Once you have bested the Elder Gods and sealed them within an iron catafalque behind an impregnable ignimbrite cliff, it is unwise to put up a sign telling people "DANGER, DO NOT OPEN"

Eventually some dickhead will stroll past, see the sign, and be all "Hold my beer, let's see what's behind the cliff!"

Sorry. My bad.

Guerrilla pet memorials of the Aro Valley

1. Moridin and Frankie.

2. Moonstar, Waimapihi Reserve.

I'm going to feel really bad if it turns out that Moonstar was really some Aro Valley hippie, rather than someone's dog.

And there upon a rock titanic, I'll cast a giantShadow on the face of the deepAnd never again will they dare to call meA freckled, spotty, specky, four eyedWeedy little creep!

What is it about antivaxxers and the weird Rorschach Vindication fantasies?



This can't be normal.

Meta

More people were writing about Goofle Ngram Viewer in 1820 than in any subsequent year.

You can't spell "icon" without 'I' and 'con'

Wellington, city of pageantry, home to the iconic British Museum and Buckingham Palace...

THAT IS NOT MY COW Wellington. That is the Wellington Arch in London, viewed from behind.

London, sun-soaked jewel of the South Pacific...

THAT IS NOT Wellington MY COW. That is GLASGOW - home of an equestrian statue of Wellesley Duke of Wellington, who sports a road-cone on his head on festive occasions as is the traditional costume of his people. It is almost as if some shiftless grifter was sent to the Interlattice tasked with searching out scenic icons of Wellington, but had given his last fuck.

Wellington, capital of New Zealand (population 67,659,683), where the languages are English, Maori and Lorem Ipsum...

-

This is just really sad now.

OK. There exists IASED ("International Academy of Science and Engineering for Development"), whose physical address is an anonymising / virtual-office service in Hong Kong (popular among tax-evaders and money-launderers). They have one telephone number, and a secretary who is willing to pander to a caller's tastes by becoming Ms.Amy L. P. Yeung; Ms. Jessily D. M. Cheung; Ms. Yedda Q. Ye; Ms. Anna H.M. Wong; or Ms. Tiya T. Deng (among others) depending on the nature of the call. For IASED exists primarily to instantiate ad-hoc professional and academic bodies from its flanks... bodies that exist primarily to arrange scabby little scamferences at monthly intervals around the world, while inviting suckers to pay $570 of their employers' money so as to attend.

The IASED-spawned CCVPR, JCRAM, ICCSSE and ISEEIE all invite you to their December meetings at the James Cook Grand Chancellor hotel in Wellyton, in the same three days (13th-15th Dec) and indeed in the same conference room. A one-day meeting, really, since the 13th and 15th are scheduled for registration and a tourist outing respectively. They claim different organising committees but the same keynote speakers for all four events.

Assuming that the staff have cleaned up the room after the hard-core festivities of 10-12 December, when the IASED sockpuppets ICCAEE, JCMME and JCRAI hold their combined monthly meeting.

Many of these meetings were initially promoted as occurring under the auspices of the Museum of New Zealand (which came as a surprise to the not-well-pleased Museum)...*

... or at the Wellington Convention Centre.

This has the minor disadvantage of not existing, forcing the scammers to relocate to the James Cook hotel. Updates will follow if I hear back from the hoteliers.

[Thx John Chen for the heads-up and for research]

* Museum, not-well-pleased:

Not at all weird

Visitors from locations not marked on ordinary maps.

Liverpuddle Scene: Stage set-up in progress

Just saying, roadies for a Spın̈al Tap Tribute Band have an easy job.

Scrabble: Not just a Board-game!

It's like an old "Two Ronnies" joke that got separated from its punchline.
I guess it's no worse than having garden gnomes.

House built on sand

Bunker struck amidships in the last torpedo salvo
Taking on sand and sinking fast
This is last transmission
God save the King

This town is so cultured...

Even the tagging is in classical Greek.



Just steer clear of the Maenad crew on a Friday night after they have been touring the booze-barns, unless you want to be on the blunt end of a thyrsos, is all I'm saying.

Next there will be "Titans rule, Olympians drool" graffiti popping up, and shit will get real.

With hardened smiles and evil signs

According to the sticker, what I believed to be a clothes drier is actually an appliance intended for burning books.

I have no idea why the Frau Doktorin reacted so badly.

What did people sweep things under, before carpets and rugs were invented in the 1950s?

Why proofreading matters #53

Lost Lake

I found it! Is there a reward?

I guess the authorities are not too worried about its precise location because they have built a barrier further up the river, so they know it can't wander very far.

