Smell is perhaps more closely intertwined with memory than sight, sound, or any other of our senses. Indeed, scents are an incredibly important part of history and culture. That's why Cecilia Bembibre and her colleagues at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage are working to preserve certain smells for the ages. After all, smells are "the olfactory heritage of humanity," she says. ”From the BBC:But how do you capture something as intangible as a historical scent? One method involves exposing a polymer fibre to the odour, so that the smell-causing chemical compounds in the air can stick to it. Then Bembibre analyses the sample in the laboratory, dissolving the compounds stuck to the fibre, separating them and identifying them. The resulting list of chemicals is effectively a recipe for the scent.Another method separates and identifies the compounds directly from the gas sample – an approach commonly used in the perfume, food and beverages industry, as it allows volatile odour-active compounds to be identified. A third way is to use the nose itself, either by asking panels of people to describe certain smells, or by asking expert “noses”, who may be perfumers or scent designers. “We characterise the smell from the human point of view,” adds Bembibre. “This is important because if we want to preserve it for the future, it depends on many factors. Not only the chemical composition but also our experience.”Bembibre has chemically extracted the smells of old leather gloves, ancient books and mouldBembibre has chemically extracted the smells of old leather gloves, ancient books and mould, among other things. Read the rest

On January 13, 1979, Bauhaus (then called Bauhaus 1919) played their second live gig, at the Romany Pub in their hometown of Northampton, England. YouTube user Halfman Halftripod documented the performance and has just posted it with annotations. From Post-Punk:For this gig, one of their earliest (the second in fact), the band played a 30 minute set at The Romany pub in Northampton performing songs like the prototype for “Largartija Nick”—”Bite My Hip”, plus “Screen Kiss”, “Lovelife”, and more.The band were apparently not paid for this gig because “the punters did not buy enough pints”, and payment was instead negotiated via “a free lesson in martial arts”. Read the rest

Animal handlers in Australia played a fabulous prank on a Scottish reporter visiting to cover the bush fires there: a meeting with a terrifying, dangerous drop bear.""F*ckin' Aussies!" - Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park tricks Scottish reporter into handling dangerous 'drop bear'. Read the rest

Drones are fairly ubiquitous these days. It doesn't take much to get a piece of plastic off the ground — and, as our smartphones have proven, decent cameras don't have to take up space. Attach one, and voila! You've got some fun, if shaky, footage.The DJI Mavic 2 Pro Drone is a whole other ballgame. This piece of technology shows that the line between consumer tech and professional-grade movie-making equipment is growing thinner every day.If you ever wanted to know what's available at the high end of the drone market, the Mavic 2 hits all the marks. Where to start?First and foremost, there's the camera. It's Hasselblad L12-20c with an adjustable-aperture lens, capable of taking 20 MP photos. The range is impressive, thanks to the 10-bit Dlog-M color profile that begs to be used for sweeping, panoramic vistas. But even on foggy nights or in low light, the CMOS sensor compensates to deliver crisp images back to the viewer.Those viewing options are just as impressive. You can watch the footage from your smartphone or fly along virtually in DJI goggles. With low latency transmission, it'll be just like you're in the very tiny cockpit.Speaking of portability, the unit is 8.4" H x 3.6" L x 3.3" W when fully deployed, but it folds up to a fraction of that when dormant. The low-noise propellers make it fly like a whisper, and sensors on all sides of the drone can actively scan for obstacles and compensate in flight for remarkable maneuverability. Read the rest

I've been writing about the Aeropress coffee maker for years, an ingenious, compact, low-cost way of brewing outstanding coffee with vastly less fuss and variation than any other method. For a decade, I've kept an Aeropress in my travel bag, even adding a collapsible silicone kettle for those hotel rooms lacking even a standard coffee-maker to heat water with.

