Boing Boing

Sociologist Brooke Harrington got her Trust and Estate Planning certification in order to study the super-secretive world of the wealth managers who are in charge of hiding the $21 trillion controlled by the world's super-rich from tax authorities, feckless descendants, religious leaders, tax justice activists, kidnappers and extortionists. (more…)

Part of the economic argument for free trade deals is that they benefit workers by producing cheaper goods -- even if you lose your manufacturing job, you can buy stuff a lot cheaper with the next job you get. (more…)

Chuck Wendig (previously) celebrates the release of his latest novel Invasive with 25 extremely good pieces of advice for people trying to finish a novel. (more…)

If one of the 2,000,000 fraudulent accounts Wells Fargo opened was in your name, the US government has some advice for you. (more…)

Yesterday, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf addressed the Senate Banking Committee about his bank's years of fraud, driven by threats of firing for low-level employees if they didn't meet unrealistic sales-targets, overseen by an executive who was given a $125m retirement bonus when she quit last summer, just before the scandal broke (though the bank had known it was going on since 2011). (more…)

According to RCMP investigators, Leston Lawrence would make 210g "pucks" of gold using the mint's "dipping spoon," hide them up his butt, then pawn them for about $6,800, at the Ottawa Gold Buyers in the Westgate Shopping Centre, depositing the cheques at a Royal Bank in the same mall. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjMwGWdqHVQJohn Cleese is played by the Intex Talker, Michael Palin is played by the Dectalk Express ("Perfect Paul modified to sound more like Stephen Hawking"), and the video was made by Per Kristian Risvik, who is an evil genius. I could watch the entirety of the Python oeuvre conducted like this, and in so doing perhaps put behind me John Cleese's shameful support for Brexit. (via Kottke)

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Share this inspiring video with every kid or teen you know who dreams of space. John Streeter of NASA Television has sent us some wonderful NASA TV videos over the years. I love this new one with Vermont-born rock and roll star Grace Potter, about some of the amazing women in the history of the American space program. I hope it inspires a little girl out there to become an astronaut. (more…)

The painter Vincent Van Gogh continues to fascinate, his popularity seeming to grow every year. His creativity came at the price of much misery and madness, and led to his eventual suicide at age 37 in 1890. He had produced approximately 900 paintings but sold only one during his life—and that was to his brother. It has been speculated that he suffered from bi-polar disorder, or possibly a type of epilepsy, and was able to work between episodes of delusion.These few words do an injustice to someone who suffered so greatly while producing art in a new and unique style that has sold for as high as $82 million for a single painting.Several years ago work began on a motion picture titled Loving Vincent, which uses paintings done in the style of Van Gogh to create its visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjA6_GcBtcAThe film’s website has an entirely different trailer, which allows us to see the characters speak.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYCYdpqrkpkAnd because you should be wondering how a film in which Van Gogh’s paintings come to life to narrate his own story was made, there is a video on that very subject.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRuwVhI-MQOne could write at length about all of this, but the videos convey more than words.Something interesting, to me at any rate, is the music used during the making-of video: part of it comes from the soundtrack from the science fiction film Moon.Directed by Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie) and released in 2009, it is a painful meditation on what it means to be human. Not an easy question to answer, particularly within the context of the film. The sole actor for most of the movie is Sam Rockwell, doing gut-wrenching work in the depths of unspeakable melancholy. It’s quite wonderful and was well-reviewed. The late lamented Roger Ebert wrote, “Moon is a superior example of that threatened genre, hard science-fiction … The movie is really all about ideas. It only seems to be about emotions. How real are our emotions, anyway? How real are we?” Not getting the attention it deserved was the film’s score by Clint Mansell (he also scored Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, among others). It is his music which you can hear behind the director’s voice in the making-of video for Loving Vincent. It is perfectly chosen. Van Gogh, too, struggled with what it meant to be human.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyzlE0nDnj4

Boars, Gore, and Swords podcast's ASOIAF book club - FeastDance #7: "The Fault of Our Complexion" The Boars, Gore, and Swords book club reading of the Boiled Leather chapter order combining George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons continues with this week's "The Fault of Our Complexion." Ivan and Red covered Sansa I (AFFC) in a previous book club episode, and move on to The Kraken’s Daughter (AFFC), and Tyrion III (ADWD). They discuss their further dislike of book Tyrion, various titular line drops, and Asha/Yara Greyjoy's thirsty suitor. For their Patreon donors, they've also begun their Great British Bake Off coverage, so kick in a dollar if you like talking about cakes.To catch up on previous television seasons, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, andemail them. If you want access to extra episodes and content, you can donate to the Patreon.

