They took your data. Then they took control. The Great Hack uncovers the dark world of data exploitation through the compelling personal journeys of players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal. In select theaters and on Netflix July 24.
Category: Flotsam-and-Jetsam
BIANCA DEVINS AND HOW LIVESTREAMED MURDER HAS BECOME THE ULTIMATE SHITPOST (Plus 2 retrieved photos of murder)
XEN: THE ZEN OF THE OTHER
a book by Ezra Buckley of The PsychoPath.Org
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When we ask why the archetype of the serial killer has faded from public consciousness, we may well look to the trend of murders broadcasted directly to the internet.
Like far too many people, I can’t help checking my phone one last time before bed, usually while brushing my teeth. When I did so on Sunday night, I saw Twitter chatter about a murder that had unfolded that morning on Instagram and Discord, with possible connections to 4chan and an incel subgroup known as “darkcels.” Some 10 hours later, police confirmed that 17-year-old Bianca Devins of Utica, New York, was the victim of a homicide; 21-year-old Brandon Andrew Clark, her alleged killer, was hospitalized in critical condition due to severe injuries.
Nabisco’s X-Rated Toy Scandal of 1971
No one at Nabisco’s corporate headquarters in New York City had any idea why members of the National Organization for Women were lined upoutside. It was the fall of 1971, and the manufacturer best known for their Oreo and Chips Ahoy! snacks had not made any obviously sexist advertisements or taken any particular political stance. They sold cookies.
Then they read the signs: “Sick toys for children make for a sick society.”
That May, Nabisco had attempted to diversify by purchasing Aurora Company, the West Hempstead, New York model kit maker best known for their plastic kits of Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, and other horror film icons. The cheap plastic toys came in pieces and could be glued together and painted.
Unknown to Nabisco, Aurora had recently branched out and begun offering entire model kit dioramas. Instead of a single figure, consumers could buy detailed “sets” for their monsters to interact with. There was a guillotine, a razor-sharp pendulum, and a laboratory; a female protagonist, referred to in the copy as “the Victim,” was scantily-clad and ready to be dismembered, beheaded, or trapped in a spiked cage. Kids could also opt to have Vampirella, the top-heavy villain licensed from Warren Publishing, operate the winch and pulley while her plastic captive was shackled to a table.
Each kit also contained a comic, which instructed builders on how to assemble the torture scenes for maximum enjoyment. A narrator named Dr. Deadly seemed to opine on the appeal of the Victim once she was fully assembled. “Now that you’ve gotten her all together, I think I like the other way. In pieces … yesssss.”
In addition to Fig Newtons, Nabisco realized it had also been peddling tiny torture racks.
LINK: http://mentalfloss.com/article/84257/nabiscos-x-rated-toy-scandal-1971
Amazon and Google are listening to your voice recordings. Here’s what we know about that
First Amazon admitted it — now Google says it’s listening, too. Here are the specifics, and the questions we still want answered.
ANCIENT TREE WITH RECORD OF EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD REVERSAL IN ITS RINGS DISCOVERED
Earth’s magnetic field is thought to be generated by the iron in the planet’s core. As it moves around, it produces electric currents that extend far into space. The magnetic field acts as a barrier, protecting Earth from the solar wind. This is a stream of charged particles from the Sun that could strip away the ozone layer if it were to impact the atmosphere.
When the magnetic field reverses—or attempts to—it gets weaker, leading to more radiation from the Sun getting through. Previously, scientists have linked extinction events to magnetic field reversals.
LINK: https://www.newsweek.com/ancient-tree-discovered-earths-magnetic-field-1447570
‘Climate Despair’ Is Making People Give Up on Life
Climate despair got you down? Go read this and maybe it will give you some ideas.
“It’s super painful to be a human being right now at this point in history.”
