JustDuckie

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A Girl With a Disability Appears as Princess Elsa in Target's Halloween Ad | Adweek (http://www.adweek.com/adf... http://www.adweek.com/fil... )

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"Not long after removing the gender labels in its toy section, Target has once again impressed the social justice wing of the Internet—this time by using a model with braces and arm crutches in a Halloween ad for children's costumes. The model in question is a little girl wearing a Princess Elsa costume from Disney's Frozen. The ad itself went viral after the mother of a child with a disability posted it on Facebook. "Dear Target, I love you," she wrote. "Thank you for including a child with braces and arm crutches into your advertising campaign!" " - JustDuckie - -

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What people don’t get about ‘Black Twitter’ - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost... https://img.washingtonpos... )

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"One key reason why minorities and underserved populations have made inroads on social media is the plummeting price of technology. No one could have foreseen the egalitarian effects of the smartphone, which brought cheap Internet access to poor communities. “It revolutionized access,” says Dayna Chatman, a PhD student at the University of Southern California who studies black culture online. “A lot of the conversations about the digital divide were about who could afford Internet at home. But instead, people were getting online using their phones.” Even if you couldn’t afford a data plan, Chatman says, even if you didn’t have the Internet at home, you could hop on the WiFi network at a McDonald’s or a Starbucks and be connected. Black households still lag behind white households in terms of broadband access, but black teenagers have long been more likely than their white counterparts to own smartphones. Young black Americans have particularly embraced social media platforms, which were some of the earliest sites that tailored themselves to mobile users. According to the Pew survey from 2013, 40 percent of black Internet users ages 18 to 29 said they were on Twitter, compared with 28 percent of their white peers." - JustDuckie - -

"“It’s not that we don’t want to celebrate our visibility,” said Chatman, the USC researcher. “Our visibility brings a certain amount of power. But we are wary that it can easily be co-opted, reconfigured in a certain way that we didn’t intend. There’s tension over the lack of control over our own narrative.” This is why many have begun to take offense at the term Black Twitter. To attach a label to the phenomenon is to imply that it is somehow secondary. It’s a subtle way of making black people on Twitter feel segregated. As Clark recalls one prominent user telling her: “Black Twitter is just Twitter.”" - JustDuckie - -

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The Writing of Art - The Morning News (http://www.themorningnews... http://www.themorningnews... )

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"“A story has two things,” a writing teacher once told me. “The plot—thing one—and the emotional situation the reader cares about—thing two.” At the time, we were discussing Andrea Barrett’s short story “The Littoral Zone,” which is about two biologists having an affair on a remote research station, and subsequently dismantling their marriages and professions to be together. It’s also—thing two—about making a decision you can’t take back, and the cinder of regret forever smoking in a new relationship. Another way to say it: there’s text and subtext. There’s the plot and the emotional arc. As a painter, I couldn’t help but reflect on lessons I was hearing in writing classrooms when I returned home to my studio. Walking through museums with my dad when I was young, there were always certain paintings I gravitated toward; my father, also a painter, had taken me to see paintings since I was old enough to carry the coats to the coat check. Two paintings might be nearly identical in composition—say, both landscapes—but there was one that was, to put it bluntly, better." - JustDuckie - -

" If I were to draw a one-to-one comparison between fiction writing and (figurative) painting, the emotional question would seem to be the intentions of the painting: why the painter rendered what he or she did, what emotional question is he or she answering? It would be the equivalent of Andrea Barrett rendering through linked scenes that smoking cinder of regret, answering the question of what might remain when you dismantle a life for lust. You would ask what Winslow Homer intended to say when he painted a scene of waves. Rembrandt when he painted himself in different hats. Robert Henri when he painted snow-filled city streets" - JustDuckie - -

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(Florida) Man camps out for Black Friday 33 days early | Latest News - Home (http://m.clickorlando.com... http://m.clickorlando.com... )

