Boing Boing

A group of South African astronomers announced on Saturday the discovery of more than a thousand galaxies never before known to have been seen or recorded by human beings. The astronomers “were showing off the first taste of the ultimate cosmic feast of what is to come, at least as seen from this particular dusty crumb called Earth,” writes Dennis Overbye at the New York Times:[caption id="attachment_472309" align="alignnone" width="930"] Left: A patch of sky about as big as the full moon where the MeerKAT telescope discerned the radio glow of about 200 galaxies. Only a few (circled) had been previously observed; Right: A distant galaxy that is being blown up by a black hole at its center. Credit SKA South Africa[/caption]When it’s done, sometime around 2030, the Square Kilometer Array, as it is known, will be the largest telescope ever built on our planet. It will consist of thousands of radio antennas that will collectively cover a square kilometer (hence the name), spread out in mathematically intricate patterns in South Africa and Australia.The telescope is being built by an international collaboration with its headquarters at the University of Manchester in England. The first phase, to be completed in 2023, will cost 650 million euros.Astronomers estimate that it will pull some 35,000-DVDs-worth of data down from the sky every second. So much that it would take 2 million years to play on your smartphone.For now the bounty consists of the radio glow of some 1,300 distant galaxies spotted in a patch of sky about 20 times the size of the full moon, where only 70 galaxies had been counted before. Some of them are erupting in cataclysms as massive black holes in their hearts spew radioactive high-energy particles across the dark sea of space.South African Telescope Spots 1,300 Unknown Galaxies [NYT]These Frank Chu signs are fake and created with the acme.com/chumaker, but the New York Times headline reminded me of Chu's intergalactic imaginings.[caption id="attachment_472313" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption][caption id="attachment_472319" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption][caption id="attachment_472318" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption][caption id="attachment_472320" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption]

"How To Hide Anything" is Michael Connor's 1984 book about rigging secret hiding places for your contraband and even yourself. Download the book for free here at Archive.org or purchase a hardcopy from Amazon. Connor is also the author of other well-intentioned self-help books like "Sneak It Through: Smuggling Made Easier" and "The Power of Positive Revenge: A Winner's Guide to Exacting Vengeance."

For more than 50 years, Justo Gallego has spent his days building his own beautiful cathedral outside of Madrid, all by himself."When I started to build this cathedral, the word on the street was that I was crazy," Gallego says.

Approximately 350,000 people in the US are diagnosed with gonorrhea each year. According to the CDC, it may soon be untreatable. Currently, the sexually-transmitted disease, not-so-fondly known as The Clap or The Drip, is treated with two antibiotics, azithromycin and ceftriaxone. Data is currently showing a rise in gonorrhea samples that are resistant to those drugs. Companies are developing new antibiotics but could be "years away," says CDC medical epidemiologist Robert D. Kirkcaldy."We think … it’s a matter of when and not if with resistance,” he says. “This bug is so smart and can mutate so rapidly.”(Scientific American)

The copyright troll business-model: a sleazy lawyer gets copyright holders to one or more films (often, but not always, porn) to deputize them to police those rights; then the lawyer's company uses sloppy investigative techniques to accuse internet users of violating those copyrights; they use deceptive notices to get ISPs to give them contact details for those users (or to get the ISPs to pass notices on to the users); then they send "speculative invoices" to their victims, demanding money not to sue -- usually a sum that's calculated to be less than it would cost to ask a lawyer whether it's worth paying. (more…)

Lucky there are leash laws!(via Reddit)

The failed military coup in Turkey was bizarre, even (especially) by the standards of Turkish military coups (which is a surprisingly large data-set), and in the wake of the coup, 6,000 people were promptly rounded up and arrested including respected judges, powerful military leaders, prosecutors, and a whole list of others whose names seem to have been put on an enemies list long before any coup. (more…)

No matter where you place it, pointerpointer.com has a photo with someone point at your pointer.

This Ecuadorian caterpillar not only looks like a scary snake, it will also "strike" at curious creatures.

