Russian Sledges

I was hoping for Gawker, but I’ll take it.

Scene of the crime.

One of the small, periodic joys of belonging to mass e-mail listservs is the rare occasion when a reply-all function is accidentally turned on, enabling anyone on the list to spam thousands of people at once. NYU had a reply-all fail last year; today, it's Brown's turn. The university's alumni are currently being besieged by hundreds of confused e-mails begging to be "unsubscribed" and "taken off" an e-mail list that has quickly spun out of control.

The trouble started this morning with an errant bulletin from the University Scheduling Office (Subject: "Resource 25 Access Restored") that was mistakenly sent to the entire alumni network. Somehow, someone figured out that, by replying-all, you could e-mail everyone in the group. This created confusion.

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:33 AM, [redacted] wrote:

Hey: I'm a 20 year alum. Why am I getting this email?

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:32 AM, [redacted] wrote:

???

Finally, someone stated the obvious:

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

It seems you're sending this out to a huge alumni list.

Then chaos broke out:

Not sure why I am getting this email. I would like to be taken off.

??? Why Brown emails????

Quit replying All..All!! I've reported this as spam!
Please stop replying all

I am not a "scheduler" either and do not know what resource 25 is.

The authorities stepped in:

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

Please don't reply all to these e-mails. If you have questions, reply to the sender only. Thx.

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

PEOPLE PLEASE STOP HITTING REPLY ALL!

But it was too late:

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

To whom it may concern: please take me off this list, I graduated last month.

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

This e-mail is obviously a Phishing attempt/Trojan attachment. Do not click any of the links and please stop replying all to the message. I have notified Brown CIS. I'm sure they will take action soon.

From: [redacted]@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

Unsubscribe ?
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2ok -- yeah

Some alumni seized on the list as an opportunity to lobby for issues close to their hearts:

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

i was in Phi Delt we need to take down the pool

And some just abused their privileges:

From: [redacted]

Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored

Does anybody know a nice restaurant in the Virginia area? Driving through with my cat and two birds this evening and like Italian food.

Brown's administration has not yet stepped forward to explain the mistake, nor has anyone given the kind alumnus above a restaurant recommendation.

Original Source

I had time to make a comic, so I did! Yay COMICS, I miss 'em.

While other stuff is plodding along, and that's great, I wish I could find a way to keep this comic going regularly. Usually, the longer between updates, the more I freak out in my head about how long it's been, and feel like whatever I post next has to be really long, or "worth the wait." But I should just post. Unfortunately, this being the thing that has neither deadline nor paycheque attached, it is always the one that gets pushed back. But I have to figure something out. I really do.

Kaesong, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

eridave:

[ REVVING INTENSIFIES ]

The biblical narrative tells us that jesus gave humanity the chance to repent its sins by sacrificing his life on the cross, which the christian culture have turned into christmas, the jewish culture have turned into hanukkah, the buddhists into kwanza, and so forth.

tastefullyoffensive:

Facebook’s new privacy options.

In a gasp-worthy ending you never saw coming, M. Night Shyamalan has revealed that he ghost-wrote She’s All That, the 1998 teen romance starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook. Shyamalan dropped the prom bomb to both MTV and Movies.com recently, saying he wrote the movie while also writing The Sixth Sense and Stuart Little, all of which helped “add to the breadth” of his then-burgeoning career.

There’s not a ton more information out there now about Shyamalan’s Pygmalion-adapting past, but really, the revelation has raised so many questions. Did he write in that dance sequence at the prom? What about Prinze Jr.’s hacky-sack performance art piece? And, seriously, did he (and the makers of the movie, of course) expect us to believe that Prinze Jr. could fall for Cook just by taking off her glasses? 

zestyoranges:

He’s been there this whole time

watching

l e a r n i n g

The projects were developed on the most wonderful and unique locations. On hillsides with breathtaking sea views or on mountains surrounded by olive trees, enclosed with privacy and serenity.  

The architectural lines combined with the ash-grey concrete structures are an attractive contrast against the rough, red-coloured rocks, the warm yellow high grass and the olive green bushes and trees. This almost abstract scenery shows a unique synergy between architecture and nature. It creates a new and intriguing landscape in which failure, poverty and hopelessness are easily forgotten.

Here, via Vice, is "pretty much every single Black Flag flyer designed by Raymond Pettibon," which is pretty much all you need to know. #TeamKeith.

Read more...

HARPSWELL, Maine — A 90-year-old lobsterman is eager to get back on the water after surviving the sinking of his boat by swimming to a nearby island through the cold waters of the Gulf of Maine.

Philip Tuttle, of the Great Island community of Harpswell, is on the mend, but his boat needs more work to ensure the engine is OK and the electronics are restored, daughter-in-law Verian Tuttle said Wednesday.

His boat, Queen Tut, hit rocks Saturday, lurched and took on water in choppy, 50-degree seas after the remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea passed through the area.

