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Squee of the Day: Mom Weasel Goes Back For Smallest Baby Left Behind

OK, so we aren’t sure if these are weasels, ferrets or stoats—but we do know this is one dedicated momma!

The video starts out with these adorable creatures scrambling up a stone wall led by their fearless mom. When mom gets a look at the camera, she signals to the babies to follow her away from any danger.

But, oh no! One of the babies has fallen off the wall and can’t seem to get up.

The runt of the group finally makes it back up to the top of the wall where it calls out for mom.

With one swift tug, the mom weasel/ferret/stoat pulls the baby to safety and rejoins the group.

Supercut of the Day: Watch All Your Favorite Dance Scenes from Movies in One Video

Shut up and dance with everyone who has ever danced in a major motion picture.

YouTuber MsTabularasa has taken memorable dance scenes from about 88 different movies and mashed them together in one big celebrity dance-off for your viewing pleasure.

The supercut is set to Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance with Me” and it’s really well timed with the music.

It includes classics like “Dirty Dancing” and “Footloose” as well as some more recent films like “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Magic Mike.”

In case you can’t guess them all, she’s listed all of the film titles in the comments below the video along with the corresponding time codes.

Food of the Day: Krispy Kreme Announces Donut Dog with Raspberry Jelly and Bacon

Is the world (or our heart) even ready for this?

It’s only been a few weeks since Little Caesars unleashed their bacon-wrapped pizza, and now Krispy Kreme has come along with an exclusive new creation to put that thing to shame.

Meet the “Krispy Kreme Donut Dog,” a hot dog in a glazed donut bun, slathered in raspberry jelly and covered in bacon.

The Wilmington Blue Rocks, a minor league baseball team from Delaware, has partnered with the donut company to sell this beast during their games at Frawley Stadium.

“The Blue Rocks are always looking for new ways to please our fans, and we think this is certainly going to accomplish that,” said Blue Rocks Director of Advertising Sales Brian Radle. “Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ballpark hotdogs are two of America’s favorite treats, so why not combine them?”

The team has also set up a contest to help officially name the monstrosity, and they are accepting submissions until March 17.

Apology of the Day: Comcast Sorry for Changing Subscriber’s Name to A-Hole

Here’s yet another reason to join the cord-cutting revolution.

A man in Spokane, Washington was surprised to find out that Comcast had changed his name from Ricardo Brown to “Asshole” Brown on his most recent bill.

He and his wife Lisa had been trying to cancel their cable subscription with the company, which should have been a very simple process.

But it was not.

They first reported the issue to consumer advocate Christopher Elliott, who wrote:

Instead of complying immediately, a representative escalated her call to a retention specialist, who tried to persuade her to keep the cable service and sign a new two-year contract.

His wife said she was not being rude, but the Comcast customer service agent decided to get back at them for not taking the offer in the most passive aggressive and childish way possible.

Elliot spoke with a Comcast rep who eventually apologized.

“We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change,” he said. “We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.”

The company also promised to fire the employee responsible and has offered to both waive the $60 cable cancellation fee (how generous) and provide a refund of their two years of cable service.

And just as a reminder of it’s like to deal with Comcast customer service:

Toy of the Day: You Can Now Buy an Action Figure of Vladimir Putin Riding a Bear

Meanwhile in Russia… you can now own an action figure of your favorite Russian president Vladimir Putin, shirtless and riding a bear.

Finally!

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Robert Coalson tweeted the strange image this weekend.

“For sale at the Ismailovo market in Moscow,” he wrote.

You can also purchase the polyresin figure at this website, and it appears to be on sale for just 2500 Rubles (about $38).

Here’s the description of the item from the site, via Google Translate:

Luxurious Figurine as the head of state who tamed forest brown bear standing on a segment of a great country, symbolizes the victory, the heroic strength and power. Bear has long been considered a symbol of immense Russia, represents courage, strength, courage and rage directed against enemies – this beast could not be better reflects the position of the nation and its principles.

There have been other Putin action figures available in the past, like this one of him giving a speech at a podium (boring).

Joke or not, Coalson is noticing a lot of interest from people about the item on his Twitter account.

There are a number of photoshopped images of the Russian president riding various wild beasts, including a shark, but this figure seems to be based off this one.

