A place to memorialize the domain names you let lapse

goodbye.domains is an obituary column for the domain names that you, after years of squatting, now accept will never be put to use and which are, furthermore, worthless.

I just let neverie.com lapse. "Neverie" was the title of the first novel I wrote as a teen, in the genre of trash fantasy. I'd imagined that I might one day edit and publish it, hence the domain. But I won't. Goodbye, neverie.com.

Goodbye Domains [via Dean Putney, who retired deansli.st]

Blondie fans: Here's Deborah Harry's old screen test for the 1980 movie Union City

On Reddit I stumbled across this old screen test of Deborah Harry auditioning for the crime mystery movie Union City, which was released in 1980 to lukewarm reviews. She got the part as the leading actress, with a smaller role going to Pat Benatar.

Here's the plot, from Wikipedia:

Harlan (Lipscomb) is a repressed, uptight accountant living in an apartment block with his beautiful, neglected wife Lillian (Harry). He becomes obsessed with discovering who is drinking from the milk bottles left outside his apartment every morning, so he ties some cord to a bottle which will alert him when it's taken, and through this he finds the culprit to be a homeless war veteran (Sam McMurray). The vagrant apologises but the obsessive Harlan attacks him, knocking him down and seemingly cracking his skull. In a panic he hides the body behind the folding bed in another vacant apartment opposite his own.

Harlan's behaviour becomes ever more irrational, driving Lillian away from him and into the arms of building supervisor Larry Longacre (McGill); he believes another deranged resident known as the Contessa (Irina Maleeva) is planning to run away with him and puts potential residents off the room where he hid the vagrant's body with his bizarre behaviour.

However, eventually a young couple of newly-weds, Alphonse (Tony Azito) and Jeanette (Pat Benatar) Flourescu move in. Harlan attempts to dissaude Alphonse from opening the bed but is unsuccessful. Alphonse looks at the bloody but empty bed as a terrified Harlan throws himself through the apartment to his death on the street below. A crowd gathers around his body, watched briefly by the disinterested vagrant, alive with his head bandaged.

I've never seen the film, but love the trailer below (was that really 1980?!) and plan on watching the movie asap.

Fecal rampage grounds international United flight

2018 seems no easier for United Airlines.

Via the WaPo:

United Airlines passengers found themselves in a fetid situation when their Chicago-to-Hong Kong flight made an unscheduled landing in Alaska after a man had smeared feces all over some of the plane’s bathrooms, airport officials said.

United Flight 895 was diverted to Anchorage on Thursday night, according to CBS affiliate KTVA, and police officials at Ted Stevens International Airport said the landing was due to a “passenger smearing feces everywhere.”

Wells Fargo's CEO told Congress that he wouldn't enforce binding arbitration, so Wells is getting sued in Utah

A class action suit by some of the 3,500,000+ Wells Fargo customers defrauded in the company's fake account scam was foundering in Utah, thanks to the company's insistence that its binding arbitration clauses also applied to the accounts it fraudulently opened (that is, by agreeing not to sue the company for defrauding you over the accounts you opened, you were also agreeing not to sue them if it opened a bunch more accounts and forged your signature on the papers). (more…)

In California, an underground network of anti-vax doctors will write your kid a medical exemption letter to get them out of their vaccinations

After an outbreak of measles at Disneyland, California lawmakers had enough and passed SB277, banning kids from attending the state's schools unless they were fully vaccinated, and eliminating the waiver that let parents put their kids and others' in danger by signing a form stating that "immunization is contrary to my beliefs." (more…)

Proposal from 1981 - the president must commit murder before he can launch a nuke

From an article titled “Preventing nuclear war” in the March 1981 issue of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

An early arms control proposal dealt with the problem of distancing that the President would have in the circumstances facing a decision about nuclear war. There is a young man, probably a Navy officer, who accompanies the President. This young man has a black attache case which contains the codes that are needed to fire nuclear weapons. I could see the President at a staff meeting considering nuclear war as an abstract question. He might conclude: “On SIOP Plan One, the decision is affirmative. Communicate the Alpha line XYZ.” Such jargon holds what is involved at a distance.

My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If the President ever wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is — what innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.

Of course, this would only work with a president who isn't psychopathic. Some presidents might consider this as an incentive instead of a deterrent.

[via Kottke]

Company sells old Nintendo SNES consoles with clear cases

A company called Rose Colored Gaming upcycles damaged Nintendo SNES consoles by putting them into clear acrylic cases.

These SNES consoles* have been treated to a 100% brand new, hand-built exterior, all while retaining complete original function. Each is assembled by hand with the care and attention to detail that you have come to expect from RCG. The housing consists of laser cut and etched acrylic components which have been drilled, bent, bonded, threaded, & assembled using all new anodized aluminum hardware. Many internal components have been slathered in various finishes then etched in order to accentuate items which were never meant to be seen. All hand-built, these units will only be available in VERY limited quantities upon release, with each being treated to a unique serial number.