Emily Stewart's private equity explainer for Vox is a great explainer on how the PE con works: buy up businesses, load them with debt, sell off their assets, slash their costs, then walk away as the house burns, leaving society to put out the fire -- all while enjoying special tax status on your gains.It's a great companion-piece to Matt Stoller's "Why Private Equity Should Not Exist." Stewart's got a delicious opener, though: she notes that in 2010, Doug Lowenstein -- the top US private equity lobbyist -- wrote a letter complaining about a PBS special on the problems of PE, touting Toys R Us as PE success story.But by 2017, the private equity looters who took over Toys R Us had looted the company into ruin, paying themselves hundreds of millions in bonuses, stealing their workers' pensions and severance, and leaving their workers' private data sitting behind in ruined stores for anyone to find and steal.To explain leveraged buyouts in easier-to-understand terms, let’s say you buy a house. Under normal circumstances, if you can’t pay for the mortgage, you would be in trouble. But by the LBO rules, you’re only responsible for a portion. If you pay for 30 percent of the house, the other 70 percent of the asking price is debt placed on the house. The house owes that money to the bank or creditor who lent it, not you. Of course, a house can’t owe money. But under the private equity model, it does, and its assets — its factories, stores, equipment, etc. Read the rest

Cartoonists Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg take a page-by-page look at the upcoming Fantagraphics book, Original Art: Daniel Clowes. It measures a whopping 17 x 24 inches and has photos of Clowe's original art pages. I can't wait to get this book. You can pre-order a copy here. Read the rest

Six months ago, Propublica began beating the drum about "Free File," a bizarre, corrupt arrangement between the IRS and the country's largest tax-prep firms that ended up costing the poorest people in America millions and millions of dollars, every single year.The scam is one of those baroque, ultimately boring and complex stories that generally dies in the public imagination despite its urgency, because "boring and urgent" is the place where the worst people can do the worst things with the least consequences. With that warning, here's a short summary: in most wealthy countries, the tax authority fills out your tax return for you, using the information your employer already has to file every time it pays your wages. If all the numbers look right to you, you just sign the bottom of the form and send it back, without paying a tax preparer. If, on the other hand, you want to claim extra deductions, or if something complicated is going on with your finances, you can throw away that free tax return and fill in a form from scratch, either on your own or with the help of a professional.When Americans asked to have the same courtesy extended to them -- a move that would save the vast majority of Americans millions and millions of dollars they were currently paying to the likes of HR Block and Intuit/Turbotax, every single year of their entire working lives -- the tax-prep industry mobilized to kill the proposal. The industry (which is highly concentrated and dominated by a small handful of firms whose top execs have mostly done time in all their competitors' board rooms, making them into essentially one giant company whose different divisions have different shareholders) lobbied the IRS very hard, and won a resounding victory. Read the rest

Cliff Stoll (previously) is a computing legend: his 1989 book The Cuckoo's Egg tells the story of how he was drafted to help run Lawrence Berkeley Lab's computers (he was a physicist who knew a lot about Unix systems), and then discovered a $0.75 billing discrepancy that set him on the trail of East German hackers working for the Soviet Union, using his servers as a staging point to infiltrate US military networks.The book is superbly written and fascinating, and it inspired a generation of cybersecurity practitioners (I referenced it in my 2008 novella The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away). Stoll himself is charming and curmudgeonly, the author of early tech-skeptic titles like 1995's Silicon Snake Oil, and he is the proprietor of the Acme Klein Bottle company, which sells the hand-blown Klein bottles (basically a Mobius Strip extruded into the third dimension) that he makes (he also makes ones you can drink out of, called "Klein Steins"). I've given Acme Klein Bottles to friends and family as gifts and they're always well-received.I had the enormous pleasure of meeting Stoll this year at Atlseccon in Halifax, and he was every bit as funny and interesting in person as you could have asked for. Writing in Wired, Andy Greenberg offers a candid, personal profile of Stoll at his home in Oakland, whose cellar is filled with boxes of Klein bottles that Stoll retrieves with a homemade robotic fork-lift. Stoll's work in the Cuckoo's Egg affair presaged many of the common tools used by security pros today, like the ubiquitous "intrusion detection system," as well as "honeypots." Read the rest

Here's what's happened: first, ICANN (the legendarily opaque US corporation that runs the internet's Domain Name System) approved a change in pricing for .ORG domains, run by the nonprofit Internet Society (ISOC) through its Public Interest Registry (PIR), allowing the registry to raise prices. The change was done entirely by staff, without board approval.Next, several of the people involved in that decision migrate from ICANN to ISOC or to a brand-new private equity fund called Ethos Capital, whose major investors are three families of Republican billionaires: the Romneys, the Perots and the Johnsons.Ethos then buys the Public Interest Registry from ISOC for a little over a billion dollars -- about a billion dollars less than it's likely worth -- and makes a nonbinding pledge to limit its price increases to 10%, compounded annually (!!) and starts a PR campaign to argue that this is very reasonable (however, none of the defenders of this practice are willing to refinance their mortgages on these "reasonable" terms, nor to offer bonds for sale at that rate). They buy the top Google Adwords for search terms related to the sale, and hire one of the most expensive PR firms in the business to run interference for them.But despite this charm offensive, the opposition continues to mount. EFF and a bunch of other nonprofits point out that selling .ORG to private equity looters will put these shadowy power-brokers in a position to censor some of the world's leading human rights and nonprofit organizations by taking away their domain names (domain names have become a central nexus of censorship efforts). Read the rest

