Mein Kampf was about to enter the public domain in Germany, removing the country's preferred copyright-based method for keeping it away from readers' hearts and minds. There's no chance of them just letting it be available (as is done in the UK, US and Israel), but they didn't want to ban it outright, martyring Hitler afresh. Instead they favored what the BBC describes as "a heavily paternalistic approach": publishing a nigh-unreadable "critical edition" in the hopes that it would be too cumbersome to be popular. This not only failed, but ensured a constant stream of discussion and drama to keep it on the bestseller list.[The publishers'] director, Andreas Wirsching, declared that it would be irresponsible to hand over Mein Kampf "free of copyright and commentary", because in that case everybody could do whatever they wanted with Hitler's book. ...If anything public interest in the book was fanned unnecessarily by keeping the aura of the forbidden alive.By mid-April, Mein Kampf had managed to move to the pole position of Germany's influential Spiegel bestseller list, where it remained for several weeks.Even now it stands in 14th place, though many bookshops do not have the book on display and others only order the book on request.This renewed calls to stop being so controlling and just let Hitler's long, boring rant die in the public domain.

Illustration of a microburst The air moves in a downward motion until it hits ground level. It then spreads outward in all directions. The wind regime in a microburst is opposite to that of a tornado." srcset="http://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Microburstnasa.jpg?w=641 641w, http://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Microburstnasa.jpg?resize=300%2C232 300w, http://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Microburstnasa.jpg?resize=600%2C464 600w" sizes="(max-width: 641px) 100vw, 641px" />https://youtu.be/b_WmjWAGkLIAccording to Wikipedia, a microburst is a "small downdraft that moves in a way opposite of a tornado." This video shows a microburst causing two small glider planes to spontaneously take to the air, causing the fellows in the air traffic control tower to use naughty words. I wish I could find out more information about the incident.

In a new Tested.com video, Adam Savage celebrates the upcoming National Week of Making that the White House is hosting again this year. To kick off his week in the sort of unique way that only Adam Savage can, he has been asking his social media followers to tag pictures of their personal workspaces, the happy places where they go to create something from nothing.In the video above, he shows off a number of these wonderfully diverse shops (see a few below) and talks passionately about the joys of making and how we should all yield to the hands-on imperative.The National Week of Making kicks off on Friday and includes the second annual National Maker Faire, which will take place on Saturday and Sunday at the UDC-Van Ness campus in the District of Columbia. This is one of Maker Media's full-blown flagship events, joining the long-running Maker Faire Bay Area and World Maker Faire in New York. Unlike those events, the National Maker Faire is free to the public. You can find out more about the National Week of Making and how to get involved on the event's official website.

Last month's research report on work-hours for high-paid salaried workers from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth paints a picture of a nation where even the winners are losers. (more…)

MONSTRUM founders Ole Barslund Nielsen and Christian Jensen create imaginative story-based playgrounds in their native Denmark and around the world. A few examples below: (more…)

