On November 21, 2019, in accepting the Anti Defamation League’s (ADL) International Leadership Award, Sacha Baron Cohen shamed social media networks that, under the guise of freedom of speech, allow hate and lies to propagate world wide with dire consequences. Highly worth watching.

Sacha Baron Cohen gave the greatest speech on why social networks need to be kept in check
by Catalin Cimpanu
ZDNet
November 22, 2019

Actor says six US billionaires more focused on their share prices shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what is acceptable online.

Watch the video:

For an actor who made a career by playing silly characters, actor Sacha Baron Cohen gave yesterday one of the most eloquent and convincing speeches ever given in support of cracking down on large social media networks to prevent the spread of lies and hate speech that these platforms allow.

While accepting his award, Cohen touched on the role companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have played in spreading lies and hate speech online, calling the sites “the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

Read the full transcript here.

Extinction Rebellion floats “Sinking House” on the Thames.

Extinction Rebellion Sends a Sinking Home Along the River Thames, Warning of Climate Disaster
by Sarah Rose Sharp
Hyperallergic
November 13, 2019

Climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a public protest over the weekend, in the form of a floating structure that created the illusion of a suburban house sinking into the River Thames in London. Titled “The Sinking House,” the intervention took place in the early hours on Sunday, November 10, and is intended as a public appeal to politicians to make a more stringent and immediate response to regulate the effects of human industry and waste on the environment. (more…)

Donald Trump and family inspire artists and activists all over the world. Here are a couple of the latest examples:

Berliners Tried to Send Trump a Piece of the Berlin Wall to Suggest Walls Don’t Work
A German nonprofit inscribed a message to the United States President, sending it to Washington on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

image from Quartz

Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, known as The Good Liars: “We changed the cover of Don Jr’s book to make it a little more honest and put them up in Barnes and Noble. You’re welcome, Junior!”

Artist Phil Gable floats a Trump effigy in the toxic water of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York.

‘He has become the swamp’ Artist behind Gowanus Trump float speaks out
by Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
October 30, 2019

Photo by Kevin Duggan

This artist is putting Trump’s impeachment scandal into context!

The Park Slope artist behind a mocking seaborne sculpture of Donald Trump claims he dumped the president’s effigy in the Gowanus Canal out a desire to see the reality star in his natural environment.

“I felt like that was really the natural place where he should be — in a canal of toxic water,” said Phil Gable. “He wanted to drain the swamp when in fact he has become the swamp.”

Gable — who first invited Brooklyn canines to pee on the president by installing miniature “Trump Stumps” in 2018 — decided to float another effigy to the man in the White House that would decompose in the canal’s noxious waters as the impeachment inquiry against him proceeds.

Read the whole article here »

Nothing like a good laugh when you’re grieving!

Funeral cracks up as dead man screams ‘Let me out!’ of coffin
By Hannah Sparks
New York Post
October 14, 2019

He got the last laugh.

Loved ones at an Irish funeral for Defense Forces veteran Shay Bradley were shocked — then delighted — when they heard the voice of their late friend calling out from his coffin.

“Hello, hello — let me out!,” they heard on Saturday at Bradley’s funeral in Kilmanagh, Leinster, as his casket was lowered into the ground.

The pre-recorded message continued, “Where the f?-?-?k am I? Let me out, let me out. It’s f?-?-?king dark in here. Is that the priest I can hear? This is Shay, I’m in the box. No, in f?-?-?king front of you. I’m dead.”

A video of the posthumous prank, posted to Twitter Sunday, shows mourners laughing and crying as Bradley’s voice began to sing, “Hello again, hello. Hello, I just called to say goodbye.”

Watch the video:

Read the rest of the story here »

Senator Lindsey Graham was caught by Russian pranksters a few months ago saying the exact opposite of what he just said publicly against Turkey’s aggressions in Syria yesterday. How much more convoluted can our foreign policy get?

