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Florida's Governor Adopted a Dog for the Campaign, Promptly Returned It From Whence it Came

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Florida's Governor Adopted a Dog for the Campaign, Promptly Returned It From Whence it Came A dog can be a political double-edged sword: treat it well and you get lots of good press; treat it shitty and, well, just ask Mitt Romney how that worked out for him. Florida's Republican (and wildly unpopular) Gov. Rick Scott is the latest politician to fall victim to dog-loving media. The Tampa Bay Times reveals that shortly after being elected governor, the Scott family returned a rescue dog they had adopted during the campaign back to its previous owners. Yikes.

The Labrador, pictured above, was adopted shortly after Scott won the Republican primary in 2010. A picture of it was posted to Facebook, asking Scott's fans what the family should name its new pet. The winning name was, shock of all shocks, Reagan (keep in mind this was in the middle of the Tea Party's Reagan-nostalgia, rabble-rousing).

Recently, Florida reporters began to wonder why they hadn't seen First Family of Florida's Beloved Pet recently and started digging. They first reached out to Brian Burgess, who was Gov. Scott's communications director during his campaign:

Late Wednesday, Burgess testily emailed that he was working on an answer and recognized "the potential for a PR nightmare if the Tampa Bay Times doesn't receive a photo of Reagan next to today's copy of the Tampa Bay Times. So take it to the bank I'm getting you every bit of info I can lay my hands on.''

Not satisfied, reporters reached out to Gov. Scott's current communications director, Melissa Sellers, who was somehow even more haughty and self-important:

Sellers responded over two days that she was far too busy to find an answer to the question.

At this point, it must have been pretty clear that Scott's camp had something to hide. A spokesman for Ann Scott said that the family has one dog, named Tallee. So what happened to Reagan? Was he eaten by Burmese pythons? No, it turns out he simply wasn't good enough for the Scotts:

Scott said Reagan never bit anyone but "scared the living daylights'' out of people at the mansion. He said one kitchen employee threatened to quit and photographer Eric Tournay was frightened when the dog "barked like crazy'' every time he saw him with a camera.

The thing is, many will jump to Scott's defense. Anyone who has any experience with rescue dogs knows that they can be difficult and sometimes it's just not a good fit. But did no one spend any time with Reagan before adopting it, or did a campaign aide simply choose the most photogenic pooch at the Pound for Sad Dogs™? Likely the latter. While perhaps Reagan is happy in a new home now, it says a lot about Scott's character that he's the kind of person who's willing to adopt a pet and simply dump it when the dog is no longer politically advantageous.

Have at him, PETA. This one's low-hanging fruit.

[Images via AP and Facebook]


The Atlantic Is Now Publishing Bizarre, Blatant Scientology Propaganda as 'Sponsored Content' (UPDATE)

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The Atlantic Is Now Publishing Bizarre, Blatant Scientology Propaganda as 'Sponsored Content' (UPDATE)The Atlantic –- the one time publisher of Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edith Wharton –- is now publishing Scientology propaganda. The "sponsored content"</a, bought and paid for by the Church of Scientology, went up Monday around noon and features all sorts of breathless praise for Scientology and its alleged growth last year.

The post — an example of the kind of advertising many publishers are turning to as display ad revenue stagnates — is basically one long tribute to David Miscavige, the "ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion":

Mr. Miscavige is unrelenting in his work for millions of parishioners and the cities served by Scientology Churches. He has led a renaissance for the religion itself, while driving worldwide programs to serve communities through Church-sponsored social and humanitarian initiatives.

And focuses on Miscavige's plans to expand the religion's already existing churches:

David Miscavige spearheaded a program to build every Church of Scientology into what Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard termed "Ideal Organizations" (Ideal Orgs). This new breed of Church is ideal in location, design, quality of religious services and social betterment programs. Each is uniquely configured to accommodate the full array of Scientology services for both parishioners and the surrounding community. Ideal Orgs further house extensive public information multimedia displays that introduce every facet of Dianetics and Scientology, along with libraries, course and seminar rooms for an introduction to and study of Scientology Scripture. Chapels serve to host Sunday Services and other congregational gatherings. 

