Apple is exploring getting into the original programming business, reports Variety. “An Apple representative declined comment,” but you knew that was coming. If the report is accurate, it makes sense that the most valuable company in the world​ wants to go head-to-head with Amazon​ and Netflix​ on streamable original video content.

From Variety:

Sources indicate the Cupertino, Calif., colossus has held preliminary conversations in recent weeks with executives in Hollywood to suss out their interest in spearheading efforts to produce entertainment content. The unit putting out the feelers reports into Eddy Cue, who is Apple’s point man on all content-related matters, from its negotiations with programmers for Apple TV to its recent faceoff with Taylor Swift.

[...]The scale of Apple’s ambitions vary depending on whom is asked, but one high-level executive who talked with the company said the goal is to create development and production divisions that would churn out long-form content to stream in a bid to compete with Netflix. Apple is hoping to put a headhunting firm on those hires in the coming months, according to source, with the goal of being in operation next year. Unknown is whether the focus is on TV series, movies — or both.

Apple Eyes Move Into Original Programming (EXCLUSIVE) [variety.com]

“I can see it now! The largest ever known to have lived on our planet, larger than any of the dinosaurs, a creature we hunted so much that 99% of its numbers disappeared is right here, right now, live!”

Read the rest

A Chinese news reporter who has been held for a week by authorities in China, accused of spreading “false information” about the economy, has surfaced.

Read the rest

The US Department of Energy has approved the start of construction for a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera, which would be the world’s largest, at the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Read the rest

The US Army graciously requests your assistance in locating their lost missile.

Read the rest

Never change, New York Times.

“A chance encounter proves fateful for 2 robots mining on a desolate planet.”

Read the rest

This little blade-less multitool called the Shard is TSA safe (depending on the mood of the TSA behavior detection officer who is inspecting your baggage and scanning your brainwaves). It's got a pry bar (for opening paint cans and the like), a wire stripper, two flat blade screwdrivers, and one Phillips head screwdriver. And it's only $5, so if the TSA behavior detection officer determines you plan to use it to pry open the airplane window, crawl out, and unscrew the engines from the wing while the plane is aloft, he can take it from you without much damage to your net worth.

Viagra is not a controlled substance but that didn't stop Brooklyn police offficer David Esparragoza from arresting Earl McLeod, 33, for possession of a single Viagra pill.

McLeod’s lawyer, Nicholas Mindicino, told the Daily News that the entire encounter appeared to be illegal — that there was no basis for the car stop, and there was no basis for the search, not to mention the bogus charge.

The passengers in the vehicle were not arrested.

“A police officer’s job is to arrest people who commit crimes, and they can’t do their job if they don’t know what is a crime and what is not,” Mindicino said.

“It’s absolutely a case of police officer incompetence.”

McLeod went to Brooklyn Criminal Court to appeal and the charges were dropped. He is suing “emotional trauma, embarrassment, and humiliation.”

The NYPD declined to comment.

For decades, the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru in Northern India was thought by most elite climbers to to unclimbable.

Read the rest

On Saturday, Elinor Dempsey, 54, was surfing Morro Strand State Beach near San Luis Obispo, California when she noticed a great white shark approaching her.

Read the rest

Woods--who insults people on Twitter with comically hyperbolic accusations of drug use--is suing someone on Twitter who insulted him with a comically hyberbolic accusation of drug use.

Woods is suing the individual tweeting as "Abe List" for $10 million. The defamation lawsuit aims to send the message to the defendant and "anyone else using social media to propagate lies."

After the lawsuit was filed late last month, Woods' attorneys followed up with a subpoena to Twitter in order to unmask "Abe List" as well as a second individual under the Twitter name "T.G. Emerson," who accused Woods of being a "notorious coke fiend and registered sex offender." What Woods might not have expected was the scorching response that would came back from the social media service, which has hired outside counsel to deal with this case.

Twitter has objected to the filing on First Amendent grounds, among others, but lawyers for Woods--known to inject bath salts into his eyeballs with rusty insemination syringes blessed by the vicar of Satan--say the tweets are "not couched as opinion or hyperbole."

Abe List, however, is being represented by Ken White, he of the papal headgear and a vigorous First Amendment advocate.

The attorney is familiar to many as the caustic former federal prosecutor who tweets as "Popehat" and who blogged about the case after THR first reported it.

White was in LA Superior Court today as well and has filed his own opposition to early discovery in the case.

"Plaintiff James Woods is abusing the court system to lash out at a constitutionally protected political insult — the very sort of insult he routinely uses himself," opens the brief.