I run a website with Kevin Kelly and Claudia Lamar called Cool Tools. The three of us have started a weekly email newsletter of things (experiences, tips, entertainments) we personally use and recommend. It's called Recomendo. Here's what Kevin says about it:We'll be recommending 6 items in an extremely short email every week. Mark, myself, and Claudia — the entire staff of Cool Tools — will suggest good stuff we have personally used, consumed, or experienced. We'll try to keep each recommendations light and fast, to no more than a sentence or two. They won't be definitive reviews; rather they'll be quick recommendations. Going back again to our roots, we've named it Recomendo — which, believe it or not, was the name of this site before I renamed it Cool Tools.If you want great tools, stay on (or sign onto) the Cool Tools newsletter. To get all the other kinds of things we encounter and enjoy sharing, sign up for Recomendo here. As usual, we don't do anything with your info except send you short and sweet one-screen news once a week.

When the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act in 2015, we learned that the 2016 election would be the first in two generations without the basic protections for equal voting rights for all people. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.The Worrier's Guide to Life by Gemma CorrellAndrews McMeel Publishing2015, 112 pages, 6.5 x 8 x 0.4 inches (softcover) $11 Buy a copy on AmazonAre you an every-second second-guesser? Do pizza, sweatpants, and pugs sound like your perfect Friday night? Do you ever want to punch your brain in the face? Are you starting to feel anxious because I’m asking you so many questions? Find comfort in Gemma Correll’s new collection of comic snapshots, The Worrier’s Guide to Life. You can easily slip this slender book into your bag and bring it along to all those anxiety-producing other-people-filled situations that seem to dominate life. When faced with an overly crowded waiting room full of obviously contagious people whose germs will surely turn your sinus infection into a face plague, hide your nose in this book! If you’re forced to stomach a social gathering full of professional bloggers who couldn’t possibly look that good or be that happy in real life but ohmygod they do and they are and you haven’t showered in three days, steal away to a corner, flip open this book, and remember you’re not alone! Correll offers sketches of an anxious life, as lived by everyone from fetuses to fairytale princesses, interspersed with snippets from her ongoing series of punny visual lists. These delightfully silly sets include “Urban Birthstones,” featuring rings topped with a bit of styrofoam, a cigarette butt, or a balled-up passive-aggressive note, depending on your month, as well as “Pasta Shapes for the Depressed,” “Sexy Halloween Costumes for the Ladyeez,” and “Ye Olde Video Games.”You can get a daily fix of Gemma Correll’s illustrated insights and anxieties via her various social media streams, but it’s lovely to actually flip through her work in a real-life book rather than, or in addition to, reading it on a scrolling screen. The Worrier’s Guide to Life also makes a fabulous gift for that perfect friend who never judges you for eating all the ice cream, texting her the conversations you have with your pet, or using Google like a magic eight ball. You know, the one who gets it.– Marykate Smith Despres

MTV's Carvell Wallace offers a condensed history of white rappers. As the genre grew from art to hustle to full-fledged industry, multinational corporations began to exert increased control over its products and direction. Protecting its cultural roots against the ensuing opportunistic influx became a martyr's errand; so much so that Rakim himself felt it necessary to reframe his famous line, placing it in entirely different context on his 1990 single “In the Ghetto”: "So I collect my cash, then slide / I've got my back, my gun's on my side / It shouldn't have to be like that / I guess it ain't where you're from, it's where you're at." Rather than an open invitation for all into rap, the line is flipped into a necessary reminder of the genre’s dour beginnings. And possibly a subtle dis at what it was already becoming.Blondie's Rapture was the first rap video MTV saw fit to play. The second was a comedy song by Rodney Dangerfield, embedded above.

Retronaut posted a fabulous gallery of women railroad workers from World War II. [via]

On June 21, Joshua Lee Long's aunt was cleaning her trailer in Carlisle, Pennsylvania when she found a department store bag containing a human brain under the porch. She called the police, who interviewed Mr. Long. He admitted that he sprayed his marijuana cigarettes with the formaldehyde-based embalming fluid used to preserve the brain before smoking them. The 26-year-old was charged with abuse of a corpse and conspiracy.

r/BadCGI is my new favorite subreddit, whose inhabitants share examples of grotesque, inept, or amusingly dated computer graphic animation. Embedded here for your enjoyment is the full movie of Joshua and the Promised Land.P.S. Has anyone noticed that the cripplingly addictive game in Star Trek: The Next Generation is basically Pokemon Go, but with only one Pokemon? Right down to the quality of the graphics! Speaking of Pokemon, here's a genuinely terrifying PC version from 2000:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpf25GfbjpM

This simulation of live mobile internet stats offers a sense of scale: there are millions of concurrent Google searches, and, every minute, about half a million photos posted on WhatsApp, 3,000 smartphones sold (roughly half from Samsung and Apple), 35m messages sent on Facebook, and 40m emails opened. It is a marketing infographic, take heed, but it does conclude "Heck some people think smartphones are the gateway to transhumanism, where one day we will fully merge with machines!", which is nice.