It is from these Ideal Churches that Scientologists extend their humanitarian programs to mitigate intolerance, illiteracy, immorality and drug abuse.

The post then lists the "unprecedented 12 Ideal Scientology Churches" built around the world last year, including locations in Germany, California, Italy and Israel, with accompanying pictures of each opening's celebration.

And let's not forget the comments. Of the 17 comments posted as of this writing, 11 are so pro-Scientology they read as though they're an extension of the original post. A bold, proud day for The Atlantic and its fine history of journalistic excellence.

Unsurprisingly, Atlantic staffers are distancing themselves from the post by tweeting about Lawrence Wright's forthcoming Scientology exposé, Going Clear:

UPDATE: The Atlantic took down the post, writing: "We have temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads."

Here's a screen grab of the original post, in case you missed it.

[The Atlantic]

Al Sharpton Rips Into 'Gun Appreciation Day' Chairman Who Thinks Slavery Might Not Have Happened If We Had Just Given Black People Guns

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On CNN last Friday, Chairman of "Gun Appreciation Day"—which is to be held on Martin Luther King weekend—said this:

The truth is, I think Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.

Tonight he was given a chance to recant on MSNBC, but he (predictably) did not and continued to shove his own foot into his awful, racist mouth. And so preached the Reverend Al Sharpton:

You do realize that Martin Luther King was killed by a gun and that he preached all of his life against the use of any weapons?... So you do realize that what you said was the total antithesis to Dr. King? I don't know how much you know about Martin Luther King.

Not to mention:

To say that there wouldn't have been slavery if slaves had the right to gu—slaves didn't have any rights!

"If you're gonna preach that on Saturday," the Reverend added, "I want to be clear because I might miss your speech on Saturday." And so might we all.

Clarence Thomas Ended His 7-Year Courtroom Silence With a Stupid Joke

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Clarence Thomas Ended His 7-Year Courtroom Silence With a Stupid Joke

Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas broke his impressive seven-year courtroom silence with a stupid Yale joke. Or at least that's what people think he said – the official transcriber (somewhat appropriately) failed to record the entire comment, although they did note it produced some laughter.

JUSTICE SCALIA: She was a graduate of Yale law school, wasn't she?
MS. SIGLER: She's a very impressive attorney.
JUSTICE SCALIA: And another of his counsel, Mr. Singer - of the three that he had - he was a graduate of Harvard law school, wasn't he?
MS. SIGLER: Yes, Your Honor.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Son of a gun.
JUSTICE THOMAS: Well - he did not -(Laughter.)
MS. SIGLER: I would refute that, Justice Thomas.

According to Bloomberg, Thomas "quipped that a Yale degree could be a sign of incompetence, rather than competence." Pretty weak, considering it's the first comment Thomas has made in court since February 22, 2006. And, in case you're not up to date on your Supreme Court Justice – law school beefs, Thomas has had it out for Yale Law, his alma mater, for some time now; in his 2007 memoir, Thomas wrote that he once "peeled a 15-cent price sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale."

[Image via AP]

Fish Feeder Nearly Becomes Real-Life Jonah After Tarpon Swallows His Arm Whole

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Warning: Turn down the volume, shit gets loud.

While feeding tarpon at Robbie's in Islamorada, Florida, a young man named Ryan Reynolds gets a closer encounter than he bargained for when one of the Silver Kings mistakes his entire arm for baitfish.

A struggle of man versus fish ensues, and, as always, there can be only one.

[video via Daily Picks and Flicks]

Cleaning Lady Steals Train, Slams It Into Apartment Building

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Cleaning Lady Steals Train, Slams It Into Apartment Building

Transit officials in Sweden are at a loss to explain how a cleaning lady was able to steal a commuter train from a station near Stockholm and drive it for three minutes before crashing into a three-story house.

Luckily, no one was on the train at the time of the accident, which occurred early Tuesday morning.

A spokesman for Stockholm County's transit operator Storstockholms Lokaltrafik said the twentysomething woman seized the train around 3 AM and drove it for two stops before derailing in the Stockholm suburb of Saltsjöbaden.

