[Tsundoku]

Very SFW - is this the world's cutest haka?

https://twitter.com/...359749218820097

[Malankazooie]

[Malankazooie]

This is poppin' everywhere, but it would be a crime against humanity if it didn't find a happy home here in this thread. My personal take - I feel it's fake and was setup/planned. The guy is acting too much of a clueless dolt and over performs that aspect. Still, it's too cute.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Malankazooie, on 11 February 2021 - 01:36 AM, said:

This is poppin' everywhere, but it would be a crime against humanity if it didn't find a happy home here in this thread. My personal take - I feel it's fake and was setup/planned. The guy is acting too much of a clueless dolt and over performs that aspect. Still, it's too cute.

'I'm not a cat' lawyer was prosecuting a civil asset forfeiture case.

'The Zoom Cat Lawyer Used Federal Agents To Torment a Former Lover With Drug Raids and Bogus Charges

[...] as a prosecutor, Ponton leveraged the gears of the federal government in a yearslong effort to level bogus drug charges against a woman in Alpine, Texas, ultimately succeeding at destroying her business.

[...] 10-12 men came in, SWAT team style" to the Purple Zone, Lipsen recalls. They told her she was not under arrest, but cuffed her and threw her in the back of a police van while they searched her store, seized personal property including computers, a cell phone, and hard drives. They also took numerous packets of what Lipsen sells as potpourri in the incense section of the store, adorned with the colorful brand names such as "Dr. Feelgood," "Scooby Snax" and "Bomb! Marley."

According to Ponton, then the district attorney in Brewster County, Texas, Lipsen's potpourri qualified as "spice"—synthetic cannabinoids. The only problem: Her products were legal, as state-sponsored lab tests would confirm over and over.

Eight months later, Ponton had her arrested anyway. He also arrested her mother, who did not work at the store, charging both with "possession and distribution of a controlled substance"—a felony. Ponton cited a little-known rule on "analogues," which, as Fisher wrote, "are chemicals that are not prohibited but are similar enough to controlled substances that they become illegal depending on who interprets the data." Lipsen had the products tested in private labs and likewise had proof that the substances weren't illegal.

That didn't matter to Ponton. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) would go on to make several undercover purchases over the next few years, and Ponton would continue to beg the state for testing money, apparently hoping that a lab result would finally yield the proof he needed to substantiate the criminal charges he wanted to bring against her.

He was denied the funding. So he got creative [...]

Again, agents found no illegal substances. But they did find ammunition that Lipsen had received as a gift; Ponton excavated another obscure law and charged her with "receiving ammunition while under indictment." Lipsen's sister Arielle was also arrested after arguing with an agent onsite, who threw her to the ground as he took her into custody. She sustained an injury on her neck [...]

Lipsen sat in jail on the ammunition charge, unable to post bond. But not long after, she received a potential way out. At the behest of the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, the federal magistrate noted that the state would uncage her if she took care of a few things:

"Will request Tom Cochran retract his blog on Facebook. Will provide a letter of apology to both local newspapers in Alpine, TX, advising DEA had a legitimate reason to execute a warrant at her business. Will advise newspaper A warrant was not executed at her business because she was Jewish, owned Arabian horses, is of Turkish decent or because she visited Chinese websites. Will advise media (KWest 9 news) that her sister, Arrielle Lipsen, was not beaten by agents carrying/using a M16 rifle, and her sister instigated/assaulted agents."

Lipsen signed it. Meanwhile, Ponton was busy across town intimidating the local press[...]


Four months later, Lipsen pleaded guilty to first-degree felony manufacture, delivery, and possession of a controlled substance—though no substance the government found was illegal in Texas at the time of the raid. As a part of the deal, the state dropped the charges against her family members, along with the ammunition charge Lipsen faced from the second raid. She was given a deferred adjudication, meaning she has to keep a clean record for 10 years or face 5 years to life in prison. She sold her shop and left town.

As for Ponton, he's still at it. His 15 minutes of fame came as he prepared to argue a civil forfeiture case'

https://reason.com/2...X4eGJ-bbILia-RY

'Civil asset forfeiture is a controversial law-enforcement tactic that is based on a legal fiction dating back to the days of the pirates. The fiction is that property can be a "criminal." Police can seize property they think is connected to a crime, even if they don't charge the owner of the property with a crime — just as navies seized pirate ships in colonial days.

The practice skirts the Fourth Amendment's guarantee that Americans are free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and it provides a potentially corrupting incentive for police to circumvent the law to fund their departments.'

https://pulitzercent...sset-forfeiture

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 11 February 2021 - 03:13 AM

[Malankazooie]

[Malankazooie]

[Malankazooie]

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Wombo Can Make Anything Sing, For Better Or Worse

I will never forget Mr. Blobby asking me to touch his tra-la-la.

Wombo is an app that allows you to take pictures of people and make them lip sync to songs. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it also accepts pictures of non-faces.

[...] Although the faces move uncannily, showing not just teeth in their open mouths but the sides and tops of their heads as they move around, the app is also pretty stupid. Wombo doesn't detect faces for you; in order to make a video, you tell Wombo where the face is in the photo you've uploaded. This means that it's pretty easy to use Wombo on things that aren't faces, like this sink and drain:

https://twitter.com/...092244603080708

Or this building:

https://twitter.com/...770569659097100

Or freakish British children's television show character Mr. Blobby:

https://twitter.com/...464434594484225

Or, ahem, the peach emoji:

https://twitter.com/...889928331591680

[...] these videos of objects singing look pretty good. Humans seek and perceive faces even where they don't exist. This tendency is called pareidolia and there's a whole subreddit dedicated to it in case you're looking for more objects to feed to Wombo.'

https://www.vice.com...better-or-worse

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 15 March 2021 - 08:58 PM

[Malankazooie]

Discovered this guy when a segment on the local news covered him and the awesome tribute he made to the ten shooting victims in Boulder.

Boulder artist honors 10 shooting victims with rock sculpture garden

*link is to www.cbs8.com

As I've been playing Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and there is a 'cairn building' mini type game sprinkled across the AC:V sandbox world, I've formed an interest in this skillset. I'm blown away by the insane rock balancing he can perform.

[Malankazooie]