A medical examiner's office has confirmed the brain is not human. Which begs the obvious question, what kind of brain is it?

Portland Parks and Recreation has denied a permit for a planned Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer rally in Delta Park on Saturday. In a statement, City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees city parks, said the rally of right-wing groups would violate social distancing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. "The described event is not compliant with Oregon Health Authority guidelines about the number of people allowed in gatherings," Fritz said in a statement, "and cannot be conducted in a manner consistent with physical distancing guidance from public health officials." The decision was first reported by The Oregonian.

Do you REALLY want to give the Police (and we know how some, not all, are not too scrupulous when it comes to citizen’s rights) access to video inside your home?

The heterosexual frontman for the Village People wants you to know the iconic song "YMCA" is not about illicit gay sex, warning he’s going to sue anyone who suggests otherwise. Victor Willis, better known as the sexy cop with one heck of a nightstick, laid down the law about the meaning of the lyrics he wrote, and he’s claiming it had nothing to do with hot guys hooking up at the local Young Men’s Christian Association. “I will sue the next media organization, or anyone else, that falsely suggests Y.M.C.A. is somehow about illicit gay sex,” Willis warned via Facebook, later adding “Get your mind out of the gutter, please!”

Gov. Mike Parson said Wednesday he and his wife, Teresa, have tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting both to isolate from the public and postpone several events, including a ceremonial bill signing in St. Louis and a widely anticipated debate with Democratic challenger Nicole Galloway. In a brief recorded statement, Parson said his wife was tested Wednesday morning after experiencing mild, coldlike symptoms; he then was tested despite not having any symptoms. A second test confirmed the first lady’s diagnosis; the governor said he was awaiting the results of a second test.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., introduced a bill Wednesday that would ban the use of camouflage uniforms by federal law enforcement following criticism during the summer that federal agents assigned to control racial protests looked like National Guard troops. “The Trump administration’s decision to deploy federal law enforcement officers outfitted in camouflage uniforms in response to those protesting the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans blurred the lines between military service members and law enforcement officers while causing even more fear and division,” Duckworth said in a statement.

To state the obvious, comic book publishing is in serious trouble, with a business model that almost literally has no future. Yet comic books are a source of intellectual property for exploitation in all sorts of popular media and have never have greater potential. So, why is this? Why do comics as a storytelling form (superhero and otherwise) have such an enormous impact on popular culture but comic book publishers are struggling to survive? Why are publishers almost universally failing to succeed at actual publishing? My basic answer is— they're pursuing the *wrong market.* And they've been doing so, with increasing desperation, since the late 1970s. Let's put aside the incredible business stupidity of depending on a single distribution method (direct sales to single-audience comic book stores). The problem is bigger: the defined audience for mainstream comics is an audience that by definition constantly shrinks.

Under McConnell, the Senate has been run according to a simple principle: Parties should use as much power as they have to achieve the outcomes they desire. This would have been impossible in past eras, when parties were weaker and individual senators stronger, when political interests were more rooted in geography and media wasn’t yet nationalized. But it is possible now, and it is a dramatic transformation of the Senate as an institution, with reverberations McConnell cannot control and that his party may come to regret. Indeed, McConnell’s single most profound effect on the Senate may be what he convinces Democrats to do in response to his machinations. ... This is the true McConnell rule: What parties have the power and authority to do, they should do. And to give him his due: It is much stranger, by the standards of most political systems, for the reverse to be the case, for senators to refuse to use their power to pursue their ideological ends on a question as important as a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. But that’s how American politics has traditionally worked.

The "Amazon Room." According to Mauricio Umansky, CEO and founder of The Agency, that's the latest amenity some high-end Hollywood homebuyers are seeking when shopping for a new estate. In a COVID-19 world, buyers are looking for a room to store the many packages that arrive, and also a spot for them to decontaminate before opening.

The problem with men — according to Twitter — is that they sneeze too loudly. They keep their private lives off social media, which is a bad thing, and they treat lines from blockbuster comedies as though they’re in-jokes among their friends, which is clearly dumb and embarrassing. They have loud keyboards, plan to move to Colorado and love the movie Step Brothers — ughhhhhhhh! And if you spot one with a dog-eared copy of Goethe’s Faust on his bookshelf, you’d be amiss to think that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s a warning sign that he’s the worst kind of guy.