The train slammed into the first-floor kitchen of an apartment building where three families live. The cleaning lady had to be rushed to the hospital with "serious" injuries, but none of the building's residents were hurt.

An investigation into the incident has been launched, with local politicians demanding to know how an unauthorized person was able to commandeer a commuter train.

A spokesman for Arriva, the subcontractor that operates the line, said driving their trains wasn't that complicated.

"Generally speaking that's possible even if you're not a train driver," he told the Associated Press. "You can read about it on the Internet, or observe how others do it."

[screengrab via AP, video via Expressen]

Popular YouTube Prankster Arrested for Giving People Wedgies

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Popular YouTube Prankster Arrested for Giving People Wedgies

An 18-year-old known for posting poorly thought-out pranks on YouTube crossed a stupidity threshold Sunday night when he went on a wedgie spree outside a movie theater in his hometown of Bradenton, Florida.

Charles Ross, whose previous "pranks" include "kissing strangers" and "trust falling on strangers," was arrested by Manatee County deputies and charged with misdemeanor battery for pulling up the back of a passer-by's pants.

According to the incident report, other people who fell victim to Ross's schoolyard shenanigans "were too embarrassed to want to pursue charges."

The Sheriff's Office noted that Ross appeared to be "filming the crime with a camera," which gels with his history of "creat[ing] situations in order to harass and annoy people."

He was briefly jailed before bailing out on $750. A court date has been set for Valentine's Day.

[mug shot via Manatee County]

Nobody Who Knows Anything Trusts the Banks

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Nobody Who Knows Anything Trusts the BanksA hedge funder is making noise about bringing down the salaries of executives at Morgan Stanley. Good. The government sure hasn't been successful at holding down corporate executive salaries, so maybe the market should work its magic—let hedge funds squeeze a few extra percentage points of profit in return for holding down the paychecks of the bosses of the banks they invest in. A worthwhile deal for the public. And a vindication of capitalism's mythical self-regulatory powers!

Of course, in order for big activist investors to go to all the trouble of harassing banks enough that they get their shit together, big activist investors will first have to invest in banks. And, for the most part, they don't want to. Why? Because, as this excellent new Atlantic story by Frank Partnoy and Jesse Eisinger shows in painstaking detail, the information that banks provide about their own financial situation is widely assumed to be untrustworthy.

Some four years after the crisis, big banks' shares remain depressed. Even after a run-up in the price of bank stocks this fall, many remain below "book value," which means that the banks are worth less than the stated value of the assets on their books. This indicates that investors don't believe the stated value, or don't believe the banks will be profitable in the future-or both. Several financial executives told us that they see the large banks as "complete black boxes," and have no interest in investing in their stocks. A chief executive of one of the nation's largest financial institutions told us that he regularly hears from investors that the banks are "uninvestable," a Wall Street neologism for "untouchable."

No big deal, just the planet Earth's most powerful financial institutions (which were recently bailed out by you and me and your mama) are considered by the most sophisticated investors in America to be so opaque in their dealings that the risk they pose is not worth their profit potential. Anything could be going on inside banks, in other words, and there's no real way to tell from the outside. Until they collapse, and come back to you, and me, and your mama, with their hands out. In the meantime, if they're doing well, they'll continue paying their executives huge sums.

Banks despise regulation, yet they expect to be rescued by the public when their bets go bad. This is a simple explanation of why "Too Big to Fail" financial institutions are now and will forever be bloodsuckers on the American public, until they are properly regulated. It seems insane that our legislators have not corrected this oversight, until you consider the fact that money buys legislative power in our political system, and the fact that banks have all the money. Then it makes perfect sense.

In the meantime, "wages have fallen to a record low as a share of America's gross domestic product," meaning that all of America's gains in productivity have helped out you, and me, and your mama not at all. Workers see no gains; investors, and executives, and bankers funnel all the gains to themselves. Until things go wrong, and the workers are asked to bail out the bankers again. It's not that complicated. It's a ripoff.

This is why they invented socialism.