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"A man camping outside an Orlando store 33 days before Black Friday plans to be the first to grab a deal on a new TV while raising awareness of homelessness. Kevin Sutton started living in a tent on Sunday at the Best Buy at the Florida Mall. Sutton told News 6 that he wants to purchase a new television, but also wants to raise awareness of 13,000 homeless children in Central Florida. Sutton, who hosts a radio show for The Game in Orlando, said he's accepting donations, gifts, toys and money, which will be given to the Love Pantry." - JustDuckie - -

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How an industry of ‘Amazon entrepreneurs’ pulled off the Internet’s craftiest catfishing scheme - The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpos... https://img.washingtonpos... )

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"Dagny Taggart spends her time traveling the globe, meeting new people and learning new things. She speaks more than 15 languages, including Latin, Russian and Chinese. In the past year, she has written a new book at the rate of about one every five days: 84 books in total. All of them have gotten glowing reviews from her hordes of Amazon groupies, who leave 5-star reviews on everything she does. There’s only one problem with Dagny Taggart — she doesn’t exist. Evidence collected and examined by The Washington Post suggests that Taggart (who is named for a character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”) is a made-up identity used by an Argentine man named Alexis Pablo Marrocco. Marrocco, meanwhile — and other self-described “Kindle entrepreneurs” like him — form part of a growing industry of “Amazon catfish.”" - JustDuckie - -

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Chinese State Planning Meets ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ in New Video - The New York Times (http://sinosphere.blogs.n... )

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"For years, China’s propaganda machine was mired in the 1950s, stuck producing propaganda posters in the socialist realism style. Now, a new video has brought the world’s biggest publicity machine to a new era. 1973. There’s the old Volkswagen bus. The folksy singers. The guitar. In the spirit of Marlo Thomas’s “Free to Be … You and Me” or the animated shorts from ABC’s “Schoolhouse Rock!,” China brings you: The 13th Five-Year Plan. Or, in Chinese, “Shi San Wu” (十三五). " - JustDuckie - -

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"What kind of people? “There’s doctors, bankers and farmers, too. And even engineers who deal with poo.” The video was produced by the same Chinese studio that in May released a video about China’s love of Vladimir V. Putin ahead of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia. That spot was backed by the state-owned Shanghai Media Group. A link to the 13th Five-Year Plan video was posted on Twitter by Xinhua, the state news agency." - JustDuckie - -

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13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CXLX) | Messy Nessy Chic (http://www.messynessychic... http://static.messynessyc... http://static.messynessyc... )

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9 years ago from Bookmarklet - Comment - Hide - - [ 3 ] -

"1. A Vast, Private Collection of Tiny Folk-Art by Unknown Artisans" - JustDuckie - -

"3. The Miss Navajo Beauty Pageant, which requires contestants to butcher a sheep and speak navajo" - JustDuckie - [ 1 ] -

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A Day In The Life Of A Brooding Romantic Hero - The Toast (http://the-toast.net/2015... http://the-toast.net/wp-c... )

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THE LEARNING WOMAN: you murdered other people but not me, that’s what love is - JustDuckie - [ 1 ] -

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It's tough to say. It could be that the cravats themselves precipitate events. Also, how do you get certified? I feel like an apprenticeship program would be.. problematic. - Jennifer D. - [ 1 ] -

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SPD: Man's 'explosive' bowel issues lead to machete melee | Local & Regional | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News (http://www.komonews.com/n... )

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"Seattle's infamously slow traffic finally worked to society's advantage Thursday when a machete-wielding man got caught in a traffic jam while trying to evade police. Officers were called to Capitol Hill's Cal Anderson Park just before 5 p.m. on Thursday after getting reports that a belligerent man was threatening people with a machete and a throwing knife, according to Seattle police. Witnesses told officers the man was using the women's restroom, and when he was confronted he pulled out a 2-foot-long machete, swung it around and threatened to kill a half dozen people. The man then armed himself with a throwing knife and "acted as if he was going to hurl it at his victims," according to police. With police on their way, the man decided to make his getaway. He got into a car parked next to the park and tried to speed away. But he didn't account for rush hour traffic on Capitol Hill and immediately got stuck in a traffic jam on Broadway." - JustDuckie - -

