Patrick Kennedy

There has never been a better time to commit financial crimes.

David's post about the rise in Google searches for "coronavirus beer," "corona virus beer," and "virus corona beer" in the last few days, brings to mind the sad fate of Ayds.

Ayds (pronounced aids) was a popular appetite-suppressant candy from the 1930s-1980s. When public awareness about AIDS grew in the mid-80s, sales of Ayds declined. Eventually Ayds went out of business. From Wikipedia:

By the mid-1980s, public awareness of the disease AIDS caused problems for the brand due to the phonetic similarity of names and the fact that the disease caused immense weight loss in patients. While initially sales were not affected, by 1988 the chair of Dep Corporation announced that the company was seeking a new name because sales had dropped as much as 50% due to publicity about the disease.[3] While the product's name was changed to Diet Ayds (Aydslim in Britain), it was eventually withdrawn from the market.

(Side note: I like the mod music in the commercial that starts at 1:55)

Simon Weckert loaded a hand-cart with cellphones and pulled them slowly through Berlin. This fooled Google Maps into registering severe congestion, marking the streets bright red in the service, and rerouting traffic to avoid the area.

99 smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps.Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic.

Reminder: public disclosure of a zero-day vulnerability is rarely the first time it was exploited.

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In an attempt to curb the spread of the deadly new coronavirus, Wuhan city officials are temporarily shutting down "bus, subway, ferry and long-distance passenger transport," reports NPR.

The virus, which has killed 17 people and infected over 500, is thought to have originated in a Wuhan seafood market. According to The Washington Post, the now closed "1,000-stall bazaar sold not only seafood but marmots, spotted deer and venomous snakes, according to state media reports that described the market as 'filthy and messy.'”

China Daily tweeted "Public #transportation such as bus, subway, ferry and long-distance bus in Wuhan will be temporarily closed since 10am Thursday. All flights and trains departed from #Wuhan will be temporarily cancelled to reduce risk of spread of the new virus, local govt says. #coronavirus"

Wuhan is China's "fifth-largest city, and more than 3,200 square miles in size," reports Business Insider. "By comparison, New York City has 8 million people — nearly 3 million fewer than Wuhan."

Two other well-know coronaviruses are MERS and SARS. From the CDC website:

Two other human coronaviruses, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV have been known to frequently cause severe symptoms. MERS symptoms usually include fever, cough, and shortness of breath which often progress to pneumonia. About 3 or 4 out of every 10 patients reported with MERS have died. MERS cases continue to occur, primarily in the Arabian Peninsula. SARS symptoms often included fever, chills, and body aches which usually progressed to pneumonia. No human cases of SARS have been reported anywhere in the world since 2004.

Image by Photo Credit:Content Providers(s): CDC/Dr. Fred Murphy - This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #4814.Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers., Public Domain, Link

Air Force veteran Sauntore Thomas was "humiliated" when a teller at TCF Bank in Livonia, Michigan decided, without any rational cause, that three large checks Thomas brought for deposit were fraudulent. Rather than easily confirm the checks, the teller called the cops!

Thomas is now suing TCF Bank. I hope he receives some new large checks to deposit his new bank.

ABC:

Thomas' attorney, Deborah Gordon, said he was able to deposit the checks at another bank without a problem and they cleared less than 24 hours later. She said bank employees could have easily verified the check before calling law enforcement.

"My client had very legitimate checks and he had a bank account at this bank," Gordon told ABC News Thursday. "Right away they told him there was an issue with verifying the checks, which makes zero sense because these checks were from a large corporate entity."

"They kept telling him there was an issue of fraud and that's what caused them to call the police. So then I have to ask, 'What is the reason you think there's fraud?'" she added.

Gordon said her client called her as he was being interrogated by two police officers, while others stood guard outside of the bank. She said she called the bank, but the employees were extremely dismissive and denied her request to speak with a manager.

"There's no explanation for that other than the fact that my client is African American and that is my firm belief. They never offered an explanation as to why the police were called and they never offered an explanation that made any sense as to why they thought the checks were fraudulent," Gordon said.

The time is always right to do what is right, that's true. But the timing of this is a pretty ugly retcon—especially after a new trove of FBI files on Martin Luther King, Jr. were just released six months ago, painting an ugly picture of frequent sexual misconduct.

But even if we ignore these most salacious allegations, the fact of the matter is that the FBI still wiretapped King, and wrote him anonymous letters encouraging him to kill himself.

A letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. from the FBI Archives

Their motivation in this letter was not to end or seek justice for his alleged sexual misconduct. They just wanted to discredit him and the entire Civil Rights Movement, in keeping with their usual patriotic duty to uphold the status quo at any cost.

Regardless of the FBI's blatant hypocrisy — or whatever truth might be contained within those allegations — it's still worth reading King's, "Letter From a Birmingham Jail."

Image via Wikimedia Commons

If you were in Idaho and wondering where to score some weed the answer is Oregon.

KTVB7:

It's no hidden secret that Oregon is seeing higher marijuana sales in counties along their borders with Idaho, but a new report from the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis found exactly how much more those counties are selling compared to the statewide average.

Oregon counties along the Idaho border have a sales per adult that are 420% above the statewide average, which the report said was something "you cannot make up."

Wow, check out the official posters for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

What an amazing array of styles and disciplines — there’s manga, shodo (calligraphy), Cubism, photography, surrealism, and ukiyo-e. That stunning poster at the top is from Tomoko Konoike — fantastic. As you can see, posters from past Olympics have tended towards the literal, with more straightforward depictions of sports, the rings, stadiums, etc. Kudos to the organizers of the Tokyo Games for casting their net a little wider. Love it. (via sidebar)

In order to drum up business for local movie theaters in Africa (most notably in Ghana), theater owners would commission local artists to paint movie posters.

When Frank Armah began painting posters for Ghanaian movie theaters in the mid-1980s, he was given a clear mandate: Sell as many tickets as possible. If the movie was gory, the poster should be gorier (skulls, blood, skulls dripping blood). If it was sexy, make the poster sexier (breasts, lots of them, ideally at least watermelon-sized). And when in doubt, throw in a fish. Or don’t you remember the human-sized red fish lunging for James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me?

“The goal was to get people excited, curious, to make them want to see more,” he says. And if the movie they saw ended up surprisingly light on man-eating fish and giant breasts? So be it. “Often we hadn’t even seen the movies, so these posters were based on our imaginations,” he says. “Sometimes the poster ended up speaking louder than the movie.”

You can check out more of these amazing artworks in this Twitter thread, this BBC story, on the AIGA site, and at Poster House, which has an exhibition of these posters up through Feb 16.

Update: I removed this modern-day spoof of the Ghanaian posters from the post. The tell is the reference to this amazing GIF. (thx, erik)

L.A. City Fire says 2 classes were outside when liquid jet fuel rained down on them from the sky shortly before noon Pacific time.

BREAKING NEWS: Delta Airlines flight 89 from Los Angeles to Shanghai was nearing LAX in an emergency landing sequence when it dumped fuel on a school playground, and the kids and teachers who were outside.

• Authorities say 17 children and 9 adults were treated for minor injuries.

• The FAA has declared an emergency.

• Delta says the jet experienced an engine issue requiring return to LAX.

• Plane landed safely after the emergency fuel release to reduce landing weight.

As of 130PM Pacific time, LA County Fire Department said,

“Patient count updated to 17 children, 9 adults. All minor injuries with no transports to local hospital from school. There are no evacuation orders for the immediate area. Substance was confirmed JET FUEL.”

Parents are asked to refer to the school for plans to pick up their child.

Video below from eyewitness @SujeyHernandez.

Delta Airlines told reporters within an hour of the disaster, “Shortly after takeoff, Flight 89 from LAX to Shanghai experienced an engine issue requiring the aircraft to return to LAX. The aircraft landed safely after an emergency fuel release to reduce landing weight."

LOS ANGELES TIMES:

An airplane returning to Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday morning dropped jet fuel onto a school playground, striking several students at Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy, officials said. Delta Flight 89 had taken off from LAX with 149 passengers on board and was en route to Shanghai when it turned around and headed back to the L.A. airport.

“Shortly after takeoff, Flight 89 from LAX to Shanghai experienced an engine issue requiring the aircraft to return to LAX,” Delta spokesperson Adrian Gee said. “The aircraft landed safely after an emergency fuel release to reduce landing weight.” The Los Angeles County Fire Department said that more than 70 firefighters and paramedics are at the school assessing multiple patients. Los Angeles City Fire is also at the scene.

IMAGE - Emergency vehicles converged on Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy after a jet dropped fuel onto a playground. (KTLA)

I missed this earlier in the week, but Wednesday, January 15 was the 30th anniversary of They Might Be Giants' third album, Flood—their major label debut that brought Casio synths and drum machines and Triangle Man and Constantinople to the mainstream.

