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Jesse Dimmick is suing Jared and Lindsay Rowley, whom he was convicted of kidnapping, for breach of contract. Dimmick argues that because the two won his trust when he invaded their house at knifepoint (while fleeing a murder charge which led to him driving over a police spike-strip in front of their house), and then left once he fell asleep, they violated their contract to remain his hostages. The couple lulled Dimmick with a clever strategy of watching Robin Williams's Patch Adams with him while eating Cheetos and drinking Dr Pepper.

You see, Dimmick alleges that, after breaking into the Rowleys' home with a knife and gun, they all then sat down and hashed out a deal under which they would hide him from police (the police who were right outside) for an unspecified amount of money. "Later," he complained, "the Rowleys reneged on said oral contract, resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities." Ergo, breach of contract.

Um, no, wrote the Rowleys' attorney in a motion to dismiss earlier this month. He had multiple arguments, all very good ones, as to why a contract claim would not fly here. First, there was no agreement. Second, if there was an agreement, there was no meeting of the minds on the amount of money (Dimmick admitted the "offer" was for "an unspecified amount"), and so no binding contract. Third, agreements made at knifepoint are, you may be surprised to learn, not enforceable as they are made "under duress." Finally, a contract to do something illegal (e.g. hide a fugitive) is also not enforceable.

Man Sues Couple He Kidnapped

Twitter has bought a company called Whisper Systems, who make a secure version of the Android operating system as well as suites of privacy tools that are intended to protect demonstrators, especially participants in the Arab Spring. Many speculate that the acquisition was driven by the desire to hire CTO Moxie Marlinspike, a somewhat legendary cryptographer.

At first blush, the move is a bit baffling. Twitter, the quintessential consumer internet service, would seem to have little need for a company that has revamped Android security from the ground up for business use. But the micro-blogging site may simply be acquiring Whisper Systems for its talent — including Marlinspike, who serves as the startup’s chief technology officer, and roboticist Stuart Anderson — and the two companies do have a certain affinity. Both pride themselves on the support they’ve provided to protesters in the Middle East.

Security and privacy guru Chris Soghoian believes Twitter may have brought Moxie Marlinspike into the fold because the micro-blogging site has developed a reputation for not having the best security. Marlinspike is an expert in SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption, and Twitter — which has yet to turn on SSL by default for all users — could use his skills to lock down its services and make life harder for phishers.

I've been worried lately about the crumbling infrastructure of the SSL system, and what it means for our ability to communicate in private, to conduct banking and ecommerce, and to have any assurance of identity online. I've been asking all the security/crypto supernerds I know about this for a few months, and to a one, they've mentioned Marlinspike's Convergence and said, effectively, "I'm not sure if it'll solve this, but there's nothing else I have any hope for."

Twitter Buys Some Middle East Moxie (Thanks, Larry!)

The Guardian catches up with Alan Moore, writer of V for Vendetta and noted grumpy, uncompromising debullshitificator, and asks how he feels about the Guy Fawkes mask from his comic becoming a symbol of Anonymous and Occupy protests.

"I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It's peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction..."

Moore first noticed the masks being worn by members of the Anonymous group, "bothering Scientologists halfway down Tottenham Court Road" in 2008. It was a demonstration by the online collective against alleged attempts to censor a YouTube video. "I could see the sense of wearing a mask when you were going up against a notoriously litigious outfit like the Church of Scientology."

But with the mask's growing popularity, Moore has come to see its appeal as about something more than identity-shielding. "It turns protests into performances. The mask is very operatic; it creates a sense of romance and drama. I mean, protesting, protest marches, they can be very demanding, very gruelling. They can be quite dismal. They're things that have to be done, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're tremendously enjoyable – whereas actually, they should be..."

"I find it comical, watching Time Warner try to walk this precarious tightrope." Through contacts in the comics industry, he explains, he has heard that boosted sales of the masks have become a troubling issue for the company. "It's a bit embarrassing to be a corporation that seems to be profiting from an anti-corporate protest. It's not really anything that they want to be associated with. And yet they really don't like turning down money – it goes against all of their instincts." Moore chuckles. "I find it more funny than irksome."