*This product employs original Nintendo hardware. We only source units which have extensive exterior damage, the likes of which leave each unit in an otherwise irreparable state.

[via Dooby Brain]

Camperforce: Laura Poitras documentary on the elderly precariat nomads who keep Amazon's warehouses working

Last September, I wrote about Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Jessica Bruder's important, fascinating book-length investigation into the Americans who live on the road out of economic necessity, including the Camperforce, a precariat army of retirees who saved carefully all their working lives, only to be bankrupted in the 2008 financial crisis who travel from Amazon warehouse to Amazon warehouse, filling in as seasonal and temp workers on gruelling, 12-hour shifts that leave them in pain and with just enough money to make it to the next stop. (more…)

ICE Director wants criminal charges against local officials in sanctuary cities

Thomas Homan is the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; in an interview on (where else) Fox News, he said that local officials in "sanctuary cities" (cities where law enforcement agencies do not pro-actively check immigration status of people they question or arrest, and require immigration officials to present warrants along with requests to detain people) should be held criminally liable for "harboring and smuggling" unauthorized immigrants. (more…)

Man who invites homeless people to his home during freezing temperatures threatened by city officials

A man in Elgin, IL who invites homeless people to spend the night at his house during brutally cold weather must stop his generous charity immediately or face consequences. City officials threatened to condemn his house if he continues to have homeless "slumber parties."

When the winter weather turned dangerously cold and not enough shelters were available, resident Greg Schiller offered his house to homeless people, making sure they didn't bring in any drugs or alcohol. He offered them food, hot drinks, movies and cots for the night. But authorities – who didn't offer any alternative solutions – didn't like it.

According to NBC:

Last winter, Schiller offered up his garage to area homeless, but said he was told he could no longer do so after EMTs were called to help a man with a heart condition. That’s when he had the idea to move them to his basement – complete with all the activities needed to consider them simply “slumber parties.”

Schiller believed city code allowed for slumber parties, but officials said there are "sleeping regulations" for basements and Schiller's basement doesn't meet those requirements...

Schiller said city officials and police officers came to his home with a warrant Tuesday and went into his basement. There, he said they found his ceiling height too low and windows too high and too small to be an egress.

“They shut me down and said I have 24 hours to return my basement to storage and take down - I have several cots with sleeping bags for everybody – or they’ll condemn the house.”

Yep, those hazardous low ceilings and high windows do sound threatening – good thing authorities have the good sense to send people outside in below-zero temperatures to do their sleeping.

Image: George Hodan

Author of 'Fire and Fury' says Trump "has less credibility than, perhaps, anyone who has ever walked on earth"

Trump is freaking out over Michael Wolff's new behind the scenes book about the Trumpian White House, Fire and Fury:

Wolff couldn't be more pleased by Trump's meltdown, and his attempt to stop the book's publication. "Where do I send the box of chocolates?" Wolff said in an interview on NBC's "Today":

From NBC:

Michael Wolff, the author of a new book that gives a behind-the-scenes account of the White House, defended his work Friday, insisting he spoke with President Donald Trump on the record and calling the commander in chief "a man who has less credibility than, perhaps, anyone who has ever walked on earth."

Wolff, in an exclusive interview on NBC's "Today," said that everyone he spoke to for the book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," described the president the same way.

"I will tell you the one description that everyone gave, everyone has in common: They all say he is like a child," Wolff explained. "And what they mean by that is, he has a need for immediate gratification. It is all about him."

Wolff added that "100 percent of the people around" Trump, "senior advisers, family members, every single one of them, questions his intelligence and fitness for office."

Fire and Fury is currently the best-selling book on Amazon.

Rumour mill says that the Mercers are going to axe Bannon from Breitbart over "Fire and Fury" remarks

In his new book Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff says that one-time White House chief strategist Steve Bannon accused the Trump campaign of "treason", a revelation that sparked a hilarious denunciation by Donald Trump, who claimed that his Chief Strategist didn't know anything about his strategies or his chiefs -- which drew more attention to the book (as did the legal threats the Trump administration fired at the book's publisher, Macmillan), widening the rift between Bannon and Trump. (more…)

Roy Moore accuser files defamation lawsuit against him

Roy Moore, who still thinks God wants him to be a senator despite the fact that his opponent Doug Jones was sworn in yesterday, has a new problem to deal with: the woman who says Moore molested her when she was 14 has filed a defamation lawsuit against him.

From Time:

Leigh Corfman filed the lawsuit Thursday. The suit says Moore and his campaign defamed her and made false statements as they denied the accusations in the midst of the U.S. Senate race in Alabama.

Corfman says Moore sexually abused her when she was 14 and then “called me a liar and immoral when I publicly disclosed his misconduct.”

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