Lindsey Graham dishes on Trump in hoax calls with Russians
By Natasha Bertrand
Politico
10/10/2019

Graham thought he was speaking with Turkey’s minister of defense. Instead, it was a pair of Russian pranksters.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has in the last year become something of a congressional point man for President Donald Trump’s negotiations with Turkey, leading discussions on everything from Ankara’s purchase of a Russian missile system over the summer to their more recent incursion into northern Syria.

So when he received a call from a man he thought was Turkey’s minister of defense earlier in August, it didn’t strike him as unusual. “Thank you so much for calling me, Mr. Minister,” Graham said. “I want to make this a win-win, if we can.”

But it wasn’t the Turkish defense minister at all. Instead, it was Alexey Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, Russian pranksters with suspected ties to the country’s intelligence services who go by “Lexus and Vovan.” The duo have become notorious in recent years for their cold calls to unwitting, high-profile Western politicians, including Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, leading some to suspect that they’ve had help from the Kremlin, according to The Guardian. (A Schiff spokesman said at the time that the House Intelligence Committee “informed appropriate law enforcement and security personnel of the conversation.”)

Hear a snippet of the call:

Read the whole story here.

Reminding us about the good old days, artist Joseph Reginella just placed statues around New York commemorating Mayor Ed Koch’s (1978-1989) strategy for ridding the city of taggers by releasing wild wolves in the subway yards. According to Joseph, they’ve since multiplied and are roaming the city’s nether regions. H/T Felipe.

Sculptures of wolves mauling tourist appear in New York City parks
by Rusty Blazenhoff
BoingBoing
October 10, 2019

This is weird.

A series of identical monuments depicting a tourist being mauled by a pack of wolves have surreptitiously been installed in different New York City parks with plaques that read:

Dedicated to the many tourists that go missing every year in New York City.

And a reminder as to why the parks close at dusk.

Erected by the Ed Koch Wolf Foundation and the NYC Fellowship.

A brilliant prankster with mad sculpting skills is taking credit.

Watch the video:

Here’s Mayor Koch pontificating on his brilliant idea:

Read the full story here.

Banksy conquers retail with a storefront selling satire.

Banksy Opens London Art Shop Same Week He Sets $12M Auction Record
by Naomi Polonsky
Hyperallergic
October 4, 2019

The anonymous artist has opened a shop in the south London borough of Croydon to showcase some of his characteristically humorous items.

photos by Naomi Polonsky

LONDON — Banksy has always had a complicated relationship with the art market. His unsanctioned street works deliberately challenge the idea of art as a tradeable commodity, but often still end up at auction, commanding astronomical prices. A stunt last year during which his “Girl with a Balloon” (2006) self-destructed at a Sotheby’s sale seemed like a rebuke to the art market, but in fact simply doubled the piece’s value.

But as of this week, Banksy has officially gone into business. A new installation of his work, unveiled on Tuesday, features a storefront filled with branded merchandise. Although Banksy has exhibited his works in storefront installations before, this is the first time that the items are for sale. All of the products will go on sale online in a couple of weeks with prices starting at £10. Gross Domestic Product, which is located in a disused carpet shop in the south London borough of Croydon, includes old and new works by the artist including the iconic stab vest worn by the grime artist Stormzy at Glastonbury last year…

Playing on the double meaning of “gross,” Banksy’s store stocks various disturbing and unsavoury items, such as a rug made from the skin of Tony the Tiger, who has died of diabetes after eating too much Frosted Flakes cereal. A label, written in Banksy’s characteristically irreverent tone, explains that “the floor covering makes quite the conversation piece — especially if the conversation centres around the UK spending over £7.8 million a year on tooth extractions for the under 5s.”

The art activism group BP or not BP is planning a “Trojan Horse” action for November 23 at the British Museum to protest arts organizations that take oil funding. The public is invited.