Ryan Holiday's Ego is the Enemy is available from Amazon.A few months ago, Chief Medicine Crow, one of the last remaining links to the Indian tribes of the wild west died at age 102. He had grown up hearing stories about George Armstrong Custer from his grandfather, who'd been a scout for the doomed general at Little Bighorn in 1876. A soldier himself in the Second World War, Medicine Crow was one of the last Crows to ever accomplish the four deeds required to be considering a war chief (command a war party, steal an enemy horse, touch an enemy without killing him and taking an enemy's weapon).He was a fascinating man, not just for what he did but also for what he represents to us now. He was, to use a phrase coined by Jason Kottke, a "human wormhole." His unusual and long live is a reminder to how connected the past and present really are. A curator at the Smithsonian described meeting Medicine Crow as "you're shaking hands with the 19th century." Which an amazing concept. A few intrepid historians on reddit recently discovered an even more amazing one, calculating that it would take a chain of just six individuals who shook hands with one another to connect Barack Obama to George Washington across the centuries (Obama ->Queen Elizabeth II -> Herbert Hoover -> William H. Taft -> Benjamin Harrison -> William Henry Harrison -> Benjamin Harrison V -> George Washington).I've become fascinated with discovering and tracking some of these reminders. For some time now, I've kept a file of them on 4x6 notecards in my house. My friends and I email these moments to each other as we find them -- some absurd (Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman may have hooked up), coincidental (Orson Welles claimed to have been in the Biograph Theater in Chicago where John Dillinger was killed by the FBI) and some that are so unbelievable that they might just blow your mind (there's a video from a 1956 CBS game show, "I've Got a Secret," with a very old guest whose secret was that he was in Ford's Theatre when Lincoln was assassinated. Appearing with him on the show? Lucille Ball.)Here in modern life, it's easy to think the past is dead and distant, until we bump up against the reality of Faulkner's admonition that it's not really even past. England's government only recently paid off debts it incurred as far back as 1720 from events like the South Sea Bubble, the Napoleonic wars, the empire's abolition of slavery, and the Irish potato famine -- meaning that for more than a decade and a half of the twenty first century there was still a direct and daily connection to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (The US is still paying pensions related to both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.)I'll share a few more wormholes before I get to my point -- because I promise there is more to this than just strange trivia. Did you know that Tom Pratt, a football coach whose team the Arizona Cardinals narrowly missed going to the Super Bowl in 2015, was also on the coaching staff for the Kansas City Chiefs in the very first Super Bowl fifty years ago? Or that there are whales alive today who were born before Melville published Moby Dick? Or the world's oldest tortoise, Jonathan, lives on an island in the Atlantic and is 183 years old? Or that President John Tyler, born in 1790, who took office just ten years after little Jonathan was born, still has living grandchildren?War is perhaps the strangest source of these anomalies. Did you know that Winston Churchill and James Bond creator Ian Fleming's father fought in the same unit in WWI? When Fleming's father was killed, Churchill wrote his obituary. General Simon Bolivar Buckner was a Confederate general in the Civil War (he surrendered to Grant at Fort Donelson). His son Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr also became a General, and he died at Okinawa some 83 years later. General MacArthur -- his father, Arthur MacArthur, Jr. -- was a Civil War hero for the Union. Stonewall Jackson had a granddaughter who lived to be 104. She died in 1991. In high school, a promising young student at the Virginia Military Institute named George Marshall petitioned the president for a military commission. Which President did the creator of the Marshall plan petition? William McKinley (just months before man's life was cut short by an assassin's bullet.) And most unbelievably, what of the fact that Robert Todd Lincoln was present as his father died of assassination, was at the train station with President James Garfield was assassinated, and was in attendance at the event in which McKinley was assassinated? Three assassinations, spread out over 40 years. Robert Todd Lincoln himself lived to be 82, dying in 1926. He could have read stories published by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He drove in a car. He talked on the telephone. He would have heard jazz music.And these are just the events of the so called modern history. We forget that woolly mammoths walked the earth while the pyramids were being built. We don't realize that Cleopatra lived closer to our time than she did to the construction of those famous pyramids that marked her kingdom. We forget that Ovid and Jesus were alive at the same time. When British workers excavated the land in Trafalgar Square to build Nelson's Column and its famous bronze lions, in the ground they found the bones of actual lions, who'd roamed that exact spot just a few thousand years before. The effect of these stories -- after the novelty wears off -- is an intense humbling. We like to think that we are special -- that we live in blessed, unprecedented times. It's this self-absorption that disconnects us from the universe we belong to. It's unthinking ego