Throw some salt over your shoulder and enjoy this 1977 Encyclopedia Britannica short documentary, The Occult: Mysteries Of The Supernatural, hosted by Christopher Lee who famously starred as Dracula in a string of British horror films of the 1950s and 1960s. ESP, Kirlian photography, black magic, telekinesis... Oh, how I miss this particular strain of high weirdness media that was so prevalent in the 1970s.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

The good news: Software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Camtasia and Final Cut Pro has opened up a ton of possibilities for desktop videographers. On the other hand, their use is so widespread that you have to be an expert in them before you can even think about a career in the field.That's a requirement that's made surprisingly easy with the Complete Videography Bundle: Beginner to Expert.This 10-course package doesn't just give you a broad overview of the job, though it does dedicate a 3-hour class to the bedrock fundamentals. From there, you get a deep dive into most every program being used by top videographers working in the business today.That includes an exhaustive focus on the Adobe Creative Cloud platform - specifically Premiere Pro and After Effects. You'll learn how to use those time-tested programs to create everything from infographics for your business to fully fleshed-out movies. There are also complete courses on editing and fine-tuning in Final Cut Pro or Camtasia 9.You'll have to get the software on your own, but the complete bundle covers more than 45 hours of training, and it's available for $29.99 today. Read the rest

In this video, we learn that children enjoy bullying a mall patrol robot. The kids will kick, slap, surround, and throw things at it. Tests show that kids are more likely to abuse the robot when adults aren't around. So programmers designed the robot to anticipate when it was likely to be abused by kids and roll next to an adult, which will keep the kids from hurting it. (If you know the source of this video, please post in the comments so I can add it to the post.)Robot being able to figure out when he’s about to get messed up by a couple of little devils. from r/Damnthatsinteresting[via r/Damnthatsinteresting] Read the rest

There are few intellectual exercises better than a good game of chess against a capable opponent, which is why a lot of old hands at the gameplay it online. But there's still nothing like the tactile thrill of moving a knight into checkmate. (Or sweeping the pieces off dramatically when you lose.)That's why we're really in love with Square Off, a chessboard that lets you have that immediacy of a physical board and moving pieces - whether your opponent is in the room or not.This classic-looking rosewood board is especially great at building interest among chess newcomers, with 20 levels of AI difficulty that you can ramp up progressively as you learn from each game. Ready to take on a human? You don't even have to take it down to the park. The board is connected to an app that lets you find players on your level from a community of 30 million.But the real hook here is the robotic inner workings that move the opponent's pieces, whether they're a faceless program or a remotely-playing human. And hey, if you do prefer the park, you can still take it down there and let people watch you play against a "ghost": It runs on batteries that are good for up to 15 games per charge.Square Off: World's Smartest Chessboard is currently 15% off the retail cost, but you can take an additional 15% off that price by using the coupon code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Blue Bottle Coffee customers will need to bring their own containers, or put a deposit down on one, to get a beverage at the high-end chain in the new year. In an ambitious zero waste effort, they are removing plastic and paper cups (and bags) from all of their cafes in the United States. From a statement Monday by its CEO Bryan Meehan (bolding mine): "...we’re not afraid to admit that we’re part of the problem. We recently woke up to the fact that our beautiful bioplastic cups and straws were not being composted even though they were 100 percent compostable. Too many ended up in landfills, where they couldn’t break down at all. So we switched to paper straws and sugarcane-paper cups. But that’s still not enough. We still go through on average 15,000 disposable single-use cups per cafe per month in the US alone, which adds up to 12 million cups per year. We want to show our guests and the world that we can eliminate disposable cups as we serve our delicious coffee.We are proud to announce an experiment that may not work, that may cost us money, and that may make your life a little more complicated. By the end of 2020, all of our US cafes will be zero waste, which according to Zero Waste International Alliance, means at least 90 percent of our waste is diverted from landfill. To help us go even further, we will test our first zero-single-use-cup program in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read the rest