In Russia, you is on joke.

On Kony 2012

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 Invisible Children Inc. is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called misleading, naive, and dangerous by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes. They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureaus standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they wont let their financials be independently audited. Thats not a good thing. In fact, its a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money youre sending them is going.

By ICs own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many cant seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known. Don’t send them anything, you’d be better off gambling away your money in a casino online than sending them a dime. And just to clarify I’m not suggesting anyone should now go and start betting at an online casino any time soon!

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Lets not get our lines crossed: The Lords Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and its likely he will soon be caught, if he isnt already dead. But killing Kony wont fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didnt end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is a relatively small player in all of this as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africas woes on Kony even as a starting point will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money and plastic sheets to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the regions medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Dont just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old sad. Learn a little bit about the complexities of the regions ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

Return of the Jedi Set Footage of the Day

Back in 1982, a group of young Star Wars fans trekked into the California desert to crash the outdoor set of Return of the Jedi, and this seven-minute video of scenes from the Sail Barge, featuring Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, Slave Leia and Boba Fett, was the result.

Posthumous MJ Release of the Day

Better late and unfinished than never — available today for the first time (and exclusively at Wal-Mart), the demo of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Be Messin’ ‘Round” accompanies a re-release of Bad’s original lead single, “I Can’t Just Stop Loving You.”

A full album of previously unreleased material from the Bad sessions is due September 18.

[ae]

Everybody Needs A Hobby of the Day

One man, 1,000,000 edits: Justin Knapp, a 30-year-old Wikipedia editor from Indiana, has spent the bulk of his free time since 2003 giving the open-source encyclopedia the ol’ spit-and-polish, and he’s finally hit seven digits. And that’s easier said than done, considering the site is the sixth most-visited in the world.

Among his crowning achievements on the site is the bibliography on the George Orwell entry, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world; it took Knapp more than 100 hours to complete. He also has tasked himself with keeping the site’s information on music albums up-to-date. And all for what?

“I’ve never accepted any restitution for my work on Wikipedia — it’s purely voluntary. … Far be it for me to say that it’s an act of love to edit Wikipedia. But I really do feel like it helps other human beings. That makes me feel good — knowing that somehow I can be a small part of helping someone who I’ll never know.”

[gizmodo]

Love Story of the Day

When G-Male — the imagined Google version of the perfect boyfriend — meets Siri — the imagined Apple version of the perfect girlfriend — data flies.

This Is All Kinds of Wrong of the Day

A horrifying video of a student being restrained and shocked for hours at the Judge Rotenberg Center was shown in court Tuesday at the start of Andre McCollins’ trial against the center, and it may be enough to get the facility shut down once and for all.

The video shows a 2002 incident in which 18-year-old McCollins was restrained, face-down, on the floor, and then given 31 shocks as he screamed and fought, all because he had refused to take off his coat. While the center had fought for years to keep the video sealed, it was used not only in court, but by a Boston Fox affiliate that got permission to air it over objections from Rotenberg’s lawyers.

Despite a revealing 2007 exposé (McCollins wasn’t the only student subjected to the inhumane treatment) that led to local and state investigations and ongoing lawsuits, the school, in Canton, MA, has managed to stay open. It bills itself as a special needs school, and “is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons.”

“I never signed up for him to be tortured, terrorized, and abused,” McCollins’ mother Cheryl testified in court Tuesday. “I had no idea — no idea — that they tortured the children in the school.”

Early Bird Special

9Lives Adventures, “an adrenaline-fueled tour operator catering to the physically disabled,” helps make a paraplegic girl’s bungee jumping dreams come true.

Celebrity Cellphone Pic Leak of the Day [UPDATED]

A new celebrity cellphone pic scandal may be brewing after highly personal photos of Christina Hendricks and Olivia Munn made their way online last night.

A user of the anonymous file hosting site Motherless.com started a thread two days ago asking other users which celeb they most wanted to see nude. Several hours later, seeing the thread produce nothing of value, a second user began uploading private cellphone photos of Mad Men star Christina Hendricks, including a headless shot that contained exposed breasts.

It remained unclear if the photo was in fact of Hendricks.