that makes us assume that because the photos of the past were in black and white, that the past itself was too. Obviously, it wasn't -- their sky was the same color as ours (in some places brighter than ours), they bled the same way we did, and their cheeks got flushed just like ours do. "Think by way of example on the times of Vespasian," wrote the wise Marcus Aurelius some 1900 years ago, "and you'll see all these things: marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming, flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die, grumbling over one's lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone... the times of Trajan, again the same... "Again the same for us now. However much we celebrate our own exceptionalism. In Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (which was a favorite of Napoleon's) there is a scene in which Werther writes to a friend about his daily trip to a small, beautiful spring. He sees the young girls coming to gather water and thinks about how many generations have been doing that -- have come and had same thoughts he is having. "When I sit there the patriarchal ways come vividly to life about me," he says, "and I see them all, the ancestral fathers, making friends and courting by the spring, I sense the benevolent spirits that watch over springs and wells. Oh, anyone who cannot share this feeling must never have refreshed himself at a cool spring after a hard day's summer walking."That's the feeling most of us miss. Even if we don't see it, it's there. The whispers and the smoke and remnants never disappear. Goethe was born in 1749, wrote his first bestseller which contained those words in 1774 before America was a country, and would live well into the 19th century (overlapping briefly with Jonathan the Tortoise). A hundred years after that, another famous German writer, Stefan Zweig, would be stunned to find that his elderly upstairs neighbor was the daughter of Goethe's doctor, who had vivid memories of meeting Goethe as a young girl. In fact, Goethe had attended her christening. Sorry, I'm getting distracted. I have too many of these wormholes and I don't know where to put them all.Back to the point, Ernest Hemingway opens The Sun Also Rises with a bible verse: "One generation passeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose." It was this passage, his editor would say that "contained all the wisdom of the ancient world." And what wisdom is that? That we all flow into each other as part of an endless stream (slavery, Louis C.K. observed is just two old ladies back to back). It seems slow and long to us because we're in it. It seems distant to us because it wasn't our problem, it wasn't us that did that terrible deed we'd like to forget. In fact, time whips by in a blur. Wounds barely have time to heal. They don't recognize the passing of generations. Because generations don't really exist. It is instead an endless parade. When I lived in New Orleans, my apartment was partitioned out of 19th century convent. When I would head uptown to write what became my first book, I'd hop on the longest continually running streetcar in the world -- some 181 years it had been traveling the same tracks. How many millions of people had ridden those same rails? Sat, even, in the same seat. Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, George Washington Cable, Edgar Degas -- could have looked out these very windows. They, along with so many others not as easily remembered -- but who lived and hustled and struggled just as I was trying to. In moments like that, one cannot help but know what Pierre Hadot has referred to as the "oceanic feeling." A sense of belonging to something larger, realizing that "human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity." And when one gets this feeling, we ask ourselves important questions about who we are and what we are doing. On the other hand, nothing draws us away from those questions like material success -- when we are always busy, stressed, put upon, distracted, reported to, relied on, apart from; when we're wealthy or told that we're important or powerful. Ego tells us that meaning comes from activity, that being the center of attention is the only way to matter. When we lack a connection to anything larger or bigger than us, it's like a piece of our soul is gone. Like we've detached ourselves from the tradition we hail from -- forgetting that we're just like the people who came before us, and we're but a brief stopover until the people just like you who will come after. The earth abideth forever, but we will come and go.History on the other hand, gives us perspective. As I said, it has the power to humble us. Specifically, these wormholes -- illustrating the "great span" as they do -- are instant humility in bite-sized pieces. It's proof that others have been here before you, generations of them, and that they can almost reach out and touch you. In those moments, we have a sense of the immensity of the world and also its smallness. Ego is impossible, because we realize, if only fleetingly, what Emerson meant when he said that "every man is a quotation from all his ancestors" or what John Muir tried to convey to us about his epic experiences in nature. Yes, we are small. We are also a piece of this great universe and a process.Baldwin wrote that "if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too." I actually think it's the reverse. If you can examine and face the connection between other lives, and other eras, only then can you begin to understand and appreciate your own. Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Ego is the Enemy and three other books. His monthly reading recommendations which go out to 50,000+ subscribers are found here.