Both Phrma (the lobby for the global pharmaceutical industry) and Biotechnology Innovation Organization (biotech lobbyists) provided letters to a US-UK government meeting to discuss post-Brexit trade terms, in which both organisations called for substantially higher British prices for essential medicines after Brexit.They joined a chorous of lobbyists from other US industries (pork, grains, etc) to sell products to the UK that are currently considered unfit for purpose, such as pork raised with high levels of antibiotics or grains treated with dangerous pesticides.In three days, Britons will go to the polls to elect a new government. Boris Johnson's Tories have called for a "hard Brexit" with no ongoing special relationship with the EU, which will leave the UK in desperate need of trade with the USA, and thus vulnerable to industry demands to make trade deals that tie the British government's hands on safety and health.I am a member of the Labour Party and a donor to Jeremy Corbyn's campaign. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobby group that represents the largest drugmakers in the world, insisted that any U.S.-U.K. deal “must recognize that prices of medicines should be based on a variety of value criteria.” PhRMA called for changes in the way the U.K.’s National Health Service sets price controls through comparative effectiveness research, an effort to control the costs of drugs using clinical research.The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobby group for the biopharmaceutical industry, made similar demands in a letter to trade officials for the U.K., calling to do more in “shouldering a fair share of the costs of innovation.” BIO suggests that in order to ensure fair treatment for drugmakers, companies should have the right to petition an “independent body” to overrule decisions made by the NHS. Read the rest

Even in his simian guise, Dr. Zira would hesitate to kiss the president.The Planet of the Fakes YouTube channel is great, btw![via] Read the rest

T Greg Doucette is the lawyer who put the pieces together on the University of North Carolina's $2.5m handout to the white nationalist group the Sons of Confederate Veterans, then found and published a smoking gun in the form of a "victory letter" written by the SOCV's "commander" Kevin Stone, which Stone and the SOCV used a fraudulent DMCA notice to censor.Now Doucette, acting through his lawyer Marc Randazza (previously) has sent a demand-letter to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, demanding that they turn the $2.5m into a scholarship fund for African-American students or he will sue them for abusing the DMCA.Randazza -- a First Amendment litigator -- has represented various Nazi and white nationalist groups before and Doucette told Indyweek that he expects the fact that Randazza is representing him will is "going to trigger infighting" among the white nationalists of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Doucette’s complaint centers on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act notice the SCV filed with Dropbox on December 2 after Doucette posted a letter from SCV leader Kevin Stone to his members boasting after how he suckered UNC into giving him $2.5 million. (Doucette says he received the letter from an SCV member.) The letter, Doucette argues, falls under fair use, as the law allows copyrighted documents to be published—especially in non-commercial ways—to serve the public interest, which is what Doucette did by posting the Dropbox link on his Twitter account. “Although the DMCA notice confirmed the authenticity of the letter,” Doucette’s legal team wrote to SCV attorney C. Read the rest

This week, I've been doing our family's annual charitable giving (here's a guide to some of the charities we support), a long process that involves using Charity Navigator to verify that the groups we support are still spending money effectively, figuring out how much to give, and then submitting the receipts to my wife's employer for donation-matching.I was a little late to my giving this year, and so I was delighted to be reminded that EFF (always my biggest check!) had extended its "Power Up" donation matching, through which major donors double the individual donations the org brings in.This has been a hell of a year for EFF -- and for the issues it works on. Having my donation go twice as far was a hell of pleasant surprise and really made my week!Power Up! Donations Automatically Matched This Week [Aaron Jue/EFF] Read the rest

In this Vice video, board certified plastic surgeon Dr. Norman Rowe (aka "Dr. Penis") talks about the different ways people unsatisfied with the size of their penis can make them bigger.Photo by Charles on Unsplash Read the rest

Tron: Evolution is a Disney video-game that comes with the notorious Securerom DRM (previously). Thanks to unspecified DRM issues, anyone who bought the game but didn't activate it can no longer do so, a situation that has been known since at least October. Disney says they're working on a patch but won't commit to a release date. Of course, people who didn't pay for the game and downloaded a cracked version instead aren't having any problems. (Image: Disney) (via /.) Read the rest

The business end of KOKUYO Beetle Tips highlighter looks a bit like a rhinoceros beetle's horns, hence the name. Three-way refers to the fun you'll have with the highlighter when you make three different kinds of marks with it.Amazon sells a colorful 5-pack for .[via] Read the rest