Later on, risque photos of television personality Olivia Munn, complete with salacious captions believed to be intended for her then-boyfriend Chris Pine, were also posted, likely by the same user.

Personal photos of actresses January Jones, Sarah Silverman, Hayden Panettiere, and Michelle Trachtenberg were also posted in the thread, but did not appear to be as private or scandalous as the ones of Hendricks and Munn.

The origin of the cellphone pics was not revealed.

“Hollywood Hacker” Christopher Chaney, the notorious celebrity cellphone hacker responsible for leaking the now-infamous ScarJo self-pics, was arrested last October and indicted on charges of identity theft and wiretapping among others. If convicted, Chaney could face up to 121 years behind bars.

[ontd / nudography.]

UPDATE: Christina Hendricks confirmed through a rep that her phone was hacked, but claims the nude photo is not her. Olivia Munn also denied the solitary nude pic in the set is her, but the others are apparently real.

Best Casino Ad of the Day

Hilarious stuff from Parks and Recreation in the form of this Wamapoke Casino ad. Wamapoke Casino live by the moto: “Slowly taking our money back from White people one quarter at a time.”

The internet casino version may get them even closer to their goal.

Lights Out

An adorable montage of adorable grandparents discovering Photo Booth, adorably.

More on Kony

More On Kony 2012: If this past week has taught us anything, it’s that people love — love — being aware of things. More than that, they love telling other people that they are aware of things. Most of all, however, people are absolutely, unconditionally, head over heels in lifelong love with other people liking the fact that they are aware of things.

But why do people love being aware of things as much as they do? In a 2008 blog post, Stuff White People Like attempted to get to the core of the Western world’s  codependent relationship with awareness. By raising awareness, wrote Christian Lander, ”you get all the benefits of helping (self satisfaction, telling other people), but no need for difficult decisions or the ensuing criticism (how do you criticize awareness?).”

Of course, what makes awareness so alluring is precisely what makes it so pointless: It doesn’t — in and of itself — actually accomplish anything.

Awareness, beyond argument, is the first step towards fixing a problem. But, invariably, that shared endorphin boost people experience when banding together to rally around awareness for a cause wears off, and all that’s left is a bunch of people with no answers looking around for someone — anyone — to take the next step.

And then someone does. And we pat them on the back for their willingness to put in the elbow grease and leg work necessary to actually get something done. And we happily sign their petitions or open our wallets to them: After all, it’s the least we can do to help this selfless do-gooder advance our cause beyond awareness. And we send them on their way, content in the thought that, if we couldn’t spare the time, at least we could spare a few dollars and a signature.

But what if that person, or that organization, we just bankrolled doesn’t understand the problem or what needs to be done about it? What if, instead of helping, their actions end up hurting not only the people they claim to want to help, but also the people who are actually helping? And, perhaps most importantly, what if the people supposedly being helped don’t want help? Should it still be foisted upon them against their will?

Take KONY 2012 for example.

A lot has been said over the last several days about Invisible Children‘s ultra-viral awareness campaign that targets infamous central African warlord Joseph Kony, and his 26-year-old rebel militia, the Lord’s Resistance Army.

IC’s finances have been called into question; their “emotional  porn” approach toward awareness solicitation has been criticised as a “fund-raising stunt” which employs “blatant dishonesty” in an effort to perpetuate “myths” about Kony thereby achieving their stated goal of direct military intervention; the group’s leadership troika — seen above posing in 2008 with members of the then-child-soldier-recruiting Sudan People’s Liberation Army – has been referred to as self-promoting colonialists by the AP photographer who snapped the shot. But, through all the op-eds and the think pieces and the public polls, the only ­opinions worth heeding have remained largely invisible: Those of the people who are actually from there.

“[Invisible Children] are not known as a peace building organization and I do not think they have experience with peace building and conflict resolution methods,” wrote Anywar Ricky Richard, the director of the northern Ugandan organization Friends of Orphans, and a man who knows first-hand the horrors of the Lord’s Resistance Army, having been a former child soldier in its service. “I totally disagree with their approach of military action as a means to end this conflict.”

Ugandan-born activist TMS Ruge, co-founder of Project Diaspora, agrees wholeheartedly with Richard. Of KONY 2012 he says: “It is a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes.”