Anti-Oil Protesters Will Storm the British Museum with a Trojan Horse
by Sarah Rose Sharp
Hyperallergic.com
October 3, 2019

BP or not BP? launched a crowdfunding campaign to build a giant Trojan Horse for its largest protest yet, which will coincide with the museum’s Troy: Myth and Reality exhibition.

photo by Jorge Láscar

A press release dropped today, announcing the next slated action by activist group BP or Not BP? in its ongoing protest campaign against the British Museum’s involvement with British Petroleum (BP). The theater group is inviting public participation in its forthcoming campaign, which takes specific aim at the opening weekend of the new BP-sponsored exhibition about the ancient city of Troy. BP or not BP? intends to replicate the mythic “Siege of Troy” by staging an action at the British Museum. The group has framed this as a “mass creative takeover” and “reimagining” of the British Museum which will take place on Saturday, November 23. They invite public participation in both the protest action and a public crowdfunding campaign to raise money to build a giant Trojan Horse.

In its press release about the project, timed to coincide with the national Museums Association conference in Brighton, which starts today, Sarah Horne of BP or not BP? said: “It’s deeply ironic that BP is sponsoring an exhibition called Troy: Myth and Reality, because this sponsorship deal is essentially a Trojan Horse for BP’s real activities. Just like in the myth, BP pretends that it’s giving us a gift, when in reality it’s trying to smuggle its deadly climate-wrecking business plans past our defences.” Read the whole story here.

The legendary Gem Spa received a satirical make-over as “Schitibank” after rumors that Citibank was angling for its location (which Citibank then denied). The event morphed into a “cash mob” as friends and neighbors mobilized to help save the East Village icon from debt and disaster. Read Jesse Jarnow’s Gothamist article here: Gem Spa Rally Turns Beloved East Village Institution Into Mock “Schitibank”. h/t Josh Jasper

Gem Spa, on St. Marks Place and 2nd Avenue in New York, has always been the go-to spot in the East Village; the place where everyone meets everyone else (“Meet you at Gem Spa!”).

In 1968, Joey Skaggs launched the Hippie Bus Tour to Queens from Gem Spa. This was his parody cultural exchange tour, which is memorialized in Artsy on the occasion of its 50th anniversary: When Pranks Become Works of Art.

And, in 1969, Skaggs, his pretend-wife, and a gang of bicyclers held a mock Hell’s Angels wedding parade in front of Gem Spa.

For a terrific historical perspective on St. Marks Place in the East Village, check out “St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street” by Ada Calhoun.

Posting fake photos on a fake TV news website about your fake arrest because of your fake meth lab in the basement. Hmmm… What could go wrong? h/t Ed

My Breaking Bad Prank Gone Wrong Almost Cost Me $150,000
Vice
July 24, 2019

Inspired by his favorite show, “Breaking Bad” Josh decided to pull a prank that went terribly wrong. What started off as a harmless joke meant for his friends, quickly spread online resulting in unforeseen consequences that Josh could never have imagined.

Watch the video

Deliveroo food delivery app accepts bogus restaurant run out of prankster’s apartment… Buyer beware!

Italian Stallion’ scams food delivery app with microwaved meatballs
by Hannah Frishberg
New York Post
September 11, 2019

It’s not delivery, it’s deception.

A YouTube prankster with more than 1 million followers exposed the shortcomings of food delivery app Deliveroo’s restaurant vetting — or lack thereof — when he set up a fake restaurant called the Italian Stallion.

Josh Pieters, 25, and two buddies launched a website for the egregious eatery, listing his own apartment as the address and buying Instagram followers to bolster its social-media presence.

Watch the video:

“We knew Deliveroo would check our website, so it would have to look good,” says the South African social-media star in a video uploaded to his YouTube account.

Pieters and his friends took funny food photos, posted nonsense recipes and registered “Italian Stallion, Ltd” before ringing up Deliveroo to explain their lack of a hygiene rating. “One day on the phone, [a customer service rep] said you can start so long as you notify the council and then they will assign a hygiene rating to your premises,” Pieters tells Insider.

