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The Internet wants Reese’s to do something about net neutrality murderer Ajit Pai
12.15.2017
08:21 am
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Ajit Pai, who is on the fast track to becoming this season’s Martin Shkreli, has gotten major press the past few days as the FCC Chairman blamed for “murdering net neutrality.” In most of the press photos, Pai is pictured drinking from a ridiculous novelty mug, as large as his head, emblazoned with the Reese’s candy logo.

This mug is so absurdly stupid that John Oliver made fun of it last May in a “Last Week Tonight” segment in which he asked viewers to flood the FCC with calls and comments to urge the agency to retain net neutrality. Oliver drank from a bucket-sized replica of the Reese’s mug. Pai’s response was to film a segment drinking from an even larger mug than Oliver, garbage-can sized.
 

 
Pai recently drew Internet ire all over again by releasing what AV Club called “a dumb new video” which openly mocks net neutrality supporters, culminating in a collective public head-explosion when the Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to ultimately dismantle rules regulating Internet service providers, effectively “murdering net neutrality” in the public’s view.

An interesting aside to net neutrality supporters hatred of Pai has been numerous demands on the Reese’s Facebook page to “do something” about him. Though certainly most of these posts are misguided anger, one must wonder what a company might have to do to protect their brand from the negative association with one of the most-hated men in the country. Pai’s mugging with the mug is product placement of the worst possible order. Perhaps these protester’s pleas to the candy company are simply a misguided hope that someone, ANYONE will listen to their frustration. Clearly, the FCC wasn’t listening to the estimated 83% of Americans who support net neutrality. The angry masses await word from Reese’s.
 

 

 
Many more pieces of Pai after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Christopher Bickel
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12.15.2017
08:21 am
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Why can’t you read the punk history ‘American Hardcore’ in California state prison?
09.28.2017
07:53 am
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If you get sent up the river in California and you like to read about music, better stick to biographies of Tommy Dorsey and Rudy Vallee. State prisons have banned the book American Hardcore: A Tribal History on the grounds that it “shows obscene material displaying penetration of the vagina or anus.” That’s false, says the book’s publisher, Feral House: “Not a single risqué image in the whole book.”

American Hardcore, now in its second edition, is the popular history of hardcore punk that was the basis for the 2006 documentary of the same name. Earlier this week, Feral House’s Facebook account posted a letter from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to the book’s author, Steven Blush:

Dear Steven Blush-Feral House Publishing:

This letter is to advise you that your publication entitled, American Hardcore, A Tribal History, Second Edition, by Steven Blush has been placed on the Centralized List of Disapproved Publications by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and will not be delivered to CDCR inmates statewide.

This decision is based on the violation of the California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 15, Section 3006, Contraband. The publication shows obscene material displaying penetration of the vagina or anus and shall not be delivered to the inmate(s), as it violates Department policy.


Last year, the Virginia Department of Corrections banned the GWAR coffee-table book Let There Be GWAR, which at least includes some pictures of genitals and bodily fluids that might keep a reader company during the cold penitentiary nights. As I recall, the worst obscenities in American Hardcore are musical, along the lines of Discharge’s Grave New World or SSD’s How We Rock.

“Hardcore.” They must have mistaken it for a book about porn, you think.

Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
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09.28.2017
07:53 am
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Glenn Danzig’s home is for sale
08.03.2017
10:32 am
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Glenn Danzig’s Los Feliz home is for sale. The listing price is $1,199,000. Sadly, there’s only one photo of the home’s the exterior. I’d love to take a peek inside. Perhaps the relator will add more photos to the listing?

The home boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and it’s 1,544 sqft.

From the MLS:

Located in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. This 1907 Craftsman home is awaiting your imagination and creative talents. In the rear of the property is a 2 bd.+1ba. additional unit. Many original accents are still intact. Two story home with hardwood floors, leaded glass, and storage units. This is a property that should be returned to its glorious past. Property is to be sold “as is”.

I noticed in the listing there’s no cooling but you do get four parking spaces.


Click on image to enlarge.
 
h/t to everyone who’s sharing this on Facebook.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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08.03.2017
10:32 am
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California’s bizarro ‘Flintstone House’ sells for $2.8 million
06.30.2017
09:16 am
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Some lucky schmoe just bought one of the coolest houses in the United States.

The Hillsborough, California home affectionately known as “The Flintstone House” which has been on the market since 2015, sold this week for $2.8 million—$1.4 million less than the original asking price.

The last previous sale of the home was for $800,000 in 1996.

The experimental home, built in 1976, was constructed using steel rebar and wire mesh frames built over large inflated aeronautical balloons and sprayed with high-velocity concrete known as gunite or “shotcrete.”

