The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused the mark on grounds of it being "scandalous" in what must surely be the most brilliant trademark determination of all time.

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If lacking the attention they got in times past, those who believe in conspiracy theories concerning the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are still going.

The common thread between these three believers, and others I spoke with, is the sense of isolation from regular social scenes and the reinforcement from the tightly knit 9/11 Truth community.

“It’s brutal. I will never volunteer to talk about it,” Mcllvaine said. “In my circles, people ignore it. It’s like I’m a leper. I don’t see many people anymore.” He says his wife supports him, but doesn’t want to talk about how Bobby died. She says it doesn’t matter, if even his theories are true, because it won’t bring her son back. “If she started talking about that she wouldn’t have any friends.” …

But within the movement, they have a safe space.

It's an ad-hoc mutual support group, in other words.

You know who likes Truthers? I would say to keep your eye on Donald Trump, but I figure you're pretty sick of looking at him.

The low-budget found-footage creepyflick is being hailed as his best since at least The Village. The tl;dr: starts great, becomes a bit contrived, ends preachy.

"A modest undertaking and one with its share of flaws. But it’s not the breathtaking calamity that we’ve come to anticipate from its author," writes Christopher Orr, for The Atlantic.

"Finally, a Shyamalan production that felt fun again, that made me jump out of my seat with surprise instead of shrink into it with boredom," writes Wired's Jordan Crucciola. "I honestly think it’s the best time I’ve ever had at one of your movies."

Stephen Witty says he's "come to his senses"

He made a good movie again. "The Visit" is a deceptively simple story about two adolescents meeting their grandparents for the first time. Mom's a little worried about sending the kids off alone – she's been estranged from her parents since she left home – but she thinks the teens will enjoy it. And they do, for a while.

"…he skillfully taps the kinds of primitive fears that fuel scary campfire stories and horror flicks," writes Manohla Dargis, for the New York Times. "After straining at originality for too long, he has gone back to basics in “The Visit,” with a stripped-down story and scale, a largely unknown (excellent) cast and one of those classically tinged tales of child peril that have reliably spooked audiences for generations.

From the Future of Storytelling Summit.

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A woman who sprained her ankle in Cheltenham, England, is just the latest to trip after the installation of a new street curb that is a different color to the old one.

"It has got the same sort of colour as part of the road," Michelle Webb told The Gloucester Echo. "There's no difference. Everyone is going to fall. If somebody doesn't change the colour,there's going to be more accidents."

Local authorities are considering "ways to make it easier to see," such as painting the curb. [via Arbroath]

The Slow Mo Guys said "do tase me, bro"—and filmed the results for posterity. The footage was captured with the Phantom v2511 camera. [via Digg]

Primož Ravnik thought it would be cool to ride down the face of a 200-ft dam. Damn, Primož! Daaaaamn! [Sploid]

Wall Street Journal columnist Geoffrey A Fowler: "There’s a fight brewing between giant tech companies and tinkerers that could impact how we repair gadgets or choose the shop where we get it done by a pro. At issue: Who owns the knowledge required to take apart and repair TVs, phones and other electronics?"

"Long hours, missed family vacations, and significant burnout" — Leigh McMullin on a job so unpleasant there's a cottage industry helping you escape it.

It's a culture problem: even when law firms tell people to go home, they won't, lest they be seen as incompetent or lazy by peers.

Large, corporate firms have tried implementing part-time schedules in order to relieve some of their overwhelmed employees, but to no avail. One reason that’s failed is what Joan Williams, the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at U.C. Hastings and the lead author of the report, calls “flexibility stigma,” which refers to the association of reduced hours with “negative competence assumptions.” The second is “schedule creep,” the phenomenon of a part-time job slowly warping back into a full-time one, without a corresponding raise in pay. “Slapping an alternative-schedule option on top of a full-time face time culture,” the report says, has not worked.

At many large firms, lawyers often bill 40 or 50 hours a week even if they are actually working 60 to 70.

The Guardian's 2-star outlier review of Legend was cleverly misrepresented on the movie poster. Author Benjamin Lee writes on how bad reviews like his can be turned into marketing gold.

