Nightmarish plush dolls of Frank Zappa, Robert Smith, Kraftwerk, Jim Jarmusch & more might come handy for year’s end gift season. (Not for me, thank you.)

Not until today, unfortunately.

You may have noticed that Scott "Dilbert" Adams is a colossal asshole (via deathandtaxesmag.com)

Access denied.

The Media, after access: “A protester might consciously accept the risk of a quote being included in a less sympathetic story if that story is the best or only way to raise awareness for a cause. That same protester, in a world in which the local paper can no more guarantee a large audience than a few dozen sympathetic Twitter users, might tell a reporter who she knows is going to have to write an on-the-one-hand story, or something that would be, in her view, worse—something condescending or racist, for example—to fuck right off.“

“Most of what we learn about gunshot wounds, we learn from watching television. A small sliver of this programming is actually educational, like the ballistics tests performed on Mythbusters. (…) But these examples are outliers. Depictions of gun violence in fictional shows and movies are routine, and often wildly imaginative. Those depictions are distorting understanding of what bullets can—or can’t—do to bodies.”

Slacktivism is having a powerful real-world impact, new research shows.

Struck by Lightning: “The electricity crackling over the surface of the human body singes clothing, vaporizes sweat into scalding steam, and renders metal objects so hot that they burn the skin. Occasionally, all that steam even blows victims' shoes and socks off.”

“In internet shaming, the target is reduced to a single definition, made to wear the mask of the Sexist or the Racist, the Angry Feminist or the Race-Baiter.”

Thoughts from the high castle.

“The world we inhabit is but one of a vast array of possible worlds that might have been brought about if some deity could rerun the tape of history.”

Bad protocol, bad politics.

Poul-Henning Kamp: HTTP/2.0 — The IETF is Phoning It In (6 Jan 2015).

Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015.