
Every sense you possess is an instrument for reacting to change. Does that tell you nothing?

Every sense you possess is an instrument for reacting to change. Does that tell you nothing?
In the '50s, four people collaborated to create a pill so women could enjoy sex. They fibbed about their motivations and skirted the law. Jonathan Eig details the history in The Birth of the Pill.

Image Via Wingzone
There are few things out there as funny as religious fundamentalism. The idea that people like to use the concept of God or religion as an excuse to attack other people, sects, or beliefs is insane. While there are so many examples of it out there, I would like to take a moment to point out the website God Hates Shrimp to you all. I am pretty sure you can figure out who the site is satirizing, and it makes it all even more laughable.
You see, this site is here simply to prove how asinine the ideas of places like the Westboro Baptist Church are. Sites like this exist to show us that, sometimes, in our own narrowed mind, there can be huge gaps. The truth is, while we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, and will like you no matter what your belief system is, the reality is, he or she would not likely hate shrimp. Or anyone or anything else that is different, for that matter.
A site like God Hates Shrimp just reminds us how skewered some people's views are, and does so in hilarious fasion.

The latest version of Adobe's Digital Editions, a DRM system widely used for ebooks, gathers enormous amounts of sensitive personal information about its users' reading habits and transmits them, in the clear, to Adobe.
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"I can't quite place it," writes David Shiffman. Update: The original is at Jezebel: "This Science Museum Has Royally Pissed Off a Bunch of Girl Scouts"Civil forfeiture laws seem to give police the right to commandeer anything, including cash, that they deem associated with a real or "potential" crime and use it to buy, in one police chief's words, "toys." Like a zamboni or margarita machine. Let John Oliver explain.
Yep, that's definitely it. The railgun , hailed as the future of the United States Navy, sounds exactly like this. No joking here at all.
Tech billionaire Vinod Khosla bought a house by a public beach, then cut off access to it. A court has ordered him to unlock the gates.
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It's been less than a day since the company published its new, excellent privacy policy -- but Gigaom has noticed that the latest Apple transparency report, covering Jan 1-Jun 30 2014, has eliminated the line that says that the company has received no secret Patriot Act "section 215" requests, which come with gag orders prohibiting companies from discussing them.
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To ensure Florida's stupid laws allowing religion to be taught in public schools do not expose kids to just one idea the Satanic Temple is stepping up to provide alternate reading materials.
Read the restIf you're a frequent Uber user in Toronto, keep your eyes pealed for a McLaren 650S and a smiling mouse head. Deadmau5 is officially on the Uber X payroll and he started giving rides this week.
The turbo Volvo engine-swapped Terror Tractor has returned and it has its own soundtrack.
This Russian motorcyclist throws trash into the windows of litterbugs she comes across.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn is on fire: "Let’s be clear: Under international human rights law, secret “law” doesn’t even qualify as 'law' at all."
Burger King has launched a black burger in Japan made from black peppered-beef, buns and cheese darkened with bamboo charcoal, and a topping of garlic sauce blackened with squid ink. Read the rest
There were 800 convictions in the S&L crisis, but the DOJ hasn't prosecuted a single banker involved in the financial crisis; as Matt Taibbi points out in the brilliant, essential book The Divide, if shutting down a huge bank would impose too many costs on society, then why don't prosecutors insist that the banks be split up as a condition of not dropping the entire C-suite into the deepest dungeon in the nation? Read the rest
Encouraged by departments of Homeland Security and Justice police around the country make use of a private intelligence network to determine which motorists to rob, a Washington Post investigation found.
Read the restBinaryjesusYet another example of unprompted brutality by the NYPD.

Chaumtoli Huq, former general counsel for NYC Public Advocate Tish James, attended a rally in Times Square with her family, and afterwards, waited on the sidewalk outside of a Ruby Tuesday restaurant while her husband took their children (10 and 6) to the bathroom.
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Techdirt's Tim Cushing highlights some of the more Kafkaesque moments in modern American justice -- handcuffed men who shoot themselves in the back, men who are arraigned for crimes they allegedly committed while in jail, and comes to this conclusion: Read the rest

"Mad honey," or deli bal as it is call in Turkey, contains a neurotoxin from rhododendrons called grayanotoxin that can cause "low blood pressure and irregularities in the heartbeat that bring on nausea, numbness, blurred vision, fainting, potent hallucinations, seizures, and even death, in rare cases."
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Arby's, inspired by customers who inquired about a poster in the restaurant depicting a heap of myriad meats, now sells an off-menu "Meat Mountain" piled with various kinds of animal flesh for $10. Here's what's between the buns: Read the rest
Binaryjesus"The Bloomfield PD's internal investigations department found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the cops."
Two cops from Bloomfield, NJ's police department have been indicted, and another plead guilty after a suppressed dashcam video showed them beating a man who was facing years in prison for "resisting arrest" (the DA dropped his charges right away). Read the rest