LINK: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5w374/climate-despair-is-making-people-give-up-on-life
William S. Burroughs lecture,July 20,1976,on paranormal,EVP,text+tape cut-ups,prognostication
This audio recording complements another Burroughs one uploaded to YT earlier (see: “William S. Burroughs lecture,writing class,June 25,1986,on paranormal,synchronicity,dreams” ): http://youtu.be/d-2a0Rti6-Y I’ve also uploaded an entertaining short (9 min.) reading by Burroughs entitled: “The Cat Inside – William S. Burroughs,alternate early draft excerpts,1985 reading”: http://youtu.be/7IppLHP7pvI In this recording Burroughs covers the cut-up method of writing in some detail, & reads from his own cut-up writings, as well as some by Burroughs’ sometime collaborator Brion Gysin. Burroughs describes how some cut-ups appear to be uncanny prognosticators, accurately predicting future events, according to Burroughs. He also describes experiments with audio cut-ups using tape recorders. He had intended to play recordings of some of Gysin’s tape experiments at this lecture, but the tapes had not arrived on time. Instead, Burroughs describes some of the cut-up tape experiments. And he covers other tape experiments that interest him conducted by paranormal investigators & what today is commonly known as EVP (electronic voice phenomena), where tape recorders are supposed to record unexplained mysterious human voices though no such sound input is available to the recorder. Burroughs refers to these as “Paranormal Voices” experiments/phenomena. Burroughs also makes reference to dreams, the last words of Dutch Schultz, Shakespeare, computers, Homer, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, & Carl Jung. There’s a long Q & A session with students at the end.
Book by suspect in murder of Utah university student Mackenzie Lueck removed from Amazon
Ayoola Ajayi, 31, is charged with aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice and desecration of body.
A book about a teenage boy who witnesses the murder of two people who were burned to death was removed from Amazon’s website in the wake of the author’s being arrested and charged with the murder of Utah college student Mackenzie Lueck.
A web page for the book, “Forge Identity,” written by murder suspect Ayoola Ajayi, now displays an error message reading: “SORRY we couldn’t find that page.”
The fictional work tells the story of 15-year-old Ezekiel who witnesses the murders of his neighbor and a “loved one” and then must “decide if he will join the ranks of a criminal mastermind, or fight to escape tyranny that has surrounded his young life,” the book’s description on Goodreads.com states.
Everything you need to know about the explosive new Manson murders exposé Chaos
(Editor’s note: If you find any of these ideas compelling, we recommend The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman by Nikolas Schreck instead)
Back in November, I attended a dinner sponsored by the publisher Little, Brown and Company that had all the trappings of a traditional book industry event: highly enthusiastic booksellers, a seemingly unending flow of white wine, and a venue that, if I’m being honest, I would never find myself in if it weren’t for the book dinner. Little, Brown’s editors and authors presented their slate for the coming year: a debut about 1920s Paris, a raucous family drama, and one vastly reported nonfiction exposé that caught us all by surprise.
LINK: https://ew.com/movies/2019/06/16/chaos-manson-murders-expose-tom-oneill/
What You Think You Know About the Manson Family Murders May Be Wrong
For those who consider Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter—his 1974 book about Charles Manson, the murders he ordered, and ensuing trial—to be canon, Tom O’Neill’s new book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixtiest History of the Sixties suggests a rift in the fabric of the universe as we know it. The product of some 20 years of exhaustive, obsessive research, Chaos suggests that the case made to the court by Bugliosi, who prosecuted the case before he wrote the definitive book about it, was fraudulent and that the entire “Helter Skelter” motive, which stated that Manson attempted to kick off a race war via the Tate-LaBianca murders of 1969, does not hold up to scrutiny in light of unearthed evidence. For one thing, according to O’Neill’s report, the relationship between Manson and record producer Terry Melcher (a previous resident of the house on Cielo Drive where Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Steven Parent were murdered), was more involved than it was conveyed during the trial—O’Neill says he found notes from two witness interviews that placed Melcher in the presence of Manson after the murders. This information was suppressed from the trial because, O’Neill suggests, it did not square with another part of Bugliosi’s suggested motive: Manson ordered murders to scare Melcher, who had refused to record the cult leader’s music.
LINK: https://jezebel.com/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-manson-family-murders-1835688049