The home, also known as “Dome House,” “Gumby House,” or “Bubble House,” became more commonly known as “Flintstone House” when it was painted completely orange, from its original white, in 2000.

According to Atlas Obscura, there have been many urban legends surrounding the home’s previous ownership. George Lucas was once rumored to have owned the house. It has also been speculated that O.J. Simpson made a bid following his 1995 trial and that several famous Silicon Valley investors have lived there.

The new buyer of the home has not been disclosed.
 

Photos via Alain Pinel Realtors
 

 

 
More pics after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Christopher Bickel
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06.30.2017
09:16 am
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Saudi Arabia censors turn woman in swimming pool ad into a Winnie the Pooh beach ball!
06.06.2017
10:13 am
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I don’t know how legit this is, but apparently a kid-friendly swimming pool advertisement has been censored in Saudi Arabia with a woman completely photoshopped out and turned into a Winnie the Pooh beach ball! If you notice, shirts have been photoshopped on the children and the male in the pool, too!

According to BuzzFeed, the ad is very real and you can see the Tweet here or below.

 

 
via Anorak

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.06.2017
10:13 am
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Moon shots: Showing your butt in public is the latest craze, apparently…
04.27.2017
09:43 am
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No ifs or buts, the end is nigh, quite literally it seems for bright young things from across England (and now the world) who are taking pictures of themselves baring their buttocks in public places and uploading the resulting image to Instagram.

This kind of exhibitionism or mooning it we used to call it, is not new. It has been a well-used way of showing disrespect to an enemy or scorn to nobility for centuries. Now, showing your butt in some beautiful landscape is the latest jolly wheeze for firm-buttocked young people to entertain themselves. This was what the Internet was made for…..apparently

Well, three cheers for that.

It all started with the Instagram page Cheeky Exploits which has been encouraging people from across the globe to upload snaps of their bare butts in suitable lush or unusual envirnoments. And people have been sending in moonshots from Australia, Brazil, America and alike—and you can check them out here.
 
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More butts from around the world, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.27.2017
09:43 am
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Sean Spicer’s Hitler remarks mashed up with ‘Veep’ is genius funny
04.12.2017
11:18 am
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This clip hardly needs any setting up as apparently the entire world watched in hilarious horror as Trump administration spokesman Sean Spicer stepped on his own dick (repeatedly) yesterday with his spectacular “Hitler didn’t gas his own people” gaffe and subsequent humiliating abject apology tour.

Clearly the man is a bungling fool, and in way over his head, but that could be said of many if not most of the people working in the White House. Say what you want about Spicer, he may be an idiot—and he should certainly be dismissed from his duties pronto—but at least he’s (probably) not a Russian operative. Have some perspective. It’s 2017.

Below, a genius Veep-Spicer mash-up that was noticed and tweeted by Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus who remarked that the clip “feels like an Emmy-winning episode to me.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.12.2017
11:18 am
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‘Punch Nazis’ in Arabic T-shirt is the latest in alt-right resistance
04.12.2017
10:46 am
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It’s now come to this. It’s currently necessary in the United States for citizens of good conscience and opinion to signal their public opposition to white supremacy and other Nazi-esque ideas. As was widely reported yesterday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer inexplicably chose Passover to trot out a “Hitler wasn’t so bad” justification for the Trump administration’s recent air strike on a Syrian air base that, regrettably, was not solely justified by a desire to puff up a big, bad foreign despot, was it now?

After all, the Trump administration was scarcely a week old when it released a statement addressing Holocaust Remembrance Day that neglected to reference Jewish suffering in any way. Far from a “gaffe,” Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks told CNN that the wording was quite intentional, because “we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered.” Yeah, right.

All of which just goes to establish that cold-hearted indifference is an easy posture to adopt if you don’t personally care about the people involved. Trump adviser Steve Bannon openly trumpets a race-based theory of some supposed decline of America, and the fact that he may be (please God) on the way out doesn’t mean that we all shouldn’t give him a forceful kick in the nuts as he (please God) exits the stage.

On the day that Trump became president, American Nazi Richard Spencer was standing on a street corner explaining the significance of his Pepe pin to an Australian news crew (seriously) when “a group of masked protesters” abruptly interrupted Spencer’s remarks by punching him in the face. That started a round of gleeful celebration by Trump haters as well as a wan debate about whether it’s morally OK (I almost said “kosher”) to punch Nazis. (It is.)

Artist Molly Crabapple has concocted a nifty T-shirt that is the ideal fashion statement for our fucked-up times—it’s a T-shirt with the words “Punch Nazis” on it, but the language chosen is the one most likely to strike fear in the hearts of white America—Arabic.

The T-shirt exists in unisex and women’s versions and comes in two colors, red and white. (The unisex version actually comes in “Heather Grey” and “Independence Red,” but whatevs.) No matter which one you get, the price is the same, 25 bucks, which is a small price to pay to symbolically punch Richard Spencer in the face. 