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The Concealed-Carry Fantasy - The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/20... http://static01.nyt.com/i... )

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"This foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance, however, is dramatically contradicted by a research project showing that, since 2007, at least 763 people have been killed in 579 shootings that did not involve self-defense. Tellingly, the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator. The death toll includes 29 mass killings of three or more people by concealed carry shooters who took 139 lives; 17 police officers shot to death, and — in the ultimate contradiction of concealed carry as a personal safety factor — 223 suicides. Compared with the 579 non-self-defense, concealed-carry shootings, there were only 21 cases in which self-defense was determined to be a factor." - JustDuckie - -

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50+ Of The Cutest Baby Animals Of All Time | Bored Panda (http://www.boredpanda.com... http://static.boredpanda.... )

10 years ago from Bookmarklet - Comment - Hide - - [ 3 ] -

Except for you, #7. >.> - JustDuckie - -

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Taxi driver says meter produced insulting receipt - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... )

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"The Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday that it is investigating if new taxi meters have glitches following a complaint that the receipts produced by the meters contain inappropriate remarks that have offended passengers. A taxi driver told the Chinese-language Apple Daily that she was scolded by an international tourist because the receipt produced by the new meter had the sentence “You are a Pig” printed on the top. The driver said that she had used the meter for about a month and had not paid attention to what is printed on top of the receipt. Chu Da-ching (朱大慶), a section head, said that the ministry received the complaint this week, adding that the driver could return the meter to the retailer and ask for the content displayed on the top of the receipt to be changed. “Some people may want to display the name of their taxi company or their name and telephone number to advertise their services, and the retailer should follow their customers’ instructions and change the text accordingly. I don’t know why such an offensive remark would appear on the receipt,” he said." - JustDuckie - -

"Both the Taxi Service Association and Taipei Taxi Drivers Union said that they have not received complaints from other drivers, adding that the “glitch” might have been an incident created by a meter manufacturer looking to sully the name of a competitor." - JustDuckie - -

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Sleepy Hollow Has Just Enough Mills Sisters, Odd Amount of Dentistry Pistols (http://io9.com/sleepy-hol... http://i.kinja-img.com/ga... )

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"It’s honestly a little strange to have an episode of Sleepy Hollow so good I have to pare down my caps of people’s reaction faces, but a Mills sisters episode will do that; it’s just been so long since they had a focal episode that it’s hard to remember. And honestly, they share the screen with quite a bit this week for an episode titled “The Sisters Mills”: there’s a monstrous tooth fairy, Crane’s monstrous love life, and a level of adult negligence that passes hilarious somewhere in the second act and starts to approach the bone-flute episode where a girl got marched into the woods to replace her sister as a demonic sacrifice. It could be a disaster, but with that third-season magic, most of it works! Most of it. (We’ll get there.)" - JustDuckie - -

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Words fail to express my disappointment at not finding the Ichabod emoji anywhere online. How is this not a real thing?? - JustDuckie - -

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1,369 Light Bulbs, or, How to Write in a Basement « Kenyon Review Blog (http://www.kenyonreview.o... )

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"I never bring my computer with me to the basement, and the discipline of the method is to force myself to work out the ideas, the arrangement of the argument or story before I start building paragraphs and sentences. It worked for my dissertation, and I hope it will work now as I craft that material into something that a more general audience will (hopefully) want to buy and read. The drafting process is one best compared to articulation—by which I mean an arcane definition of articulation, explained so vividly in Erik Larsen’s Devil in the White City, wherein you strip a cadaver of flesh and arrange the bones into a recognizable skeleton. If I write paragraphs while drafting or brainstorming ideas, I then lift out what is real in them, what has evidence behind it, what coheres—the bones—and hand-write it on an index card. If it sounds tedious, dry, slow, that is because it is, and its effect on me is much like what I imagine the air and capacious rhythm of the Vermont countryside effected in Ellison—it is calming, centering, almost noise-canceling." - JustDuckie - -

