Pop Culture

Mummy PlushSometimes you just need a hug from your mummy. For those tough days there is the Mummy Plush from the NeatoShop. This cuddly monster movie plush is shaped like The Mummy. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Plush Toys. Link

All you need is toothpicks, a sharp knife and a steady hand. In a few minutes, you'll have a healthy food item that still won't fool your kids one bit.-via Obvious Winner(Photo: unknown)

You hear stories about waiters being stiffed, which is inevitably followed by a storm in the comments about the entire system of tipping. But how about some really good tipping stories? Every so often, a very generous diner surprises the server with the tip of a lifetime.Rhode Islander Kristen Ruggiero is a single mom of three who has had a tough time making ends meet by working the restaurant job she’s held for the last 15 years. One day last year, a couple came in and ordered a pizza, a salad and a pitcher of beer only to settle their $42 bill by leaving $500 on the table. At first, the waitress thought they made a mistake and accidentally left the five hundreds thinking they were ten dollar bills. So Kristen set the money aside until the pair returned to the restaurant and tried to return it to them. That’s when they assured her that the $458 tip was no mistake. "He said no it was absolutely not a mistake, you deserved it," Kristen said.But that's far from the biggest tip in this roundup of stories at mental_floss. Link

Anything you're glad you don't have to experience again?

So I took a little break but I'm back now. I know every post in the last three months starts like that but I was literally on vacation so it was legit this time and not before where I was just napping and drooling a lot while on Pinterest too much. Let's catch up on some things and I'll tell you about me and then you tell me about you. As long as 'you' doesn't involve going on a real vacation to some resort somewhere involving saltwater and good hair in which case you should just unfollow this blog post haste because your cute beach bangs are pissing me off already. I had a half vacation/half staycation last week which is like the half-caf of holidays and just as douchey. For the half vacation part I ventured to the heart of the South, my dear neighbor and inbred cousin, Alabama. There I partook of lots of fun Alabama things like hugging people, thrifting, drinking, watching Netflix, drinking and looking at trailers. That's almost exactly like my staycation now that I think about it... But there was one spot that I visited that felt special and think you would like. I spent a lazy Sunday morning at The Overall Company which is a great little coffee house slash house of hipster jizz and antiques and amazing things. Way to go, Alabama. Chattanooga is jealous. I told you it was a special place. And not special like the It's Fashion I went to either last week which was special but in a different way. Special because I felt like a pioneer blazing a trail to a place I'd never been before which was confirmed by the rainbow of colors and the sales associate when she straight up asked "You... haven't been here before, have you?" To which I adjusted my nerd girl glasses and said indeed I hadn't. I don't know how she could tell. But the jokes on her because I bought two dresses and DON'T YOU JUDGE ME EITHER THEY'RE CUTE. But not as cute as this place. A spider also floated down from the ceiling as I was in the dressing room of It's Fashion so... there's that. But I had a live cockroach fall out of a shirt I was trying on at a Marshall's one time so I think the real lesson here is stop being such a cheap bitch and go to a gawddamned mall where there are nicer stores like Forever 21 and Rack Room Shoes. The staycation part of my adventure was really exciting as well. Between dealing with the torturous pain of an oncoming zit on the side of my nose and cleaning out my closet, I felt exactly like how Kim Kardashian must feel all the time: like a queen. Of terrible things. AKA Kanye West. But I soon forgot my pain because I had more important things to attend to... here ...and Benedick Cumbersnatch did not disappoint. (My snatch) I'm the lamest vacationer ever but this is what happens when you're poor and don't plan well. And when I wasn't shifting uncomfortably in my seat thinking about Star Trek, I had a full Game of Thrones marathon that involved lots of Cool Ranch Doritos tacos and a not-surprising lack of pants. here I think I cried y'all. That shit was intense. I even had to sit down my taco for a few moments. But on to shit that you really care about - I'm growing my nails out like it's 2012! I'm on my way to looking like this: The cashier at EarthFare and I had a deep and involved conversation over my organic beans about the pointed nails and she, having had them before, told me they were great. Modern manicures. It takes a village, y'all. In other important black events (please don't make an It's Fashion joke - that's racist), I think it's time we start defacing some statues: These are from a Danish artist Uncle Allan but I bet we could DIY these with some fake limoges from the thrift store and some evil intentions. Pinterest would probably weep and I would laugh and laugh. But if that kind of DIY scares yo

DeviantART member Fox Blue made this sporty hat from an old toaster. It's probably hot in the summer, but handy for those frequent toast emergencies. He writes "it's a lot lighter then I thought it would be." The should be a dial for adjusting that.Link

My new Guardian column, "Privacy, public health and the moral hazard of surveillance," discusses the way that the governments' reliance on social networks for intelligence purposes means that they can't intervene to help their populations get better at trading their privacy for services. That's a crisis. If online oversharing is a public health problem, then the state's decision to harness it for its own purposes means that huge, powerful forces within government will come to depend on oversharing. It will be vital to their jobs – their pay-packets will literally depend on your inability to gauge the appropriateness of your online disclosure. They will be on the same side as the companies that profit from oversharing, because they will, effectively, be just another firm that benefits from oversharing. It's as though Scotland Yard decreed that obesity was critical to its ability to catch slow-moving, easily winded suspects. It's as though the NHS announced it would cope with the expense of an aging population by encouraging chain-smoking. The dangers of oversharing are hard enough to manage when it's just the private sector that benefits from them. Privacy, public health and the moral hazard of surveillance

"Bath Time." A photograph shared in the Boing Boing Flickr pool by Cody Pope.

This made my day.

Data requests without a warrant. Government refusing to notify journalists they’re being spied on. Equating journalists and reporting to spies and espionage. Potential “conspiracy to commit espionage” charges. "Virtually every move made by the Justice Department against WikiLeaks has now also been deployed on mainstream US journalists," writes Trevor Timm at Freedom of the Press Foundation.