• Scientists Slowly Reintroducing Small Group Of Normal, Well-Adjusted Humans Into Society (The Onion) It’s nice that an endangered species is given another chance.
• F%$# Nuance (Kieran Healey) “We are glutted with nuance.  I say, f%$# it.”
• Sherpa: Norbu Tenzing on the Everest ‘circus’ and the inevitability of another disaster (The Guardian) Tenzing Norgay’s son talks about how the Everest climbing industry is a disaster waiting to happen (again).
• Welcome to Iceland, Where Bad Bankers Go to Prison (Bloomberg) We should do the same.
• 33 state Democratic parties launder $26M from millionaires for Hillary (Boing Boing) Why the party establishment is in the tank for Clinton
• A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again (Ars Technica) Alexandra Elbakyan runs Sci-Hub, which makes research papers freely available, which has led to much litigation, primarily from Elsevier, the evil empire of scientific publications.  See also the wiki.
• STUDY: Nation’s Largest Public Schools Have More Police Than Counselors (Colorlines) The school to prison pipeline appears to be a feature, not a bug.

Have an Avocado:

• Louis Proyect: Is Kathryn Bigelow our Leni Riefenstahl? (Naked Capitalism) Yes. This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
• Glass SLIDE is installed on an LA skyscraper 1,000 feet from the ground (Daily Mail) Speaking on behalf of my somewhat acrophobic wife, “F%$# no.”
• What is the real reason we sleep? (BBC) We still don’t know, but here are some fascinating theories.
• New Zealand ‘cat burglar’ caught stealing men’s underwear (BBC) Not a perv, it’s an actual cat.
• Fluid dynamics explain how quickly a vampire could drain your blood (Phys.org) No where as fast as in the movies.
• The Plagues That Might Have Brought Down the Roman Empire (The Atlantic) There were a number of plagues that hit the Romans, of the two biggest ones, one appears to be Y. Pestis, and the other appears to be a hemorrhagic fever like Ebola. Get your history geek on.
• Kepler watched two supernovae burst out of the surface of stars (Ars Technica) Get your astronomy geek on.
• Every NYT Millennial Trend Story in 2016 (Fusion) It is funny because it is true.
• How Bush-Cheneyism made Mideast in its Image: Wars, WOT, With us or Against Us (Juan Cole) I disagree with him on a number of levels. First, I think that Obama has deliberately embraced and extended most of the policies, and second, I think that Trump is an isolationist at heart. Still worth the read.
• Infographics in the Time of Cholera (ProPublica) Get your history, statistics, and media geek on.
• The dark web is too slow and annoying for terrorists to even bother with, experts say (Quartz) Not a surprise.
• They Made Him a Moron (The Baffler) An epic take-down of Alec Ross, Hillary Clinton’s former “Senior Advisor for Innovation” at state. A well done demolition of an under done intellect.

I will leave you with Birdy Sanders. This is real:

• Why it’s time to debunk the Churchill myth (New Statesman) Really not a surprise for an even indifferent student of history.  Except for predicting war in Europe correctly (about a dozen times), Churchill had a very long history of being disastrously wrong on everything.
• Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps, and the uncanny valley… (Accidental Scientist) A full on nerdgasm on motion pictures, the eye, and the human nervous system.
• Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven (iFixit) It actually f%$#ing worked, go figure.
• Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mail And Discovers That His Bid For Tenure Has Been Denied. (McSweeney’s)
• How stupid is a Davos audience, anyway? (Felix Salmon) Thunderous applause for Tom “The Mustache of Banality” Friedman
• The best defenses against Verizon’s invasive, already-being-abused web tracking (PC World) They don’;t mention dumping Verizon like a hot potato.

 How to gift wrap your cat:

I am surprised about just how accepting this cat is of this.

My darlings would have drawn blood.

Since it’s been a while, here is a bonus vid:

• Why Innocent People Plead Guilty (The New York Review of Books) The author, Jed S. Rakoff is as Senior Status Federal Judge
• Electric shock study suggests we’d rather hurt ourselves than others(Science/AAAS)
• The Echo Chamber (Reuters) Unsurprisingly, about 66 well connected lawyers dominate the cases the Supreme Court takes.  You have to figure that there is a lot of back-scratching going on between the lawyers and the Justices.
• The racist, classist origins of broken windows policing (Slate) The person most responsible for the idea, James Q. Wilson, specifically said that it should never be applied to things like white collar crimes, as near as I can figure out, because he did not want it applied to white people.
• Police often provoke protest violence, UC researchers find (SFGate ) Not a big surprise here.  Police (and the St. Louis County prosecutor) have been deliberately provoking protesters to justify brutal tactics.

