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It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old—named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.

Wanna buy one?

The Dark Implications of Facial Swap Filter Technology

Last month, Serena Lee was just another bubble tea-addicted New Jersey college student who loved to watch The Office while searching for her future beau on Tinder.

Except, actually, she wasn't. Lee was actually a male Princeton student named Sean who "got bored while cramming for finals and decided to catfish people with the new Snapchat filter."

Yep, that one. The one that makes men look like beautiful women and women look like men you'd cross the street to avoid. The one that's so popular that a lot of people who left Snapchat are re-downloading it just to see what the hype is all about. Snapchat's "gender-swapping" filter, which came out in early May of this year, quickly became a social media hit. And Lee wasn't the only one who immediately used it to pose on Tinder — there's a whole trend of catfishing-for-jokes, which consists almost entirely of men pretending to be women.

While on a surface level the filter may seem like harmless fun, its implications, both conceptual and practical, are deeply troubling. Besides spawning this real-life catfishing phenomenon, which tells us nothing new about men online, Snapchat's employment of face alteration technology along the axis of gender enforces stereotypical ideas of male and female appearances, and raises questions about how we should employ such identity-altering (or concealing) technology in the first place.

Student uses gender-bending Snapchat filter to catch cop allegedly seeking underage sex

A college student wanted to take down potential predators on Tinder. So, he posed as a teen girl using Snapchat's new gender filter — and ended up catching a cop allegedly looking to hook up with a minor.

Ethan, a 20-year-old from the San Francisco Bay Area, used the Snapchat filter to pose as a 16-year-old girl named Esther. He created a Tinder account as a 19-year-old girl, but said he was communicating with San Mateo Officer Robert Davies as a 16-year-old, police say.

Alabama becomes seventh state to approve castration for some sex offenses

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Monday signed into law a measure requiring anyone convicted of sex crimes with children younger than 13 to be chemically castrated as a condition of parole.

Under the new law, offenders required to undergo the reversible procedure must begin the treatment at least a month before their release dates and continue treatments until a judge finds that it's no longer necessary.

Ivey, a Republican, made no public statement about the measure. She had given little indication whether she supported the measure until Monday, the last day she could sign the bill.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Steve Hurst, a Republican representing Calhoun County, who said that if he had his way, offenders would be permanently castrated through surgery.

Chemical castration in the United States

Chemical castration is generally considered reversible when treatment is discontinued, although permanent effects in body chemistry can sometimes be seen, as in the case of bone density loss increasing with length of use of DMPA.

[...] When used on men, these drugs can reduce sex drive, compulsive sexual fantasies, and capacity for sexual arousal. Life-threatening side effects are rare, but some users show increases in body fat and reduced bone density, which increase long-term risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. They may also experience gynecomastia (development of larger-than-normal mammary glands in males).

When used on women, the effects are similar, though there is little research about chemically lowering women's sex drive or female-specific anaphrodisiacs, since most research focuses on the opposite, but anti-androgenic hormone regimens would lower testosterone in women which can impact sex drive or sexual response. These drugs also deflate the breast glands and expand the size of the nipple. Also seen is a sudden shrinking in bone mass and discoloration of the lips, reduced body hair, and muscle mass.

[...] Despite its long history and established use, the drug has never been approved by the FDA for use as a treatment for sexual offenders.

[...] The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida opposes the administration of any drug that is dangerous or has significant irreversible effect as an alternative to incarceration; however, they do not oppose the use of antiandrogen drugs for sex offenders under carefully controlled circumstances as an alternative to incarceration. Law professor John Stinneford has argued that chemical castration is a cruel and unusual punishment because it exerts control over the mind of sex offenders to render them incapable of sexual desire and subjects them to the physical changes caused by the female hormones used.

Some people have argued that, based on the 14th Amendment, the procedure fails to guarantee equal protection: although the laws mandating the treatment do so without respect to gender, the actual effect of the procedure disproportionately falls upon men. In the case of voluntary statutes, the ability to give informed consent is also an issue; in 1984, the U.S. state of Michigan's court of appeals held that mandating chemical castration as a condition of probation was unlawful on the grounds that the drug medroxyprogesterone acetate had not yet gained acceptance as being safe and reliable and also due to the difficulty of obtaining informed consent under these circumstances.

Sounds like it negatively impacts the health of the individual, and they are coerced into doing it (would you rather be stabbed to death in prison?). #StateTransgender

Are palindromes for people who like to end at the beginning?

Or for people who like to begin at the end?

Or for people who like to start in the middle?

Or for people who do only half the work and say they are done?

Florida charter boat captain accused of drinking, doing drugs, firing gun, threatening passengers

A Florida charter boat captain is accused of drinking heavily, doing drugs and threatening to shoot his passengers and throw them overboard before firing his gun several times from the top deck of the boat.