Best orchid species ever: Telipogon diabolicus!From EurekAlert:Discovered by Dr Marta Kolanowska and Prof Dariusz Szlachetko, both affiliated with University of Gdansk, Poland, together with Dr Ramiro Medina Trejo, Colombia, the new orchid grows a stem measuring between 5.5 - 9 cm in height.With its only known habitat restricted to a single population spread across a dwarf montane forest at the border between departments Putumayo and Nariño, southern Colombia, the devilish orchid is assigned as a Critically Endangered species in the IUCN Red List.[via]

Like most other online services, Pokemon Go's are a reboot of the Book of Revelations, full of bizarre horrors, each more grotesque than the last. (more…)

Rick Santorum said pregnancy from rape is a "gift from God" and compared gay relationships to "man-on-dog" sex -- and he signed a pledge saying that African-Americans had it better during slavery. (more…)

You walk into Disney’s Haunted Mansion, and whether you’re in Orlando, Anaheim, or Tokyo, after the foyer you enter a place known as The Stretching Room. The Ghost Host intones, “Our tour begins here in this gallery where you see paintings of some of our guests as they appeared in their corruptible, mortal state. Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it your imagination, hmmm? And consider this dismaying observation: This chamber has no windows and no doors, which offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out!”And the room stretches, growing many many feet taller, the four paintings on the wall (by Imagineer Marc Davis) also stretch, revealing that the seemingly innocent pictures are actually much more devious and reveal peril at every turn for those portrayed in them.If you’re a Haunted Mansion fan then you know all this backward and forward. But how would you like to carry The Stretching Room around on a rainy day to cheer you up with a fancy new Stretching Room Umbrella? The price is $34.99 with a money back guarantee. The seller gives the details:Stretching Room Umbrella. Imagine you are in the Haunted Mansion every time you open your umbrellaMade from 100% polyester pongee waterproof fabric.Image imprinted using heat sublimation technique to prevent discoloring.Opens up to 41" span.Can be reduced to a collapsed height of 9"8 ribs made from strong fiber for extra support.Each rib consists of 3-section aluminum for flexibility and strength.Main holder made from reinforced plastic.Buy it here.

https://twitter.com/EsraD/status/754126477659111424Turkey is in the throes of an attempted military coup at the time of this post. Military officials aligned with the junta tried took over CNN Turk in Istanbul, minutes after the news network reported the death toll from Parliament, and word that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was flying back to the city after being briefly (?) sort of ousted from control. (more…)

Congress today publicly released 28 previously secret pages of its 9/11 inquiry that detail possible connections between officials in the Saudi government, and the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (more…)

The 2016 edition of the Roku streaming stick is even better than the last.I love Roku. I've replaced all my set top boxes with Roku units. I was using Roku 3 and 4's but this streaming stick is just as fast, has the same video quality and is a lot smaller/easier to deal with. Less cabling. Sporting 4 processors the Roku 3600R is every bit as fast as my set top box style Roku units. It does everything they do that I want from it. I understand games may not function as well, but that has never been something I tried on the Roku.Roku with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Plex is how my video consumption occurs these days. The YouTube app is also wonderful. Roku sports hundred, if not thousands, of custom and 3rd party channels as well. If you like international sports, or just miss programming from far away, Roku is pretty great.Roku Streaming Stick (3600R) via Amazon

In 1924, representatives of the world's leading lightbulb manufacturers formed Phoebus, a cartel that fixed the average life of an incandescent bulb at 1,000 hours, ensuring that people would have to regularly buy bulbs and keep the manufacturers in business. (more…)

Chill like you know who Number One is! At the park, on the beach, in the pool -- people will wonder if that thing really is comfortable, or if it was a gift? Get excited about the Air Hammock! Go ahead, try!This portable, durable inflatable chair is easy to take with you anywhere, and might chase down rogue agents on your prison island. The rectangular, but Rover-like chair inflates with just a few scoops of wind.Wherever you go this summer, you’ll have a place to sit. Problem SOLVED, Number Six! Save 54% on the Air Hammock now in the Boing Boing shop and get your summer started right.