"The practice of limiting each index card to one idea (the way I was taught in high school) also provides a more or less satisfying solution to the perennial problem of trying to write without simultaneously editing and thus interrupting one’s creative flow. What people call writer’s block, which is not a real thing, is often some permutation of this dilemma, where the writing voice fights with the editing voice to the point of perceived paralysis. Other times it is simply perfectionism masquerading as powerlessness, in which case, the problem is perfectionism, not the mythical impediment of “writer’s block.” I manage my own perfectionist tendencies through the flexibility of the index card: If I write an idea on an index card that I can’t use in a given iteration of a chapter, I don’t cut it or throw it away, I simply add it to the stack of cards bearing ideas that I can’t use for now, ideas that might come back later, ideas that are set aside, not gone. Thus, I avoid the small states of fearful mourning that sometimes accompany the editing process, and can accumulate into an art-choking condition where I can’t cut something because I am afraid it might later be vital to me. Such fear constitutes our psyche’s attempt to pre-empt melancholia; of course, it backfires and creates melancholic attachment to passages that haven’t even been cut yet. Such frightful affects often operate unconsciously; they are entirely irrational, and superbly real." - JustDuckie - -

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A Fictional Candidate Draws Attention, and Criticism, in Argentina - The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/20... )

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"But Omar Obaca has no chance of winning. Indeed, he is not even running. He is a fictitious African-Argentine candidate, dreamed up by an advertising company to satirize Argentine, and perhaps American, politics, and setting off a whirlwind in the process. The comedy campaign has exploded into an Internet sensation, channeling a desire for change after more than a decade of one-family rule — and igniting a fierce debate here over the ways in which black people are portrayed in a society that has long prioritized its ties to Europe. The billboards advertise an online video series that has drawn more than seven million views. Some of the episodes showcase farcical policies like “Everyone Dressed as Police” to reduce street crime; paying Argentina’s national debt to China with caramel candy; or rigging the weak Argentine peso to a fantastically strong exchange rate of four American dollars. “Obaca is the politician that all politicians want to be, but they can’t — because they don’t have ideas and they’re not black,” said Sebastián Rodas, a director at NAH! Contenidos, the advertising company behind the project. “We’re making fun of the idea that someone can use their color to market themselves in a political campaign. He has proposals, but the first thing is: ‘I’m black, I look like Obama. Maybe that’s good. Vote for me!’”" - JustDuckie - -

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"But critics contend the Obaca campaign comes at the expense of Argentina’s small black population. Argentina’s 2010 census reported that about 150,000 (or just 0.4 percent) of its 40 million people considered themselves “Afro-descendent” — an ethnic category that was reinstated after more than 130 years of not appearing on the survey. Erika Edwards, an assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, said that such a tiny number was probably an underestimate. Argentina’s first census showed that blacks made up about a third of the population in the late 18th century, with most arriving as African slaves. But a huge European immigration, specifically called for by the first Argentine laws, shifted the country’s demographics. “Miscegenation and racial mixing were actually encouraged under the guise of ‘blanqueamiento’ — the concerted whitening of the nation,” Dr. Edwards said." - JustDuckie - -

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Hong Kong’s Drive for ‘Green Burials’ Clashes With Tradition - The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/20... http://static01.nyt.com/i... )

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"Generations in Hong Kong have followed a familiar routine to honor the dead, jostling for prime burial spots in the mountains and by the sea, or spending small fortunes on jade urns and elaborate ceremonies. But now the government is seeking to upend those customs. Concerned by a scarcity of space and a rise in deaths, it has embarked on an effort to promote “green burials,” urging the public to forgo traditional burials and the storage of funeral urns in special buildings after cremation. Instead, it wants people to scatter the ashes of loved ones in gardens and at sea. In a society in which ancestors are tirelessly worshiped, many see the idea as anathema. Chinese tradition dictates that families return their deceased relatives to their birthplaces and bury them or preserve their ashes so that future generations can pay homage and receive blessings. “We want to give our ancestors a home, someplace to stay,” said Tommy Fung, 35, an office clerk, during a recent visit to a cemetery. “How can you do that if you just throw their ashes all over the place?”" - JustDuckie - -

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Yeah, I think it's going to be a challenge, especially after they spent so much effort to convince people to use cremation and now it's like "Oops, no room! Now you don't even get the ashes." - JustDuckie - [ 1 ] -

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This morning I saw a woman driving a brand new, bright yellow sportscar with the pink license plate IM SPLD and yes, there was a little pink heart between the words. It's the first time I've seen someone *asking* to be rear-ended.