StyleForum member Nutcracker recently posted some beautiful photos of his visit to Edoya, Japan’s premier maker of handmade brushes. Founded in 1718 during the country’s Edo period, and named by the eighth shogun Yoshimune, Edoya started as a paintbrush manufacturer. As the Japanese lifestyle became more Westernized after the Meiji Restoration, however, the company began producing other varieties, not least of which included clothing brushes and shoes brushes designed to care for Western style clothes.

The shop itself looks very charming. Bundles of bristles are hung from the ceiling, and every corner of the shop seems to be occupied with a brush of some kind. Kitchen brushes, toothbrushes, and back scratchers are neatly displayed under some framed Japanese prints. On a glass display case, spread out for our photographer, there’s a range of shoe brushes you didn’t even know existed. Horse mane hair is used for dusting off shoes; regular horsehair and pig bristle for raising a shine; and goat hair for final polishing. There’s also a suede brush made from metal fibers so densely packed that the brush head feels almost solid when you run your finger over it.

In the past, these brushes were only bought and used by professionals, but as people became more interested in high-quality clothing and footwear, Edoya has started selling directly to consumers as well. The brushes are considerably more expensive that what you’d find elsewhere (roughly $30-50 in Japan, and double that outside of the country), but they’re uniquely made. High-quality hairs are sourced from different parts of in the world and each brush is produced by hand. For example, boar hair from Chongqing, China is used for clothing brushes because it has just the right stiffness and flexibility for removing lint and dirt. The hairs are bundled and implanted by hand into each hole of the wooden body using a “two-level fixing” technique. This allows for longer, soft bristles to come in contact with your clothes, while shorter, harder bristles surround the base of those hairs in order to give them support and ensure they don’t bend too easily.

At the moment, the only US stockist I know of is LeatherSoul. They sell the horsehair brush (Uma) for $85, the pig hair brush (Buta) for $85, and the bronze suede brush for $65. The horsehair brush has bristles that are slightly stiffer than what you’d typically find elsewhere, and the pig hair is stiffer still. Truth be told, if I were limited to just one brush, it would be horse mane, as it’s soft enough to really raise a shine. Edoya sells one, but I don’t believe they do mail orders. The Uma is nice to use in combination with a softer horse mane brush (which you can find today in almost any cobbler’s shop), but I don’t know if I’d use it alone. The bronze suede brush, however, is the true gem. Although a cheaper suede brush does just as good of a job, Edoya’s brush feels a bit nicer in the hand. An appreciated thing when you’re doing something as mundane as cleaning shoes.

(Photos by me, Nutcracker, and LeatherSoul)

Russia to vote on law to ban telling children that there are gay people.

I’ve written many, many, many, many times that if you are using Dropbox for private information that you don’t want others to have access to you better be encrypting it. And if you’re not, you have only yourself to blame when (not if) if it gets published on the Internet.

Now we learn that the US government is planning to add Dropbox to its Prism providers. As I write this there is some question as to what this means: are the providers willingly giving the NSA access to their users data or is the NSA intercepting the data outside of the providers’ servers. In the end, it doesn’t matter. You should assume that the US government has access to any data you store on Dropbox. If that data is securely encrypted, you are probably secure—at least if your encryption key isn’t passowrd—but if you’re depending on Dropbox to keep your secrets, you’re screwed. DON’T DO THAT!

If there’s anything we can learn from the Prism scandal it’s that you absolutely can’t store sensitive data in the cloud without encrypting it with STRONG crypto. I’m using Dropbox as an exemplar here but the same principals apply to any other cloud storage. Dropbox is probably one of the most reliable providers but even it is not immune to deep packet inspection of its traffic within the Internet nor warrants, no matter how specious.

aetherclaw:

theremina:

Holeeeeee SHIT. This is, literally, madness.

well there is also the women who molest and/or rape men then try to deny that such a thing is even possible, the ones who physically attack men just for their gender, the ones who shame men based on gender alone, the ones who try to keep single fathers from ever knowing their children, and an entire anti-male culture that can genuinely be called misandry.

Derail, much?

See also: https://soundcloud.com/theremina/maaahaaaa

gothiccharmschool:

Oh hey, I’m going to see this movie on the big screen tonight. Whoo!

vintagegal:

Legend (1985)

“ This place holds more magic for me than any palace in the world.”

Pope admits the existence of "gay lobby" within Vatican administration.

eccentricgeekery:

Tardis Cat Tree.

Streets of Guangzhou during the cultural revolution. 

batreaux:

how am i supposed to pay my student loans when I can’t even pay my debt to Tom Nook?

The Lomography Film Scanner affordably scans 35mm film and slides right to your smartphone. It adjusts to fit any phone. Smart, says the woman hat has a stack of negatives in her closet.

Has anyone of you tried this yet?