Cats are natural predators. They can’t help but hunt and stalk. This one just happens to be exceedingly bad at it.

The 8-week-old kitten in question belongs to Twitter user @_TakivaBreanna. Her baby cat has developed a habit of hiding just behind a wall whenever she knows her human is approaching and then leaping out at just the right moment to surprise her much larger prey.

That’s the apparent intent, anyway. The execution… could be better. See for yourself.

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Facebook has only just revealed its far-reaching cryptocurrency plans, but Libra is already prompting global financial institutions to take action.

Central banks are reportedly becoming more interested in the idea of creating their own digital currencies following Facebook’s Libra reveal, as evidenced by new comments from the head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 

As the bank used by central bankers. BIS is, in the words of Quartz, among the “the stodgiest of stodgy institutions.” But BIS bank head Agustín Carstens now says central banks have to take digital currency much more seriously as a result of Facebook’s move. Read more…

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Taylor Swift may be one of the most successful recording artists of all time, but even that doesn’t protect her from the terrible whims of the music industry. 

The singer posted a note on her Tumblr Sunday afternoon shortly after news broke that Scooter Braun (famous for managing Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, among others) would be purchasing her back catalog.

Big Machine Label Group, Swift’s former label and the owner of her master recordings from her 2006 self-titled debut through 2017’s reputation, was sold to Braun as part of a $300 million deal, Billboard reports.

Noting that she found out the news the same time everyone else did, Swift wrote on Tumblr, “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years,” calling out when Braun’s client, Kanye West, “organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked,” among other events. Read more…

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This year the New York City Pride March marks 50 years since the Stonewall Riot, and the parade is  bigger and more colorful than ever. As the march makes its way to Greenwich Village, one street sign in particular is popping up on social media as a symbol of 2019’s much-needed focus on inclusion in the queer community. 

It’s pure coincidence that Gay Street intersects with Christopher Street right near the Stonewall Inn — the “Gay” of Gay Street is a family name — but its location on the parade route makes it prime real estate for a statement on what pride means in 2019. Take a look:

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Google’s iMessage competitor may soon be getting an upgrade.

The company is testing Snapchat-like augmented reality effects in its Android Messages texting app, according to a new report. 

The folks at XDA Developers uncovered five unreleased AR effects in the messages app, and they’re actually pretty cool. You can see them all in the video below, but they include a fireworks effects, an angel (complete with a halo, of course), confetti, balloons, and a clever airplane animation.

At this point, it’s not clear if this is anything more than a test or when these might be more widely available. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the feature.  Read more…

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New Yorkers are famously unflappable, but a viral video of two people playing a full game of ping pong on a 6 train has New York Twitter visibly annoyed at the players. 

Author Mary Carr posted a video of the admittedly impressive subway athletes around 7:00 p.m. ET on June 29. Her video subsequently went viral, mostly because people were ticked off at the audacity of anyone who would clog up a whole subway aisle during rush hour.

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High school valedictorian Mason Bleu put the pride in Pride Month when he ended his graduation speech by coming out as bisexual. In a video that went viral on Twitter, he spoke on the importance of pride and in being proud of who he is, and quite frankly brought the house down with some real words of wisdom. 

“I’ve dodged it and ignored it because I wasn’t proud of who I am,” said Bleu in his speech. “But today I’m changing that. I’m proud to be a bisexual man.” 

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A Facebook statement from the president of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists took aim at one of Canada’s richest men in the controversy over an artist’s Trump-critical cartoons.

Canadian political cartoonist Michael de Adder, whose previous syndication reached over a million readers a week, was released from his contract to draw for newspapers in his native New Brunswick after he posted sensitive anti-Trump art on social media. 

The cartoon, which appeared on his accounts June 26th, depicts the American president standing over the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martínez and Angie Valeria, two El Salvadoran migrants who recently drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande River into Texas (as a caution, the art behind that link can be considered disturbing).  Read more…

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In January, there was much excitement around comic book writer Sina Grace, his Iceman series for Marvel Comics, and his latest creation: Shade, Marvel’s first drag queen superhero.

Much has changed since thenIceman is apparently done after five issues, Shade is now called Darkveil, and, with his Marvel work seemingly concluded, Grace has quite a bit to say about how the comics publisher operates behind the scenes, specifically with regard to a creative product that caters to audiences outside the heteronormative “standard” (if there really is such a thing, or ever was).

A little background may be in order: In 2015, an All New X-Men comic revealed that Bobby Drake, the human behind the mutant superhero Iceman, is gay. Then, two years later in 2017, Grace kicked off a solo Iceman series that further explored Bobby’s identity. Read more…

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Joe Biden has an SEO problem. 

The former vice president and current Democratic primary competitor hoping to become the party nominee has an official campaign website where he asks for donations and touts his various legislative accomplishments. There’s just one problem: that website has, for some time now, been eclipsed by a troll website lightly masquerading as a pro-Biden page. 

So reports the New York Times, which notes that “the most popular Joseph R. Biden Jr. website” over the course of “much of the last three months” has been https://joebiden.info, as opposed to the official https://joebiden.com.  Read more…

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