Indeed, in the rush to condescend to the central Africans who are “just not working hard enough” to get rid of Kony and his ilk and finally start improving their quality of life, what many overlook (or willfully ignore) is the already-visible progress that has been made thanks to the hard-earned grassroots efforts of central Africans themselves.

“Uganda was voted by Lonely Planet amongst the top destinations for 2012 but has this NGO just undone the potential for Uganda’s tourism?” asks Ida Horner, a Ugandan expat who remembers well a much harsher life under Idi Amin. “After all the tourism industry provides a real opportunity for Ugandans to work their way out of poverty through providing services that tourists want to consume.”

Nigerian-American novelist Teju Cole takes it a step further and slams what he calls the “White Savior Industrial Complex,” which cares little for the end, so long as it gets satisfaction from the means. “The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening,” says Cole. “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”

And all this before we’ve even touched on the dark heart of the matter: Joseph Kony.

Kony is, without a doubt, a despicable human being. His 25-year reign of terror has resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of abductions, and hundreds of thousands of displacements. But to suggest that Kony is anywhere near worthy of cheap, throwaway comparisons to such historical horror-mongers as Hitler is not only irresponsible, it might actually be what Kony wants.

IC’s video appears to suggest that Kony is currently in possession of over 30,000 child soldiers. According to the UN’s latest report, the LRA has “less than 500 combatants,” and was “dislodged” by Ugandan security forces in 2002 — meaning they are no longer there, and are unlikely to return.

Kony and the LRA are now but a horrible memory to many in northern Uganda who don’t need an Internet campaign to make Kony popular. They know all-too-well who he is and what he was once capable of, and are desperately trying — peacefully, through reconciliation – to move away from the shadows of their traumatic past.

“Now we have peace, people are back in their homes,” says Dr. Beatrice Mpora, who runs a community health organization in the rebels’ former northern Uganda stomping ground of Gulu. “They are planting their fields, they are starting their businesses. That is what people should help us with.”

That is not to say that Kony is entirely done away with; he is still able to menace remote areas in neighboring countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic — his last known hideout. But rather than an ascending fuhrer, Kony is an aging monster, thrashing about blindly in hopes of remaining relevant for a little while longer.

Sadly, it seems IC’s KONY 2012 campaign may end up doing exactly what it aims to do: Provide a spent villain with a second wind of infamy.

“Most madmen love the idea of fame,” says Marc DuBois of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), “so Joseph Kony’s wet dream just came true.” By focusing all available attention on a bygone bogeyman whose days are numbered, the IC may be unwittingly rejuvenating the perception of Kony as an intimidating and influential force with a wider reach than his true resources allow.

“Making Kony ‘famous’ could make him stronger,” says well-respected Ugandan blogger Javie Ssozi. And that strength puts a lot of people in danger, including both locals and aid workers such as DuBois and colleague Avril Benoît. “MSF teams in LRA-affected regions of DR Congo, Central African Republic & South Sudan are likely wary of retaliation risks,” said Benoît.

IC, with its support for direct military intervention in Uganda, may not care that Uganda’s own government considers it “totally misleading to suggest that the war is still in Uganda,” but Kony does. To him, KONY 2012 represents a rebirth — a chance to restore a stifling grip that has been slipping for years.

So say KONY 2012 succeeds. America plants even more bootprints on the ground, smokes Kony out of his cave, and turns him over to the International Criminal Court. A job well done and stogies all around. Now there’s just the small matter of the fact that nothing has actually changed, because KONY 2012 doesn’t do a lick to address any of the big-picture problems currently facing central Africa.

All it has succeeded in doing is propping up Uganda’s war-crimes-perpetrating military and its brutalcorrupthuman-rights-abusing dictatorship, and strengthening the alliance of four-term-president Yoweri Museveni with his US counterpart at a time when a foothold in Uganda would be extremely advantageous to American oil interests.

Meanwhile, actual problems in need of actual solutions are being rendered inaudible by the beating of war drums.

Gulu, the Ugandan town ravaged by the LRA in a previous life is now home to the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda, according to Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama. It also has unacceptably high rates of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, even when compared to the rest of Africa. And the real bane of Ugandan children — the mysterious “Nodding Disease,” which has killed scores and debilitated hundreds — is no closer to a cure.

