The January 2021 issue of Architectural Digest featured a remodeled $42 million San Francisco residence described as a Spanish Renaissance Revival palacio. Owned by a billionaire’s daughter and her husband, the home is “theatrical” and has “been described, with good reason, as the most beautiful house in America,” the luxury magazine said. Accompanying photos detailed its opulence — mirrored pilasters, walls paneled with white onyx, remarkable views of the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge. One particularly impressive image showed a two-story central courtyard with several empty pedestals off to one side. The pedestals weren’t actually empty, though: The photo had been altered. Another version, discovered by reporters on the website of the home’s architect, shows ancient Khmer sculptures resting on the same pedestals. The Cambodian government says those stone relics, depicting the heads of gods and demons, match a set that was looted years ago from one of the nation’s sacred sites. It is not known who modified the photo or for what reason, but experts interviewed for this story confirmed that the sculptures had been edited out of the magazine image.

Wreckage and oil have been found where a private Cessna plane crashed into the Baltic Sea off Latvia's coast after a mysterious flight from southern Spain. The Cessna, registered in Vienna, had been due to land in Cologne, Germany, but instead headed out into the Baltic. German businessman Peter Griesemann died - it was his private plane. German media say the other three victims were his wife, daughter and her boyfriend.

The incident occurred less than two weeks after the executive, 52, was named in a federal class-action lawsuit on allegations of federal securities fraud, insider trading, and breach of fiduciary duty, according to court documents. His death also comes just days after Bed Bath & Beyond announced it is shuttering 150 stores and slashing 20% of its corporate staff. Arnal is cited in the suit along with activist investor and GameStop chairman Ryan Cohen, who the lawsuit claims collaborated with the CFO in a "fraudulent scheme to artificially inflate the price of Bed Bath & Beyond's publicly traded stock."

Turns out that online news consumers are exposed to more opposing views, while TV news watchers rarely stray

If you thought cookie pop-ups were an annoying nuisance, just wait until you have to scan your face for some third party to “verify your age” after California’s new design code becomes law. On Friday, I wrote about the companies and organizations most likely to benefit from California’s AB 2273, the “Age Appropriate Design Code” bill that the California legislature seems eager to pass (and which they refer to as the “Kid’s Code” even though the details show it will impact everyone, and not just kids). The bill seemed to be getting very little attention, but after a few of my posts started to go viral, the backers of the bill ramped up their smear campaigns and lies — including telling me that I’m not covered by it (and when I dug in and pointed out how I am… they stopped responding). But, even if somehow Techdirt is not covered (which, frankly, would be a relief), I can still be quite concerned about how it will impact everyone else. But, the craziest of all things is that the “Age Verification Providers Association” decided to show up in the comments to defend themselves and insist that their members can do age verification in a privacy-protective manner. You just have to let them scan your face with facial recognition technology.

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of an asshole’s own actions. On August 31, the developer behind the gladiator game Domina posted patch notes that included a transphobic screed attacking trans streamer Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti. Yesterday evening, some Twitter users discovered that Domina had been removed from Steam, with a notice indicating this action had been taken “at the request of the publisher.” However, the developer confirmed that Valve chose to delist the developer from its platform.

After one of the targets of website went public with the harassment against her, Cloudflare dropped the platform that has become synonymous with online terror.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Authorities say a plane that was circling over northern Mississippi and whose pilot had threatened to crash it into the ground landed safely on Saturday. Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Twitter that the “situation has been resolved and that no one was injured.” He thanked law enforcement agencies that helped in bringing the aircraft down.

Your forecast for tomorrow includes a high chance of commandeering airships and killing god

More belt-tightening could complicate Amazon’s already fraught relations with organized labor. Earlier this year, an upstart labor union started by a fired Amazon worker won a historic victory at a company warehouse in Staten Island, New York. A federal labor official on Thursday rejected Amazon’s bid to overturn the result. Last month, workers at an Amazon facility near Albany, New York, filed a petition to hold a union election there.

Prototype designed using chemical in crustacean shells remains 99.7% efficient after about 400 hours

49 Palestinians, including 17 children, were killed during the three-day Israeli assault on Gaza from August 5–7, 2022. Read a profile of each life that was lost.

In June, police in Idaho arrested 31 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front packed into the back of a U-Haul near a Coeur d’Alene Pride event. The group had planned to riot during the LGBTQ+ celebrations, authorities said, and carried riot gear, a smoke grenade, shin guards and shields. The mass arrest not only revealed the names of members of an extremist group that had long worked to keep those hidden, it provided extremist experts with new insight into how the group is meticulously planning, financing, organizing and publicizing armed demonstrations at public events that celebrate diversity. Patriot Front’s fundraising and mobilizing efforts, those experts say, reveal a corporate-style organization that more resembles a media production company with satellite offices than a classic neo-Nazi group. “No other white supremacist group operating in the US today is able to match Patriot Front’s ability to produce media, ability to mobilize across the country, and ability to finance,” says Morgan Moon, investigative researcher with the ADL Center on Extremism. “That’s what makes them a particular concern.”

The former Democratic candidate says his fledgling third party will attract voters who disagree with one another. Lowrey: But which policies? Yang: That is one of the more interesting communications challenges for something like Forward. We’re so accustomed to something falling on a left-right political spectrum. You frame it as a centrist party, which does describe a lot of the people that are drawn to Forward. But we’re trying to set up a system where the majority will of the American people actually gets reflected in policy. Lowrey: Just to be clear, you are not defining the policy center. You’re not setting out any policies as you’re setting this party up. There isn’t a tax proposal or a health-care proposal that captures the will of the people unrepresented by the two parties. What does Forward stand for? Yang: We stand for what people want to see in their own lives, in their family’s lives, and in their own community. The principles that we are championing are free people, thriving communities, in a vibrant democracy. And it is true that people in Mississippi will pursue those things in a different way than people in California. And we think that’s great.

