Hopeful liquor store burglar breaks into, then out of locked storage room.
The Bellagio Liquor Store in Detroit never had a break in until two criminals took a sledgehammer to the back wall to rob the place. Smashing through concrete would turn out to be the easiest part of the plan.
The hole that was punched into the liquor store was perfectly placed behind three large pieces of plywood held in place by a heavy trash bin and a few crates of wine. With brute force and a few helpful shoves from outside, one of the burglars finally wiggles through the gap and into the storage room. The locked storage room.
Shamon Romeo, the owner of the Bellagio Liquor store, smartly locks his storage room at night just in case desperate men put a hole in his wall behind heavy equipment during off hours. The burglar scurries around the storage room, as if to find something to break down the door. Perhaps he doesn't want to bring in the sledgehammer he used to bust in the wall because it will leave scuffs.
Finding no indoor sledgehammer, the thief slips back through the hole from whence he came, but not before leaving behind a little something. The police recovered the burglar's watch at the scene. Your heist-planning might need help if you try to rob a liquor store with a hammer and the liquor store ends up with your watch.
So it's refreshing to see a teenage girl striking back, and reminding us all that sometimes women wear clothes for reasons beyond tempting and provoking men. It seems like common sense, but many school administrators obviously need it pointed out to them over and over again.
When I was a chubby high school boy, I wore my breezy, baggy cargo shorts to school every day in the spring and summer. I took for granted the refreshing breeze blowing up into my business, and would often stand on the windiest part of campus like a modern-day Marilyn Monroe, reveling in the sensation. And the best part is, nobody ever accused me of sexualizing my body. Quite the opposite.
While Gil Fulbright might not be an actual politician, almost all actual politicians are Gil Fulbright.
Don't worry if that doesn't make much sense. It only needs to sound like it makes sense, so that people will nod their heads in pretend understanding. It's kind of the way political oration works. Our would-be elected officials say a bunch of things that sound like the kinds of things they think we might want to hear. What they're really saying though, it's mostly without contextual substance, or, as it's more commonly known, "bullshit."
These fantastic ads from the activist group United Republic imagine a world in which politicians say exactly what they mean, which makes it pretty clear why none of them actually do. They came out last year, but with the 2016 election cycle revving up, they're more timely than ever.
Last week, the Internet went nuts over a simple website called How-Old.net. Created as a demo for Microsoft's Face Detection API, the site was built on the company's Azure cloud platform. But while everyone else was gleefully uploading their photos without a care in the world, Twitter user @Walldo dug deep into Azure's Terms of Service and found this:
Et tu, How Old Robot? Here's that fine print a little less fine:
However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing, or submitting your Submission, you are granting Microsoft, its affiliated companies, and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses (including, without limitation, all Microsoft services), including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate, and reformat your Submission; to publish your name in connection with your Submission; and to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Website Services.
What this means in people talk is that once you upload a photo to How-Old.net, Microsoft can do basically whatever they want with it. They can put it on their site, attach your name to it, put it in a book, use it in an ad, print it on toilet paper, or slap the word "BUTTFACE" on it and make it the default background image for Windows 11.
I mean, they probably won't do any of those things, but they're not closing any avenues they don't have to. After Fast Company reported on this story, a Microsoft representative reached out to them with this message:
We wanted to let you know that http://how-old.net does not store or share pictures or personally identifiable information (PII). The Terms of Service are accurate and like those of other companies. Developers get to choose how their apps work. The developers of How-old.net chose not to store or share photos for this app.
So, if Microsoft is to be believed, the photos you upload aren't even stored once you get your result. And I, for one, believe it. There's really no motive to keep the images – it's a huge waste of storage space, and using them for anything would get the company in a whole heap of unnecessary trouble, even if it is legal. This is just another example of a massive corporation giving itself as much legal leeway as possible to cover its ass for later.
Melissa Benoist, an actress from Glee (where a group of misfit students find out their shared superpower is harmony), will play the title role of Supergirl. It is a role, much like hosting the Oscars, that is great and terrible for a person's career in entertainment. On the one hand, people will definitely tune in. On the other, everyone is ready to play monday morning quarterback (if you're a geek reading this, that's sports-talk for the meanest redditor on the r/scifi subreddit).