“When ordering at Starbucks, people have changed their name to “Black Lives Matter” so that, when their order is up, the baristas have to yell out their new moniker,” reports Taryn Finley at Huffington Post Black Voices. (more…)

The crowdsourced database that was use to seed locations to catch Pokemon in Pokemon Go came from early augmented reality games that were played by overwhelmingly affluent (and thus, disproportionately white) people, who, in an increasingly racially segregated America, are less and less likely to venture into black neighborhoods, meaning that fewer Pokemon-catching landmarks have been tagged there. (more…)

Jan Chipchase has assembled a provocative, imaginative, excellent list of "driver behaviors in a world of autonomous mobility" that go far beyond the lazy exercise of porting the "trolley problem" to self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles, including flying drones. (more…)

In celebration of Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm released this thrilling teaser trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in theaters December 16.

Artist Dennis Cooper reports that Google shut down his website, without explanation, erasing 12 years of work.Along with his blog, Google disabled Cooper’s email address, through which most of his correspondence was conducted, he told me via Facebook message. He got no communication from Google about why it decided to kill his email address and blog.Cooper used the blog to post his fiction, research, and visual art, and as Artforum explains, it was also “a platform through which he engaged almost daily with a community of followers and fellow artists.” His latest GIF novel (as the term suggests, a novel constructed with animated GIFs) was also mostly saved to the blog.“It seems that the only option I have left is to sue Google,” Cooper told Artforum. “This will not be easy for me for the obvious reasons, but I’m not going to just give up ten years of my and others’ work without doing everything possible.”You're savvy, you know the drill. You don't have to blame the victim, a nontechnical person who had no idea how or why a data host could screw him. Just keep nagging everyone you know to keep multiple backups of everything and to be wary of becoming dependent on specific online services for reaching friends, colleagues, customers, and audiences.Even people smart to these issues still get suckered, too. For example, consider your "cloud storage". Just as susceptible to Dennis Cooper's experience, which in the coming years many of us will also enjoy.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Mann's Pictorial Dictionary and Cyclopedia Vol. 1 National Library Publications1960, 240 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches $20 and up (used) Buy a copy on AmazonWhat are the different parts of a knife called? How about the parts of a plough? Does anyone know what kind of mousetrap this is? What do Eskimo ice scrapers look like? I’ve got this chrysalis here — what kind of butterfly or moth will emerge from it? Can anyone show me the difference between a bath tap and a double flexible tube cock? How about a White Persian versus a Manx? How did the piano evolve? What kind of ship is that sailing out of the harbor?All of these questions and a ridiculously large number more are answered in Mann’s Pictoral Dictionary and Cyclopedia, 240 pages of the most miscellaneous miscellany out there. Each page poses a not-entirely-naturally-worded question at the top, then answers it with illustrations. If we believe the foreword of this 1960 edition, the original book was found in a bombed-out library in England shortly after WWII. One illustration shows a woman’s hairstyle from 1920, while another list, "To Which Country in the British Empire Does That Badge Belong?” includes Kenya and Gold Cost which, if I know my British history (note: I do not), suggests the book was published sometime between 1920-1957.I’d owned this book for several years before I realized that the pages are not random, they’re alphabetical (as long as you can figure out what category the page has been classified under, which is not always clear). This leads to delightful transitions like going from cat’s cradle games, to cattle breeds, to oak chairs, or from “What Bible Fruit is That?” to “Examples of British Game Birds.”The British dial is set to 11. “What is the Name of That Sedge? The Chief Species Growing in Britain” is a two-page spread on grasses. “What is the Meaning of Those Badges Worn by the Boy Scouts?” asks another page. “Which British Owl is That?” — it turns out that “Ten owls are found wild in England, and by means of these drawings it will be possible to identify any owl that may be seen.” Identify your raptors with confidence, Britain! It’s out of print, but used copies can be found at the link above.– Sara LorimerNote: The book reviewed here is Volume 1, but the link above has offers for both Volume 1 & 2, 240 pages each, starting at $20 for the set.

