Guinea pig police mascot is here to melt hearts and teach you about road safety

You’re already used to the fuzz telling you about road safety, but what about a ball of fuzz?

We’re certainly a fan of what appears to be New Zealand Police’s newest mascot, a guinea pig named Constable Elliot, who is also dressed as a cop.

SEE ALSO: Adorable cat does trust falls right into our hearts

Just look at it.

Constable Elliot turns out to be not a well-seasoned member of the force, but rather a family pet of one of the members of New Zealand Police’s media team.

“According to his human ‘mum’ he’s pampered, and loves going on trips to explore new food supplies, which is what he was doing yesterday,” according to a comment by NZ Police on its Facebook page. Read more…

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Elon Musk says we’re only 2 years from being able to nap in self-driving cars

Multi-company tech mogul Elon Musk recently laid out plans for his traffic-defeating Boring company during a talk at the TED conference, but now, we finally have the full video of his appearance. And he delivers a few more interesting comments. 

Answering a question regarding how long it will be before we can hop in our self-driving car, give it directions, and then take a nap until we’ve reached out destination, Musk says he thinks we’re about two years away.

If true, that could truly change the landscape of our cities; from how human-controlled cars operate to the number of taxi drivers who may be put out of work. Read more…

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Trump’s war on the media is straight out of a dystopian dictator’s handbook

President Donald Trump was a distracting entertainment from the moment he launched his campaign in June of 2015 — until he wasn’t.

His opening speech, in which he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and told the world he would be the best jobs president “God ever created,” was looked at as the ravings of a man whose outsized ego was too big to be anything but hilarious. 

News outlets such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC carried his run-on sentences and gesticulations seemingly every time he got behind a podiumThe Huffington Post for a time only wrote about Trump in its entertainment section. 

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk just endorsed Trump’s secretary of state pick, and it makes no sense Read more…

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Very Aussie ‘The Voice’ contestant charms judges with constant use of the word ‘flamin’

As most Australians live along the coast in urban areas, it’s not often someone as “ocker” as the guy in Crocodile Dundee comes along. But when they do, the people love it.

The Voice Australia has unearthed Sam Hale and as well as being quitessentially “Aussie,” he’s quite an impressive singer, as evidenced in his take on Shawn Mullins’ “Lullaby.”

But it seems like most of the attention was on Hale’s slang-heavy musings, which basically means he loves dropping the word “flamin'” into sentences — something only Alf Stewart from local soap opera Home and Away does, and he’s not even a real person.  Read more…

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Twitter news video will appear 24/7, thanks to Bloomberg

Twitter is now a 24/7 streaming video service, beginning with financial news. 

Bloomberg, the finance news site with a wealth of funds from terminals, has agreed to produce exclusive video content for Twitter that will play 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. 

The announcement comes just ahead of Twitter’s first-ever NewFronts, where the tech company will pitch advertisers on a slate of original programming they can advertise within for the upcoming year. 

SEE ALSO: Twitter goes Lite for developing markets

The deal also landed just after a quarterly earnings report delighted investors and analysts because of its surprise surpassing of expectations. Twitter had added 9 million monthly active users, while analysts had expected only 2 million, for example.  Read more…

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Ed Sheeran drops details about his ‘Game of Thrones’ cameo and it includes Arya

Red-headed scamp Ed Sheeran is making the rounds promoting his new album, Divide, and he seems to have let slip a little bit about his much-anticipated cameo on the upcoming season of Game of Thrones. 

SEE ALSO: Ed Sheeran walked into an Irish pub and things escalated quickly

We already know that Sheeran’s character doesn’t die, but, as The A.V. Club noted, he elaborated a bit on the role during a laid back game of beer pong with The Hits Radio’s Tom Green. 

“I just do a seen with Maise [Williams],” Sheeran reveals, “I don’t really know what I’m allowed to say.”

He adds, “I sing a song and then she [Arya] goes, ‘Oh, that’s a nice song,’ and I go, ‘It’s a new one’ and then there’s other lines.” Read more…

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WTF just happened on ‘American Gods’?

This recap contains spoilers for American Gods Season 1, episode 1, titled “The Bone Orchard.”

Shadow Moon had a hard week in the first installment of American Gods.

After being released from prison and learning that his beloved wife Laura had died (while performing a particularly ill-advised sex act on Shadow’s best friend Robbie in a moving car, as he later discovered), our brooding ex-con reluctantly agreed to work for the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday, a canny grifter with a false eye and a flair for the dramatic.

What followed was a disorienting trip into a world of myth and symbolism for Shadow and the audience. We witnessed the seductive goddess Bilquis devour a man with her lady-parts in a sex scene unlike anything else on TV; an epic bar fight between Shadow and a gigantic “leprechaun”; a talking buffalo with burning eyes haunting Shadow’s dreams; and a virtual reality beatdown that was all too real.  Read more…

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Facebook accused of targeting ‘insecure’ children and young people, report says

Facebook has apologised for reportedly allowing advertisers to target emotionally vulnerable people as young as 14, as a 23-page leaked document obtained by The Australian revealed. 

According to the news outlet, the document prepared by two top Australian Facebook executives uses algorithms to collect data (via posts, pictures, and reactions) on the emotional state of 6.4 million “high schoolers,” “tertiary students,” and “young Australians and New Zealanders … in the workforce,” indicating “moments when young people need a confidence boost.” 

In other words, data says they feel “worthless” or “insecure” and are therefore well-positioned to receive an advertiser’s message.  Read more…

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Sneaky TV contestant makes a whole nation lose the ‘circle game’

High school wouldn’t have been the same without painful memories of the circle game.

You’ll know the one: Someone tries to get you to look at something below their waist, but it turns out to their hand — with their index finger and thumb arranged into a circle — meaning you’re in store for a jab on the shoulder.

SEE ALSO: Mating kangaroos are literally blocking traffic in Australia

While most of us have grown up and forgot about it, a dude by the name of Alex Macleod who was a contestant on Millionaire Hot Seat in Australia on Apr. 10.

Just watch him get a little itchy, then slyly throw one while the camera is on him, as per a video from Brown Cardigan. Read more…

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