John Cleese on Stupidity:

• Boris Karloff’s guacamole recipe (Lawyers, Guns, & Money)
• Obama Is a Republican (The American Conservative) Interesting because of its source. Over the past 40 years, we have alternated between Republican Presidents, (Carter, Clinton, and Obama) and right wing demagogues (Reagan, Bush, Bush, and Reagan)
• Economist’s View: ”State ‘Income Migration’ Claims Are Deeply Flawed” (Economist’s View) Unsurprisingly, state income taxe rates have no measurable impact on population migration.
• U.S. taxpayers paid $486 million for Afghan air fleet. DOD sold it for scrap. (The Washington Post) Your military-industrial complex in a nut shell.
• Snoop Dogg: I’ll Hold A Concert In Alaska If Voters Legalize Marijuana (Talking Points Memo) Your dose of weird
• Consumers miss fine PRINT, promise first-born child to Wi-Fi company (Market Watch) Needless to say, you really need to REALLY read click through agreements.

Ben Stein demonstrates why he’s not a bag of sh%$, because a bag of sh%$ can serve a useful purpose. In this case, here he is accusing Barack Obama of being a racist because all Stein’s friends call him n***er:

Notice how he has honed the coded language for race that he first deployed as Richard Nixon’s speechwriter.

• Court blasts US Navy for scanning civilians’ computers for child porn (Ars Technica) Posse Comitatus Act?  What Posse Comitatus Act?
• The Overpaid CEO (The Democracy Journal) Makes the very interesting point that the very nature of the modern corporation incentivizes control fraud and looting by senior management.
• Hamster Wheel Standing Desk helps you stay fit at the office (Gizmag) It is stupid as it sounds.  Vid at link.

How wolves literally changed the geography of Yellowstone Park:

• Mirable Dictu! Florida Activists Help Depose Terrible Foreclosure Judge (naked capitalism) Depose, as in defeat for reelection.
• 5 reasons to suspect that Jesus never existed (Salon) A subject about which I do not care.
• Ayn Rand’s Capitalist Paradise Is Now a Greedy Land-Grabbing Sh%$storm (Gawker) What can you expect from acolytes of an author who wrote The Virtue of Selfishness? (H/T JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS)
• Politico Magazine does a remarkably sloppy hit piece on Glenn Greenwald, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (The Washington Post)
• Man Breaks 5 Min for new Beer Mile (Flotrack) You have to have a 12 Oz beer of at least 5% alcohol each ¼ mile lap. This did it in 4 minutes 57 seconds. Impressive.

• How Financial Innovation Produces Overgrowth and Busts (Naked Capitalism)  So nu?
• This is why you can’t trust the NSA. Ever. (The Week) Basically, they are lying to the FISA court too.
• Secret audio nails Scott Walker! A humiliating suck-up to the Koch brothers (Salon)  Cell phone are everywhere.

The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again, live, 1978:

• Parts of Yellowstone National Park closed after massive supervolcano beneath it melts roads (Raw Story) I really hope that this is a false alarm.
• London Celebrates The Monty Python Reunion By Putting A 50-Foot Dead Parrot In Potters Field Park (Co.CREATE) Win!
• Arbitration Clauses Let American Apparel Hide Misconduct (New York Times) Not only did arbitration clauses hide the serial sexual harassment of the CEO American Apparel from the public, but it hid it from the board of directors.
• Three New JPMorgan IT Deaths Include Alleged Murder-Suicide (Wall Street on Parade) I am not suggesting that these guys are getting whacked The Firm style, but maybe something is weighing on them.
• Airbus wants to patent the most uncomfortable plane seats ever (The Washington Post) Be afraid, be very, very afraid.
• New Bank Leak Shows How Rich Exploit Tax Haven Loopholes (ICIJ.org) I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
• France – Amazon snubs French free delivery ban with one-cent charge (France 24) Stupid.  If there is anything that the French excel at, it is officious bureaucrats.  Amazon is in a world of hurt.
• Fatah Envoy Accuses Hamas Of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ (TPM) Chalk one up for political opportunism in the Middle East.
• Subpoena Of GOP Aide In Insider Trading Probe ‘Freaks Out’ Hill Staff (TPM) As well it should. Leaking inside information to well connected friends is something that should have scary consequences.
• Uber Kindly Agrees to Stop Price Gouging During Emergencies (Gawker) Because there are limits to a company run by an Ayn Rand felching crook?  Probably not
• Lamb Bacon Wrapped Asparagus Recipe (JoyOfKosher.com)
• The Highest-Paid CEOs Are The Worst Performers, New Study Says (Forbes) Not surprising. Dan Dan Ariely’s research showed this years ago.

How to Roll Cable: (Should work with garden hose too)

H/T Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the vid.