In 2013, Mike Zuckerman, a self-described culture hacker, attended the White House’s National Day of Civic Hacking. Inspired by what he’d learned there, Mike returned to San Francisco and founded [freespace], an organization that focuses on sustainability and urban tactical development. In the spring of 2016, Mike went to Greece where he spent four months rehabilitating an abandoned clothing factory in the industrial sector of Thessaloniki, turning it into a humane shelter that he and his colleagues named Elpida. Unlike the official migrant camps in Greece, where refugees have little say in the day-to-day operations of the camp, Elpida put its 140 residents in charge, and the results were remarkable. Not only is Elpida much less expensive to run on a per person basis than official camps in Greece, the residents don’t suffer from boredom, restlessness, and disengagement like they do at NGO-run camps.As a pilot model, Elpida offers hope and improved living conditions for refugees in a place where no other NGO was able to provide in this kind of support.Mike has been working with Institute for the Future (where I'm on staff) as an affiliate since 2014 and recently accepted an IFTF fellowship to help uncover and study new paradigms for restoring vulnerable places and space, such as post-disaster sites, informal refugee settlements, and decaying urban neighborhoods.I spoke to Mike about his work at Elpida in August, 2016, just days after he returned from Greece.Listen to the audio podcast interview with Mike Zuckerman here. Subscribe to the IFTF podcast on iTunes | RSS | Soundcloud | Download MP3

The paradox of Iota ($8 on Amazon) is that the cards are small, but you need a decent amount of table space to play the game. You play by adding cards to a grid. There are certain rules for playing cards, depending on how their color, shape, and number matches or doesn't match the neighboring card. We enjoyed playing this game with two players and three players (you can have up to four players). Here's a review:https://youtu.be/36x1mDmEmjg

When Benjamin Franklin wanted someone to like him, he'd ask that person to do him a favor, because he noticed that people who'd done him a nice turn would rationalize this by assuming that they'd done so because they liked him, and so they'd continue to do him other favors in the future based on that affection. (more…)

Sitelock is a major player in online security; a rival, White Fir, thinks its products are subpar, and has published extensive articles explaining why White Fir's products are superior -- articles that Sitelock has targeted with fraudulent copyright claims. (more…)

Netzpolitik is an amazing German activist/journalist organization; in 2015, they braved a treason investigation by publishing Snowden docs that showed that the German intelligence services were conducting illegal surveillance and illegally collaborating with the NSA; now they've done it again, publishing a new leaked oversight report on spying at the Bad Aibling surveillance station. (more…)

The Chelsea Manning Support Network has just emailed us this latest update:1. Chelsea has written an op-ed for the Guardian explaining the painful experience of spending this whole last weekpreparing for her disciplinary board hearing.2. The disciplinary board hearing happens at 9:30 am, Thursday September22, 2016.3. Please sign the petition at FreeChelsea.com4. Please spread the word by sharing these videos by Dan Ellsberg and Michael Stipe.

The EU has ruled that Apple has to pay taxes on the billions it laundered through Ireland by pretending that an empty room with no employees was the company's "head office," a move that has enraged the Business Roundtable, which has sent a letter calling on the EU to respect the "rule of law," whose five signatories have all presided over acts of shameless lawbreaking. (more…)

Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold has been digging into purported billionaire Donald Trump's purported charity and unearths a heck of a story: Trump used $258,000 from his 'charitable' non-profit organization to settle legal problems involving his for-profit businesses. “The settlements were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses,” Fahrenthold writes.According to Fahrehthold's deep dive into Trump's dirty deals, the repugnantly racist and sexist Republican presidential nominee spent more than a quarter million dollars of funds belonging to his charitable foundation “to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses.” The reporting is based on interviews with primary sources, and a review of legal documents.From the Washington Post article, which every voter should read in full:Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the size of a flagpole.In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.The devil is in the details, and boy can you see a lot of bedevilment in these details."Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems" [washingtonpost.com]