SPIN Magazine has a great retrospective on the album, speaking with artists from Mike Doughty to Chris Carrabba to Open Mike Eagle about the impact that it had on their lives.

My own exposure to TMBG came through their weird animated music videos on Tiny Toons. I started actively listening to them in high school because my friend Flood from Asbestos Records told Teenage Me that they had an album named after him. He was lying. But he did later convince me to start a They Might Be Giants tribute band. We played exactly one show, and we called ourselves Your Racist Friends, after a song from Flood.

In hindsight, that name may not have come across as tongue-in-cheek as I thought at the time.

They Might Be Giants’ Flood Turns 30: Musicians Extol the Landmark Album [Chris Harris / SPIN]

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Did teenagers use pagers in the 1990s? I don't know any who did. Nevertheless, here's an LA Times sidebar that shows the codes kids used to chat via pager back in the day.

[via r/coolguides]

This 2½ minute commercial for termite spray is amusing, not least in how it explains why you shouldn't panic if the bugs don't immediately die. I feel more satisfied having watched it than most recent movies.

It's hard to think of any reason other than racism for the way the British press looks for every opportunity to lambaste Meghan Markle. Buzzfeed News compiled a bunch of side-by-side headlines to contrast the way the two princesses are treated.

Corey Curnutt (25) and Savannah Grillot (29) of Visalia, California were arrested on four counts of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy charges, reports Fresno's ABC 7 News. The married couple were accused of planting "bait bikes" in front of their house, and when someone tried to take the bikes, the couple would run outside wielding aluminum baseball bats and beat the would-be thieves. Curnutt and Grillot recorded the incidents and posted them YouTube.

From ABC 7:

[Neighbor Kerris LeBeau] says Curnutt and Grillot were really nice people.

But she and her husband had a front-row seat to the never-ending entrapment happening next door, and finally felt it had gone too far.

"There would be blood in the street or on the sidewalks the next day," she says.

So they said something to the couple.

"We had mentioned, 'Maybe it's not the best idea, you're kind of bringing them into the neighborhood that might not be here otherwise'. And it was a lot, it was every night, and just a lot of activity," LeBeau says.

Image: ABC 7 video screenshot

Kathryn Hughes's $19.95 CVS Receipt Scarf sends up the company's infamously absurd receipts -- at 58" long, the handmade/hand-cut scarves are only slightly shorter than the real thing! (via Kottke)

Not surprisingly, getting a reservation at the hottest Manhattan restaurants is easier if you're rich, famous, an influencer, a media bigshot, or all of those things. But even within the realm of restaurant reservation phone lines, there is a hierarchy of velvet ropes. According to former reservationist Foster Kamer, at his job the people calling were placed into one of the following four groups. There is also the PAB (Punk-ass bitch) group that included individuals known in the restaurant scene to be rude, bad tippers, or always late for their reservation. From Gossamer:

No Status
PROFILE: Plebes. Normies. In binary, zeroes. The largest of the four groups. On average, well over half the calls. Almost never got what they wanted. Almost always pissed.

PX (or: Person Extraordinaire)
PROFILE: Magazine editors and food writers, gallerinas, flacks, fashion girls, low-D-to-mid-C-list celebrities. Sometimes got what they wanted. Often felt they deserved better. Often annoyed.

PPX
PROFILE: A rare, exotic bird. Important. Memorable. At least one person in the restaurant knows who they are on sight, sound, or name. An A-to-high-B list actor, editor in chief or of note, a Times writer or Page Six gossip, a novelist, artist, or top-tier chef. Tina Brown, Graydon Carter, a Gosling, a Hemsworth, a Bushnell, a Rushdie, or (groan) a McInerney. Maybe a regular or neighbor. But mostly, bona fide celebrities. Maybe 10 percent of the calls. Usually got whatever they wanted.

PPPX
PROFILE: The 99th percentile. Royalty. No, really: actual, literal royalty. Wills and Harry. People who only need first names: Anna, Bono, Hillary, et al. Also, the owner, the owner’s family, investors, the chefs, and anybody who’d racked up visits in the triple digits. This list was so small, you were able to memorize it, and probably should. Always got whatever they wanted.