Massachusetts is one of the few places in high-tech America where non-compete agreements are enforceable, a factor that scholars have pointed to in explaining why the state's tech industry has stayed so small relative to California, where the best workers can always move to the best companies. (more…)

A new Kaspersky report analyzes an online hacker marketplace called xDedic, where access to 70,000 hacked servers -- multiplayer game servers, billing servers, cellular/ISP servers, dating servers, betting servers, government and university servers -- in 173 countries can be bought for $6 and up. (more…)

You can type Mx instead or Mr and Ms to denote someone whose gender is unknown or nonbinary, "Latinx" is a gender-neutral and nonbinary-friendly version of Latina and Latino -- it's part of a wider trend to backforming gender neutrality into a language that assumes gender is a binary instead of a continuum. (more…)

A new study in Nature by University of Bath chemist Christopher Hendon and colleagues from various universities and coffee shops finds that cryogenic freezing of coffee beans prior to grinding them produces a more uniform grind that allows for optimal extraction. (more…)

It's fascinating to see and hear the distinctive personalities of the different sorting algorithms in this 5-minute video. My favorite is the bogo sort at the end, which sounds the best but seems to do a poor job of sortingVisualization and "audibilization" of 15 Sorting Algorithms in 6 Minutes.Sorts random shuffles of integers, with both speed and the number of items adapted to each algorithm's complexity.The algorithms are: selection sort, insertion sort, quick sort, merge sort, heap sort, radix sort (LSD), radix sort (MSD), std::sort (intro sort), std::stable_sort (adaptive merge sort), shell sort, bubble sort, cocktail shaker sort, gnome sort, bitonic sort and bogo sort (30 seconds of it).Sorting videos are popular on YouTube. I like these ones that show robotos competing to sort balls from darkest to lightest:https://youtu.be/es2T6KY45cAhttps://youtu.be/H5kAcmGOn4Q

Dental regulators in Canada are trying to stop a DIY toothmaker from selling false teeth made of craft store modeling clay. Matthew Ronald Block has been making false teeth in his apartment and selling them for $100.From CBC:According to documents filed in the case, Block came to the authorities' attention last August after boasting in a Craigslist ad of having "invented a temporary flipper type false tooth" to help his girlfriend overcome a dental abnormality."She is able to do everything she would with a normal smile like eat, kiss, sing etc," the ad said."The idea that others may be in similar situations and would benefit from my assistance has been in the back of my mind for several months."The ad, which has since disappeared, offered to sell individually fitted teeth for $100 each.

Alex Xiao's video of a flexible jellyfish-inspired LED configuration hints at the artistic possibilities for these programmable displays. (more…)

Janet Waldo, who died Saturday, voiced many iconic young women for Hanna-Barbera in her 40s and 50s, including Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop, and Josie from Josie and the Pussycats. (more…)

"Of course, you're aware of the balisong," intones the deep-voiced narrator, "... or butterfly knife."Awesome, terrifying, paranoid and goofy, Surviving Edged Weapons is a relic of another era, an age of fishhook earrings and razor blade-impregnated ballcaps, where reality itself stars Charles Bronson. Which, of course, it did. (more…)

Little-mentioned but often-said is Trump's other catchphrase: "there's something going on." It's used to insinuate a conspiracy, to trigger feelings of paranoia and fear in his audience without committing to specifics. He screwed up over the weekend and attached it to a too-concrete suggestion that President Obama was somehow involved in the Orlando nightclub massacre. In the fallout, he ended up withdrawing the Washington Post's credentials to cover his rallies and press events after the newspaper reported plainly on his remarks. So who better than them to explain that now-obvious phrase's meaning?That phrase, according to political scientists who study conspiracy theories, is characteristic of politicians who seek to exploit the psychology of suspicion and cynicism to win votes.The idea that people in positions of power or influence are conspiring to conceal sinister truths from the public can be inherently appealing, because it helps make sense of tragedy and satisfies the human need for certainty and order. Yet politicians hoping to take advantage of these tendencies must rely on vague and suggestive statements, since any specific accusation could be easily disproved."He's leaving it to the audience to piece together what he's saying," said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami, in a recent interview.