“I don’t think they’re doing any checks on who’s applying to have a restaurant on Deliveroo,” Pieters says in his video documenting the restaurant’s short-lived existence. “So despite having a picture of [UK TV personality] Gemma Collins [as head chef] and an AirPod as feta cheese and no food-hygiene inspection of any kind, Deliveroo were happy for us to get going.” (more…)

“Some critics denounced it online as a ‘waste of wood’…” h/t Boris & Nancy

Slovenia Has Another Trump Statue. This One Has Vampire Teeth.
by Palko Karasz
The New York Times
Aug. 31, 2019

The figure under construction in Sela pri Kamniku, Slovenia. A local architect said he designed it “because people have forgotten what the Statue of Liberty stands for.”CreditCreditJure Makovec/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — It is not often that President Trump follows in the footsteps of his wife, Melania Trump, but he has received a wooden statue in his likeness in her homeland, Slovenia, after the same, dubious honor was bestowed on her in July.

Like the effigy of Mrs. Trump carved with a chain saw and unveiled on a riverside near her hometown this summer, this new work — a slatted structure nearly 26 feet tall — has its share of detractors. (more…)

This must-see “DeepFake” video transforms Bill Hader, when he was on Late Night with David Letterman, into Tom Cruise before your very eyes.

Watch the video: Bill Hader channels Tom Cruise [DeepFake], YouTube

A little bit of history: In 1987, an interview with Joey Skaggs was published in a book by RE/Search Pubs called Pranks! in which he predicts and discusses the implications of this exact technology.

AJ: “What is reality?”
JS: “Right. What is reality, and how can you know what is history?
“I’d also like to talk about technology and where we’re going. With the ability to comptuer-enerate photo images and do montage, collage and eventually holograms, we’ll have Hitler alive in South America totally fabricated. We’ll have a home movie of JFK actually screwing Marilyn Monroe, or whatever twisted historical thing we want to create. And it will be virtually impossible to detect that it’s a creation, because of the advancements in technology. We are coming to the forefront tehcnologically of a really frightening media reality. If we don’t sharpen our tools now, our integrity, we’re in for even bigger trouble.”

Read the entire RE/Search Pranks! interview here.

Excerpt:

The op-ed site Quillette has risen to prominence in the Trump-era conservative firmament by condemning progressive orthodoxies around race and gender, providing a platform for accused sexual predators, defending “Google Memo” author James “Fired4Truth” Damore, and promoting the “Sokal Squared” hoax, an effort to discredit academic disciplines by categorizing them as “grievance studies.”

This week, the site took a blow to its own credibility when left-aligned mischief-maker “Archie Carter” submitted a critique of the Democratic Socialists of America littered with lies, cliches, and errata. The piece was promptly published and promptly retracted by Quillette, leaving leftist publications Alternet and Jacobin (along with broad swaths of Twitter) to gloat over the fallout.

Will Sommer, a journalist/provocateur focused on far-right movements, scored an interview with the hoaxer.

Quillette Duped by Left-Wing Hoaxer Posing as Communist Construction Worker
by Will Sommer
The Daily Beast
August 9, 2019

Construction worker and avowed Leninist Archie Carter has plenty of gripes with the Democratic Socialists of America, the left-wing group that’s enjoyed a new wave of popularity during the Trump era.

In an essay published Thursday on the conservative op-ed website Quillette, Carter declared that DSA had been overrun with overeducated, oversensitive college graduates, blinding itself to the true needs of the working class.

“DSA is doomed,” Carter wrote.

Carter’s piece seemed like exactly the kind of argument that’s turned Quillette, a self-described “platform for free thought,” into a hotbed for the right-wing online “Intellectual Dark Web” movement. Carter had impeccable blue-collar bona fides, with his Quillette bio describing him as a committed union member who’s always “watching the Mets blow a lead.”

But there’s one problem with Carter’s story: He doesn’t exist.

DSA members started picking holes in Carter’s story almost as soon it went live on Quillette. New York City’s DSA local couldn’t find any record of a member, current or former, named Archie Carter. And while Carter claimed to have participated in sit-in protests as part of his DSA work, the group hadn’t organized sit-ins in New York in years.

By Thursday evening, Quillette had retracted Carter’s essay, saying Carter had failed to “supply answers to our follow-up questions in timely fashion.” Read more.