Johan Scheffer has posted designs for Lego microscale versions of the Mandalorian's Razor Crest and a few other Star Wars vehicles.For more Mandalorian, Redditor Crybug created a Christmas card:And enjoy a few gifs:Baby Yoda and his soup is the new sipping tea meme. I’ve said it. pic.twitter.com/pxPTd8kxEw— Mando the Bounty Hunter (@AdoptedBabyYoda) November 29, 2019Was killing me that everyone is sharing a rough-looped Baby Yoda Tea so I made a nice one. cc @laura_june pic.twitter.com/KNW8w1uhKQ— Joel, ᵃ ᶠʳⁱᵉⁿᵈ (@joeljohnson) November 30, 2019Them: The Internet probably has enough Baby Yoda GIFs.Me: pic.twitter.com/dd9DqYuTMd— Neil+ (@rejects) December 1, 2019 Read the rest

Cyber Monday is just around the corner, but you don’t need to wait until hoards of shoppers break the internet in order to save big on these top-rated gadgets and accessories—each of which is available for an additional 20% off when you enter the coupon code CMSAVE20 at checkout.1. AquaSonic Black Series Toothbrush and Travel Case With 8 Dupont Brush HeadsMSRP: $140 | Sale Price: $40 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $32This electric toothbrush removes up to 10x more plaque than a traditional toothbrush and comes with its own travel case.2. Nomad 1.5M Battery Lightning CableMSRP: $50 | Sale Price: $20 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $16Keep your devices charged in durable style with this 1.5M lightning cable that comes with its own battery.3. Wilfa Precision Automatic Coffee MakerMSRP: $350 | Sale Price: $75 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $56This precision coffee maker makes it easy to wake up to the perfect cup of coffee every morning, thanks to finely-tuned heat controls.4. Millennium Falcon Ice MoldsMSRP: $15 | Sale Price: $10 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $8These millennium Falcon ice molds are a must-have for any Star Wars fan who hates diluting their drinks with regular ice cubes.5. Dr. Save Vacuum Travel KitMSRP: $70 | Sale Price: $33 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $26Travel lighter with this vacuum kit that can shrink your clothing by up to 70%.6. RECOVER 600mg CBD Muscle Recovery RubMSRP: $60 | Sale Price: $48 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $38Treat your post workout soreness the right way with this rejuvenating CBD muscle rub. Read the rest

You can buy a giant LED from a guy who makes them at home. The cost about $70.From his site:My first Maker Faire as a maker was New York 2012, I brought a Giant Arduino Starter Kit (YouTube video Giant Arduino Starter Kit - A 10x Scale Model). Everything was ten times scaled up; the Arduino Uno, breadboard, resistors, potentiometer, LDR, jumper wires, and LEDs.As the LEDs were portable, I would bring an LED with me to other Faire's, it has always been received well and many times people would ask was it for sale.In September 2018 I decided to explore turning the rough model in to something that I would be happy to sell. The following YouTube playlist records some of the progress in Making a Refined Giant LED.[via Evil Mad Scientist] Read the rest

When the infamous 11-foot-8 bridge of Durham, North Carolina was raised 8 inches last month, fans of the videos showing trucks getting their tops sheared off were bummed out. But it looks like their despair was premature. From the 11-foot-8 YouTube channel:On November 26, the new 12foot4 canopener tried to snag its first truck, but it only managed to get a nibble! Still, we're counting it as "crash #151" since the truck was clearly damaged. I actually collected the piece that fell off :) Read the rest

Brace for maximum cuteness. This cute little weasel sure enjoys playing with their human's hand on that computer mouse.Such a cute little fuzzy dude.His name is Ozzy.I love that his name is Ozzy.Cute little pocket weasel. Not a pet, a rescue.From the uploader, Frisco68:Yup, he loves to play. So do I. But before I get to go online and start killing, I'm being camped by this fearless fighter. But then again; his ping is so much lower than mine...Disclaimer: A weasel is not a pet. They hate being locked up, they're not friendly when hungry. Don't get one. Seriously. Ozzy is a special case rescue baby. Cute, but deadly. ;)The video was originally published in 2013, and is newly making the viral rounds. Ozzy, the adorable desk weasel.Love that Ozzy. Read the rest