I can't wait to see Melissa's reaction to the fans at conventions doing a hover-hand over her shoulder while asking why she didn't spend any time in space near the site of what was once the planet Krypton to prepare for the role.
Anyway, big congratulations to everyone involved. Can't wait to watch it.
These little piggies went "AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!" all the way home.
If you're visiting China anytime soon, you might want to add "The Piggy Kingdom Family Amusement Park" to your itinerary. Unless this terrifies and appalls you, which would be totally fair. That amusement park, and a number of other Chinese pig farmers, have created an odd spectacle to draw in tourists: pig diving. Let's be clear, though, there are two separate things going on. At the amusement park, pigs are launching off Olympic-height diving blocks. This is somewhat alarming. Separately, some farmers are operating much shorter and cuter pig jumps. Despite the questionable reasons for forcing the pigs to dive, spectators are flocking to the swimming swine.
Are the pigs enjoying themselves? Pigs have been known to favor a dip in the water, but plunging piggies is a relatively new pastime. Jeff Zhou, a China representative for Compassion in World Farming, told The New York Times that "platform diving [is] not necessarily a pig's idea of fun." That seems like an appropriate statement to make that adds no real clarity as to why this is happening. Proponents of pig-diving, however, argue that diving pigs are healthier, leaner and tastier. That is certainly the claim made by this farmer, who operates a less-terrifying pig diving operation:
Well, if we are making pigs do inane cute things before they are inevitably slaughtered and served as bacon, here is what else I would like to see pigs do:
Little piggy wheelbarrow races.
Synchronized pig swimming.
An all-swine production of Little Orphan Hammie, complete with Miss Ham-igan and Daddy Hogbucks, thank you very much.
Pig ballerinas. Imagine a pig in a tutu. Yes. Yes, that is good.
As long as there are pigs diving, I would like pigs with little score cards to judge the diving pigs.
The practice hasn't been completely shamed yet, so I advise hauling yourself over to China and cheering on the athletic piggies. Also, while you're there, maybe try to figure out exactly why they are doing it.
It'd be so cool if somebody could just shoot her a quick link and write a quick explanation of why everyone is saying that being out of shape is so sexy. Something like:
"Hey, girl! I just read this very interesting article by a Clemson University student named Mackenzie Pearson who totally knows what's cool nowadays, and she says that 'lately, girls are all about that dad bod'—the body type that says 'I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.'— and I thought you should read it. You truly are a lucky woman."
In fact, you can just just cut and paste that if you like. It'd certainly be easier, and I can't imagine you'd be able to express the sentiment better than I did just there.
Just between you and me, I am fully aware that this supposed seismic shift in the concept of male beauty is fully absurd. And more than a little sexist. I mean, it's not like articles written by college dudes extolling the virtues of the "mom bod" are suddenly going viral.
I kind of agree with Time's Brian Moylan, who lamented that the problem with the "dad bod" is that "it continues to reinforce inequality about what is acceptable for men and women." But I also kind of want my wife to let me eat a third slice of banana bread without looking at me in disgust. So, you know, I'm of two minds.
One candidate is running to take a stand against criminal politicians in the city of Flint, Michigan, and she's also an adorable piglet named Giggles. Flint's mayoral race seems bleak. Some of the names in contention for the mayor's office are downright scoundrels; one is even a convicted murderer. Local defense attorney Michael Ewing decided to fight this systemic corruption by doing something serious: He started a Facebook campaign to elect his pig the mayor of Flint.
Meet Giggles. This pig is running for mayor of Flint.
"I am pretty forgiving, but I am really strongly opposed to murder—and think electing a mayor who was convicted of murder sends a bad message about our city. ... We also have a mayoral candidate who was recently convicted for driving his car while drunk on the highway with three flat tires—while driving the wrong direction on the highway. ... Flint deserves better candidates than this. While reading about these people it occurred to me that Giggles would be a more dignified candidate—and I'm right."