Nine months after arriving in the U.S. from South Korea, I watched my first college football game. I was 12 and living in a suburban house with a host family I barely knew. On a small TV in my bedroom, I watched Rutgers upset Louisville. Coach Greg Schiano got drenched in Gatorade. Thousands stormed onto the field, dressed in scarlet and white. The joy I witnessed that night was like nothing I had ever seen. From that moment, I was hooked. As I navigated a new country without my parents, as I was forced to move three times in three years across Southern California suburbia, college football on fall Saturdays was the only constant in my life. My day started at 9 a.m., through late Pac-10/Pac-12 games and sometimes Hawaii games that ended after midnight. On my morning bike rides to school, I listened to podcasts rehashing the weekend’s games. College football became my gateway to understanding my new home. College football, to me, was America at its best, wildest and funnest.

Last night, after President Biden gave a prime-time address in Philadelphia warning that America’s democracy is under threat from extremist Republicans in thrall to Donald Trump, the lead story about the speech in the New York Times quoted a historian who succinctly put it in context. “We are in a crisis in this country. There’s no doubt about it. Not just in terms of the sanctity of the vote or trusting our votes will be counted,” Allida Black, a University of Virginia academic who was among a group of experts to recently brief Biden privately on the state of US democracy, said. “We seem to attack rather than embrace responsibility and accountability.” Sadly, Black’s quote came forty-one paragraphs into a forty-four-paragraph story. Quoted much higher up (paragraph eight) was Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, who said before Biden’s speech that, actually, Democrats are the ones “dismantling Americans’ democracy.” The Times did not point out that this is false, or that McCarthy was one of 139 House Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election even after insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6. Also quoted high up (paragraph ten) was Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, who called Biden “the divider in chief” and accused him of exhibiting “disgust and hostility towards half the country.” The Times did not point out that the RNC’s official position on January 6 is that it was “legitimate political discourse.” In between, the Times characterized a more general Republican objection to Biden’s speech: that he “was maligning the 74 million people” who voted for Trump in 2020.

CNN is in flux. It has a new owner, and a new boss, who promises to remake the news channel and has told employees to be prepared for “a time of change.” Most of those changes have yet to manifest. But one of the first ones — canceling its long-running Reliable Sources show and pushing out anchor Brian Stelter — has already unsettled some CNN employees and viewers. But the bigger question floating over one of the world’s largest and most important news organizations is why it’s changing. Is it because the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, its new owner, wants an overhaul? Or is it at the behest of a conservative billionaire investor in the company who sits on its board? That billionaire is John Malone, a legend in the cable TV business and one who has deep and longstanding ties with David Zaslav, the CEO of WBD. People close to both men insist that Zaslav is remaking CNN because he wants to for both business and editorial reasons, and not because Malone has told him to. But complicating that narrative is the fact that Malone has repeatedly wished, in public, for CNN to remake itself. And his prescription happens to sync with the new CNN agenda: a plan to steer the channel away from what Malone and others call a liberal bias they say muddles opinion and news. And to shift it toward a supposedly centrist, just-the-facts bent. “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” he said. Then he suggested a model: “Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have ‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”

“Hosts Rally in Support of Affordable Housing” was at the top of Mayor Eric Adams’ schedule for Tuesday, located at the site of a highly controversial Bruckner Boulevard rezoning proposal in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx. By Tuesday morning, his appearance was quietly canceled, but he still declared support for the redevelopment, which would bring four new buildings with 349 apartment units, of which 168 would be designated affordable, including 99 units for seniors. An additional 22 units would be designated for veterans and privately subsidized, according to the development team. But Bronx residents of Community District 10 have responded with uproar against the project, branding it as a harmful upzoning that will overload their previously designated low-density community. But local opposition has been vast, with all but one member of the local Community Board 10 striking down the project and local Councilmember Marjorie Velázquez also stating she is against the project — although the City Planning Commission greenlighted the project to continue onto the City Council for consideration. Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson lent her support to the project with conditions that have not been fulfilled. “They make us seem like we’re against affordable housing and the types of people that come in, and the homeless,” said lifetime local resident Carmine Bonanno. “We’re not against that. We’re against the upzoning change, not just for here but for every block throughout the neighborhood.” He also shares concerns about affordability in the neighborhood, saying that even though his kids have good jobs he doesn’t think they’ll be able to afford to stay in the neighborhood. Fellow longtime resident Carol Brumley-McManus said she’s not convinced the proposed apartments will actually be affordable. Yet when Brendan Cheney, of NY Housing Conference, said that Throggs Neck isn’t doing its part, and every neighborhood needs affordable housing, a woman came up to the barricades and said: “No we don’t. No we don’t. I pay my taxes.”

Children’s hospitals across the U.S. are facing growing threats of violence, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens. Twitter has left up the account inspiring the attacks, despite employees voicing concerns in internal Slack channels that it’s “only a matter of time” before the posts lead to someone getting killed. The campaign is led by Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account with more than 1.3 million followers run by a former Brooklyn real estate agent named Chaya Raichik, whose posts are frequently cited by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and other right-wing media figures. After gaining a large Twitter following in the spring as she baselessly accused LGBTQ teachers of being pedophiles and “groomers,” Raichik began criticizing children’s health facilities earlier this summer, targeting a hospital in Omaha in June and another in Pittsburgh in August. The attacks resulted in a flood of online harassment and phoned-in threats at both hospitals. Next came threats against children’s hospitals in Boston and Washington, D.C., after Raichik posted tweets targeting them.

The state auditor says $70 million in federal welfare funds went to Favre, a volleyball complex and a former pro wrestler in a scandal that has rocked Mississippi.