Look At This Fire-Bending Cat of the Day: Sure, this looks like a cute kitty innocently playing with fire, but if you knew anything about cats you’d realize he’s clearly attempting to harness its deadly power to enslave humanity.
The more you know.
[doobybrain.]
Postage Paid Protest of the Day: YouTuber ransackedroom — a San Francisco-based “poet, editor, and marketer” — has come up with a rather ingenious way ordinary people can support the Occupy Wall Street movement without ever leaving their homes.
It involves taking the business reply mail envelope that comes with most unsolicited credit card offers, and sending it back to the banks with a message inside that ransacked hopes will help open “a dialogue.”
He says:
This isn’t really about running up the postage bill on the big banks, although that’s a nice side effect. The real effect of this is to force banks to react to us.
If they start getting hundreds and thousands of weird responses to their credit card applications, well they’re going to have to have meetings. They going to have to develop new procedures and every hour banks spend reacting to us is an hour banks don’t spend lobbying Congress on how to screw us. It’s an hour banks don’t spend foreclosing on our houses.
So I think that that’s progress.
YouTube Comment of Note: “This supports the United States Postal Service also, maybe keeping several thousand postal workers out of the unemployment line. Good idea.”
[thanks mike!]
Drug War of the Day: The hacker collective known as Anonymous released a video statement recently, warning Los Zetas — one of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels — that it would release identities of its collaborators and names of its money-laundering fronts if the syndicate did not return a kidnapped member of the group to his home.
The alleged accomplices are taxi drivers, journalists, and police officers — referred to in the video as “police-zetas” — who Anonymous claims are working with the cartel, or against “honest authorities like the army and the navy.”
“We can´t defend ourselves with a weapon,” the statement goes on to say, “but if we can do this with their cars, houses, bars, brothels and everything else in their possession…It won´t be difficult. We all know who they are and where they are.”
The video appears to set November 4th as the last date for compliance with the ultimatum.
Austin-based global intelligence company Stratfor warns that Anonymous may be in over its head, and any publication of names would “most certainly” result in bloodshed.
The Zetas have a well-documented history of attacking online critics.
However, retired DEA international operations chief Mike Vigil calls the statement “a gutsy move,” and says the Zetas should take Anonymous seriously. “By publishing the names, they identify them to rivals,” he says, “and trust me, they will go after them.”
[chron.]
Kickass Costume of the Day: Redditor HemlockForAlgernon shows off his “Son of Man” Halloween costume, inspired by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte’s well-known self-portrait of the same name.
[reddit.]
Cosplaying Kid of the Day: Proving that being the best dad ever wasn’t a one time deal, photographer Jim D. Griffioen — who you may remember from dressing his son up in a homemade RoboCop costume last year — returns with a 20th anniversary homage to one of his son’s favorite movies: The Rocketeer.
Over on his blog, Griffioen describes how he pieced the costume together for pennies using a bike helmet, a cheap Iron Man mask, a couple of thrift-store jackets, a couple of Pepsi bottles, a few found items, a lots of elbow grease.
[sweetjuniper.]
This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: An op-ed by Joe Nocera in today’s New York Times reveals that Steven J. Baum, New York’s largest “foreclosure mill” firm — defined by Word Spy as “a law firm that processes foreclosures perfunctorily and without due process” — held a Halloween party last year that featured a particularly nauseating theme: Homelessness.
Damning photos sent in to Nocera by a former employee show Steven J. Baum personnel covered in soot and dressed in rags, holding signs that say “I was never served” — reportedly meant to mock the “typical excuse” of homeowners attempting to avoid being foreclosed upon.
“When we spoke later,” Nocera writes, “[the former employee] added that the snapshots are an accurate representation of the firm’s mind-set.” ”There is this really cavalier attitude,” she told him. “It doesn’t matter that people are going to lose their homes.”
The firm, which represents Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, among other mortgage lending behemoths, is currently being investigated by New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman.
Furthermore, it recently resolved a Department of Justice investigation into the filing of “misleading pleadings, affidavits, and mortgage assignments” by agreeing to pay $2 million. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of homeowners is currently pending.
A spokesman for Steven J. Baum denied the “suggestion” that employees dressed “in attire that mocks or attempts to belittle the plight of those who have lost their homes,” claiming that this op-ed is simply “another attempt by The New York Times to attack our firm and our work.”
The photos, however, suggest otherwise.
[nyt.]
Damn Nature U Scary of the Day: A 16-foot-long Burmese python was recently caught and killed in the Florida Everglades.
When officials opened the snake’s belly they found a second surprise: The python had just consumed a 76-pound adult deer.
“This is clearly an extreme event,” Everglades National Park python specialist Skip Snow told the Sun-Sentinel. “It shows you they can eat huge things.”
[sunsentinel / dailymail / photo: ap via photoblog.]
Blunt Billboard of the Day: Spotted in Swindon.
Thanks, but the cosmetic surgery clinic down the way has a billboard offering to take care of both.
[reddit.]
This Changes Everything of the Day: Stop preparing your pasta like a slow-ass sucker: Speed things way up with this life-altering tip from Keys to Good Cooking author Harold McGee.
[chow.]