https://youtu.be/pqnzqH7FvZUThere are a of Nut Wizard videos on YouTube. People use them to pick up all kinds of spherical objects.Here's a multi-headed Nut Wizard that makes short work of 40lbs of pecans on the lawn:https://youtu.be/Dz_3F0ZW4ogHere's a fellow who uses one to pick up shell casings. True to YouTube form, he doesn't show how it works until the video is half over:https://youtu.be/Vbf8ZNY1DKw

The Royal Society, once presided over by Isaac Newton, is one of Britain's most respected learned institutions: that's why it matters so much that the organisation's new report, "Progress and research in cybersecurity," begins by demanding that government "must commit topreserving the robustness of encryption,including end-to-end encryption, andpromoting its widespread use. Encryptionis a foundational security technology thatis needed to build user trust, improvesecurity standards and fully realise thebenefits of digital systems." (more…)

French President Francois Hollande's taxpayers are delighted to spend $11,000 a month on their beloved leader's haircuts.From NPR:"I can understand the questions, I can understand that there are judgements," said [French government spokesman Stephane] Le Foll, as AFP reported. "Everyone has their hair done, don't they?"The amount Hollande pays his personal hairdresser is roughly the same as a government minister's salary, according to The New York Times. The job comes with significant responsibilities: the hairdresser is "committed to secrecy and needs to be available 24/7," France 24 reported.French citizens are showing their support for Hollande's haircut budget on Twitter:Quand on flambe l'argent du contribuable on s'attend à un minimum de résultat. #CoiffeurGate pic.twitter.com/lxY7vZLezq— Patrizio Cantello (@TheOwLisWatchin) July 13, 2016Les photos privées qui justifient le salaire du coiffeur de #Hollande sont enfin dévoilées #CoiffeurGate pic.twitter.com/6BgkpdJkkq— Sarkoziste #NS2017 (@Sarkoziste) July 13, 2016Pour la moitié du salaire proposé je veux bien m'occuper de la coiffure de François Hollande. #CoiffeurGate pic.twitter.com/GsDmHJ8Ao6— Rashmaninoff (@RasheedDaci) July 13, 2016

Newt Gingrich, the best loser in the quixotic race to be Donald Trump's pick for Vice President, has a plan to make sure America is safe: make it a federal crime to read websites sympathetic to terrorism, test suspected Muslims on their religious beliefs, and deport all those who believe in "Sharia." (more…)

One of Theresa May's first act as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was to shutter the Department for Energy and Climate Change, moving the climate change to a new entity called the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with Andrea Leadsom -- who, as Energy Minister, celebrated her first day on the job in 2015 by asking the civil service "Is climate change real?" and giving the UK coal industry a role in answering the question -- as Environment Secretary. (more…)

They put Infinite Yul on proper TV and the inevitable has happened: is has been improved. Enjoy this disco remix, courtesy of Dean Caldicott. https://twitter.com/medeanc/status/753910084430864384

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIdAgftgP5QFresno cops pulled over Dylan Noble, an unarmed 19-year-old, and shot him because he failed to comply with orders to get on the ground. Then they approached him as he lay squirming on the asphalt, and executed him with a shotgun. The pretext: his continued failure to put his hands where they could see them.California police were looking for a man in camouflage walking down the street carrying a rifle when they decided to pull over a man in a truck who was not wearing camouflage and not carrying a rifle. An unarmed man named Dylan Noble whom Fresno police shot and killed anyway.Today, after viewing body cam footage of the shooting, Noble’s family filed a claim to sue the Fresno Police Department, stating that they had no justifiable reason to shoot the 19-year-old man on June 25.Fresno's police chief, Jerry Dyer, was unable to explain to CNN why his officers killed Noble. "I do not have the answer for that today," Dyer told reporters in the central California city of 520,000 people.An internal affairs investigation will look into whether police procedures were followed and whether there were other options. A review by the district attorney will determine whether the two Fresno police officers should be criminally charged."We're shocked and appalled that the city of Fresno would continue to defend the actions of its officers," said Stuart Chandler, an attorney for Veronica Noble, Dylan's mother. "Clearly the only appropriate response is to accept responsibility and commit to changing practices of the police department."

