“We would never condone raising funds for cancer research in this manner.”

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An interesting twist in the ongoing debacle of the stolen/hacked nude celebrity photos is the effort by various people on the sub-Reddit known as the “Fappening” (a word I promise to use as little as possible) to raise money for prostate cancer research. Get it? A bunch of dudes doing, uh, dude stuff in front of their computers raising money for research into cancer of dude parts? It’s apparently funny to the sort of people who think any of this is a good idea.

Well, the Prostate Cancer Foundation isn’t laughing, nor is it accepting their donations:

The Prostate Cancer Foundation returned all money donated via a post on the website Reddit that was designed to make a joke about leaked naked images of Jennifer Lawrence and a slew of other famous women hacked from the women’s Apple iCloud accounts.

“We would never condone raising funds for cancer research in this manner. Out of respect for everyone involved and in keeping with our own standards, we are returning all donations that resulted from this post,” the foundation said in a statement Tuesday.

The dudebros on Reddit are now all butthurt about it. Good.

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More in the “Sex Sells” Department

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Targeted advertising can be pretty creepy, in the way that it demonstrates how much these companies know about you, and what their algorithms suggest they think they know about you. Other times, they’re creepy in their choice of photos to accompany the ads. Today, I bring you these, from a page on Heavy.com:

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A few of these make perfect sense. Articles about saving on a mortgage have a picture of a smiling woman holding a piece of paper with the word “APPROVED” stamped on it, which probably prompts some positive cognitive response in viewers; and a picture of a $20 bill folded in half in front of the White House, because, you know, money and stuff. An article about “Fitness Enthusiast” Jen Selter is accompanied by a picture of Jen Selter. No big surprise there, although it makes me wonder why the internet thinks Jen Selter and mortgages are foremost on my mind.

The other ads are a bit more of a mystery, and I do mean that completely sarcastically. Continue reading →

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You May Keep Your Backwoods Stereotypes

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You know how people sometimes mock certain states of the union as being backward places that allow first cousins to get married? Have you ever wondered how many of those places actually allow that? After a friend brought it up on Facebook yesterday, I decided to waste a fair amount of time doing some research—miraculously, without ever having to Google anything related to marrying one’s first cousin.

Laws against marrying family members are based on concepts of consanguinity, a word which shows up in many of these statutes. A first cousin is in the fourth degree of consanguinity.

I was just curious to see how the stereotypes held up to actual law. I only looked at the U.S. states that seem like they might most often fit into a certain stereotype. As it happens, they are all “southern” states. Some of the states that have perhaps been the subject of the most mockery actually do not allow first-cousin marriage, while others—including my home state of Texas—do.

Later, I might look at the states whose denizens might consider themselves more cultured or enlightened to see what their laws have to say. (Spoiler alert: you can legally marry your first cousin in California and New York.) With regard to the “southern states,” six states do not allow first cousins to get married, and eight do.

I had research help from a website called CousinCouples.com, which actually exists.

No First Cousins: Continue reading →

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Points for Effort in the Marriage Equality Cases?

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The oral arguments in the Seventh Circuit case involving the marriage statutes in Indiana and Wisconsin sounds like they were extremely uncomfortable for those states’ attorneys general. In a way, I feel bad for the two attorneys who had to argue the case, but then again, they were trying to steer an obviously sinking ship. Ed Brayton posted some highlights from the hearing. This bit between the judges and Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher seems like the trial advocacy equivalent of being rapped on the hand with a ruler:

JUDGE POSNER: “You allow the homosexual couples to adopt. Why don’t you want their children to have the same advantages as children adopted by heterosexual couples?”