 

The Huge Manatee

We, here at the Riddled Institute of International Politics and Polychete Skin Mitochondria Analysis are always quite interested in that reservoir of electoral infection by RWNJ, Australia (hereafter known as The Fuckitude).
This last weekend the good folks of Aus have been doing the election Hokey Cokey and have, indeed, shaken it all abart. Not content with rejecting the current Morons-in-power, they have rejected the opposition as well, leaving Aus in the "Somalia scenario" of not actually, technically, in the sense of having  elected one recently, having a government.
Many Australians are unconcerned by this and continue on their daily rounds, unaware of the futility of their tasks while no government is there to scare them with stories of  invasions by Musselmen and/or starving brown skinned persons. I mean what is the point, people, if someone wearing an ethnic beanie doesn't cause you to wet yourself when they get on your bus???
Now, of course, Aussietrailya is well supplied with persons of sound mind and good heart and some of them may have sneaked past the politics filters (Penny Wong) and been elected (god knows what is going on over there) but some of the more "colourful" characters of recent times have shambled back into parliament, particularly into the senate, where underpants being worn on the head will soon become So Last Year. These are people who would be kicked out of North Carolina for being a bit "old fashioned".
All of this is of some concern to the reigning Prime Monster, Malcolm Turnbull, who gave a wonderfully spiteful and "it wasn't my fault" non-victory speech at 1am on Sunday morning. Never was a chap in more need of a cup of tea and a lie down.
But he will not get one since the counting of votes and configuring of Who You Meant To Vote For enters the Byzantine realms of the Australian Electoral Commission. Abandon hope hope all ye who enter there and remember to take some choccy biscuits for Ceberus, artificial sweeteners please, as he is watching the diet.
I have a theory, which is mine, that The AEC does not want to pay overtime to the scribes and thus cannot start back on the counting until Tuesday. Which is, according to newspapers in Nastyralia, worse than Hitler.
Interestingly the ruling Liberal/ National arsehole party have begun to fall out with two of their biggest and best journalistic bottom wipers, Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones. Truly the end times are upon us. Mr.Jones got called a "grub" on national TV on election night by an MP and Bolt is calling for Turnbull to be made into soap, I think.
The current state of play is that the so-called Left is two seats ahead of the Rightly Right with 13 seats undecided. If those undecideds go the way that the Aust. Broadcasting Corporation predicts it will  be tied on 72 seats each and they need 76 to win. Thus the hand-rubbing with glee of the Independent MPs. Those normally go with the Right so I would expect that Australia is in for 4 more years of Scummy government. I could be wrong, I could be right (J.Lydon).
Which is kinda the point here since both major parties are pledged to continue the barbaric treatment of migrants. Yeah there was talk of Medicare being dismantled and cold showers being compulsory but in the end, same ole same ole for the most vulnerable.
It is all a bit much but will, at least, keep Mr. First Dog on the Moon in regular employment.

In vitro, in vivo The revolution's begun

A 2006 paper in Cancer, let me show you it:

See Fig 2 below. Each column contains cultures of a different line of human prostate cell -- normal (PrEC), and three less-to-more invasive lines of prostate cancer. Each row shows different samples that have been fixed and stained with monoclonal antibodies to depict the level of expression of three separate components in a novel cytokine pathway.

Clearly the plan was that Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Field would guide the proliferation of the cells as they teem and pullulate in their petri dishes, inducing the same clusters to recur until a repeating pattern formed that could be used as wallpaper. Of course you could obtain the same effect with Photoshop but that would lack the challenge.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down

This came to the notice of Retraction Watch readers thanks to a sharp-eyed pseudonymous commenter. The fourth author of the paper, Anil Potti, enjoys a kind of celebrity status at Retraction Watch on account of his aggressively lawyered-up response to questions of research probity and requests for original data.

The degree of recurrence from one cell-culture to the next is most easily dramatised by turning one panel into a photographic negative, rotating it through 180° if necessary, and superimposing it on the other with 50% transparency, so that corresponding pixels will cancel out if they are identical.

And then things escalated at RW and at PubPeer until we wound up with a colour-coded tequila hangover:

Petrie dishes (UCL Museums, London)

In each combination of panels there are sections which do not match, and do not cancel, as if the separate panels were themselves photomosaics. Thus the experiment can only be considered a partial success and the jobs of wallcovering designers remain secure! Chen &c should have borrowed the Morphogenic Field Flux Intensifier!