Ewing was more right than he could imagine. Giggles' campaign message angered one of her opponents in the race: Wantwaz Davis, convicted murderer and city councilman. Davis took to Facebook to fire back at Giggles, the silly mud-slinging pig, and maybe got a little carried away with his reply. In his now-deleted post on Giggles campaign headquarters, Davis wrote a lengthy rebuttal to his murder charge, called Ewing a hypocrite, and closed with a chilling campaign promise, "I honestly laughed at your remarks, however, I will be the next mayor of Flint, Michigan and will feast off of your pig at my victory party, you can get in for free, VIP on me."
We're less concerned about Mr. Davis' threats than the fact that he honestly uses this photo for every single Facebook post. (via Wantwaz Davis on Facebook)
I haven't processed my emotions concerning this new reboot of the Vacation franchise, with Ed Helms picking up the Griswold mantle as the adult version of Rusty, and Christina Applegate as his wife:
It's not that Helms didn't play Rusty Griswold in the original National Lampoon's Vacation. That was Anthony Michael Hall. There were four Vacation movies and four separate sets of Griswold kids, so it's actually kind of fitting that they recast the role once again. Plus, Helms is a lot funnier than Hall, and that's what's really important.
What bothers me a bit is how much it seems to be leaning on the original films. A good chunk of this trailer is actually footage from the 1983 original. Plus, it's referencing jokes, recycling music and lifting the road-trip-to-Wally-World plot. The fact that the nostalgia here is so much stronger than the humor is kind of a red flag.
That said, I am somewhat intrigued by the fact that the stand-in for Christie Brinkley becomes road kill almost immediately, while the stand-in for Randy Quaid is a practically naked, remarkably well-endowed Chris Hemsworth. That says something about society. I think. Maybe? Or perhaps it just says something about how much even straight dudes like looking at Thor's physique.
He left the bank with $150,000 and filmed the teller counting the money. Then he walked outside and into his new life as an Internet celebrity. The cops had a different take on the internet stunt, and arrested Alfonseca immediately.
Here is the video of the heist taking place:
To be fair, the note he gave to the teller wasn't necessarily threatening. It's just the context. If you went into a bank and said "I wish I had all the money in this bank!" no one would do anything. If you write "I need all the money" on some paper and slyly pass it to someone like a middle school student passing notes in class, suddenly you're a "bad guy."
If you can't ask a random bank teller for money in a note, is this country really free? (via Instagram)
The line has been drawn in the sand. Don't do anything illegal and post it on Instagram to get followers. Go the normal route and post borderline-pornographic selfies with funny descriptions.
Colbert partnered with two charitable organizations to make the dreams of more than 800 South Carolina teachers come true.
Stephen Colbert, world's nicest man.(Getty)
Stephen Colbert is working hard these days to shed all traces of the blowhard character he played on Comedy Central from his public persona. He grew a lovable Santa Claus beard, he geeked out with George Lucas, and now, he's pulled off one of the most grandiose philanthropic gestures we've seen in a long time.
Colbert partnered with Share Fair Nation and ScanSource to fund every single grant request submitted by South Carolina public school teachers to DonorsChoose.org. Donors Choose is an educational crowdfunding website where teachers can request small grants for materials or tools that their students need but the school won't provide. Donors who visit the website can choose directly which requests they want to fund, but today they don't have to. Not in South Carolina, anyway. All of those requests have been paid in full.
Colbert, a South Carolina native, helped finance the project by auctioning off pieces of the set from The Colbert Report. With matched sums from his partner organizations, he is funding almost 1,000 different requests for more than 800 teachers and 375 schools, totaling approximately $800,000. The announcement was made on a live feed at Alexander Elementary School in Greenville. Here's a video of the event:
Here are just a few of the requests this donation will fulfill in schools across the state:
Classroom carpet: $520
Basic school supplies such as pencils and air freshener: $545
A trampoline and treadmill for sensory therapy: $504
Dodge balls for recess play: $165
16 new bulletin boards: $202
Game chairs for flexible learning: $485
A kidney-shaped activity table for individualized attention: $444
Classroom library books: $239
Two bookshelves: $368
Books on CD: $506
Motivational posters: $206
Way to go, Stephen Colbert. This just makes me more of a fan. I was already going to watch your show on CBS, but now I'll write it off on my taxes, too.