A 3-year-old girl got a pair of doll shoes stuck in her nostrils, reports NPR. Her mother used tweezers to remove one shoe, but the second shoe was beyond reach of the tweezers, so the girl's parents took her to an urgent care center. The staff there were unable to extract the shoe because they lacked forceps of sufficient length. They told the parents to take the girl to the emergency room. A doctor at the hospital had long-reach forceps and removed the shoe. The hospital charged the parents $2,658.98.From NPR:Total bill: $2,658.98, consisting of a $1,732 hospital bill and a $926.98 physician bill.Service provider: St. Rose Dominican, Siena Campus, in Henderson, Nev., part of the not-for-profit Dignity Health hospital system.Medical procedure: Removal of a foreign body in the nose, using forceps.What gives: The Bransons negotiated a reduction of the physician's bill by half by agreeing to pay within 20 days. But Dignity Health declined multiple requests for an interview or to explain how it arrived at the $1,732 total for the ER visit."Not every urgent situation is an emergency," the hospital said in an emailed statement. "It is important for patients to understand the terms of their health insurance before seeking treatment. For example, those with high-deductible plans may want to consider urgent care centers in nonemergency situations."The hospital billed the Bransons $1,143 for the emergency room visit and an additional $589 for removing the shoe. The entire $1,732 hospital bill was applied against their deductible. Read the rest

I already purchased Civilization VI's The Gathering Storm expansion for my Mac, becasue of course I did. There's not a lot of games that my 2015 13" MacBook Pro Retina can play that I enjoy—Civ is one of them. I've been farting around with Sid Meir's games since the mid-1990s and my enthusiasm for his titles has only been crushed once. Sid, if for some reason you're reading this, Beyond Earth should have been an add-on for Civilization V. All on its lonesome, it was kind of a lame duck.Anyway, The Gathering Storm.In this, the second add-on to Civilization VI, players are introduced to the misery of natural disasters. Build on a flood plain, sooner or later, you're going to have a bad day. Set up shop in the tundra and you may be visited by a winter storm. Drought is a distinct possibility and don't get me started on volcanoes. The upside of all of this potential carnage is that, in the wake of some of the disasters, new opportunities to improve the lot of your cities becomes possible. Flooding leads to rich farmland, for example (but, unless you research and invest in technology to stop future flooding your peasants are going to be pissed when everything gets washed out again.) These problems add a welcome layer of strategy to a game that I've shamefully invested close to 100 hours in when I should have been writing my damn book. Now, it's not enough now that you have to worry about being influenced by other civilizations. Read the rest

Michael Gardi says, "There were probably millions of CARDIACs (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) distributed to high schools and colleges in the late 60s and early 70s. Heck even my little high school in Northern Ontario got a bunch of them. But they are all but impossible to find now, so here is the next best thing."The CARDIAC Instructable presented here is not a computer, it's a device to help you understand how a computer works. You the user will:decode instructions by sliding panels up and down,move the program counter "lady bug" from one memory location to the next,perform the duties of an arithmetic logic unit (ALU),read inputs from one sliding strip,and write output results to another (with a pencil).Along the way you will you will learn the internal workings of a typical Von Neumann architecture computer. Some fairly sophisticated programs can be executed (by you manually remember) on the CARDIAC. Stacks, subroutines, recursion, and bootstrapping for example can all be demonstrated.Image: InstructablesPreviously on Boing Boing:CARDIAC: Bell Labs's old cardboard computerCARDIAC paper computer emulatorCARDIAC paper computer unboxingNew-old stock of Bell Labs's cardboard teaching computer, the CARDIAC Read the rest

The Persistence of Pong is an art installation by Jesse Stiles, augmenting a standard game of ping-pong with sounds, colors, intense flashing lights and moments of complete darkness.An ordinary ping pong table is augmented with reactive sounds and lights, turning the game into a disorienting synesthetic experience for players and spectators alike. The installation presents players with syncopated patterns of light that play with the illusion known as persistence of vision – the phenomenon that distinguishes between the perception of still images versus continuous motion. These patterns are triggered directly by the bouncing of the ball, which is detected by microphones embedded in the table. Similarly, the installation presents disorienting patterns of sound that teeter between rhythm (individual sounds) and pitch as the speed of the action increases and decreases based on game play. Players may choose to cooperate by trying to keep the ball in play through increasingly hallucinatory levels or may seek to destroy the competition in the most disorienting ping pong environment technology can provide.You can play yourself at the LikeLike gallery in Pittsburgh, but you have to arrange an appointment outside of specified dates. Read the rest