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

A Turnip For the Books

In response to a large number of reader's requests for more information about Turnip, the cat belonging to the uncle of James Cook Riddled is publishing extracts from the 7 volumes of the diary of  Nicholas Esquire, the uncle.
1 Jan 1730: Moar trubble wythe Turnip the Cat. Mr Thatcher did come and saye that Turnip is a devil cat and is going about Byting and Scatching peeple. He brought a mobbe of villagers wythe him and they shouted "Burn the cat!' "It is a witch" and such.
I larfed at there sillyness and threw cow pooze on them.
 Mr Thatcher sayed "This cat is evil and probably made the cobbler's sign falle on my head whenever that happyned"
The Mobbe sayed "Burn the cat" and "Boo down with thee cat" and "Don't throw pooze on us anymore, it is badde for our self esteeme"
I sayed to them "Mr Thatcher, the lady cat's notte for burning"
The crowd were silent as though expecting somethynge but nothinge happned.
Thenne Turnip appeared at a top storrye windowe and sayed. "Go home puny Humans orre I will eat yore eyes and make ratatouille with yore braynes instead of Aubergines"
The mobbe arked "What sorte of ratatouille? Provencal or Basque. because you carnt get black olives at the moment whatte wythe The War of Jenkin's Elbow."
Turnip sayed "Whatte is rong wyhte you peeple? Provencal ratatouille is awful. What the actual fuck?"
Mr Thatcher sayed "My motherre would not have a Provencal ratatouille in the hoyse. She said it was in all ways inferryorre to Basque"
The mobbe sayed "Pardonne us forre having an opinion, we wasse only saying as we findde" And went home in a grate huff.
Mr Thatcher watched them go and shook his head, "Inne, my day, a mobbe had somme staying power and woulde not go off in a huffe over a gastronomic disagreement" he sayed. Thenne he went away singing a songge about a cabinboy called Roger.
2 May 1730; A Mr Throgmorton Portcullis has been to see me about his ownership of Turnip the cat. He sayed "I wonne it in a hospital raffle and have thee tykett to prove it"
The tykett had a false dayte on it saying 2015. I sayed "You varlet, sir this is a wrong tykett"
"Noe" he sayes "Thisse is inne the future"
"Of corse" I sayye "Turnip is waitying for you behynde this door"
He steps through and thenne I hear the splash and watch him crawl out of the moat. Turnip appeers at  a crenlaytion and  shouts "Fuck offe Throgmorton!'
 Howe does shee noe his nayme? She sayes he just looks lyke a Throgmorton.
6 August 1730: A letter arryved from my idyot nefew Jaymes Cooke. I sent hym 6 pence and he says he will use it to equip 3 ships and sail South to find new lands for the Empyre. He is suchhe a dorke.
I wryte to Joseph Banks saying he should get in touche with Jaymes and go with him. I would payye 3 pounds to be ridde of themme both.

When you're a dairy farmer, everything looks like a river of poop.

The highly informed readers of "Riddled" are, of course, aware of the seasonal distress that is afflicting New Zild at the moment. Other cultures with experience of these climatic extremes might call this "summer".
New Zilinders, however, take a more nuanced view of the higher temperatures and longer sunshine hours:
City and some rural people explain slowly and carefully that this is due to climate change because, look, the climate has changed. We used to have summer from December to February and while it got hot and we had droughts sometimes it wasn't every fecking year like it is now from January to April.
Farming people say "Lawks a mercy, we have run out of water. We need more water, more cows and less blimmin' government regulations holding down the backbone of the economy which is us by the way. Also this is not a handout we are asking for just unfettered access to water"
Power companies say "Lawks a mercy, we are running out of water, we need more water and less regulation and no taxes because look we are the backbone of the economy. Also get a job losers".
The government says "Lawks a mercy, we are running out of water and need to reduce house prices in Auckland. To do this, we must change a few minor parts of the Resource Management Act and give ALL THE WATER to farmers and power companies. Also, it sucks to be you, in our opinion."
Thus, by careful consideration of the issues which surround the backbone of the New Zild economy and by listening carefully to all stakeholders in the issue on an ongoing basis in a going forward momentum situation NZ decides to give ALL THE WATER to business people.
 Who could have foreseen this outcome?
 Brave new Zild Prime Minister John Key meanwhile, bravely goes to see The UK Prime Minister , at Chequers, where he bravely tells David Cameron that "Where Britain goes, so we goes to the- that place - we'll go too, not me though" And the NZ media soberly reports it as "Kiwis join anti-Islamic coalition" bless them. They have since retracted that and renamed it the "Anti-Islamic Crusade". Because the rugby team Canterbury Crusaders have...LOOK A SQUIRREL!!

