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'These Are All White Men': Northern Ugandans Watch KONY 2012

Max Read · 03/14/12 02:22PM

Here's an al-Jazeera story about a public screening of the KONY 2012 video in northern Uganda. It doesn't go over very well. "As the film progresses, puzzlement turns to anger," says al-Jazeera's Malcolm Webb. The crowd is critical: "There are some kind of people who are trying to mobilize using the atrocities committed in northern Uganda," says one man. "We wanted to see our local people who were killed. These are all white men, different from northern Uganda," says another. It's worth checking out al-Jazeera's project "Uganda speaks," which is gathering text messages in support or opposition of the campaign from Ugandans.

Every Variety of Pathological Internet Commenter Appears on One Random Story

Hamilton Nolan · 03/14/12 01:07PM

Here is a story on the New York Post's website about a jury ruling that Americo Lopes, a New Jersey man who hit a $77 million lottery jackpot, must share his winnings with his coworkers, who were in a lottery pool with him. The details of this story are unimportant. It is fascinating because, like a petri dish freshly set with agar gel, it has attracted every variety of Awful Internet Commenter. Behold:

Bank of America Declares Living Customer Dead for Three Years

Max Read · 03/14/12 12:30PM

Arthur Livingston, 39, maybe "alive" in the "technical" tense. He is "breathing" and his "biological heart" is "beating." But he's not alive in a much more important sense: his bank has declared him dead. Since May 2009.

Happy Pi Day, Nerds! Here's Pi to Around 100,000 1 Digit

Max Read · 03/14/12 10:14AM

Today is Pi Day, for obvious reasons. Pi is a Greek letter representing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, a mathematical constant. If a circle's diameter is one, its circumference is approximately 3. Happy Pi day.

We Are Staunchly in Favor of CEOs Having Dangerous Hobbies

Hamilton Nolan · 03/14/12 09:44AM

The Wall Street Journal today takes on a thorny question that's wracking the collective consciences of corporate boards from coast to coast: when does a CEO's private hobby become too dangerous? As natural leaders driven to excel and seek thrills in both their private lives and their careers, it's no wonder that many CEOs enjoy flying their own small planes, or even sky diving. Considering the responsibilities they have to their employees and shareholders, should CEOs of huge public corporation really be allowed to engage in risky behavior that holds a chance of serious injury or death?

Goldman Exec, Ping Pong Star Quits with Brutal Rant in The New York Times

Max Read · 03/14/12 09:19AM

There is no better way to quit your job than by unloading on your former employer in the pages of the country's paper of record, and for that if nothing else we salute (former) Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith, who has a Times Op-Ed today entitled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs." Spoiler alert: it's because the firm is filled with "morally-bankrupt" sociopaths.

College to Charge Extra for Deluxe Classes Like 'English' and 'Math'

Hamilton Nolan · 03/14/12 08:30AM

Santa Monica College is an absolutely god damn humongous community college in California. They have a problem faced by many such institutions these days: no money$$$ from their broke-ass state government, and one bazillion kids trying to get in, because everyone is poor and shit these days. How to take advantage of one of these problems to solve the other? Charge more money$$$, for the "good" classes!

Stephen Colbert Translates the Right's Supposedly Plain Spoken Rhetoric

Matt Toder · 03/13/12 11:06PM

When they think the President has said something they can jump on, the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum pounce with everything they've got. Unfortunately for those three, Stephen Colbert is around to point out how moronic their criticisms usually are, as he did on tonight's Colbert Report.

Jon Stewart Slams Fox News' Free Speech Hypocrisy

Matt Toder · 03/13/12 10:32PM

On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart took Fox News to task over the way they have exemplified the way the right has played the victim in the aftermath of Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke; they've taken an "offsetting penalties" approach and roped in the fact that Bill Maher called Sarah Palin the C word in the past. Of course, the fact that they condemn Maher with the same language they use to defend Limbaugh is beside the fact.

One Less Thing to Burn for Warmth at the End of Days

Caity Weaver · 03/13/12 08:00PM

You promised and promised to buy your barefoot, ignorant loved ones a set of Encyclopædia Britannicas and now you'll never get the chance. The New York Times Media Decoder blog reported today that the edition of the encyclopedia that came out in 2010 will be the company's last, in print.

The Internet Is The Biggest Threat to Publishing Since the... Xerox Machine?

Hamilton Nolan · 03/13/12 10:02AM

Harper's Magazine publisher John R. "Rick" MacArthur is a man who was born wealthy and has used some of his wealth to publish a great magazine. That's good. Where he pays his staff notoriously meager salaries and fights against their efforts to form a union. That's bad. Rick MacArthur, though, has one overriding redeeming aspect: he is fucking hilariously dumb when he talks about the internet.

Rebekah Brooks Arrested Again

Hamilton Nolan · 03/13/12 08:16AM

It looks like the biggest guillotine thus far has fallen (again) in the News Corp phone hacking scandal: British police have reportedly arrested Rebekah Brooks—former editor of the tabloids News of the World and The Sun, as well as former CEO of News International, News Corp's UK newspaper division, and a close friend and confidante of the Murdoch family. Brooks resigned from News International last year and was arrested last summer in the earlier stages of the phone hacking investigation. She was given a hefty going-away package last year.

This Is By Far The Grossest Fetish Discovered This Week

Danny Gold · 03/12/12 10:16PM

Vice published a story today that they are referring to as the "chain pub piss dungeon." It is not for the faint of heart. You would think with all of the weird Internet fetishes out there, we would be used to them by now but for some reason this one seems to have struck a chord. This perhaps trumps even the eel sex documentary they did in Japan.