Pete from Doctors Without Borders writes, "Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders have today launched MapSwipe, an app that enables anyone with a smartphone to map the most vulnerable communities in the world. Geo-data is vital for aid agencies responding to emergencies such as disease outbreaks and natural disasters and MapSwipe now gives everybody the ability to contribute directly to these responses. So, instead of Angry Birds or Candy Crush, you can now do something meaningful on your commute! (MSF has developed MapSwipe as part of the Missing Maps project, where thousands of volunteers assist NGOs by mapping their areas of operations on OpenStreetMap.)" (more…)

A truck crashed into a crowd of people in Nice, France, leaving an unknown number of people dead and many others injured. Authorities are calling it an act of terrorism, and treating it as an active attack. Early reports placed the number of people killed immediately at 30 or greater. (more…)

Today, Nintendo announced the NES Classic Edition, a little console loaded with 30 classic titles, including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, and Kirby's Adventure. It plugs into your TV's HDMI port and includes one NES gamepad controller. It's coming November 11 and retails for $60.Included titles:Balloon FightBubble BobbleCastlevaniaCastlevania II: Simon's QuestDonkey KongDonkey Kong Jr.Double Dragon II: The RevengeDr. MarioExcitebikeFinal FantasyGalagaGhosts'N GoblinsGradiusIce ClimberKid IcarusKirby's AdventureMario Bros.Mega Man 2MetroidNinja GaidenPac-ManPunch-Out!! Featuring Mr. DreamStarTropicsSuper CSuper Mario Bros.Super Mario Bros. 2Super Mario Bros. 3Tecmo BowlThe Legend of ZeldaZelda II: The Adventure of Link[via](Thanks, Calvin!)

Two weeks ago, pioneering futurist Alvin Toffler died. Over at Medium, my colleague Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future, reflects on Toffler's vision and why it's more important than ever for futures thinking to be a massively public endeavor. Marina writes:Disorientation. Irrationality. Malaise. These were the sensations that in 1965 famed futurist Alvin Toffler, who died two weeks ago, suggested would run rampant in the face of the “revolutionary transitions” facing our society. According to Toffler, we would all suffer from a condition not unlike the culture shock experienced by travelers to foreign countries. He called it “future shock.”“Imagine not merely an individual but an entire society — including its weakest, least intelligent, and most traditional members — suddenly transported into this new world,” Toffler wrote in a Horizon magazine article titled “The Future as a Way of Life.” “The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale.”Arguably, we are living Toffler’s future today. Many of us are in a state of shock as social media enables the rise of political figures who we could never imagine as viable presidential candidates, software eats people’s jobs (according to some), massive data leaks allow loosely organized networks of journalists to uncover stories of global crime and corruption, and surveys consistently point to the loss of trust in most institutions across the globe. We are quick to marvel at Toffler’s foresight. I would argue, however, that our “future shock” is highly unevenly distributed....We need to make futures thinking a way of life for more people outside of the enclaves like Silicon Valley, corporate boardrooms, and academic think tanks. To accomplish that, we must distribute the tools of futures thinking and futures-making more widely. Envisioning and making the future must be a massively public endeavor."The Future as a Way of Life: Alvin Toffler’s Unfinished Business"

It is all about maintaining etiquette and protocol in Scott Meyer's Master of Formalities! Watch cultures clash as two space empires come together in what feels like Downton Space Abbey.Dry humor and wry wit fill this story. House Jakabitbus is taking on the scion of its chief rival, the less steeped in fine tradition Hahn Empire, as a ward. Can Wollard, the titular Master of Formalities, hold society together? He's really not up to it.I really enjoyed Scott Meyer's Magic 2.0 series, and found this book a fun change of pace. Both are available via Kindle Unlimited.Master of Formalities by Scott Meyer via Amazon