[...] All of the passengers and Kissell reported that Bailey drank several beers in the beginning of the trip, according to an arrest report. When Lopeparo asked his nephew, Rialmo Jr., to grab him a beer from the top deck where Bailey was, the captain told him he couldn't have it, but the teen thought he was kidding and grabbed the beer anyway.

At that point, "the captain bumped shoulders with the young man and grabbed him around the neck and clasped on to the young man’s chain and ripped it off," Giuffre told police. An argument ensued, but the captain retreated back to the upper deck to keep drinking. At this point, he was drinking Captain Morgan rum, smoking a joint and using cocaine, the passengers reported.

Later, the inebriated captain told Giuffre Jr., "It would be nothing to pop a bullet in each one of us and dump our bodies overboard," Giuffre Jr. wrote in his statement to police. "He also stated he has his buddies at the dock for us when we get back. He then proceeded to say he wanted to help to kill n------," Giuffre Jr. wrote. The police report said Giuffre Jr. and his fellow passengers were white.

All of the passengers reported that shortly after threatening them, Bailey fired between four and eight gunshots from the upper deck. At that point, the elder Giuffre said, Bailey was "drinking rum from the bottle" and "scaring the crap out of all of us."

I am a Master Builder. And when I build, I never ever forget the paint. That's so important. Great paint makes a structure look truly fabulous. The same way a Supermodel -- like Melanie -- makes a dress look truly fabulous. So important. And paint can do much more. It does many things.

That's why I've directed my military to paint our Border Wall. Starting in beautiful Calexico, California. Which I visited in April with Kirstjen -- we miss Kirstjen, don't we? And which I'll be visiting many times. Many times. We tore down the old Clinton Border Fence in Calexico. And put up a brand new See Through Barrier. Very see-through, so you're able to see the other side, which is a very important element. And very, very hard to climb. That's something my Border Patrol appreciates a lot. They gave me a trophy for that one, if you can believe it.

And mark my words, they'll be giving me another trophy when we're done with the painting there. Because we're doing a very special color. Known as Flat Black. Looks incredible on a Supermodel. And believe me, it's going to look incredible on our tall Wall Slats, which are 30 feet tall in some places. One of the tallest Walls in the entire world. And the Flat Black is going to do a lot to stop the invasion of our Country by Human Traffickers, Drug Dealers, Cartels, Coyotes and Caravans of Illegal Immigrants. Something that, frankly, Mexico hasn't been doing much about. But the very special paint, the Flat Black, when it's in the sun there in Mexico -- Mexico adjacent USA and they get an incredible amount of sun in that part of our Country, it's a sun day almost every day. Almost every day and that Flat Black is going to get very very hot. Not the sexy hot, the gotta grab it hot. The other hot, the one that's very painful when we touch it. And nobody's going to want to climb up there because of that horrible heat. That's right, we're doing the Anti Climb paint. There are now 77 major or significant Walls built around the world, with 45 countries planning or building Walls. But U.S.A is the first with the Anti Climb paint.

And there's more. If you've seen the Clinton Border Fence -- so ugly. Because it rusted. And it was actually camouflaging the individuals crossing (illegally) our Border. One of their favorite tactics. My Border Patrol folks told me it was very hard for them to see those people. Because it was brown against brown. No more, we're doing the black. And that's costing $150,000. Sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. And Crybaby Dems like Dick Dustbin are saying, "oh, it's too much money." They're very short sighted. And possibly something else is short too, I don't know. Trust me, we're going to make it up on the back end. Mexico is going to be paying for that one. Because of me there is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have. But now we're making a New Deal with Mexico, much better than NAFTA. Much better and Mexico is going to work a lot harder on stopping the invasion. And the beautiful Flat Black paint will also stop it. NO MORE INVASION! And that means we'll be spending less money on the Enforcement, on the Boarder Patrol.

And I want spikes on top. Very sharp so if someone makes it up there -- again, we have 30 foot tall Slats in some places and that's something we're going to see more and more -- they're going to be sorry they did. Because there Hands are going to get cut very badly. And I think they know that. I think they know. And they're VERY INTIMIDATED by it.

Tall, Black and covered in spikes. The Wall I'm building is very big. And very beautiful. A promise kept!!!!

The whole reason for his "tariff" bullshit is to manipulate the stock market. He even tweeted that his "position" is profitable. How could it not be?

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 4.7 GHz CPU Leaked, World’s First 16 Core Gaming Chip

It has the full 72 MB of cache.

I'll guess $700 for the price.

AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT ‘7nm Navi’ Graphics Card Final Specifications Leak Out – Features 2560 Cores, 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM and Up To 1905 MHz Clock Speeds

Apparently people want more than 8 GB of VRAM for 4K gaming.

Skip as many gens as you can!

Spotted at Computex: Triple Monitor Mobile Systems are Back

More innovation than a MacBook.