FISHER: “The question is what can we do to nudge heterosexual couples who may produce children, you know, unintentionally to plan for this—to plan for the consequences and appreciate the consequences of sexual behavior. Those consequences don’t arise with same-sex couples. It’s not in the context of adoption that marriage—”

JUDGE POSNER: “But you’re not answering my question. You’ve got millions of adopted children, and a lot of them—200,000 or more—are adopted by same-sex couples. Why don’t you want their children to be as well off as the adopted children of heterosexual couples?” Continue reading →

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Ferrari v. Deadmau5, the Nyan Cat Debacle

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Deadmau5, the DJ with the quirky sense of spelling, bought a Ferrari 458 Italia and tricked it out with a Nyan Cat wrap. He called it the Purrari. I say “called” because he removed the wrap after receiving a cease and desist letter from Ferrari. Someone asked me about the legal issues, I guess because I still play a lawyer on Facebook, so I looked into it.

It sounds like the issue is with his modification of the Ferrari emblem. Deadmau5 hasn’t released the actual C&D letter, but he has apparently said that it mostly involved the modified logo on the car and the floormats.

As a general rule, I think that (a) a person can do whatever they want with property they purchase, but (b) the seller might continue to own intellectual property rights associated with that product. I bought the Macbook on which I am typing this, and I am free to slap bumper stickers on it or use a marker to make the Apple logo look like a butt. I do not have any rights to use the Apple logo elsewhere, though. That doesn’t describe Deadmau5’s situation for several reasons. Continue reading →

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Let Local Government Compete!

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has claimed that it has the authority to nullify state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that would prevent municipalities from creating their own broadband services if they “restrict competition.”

At issue are laws that are preventing the cities of Chattanooga, TN and Wilson, NC from building broadband networks that would compete with networks operated by private-sector companies. You can probably guess who supports these laws and opposes the FCC. Companies like Netflix are calling on the FCC to exercise its power:

The cities of Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson, N.C. — which have asked the FCC to invalidate state laws preventing their government-run Web services from expanding — “should not be hamstrung by state laws enacted at the urging of incumbent broadband providers seeking to maintain market dominance,” Netflix added.

***

Public interest groups have urged the agency to go ahead, but Web providers, the National Governors Association and some Republicans in Congress have warned it to back off.

Interfering with state laws would be a federal overreach, critics say, and regulators ought to respect the will of the states.

Let me get this straight: it would be “federal overreach” for the FCC to nullify state laws, but it’s okay for state laws to nullify municipal actions? Once again, business interests define “federal overreach” solely as things they don’t like.

What exactly is the problem with the two cities’ plans, anyway? They don’t appear to be placing any additional regulatory restrictions on the private broadband players. They’re just trying to enter the market—the free market, as I recall it being called. If government is so incompetent at everything it does, this should not be a threat to the private companies. Which is why the fact that they are obviously so terrified of a “public option” (see what I did there?) is so interesting.

You can submit comments to the FCC here and here.

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This Week in WTF, September 5, 2014

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– Never get poisoned again: Baidu, a large Chinese company, has developed “smart chopsticks.”

Chinese internet giant Baidu has unveiled a pair of ‘smart chopsticks’ that can detect contaminants in food and report back to smartphone and desktop apps.

The compapny (often known as ‘China’s Google’) says the prototype device is currently designed to detect temperature and whether food was produced using ‘gutter oil’ – reused cooking oil that’s potentially toxic – but that future models could also flag up contaminated water and measure salt levels.

I had not heard of “gutter oil” before, and now I really wish I hadn’t. You might have thought that I selected this story for “WTF” treatment because of the “smart chopsticks,” but you would be wrong. It was because such an invention appears to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very necessary.

– I don’t get it, but I don’t need to: Some new mothers want to eat their placentas (placentae?), but hospitals won’t let them because of medical waste laws.

No further commentary offered.

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What I’m Reading, September 4, 2014

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Unreality TV: ‘Weekend Update’ and the landscape of fake news, Brian Phillips, Grantland, August 22, 2014

It would be a mistake, however, to write off “Update” as the less subversive precursor to a more radical age of news satire. In the early years in particular, it wasn’t that “Update” was soft; it was that the target was different. Saturday Night Live first aired a year after Nixon resigned, six months after the fall of Saigon. The old American public reality, I mean the Walter Cronkite, Fit to Print reality, was cracked down the middle but still more or less in place. TV channels were confined to a few stiff buttons on an oversize remote. Newspapers still published late editions. There was no Internet. The structure of American authority had been shown up as fatally flawed, but nothing emerged to replace it. The early “Weekend Update” sketches were less interested in using the power of the news to castigate corruption than in pointing out the fraudulence on which the power of the news was based. They showed Chevy Chase, a mock-up of the oracular newsman, murmuring dirty talk into a telephone, unaware that he was on the air.