Woods--often to be seen smoking "Civet Heroin" harvested from the excrement of lithe mammals raised on a force-fed diet of poppies and milk--has told other Twitter users to "put down your crack pipe," that "I wouldn't want you to spend your precious crack allowance being enlightened," and has described Al Sharpton as a "race pimp."

Woods--forced onto the Hasbeen County sex offenders' registry after sodomizing himself with his own head during an overenthusiastic effort to get high on his own burning arse hair--now faces the anti-SLAPP motion White anticipated before he was retained.

Woods probably has plenty of money, and can afford to waste it on this sort of enterprise. That means that he won't be ruined if the semi-anonymous Twitter user hits him with an anti-SLAPP motion and wins attorney fees — which could easily be in the mid to high six figures.

Why do I think that Twitter troll "@abelisted" (now deleted) can win an anti-SLAPP motion in defense of this suit? Because he's a Twitter troll, and reasonable people would take his tweets as abuse, hyperbole, and satire, not as a statement of fact. Therefore they can't be defamatory.…

Anyone familiar with Twitter knows it to be overrun with trolls, malcontents, comical and satirical characters, and deranged stone-throwers. Every indication is that "@abelisted" falls into this category.

Mental Floss has a list of the 31 "most adorable" terms for sexual intercourse from the last 600 years, complied from the massive Green’s Dictionary of Slang. Some make sense, others are cryptic, at least to me. "Give someone a green gown." Huh?

[UPDATE: In the comments, PGT explains the "green gown" term: "'Give someone a green gown' is actually one of the better known ones -- it refers to acquiring grass stains on one's undergarments from vigorous exercise while lying in the grass. 'She has a green petticoat' was Victorian for 'she's a slut,' and even into the 20th century green woman's underwear remained unpopular."]

1. Give someone a green gown (1351)

2. Play nug-a-nug (1505)

3. Play the pyrdewy (1512)

4. Play at couch quail (1521)

5. Ride below the crupper (1578)

6. Board a land carrack (1604)

7. Fadoodling (1611)

8. Put the devil into hell (1616)

9. Night physic (1621)

10. Princum-prancum (1630)

11. Culbatizing exercise (1653)

12. Join paunches (1656)

13. Dance the Paphian jig (1656)

14. Play at tray trip of a die (1660)

15. Dance Barnaby (1664)

16. Shot twixt wind and water (1665)

17. Play at rantum-scantum (1667)

18. Blow off the groundsills (1674)

19. Play hey gammer cook (1674)

20. Join giblets (1680)

21. Play at rumpscuttle and clapperdepouch (1684)

22. Lerricompoop (1694)

23. Ride a dragon upon St. George (1698)

24. Houghmagandy (1700)

25. Pogue the hone (1719)

26. Make feet for children’s stockings (1785)

27. Dance the kipples (1796)

28. Have one’s corn ground (1800)

29. Horizontal refreshment (1863)

30. Arrive at the end of the sentimental journey (1896)

31. Get one’s ashes hauled (1910)

31 Adorable Slang Terms for Sexual Intercourse from the Last 600 Years

Comic Book Resources gives our new “extravaganza” a thumbs-up. Come join us for the fun Sep. 18-20, at Southern California's historic Mission Inn Hotel and Spa.Read the rest

Chris Christie hopes to win the Republican nomination by being the biggest plain-speaking asshole of the pack. It's not working, though, because the absentee New Jersey governor can't rise above Mini Me status next to Donald Trump. In a desperate attempt to crawl out of his abysmal approval rating hole, the Bridgegate-tainted blowhard said as President he will hire FedEx to develop a system to track immigrants:

I’m going to have Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, come work for the government for three months. Just come for three months to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and show these people... You go online and at any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. Yet we let people come into this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them.

The only detail left out of Christie's kooky proposal is where the tracking number tattoo will go. Right hand? Forehead?

L.E.MORMILE / Shutterstock.com

In the book The Man Who Wasn't There, Anil Ananthaswamy explores mysteries of self, including the weirdness of autoscopic phenomena, a kind of hallucination in which you are convinced that you are having an out-of-body experience or face to face with your non-existent twin.

Read the rest

Every parent knows that baby humans love to play peek-a-boo. But in this adorable video taken at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, a toddler finds an enthusiastic baby gorilla to play the game with him. It started when the 2 1/2-year-old boy, Isaiah, pounded his chest at the gorilla. According to the Columbus Dispatch:

That's when he caught the attention of the young gorilla Kamoli, who was born in 2013.

With Kamoli in his enclosure and Isaiah on the other side of the glass wall, the two played for the next five minutes. They stared at each other, ran back and forth and played peek-a-boo.

After five minutes, they were both pooped, and the boy waved goodbye as the two went their separate ways.