Arash Missaghi seemed immune from consequence. His voluminous court records show no convictions, no jail time and no successful lawsuits against him in Canada, while providing few – if any – indications why criminal charges against him were withdrawn on multiple occasions. from Businessman killed in Toronto triple shooting defrauded hundreds of victims, netted at least $100-million, records show [CW: suicide, murder, fraud]

'He was everywhere and nowhere all at once': The elaborate web of triple shooting victim Arash Missaghi [The Star; ungated] Arash Missaghi and Canada's Largest Abandoned Mansion [Freaktography] Paradise Lost [Toronto Life, 2018] Law Society of Ontario v. Mehta, 2019 ONLSTH 154 [CanLII] This post sponsored by seanmpuckett's #LinkMe

comment "LinkMe:" followed by the link and maybe a one sentence description for context. Everybody has tacit permission to turn your link into an FPP if they'd like, first come first serve, with a nod back to the original LinkFilter comment. Previously...

Per the recent MetaTalk about this, I thought I would try what I suggested and just make another LinkMe post and see what happens.

Last month a snorkeler disentangled a sperm whale from a bunch of human garbage in the ocean. Here is a video of the encounter, which seems to originate with the Instagram account globetrottingbaes. (This is a LinkMe FPP via mygothlaundry. )

Lorien, one half of globetrottingbaes, left the following comment on their Instagram post:

It's taken a couple of days to process this After a couple of big storms this past week there was a layer of plant debris and trash at the surface of the usually pristine waters here. Another boat of people had already jumped in the water to observe and photograph this majestic lady, so that when we slid in there were a few people in front of us. To be clear, there is no way the people not directly by this whale's head, like those toward the back, could see that her mouth and throat were full of organic debris and trash, but there were people in front of us who could and just proceeded to take videos. Yes, we also took videos, but we were shook. After only seconds of observing her I thought that's enough. I felt sick. I swam in front of the few people near her head. I was honestly nervous, I'd never been this close to a Sperm whale and had certainly never considered putting my hands in ones mouth. I braced myself against her and started to remove the debris. I did not know Robby had hung back and was filming. The part shown here in the video was the "easy part" as I didn't really have to put my hand super close to her teeth where she could close her jaw on my hand. Though I didn't need to be, I was still nervous, but she was super relaxed seeming and allowed me to remove the first big pieces. After this I surfaced for a breath, then immediately went back down to get the rest of the trash that was further down in her throat. Again I was a bit nervous, but she barely moved and let me reach in to remove the last of the trash. Once all was removed she seemed relaxed and hung around for a bit. As she started swimming, slowly enough for Robby and I to snorkel alongside, she rolled around multiple times, checking us both out and was quite chatty. Once she stopped we just stared at each other for a while before we all went our own ways. These moments were very special, but also heartbreaking. Caption continued in comments Update: we saw this individual yesterday and she is happy doing all the whale things, diving deep to hunt, socializing with her pod mates and just generally being whale-y awesome ☺️

I couldn't find much coverage of this from any website that wasn't just those crappy reposting clickbait websites. The Inertia, which appears to be a blog for surfing enthusiasts featuring occasional contributions from famous surfers, posted this article, and a site called Wide Open Spaces has this article which notes, "Although Lorien describes herself as helping a distressed whale, experts say you should not touch them. Costa Rica Dive & Surf, which organizes swimming adventures, explained on its website that swimming with whales and touching them can be dangerous. Besides putting yourself at risk by interacting with a wild animal, you could also spread germs to the giant mammal and even be the source of its distress." Like all their cetacean brethren, sperm whales are so amazing. Here is an hour-long doc called "Sperm Whales: Titans of the Deep," which I believe originated as a TV miniseries. (caveat, I haven't finished watching it.) Here is footage of a deep-sea sperm whale encounter from the EV Nautilus research vessel. And here's a reminder that these creatures sleep vertically!

Generate yourself a cat avatar with the Cat Avatar Generator for Generating Cat Avatars. (via JHarris' LinkMe submission)

Shelf stable, so feeding it the same username will always generate the same cat. (Not sure I could ask for anything cuter for this happy-go-lucky nobody cat.) (And...it looks like somebody doesn't want to hear what the metafilter cat has to say.)

Maj. William A. Anders, who flew on the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, the Apollo 8 "Genesis Flight" of Christmas Eve 1968, and took the color photograph "Earthrise" credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement, died on Friday morning when a small plane he was piloting alone dove into the water near Roche Harbor, Wa., northwest of Seattle. He was 90. [NY Times; ungated]

Nasa 'Earthrise' astronaut dies at 90 in plane crash [BBC] NASA Remembers Apollo 8 Astronaut Bill Anders [via] JoeZydeco's LinkMe

Hi, MetaFilter moderator here, posting an experimental thread, based on a recent suggestion by Rhaomi. Here's the idea, paraphrasing:

"Find a neat article, video, blog, etc. but don't feel up to the work of cobbling together an FPP, tags, title, and otherwise putting yourself out there? Just comment "LinkMe:" followed by the link and maybe a one sentence description for context. Everybody has tacit permission to turn your link into an FPP if they'd like, first come first serve, with a nod back to the original LinkFilter comment"

An example of the type of comment to make is inside, but don't feel bound to that exact format!

This post was made by a moderator to let members know that this is an experiment and explain the idea. Nothing is set in stone, just trying it out to see how it goes. If things move forward with this and/or the other types of posts mentioned in Rhaomi's suggestion, then the posts could certainly be made by members themselves. Edited notes/suggestions from further down in the thread: Suggestion from another moderator: "For now maybe ask the poster to flag the linkme comment they posted, and we (mods) can add some checkmark or other flair to the comment to show it's been used?" # LinkMe should not be used for self linking. # Since this is so new, if you use make a post that uses one of the links already posted in this thread, the system, after previewing your post, may say your be double post. For now, just ignore that after verifying that the link is not a major part of another post.