C4D4U's SOFTBODY TETRIS V16 is (as the name implies), the latest in a series of "softbody" simulations of Tetris, in which the tetronimoes are rubbery, jelly-like solids that glisten as they wobble into place. It's an incredibly soothing thing to watch (C4D4U calls them "ASMR for my eyes") and part of a wider genre of softbody sims. JWZ argues that this "becomes intolerable" upon the "realization that completed rows don't liquify" but if that's your thing, you need SOFTBODY TETRIS V9. Read the rest

Over at Medium, BB pal Douglas Rushkoff explores how today's propaganda -- born in the 17th century to propagate the Catholic faith and reborn in the 20th century as "public relations" -- is no longer about convincing people to believe in whatever story the source happens to be selling. Today, Doug writes, "the primary goal of government propaganda is to undermine our faith in everything. Not just our belief in particular stories in the news, but our trust in the people who are telling the stories, the platforms, and fact-based reality itself." Interestingly, he traces this kind of systematic reality disruption to the counterculture. From Medium:Before Watergate anyway, it felt as if the press and the government were on the same side, telling the same story to us all. There was no way for the underfunded counterculture to compete with mainstream reality programming—except by undermining its premises. The flower children couldn’t overwhelm Richard Nixon’s National Guard troops, but they could put daisies in the barrels of their rifles.Taken to the extreme, this sort of activist satire became Operation Mindfuck, first announced in 1975 by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in their Illuminatus Trilogy!. The idea was to undermine people’s faith in government, authority, and the sanctity of consensus reality itself by pranking everything, all the time.The idea of Operation Mindfuck was to break the trance that kept America at war, blindly consuming, and oblivious to its impact on the rest of the world. Destabilize the dominant cultural narrative through pranks and confusion. Read the rest

South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi L. Noem spent $449,000 (more that $0.50 per resident of South Dakota!) on a campaign to educate state residents about the state's program to address its methamphetamine epidemic. That campaign's slogan? "Meth: I'm On It."The slogan has been widely mocked. Noem insists that this is all part of a cunning plan because "any publicity is good publicity."Appearing to respond to the backlash in a Sunday evening tweet, Noem bought into the adage that any publicity is good publicity. She suggested the campaign was successful because so many people were talking about it.In a separate statement emailed to The Washington Post, she called the anti-meth initiative “a bold, innovative effort like the nation has never before seen.”“South Dakota’s anti-meth campaign launch is sparking conversations around the state and the country,” she said. “The mission of the campaign is to raise awareness — to get people talking about how they can be part of the solution and not just the problem. It is working.”‘Meth. We’re on it,’ says South Dakota in ridiculed ad campaign that cost $449,000 [Michael Brice-Saddler/Washington Post](Thanks, No Name!) Read the rest

Cecil Castellucci (previously) is a polymath artist: YA novelist, comics writer, librettist, rock star; her latest book, Girl on Film, is an extraordinary memoir of her life in the arts, attending New York's School for the Performing Arts (AKA "The Fame School") and being raised by her parents, who are accomplished scientists.

The Kon Marie method ("does it spark joy?") offers a self-medication regime for middle class people with undiagnosed anxiety disorders and too much stuff. And now there's an official store, complete with $86 candles, to consume your way to minimalism. In a letter posted on the site, Ms Kondo said her tidying method "isn't about getting rid of things".Instead, she wrote: "It's about heightening your sensitivity to what brings you joy."Once you've completed your tidying, there is room to welcome meaningful objects, people and experiences into your life."BUY. Read the rest

In Arkansas, Henderson State University chemistry professors Terry D. Bateman, 45, and Bradley A. Rowland, 40, were charged on Friday with making methamphetamine. They had been put on administrative leave on October 11. From the New York Times:(Tina V. Hall, a university associate vice president of marketing and communications) said the school’s Reynolds Science Center had been closed on Oct. 8 because of “a report of an undetermined chemical odor.” Testing revealed an elevated presence of benzyl chloride in a lab, she said...Stephen J. Madison, who is on the chemistry faculty at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., said that benzyl chloride could be used to help make methamphetamine...It was not clear whether the chemical smell in the school building had prompted the investigation by law enforcement. Read the rest