Luverta Jeffrey’s son used to be on Twitter all the time. The 19-year-old was a big Kamala Harris supporter and loved discussing the then-presidential candidate online last year with fellow fans. But, after some research, he decided Harris was no longer his candidate.  “We don’t need you fags anyway,” a tweet popped up on his phone from someone identifying themselves as a member of Harris’ digital army of fans, dubbed the KHive. The loosely organized fan group is an online community of ardent Harris supporters who backed the Democratic senator from California first during her presidential run and now as Joe Biden’s pick for vice president.  Jeffrey came to her son’s defense, thinking that she was up against a few online trolls ― nothing she hasn’t seen on Twitter herself. But things quickly got ugly.  Self-identified members of the KHive started replying to and retweeting Jeffrey’s tweets about her son, Jeffrey said, which led to her getting swarmed — when anywhere from several to dozens of accounts start tweeting at or retweeting one person at the same time. They used her past tweets about being a victim of sexual assault and domestic abuse to harass her. Multiple people also told her she should try to kill herself, citing prior tweets in which she discussed having suicidal thoughts.

Right now, in almost every river in the world, some 12,000 different species of caddisfly larvae wriggle and crawl through sediment, twigs, and rocks in an attempt to build temporary aquatic cocoons. To do this, the small, slow-moving creatures excrete silk from salivary glands near their mouths which they use like mortar to stick together almost every available material into a cozy tube. A few weeks later a fully developed caddisfly emerges and almost immediately flies away. After first learning about caddisflies, self-taught (and self-professed amateur) artist Hubert Duprat had a thought. Had a caddisfly ever naturally encountered a fleck of gold in a river and used it to build a home? And then one step further: what if a caddisfly had only gold and other precious stones or jewels to work with? Trichoptères, French for the scientific name of the caddisfly, is Duprat’s answer to that question. For years the artist has been collaborating with the tiny insects, providing them small aquariums of gold, turquoise and pearls that the the larvae readily use to construct their temporary homes. Regardless of how creepy crawly you might find the insects, it’s impossible to deny the strange beauty of the final product, tiny gold sculptures held together with silk. Encountering them void of any context, one would assume they were constructed by a jeweler. Duprat currently has a solo exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania which runs through July 28th, and it should be noticed that is work with caddisflies is only one small aspect of his art practice.

Mississippi-based Dana Caldwell runs the account dayne_n_simple, and has become popular for her calming, rhythmic narrations of TikTok food-prep videos.

A crowd of onlookers shouted at President Donald Trump as he visited the casket of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lying in repose.

Unlike most of the speakers at the Trump rally at Ace Speedway on Saturday, Jesse Hursey wore a suit. His black leather shoes shone. His hair was carefully brushed back. The satiny red tie he wore over a light blue shirt flapped in the breeze. Hursey faced the racetrack stands. A crowd gathered around. “First of all, I’m a Christian,” Hursey said, his voice rising and falling with a preacher’s practiced cadence. “Second of all, I’m a Republican. And in that order.” Later the same day, Hursey drove a pickup truck through Elon, shouting “White power!”

The ride-hailing giant Lyft is bankrolling a campaign to unseat Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan in this year’s election, according to public records and interviews. On Monday, Lyft contributed $100,000 to a local political action committee set up in July by several pro-development “YIMBY” housing activists. Lyft’s donation accounts for 90% of the total funds raised by the committee so far. Under state election laws, the committee can raise and spend almost unlimited amounts of money supporting or opposing candidates, but it can’t directly coordinate with any candidate. The original name of the Lyft-financed committee, “East Bay Housing Action,” indicated it would be focused on housing issues. But its creators changed the name several times since July, eventually landing on “Committee for an Affordable East Bay supporting Derreck Johnson and opposing Rebecca Kaplan for Oakland City Council At-Large 2020.”

If you’re anything like us, you can’t get enough of the latest GM Design renderings posted to social media. We’ve already got a glimpse of GM’s innovative GMC pickup and GMC TopKick renderings, as well as a cool Chevy Impala concept. Now, we’re taking a look at this futuristic GMC Sierra HD Denali rendering.

Was this a bad year for the left? Only in the headlines — at ground level, progressives have made major gains.

'Cake Boss' star Buddy Valastro's hand was impaled in a horrific bowling accident.

At least three MTA employees secretly turned a storage room below one of the platforms at Grand Central Terminal into a private “man cave,” complete with a futon, TV, exercise equipment, a fridge and beds, the agency’s inspector general said Thursday. “Many a New Yorker has fantasized about kicking back with a cold beer in a prime piece of Manhattan…