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Death is Stupid by Anastasia HigginbothamThe Feminist Press at CUNY2016, 64 pages, 8.5 x 8.6 x 0.5 inches $13 Buy a copy on AmazonDeath is Stupid does what so many grown-ups struggle to do with their kids. It tells them the truth that they already know. In collages of illustrations and dialogue, Anastasia Higginbotham walks readers through the confusion and questions that come when someone dies. Using two concurrent narratives, one that broadly voices and validates the feelings and fears kids have around death, the other focusing on a little boy whose grandmother has died, Higginbotham masterfully draws connections for young audiences and their grown-ups. The story opens, gracefully straight-forward, “When a loved one dies people can say some stupid things.” The line stretches over the course of three pages in which the boy goes from surprised to sad as he hears, “I know exactly how you feel." "Don’t cry." "Just be grateful for the time you had with her.” We follow him through the funeral and days after, through the rituals of grief and remembrance, through the fumbling adult attempts to explain and comfort. Through his experience and the narrator’s staccato interjections (“Dying is not a punishment. But it mostly doesn’t feel fair.”), readers are given the space to explore the well-intentioned answers and advice that grown-ups pat into the palms and shoulders of the kids they love, and the ways in which those hugs and kisses can land like blows.Just as the boy tries out different ways to stay connected to his grandma while accepting her death, like caring for her garden, readers can explore suggested activities at the back of the book. Higginbotham offers templates for personalized remembering of both pets and people, simple instructions (“Read what they read. Make what they made.”), and the loveliest reflection on the power of speaking someone’s name. I know that when we are inevitably grieving a loved one’s death, I will be grateful to have this book on hand to read with my daughter.– Marykate Smith Despres

One afternoon in 1954 Ann Hodges of Alabama was napping on her couch when a meteorite the size of a software came through the ceiling, bounced off a radio and hit her in the thigh. She escaped with a giant bruise, but the meteorite inflicted much harsher damage in an unexpected way. The Air Force took the meteorite. Hodges and her husband Eugene fought to get it back, but their landlord, Birdie Guy, said the meteorite belonged to her and she sued to get it back. She settled with the Hodges, taking $500 in exchange for the rock.From National Geographic:Ann later suffered a nervous breakdown, and in 1964 she and Eugene separated. She died in 1972 at 52 of kidney failure at a Sylacaugan nursing home.Eugene suspects the meteorite and frenzy that followed had taken its toll on Ann. He said "she never did recover," according to the museum.From Slate:That rock, even at the time, was worth a fortune. To give you an idea, a second piece was found not far away by a farmer on his property. He was able to sell it and buy a new house and a car. And his piece was less than half the mass of the Hodges chunk, with less notoriety as well. Were something like that to happen today, the meteorite would sell for a lot of money.Hodges’ legal problems were so great that her mental and physical health suffered. She and her husband divorced, and she died of kidney failure in 1972 at the relatively young age of 52. It’s easy to wonder how much the event led to her decline.The meteorite now resides at the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa.

In 1998, TranDirect Holdings created this video pitching an online home banking system that ran on Nintendo's Super NES. Ah, another 16-bit dream that didn't quite become real.