[Photo: AP]


Here Are Seven (Very) Short Stories About Drones by Award-Winning Author Teju Cole

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Here Are Seven (Very) Short Stories About Drones by Award-Winning Author Teju ColeTeju Cole, the novelist, essayist, art historian and master tweeter, wrote seven short stories about drones — the unmanned aerial vehicles used by the U.S. for covert assassination in foreign countries — on his Twitter feed yesterday. Here they are.

Fifth Grader Bullied for 'Gay Tendencies' Brings Butcher Knife to School

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Fifth Grader Bullied for 'Gay Tendencies' Brings Butcher Knife to School

Police in Winter Haven, Florida, are investigating the circumstances that led an 11-year-old boy to bring a butcher knife to school inside his Scooby-Doo bookbinder.

The knife was noticed by the fifth grader's classmates at Inwood Elementary School because the eight-inch knife was too large for the binder and was reportedly sticking out.

According to his family, the boy was being targeted by bullies for "gay tendencies," and was seeking to defend himself.

Both police and the school district are challenging the family's claim that administrators knew about the bullying problem but did nothing.

"Right now there is nothing on file with the school that she has been told of of any bullying. But there will be more interviews done to find out," Capt. David Brannan told ABC Action News.

An investigation is also ongoing into whether the boy made any direct threats, but the school insists no student was ever in danger.

[screengrab via ABC Action News]

18 Severed Human Heads Discovered in Package at Airport; Everyone Being Very Chill About It

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18 Severed Human Heads Discovered in Package at Airport; Everyone Being Very Chill About ItOfficials at Chicago's O'Hare Airport intercepted a package containing eighteen severed human heads yesterday, and are getting a little tired of everyone acting like it's weird.

"Everybody here is ‘Oh my gosh, you got a box of heads,'" Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian Bell said to the Chicago Sun-Times, "and everybody thinks that it's unheard of."

We're with you, Brian. It's like, chill out, nerds. Yo, Brian, you want to go to the corner store to buy cigarettes? I steal money from my mom's purse all the time, no big deal, I'm not scared of the heads either.

Local news outlets are reporting that the eighteen heads are "still covered in skin," which is probably what you were already picturing, but isn't it creepy to have them specifically described that way?

The heads are said to have been shipped to Chicago from Italy, a country with many heads.

Authorities believe these ones were medical specimens intended for use in a scientific research or medical experiment.

They're currently in the process of verifying that the heads have proper documentation.

Foul play is not suspected in the collection of the 18 severed heads.

[Chicago Sun-Times / FOX 32 News // Image via Shutterstock]

Oil-Loving Smoothie Bar Owner 'Taxes' Liberals One Dollar Extra Per Drink

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Oil-Loving Smoothie Bar Owner 'Taxes' Liberals One Dollar Extra Per Drink

The oil-obsessed owner of a juice and smoothie bar in the Eastern Utah town of Vernal says he's trying to make a point about fiscal responsibility by charging liberal patrons a dollar a dollar extra for their drink.

"We have a fiscal problem in this country. We've got to deal with it or we don't have a country," I Love Drilling Juice & Smoothie Bar owner George Burnett told KSL. "So to kind of help make that point, just a little bit, I charge (liberals) just a little bit more."

Burnett says he makes it very clear to liberal customers that he's going to charge them an extra dollar, and that he's going to donate that dollar to conservative organizations like The Heritage Foundation.

His "liberal tax" has been criticized on Facebook as "pathetic" and "offensive," but at least one conservative customer is perfectly fine with putting a surcharge on certain political views.

"For him to do this kind of puts a face out there on people who are, in my opinion, in the wrong. 'In the wrong' being liberals," personal trainer Corey Peterson said. "To see them being charged a little bit more, it makes me happy."

[video via ThinkProgess]

David Brooks Columns Are Required Reading for the Yale Course Taught by David Brooks

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David Brooks Columns Are Required Reading for the Yale Course Taught by David BrooksDavid Brooks, author, essayist, columnist for The New York Times, guy who has thoughts, is teaching a class at Yale this semester. Here is the syllabus; authors listed include Edmund Burke, Reinhold Niehbuhr, Isaiah Berlin, and David Brooks. "We will ask," Brooks writes, "whether it is proper to put a Yale window sticker on the back of your car."