“For the first time, an instrument onboard an orbiting spacecraft has measured the methane emissions from a single, specific leaking facility on Earth's surface,” NASA announced Tuesday. (more…)

This high quality paperback reproduction of the Voynich Manuscript is lovely. You, and your guests, can take a stab at decoding this mystery!Purchased 1912 by book dealer Wilfred Voynich, this 15th century manuscript remains a mystery today. The meaning of this manuscript has puzzled codebreakers for the last century. The 240 remaining pages are available for viewing online via the Yale Rare Book and Manuscript Library, but this $40 edition gives me something to sit and enjoy without staring at a screen.The online scans are higher resolution than the print edition.The Voynich Manuscript: Full Color Photographic Edition (Paperback) via Amazon

Sweet Valley High cover illustrator James L. Mathewuse still takes commissions on his site. Imagine you or your friends rendered in glorious 80s pastels or oils! (more…)

In this episode, we take on a doomsday future: all the active volcanoes in the world erupt. At the same time. Kaboom. This is not good for us. What happens to humans and our planet? Who survives? How? Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | Patreon | RedditWe talk about the basics of a volcanic eruption, what makes something an active volcano, and all the terrible things that would happen if all 1,500 active volcanoes erupted at once. ▹▹ Full show notes

Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has juxtaposed a series of modern outdoor and indoor sculptures at the Palace of Versailles through October 30. Above: "Waterfall." (more…)

The unfamiliar track is "Heemi Lheemey," a quirky tune that Anthony Kiedis and Flea wrote when they were 15-years-old and "smoking large quantities of marijuana" in the Sierra Nevadas.(The Late Late Show via Rolling Stone)

Still rates as better than an episode of Mr. Belvedere.(Thanks, Leo!)

We all love our iPhones and iPads. But if there’s one thing about them we don't like, it's their dang charging cables. It seems like they’re barely out of the box before they’re peeling, frayed, and ultimately unusable. Replacing any Apple product - even charging cables - usually comes at a premium price. Thankfully, we're looking out for your wallet: you can pick up a pair of two-meter MFi-certified Lightning cables for only $12.99, or 77% off MSRP.These cables look and feel just like the official Apple versions, but without the price tag. These cables stand ready to handle all your syncing and charging needs, while their two meter length offers extra reach for handling those critical functions.At $12.99 for a pair, it’s worth stocking up on these Lightning cables for emergencies. Jump on this deal now, while supplies last!

In 2006, western leaders decided that Gaddafi's oil was more important than his human rights record and complicity in terrorism and lifted sanctions against Libya, creating a massive pool of cash for the country that it turned into a sovereign wealth fund whose business was aggressively courted by Goldman Sachs. (more…)

Charter is trying to buy Time-Warner for $79B, and the FCC says the merger is conditional on Charter expanding its service to compete with existing cable operators in various markets around America. (more…)

Music video: Goldfrapp performing 'Strict Machine.' Trips me out to realize this song is 13 years old. It never aged, for me, and I'm enjoying it again today. Here's a Vimeo link if you prefer.I'm dressed in white noiseU know just what I want so pleaseWonderful electric, wonderful electricWonderful electric, cover me in u

Every day for a year, Niall Brady attempted to flip a spoon over his shoulder into a coffee mug. One attempt each day, most of which he captured on video. The joy when he succeeds is palpable.

In 1925, Kentucky caver Floyd Collins was exploring a new tunnel when a falling rock caught his foot, trapping him 55 feet underground. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the desperate efforts to free Collins, whose plight became one of the first popular media sensations of the 20th century.We'll also learn how Ronald Reagan invented a baseball record and puzzle over a fatal breakfast.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

The Bellevue, Ohio Police Department reported that Ashley England, Mary Jordan, and Sammie Whaley were arrested on June 8 for assaulting a female McDonald's employee in the parking lot "because she was working too slowly when dealing with three woman and their family and friends from Sandusky Ohio." Jordan (left) and England (right) hammed it up during the mugshots. All three women have pleaded not guilty multiple charges.England was charged with assault, theft and child endangerment. Jordan was charged with assault and child endangerment. England and Jordan's child endangerment charges are due to the fact they had their children present with them and participating in the incident. Whaley was also charged with assault.