9 years ago - Comment - Hide - - [ 1 ] -

There are tasteful ways to flaunt your wealth, and then there's Dallas. - JustDuckie - [ 1 ] -

There's a "SPOILED" license plate on someone's sports car around here as well (bright red.) I'm always surprised it doesn't get keyed. - Jennifer D. - [ 1 ] -

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Texas is so crazy Norwegians are literally using ‘Texas’ as slang for ‘crazy’ (http://www.rawstory.com/2... http://www.rawstory.com/w... )

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“In Norwegian, ‘texas’ means mayhem and chaos, as in cowboys punching each other and breaking chairs over each other’s heads,” according to a Tumblr page cited by Texas Monthly. Some say the tradition dates back as far as the 1970s. The Austin American-Statesman dug up a Reddit discussion from earlier this year where one Norwegian explained what Texas meant to him. “It’s basically an idiom at this point,” the Redditor wrote. “When I think of the word I picture a cowboy crashing a party and shooting two revolvers into the air. ‘It’s completely texas!!'” - JustDuckie - -

Texas is so crazy, people from Colorado are literally using 'Texas' as slang for people from Florida. - Joe - [ 4 ] -

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The Odds That a Panel Would 'Randomly' Be All Men Are Astronomical - The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.co... http://cdn.theatlantic.co... )

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"Enter the mathematician Greg Martin, who has devised a statistical probability analysis that even amateurs can (mostly) understand. Working with a “conservative” assumption that 24 percent of Ph.D.s in mathematics have been granted to women over the last 25 years, he finds that it’s statistically impossible that a speakers’ lineup including one woman and 19 men could be random. His explanation of the formula is a rollicking one involving marbles and a potentially suspicious roommate. The underrepresentation of women on speakers’ lists doesn’t “just happen,” despite many conference organizers’ claims that it does. After doing the math, as Martin has, the argument that speakers are chosen without bias simply doesn’t hold up. In fact, when using the formula to analyze the speakers’ list for a mathematics conference—which featured just one woman and 19 men—he found that it would be five times as likely that women would be overrepresented on the speakers’ list than underrepresented." - JustDuckie - -

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The odds are more mathematical and statistical than astronomical. - Joe - [ 1 ] -

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Courtly Love isn’t about Love, You Piece of Shit | Myths RETOLD (http://bettermyths.com/co... http://bettermyths.com/wp... )

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"Courtly love was originally dreamed up by horny poets in the early 1400s, but it flourished because it served a social purpose. Most popular stories, myth and legend especially, survive because they illustrate rules that we think are important for keeping our society together. Coincidentally, most of these rules have to do with humping. So whose social purpose is served by this miserable dicktease of a courtship ritual? Who comes out a winner? The lady is locked into a straightjacket of protocol that makes actual consent super hard to suss out, the knight is running around murdering dudes nobody asked him to murder because he’s too proud to just jack off into his helmet, and if the two of them ever do get together, every example we have shows it ending apocalyptically. No, you know who’s the real winner here? The husband." - JustDuckie - -

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Same here, Jennifer. I read half of this wondering what it had to do with her. - faboomama - [ 3 ] -

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A 16th Century Pope Buried His Pet Elephant Under the Vatican | Atlas Obscura (http://www.atlasobscura.c... http://assets.atlasobscur... )

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"In February of 1962, while digging up the Vatican's Belvedere Courtyard to modernize a heating and cooling system, a group of Italian workers hit bone. There was a large tooth and four pieces of a giant jawbone, and at first they thought they had found a dinosaur. But the bones were not fossilized, and when the custodian of the Vatican Library collection had them examined, he learned that they belonged to a much more modern mammal—an elephant." - JustDuckie - -