To get an answer to that (very good) question, though, you'll need to wait until April 9 — "Week 11: Seemliness" — the required reading for which is "Level 5 Leadership," a Harvard Business Review article by James Collins. At that point, you'll have spent two hours a week for ten weeks, discussing "character" with David Brooks and a bunch of Yale kids:

Course Description

Everyone says character is important to leadership but few people know how to build it. This course will survey one character-building tradition, one that emphasizes modesty and humility. The strategies covered here start from a similar premise—that human beings are blessed with many talents but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance and weakness. Character emerges from the internal struggles against one's own limitations.

We will start in the current moment. How do we conceive of character building today? We will then trace this humility tradition in its different forms over the centuries—from Moses to Augustine, to Montaigne, Burke, Niebuhr and so on. We will make special effort throughout to connect the themes of each session to practical politics and leadership.

What a surprise, that David Brooks' class would be a turgid, clueless examination of his own fetishes and pet theories ("Why did America reject the values of the Protestant Establishment? What replaced it?")! How enticing, the thought of gathering to discuss Exodus and the Confessions with the Times' second-worst columnist and the most pathetic, careerist undergraduates Yale has to offer!

At least the reading list isn't terrible, though Brooks certainly prefers pop histories to more focused academic texts:

Course Texts:
General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman" by Ed Cray; Publisher: Cooper Square Press (June 6, 2000)

"Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do And Who We Should Be" by Mark Schwen and Dorothy Bass; Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co (May 15, 2006)

Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy by Donald Kagan; Publisher: Free Press (October 1, 1998)

"Augustine of Hippo" by Peter Brown; Publisher: University of California Press; Revised Edition (August 7, 2000)

"How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer" by Sarah Bakewell; Publisher: Other Press (October 19, 2010)

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke; Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Reissue edition (June 15, 2009)

"The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist" Dorothy Day; Publisher: HarperOne (December 6, 1996)

The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niehbuhr; Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (May 1, 2008)

"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman; Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2011, Reprint edition (April 2, 2013)

The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin; Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher (1993)

That's an incomplete list, by the way — Brooks is also assigning his Atlantic Monthly article "The Organization Kid," and three of his Times columns. Because how can you possibly learn about humility from David Brooks if he's not teaching you about articles he's written?

Brooks huffily defended himself to New York's Joe Coscarelli:

"I certainly wasn't wrong about it provoking smart ass jibes," Brooks wrote in an e-mail to Daily Intelligencer last night about the class. "I understand the shot taking - the target was designed to be easy - but getting beyond the Twitter level, I don't see what is intrinsically ridiculous about the course." [...]

And his own entries - including "The Organization Kid" from The Atlantic and three Times columns - "are not really mine," he said. "Those three columns are just lessons drawn from the essays that were sent to me by others," Brooks explained. "I asked readers over 70 to send in life reports in which they describe what they've learned over the years."

It's true that colleges are filled with professors who assign essays and books that they've written — but most of those professors aren't teaching courses called "Humility." Anyway, we'd rather take Peggy Noonan's Harvard class.

[NYM; image via AP]

Are You Aware that Victor Garber's Boyfriend Is the Hottest Guy in the World?

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Are You Aware that Victor Garber's Boyfriend Is the Hottest Guy in the World?First things first: Did you even know Victor Garber was gay?

Because, according to an interview he recently gave to Greg in Hollywood, everyone on the planet knows that he is.

"I don't really talk about it but everybody knows."

Quick poll: Did you know Victor Garber was gay?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Who is Victor Garber?
  • If you answered "Yes," you are "everybody." If you answered "No," you are "nobody." If you answered "Who is Victor Garber," you are actor Victor Garber with amnesia; Victor Garber is you and you are gay, and everybody knows it.

    But who is actor Victor Garber dating?

    He is dating the Hottest Guy in the World.

    The Hottest Guy in the World is named Rainer Andreesen.

