Found in my spam folder. I haven’t seen one of these in quite a few years, and then only in English (admittedly, some of my Chinese spam may have contained similar offers, but usually those are about infected zip/excel/pdf files).

Subject: Artikelanfrage für dotclue.org

Hallo J Greely,

für meine Kunden suche ich hochwertige Artikelplätze mit thematischem Bezug. Ein konkretes Interesse meines Kunden auf Ihrer Seite zu buchen besteht bereits. So bin ich auf Ihre Seite aufmerksam geworden. Ich würde gern bei Ihnen einen thematisch passenden Artikel buchen.

Ich liefere Ihnen gern einen sehr hochwertigen und professionell geschriebenen Text, welcher von meiner hauptberuflichen Redakteurin aufwendig recherchiert und getextet wird. Alternativ können Sie aber auch gern den Text verfassen. Der Text sollte mindestens 2 Jahre online bleiben.

Bieten Sie so etwas an? Können Sie mir bitte ein Beispiel und Ihren Preis mailen?

Haben Sie evtl. noch weitere Seiten, auf denen so etwas möglich ist?

Ich danke Ihnen für Ihr Feedback.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that these are slightly less than legit:

BEST Shooting Glasses UV Blacklight Flashlight Yellow Safety Eye protection by iLumen8. See Dog Cat Urine with Amber Black Lights Night Vision Ultraviolet

Seriously, one of the included accessories is a “Crush Resistant Storage Box”. It’s a cardboard box with a logo sticker on it.

There are a number of short, oddly-written five-star reviews, too.

…today’s headlines would simply have read, “Mentally Ill Spy Wins Early Release”.

(via)

(original source lost; image search turns up a bunch of fake blogs filled with text and pictures stolen from other sites and randomly thrown together, sigh)

Can you imagine what the world would be like today if Hef had gone with his original “stag” logo and theme? Antlers just don’t have the same impact. Then again, as our lead bunny-girl’s companion illustrates, what if he’d gone with a kitten theme and started the catgirl revolution decades early?

more...

So, someone got me one of these for my birthday, and I finally got around to building a stand for the outdoor sensor (basically an oversized tameshigiri stand made with pressure-treated lumber).

A promised feature was remote access to your data through an iOS/Android app, so I downloaded the app …and it didn’t work. Surprise! You have to:

1. register your purchase online (and the form wouldn't let me hit Submit until I added demographic data...),
2. plug the USB cable on the indoor sensor into a computer,
3. download and run their PC/Mac app in the background,
4. and leave your computer on at all times to report the data.

I have two words for that, and the first one starts with “F”.

So, delete the Mac app, delete the iPhone app, unplug the cable, and now I have a standalone weather station. Oh, well, at least it wasn’t an Internet of Things Thing that sat on my wireless and took orders from The Cloud.

Update: now that the sun is down, I can report that the backlighting on the screen is bright. I won’t be needing a nightlight downstairs any more.

Lying under oath to steal children: was that wrong? should we not have done that?

Trott: You mean to tell us due process is consistent with a government official submitting perjured testimony and false evidence? How is that consistent? I mean I hate to get pumped up about this but I’m just staggered by the claim that people in the shoes of your clients wouldn’t be on notice that you can’t use perjury and false evidence to take away somebody’s children. That to me is mind boggling.

Lin: In criminal proceedings we know this to be true because . . .

Trott: No, no! It’s a court proceeding with a liberty interest, a fundamental liberty interest at stake.

Lin: And on the reverse side . . .

Trott: And you’re telling us that these officials [weren’t] on notice that you can’t commit perjury and put in false evidence?

Lin: I understand broadly the principle that common sense tells us that lying is wrong and lying to . . .