Alan Moore – meet the man behind the protest mask

(Image: Anonymous at Scientology in Los Angeles, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from sklathill's photostream)

This morning I watched a video compilation of botflies—parasitic, skin-burrowing larvae—being pulled out of bleeding human flesh. Compared to this "Windows Phone 7 Fangirls Video," the botfly footage is like butter and candy. This internet deserves destruction. Now.

Don't get me wrong! I totally love Windows Phone—but if there's any truism through human civilization, it's that white people will ruin anything they touch if provided the chance.

The girl in red murmuring "holla," repeatedly.

One of them says "IN DA HOOOOUSE."

"Sleek on the outside, Microsoft inside."

The four of them lurching from side to side, eyes blank, as if just released from some weeklong novacaine binge.

The fact that the words "keep my phone in my back pocket, Powerpoints always on my hip socket" were uttered, ever, for any reason.

This is inexcusable. How can I reverse this? If I throw my phone into Mount Doom, will my memory be cleared of this horror? What if I drink bleach? If China wants an argument to keep the web shackled for which there is no refutation, they'll present this video before the United Nations.

I award them five points for their beat selection (Dorrough is probably sobbing right now), for a total of -99999995 points. [Thanks, Whitney!]

Maciej Ceglowski:

Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender.

This is so good.

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"I haven't been so inspired since 1994," an Italian friend of mine posted on her Facebook page.

Well, I too can remember the year 1994, when I was in Milan, giving a public speech among some so-called intellectuals, soon after Berlusconi was elected. I had come there directly from Serbia, struggling in the thick of the Milosevic reign of terror.

I remember warning my Italian friends, feeling frightened, extremely emotional. I described a 'soft dictatorship,' how a small caste of oppressors gets into power legally, because WE vote them in, and then they steal and fake everything that WE, the people, never delegated them to do. And how, finally after waging wars against all the OTHERS in our own name, they finally turn on their ultimate victims and wage their war against US.

How they destroy every aspect of reality that stands in the way of a total exploitation: meaning the destruction, the ruin, of the people, ideas, customs, habits, prosperity, morality, of a nation and its history, of a time and a space. Afterwards, after the dreadful crash, who feels empty and responsible? We, the citizens who voted, we whose states were surrendered to the exploiters and profiteers, we, the participants, we are the ones humiliated in front of our children and the whole world.

Tonight, while Italians danced in front of the parliament, impatiently waiting for Berlusconi to officially resign, I remembered, once again among many times, how Milosevic was finally toppled after his miserable endless reign. Milosevic stumbled in the elections. He took Serbian support for granted, since he controlled all the Serbian mass media, and all the local means of patronage and favors.

Milosevic admitted his electoral defeat, promising to regroup and return to power soon. He faked a compliance with democracy, but we believed in his defeat. We didn't allow him to return to the statehouse. Instead we paralyzed Belgrade by occupying the streets in a crowd of a million, surrounding the parliament until the police and army deserted the criminal and agreed with the population.

Italian change came more smoothly: but the exasperated crowds in Rome were harshly insulting their premiere. "Mafioso," "buffoon," "go to jail now," "up your ass, Silvio," between sentimental fits of patriotic singing, huge crowds of people in the nation's capital called their elected leader awful names that haven't been heard since the fall of Mussolini.

Italian state TV channels were very prudish about reporting the rude scenes in the streets and squares of Rome. Only one Italian TV channel, plus online video streaming from Italian newspapers, recorded the historic moments. Italian journalists had to rely on Al Jazeera, BBC, Sky and other foreigners to tell the Italian people about the public scenes and public events within their own capital city.

As usual, Twitter was raving and reporting live. These 140-character messages from widely-scattered cellphones are hard to repress. However, bandwidth on the net got very patchy as Italians poured online massively: their government was collapsing headlong while their leader's pet TV machine offered them nothing but game shows, vapid repeats and busty dancing girls. So much for their national media and their role as informed citizens.