Kyler Davies is in the seventh grade in the Coldwater Community Schools district in Coldwater, MI; his mom buys her kids (whom she fosters) some of their school supplies used at Goodwill, including Kyler's backpack, which turned out to have a knife in it. (more…)

The lovely brown hues in Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting above, titled "Liberty Leading the People," were actually pigments made from ground-up mummies from Egypt. From National Geographic:The use of mummy as a pigment most likely stemmed from an even more unusual use—as medicine. From the early medieval period, Europeans were ingesting and applying preparations of mummy to cure everything from epilepsy to stomach ailments. It's unclear whether Egyptian mummies were prized for the mistaken belief that they contained bitumen (the Arabic word for the sticky organic substance, which was also believed to have medicinal value, is mumiya), or whether Europeans believed that the preserved remains contained otherworldly powers.What is clear to researchers is that early artist pigments were derived from medicines at the time, and were commonly sold alongside them in European apothecaries. And just as mummy was waning in popularity as a medical treatment, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt at the end of the 18th century unleashed a new wave of Egyptomania across the Continent.Tourists brought entire mummies home to display in their living rooms, and mummy unwrapping parties became popular. Despite prohibitions against their removal, boatloads of mummies—both human and animal—were brought over from Egypt to serve as fuel for steam engines and fertilizer for crops, and as art supplies.By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the supply of quality mummies for pigment appears to have dried up. A 1904 ad in the Daily Mail requests one "at a suitable price," adding: "Surely a 2,000-year-old mummy of an Egyptian monarch may be used for adorning a noble fresco in Westminster Hall…without giving offence to the ghost of the departed gentlemen or his descendants.""Was This Masterpiece Painted With Ground Mummy?" (Nat Geo)

Mylan, the company with a monopoly on FDA-improved epinephrine auto-injectors ("epipens") has quintupled the price of their life-saving technology since 2004, to $600/unit (and they have the be thrown out and replaced every year); for this, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch (daughter of US senator Joe Manchin, who secured her initial job interview through political connections while he was Governor of West Virginia, moving her laterally from her gig as an aerobics instructor) received a 671% raise , bringing her compensation up to $18,931,068. (more…)

@whostheidiotnow maintains a carefully curated selection of tweets: ones where the author types the exact phrase "your an idiot." One man's automated blocklist is another's breakfast entertainment! [via @saladinahmed]

The first terabyte SD card will soon be sold by Sandisk. They were apparently first to 512GB too (don't, PNY's is cheaper), but no-one cared because that's not as arbitrarily interesting a number. No release date, no price. It'll be about $700.Hitachi sold the world's first one terabyte hard disk drive in 2007, according to Wikipedia, one sixth of which would fit in a terabyte, assuming you're just counting the plain text of articles.I wish there was an SD card format in the exact shape of tiny 3½-inch floppy disks, complete with a sliding metal hatch over the connectors and a free bootsector virus

Jeremy Leaird-Koch lovingly recreated the opening title sequence to the Netflix series Narcos, but with dogs. The result: Barkos. (more…)

I just saw Oliver Stone's Snowden. It's an excellent film, no doubt, and also an important rebuttal to ongoing efforts by propagandists to limit America's conversation to who Edward Snowden is, rather than what this whistleblower revealed. (more…)

Twitter has been struggling to attract new users and retain existing ones. In a long-awaited update for the social network, Twitter announced today that video, still images, animated GIFs, polls, and quotes will no longer apply to the 140-character limit for tweets. (more…)

Well, that's one way to re-use pizza boxes. (more…)

WARNING: The video in this post is graphic and documents a violent death.In Tulsa, Oklahoma, police have released video that shows a white police officer shooting and killing an unarmed black man. In the video, Terence Crutcher can be seen raising his hands above his head. (more…)

https://youtu.be/ZH1ObUcBuV4It would be a shame if anything happened to her. (more…)