We read the latest venereal journals Flicked through some catalogues of fear

Here at Riddled we have long been warning our readers against the Shapeshifter Menace. The shapeshifters in question being the skinwalkers who set up more-or-less convincing website impersonations of on-line journals to skim off money from academics at the Derek Zoolander University for Researchers who Can't Write Good and Wanna Learn to do Other Good Stuff Too, who desperately need Publication Outputs but are devoid of anything worth publishing.

Tleilaxu facedancer

Sometimes the facedancers endow their nonce websites with a spurious past, scraping papers from elsewhere in the Interweave or synthesising them with software to create a purported publication history. The result is this mockademic puke-funnel which could not handle the stress of implantation with false memories; it has suffered an identity crisis, and cannot decide whether it is the Journal of Information System[s] Management, JESAM, Assessment of Economic, or Argumenta Oeconomica.

If the stolen ISSN code is any guide, it was intended to impersonate the existing Taylor & Francis journal Information Systems Management, and to extract publication fees from credulous contributors who expect their magna dopera to appear in that slightly more prestidigitous outlet. However, its archives are a crufty shambles; the titles of the putative previous-issue articles are stolen from the real Journal of Environmental Science & Management, while their abstracts are recycled from another scam, the identity-stolen version of the journal Sylwan. As for the text on the website, most of it hails from the real Academica Oeconomica (a mildly grifty newsletter from Wrocław University of Economics). So submitting material here requires a high degree of credulity indeed (or submitters who know perfectly well but don't care that they're consigning their manuscript to a highly-priced rubbish-bin).

The recycling of material from the Sylwan scam suggests that the same grifters are involved. Perhaps the uncertainty as to the title of this venture is because focus-group tests revealed that the acronym JISM lent itself to misunderstandings. Our advice is that they drop the 'Journal' and add 'Zetetic' to the name so they can call it ISZM. That will be $450, please.

It turns out that the emails soliciting contributions for Sylwan and for several other evil-clone identity-stolen journals -- Baltica, Bothalia, Ciência e Técnica Vitivinícola, Jokull, Kasmera, Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg, Revistas Academicas, Wulfenia --  are all sent through the MailChimp spamming service. All provide the same link:

unsubscribe from this list (http://arenaofsciences.us9.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=bbf5dac72c6b63dc9c35d3c00&id=872890027a&e=386f2031de&c=beea8fe88a) 
Science · Wilmington DE 19815 · Wilmington, DE 19815 · USA

While we're being all Scooby-Doo, here's the scammers' "Arena of Sciences"... "World's Pioneer Publishing Corporation"... and an entertaining spectacle it is, a chimera of plagiarised photography and plagiarised text, stitched together and animated by electrical current in the midst of a lightning storm.

Its Archives are minimalist, containing only eight titles about lumps of green putty which some author found in their left armpits; in a commendable display of environmental awareness, they are recycled from (again) Sylwan. Little attempt is made to entice a potential audience into paying $50 each to read these concretions of bafflegab and lucubration, with no Abstracts on offer:

after you make the payment, the username and the password to access the article will be emailed to you within 2days (48 hours)

Our ambitious skinwalkers display a level of optimistic greed that is egregious even by the standards of on-line fraud, asking $400 from authors to add an article to the green-putty collection, and warning them to expect further (open-ended) charges for "Edition costs". The explanation of why potential authors need the benefit of their superior English-language editorial skill is plagiarised.

But wait, there's more! Six more scamsites from the same shapeshifting crew!

Not Jeffrey Beall

Ultimately the grifters present them as 'portals' or 'libraries'. This places them outside the purview of Jeffrey Beall (World's Toughest Milkman Librarian) who focuses on predatory or flatly fraudulent on-line journals. Thus they are fair game for Riddled. Yay team!

Science Route Online

Leading Publishers

Of the seven sites, "Leading Publishers" seems have been cobbled together with most haste and shoddiness and least competence, but it is a close call.

Knowledge Insights

Research Pioneers

The images are scraped from different sources but the copied text is the same in each incarnation. Each site offers a prestigious publishing history of eight titles from Sylwan, and is purportedly helmed by an six-member Editorial Board of optimised diversity (two Anglosaxon-ish surnames, one French, two Eastern European and one Middle Eastern).

More crucially, all seven claim to be operations of the Mellatron Limited Partnership (registered 24/10/14, company registration SL018524).

Pioneer Scientists

Science Borders

Another Kiwi's theory is that what we see here is an experiment in the effect of environment, in the manner of a twin study, to see how much divergence is possible across a cohort of websites with the same business model and the same HTML DNA. "Nietzsche versus nurture" was how he put it.