    According to his website, Rainer Andreesen was born in 1963 in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. He is a portrait artist who has modeled for Gucci, Armani, and Valentino.

    He looks like the dad from an ABC family drama, who's a veterinarian and a widower, whose gruff demeanor is just a defense mechanism. He looks like the rugged sea captain from a Winslow Homer painting. He looks, to be honest, quite a bit like The Most Interesting Man in the World from those beer commercials.

    He is the Hottest Guy in the World.

    Indigo pants seem more fully realized when Rainer Andreesen wears them. Suits look better than they do on a Ken doll. Rainer Andreesen wears a blazer with no shirt underneath it and you're like "Yes, that's correct."

    You just want to take him home to your houseboat and have him build you a bookshelf and give you a good grade and eat lobster with hands and then disappear into the fog one morning and never return.

    According to Us, Garber first spoke publically about Andreesen in a 2012 interview with a Canadian "adult lifestyle publication":

    "My companion Rainer Andreesen and I have been together almost 13 years in Greenwich Village. We both love New York."

    Congratulations on your fabulous life, Victor Garber.

    [Greg in Hollywood via Us // Garber image via Getty / Image of Andreesen shot by Cedric Buchet for British GQ]

Hundreds of Cats Being Shipped to Restaurants in China Saved from Slaughter Thanks to Traffic Accident

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Hundreds of Cats Being Shipped to Restaurants in China Saved from Slaughter Thanks to Traffic Accident

A truck hauling over 1,000 cats stuffed into some 40 cages was involved in a traffic accident in Changsha, the capital city of China's Hunan province, giving local animal activists time to free them.

Hundreds of Cats Being Shipped to Restaurants in China Saved from Slaughter Thanks to Traffic Accident

Care for Chinese Animals reports that the cats, which were stuffed 25 a piece into some 40 cages, were being shipped to Guangdong province to be sold to restaurants for slaughter.

While the truck was stranded by the side of the road, a call went out through the social network Weibo for Changsha residents willing to help save the cats.

Some felines unfortunately perished in the accident, but those that survived were taken home by volunteers or handed over to the Changsha Small Animal Protection Association.

Though consuming cats is considered bad luck in many parts of China — and serving food that hasn't been quarantined is illegal throughout — the Animals Asia Foundation says Guangdong, China's most prosperous province, has seen "renewed interest in eating cat" because some well-to-do citizens see it as a previously unaffordable delicacy.

Hundreds of Cats Being Shipped to Restaurants in China Saved from Slaughter Thanks to Traffic Accident

[photos via Care for Chinese Animals, Weibo]


Woman's eBay Auction Goes Viral After She Accidentally Includes Naked Photo of Herself in Post (NSFW)

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Woman's eBay Auction Goes Viral After She Accidentally Includes Naked Photo of Herself in Post (NSFW)

An unnamed eBay seller from Oxfordshire has attracted bids well over £150,000 for her yellow ASOS skater dress after accidentally uploading a nude photo of herself to the auction site.

Woman's eBay Auction Goes Viral After She Accidentally Includes Naked Photo of Herself in Post (NSFW)

The initial asking price was just £15.99, but numbers started to climb rapidly after word got out that the woman's half-naked body appears in one of the photos ostensibly showing off the dress.

And sure enough, the clueless auctioneer's bottomless figure can clearly be seen in the reflection of a mirror just behind the clothing.

The Twitter hashtag #ebayyellowskaterdress soon began to trend in the UK, leading some to call shenanigans on the whole thing.

"Possibly the best use of viral advertising to date?" one user asked.

That's entirely possible, but the girl at least appears to be real: She updated the item's page with a new photo of herself, covered this time, and added the tagline "#ebayyellowskaterdress as seen by thousands. never worn naked."

[images via Twitter]

The Sweet vs. Dill Relish Imbalance Is an Outrage

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The Sweet vs. Dill Relish Imbalance Is an OutrageLet's examine this issue calmly, one step at a time. People invented pickling thousands of years ago as a way to preserve perishable foods. The preservation comes from acidity. That's that classic, sourish, pickly flavor. Americans consumer more than 20 billion pickles a year. Most of those pickles are dill. Dill pickles are the most popular kind of pickles.