Federal auto safety regulators today said that self-driving cars “will save time, money and lives,” but also sent a clear signal that they want the power to inspect and approve technology before it hits the highways, rather than each U.S. state setting its own safety standards.U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said on a press call today that a new federal premarket approval system "would require a lot more upfront discussion, dialogue and staffing on our part." The government's statement today is big news for Uber, Google, Apple, and other Silicon Valley firms pouring millions of R&D dollars into figuring out how to swap human drivers for smart machines, or at least allow us to share control in “semiautonomous” setups. (more…)

I spent a few days in beautiful Victoria, Canada last week. What a fantastic city! One of the highlights of my trip was spending some time with Andrew and Christina, two of the principles at Robazzo, a one-stop-shop eco design studio. They do everything from logos to large architectural installations:On the flight home, the guy sitting next to me had a small pouch in his lap. Before the plane took off, he unfolded it and blew on a valve a few times to inflate what turned out to be a travel pillow. He slept the entire time. I have a travel pillow, but it is bulky so I don't usually bring it with me. This inflatable pillow looks perfect. After looking around I think I found the one the guy was using. It's $6 if you use coupon code QZJWYQLF. I bought two (one for my wife), and the discount worked for just one pillow.

One of the wackiest, most fun movie predictions of the future came from Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future Part II. The film took 80s trends and cast them forward perfectly! I've often felt ripped off that Marty McFly's polychromatic hat and awesome light up sneakers were never part of every day fashion. While the wild predictions about 80s fashion permutations have yet to arrive, it is easy to go as Marty this year! Sadly the automatic jacket doesn't automatically adjust to fit, and the hoverboard doesn't hover, but this costumery does look great. I just love the dorky hat, I remember hating it as a kid!I would rather have Marty's Gibson ES-345.Back to the Future 2 Jacket / Marty McFly 2015 costumevia AmazonBack to the Future: Part II: Marty McFly Cap Replicavia AmazonBack to the Future 2 Light Up Shoes via AmazonBack to the Future Hoverboard - ST via Amazon

September 20th, at 2amPST, Bungie's year three update for Destiny, their massively multiplayer FPS, Rise of Iron goes live!Sporting some of the best FPS game play ever, and a huge online following, Destiny is seeing some major changes in Year 3. Private match-making in custom games is probably the most anticipated, and longly awaited community feature. Destiny: Rise of Iron appears to become a fantastic tournament platform! A new story mode focusing on the Iron Lords, a legendary band of near extinct Guardians will provide ample opportunity for Bungie to confuse the incredibly disjointed backstory even more, but will likely be AWESOME. It appears Destiny is headed back to a Close-Quaters-Combat meta and the new adventures and weapons will encourage that.https://youtu.be/7WR3eL_skCoFans are super excited! There've been lots of community made videos made, eagerly anticipating the launch, but none as much fun as "Rise Up!" by Crucible Radio's Bones. If you play Destiny, the Crucible Radio podcast is a must!

I'm much more comfortable with Adobe Illustrator than Photoshop, but I enjoyed this short video about Photoshop users talking about the powerful image editing application.For over two decades, Photoshop has been an essential part of the digital artist's toolset. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, we've taken a look back at Photoshop's history: from the rise of desktop publishing and digital photography, to the evolution of Photoshop's tool palette and its sometimes controversial but necessary role in modern photojournalism.We interview early adopters and pioneering artists such as Bert Monroy, Chris Orwig, and Douglas Kirkland, as well as the people responsible for guiding Photoshop's development: John Nack, Russell Brown, and current product manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes. Konrad Eek and Sean Adams also explain what life was like before Photoshop and how this beguiling tool has democratized design and darkroom photography.

Johannes Grenzfurthner writes, "My cinematic tour de farce through nerd culture comes to the West Coast. Upcoming Bay Area and L.A. premieres!" (more…)

Much of this wonderful video could have been shot at Cincinnati's Metro/Clubhaus where I spent the late 1980s, but it's actually from Stratus in San Diego, California. This is the first in a series of vintage Stratus videos that you can watch here.