"Making Reservations: Life behind the lines of one of New York’s most iconic restaurants." (Gossamer)

image: "Tom's Restaurant in Manhattan, New York, United States, which was made internationally famous by Seinfeld" by Rdikeman (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Rob Sheridan, one of the creators behind DC's upcoming High Level comic series and NIN's former art director, swallowed an unmeasured handful of 'shrooms before heading into see the "disasterpiece" known as Cats. He soon regretted it.

Birth. Movies. Death. then interviewed him on the experience:

As a masochistic connoisseur of bad cinema, I knew since the Cats trailer came out that I needed to see this hideous disaster, in a theater, and very high. I was visiting with family for the holidays so I didn't get to see it right away when everyone on Twitter was shrieking in horror about what they'd just experienced. So after New Year's, the full Cats experience became a priority. On Monday I have to dive heavily back into work and start a whole health kick, so this strange post-holiday week was pretty much my last chance, and I decided I was going to go all in. Instead of taking an edible as I'd planned, I remembered some mushrooms someone had given me a while back and felt like if there was any chance I was going to enjoy Cats on any level, it would be melting into a psychedelic trip – just get weirded out and giggle and maybe make it fun. I was very, very wrong.

You really have to read the entire thing. It's too good.

image via Deadline

Meanwhile you can catch Cheap Trick headlining smaller venues like the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester.

Continue reading…

Move over, every other craft project — this Homer Simpson disappears into the bushes embroidery piece by Rayna of Hermit Girl Creations is the best embroidery in the history of the world. The scene is taken from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons called Homer Loves Flanders and has become a bit of a meme in recent years; here’s the clip:

Check out her Instagram or Etsy shop — she does a lot of other Simpsons-based embroidery as well as Charlie Brown, The Office, Dr. Seuss, Frog & Toad, Stranger Things, and Futurama. Looks like she takes commissions via Instagram DM.

Earlier this month at the Festival of Lights event in Riverside, California, a gentleman requested that a caricature artist paint his portrait. Once the drawing was finished, the subject snatched the artist's bag of earnings containing around $500. He left his portrait behind. From KTLA:

“Do you recognize this caricature? And no, we are not kidding,” police said in a Facebook post sharing the drawing. “This caricature is of the suspect, but of course, has exaggerated characteristics and features.”

This video hit YouTube in 2009. The song was originally released in 2006 as a bonus track on Jarvis Cocker's first post-Pulp album. More than a decade later, not much has changed. In light of this month's disastrous election results in the UK, a push is on to bring this 13-year old song back to number one, just in time for Christmas.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

Becoming important enough to merit a "hedcut" stippled portrait from the Wall Street Journal used to a be a significant honor. But on Monday, the WSJ announced that all members can now receive a hedcut courtesy of an AI that's been trained over the last year. Along the way, developers ran into some speedbumps. Baldness was one obstacle:

“We had to go through and hand-tag over 2,000 photos, including a lot of bald men, so that the machine would learn what baldness is”

And so was overconfidence:

The most harrowing issue of all was overfitting, which happens when a model fits a limited set of data too closely. In this case, that meant the machine became too satisfied with its artistic ability and began producing terrifying monstrosities like [the portraits seen above].

You can learn more about the process and sign up for your own hedcut here. With any luck, someone will post a program a generate monstrous glitchy versions.

(Via Gene Park.)

"Vandalism must be mild!" declares the pinned post at r/MildlyVandalised, my new favorite subreddit. It's dedicated to amusing examples of relatively insignificant destruction and decay, such as missing letters in signs, wikipedia "vandalism" and fake instructional stickers added to public appliances and the like.

Like Andy Warhol famously said,¹ someday in the far future you might end up in an exhibit in someone else’s natural history museum. That what happens in this short film by Kirsten Lepore, who you may remember from the weirdo Hi Stranger video. (via waxy)

1. Who’s to say he didn’t?↩

When I was younger, I would feel so badly about abandoning a book that didn't grab me, I'd force myself to slog through it until the bitter end. Then I realized that there are only so many books I'll have time to read in my lifetime so it's better to make each one count. If I'm not consistently pulled into the pages, I drop the book and crack another one. Of course there are exceptions, but it mostly means that I've enjoyed nearly all the books I've finished reading in recent years. Related, here is Goodreads' list of the most popular books users of the service have abandoned.

(via Kottke)

Macquarie Dictionary announced yesterday that its 2019 “word of the year” is “cancel culture.” On the surface, this is fine: “Cancel culture” may signify an important trend that existed before this year, but it’s also an important shorthand to describe how the world is currently trying to hold people, from racist…

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