Passengers confined for two hours on a grounded Monarch Airlines were not given food, apparently because the food items had been locked away with duty free items. The passengers included young children, and some passengers tried to walk off the flight.The Independent’s economics editor Ben Chu, 36, said the situation was “idiotic” as some passengers threatened to walk off the flight.He told the Standard: “The crisps and sandwiches have been padlocked with the duty free items and because they’ve been sealed we’ve been told we can’t eat them.A Monarch Airlines spokesman told the Standard: "Due to customs law crew are not able to serve food or drinks on board whilst the aircraft was grounded at Luton airport. Customers who asked for drinks were offered tap water where available.

Real cowboy Robert Borba was in the parking lot at an Eagle Point, Oregon Wal-Mart when he heard a woman yelling that someone was riding off on her bicycle. So Borba grabbed his trusty steed Old Grey from his trailer and took off after the suspected thief. “I just roped him and the rope went down around his feet and I just rode off like I would if I’d roped a cow or something by myself...” Borba told KOBI-TV news. "Stealing ain’t right so I figured get him stopped you know?”Police arrested the suspect, Victorino Sanchez, and charged him with theft.

Justin McCrory of Nashville sold his house to Tamara Holloway, and was supposed to vacate on June 1, but he refuses to leave. When a TV news reporter when to the house to ask McCrory why he is living in a house that is no longer his, he first told her to "get off my property." When the reporter reminded him that the house was no longer his property, he warned her that she might get run over by the big pickup truck he was driving. When she continued to ask questions, he became angry and told her, "You need to learn to take orders."

With 147 day to go until election day, Trump's imagination has hardly been tested. David A. Graham at The Atlantic reports that the top Republican suggested President Obama is "involved in the Orlando shooting." Somehow!In an almost entirely unprecedented moment, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, suggested in interviews Monday morning that President Obama may have somehow been involved in Sunday’s massacre in Orlando. ...“He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands—it’s one or the other and either one is unacceptable,” Trump said on Fox News. He had already called in a statement Sunday for Obama to resign from office. Trump added on Monday:"Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind—you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on."

Look, it can’t always be about work. Sometimes, you’ve got to go outside and catch some rays. Of course, once you’re out in the great outdoors, you still need a place to sit down.The Loungr Inflatable Chair (on sale for just $69 in the Boing Boing Store) has you covered. Find a nice spot, extract and inflate the Loungr, and you’ve got a comfortable lounge chair in which to relax. The Loungr’s durable ripstop nylon protects your chair from rough surfaces, so whether you’re on sand or gravel, you’re safe from punctures.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gczT6JgPXgk&w=560&h=315]No pump or valve concerns with the Loungr: just sweep it through the air to fill it up, seal off the end, and you’re good to go. Your carrying bag even comes with a bottle opener so you can enjoy your surroundings.Grab a Loungr Inflatable Chair now, now just $69, before this offer expires. That's 22% off the MSRP for a limited time only.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) trained a neural network to recognize materials (e.g., metal grate, plants, concrete sidewalk) being hit with a drumstick, and synthesize sounds to accompany the actions. It did well enough to fool humans into thinking the sounds were real.From the abstract:Objects make distinctive sounds when they are hit or scratched. These sounds reveal aspects of an object's material properties, as well as the actions that produced them. In this paper, we propose the task of predicting what sound an object makes when struck as a way of studying physical interactions within a visual scene. We present an algorithm that synthesizes sound from silent videos of people hitting and scratching objects with a drumstick. This algorithm uses a recurrent neural network to predict sound features from videos and then produces a waveform from these features with an example-based synthesis procedure. We show that the sounds predicted by our model are realistic enough to fool participants in a "real or fake" psychophysical experiment, and that they convey significant information about material properties and physical interactions.[via]

For many years, Tenyo's clever "self-performing" magic gimmicks have been a delight to amateur magicians and a bugaboo of professionals, who sneered at them as being obvious, hackneyed and, well, gimmicky. (more…)

Dango is a personal assistant that feeds its users' messages into a deep-learning neural net to discover new expressive possibilities for emojis, GIFs and stickers, and then suggests never-seen combinations of graphic elements to your text messages that add striking nuances to them. (more…)