When will the relish industry listen?

Last week, I went to a spacious, well-stocked Key Food grocery store to pick myself up a little dill relish. Like most Americans, I enjoy dill pickles, and, therefore, I also enjoy dill relish, which is little more than ground-up pickles. Indeed, the store offered a wide selection of dill pickles. But relish? No. The store offered brand after brand and jar after jar of SWEET relish only. There was not a single brand of dill relish to be found, much less a wide-ranging selection, concomitant with the selection of pickles themselves.

Is relish some sort of alien substance? Should relish operate by a set of rules completely unrelated to the set of rules governing the substance from which relish is made? Hardly. If Americans prefer smooth peanut butter over chunky, you can be sure that the PB&J restaurant will offer smooth peanut butter in their sandwiches. If Americans prefer no-pulp orange juice over pulpy orange juice, you can be sure that the bar will offer no-pulp orange juice as a mixer for screwdrivers. But when it comes to pickles, it seems that Big Food has decided that America's preferences should be ignored. Does America prefer the "dill" variety of pickle first and foremost, above all other flavors? Yes. Does the relish industry therefore respond rationally by making the majority of its relish dill? No.

What is your major malfunction, relish industry?

Think I'm lying? Let's just check on popular grocery delivery service Fresh Direct. Here we go, let's just enter "relish" into the search box there, and, here we go: one result. B&G Sweet Relish. If you want relish delivered to your house, I hope you like sweet relish—that's all you're getting. And if you go to the store—that's probably all you'll get there, too. Big Food is quite literally forcing American relish purchasers—who overwhelmingly prefer dill pickles—to consume sweet relish.

Sweet relish is made with corn syrup. Who the fuck puts corn syrup on a pickle. It's all fucked up.

Tell Big Pickle to stand up for itself.

[Photo: Kurt Nordstrom/ Flickr]

Concerned Citizen on the Today Show Reminds Everyone That Al Roker Sharted Himself

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This morning on the Today Show, Al Roker was in Chicago to talk to a TV fireman about the weather, but one concerned individual would rather we keep talking about that time when Al Roker #sharted at the White House. Suspecting that we may be getting off track, this brave man (apparently a radio DJ in Chicago) was there to redirect the national conversation by holding up a simple cue card: "#shart." (Upper left hand corner; later, front and center.) And yet when NBC's camera man tried to pan away, our hero went above and beyond the call of duty to get back in the shot.

Now if everyone could just please keep talking about Al Roker #sharting himself at the White House, that'd be great.

Game Park Owner Who Advised Couple to 'Stand Closer' to Rhinos Snapped This Foreboding Photo Seconds Before They Were Attacked

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Game Park Owner Who Advised Couple to 'Stand Closer' to Rhinos Snapped This Foreboding Photo Seconds Before They Were Attacked

A Johannesburg resident was still in intensive care today — several days after being gored by a rhino while on a game drive through the Aloe Ridge nature reserve in Muldersdrift.

A photo released by Chantal Beyer's family shows the 24-year-old and her husband standing perilously close to a pair of rhinos just seconds before the attack that left her with a collapsed lung and broken ribs.

Beyer's uncle told a local newspaper that his niece is in currently in stable condition.

Thom Peeters said Beyer told him that she and her husband were advised by the game park owner, Alex Richter, to "stand just a little bit closer" to the rhinos so he could take their picture.

Richter was leading a group of nine on a tour of the reserve when he stopped the car near the rhinos and lured them closer with some food. He insisted it was safe to exit the vehicle and approach the animals.

"There were quite a lot of young people on the vehicle and they probably felt they could trust Richter, who was an adult," Peeters said.

[photo via Beeld]

This Is What the Fresh Prince Theme Song Sounds Like After You Run It Through Every Language in Google Translate

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You've no doubt heard the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song a million times by now, but how many times have you heard the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song after its been translated through all 64 languages currently covered by Google Translate before being translated back the English?

None, considering it's never been done.

Until today.

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