In 1988 Kevin Kelly (my friend and business partner at Cool Tools) edited Signal, a book about “Communications Tools for the Information Age.” With articles about smart phones, artificial life, computer viruses, interactive literature, online databases, teleconferencing, image processing, and the “world information economy,” Signal was years ahead of its time. (In 1993 it served as the prototype for Wired, the magazine Kevin co-founded.) Signal changed the way readers thought about technology – we weren’t in a computer revolution – we were in a communications revolution. Kevin understood that people were co-evolving with technology, transforming the way we received, processed, and transmitted information, both as individuals and a society.Kevin has never stopped thinking about the implications of the communications revolution. He co-founded the first Hackers Conference in 1984, was a founding board member of the WELL (an early online service launched in 1985) and in 1990 he launched the first virtual reality conference. His first book, Out of Control, about technology’s lifelike patterns and behavior, was called “essential reading for all executives,” by Forbes. His latest book, released in June, is called The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. This clear-eyed guide explains the twelve inevitable, interrelated technological trends (including robotics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality) that are already disrupting every imaginable human activity, from the way we work, learn, and play, to the way we exist as a species. Kevin Kelly's The Inevitable is available from Amazon.In this excerpt from The Inevitable, Kevin imagines a future were people own nothing but have access to everything-- MarkIn the coming 30 years the tendency toward the dematerialized, the decentralized, the simultaneous, the platform enabled, and the cloud will continue unabated. As long as the costs of communications and computation drop due to advances in technology, these trends are inevitable. They are the result of networks of communication expanding till they are global and ubiquitous, and as the networks deepen they gradually displace matter with intelligence. This grand shift will be true no matter where in the world (whether the United States, China, or Timbuktu) they take place. The underlying mathematics and physics remain. As we increase dematerialization, decentralization, simultaneity, platforms, and the cloud—as we increase all those at once, access will continue to displace ownership. For most things in daily life, accessing will trump owning.Yet only in a science fiction world would a person own nothing at all. Most people will own some things while accessing others; the mix will differ by person. Yet the extreme scenario of a person who accesses all without any ownership is worth exploring because it reveals the stark direction technology is headed. Here is how it works.I live in a complex. Like a lot of my friends, I choose to live in the complex because of the round-the-clock services I can get. The box in my apartment is refreshed four times a day. That means I can leave my refreshables (like clothes) there and have them replenished in a few hours. The complex also has its own Node where hourly packages come in via drones, robo vans, and robo bikes from the local processing center. I tell my device what I need and then it’s in my box (at home or at work) within two hours, often sooner. The Node in the lobby also has an awesome 3-D printing fab that can print just about anything in metal, composite, and tissue. There’s also a pretty good storage room full of appliances and tools. The other day I wanted a turkey fryer; there was one in my box from the Node’s library in a hour. Of course, I don’t need to clean it after I’m done; it just goes back into the box. When my friend was visiting, he decided he wanted to cut his own hair. There were hair clippers in the box in 30 minutes. I also subscribe to a camping gear outfit. Camping gear improves so fast each year, and I use it for only a few weeks or weekends, that I much prefer to get the latest, best, pristine gear in my box. Cameras and computers are the same way. They go obsolete so fast, I prefer to subscribe to the latest, greatest ones. Like a lot of my friends, I subscribe to most of my clothes too. It’s a good deal. I can wear something different each day of the year if I want, and I just toss the clothes into the box at the end of the day. They are cleaned and redistributed, and often altered a bit to keep people guessing. They even have a great selection of vintage T-shirts that most other companies don’t have. The few special smartshirts I own are chipped-tagged so they come back to me the next day cleaned and pressed.I subscribe to several food lines. I get fresh produce directly from a farmer nearby, and a line of hot ready-to-eat meals at the door. The Node knows my schedule, my location on my commute, my preferences, so it’s really accurate in timing the delivery. When I want to cook myself, I can get any ingredient or special dish I need. My complex has an arrangement so all the ongoing food and cleaning replenishables appear a day before they are needed in the refrig or cupboard. If I was flush with cash, I’d rent a premium flat, but I got a great deal on my place in the complex because they rent it out anytime I am not there. It’s fine with me since when I return it’s cleaner than I leave it.I have never owned any music, movies, games, books, art, or realie worlds. I just subscribe to Universal Stuff. The arty pictures on my wall keep changing so I don’t take them for granted. I use a special online service that prepares my walls from my collection on Pinterest. My parents subscribe to a museum service that lends them actual historical works of art in rotation, but that is out of my range. These days I am trying out 3-D sculptures that reconfigure themselves each month so you keep noticing them. Even the toys I had as a kid growing up were from Universal. My mom used to say, “You only play with them for a few months—why own them?” So every couple of months they would go into the box and new toys would show up.Universal is so smart I usually don’t have to wait more than 30 seconds for my ride, even during surges. The car just appears because it knows my schedule and can deduce my plans from my texts, calendar, and calls. I’m trying to save money, so sometimes I’ll double or triple up with others on the way to work. There is plenty of bandwidth so we can all screen. For exercise, I subscribe to several gyms and a bicycle service. I get an up-to-date bike, tuned and cleaned and ready at my departure point. For long-haul travel I like these new personal hover drones. They are hard to get when you need them right now since they are so new, but so much more convenient than commercial jets. As long as I travel to complexes in other cities that have reciprocal services, I don’t need to pack very much since I can get everything—the same things I normally use—from the local Nodes.My father sometimes asks me if I feel untethered and irresponsible not owning anything. I tell him I feel the opposite: I feel a deep connection to the primeval. I feel like an ancient hunter-gatherer who owns nothing as he wends his way through the complexities of nature, conjuring up a tool just in time for its use and then leaving it behind as he moves on. It is the farmer who needs a barn for his accumulation. The digital native is free to race ahead and explore the unknown. Accessing rather than owning keeps me agile and fresh, ready for whatever is next.