For many years, China watchers have written about the 50 Cent Army, contractors who are paid RMB0.50 per post to sing the praises of the government in online discussions of corruption, oppression and wrongdoing; but a new report from the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Science paints a radically different picture of Chinese networked social control. (more…)

Nicole Macintosh posts videos of adorable rodents; YouTube's kanilox added some appropriate music

New York governor Andrew Cuomo released this photo last night of 1 World Trade Center displaying the pride colors. “From Stonewall to marriage equality to protecting transgender individuals to the first-in-the nation executive action to ban conversion therapy, New York has led the way in the fight for LGBT rights. In this state, we believe that no matter your race, creed, color, gender identity or expression you have the right live your life free from persecution and prejudice."This senseless act of terror reminds us that there are those who seek to undermine these very values and the progress we have achieved. We will not let this happen. An attack on one is an attack on all. New York joins the rest of the nation in rejecting this hate, fear and extremism and stands shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT community.“Tonight, I am directing One World Trade Center to be lit the colors of the pride flag in a tribute to LGBT Americans and the lives that were lost. On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest thoughts and prayers to those affected by this horrendous tragedy.”This gesture will doubtless draw irritated sighs from the New York Times, which published a column by Frank Bruni making clear that the slaughter of 50 people at a gay nightclub by a homophobic terrorist isn't about gay people, who should accept that "this isn’t a moment for identity politics" which "could muddle the significance of the carnage."

Remember in 1988, when South Korea's military dictator created slave-labor camps and kidnapped thousands of homeless children to work in them? (more…)

In the wake of spectacular trailers for forthcoming games at the E3 trade show this weekend (I'll have trouble resisting Skyrim: Fancy Edition) this graphic, by RamsesThePigeon, burned up the 'net. The lessons apply to all forms of consumerism. Here's something similar I did about gadgets a decade ago, though for some reason it was about the marketing and supply chain side of things. Itself based on a 1902 chocolate ad.

Producer Tony Visconi insinuated that British singer Adele, whose voice has sold more than 100m records, used digital trickery to hit the hard notes. She told him to suck her dick. Then he apologized.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9m_NlXac5I

50 people were killed at an Orlando gay nightclub by a terrorist. Usually, John Oliver offers a caustic, mocking routine that details and breaks down the stupidity for his viewers' bitter amusement. But not this time.

This morning Santa Monica Police arrested James Wesley Howell, 20, of Indiana. His car was found with long rifles, magazine clips, boxes of bullets, a rifle scope, and "chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device."I was invited by my friend to the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles today and wanted to go, but couldn't, due to a Girl Scout event for my daughter. I wish I could celebrate with her, like we did when gay marriage became legal and we went down to celebrate with the people in the streets, and bonded in a way we hadn't before, as I witnessed how historic it all really was. Now, I feel the "terror" in the kind of terrorism that happened in Orlando. It is how I felt in New York on 9/11, when I was in lower Manhattan and heard the planes and watched the cloud of debris standing like a bully as I walked uptown, a testament to hate and ugliness. My terror continued in the days after, and during the confusing anthrax scares. I ended up leaving New York permanently within a month, fearful and overwhelmed. Terror took away my freedom to live where I wanted to live. Seeing that an arrest was made this morning of a heavily armed man at Santa Monica's pride parade, I know that if I went to the LA parade today, I would be afraid like I was in New York, and now I am afraid for her and others. I don't want to live like this in my country. I don't want her to live like this for a minute, ever. I don't want my daughter to ever feel this way for any reason. Terror is taking away our freedom to celebrate. It is working. That is what terrorism does. The fear of bodily harm for being what we are immediately robs us of freedom. It is felt by gay people every day, by female college students on campus, by minorities, by anyone who alters their day, their dress, or their words to avoid bodily harm for being themselves. We are not a free nation if any of us feel like this. When one of us is oppressed, it limits us all, it limits the potential of us as a nation and destroys our reputation as a symbol of freedom. How do we stand up to it? How do we stand bravely at the threat of an AR-15 automatic weapon which is legal to buy in our country? How do we support our LGBT community today and every day? I don't know. But I want to think about it long and hard today, and I want my friends to know I understand their terror and grief, and that it is not an acceptable way for anyone to live in this or any society. Already there is rhetoric that seems to blame the victims for the tragedy. You see it in the comments of news articles, and one Republican politician tweeted a bible verse suggesting that they got what they deserved, though he walked it back as coincidental. Those sickening enough to suggest that these things are deserved in some way are terrorists in our culture as much as those who holding the guns. They are the ones who fuel hatred and intolerance and make us unsafe with their rhetoric. We need to hold those who encourage hatred as accountable. It is not just an opinion to believe gays deserve to be killed, it is ignorance that incites violence--and they, too, are responsible. Anyone attending any pride event today to celebrate who they are is an exceptionally courageous and heroic person. They are facing very real, violent threats against their lives for their sexual orientation, and doing it because they refuse to be terrorized in a society that it seems to be increasingly terrifying to be yourself in. When you look at footage and photos of those parades today, remember that those people are fighting for freedom--theirs, and ultimately all of ours. WEST HOLLYWOOD: LA Times reports arrest of man armed and with explosives heading to Gay Pride Festival. https://t.co/7hyFhyt5da— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 12, 2016Developing: Evidence gathered at Santa Monica location where man was arrested with weapons before LA Pride. pic.twitter.com/6ALC08Go61— Jeff Nguyen (@jeffnguyen) June 12, 2016