This Asiatic black bear was captured walking in an eerily human way.
I don't even know how to describe the way this bear is walking. It's like a cross between the ultimate slacker dude, Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's 2, and a bear. But weirder than that.
It also has a very strange build for a bear. Skinny and lanky but with short little legs. You almost want to think it's a person in a bear suit, but there's no way that's true.
Actually, I saw a real bear in the woods one time, and at first I thought it was a person in a bear suit. They have that effect; it's very strange. This video is also making me feel strange. I'm going to watch it again and do some soul searching.
If you've never visited NYC, the first spot you should skip is Times Square. It's like walking through the subconscious of a billboard. Where you could once buy cocaine and a ticket to a peepshow (from the same person), the space is now one giant advertisement.
My friend once compared New York City to the Internet, a vast, fast network where you can find almost anything and a pocket of people who will accept you if you just know where to look. If NYC is the Internet, Times Square is the virus-filled pop-up ad that kills your whole computer.
The Department of Transportation was going to apply a 2012 law to Times Square requiring signs within 660 feet of a US highway to be below a certain size (technically speaking, Broadway and 7th Avenue are both US highways...30mph highways). Times Square was in clear violation of these rules.
Alas, the Feds will not pursue this action, and the signs will remain until long after anyone reading this has turned to dust. Those of us who live near the space will continue to dread those times our cousins come to town and demand we meet near the McDonald's with the entrance surrounded by thousands of lightbulbs. We will forever live in the shadow of a Calvin Klein jeans ad, never knowing what the buildings behind it actually look like.
New York City's cheap manicures are big business, but manicurists earn criminally low wages while being charged fees to learn the trade.
If you've ever had your nails done in Manhattan, or even walked by the bright storefront of a nail salon in the New York Metro area, you get the sinking suspicion that something is going on inside. Something vile and unsettling and so frighteningly obvious that it can't be true. Well, The New York Times has confirmed your worst fears, and the details put any of your crappy jobs to shame.
Pay is virtually non-existant. Typically, beginners are forced to pay around $100 a day in cash to the owners of the salon, but they keep their meager tips. The owners say this is for the privilege of learning on the job, but unlike a school, it's up to the salon owner to determine when you are done "learning." It's like a paid internship, but in reverse! And if you complain, you could be sent to another country. So, not like that paid internship at Viacom at all, really.
The bullshit rolls downhill.
Owners of nail salons are often immigrants themselves, and are celebrated in their communities as successful businesspeople. However, owners often run their nail salons like miniature dictators. Workers are routinely docked in pay for minor infractions. Nail salons are also covered in hidden cameras that feed directly to the owners phones and tablets, so they can monitor the workers from their Mercedes SUV. Its not uncommon for salon owners to buy large houses and cram as many workers as possible into subterranean floors as "tenants." They even assign you a different, American name so you won't make the Astors or the Rockefellers uncomfortable with your ugly, foreign identity.
Salon owners also impose a racial caste system amongst the workers. Primarily, Korean owners of the salons will give the important work to young, beautiful Korean women. At the very bottom of the caste system are Hispanic women. The workers who are at the bottom of the caste are often cruelly treated by everyone. One Ecuadorean worker alleged she had to remain completely silent for her entire 12-hour work day. The Hispanic workers are often given the jobs no one else wants to do, particularly the skin-crawling, stomach-churning work of men's pedicures.
Mal Sung Noh, the owner of a nail salon in New York and money-gargling ghoul, said of Hispanic women, “They don't want to learn more."
Maybe they would learn, if it didn't cost extra.
Just like the price list that hangs in the salon, there is a price list for the workers if they want to learn. If they want to wax or polish or buff the sallow, decrepit bodies of Manhattan's elite, workers have to pay more of their own money for the education.
Ultimately, the reason workers are so mistreated is because of their citizenship. Workers are nearly all illegal immigrants. They have no resources for justice, few advocates, and nothing but obstacles in their way. If any of us spoiled New Yorkers with freshly lacquered nails had to face a workplace this abusive, we would never stop crying.