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Norwegian hunter shoots two moose -- in a zoo - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2015/1... http://i2.cdn.turner.com/... )

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"A hunter in Norway shot dead two moose before realizing moments later that he was shooting through the fence of a zoo. The animals were in the Polar Park Arctic Wildlife Center in northern Norway, about two hours drive south of the city of Tromso, above the Arctic Circle." - JustDuckie - -

"Polar Park will not press charges against the hunter because it was an accident, Strathmann said, but the zoo is asking that the hunters pay its costs. "We have to buy two new moose, the cost of the vet, autopsy, transportation and destruction," he said. A moose costs about 30,000 Krone ($3,500) to buy, he added. " - JustDuckie - -

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Central figure from Olympic figure skating judging scandal bids to be ISU president | OlympicTalk (http://olympics.nbcsports... https://nbcolympictalk.fi... )

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"Didier Gailhaguet, a central figure in the judging scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, is bidding for the International Skating Union’s presidency. The French federation president pledged to transform the ISU ”to bring it into the modern age” if he succeeds Ottavio Cinquanta, who will step down in 2016." - JustDuckie - -

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Which was not the only scandal associated with the Salt Lake City Olympics. - John B. - [ 2 ] -

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U.S. champions hope to end Skate America droughts | OlympicTalk (http://olympics.nbcsports... https://nbcolympictalk.fi... )

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"It’s been three years since a U.S. woman won Skate America and six for the men, but Gracie Gold, Jason Brown and Max Aaron hope to end the drought for home skaters at the U.S.’ biggest annual international event this weekend. Gold, Brown and Aaron, who all own U.S. titles, each seek their first Skate America crowns in Milwaukee. Short programs for all four disciplines are Friday. The long programs are all Saturday. NBC and NBC Sports Live Extra will air coverage Saturday from 5-6 p.m. ET. NBCSN will air coverage Sunday from 10-11:30 p.m. ET." - JustDuckie - -

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The Japanese Toilet Takes A Bow: A Personal History - The Rumpus.net (http://therumpus.net/2015... http://therumpus.wpengine... )

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"What I find most interesting about Hanako-san, however, is that she is a new ghost—a post-war creation, with her first appearances reported in the 1950s, and the peak of her activity in the 1980s. While no one seems to be able to pinpoint exactly how she arose, at least one Japanese television news program suggested that Hanako-san’s origins lie in the number of restrooms in Japan’s post-war public schools, which were dirty, old-fashioned, and poorly lit. In a 2002 article, which addressed the issue of both Hanako-san and dirty public school toilets, the Asahi Shimbun reported that the city of Izumi had just completed a renovation campaign of school bathrooms. The new stalls included Washlets, that most modern of Japanese creations: a toilet outfitted with a motion-sensitive opening lid, automated seat heater, and optional shower and air-dry for your bum. The total cost for the renovation: about $156,000. Presumably, Hanako-san has disappeared entirely from the Izumi school system. Sometimes technology can cure superstition." - JustDuckie - -

The whole "well lit" part resonates really well - most of the public restrooms I saw in Japan were 90% western style toilets, with maybe one or two old-fashioned ones, and were very well lit. The two which were all, or mostly, old-fashioned were very poorly lit (they were all very clean.) The darkness made them way more creepy than they would have been otherwise. - Jennifer D. - [ 2 ] -

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This French Ad, Aimed at Celebrating Women, Is Ridiculed for Stereotyping Them Instead | Adweek (http://www.adweek.com/adf... http://www.adweek.com/fil... )

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"French TV station France 3 pulled its latest campaign after widespread criticism. The offending ad shows a home in a state of disarray—an oven smokes, children's toys are scattered, an unattended iron catches aflame, a dog is left whimpering—while ominous expect-sad-little-girl-ghost-here music plays. It closes on a shot of a woman's closet, with one pair of shoes clearly missing, as upbeat music plays and the answer to the question that's presumably your mind (i.e., "Where the hell are all the women?!") appears: "They are on France 3."" - JustDuckie - -

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