If you can get over the shitty narration and the wincey feeling of killing an entire ant colony, this is pretty fucking cool and worth watching.

Xavier Goldie has a new blog. He is into plants and politics.
He must REALLY like Trevor Mallard.

Wait. Ducks aren't plants.

If you don't know how this works, most of the stuff below involves clicking on a picture to expand the text beneath.

Being linked to by a popular blog is like having visitors showing up unannounced. On one hand, I'm delighted. On the other hand, I'm quite naked, and my wang (which here represents the absence of today's post) is flapping about in the open.

So, just quickly, here are 13 unconventional facts that affect the (US) dollar, and if you like me grew up on Usborne books, delight in a full web scan of The Usborne Book of the Future.

I leave you with this thought:

We perfected toothbrush technology decades ago. Why is society's resources going into inventing new kinds of toothbrush (cheek cleaners? cheek cleaners?!) and going into marketing them when children are dying from lack of simple clean drinking water? Is this system efficient? Is it guided by a benevolent invisible hand? Or is it rather the invisible claw of increasingly amoral systems of surplus production and consumption?

And when ATMs were invented, why were bank tellers not sent home to pleasant paid retirement for the rest of their lives? What are we heading towards? We could already satisfy the needs of everyone on earth with significantly less than 40 hours a week in labour. As technology increases, labour is worth more - so how come fewer work at supplying necessities - and more work at supplying unnecessaries - rather than everyone working fewer hours?

What are we heading towards? Is there an end to this cycle within the current framework? Does anyone have time to think of these things when they're working hard to earn money to buy things they're reliably informed that they want?

Roy Orbison cling-film porn and peace to all of you. Have a safe weekend.

PS. Russell Brown so sexy.

Wide load.
A character I love in a comic I love - Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan - uses a weapon called a bowel disruptor. It has various settings, from causing simple diarrhea to complete rectal prolapse. He enjoys using it, sometimes on cops.

Speaking of cops and inducing bodily functions from a distance, which is what we are now speaking of, due to my cunning wordplay, check this shit out. It uses pulses of flashing light to cause nausea, disorientation, perhaps vomiting. Non-lethal weapons almost seem more unpleasant than lethal ones, you know?

The Last Words of Henry Porter

I want to thank Father Walsh for his spiritual help. I want to thank Bob Ray (Sanders) and Steve Blow for their friendship. What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer. People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight. The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a thirteen-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river. You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice. This is America’s equal justice. A Mexican’s life is worth nothing. When a policeman kills someone he gets a suspended sentence or probation. When a Mexican kills a police officer this is what you get. From there you call me a cold-blooded murderer. I didn’t tie anyone to a stretcher. I didn’t pump any poison into anybody’s veins from behind a locked door. You call this justice. I call this and your society a bunch of cold-blooded murderers. I don’t say this with any bitterness or anger. I just say this with truthfulness. I hope God forgives me for all my sins. I hope that God will be as merciful to society as he has been to me. I’m ready, Warden.

In December 2006, a group of journalists and dissidents launched a website dedicated to providing both anonymity and publicity to corporate and state whistleblowers, with a forum for releasing leaked classified documents. Today, if you type www.wikileaks.org into your browser, you'll be told the server can't be contacted.

Cayman Islands bank Julius Baer's well-paid lawyers successfully sought a court injunction against Wikileaks via their Californian host, Dynadot. The DNS records and local hosting have been removed, but once again, the internet is too smart for hierarchical control and there are roughly a zillion mirrors. You can read Wikileaks' own coverage here.

You can't stop the signal, guys.

So, what was the bank's problem? Wikileaks - which has already been censored by the usual suspects in China - has been publishing leaked documents showing that the bank is potentially involved in dodgy money-laundering dealings. The whole of the Cayman Islands is already famous in pop culture for being a tax haven and black spot on financial watchdogs' radar, of course, but specifics are far more interesting. Here is the list of documents leaked, and here is some background information on Bank Julius Baer.

YOU'LL FLOAT TOO.
I'm watching a documentary (it'll screen on TV2 on Wednesday, 27th of Feb) about Real Dolls and the people who love them. Now, I normally enjoy being scared. It doesn't happen often, in terms of movies and books, but when it happens, I love it. And this documentary is terrifying me.

These people, who have - or believe themselves to be having - serious relationships with these inanimate objects... And they're creepy as fuck, of course. Very much about Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley. They're creepy by themselves, but what's genuinely terrifying me is the guys who love them.

It's not just about sex for them. The dolls aren't purely masturbatory aids. They're replacements for actual human contact in guys who don't want to have to deal with women, or feel incapable of dealing with women. Listen: "They don't react at all. But if you don't mind that, they're good fun. They're certainly better than going without any female company at all." Listen: "Especially, like, in the really early daylight, just being able to see her, you know, looking at me, regarding me, that sort of thing, and me doing the same back."

Okay, it's less unsettling now that I'm writing about it. But it was just that moment of mental vertigo, you know? That point where your mind takes a peek at what it thought was solid ground and finds itself over a sheer drop into utterly alien territory. People can love things.

The geometry is all wrong.

Sarah Silverman is five times as cute as a button.
YouTube commenters are the stupidest people in the world.

Apparently this optical illusion was created by Phillippe Schyns and Aude Oliva of the University of Glasgow. The pictures reverse if you take a few steps back. (Fewer steps for me, now that I'm wearing these bastard old contacts again and everything's fuzzy.)

And remember to vote Liberal!

I've seen parts of this before, but not the whole thing, and at the time didn't recognise Morrow from Chaser's War on Everything.

I guess this guy got kicked off another My Little Pony forum.

Click here.

I can't stop watching this.

It is from one of the most famous Yahoo Answers ever.

To a pessimist, that's like half not a billion dollars!

I don't know where this came from,
but it's pretty funny.