DJ Jesse Jarnow polled a bunch of "hardcore music nerds" to get their feature wish-list for a music-centric phone for Wired; here's what I suggested: (more…)

The UK's Brexit Minister, Boris Johnson, has proposed a new immigration regime for a post-EU UK, in which the "white Commonwealth" countries (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) will have a relatively easy time migrating to the UK, while EU nationals, Africans, and post-colonial, racialised people will be excluded. (more…)

Over at Medium, BB pal Mitch Horowitz, author of the excellent Occult America and One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life, writes about how "if America loses its smiley-faced coffee mugs and ethic of better tomorrows — themes extolled by presidents ranging from Ronald Reagan ('nothing is impossible') to Barack Obama ('yes, we can') — we also risk losing a basic part of what makes our nation work." From Medium:Consider online banter. The level of invective is bottomless on Twitter, comments sections, and virtually everywhere in the perpetual open-mic night of digital culture. Americans once turned to books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) to learn how to behave appropriately in professional environments and get things done inside large organizations. (Key insight: agreeable people win.) Yet our generation is almost hostile to the lessons of civility held by the previous one.The original positive thinkers were actually a cohort of mystics, freethinkers, proto-psychologists, and religious seekers in New England in the mid-to-late 19th century. Their movement was often called New Thought, and they believed that thoughts, in some greater or lesser measure, affected health, happiness, fortunes, and relationships.Remember the oft-mocked mantra “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better”? It was a confidence-boosting formula popularized in the early 1920s by French hypnotherapist Emile Coué. Although Coué won thousands of followers, critics mocked his method for its singsong simplicity. Today he is forgotten. But placebo researchers at Harvard Medical School recently validated one of the mind theorist’s most important insights."Losing The War On Unhappiness: A Historian of “Positive Thinking” Declares Surrender — Almost"

For nearly a decade, the CIA kidnapped people from over 20 countries, held them without trial or counsel, and viciously tortured them, sometimes to death -- but the only person to serve jail time for the program is the man who blew the whistle on it, and that's thanks in part to Obama's insistence that "Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." (more…)

The Washington Post was one of the newspapers that participated in the initial Snowden disclosures; Barton Gellman won a well-deserved Pulitzer for his work on them -- but now the paper's editorial board have called on the US government to imprison Edward Snowden, making it the first paper in US history to demand the prosecution of its own source, specifically to punish him for bringing them the story they published. (more…)

Technologists have a dismal pattern: when it comes to engineering challenges ("build a global-scale comms platform") they rub their hands together with excitement; when it comes to the social challenges implied by the engineering ones ("do something about trolls") they throw their hands up and declare the problem to be too hard to solve. (more…)

Kevin Kelly and I interviewed Tim O'Reilly on the Cool Tools podcast.Our guest this week is Tim O'Reilly. He's the founder of O'Reilly Media, a company the spreads the knowledge of innovators through technology books, online services, magazines, research, and tech conferences.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes:Unix regular expressions"This is an enormous power - you can write scripts that allow you to do magic with text."Amazon Echo's Alexa"Whoever did the design work on Alexa did it brilliantly."Gan Mao Ling and Black Elderberry"If you feel like you are coming down with a cold, take these in combination. I have found it incredibly reliable in knocking out colds."Also: Astragalus Supreme as an immune system booster, and Juvenon ("I felt like it took 10 years off my life, in a good way, making me 10 years younger. I take a generic version called Anti-Aging LX")Altra Men's Instinct 3.5 Running Shoe"Running shoes with a really wide toe box. It's a bit like running barefoot inside the shoe.""These books have become part of my mental toolchest:"The Way of Life, According to Laotzu translated by Witter Bynner. "My personal religious philosophy, stressing the rightness of what is, if only we can accept it. Most people who know me have heard me quote from this book. 'Seeing as how nothing is outside the vast, wide-meshed net of heaven, who is there to say just how it is cast?'" (From Books That Have Shaped How I Think)The Meaning of Culture, John Cowper Powys“This book is a part of my regular mental toolbox. Powys makes the point that the difference between education and culture is that culture is the incorporation of music, art, literature, and philosophy not just into your library or your CV but into who you are. He talks too about the interplay of culture and life, the way that what we read can enrich what we experience, and what we experience can enrich what we read.” [via]The poetry of Wallace Stevens"Stevens is my favorite poet, and this is the most commonly available collection of his poems. His meditations on the relationship of language and reality have entranced me for more than thirty years. I keep reading the same poems, and finding more and more in them. Also someone I quote often. Special favorites are 'Sunday Morning,' 'An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,' and 'Esthetique du Mal.'" [via]Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, by Alfred Korzybski"OK, General Semantics was the 30s equivalent of pop-psychology in the 70s, but there are some great concepts there. 'The map is not the territory.' The idea is that people get stuck in concepts and don't go back to observation. My friend George Simon applied General Semantics to psychology, and gave me a grounding in how to see people and to acknowledge what I saw that is the bedrock of my personal philosophy to this day. There are many popular introductions to General Semantics on the market, and also a fun science-fiction book, A.E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A." [via]