Or they showed Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin, in a “Point/Counterpoint” debate, dropping the pretense of civility and saying what they really thought: “Jane, you ignorant slut.” “Dan, you pompous ass.”

Above all, they made the news, that somber institution, look innocuous and foolish, a province of irrelevant weirdos and harmless egomaniacs.

***

Is it strange that, of all the current-events products currently on television, it’s often Fox News that feels most like a “Weekend Update” bit? Critics are constantly asking why there’s no conservative Daily Show, but there is; it just won’t admit it’s a joke. The structure of Fox News is so deeply and basically comic that it’s impossible not to read it into the tradition of news satire. All those weeping paranoiacs! The fist-shaking curmudgeons! The gun-toting robo-blondes! Like “Weekend Update,” Fox succeeded by taking the elements of a normal news broadcast and exaggerating them to ludicrous proportions. Only instead of Opera Man, it has Angry Immigration Crusader; instead of Mr. Subliminal, it has Jowly Operative Insinuating Things About Hillary Clinton’s Health; instead of Gay Hitler, it has Outmatched Token Liberal; instead of “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead,” it has Benghazi.

Be sure to read the full article. It has some brilliant Fox News screen captures.

Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female, Stubby the Rocket, Tor.com, September 2, 2014 Continue reading →

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I’ll Never Understand Some People’s Idea of “Art” (UPDATED)

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I really do believe that some people mistake edginess, abrasiveness, or plain old controversy for “art.”

The recently leaked private images of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, among others, are set to be printed onto life-sized canvases and exhibited at an upcoming event held in Los Angeles.

Cory Allen Contemporary Art (CACA) has announced that the works will be among the new additions to artist XVALA’s “Fear Google” concept.

They are set to be displayed at his upcoming exhibition, named “No Delete”, at the CACA’s space The Showroom in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

The artist’s publicist, Cory Allen, said in a statement: “XVALA appropriating celebrity compromised images and the overall ‘Fear Google’ campaign has helped strengthen the ongoing debate over privacy in the digital era.

“The commentary behind this show is a reflection of who we are today. We all become ‘users’ and in the end, we become ‘used.'”

That’s quite a bold statement for an artist who uses a pseudonym and speaks through a publicist. I had never heard of XVALA before I saw this article, and I already hate them.

I thought this article was satire at first, initially because of the subject matter, and then because the promoter goes by the name CACA.

I am perfectly willing to accept that no one person gets to define “art,” and that any single piece of art will mean 50 different things to 40 different people. What I do not accept, however, is that displaying stolen, intimate photographs of people without their permission is any less a grotesque invasion of privacy if you add some pretentious artiste-speak to it, than if it was posted anonymously to 4Chan.

“In today’s culture, everybody wants to know everything about everybody. An individual’s privacy has become everyone else’s business,” XVALA added. “It has become cash for cache.”

Shut the hell up.

UPDATE (09/07/2014): Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice named XVALA “Douchecanoe of the Week,” and the description made it into his Wikipedia page. Well done, internet.

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Gosh, Who Could’ve Seen This Coming?

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The fundraisers for Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department have surpassed $400,000, much more than the fundraisers for the kid he shot and killed. Wilson currently has no legal expenses to speak of, although even if the prosecutors never bring charges, a civil wrongful death claim is still a possibility. The kicker, of course, is that no one seems to know for certain what the $400,000+ is for, or where it is going:

This is one of those “read the whole thing” stories, because there’s just an unbelievable amount of Really Damn Sketchy going on. To sum up: Continue reading →

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