There’s something maddeningly brilliant about this promotional sleight of hand. Technically, there’s nothing dishonest about the use of my rating. I gave it two stars and there are just two stars on display. I’ve been trolled and I’m totally alright with it. The word “chutzpah” has been used a lot on Twitter. … but … In 2000, Sony executives decided it would be smart idea to invent a critic who would miraculously always love all of their movies. David Manning, aka thin air, thought that Hollow Man was “One helluva scary ride!” while Rob Schneider’s critically loathed comedy The Animal was “Another winner!”. It resulted in a payout to those who had seen the films in question. Around the same time, it was revealed that Sony had also used employees to pose as moviegoers in a TV spot for Mel Gibson’s The Patriot. One of them described the violent drama with implied rape threats as “a perfect date movie”.

The tl;dr: the chutzpah in this particular example was brilliant, but don't let Hollywood normalize its manipulations of the press and its audience.

Jhovany Quiroz's art is "the human eye made weird and psychedelic." [Wired]

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Wes Craven obeyed the gatekeeper's creed: "learn the rules before you break them." Ben Gabriel suggests this is why, despite great success, he never quite earned the same status as Carpenter and Cronenberg—a status he certainly deserves.

Let's Glitch Super Mario World is a YouTube series about the creative destruction and remaking of a classic game, simply by exploiting its glitches. [via] It might not be long for the world: Nintendo is asserting copyright ownership of "game performances" in order to wipe Let's Play videos from the net.

Looks like it's some kind of volcano poop, but NASA's still hedging its bets.

The latest images from Dawn reveal surface features as small as 450 feet across. The two bright spots are now resolved into one very bright area near the center of a crater known as Occator with about eight smaller concentrations to one side surrounding an area where the deposits appear more spread out. …

"Although our data are now of higher resolution, we're still missing key pieces of information that we really need to know the whole picture," Carol Raymond, the Dawn deputy principal investigator, told CBS News. "Essentially, the important information we're missing is the detailed chemistry of these deposits. We won't know that until we complete the spectral mapping and have fully analyzed those data. Then, as we get much closer to the surface, we'll be able to better resolve at the level of these individual deposits and assess whether these bright materials are all the same or are there different flavors of the constituents?"

The iPhone 6s and 6S+ (prices unchanged) are much faster—and very slightly thinner—than last year's models, and come optionally in a new "rose gold" color as well as silver, gray and gold. The flagship new feature is "3D Touch," bringing on-screen pressure sensitivity and more precise haptic feedback to iOS devices.

An upgraded camera takes higher-resolution pictures and records 4K video. The new phones will be available Sept. 25, with Apple taking preorders on Sept. 12.

The iPad Pro ($799 and up) is a monster-size 12.9" tablet that comes with an optional stylus and keyboard, and offers more powerful features such as dual-pane multitasking. Like the new iPhones, it uses Apple's A9 chip. It is 6.9mm thick, weighing 1.6 pounds.

The Smart Keyboard looks similar to those that come with Microsoft Surface tablets; the Apple Pencil has pressure sensitivity, which will make the iPad Pro of great interest to artists.

An updated version of the iPad Mini was also on show—just a spec bump there.

The new Apple TV is larger and more gaming-oriented, with beefier hardware and a focus on individual movies, titles and apps rather than "channels." Apple Music will also be available on the box, which also comes with a new "touch" remote providing easier manipulation of the new user interface and credible game controls.

Finally, a new version of the Apple Watch's software was announced alongside new official watch band options.

The $750m deal places the legendary nonprofit under 21st Century Fox's control.

The first edition of National Geographic was published in 1888, the same year that the National Geographic Society was founded. An note in the first issue said the publication would help spread the research of others, “so that we may all know more of the world upon which we live.”

But things have changed since 1888, and the Society said Wednesday that selling its publications to 21st Century Fox, which has partnered with the non-profit in owning and operating its television channels for almost 20 years, was the best bet for survival in the modern media market.

Polygon's Willie Clark finds out what it's like to operate a video arcade in an age of pocket supercomputers, of Dave and Buster, of booming rents.

"There really is an obsolescence factor with these things," Horne says. "There's going to come a point where they're just going to get more and more rare."

That just reinforces one of the most important points Horne stresses when it comes to opening an arcade bar.

"It's very important to have a very good video game repairman," Horne says. "It's very important. Probably the number one thing. And bring your patience when it comes to sourcing the games."