I use TripIt for travel planning, but I'm going to give the new Google Trips a try. It stores your travel plans offline, so you don't need to have a Wi-Fi or cellular connection to find directions or access your itinerary.When I installed it, it scanned my gmail and did a great job of finding my upcoming flight, restaurant, and hotel reservations.Google Trips makes exploring the world easier by organizing your essential info in one place and making it available even offline. Get activity suggestions based on what’s nearby, customizeable day plans, and your travel reservations from Gmail. AUTOMATIC TRIP ORGANIZATIONYour travel reservations are automatically gathered from Gmail and organized into individual trips. Each trip contains day plans, things to do, food and drink suggestions, and more. BUNDLED RESERVATIONSSee your flight, hotel, rental car, and restaurant bookings in one place without having to search for them individually.DAY PLANSFor several hundred of the world’s top places, find popular day plans organized on a map that you can customize based on your interests and available time.NEARBY ATTRACTIONSFind out when you’re near popular attractions (and whether they’re open) as well as reviews and ratings from other travelers.THINGS TO DOEvery trip contains ideas for things to do automatically organized into useful categories like Top Spots and Indoors or Outdoors. For many of the world’s top places, you’ll get curated local suggestions and travel tips. OFFLINE ACCESSNo Internet? No problem. Google Trips is available offline, so you’ll always have access to your info.

On September 13, owners of HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X began contacting third-party ink vendors by the thousand, reporting that their HP printers no longer accepted third-party ink. (more…)

Wired's Emma Grey Ellis runs the numbers on HB2, the anti-transgender North Carolina law that requires bearded blokes to use the womens' bathroom because they have an F on their birth certificate. "It’s North Carolinians, most of whom don’t even support the legislation," Emma writes, "who get stuck with the bill. "Adding all that up, the total cost to North Carolinians so far from HB2 protests is slightly more than $395 million. That’s more than the GDP of Micronesia. And the bulk of it is from sporting organizations, who even five years ago would likely not have waded into political territory like this. But experts aren’t that surprised that the NBA, NCAA, and ACC have taken this step now. “They’re not out on a limb here,” Durso says. “They’re in line with their base.” The near unanimous outcry against HB2 and in support of the NCAA and ACC confirms that. Legislating discrimination has become an expensive bad habit.The sports-media business often imposes audience consensus upon local authorities. If usually a bad thing--think "taxpayers hooked into building private stadiums"--there are silver linings.

After 1954's landmark Brown v Board of Ed ruling, America's (largely racially segregated) cities began racially integrating their schools by busing black kids to white neighborhoods, a project that hit its stride at the start of the 1970s. It worked. (more…)

Few things match the delight of my dogs and myself at the sight of Floor Food. When it happens we're like "Ooo! Floor Food!" and compete to dive on it and eat it first. Sadly, The New York Times reports that the Five Second Rule—the cherished belief among some humans that it is 'safe' to eat Floor Food so long as it has been in contact with the floor for less than five seconds—has been debunked.Professor Donald W. Schaffner, a food microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said a two-year study he led concluded that no matter how fast you pick up food that falls on the floor, you will pick up bacteria with it.The findings in the report — “Is the five-second rule real?” — appeared online this month in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.They tested stainless steel, ceramic tile, wood, and carpet, with four different traditional floor foods: bread, buttered bread, watermelon and gummi bears. All resulted in the transfer of a salmonella-like bacterium.HOWEVER. They also noted that while "bacteria can contaminate instantaneously," it was also the case that "longer contact times resulted in transfer of more bacteria," so I figure we're still good.Photo: reader of the pack [CC BY-ND 2.0]