If you absolutely have to get your nails groomed by another person so you can zone out on a recliner-mounted iPad, at least consider a generous tip. Or just set yourself on fire, you monsters.
Miley Cyrus has had a big week in terms of sharing her evolving identity with the press and the world. She revealed to the Associated Press that not all of her romantic encounters in life have been heterosexual. I didn't even hear about it at the time, which doesn't surprise me because it seems like a really boring non-story about a perfectly normal 23-year-old in 2015. More groundbreaking was her interview with Out magazine on Tuesday.
In it, she discussed the launch of a pretty cool non-profit, the Happy Hippie Foundation, which is "dedicated to fighting the injustices faced by homeless youth, LGBT youth and other vulnerable populations." Helping homeless youth and lowering the depressingly high rate of runaways and homelessness among LGBTQ youth has been a public passion of Cyrus's ever since she asked a homeless teen to accept her MTV Video Music Award. Oh, Miley also performed the first in a series of backyard concerts, this one with Joan mother-effing Jett singing "Different."
She also discussed the issue of gender identity in the interview. She didn't say "genderqueer," but she said "I don't relate to what people would say defines a boy or a girl." Within hours, the Internet's digestive system was processing Cyrus's new genderqueer identity and debating whether it's just a case of attention-seeking. Normally for these stories, I really try to double-check my terminology (and privilege), and then I realized: today is the day. Today is the day I say to the world "I am someone who doesn't give a fuck about gender identity."
Not in the "who cares about Miley Cyrus?!" angry Internet commenter sense, but in the "why are people acting like I need to care about someone's gender identity?" sense.
Even if you've never heard the word "genderqueer," it shouldn't be too hard to get: some people don't really like identifying as a girl or a boy (in the social construct sense of the world). Some people identify more as one gender (Eddie Izzard famously called himself a full boy and half a girl), and other people just kinda say "screw it" to the whole identity concept. I really don't see where the confusion here is, anymore. I'm bored just explaining it. Besides, Cyrus's whole thing is being anti-label, so I don't even know if Miley would use the word "genderqueer" anyway.
We used to just have "girls" with a subset of "tomboys" and "boys" with a subset of, I don't know, "sensitive types." I have a shockingly boring identity and I like it, but good God, why would I want to live in a world that only has boys who will be boys and girls who act like good girls? The hardest part of this for me to understand is how anyone else thinks this is hard to understand. Do your jobs, live your lives, fuck whoever wants to fuck you back, name yourself what you want, be what you want, just don't fucking hurt anybody or call me after 7pm unless I know you.
I realize I'm dancing a jig on the summit of Unoriginality Mountain right now, but I'm a selfish straight man and I am tired of having to consider the lives of other people. If everyone would just go ahead and accept different identities, and only judge people for their actions, I could go back to playing video games and thinking only about myself. Please, please, give me my selfish peace of mind back and just accept one another so I can stop worrying about inequality in this world. Obviously, this goes for racism, too. Stop it. Stop all of it. Be nice. You're stressing me out and I don't want to think about any of you. At all. Just me. And I can't until you stop.
If you're not on board with the changing landscape of sexuality, consider this: in a few years, North West, offspring of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, will be more in touch with mainstream America than you. That should be horrifying.
These are the kind of morning show hosts I can get behind: hosts that say nothing and just play with a ball.
I'm serious: Some star-maker should get these foxes agents so they can then talk to those agents and set up a lucrative deal where these foxes are aired on national television five mornings a week.
According to Mashable, this video was filmed by a guy in Washington D.C. who was alerted to the foxes when a motion-sensor light went off in his back yard. You have show-business gold here, guy.
Check out these two young comedians performing improv at Chicago's Second City. I think their names are something like Tina Fenn and Dratchel Ratch. At any rate, their scenes together begin about three minutes into this video (though you probably should start from the beginning to understand what's going on). They's got something special going on, I'll tell you that.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if one of these women went on to become a highly respected but criminally under-used professional comedian while the other will become one of the most successful and transformative women in the history of comedy. Just a hunch.