The Lesser Bot is a twitterbot that is writing a machine-generated grimoire, complete with summoning runes, which is timely, given that we're entering the age of demon-haunted computers. (more…)

At least 50 are reported dead and dozens injured after a gunman took hostages at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Police killed him and described the massacre as an act of terrorism."Everyone get out and keep running," the club posted on its Facebook page during the attack, which began about 2 a.m. The BBC reports that desperate relatives gathered near the club after receiving texts and call from inside but nothing since.https://twitter.com/OrlandoPolice/status/741955142774325248https://twitter.com/OrlandoPolice/status/741952039400427520The shooter was named as Omar S. Mateen, a U.S. citizen from Port St. Lucie, Fla., reports WDBO, and the FBI are "leaning towards Islamic terrorism" as motive.A clubber earlier described a situation of chaos outside as the number of casualties became apparent."There were just bodies everywhere," Christopher Hansen said. "In the parking lot, they were tagging them - red, yellow - so they knew who to help first and who not help first. Pants down, shirts cut off, they had to find the bullets. Just blood everywhere."Some of the injured were reportedly brought to the Orlando Regional Medical Center in police pick-ups.John Mina, Orlando's Police Chief, said the attack began when a police officer stationed at the club exchanged gunfire with the assailant, who managed to enter the club and initiate a hostage situation. A SWAT team went in at about 5 a.m. to rescue the hostages and the suspect died in a shoot-out. He was said to be armed with an assault rifle and handguns , reports The Boston Herald.He was "organized and well prepared" for the attack, reports WFTV, citing a city official.An explosion reported at the scene was a controlled blast used to distract the gunman, police said. A bomb-disposal robot was sent in to inspect a vehicle, thought to be the killer's, parked by the nightclub.In an interview with NBC News, Mateen's father said he had no idea why he did it: "I apologize for what my son did. I don't know why he did it. He is dead, so I can't ask him. I wish I knew."Mateen had active security officer and firearm licenses, according to Florida records, and his family said he worked in security. Marriage records show he was married in Port St. Lucie in 2009, and a relative said he had a 3-year-old son. Mir Seddique, Mateen's father told NBC News, "this has nothing to do with religion." Seddique said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.His ex-wife told the Washington Post that he was abusive and they divorced after a few months of marriage....he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married.The ex-wife said she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him.At first, the marriage was normal, she said, but then he became abusive.“He was not a stable person,” said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”Mateen's religious beliefs have not yet been confirmed. Muslim groups denounced the attack Sunday morning."We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured," Rasha Mubarak, regional coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. "The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."Note: this post covers breaking news. The facts aren't clear and even the most reliable sources and media outlets sometimes turn out to be mistaken. I'll update with further developments; please email or comment with corrections.