• UAW: ‘Consensus’ reached with Volkswagen on union (Washington Post) This is hearty F%$#-You from VW to the politicians who scare-mongered the union election in Tennessee.
• Several Species of Small Privileged Onanists Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Couric (d r i f t g l a s s) A take-down of David Brooks worthy of Matt Taibbi.  Today’s must read.
• NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious for Surveillance (Bruce Schneier) Not surprised:  The NSA says that trying to protect your privacy is justification to invade your privacy
• Scarborough: Christie Is ‘Chicken’ For Refusing To Meet Sandy Hook Families (TPM) et tu Joseph?
• BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks on to science programmes (Telegraph) The cranks in question are anthropogenic climate change deniers, but “Opinion on the shape of the earth differ” journalism continues in the good old US of A.
• How Finland Keeps Kids Focused Through Free Play  (The Atlantic) One of the ways that Finland’s education system works is more frequent breaks, particularly at the lower grades.
• The British Foreign Office claims to have “lost” documents on rendition for torture (Daily Mail)  Yeah, “inadvertent water damage”.  I believe that.
• The Department of Justice declines to investigate the CIA’s spying on the US Senate (McClatchy, DC) Nope, no official coverup here.

Here is John Oliver on how the Hobby Lobby crowd export homophobia while it becomes unacceptable locally. (Kinda long)

• US stock exchanges face lawsuit over high-frequency trading (The Guardian) The lawyer who sued big tobacco is now going after the exchanges alleging that they colluded to defraud other investors. Pass the popcorn.
• Jill Lepore: What the Theory of “Disruptive Innovation” Gets Wrong (The New Yorker) She eviscerates the whole “disruptive innovation” cliche and its attendant libertarian ethos.
• Choosing enemies, propaganda, regime change and plain dumb policy (Sic Semper Tyrannis) Todays must read. Explains how our “Hitler of the Week”
• policy of regime change is not a reasomable substitute for coherent foreign policy.
• Google Glass Hacked, Can Record Everything You Stare At (Testosterone Pit) ‘Nuff said

Neat orgami robotic wheel concept:

• Schroedinger’s Kingdom: the Scottish Political Singularity Explained (Charlie’s Diary) A summary of Scottish grievances, which, rather unsurprisingly, have a lot to do with the Tory’s, “F%$# them, they don’t vote for us anyway,” attitude.
• Fair Use Victory in HathiTrust Litigation(The Berkeley Blog) Libraries win a court judgement against publishers who wanted to keep them from helping the blind.
• Why Do Coal Mining Jobs Matter So Much More Than Jobs Lost to Trade? (Truthout)
• Linus Torvalds says that the suggestion that everyone should know how to code is bullsh%$ (The Register) I agree. I program (mostly shell script and MS Office macros these days), but when non-coders are forced to take programming courses, they are more likely to become computer phobic, and less likely to use them as tools.
• How corporate jets fly under shareholder radar (Reuters) Once more, our larcenous managerial class.
• World’s most delayed software released after 54 years of development (The Guardian) 54 Years, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
• On 6/5, 65 Things We Know About NSA Surveillance That We Didn’t Know a Year Ago (EFF) Read this. It’s short.
• US stock exchanges face lawsuit over high-frequency trading (The Guardian) Short version is that exchanges have an obligation to provide accurate data, and HFT is a violation of that obligation. I hope that the plaintiffs prevail, but I don’t expect them to.

Time to stare into the face of God.

It’s not a nova, it’s the light from some sort of stellar upheaval reflected off of interstellar gas.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

• Madness Posing as Hyper-Rationality: OMB’s Assault on Effective Regulation (New Economic Perspectives) The free market mousketeers continue to destroy us all
• GooBing Detroit Google Street View documenting the decay of a city.
• It’s Easier To Get A Gun Than A Vibrator In Georgia (Crooks and Liars)  Not The Onion
•  The year of living more dangerously: Obama’s drone speech was a sham (The Guardian)
• REVEALED: The head of Omidyar Networks in India had a secret second job… Helping elect Narendra Modi  (PandoDaily) Because the rabid Hindu nationalist with ties to anti-Muslim pogroms is good on ecommerce

Have a medley of Lewis Black:

• AT&T Plans to Start Screwing You Over in 2018 (Mother Jones) Not a surprise, they are the phone company, they don’t care, they don’t have to, but they basically admitted in regulatory filing over the DirectTV merger.
• Tim Geithner Lays into FDR for Not Working with Hoover (Matt Stoller) Because all Hoover asked for in return was that FDR do nothing to fix the Depression.
• How do we prevent the next Tim Geithner? (Mathbabe) By electing a President who doesn’t bring the retread usual suspects in as his/her cabinet.
• Keith Alexander: NSA Makes The Entire Internet Weaker To Protect You From Terrorists (Crooks and Liars)

What if The Matrix ran on Windows XP:

• Programming Sucks (Still Drinking) A good essay on why your software just crashed.
• British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA’s Data Pools (The Intercept) Guess what, the British signals intelligence was salivating about getting access to the NSA data.
• Exclusive: Emails reveal close Google relationship with NSA (Al Jazeera America) Don’t be Evil, My Ass
• How The US Gov’t Destroyed The Lives Of A Muslim American Man’s Entire Family After He Refused To Become An Informant (Crooks and Liars) Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

The most comprehensive model of the Big Bang yet:

• Let’s call him BACKTRACK Obama (Cannonfire) How Obama has reneged completely on his promise of openness
• On civility, again (Matt Bruenig) A truly epic take-down of Megan McArdle
• Where Was Anal Rape Approved in the OLC Memos? (Emptywheel) Marcy Wheeler uncovers a hidden gem of truth from the Guantanamo, that Rahim al-Nashiri is showing symptoms consistent with sexual assault
• State Employment Trends: Does a Low Tax/Right-to-Work/Low Minimum Wage Regime Correlate to Growth (Econbrowser) Spoiler warning!  The answer is, “no”.

Here is a drink that you will never see on Maddow, the Alien Brain Hemorrhage: (H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS)

• When Jesus Died at Auschwitz (The Inner Walls) Just when you thought that Jews for Jesus could not get any more obnoxious.
• George Bush Attends Summit For 50th Anniversary Of The Civil Rights Act – Makes A Penis Joke (Addicting Info) so not surprised.
• U.S.-Japan Talks Said Unable to Overcome Deal Obstacles (Bloomberg) The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is not a good deal, and the Japanese are dubious of US proposals.
• Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal (The Guardian) I am not sure why this is news. I also wonder why Bob Rubin has not been frog marched out of his office in handcuffs.
• Clapper Goes on Tour to Persuade University Students Snowden Is No Whistleblower, Not a Hero (Firedog Lake) The author asks, “Why should taxpayers be funding this propaganda? And doesn’t Clapper have a job to do as Director of National Intelligence?” I would add, “Doesn’t he have a Congressional committee to lie to?”
• Creepy Old Dudes Make Up The Majority of Readers On Some Right Wing Websites (Politics News) So Nu?

Here is a video about how to make smoked salmon at home:

FWIW, if you are bit less ambitious, you can make Gravlox.

What Happened to Canada? (N+1) A good description of how a country of decent people is being converted to a, “rogue, reckless petrostate,” by the, “formidable disciplinary forces of late capitalism.”
Jack Halprin: As a Google Attorney, I Need the Homes of 7 Teachers, and Here’s Why (SF Weekly) Satirist gets in the head of a Google Lawyer who bought an apartment in San Francisco, and evicted everyone, including at least 2 teachers, just because.
In U.S., right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists (CNN)  Since 2001, 50% more deaths from right wing white supremacist extremists than from Islamist extremists
Court Says That Tweeting Someone Is ‘F**king Crazy’ Is Not Libelous (Crooks and Liars) What a relief that this f%$#ing crazy lawsuit was tossed out.

Jurassic Park as it should have been:

• FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States (America’s Finest News Source) Read Eric Frank Russell’s novel Wasp, and you will understand.
• “It’s Not a Bubble,” Retail Investors Are Told As The Smart Money Bails Out (Naked Capitalism) My rule of thumb is that a bubble is due to burst whenever the rest of us start moving in.
• Cookies that give you away: The surveillance implications of web tracking (Freedom to Tinker) Kinda dry, but worth the read.
• Defending Kickbacks (The Baseline Scenario) A good description about how current rules, which do not require a broker to act in the best interest of the customer, is immoral and corrupt. 
• A SILICON VALLEY DISASTER: A 21-Year-Old Stanford Kid Got $30 Million, Then Everything Blew Up (Business Insider) This reminds me of Razorfish, and when its CEO could not tell 60 Minutes II what the hell they actually did.
• Guardian and Washington Post awarded Pulitzer for Snowden revalations (The Pulitzer Prizes) I kind of missed this over Passover.  Well deserved by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poirtras, and Bart Gellman.  I thought that the Pulitzer jury would wimp out, but they didn’t.
• Torture doesn’t just hurt guys in turbans (Washington Post) A linguist who aided in interrogations discusses the damage that our torture program did to him.  Read this

Best April Fools joke ever:

H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

• Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Cosmos Causes 27 Local School Children Demonic Possession (Topekas News) It’s parody, folks.
• Hugo Boss Awarded Contract For Joint Service Uniform Design (Duffelblog) Yeah, this is parody too.
• Customer accuses J.P. Morgan of robo-signing credit-card collections (Marketwatch) Bankstas gotta eat.
• New research suggest five-second rule exists (CTV News)
• 16th-century manual shows ‘rocket cat’ weaponry (The Journal Gazette) Rather surprisingly, this one is NOT parody.

Hugh Jackman can sing?