Plus, proceeds go to City Plaza, “a squatted, self-managed hotel in Athens which provides dignified housing for refugees.”
 

 

 
via Exile on Moan Street
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.12.2017
10:46 am
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How to lie in 14 steps: the WikiHow guide to dishonesty
03.24.2017
08:33 am
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Writing for Esquire in 1969, Gore Vidal laid bare a “demagogic strategy” William F. Buckley used to befuddle opponents:

If one is lying, accuse others of lying. On television this sort of thing is enormously effective in demoralizing the innocent and well-mannered who, acting in good faith, do not lie or make personal insults. Buckley has made many honorable men look dishonest fools by his demagoguery, and by the time they recover from his first assault and are ready to retaliate, the program is over.

Why is this effective? Because the thought of lying in public, where a judge, policeman or journalist might hear, gives good citizens the cold sweats. The mere accusation unleashes the bad conscience of the regular taxpayer and snaps his mind neatly in half. Did I fail to give a full and accurate account? Am I guilty of an act of omission, if not commission? Could I have used a more charitable adjective? Perhaps I did mischaracterize certain of my honorable friend’s views, etc.
 

 
We at Dangerous Minds don’t believe the strategies and tactics of dishonesty should be the preserve of the rich, the powerful, and the stupid, and few other “content providers” will tell you the score. While the New York Times may report on “How to Improve Your Productivity at Work,” the Gray Lady is unlikely to teach you how to play fast and loose with the facts. Less reputable outlets than ours will lie to you, which can be instructive, but they will do nothing deliberately to wise you up.

That’s why, until they start teaching us how to do our own surgeries, WikiHow’s lying clinic is likely to remain their most useful public service. 

I won’t list all of their 14 steps to falsehood, but here are some of the basics. Rehearsal is a key part of the technique. Repetition gives purchase to the most absurd, self-contradictory assertion. There are a few body language tips:

Be sure not to rub your face too much, sway back and forth, or shrug your shoulders a lot. Keep your arms down at your sides rather than folding them across your chest. Don’t blink more often than normal or turn your body away from the person. All of these are signs that you are lying.

(But what if you want people to believe you’re lying? It would be interesting to try all of these gestures at once while scrupulously telling the truth, as an experiment.)
 

 
Another pro tip from WikiHow: lie before you have to. Take the initiative. I think this means you run into the living room with icing in your nostrils and scream “I did not eat the cake that is not missing!”

The Community Q&A covers likely eventualities: “What if the person has found evidence?” “Is covering up your bad deed with a less significant bad deed a good strategy?” “If I need to, how do I force tears?”

This last question is misguided. Just tell the sucker you’re crying.

Posted by Oliver Hall
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03.24.2017
08:33 am
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See what North Korean TV is really like with an uncut hour of weird propaganda programming
03.20.2017
01:56 pm
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It’s painful to contemplate the relentless gauntlet of oppression and misery the citizens of North Korea have endured for decades now. The reign of autocratic terror hatched by Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, and his grandson Kim Jong Un is an occurrence we can only hope ends soon and is never repeated again. The three Kims are held up as something akin to deities, while most of the population starves.

In North Korea, the Korean War of the 1950s may as well have happened yesterday. There is no such entity as “South Korea,” it is all simply “Korea,” with the southern half temporarily occupied by American imperialists, who (as the propaganda never stops emphasizing) started the Korean War and have been intent on killing and raping North Korea ever since, an outcome stymied by North Korea’s dominating military forces.

By chance I’m in the middle of a pretty decent murder mystery set in North Korea—it’s called A Corpse in the Koryo, and it’s written pseudonymously by a westerner with access to the country.

For that reason I was extra-interested to learn that an hour of North Korean TV programming found its way onto YouTube yesterday. As might be expected, the programming is equal parts rousing, patriotic, and grim.

From the 10th to the 18th minute there is an amazing story, told entirely in the medium of dance, of a boy and his mother being brainwashed by a Catholic priest. After the priest kills the boy, the mother avenges the boy’s death. After the story is over, the text “Do not forget the brutality of American things” appears on the screen. Because the United States is all about murderous clergymen!

There’s a documentary segment about a clothing factory, followed by one about mining. Around the 35th minute we begin to get the truly demented patriotic pageantry that is associated with North Korea. A loud and uplifting song is played while stirring images of prosperous and colorful North Korea pan and fade in and out. For the first time we see copious images of the Glorious Leader Kim Jong Un.

The last chunk is dedicated to North Korean children engaging in music and dance. Two small children play a duet on a piano—this is followed by a solo dance of a young boy dancing with a stick.

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.20.2017
01:56 pm
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