Sesame Street's House of Cards parody is way too insightful to be wasted on small children.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2: The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Review (The Verge)
Nobody needs to read a review of Hot Tub Time Machine 2. It's highly doubtful — but not impossible— that critics could dream up the kind of scathing comments that would faze the likely audience for it; people who have no intention of watching the movie and fans of the original that read the review just to get mad. Rather than playing into the hands of fans and haters by condemning the film, The Verge asks readers to play a little game called; "What kind of person would watch this movie?" The answer is, of course, almost no one.
While the idea is hilarious in theory, the review's commentary, when combined with its interactive element, risks mirroring the offensive content it calls out in its subject. It took me three tries to find the path to where the review would recommend the movie, and it's hard to imagine that many people would come to it honestly because, as you get deeper to the pro-HTTM2 camp, the questions rapidly shift from joking to accusatory. While calling a film out for offensive humor is the purview of the critic, making the reader feel uncomfortable in their choice to disagree is not. By doing so, The Verge has turned criticism into the thing that triggers angry and, until now, generally unwarranted hate from online readers; it contends that the review is not only an assessment of the film, but of its fans as well.
Adi Shankar Presents a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Bootleg Film By Joseph Kahn. To Learn More About Why This Bootleg Exists Click Here: http://tinyurl.com/mw9qd79
Dropcam Keeps an Eye on The Network (NYT)
On that time the reporter caught a guy pooping on the sidewalk outside his house using a $200 camera that streams to his phone.
The Disappeared: Chicago Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden Black Site (The Guardian)
There are places where Chicago police take people they arrest when they don't want them to see a lawyer. Where they can remove people from the world for a day or two to "interrogate" harder than legally allowed. The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman blows the lid one such site, Homan Square, where the uncooperative, including protestors and suspects gang- or drug-related crimes, are brought to be beaten into submission.
Poison Pill (Pacific Standard)
The history of the modern Opioid painkiller OxyContin reveals how free-market pharma and a time-limited grab for cash flooded America with narcotics and fueled the illegal painkiller trade.