“Last year I went to Gulu, Uganda, where Invisible Children is based, and interviewed over 50 locals,” writes Columbia University student Amber Ha in an open letter to IC’s Jason Russell. “Every single person questioned Invisible Children’s legitimacy and intention.”

Adam Branch, a human rights advocate who has worked for years in northern Uganda, elaborates on what precisely has given so many people in the area pause:

The warmongering, the self-indulgence, the commercialization, the reductive and one-sided story they tell, their portrayal of Africans as helpless children in need of rescue by white Americans, and the fact that civilians in Uganda and central Africa may have to pay a steep price in their own lives so that a lot of young Americans can feel good about themselves, and a few can make good money.

By now it should be abundantly clear that KONY 2012 doesn’t offer a single enduring solution to any of the problems it pretends to want to fix. At the very least, it makes things worse. At the very most, it makes things much worse.

But beyond the reasons why lies a simple truth: Lasting change — the kind that makes people’s lives truly better — doesn’t come from awareness, or even from doing something: It comes from doing what needs to be done. And knowing what that is requires paying attention, listening to the victims, and understanding the whole story.

You’ll notice that I haven’t once mentioned money. There is plenty to say about IC’s accountability and transparency (or lack thereof) and the way it goes about spending the piles of cash it is making off KONY 2012 — and piles of cash are definitely being made considering the ubiquitous ”sold out” heraldic standards that popped up almost instantaneously next to the all-important “awareness swag” IC is hawking in conjunction with the video campaign — but that discussion is mostly moot.

IC is not a charity in the true sense of the word. It is a private interest group that allocates the overwhelming majority of its budget (nearly 70% in 2011) toward travel, compensation, administration, fundraising, making movies, and lobbying celebrities and congress [pdf] to support its central aim: Direct foreign military intervention in Africa.

Whether or not that is what IC should be spending its money on is a question best left to IC. The real question that you should be asking yourself is whether or not that is what you should be spending your money on.

It should be well-evident by now that KONY 2012 is a poorly thought-out and oversimplified campaign with shortsighted objectives that are detrimental to every relevant cause except making money. More than that, it is a campaign that is unwelcome by local civilians, politicians, experts, and humanitarian aid workers.

Asked about the video’s glossing over major aspects of regional history and culture, IC co-founder, and the star of KONY 2012, Jason Russell told the New York Times, “No one wants a boring documentary on Africa. Maybe we have to make it pop, and we have to make it cool. We view ourself as the Pixar of human rights stories.”

That’s great, except Africa is not a feel-good animated feature for the whole family. It is a real place with real people who would suffer real consequences if KONY 2012 succeeded in convincing well-meaning individuals that all it needs for a happy ending is to catch the “bad guy” with the help of American soldiers.

Africans deserve better than to be treated like two-dimensional Wacom sketches by a group of sensationalist jet-setters who — by their own admission — oversimplify the issues to sell their cause (and their bracelets). The people of Africa — nay, the people of everywhere — deserve real, long-lasting solutions; not quick-fix half-remedies that look good on Facebook.

There are plenty of ways to help without trampling all over self-determination. There are good, honest, transparent not-for-profits based in Africa that have been working for years to promote self-sufficiency through education, health services, rehabilitation, democracy-building initiatives, and myriad other programs that have resulted in empowering change. These organizations help the people help themselves without condescension or remote imperatives.

But don’t take my word for it: Do the research. Find a cause you support and make sure it is what it says it is, and, more importantly, that it helps the people it claims to help. Invisible Children and KONY 2012 do not meet that criterion, and for that reason, above all other reasons presented here and elsewhere, it should not be allowed to speak on their behalf.

Cat Tease of the Day

Cat Tease of the Day: A few of Big Cat Rescue’s biggest cats get a chance to take a good hard look in the mirror. These are some seriously large cats and you certainly wouldn’t want to show them how to get bigger that’s for sure!

Read-Through of the Day

Read-Through of the Day: Michael Cera, Martha MacIsaac, Jonah Hill, Emma Stone, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse do a table-read of the (not-safe-for-work) sex scene from Superbad.