Do you remember telling Facebook that it can access your contact numbers and use them for advertising? What about your security contact info? Probably not, but in a recent report by Gizmodo that should come as a surprise to precisely nobody, Facebook is doing just that. 

It seems like a pretty logical idea. Everybody poops, as the popular childhood book told us, and we use (animal) poop as fertilizer. So why not use your own poop as fertilizer? Well, before you drop trou in your own garden you might want to watch this video. While you can use your poo to fertilize, you need to take some precautionary steps to make sure you don’t spread disease. One thing you could do is buy a special toilet, or you could compost––if you don’t mind having a literal pile of crap in your back yard. 

Mexican authorities have claimed that Acapulco’s police force is so infested and corrupted by drug gangs that the military has been sent in to take over. Two of the police force’s commanders have been accused of murder, and the rest of the force has been stripped of all their equipment and sent off for background checks. From the article, “Last year, Acapulco had a murder rate of 103 per 100,000 residents, one of the highest in Mexico and the world.” 

The phrase “crack a joke” makes it seem as though making something funny is easy. But real humor, good humor, is anything but easy. This video walks through the steps of making a joke, from the initial attempts to write a joke to the set up and delivery to the delivery. You may not be able to make a better joke after this video, but at least you’ll understand how hard it is to make a successful joke.

Indonesia was struck by a series of powerful earthquakes on Friday, the strongest of which being a 7.5 magnitude but with aftershocks as high as 6.7. The earthquakes triggered a tsunami, which swept away homes and further disrupted the already damaged telecommunications networks in the city of Palu, the capital of the Sulawesi province. The extent of the damage is still unknown, but as you can see from this twitter video below, the tsunami was devastating. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck Indonesia. 

Patrick Soon-Shiong, billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, has said that “The short attention span we’re creating in this millennium is actually very dangerous. It’s the unintended consequences of social media.” Social media, the former surgeon says, is a “metastasis of news” that confuses people. Readers no longer know the difference between fake news, opinion news, and real news. Soon-Shiong is the latest in a series of billionaires to own media companies, including Marc Benioff and Jeff Bezos. 

San Francisco’s new transit terminal, which was supposed to be the Grand Central of West, has been shut down. Two steel support beams developed massive cracks, causing the terminal the be shut down just a month after it opened. Workers discovered the crack just before rush hour, causing commute chaos in one of San Francisco’s busiest areas. Engineers are optimistic that the crack is a minor flaw and can be easily fixed, and that it is not the result of major issues with the terminal. 

It’s difficult to command respect without being a jerk about it. There are two ends of the “commanding respect” spectrum. On the one hand, you’ve got Rambo. He’s tough, he’s fearless, and he is ready to fight. On the other hand, you’ve got Mr. Rogers. He’s gentle, he’s calm, and he’s always ready to talk. Joe Rogan is somewhere in between, perhaps a bit closer to Rambo. This video teaches you how to taper your toughness with kindness in order to command respect without losing friends. 

Starbucks has formed partnerships with coffee plantations in order to ensure fair trade, equitable hiring practices, and fair treatment among plantation workers. But a recent discovery at a Brazilian plantation has thrown Starbuck’s laudable goals into question. “But investigators have found that laborers on the farm’s coffee plantations were working under degrading conditions and living in substandard housing without sewerage or drinking water. A Ministry of Labor team inspection conducted at the site rescued 18 rural workers in conditions analogous to slavery.”

Alexey Navalny is the most outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Recently, he completed a thirty-day jail sentence for holding an unauthorized rally. As he left the jail upon completing the sentence, he was met by police and immediately rearrested for another protest violation. Navalny allegedly called for this second protest while he was in jail, and he was arrested and sentenced is unbelievable. From the article: “The harm alleged by the prosecution was that during the protest, which saw hundreds of people arrested, a police vehicle’s paintwork was scratched by demonstrators.”

And if that’s what you think of, then why on earth would colleges allow frats, you might wonder. And you wouldn’t be wrong. Students drink more and their grade point average drops when they join a frat. But frats do something useful for university: they provide a disciplinary structure that helps organize the university. Deans can pass along information, criticisms, or demands to frat leaders, who in turn can tell their people. 

Amber Guyger, the police officer who entered Botham Jean’s apartment––allegedly under the impression that it was her own––and shot him for intruding, has been fired. Her firing is not, however, related to the ongoing criminal investigations about the shooting. Instead, it follows a “very short” internal affairs investigation and a hearing. The department has cited “adverse conduct” during her arrest for manslaughter as the reason for her firing. The criminal investigation is ongoing.