Newsletter Central

I’m not convinced this isn’t a hoax or viral marketing campaign, since “strange news blackout” can also mean “didn’t actually happen.” Even if it’s fictional internet lore, it’s notable as such. (Appears to be real). An anonymous friend of BB says,

There seems to be a strange news blackout around the horrifying story of the “Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs”, three Ukranian teens who apparently recently performed a series of staggeringly violent serial killings and recorded them on cellphone video and then attended the victims’ funerals. Supposedly this is some of the first actual video of this kind of crime that has made it into the wild of the internet - the perspective of the deranged killer.

If you Google-news “Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs,” little if anything comes up, but the video and story is all over the gore/shock sites, putting them ahead of the news organizations here in the US.

I can’t watch the video, and only came across the story by cruising Encyclopedia Dramatica for teh (non-violent, tsk-tsking) lulz, but I glimpsed some stills and felt a little more heartsick about humankind because of it.

Purported Translation of cellphone video dialogue. See also dnepropetrovskmaniacs.com. [warning: links include graphic violence]. Link to video of teens in Ukranian court [does not include video footage of the attacks, thanks leriseux]

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A NOTE FROM THE MODERATOR: I don’t want to see any more comments from people who read Xeni’s description, watched the video anyway, and are complaining about how horrifying it is. Yes! It’s horrifying! If you don’t want to see that, don’t watch the video. Furthermore, those of you who feel that stuff like this should not be given attention are hereby invited to (1.) not watch the video, and (2.) not post comments about it, either. (Ignoring: ur doin it rong.) Thank you.

p.s.: There’s a large stash of unicorn chasers further down the thread. Use as needed.

–Teresa Nielsen Hayden

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UPDATE: An anonymous commenter in the discussion thread for this post writes:

Hello all. I am from Ukraine, I live in Kiev, but at that time i worked with a girl whose family lived in the same entrance of the multistoried building as one of those teenagers. I remember the horror when she was speaking about what was going on and the shock when she knew it was her neighbor. What we know from the news is… they were 3. One of them was likely an initiator (his surname was Supruniuk) and second one supported him. The third one was kinda acting under the pressure. Nobody knows what moved them, because they rarely robbed. They just liked to kill, those who were weaker than they. It is totally sick, totally criminal. Some newspapers wrote that they might have been under the cover of the dad of this Supruniuk…that he kinda was selling those videos online. N tht he was trying to hide the evindece (smb threw mobile phones in the lavatory)… Some say that they got more pending crimes imposed upon them by police. They are very calm during interrogation, etc. Their parents can not believe. In the phone of one of them police found some nazi images… What can i say… I dont want to ever watch anything about that or know anything more than i know. Their souls are sick. May God do something to that.. Regards, Margaret

From at-Largely (Larisa Alexandrovna):

“Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all “known” Karl Rove accounts.

In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.”

Graham writes: “Unfortunately, he won’t get to talk. He died in a plane crash yesterday.”

UPDATE: A curious press release: “Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation” (Thanks, Adam!)

(Via Why, That’s Delightful)

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we interviewed Douglas Krone, the CEO of new import tech toy store Gizmine; found an astonishing $250,000 wristwatch; and beheld a giant mechanical spider.

John saw a spy cam-watch from Brando, an awesome Lego chess set, and—drool!—Moleskine iPod cases.

There was also a floating DVD player, a Roomba from 1959, and a crazy 1980s ad with Zack! Lego Maniac!

I’m off on my family holiday and won’t be back until 2009, so I wanted to drop one last post in the queue for the wild and wooly 2008 — a year that was busy and wonderful and that ended a little scarily. We moved continents and had a baby; I wrote two books and published three; went on a book tour and spent a month in Asia researching the next book; and to top it all off, got married three times on two continents (to the same woman!).

It’s been a fantastic year, thanks to you folks. It’s been an especially great year for me, writing-wise. The UK edition of Little Brother, my first young adult novel, is selling briskly, and the US edition is doing spectacularly, having just gone on to an eighth hardcover printing (the hardcover’s selling so well that my publisher’s delayed the paperback for a year!). The book’s made just about everyone’s best-of lists for 2008: the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, School Library Journal, Amazon Editors’ Picks, Amazon top teen books, Richie’s Picks, Book Sense, VOYA, TeenReads, Texas Library Association, io9 — not to mention a whopping haul of awards and award-nominations: Emperor Norton Award, ALA’s YALSA Award, Cybils Award, Prometheus Award, Ontario Library Association White Pine Award, the ALA Printz Award and the Nebula Award! My agents are doing some serious talking with a film studio (though nothing’s ever final until it’s signed and delivered), and there are more overseas publishers signing up every month to do their own editions.

Best of all is all the fan-stuff — videos, art, readings, translations, adaptations… All the stuff that takes advantage of the Creative Commons license to remake Little Brother to better suit the readers (and man, do I get awesome email from readers, from security researchers at Microsoft to activist students in rural schools). And of course, I was floored by the generosity of the donors who sent hundreds of copies of the book to libraries, schools, halfway houses, and shelters as a way of saying thanks for the CC license.

Who the hell knows what’ll happen in 2009? It’s definitely the most uncertain new year I can remember. One thing I’m sure of, though, is that whatever happens, we’ll all figure it out together, that the Internet will make it possible for us to bug-in and help each other here at home, rather than heading for a defensive position in the hills. Crappy economies are often the home of wonderful Bohemias. Two recessions ago, I dropped out of school to become a computer programmer. In the last one, I quit the company I’d co-founded and went to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Now that I’m a parent — and now that I’m a little older — I feel the risk a lot more keenly than I did then. But I just keep on remembering that we live in the best time in the history of the world to have a worst time: the time when collective action is cheaper and easier than ever, the time when more information and better access to tools, ideas and communities are at our fingertips than they’ve ever been.

Have a fantastic holiday. Remind the people who matter to you of that fact. Ring in the new year with a big grin, and I’ll see you all in 2009.

Today, on my In Bed podcast, I interview Wendy Chapkis, author of Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine.

Wendy and her co-author Richard Webb conducted extensive interviews with members of WAMM (The Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana) - the patient collective that exemplifies the “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” ethos when it comes to pot medicine.

In this excerpt, Wendy talks a bit about how boring ole’ cannabis became demon “mari-juana,” in D.E.A. history.

Listen to an excerpt

Read an introduction to Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine (PDF).

(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)