Silenced and humiliated.

Anonious people are courageously shouting in the public streets: the buffoon is gone! We lived for this day! Prison for Berlusconi, out with all the cowards!

People around me are more than happy. They are extremely frightened. They don't need the somber warnings of Italy's President, Napolitano, an old man in a figurehead post whom many now credit with saving the country -- for the time being. It is as if, only now, the Italians can realize the obvious truth of their dramatic situation, the grave national crisis they have somehow survived.

The future carries a worrisome burden of long-denied truth. After so many blatant and revolting personal scandals, people somehow imagined that they knew the truth about their Big Boss. They knew how to maneuver and how to protect their own interests in the minefield of official illusions. But that is not what real life is like, after the Fall.

The aftermath is like a mudslide after a torrential rain: it carries away the innocent as readily as the guilty. Since every citizen is entirely implicated in a nation's official fantasies, you cannot tell the clean from the polluted. Berlusconi brought out the worst instincts in every Italian, Eugenio Scalfari said.

Tomorrow is a big day for Italy: the first day of reconstruction. A new government, a new prime minister. Emergency stability law has been passed, as required by EU in a terrible haste, as Prime Minister Berlusconi crept from the President's house through the side door after resigning.

He finally departed his TV stage-set in a cloud of angry Twitter #hashtags: #byebyebungabunga, #finecorsa (end of the road), #maipiu (never more) #rimontiamo (Italy rides again)!

[Video Link]

How did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt get into the Waldorf-Astoria without alerting the paparazzi? A secret subterranean train station, obviously.

This is track 61, a little-known extension of the New York subway system that runs directly under the world-famous Waldorf-Astoria hotel. It has hosted numerous luminaries from General Pershing, who visited in 1938, to Andy Warhol, who used it as a party space in 1965. The trolleys were reportedly capable of transporting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Pierce Arrow car—with him inside—which could drive off the train and directly onto an elevator that would carry it topside.

And even with the construction of the new Long Island Rail Road extension as part of Grand Central Station's revamping, the site will remain—including the trains themselves—though the squatters that have occupied the space since the late seventies will likely be getting the boot (or at least bus tickets to San Francisco). [Gothamist - Image: Sam Horine/Gothamist]

These student protesters in Bogota, Colombia have really got it going on, makeupwise.

Student protestors in Colombia know how to get attention (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: cropped, downsized thumbnail from a photo by AP Photo/Fernando Vergara))

They practice incredibly hard for showdowns with Rambo.

From a NYT opinion piece by Joe Nocera, "What the Costumes Reveal"—

On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party until around noon, and then return to work, still in costume. I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s.

That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.

I'm not one to incite illegal activity, but christ, guys: if there were ever a house that deserved T-P-ing on Halloween? This firm's headquarters is it. May not be justice, but it's a start.

Read the rest, and see all the photos, here. (via Chris Hayes)

New high speed server! 
You guys have been awesome.  All the facebooking, stumbling, and social media sites you’ve shared our website on has
blown us away.  We’ve been trying to figure out a way to say thank you.  We threw around ideas from more posts every
week to getting you all puppies that fold laundry.  We finally decided to go with the faster, less-traffic-spike-crashing
site option.  So thank you, everyone.  Hope you enjoy the new server speed.

Success of any kind is a function of many factors, individual talent is just one of them–ability to eat a whole box of Cheez-its in one sitting is another.

Photo: Ahram Online.

Whales can live for 50 to 75 years. But did you know that after they die, their decomposing bodies can support a whole community of organisms and other sea life for an additional 50 to 75 years?

Whale Fall is a short documentary on what happens to the largest mammal on the planet after it dies and sinks to Davy Jones' locker. Created by Sweet Fern Productions for Radiolab, it's not only fascinating on an educational level, but it's also a feast for the eyes through the use of animation, paper cutouts and puppetry. I loved science growing up, but had the educational videos in biology class looked like this, I may have actually paid attention. [Whale Fall via Radiolab via BoingBoing]