This year's episode of the grand meteor shower the Leonids will peak on Monday morning before dawn. The meteors are bits of debris dropping off the comet Tempel-Tuttle that intersects Earth's orbit every November. Unfortunately, it may be tough to see many shooting stars because activity this year will be low and the waning gibbous moon will shine brightly. Still, it's always fun and meditative to watch the skies. From EarthSky:In 2019, no matter where you are on Earth – and no matter when you watch, on the morning of the peak itself, or on the morning leading up to the peak – the best hours of the night for meteor-watching will be hindered by the bright moon. Those hours are between midnight and dawn, when Earth’s forward motion through space has carried your part of Earth head-on into the meteor stream.Also in 2019, there’s really no way to avoid the moon. You’ll have to find a way to work around it. Try observing in a shadow of a large structure (like a barn), or in a mountain shadow. Just try to keep the moon out of view. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness for a period, say, 15 minutes to half an hour. Just wait and watch, don’t expect too much, and see what you see.We hear lots of reports from people who see meteors from yards, decks, streets and especially highways in and around cities. But the best place to watch a meteor shower is always in the country. Read the rest

Marin for the win!Lost and Found: We found this methamphetamine in a parking lot that appears to have been lost by the owner. If you lost your drugs and are looking for them, please get in contact with us! #LostAndFound #dontdodrugs #DARE pic.twitter.com/wiVRNyu6Gl— Marin County Sheriff (@MarinSheriff) November 15, 2019 Read the rest

Wired security reporter Andy Greenberg's latest book is Sandworm (previously), a true-life technothriller that tells the stories of the cybersecurity experts who analyzed and attributed as series of ghastly cyberwar attacks that brought down parts of the Ukrainian power grid, and then escaped the attackers' control and spread all over the world.In an interview with Rick Kleffel's Agony Column podcast (MP3) Greenberg tells the tale of how he came to write this extraordinary book, and what it means in the context of Ukraine and the current US political situation.(Thanks, Rick!) Read the rest

Geneva ("Genetic Evasion") is a project from the University of Maryland's Breakerspace ("a lab dedicated to scaling-up undergraduate research in computer and network security"); in a paper presented today at the ACM's Conference on Computer and Communications Security, a trio of Maryland researchers and a UC Berkeley colleague present their work on evolutionary algorithms as a means of defeating state-level network censorship.Geneva develops countermeasures to deep-packet-inspection-based censorship systems that monitor network traffic for forbidden keywords and use packet-injection to break connections to forbidden resources.Geneva's approach is typical of genetic algorithms: drawing on an arsenal of evasion techniques, Geneva attempts to circumvent filters, and the techniques that work are reinforced and then randomly varied to produce new generations of algorithms, and the best of these are then reinforced and allowed to reproduce, etc, etc. The researchers describe this as a kind of inversion of the usual method for censorship evasion, in which researchers first determine how the censorship works, and then develop an evasion countermeasure. With Geneva, the system automatically probes censorship systems and develops countermeasures, and by evaluating which countermeasures work, researchers can infer how the censorship is accomplished.The researchers used Geneva to successfully evade the Great Firewall of China, as well as national censorship systems in India and Kazakhstan. They propose that this kind of evasion tool could run continuously on the server side, providing a continuous stream of new tactics for bypassing censorship systems.They also note that censors could use Geneva to find defects in their own systems and so they can fix them, but say that some of the fundamental errors in the assumptions of the censorship systems might be impossible to fix. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH is presented the Good News about Donald J. Trump, in the Newest, Best, Third Testament

If you have a lot of books at home, a cheap book safe like this is a good way to hide small things. The inside storage area is 2" x 5.625" x 9" and the book looks like a dictionary. (Crooks already know to scan bookshelves for The New English Dictionary, so you should put a jacket from another book on it.)It has a lock and two keys to discourage snooping if someone pulls the book off the shelf. Read the rest

After being bankrupted by Peter Thiel and sold off to Univision, merged with The Onion, then finally handed off to a private equity group, the G/O Media (formerly Gawker) stable of blogs might yet have thrived due to their undiminished traffic and capable reporters. This was not to be, as the new management were soon proved ignorant of the company's culture in particular and of contemporary journalism in general. Things came to a head after Deadspin, famed as much for its trenchant culture writing as its game coverage, was told to "stick to sports", an edict that led to the firing of its editor and the mass resignation of its entire staff. In the empty office, the new management tried its hand at blogging only to find that this is harder than it looks.Anna Merlan describes a cringe-inducing, quickly-abandoned effort to write the Gawker way:The sentence structure was uniformly strained. The ledes were clunky. Many of the paragraphs were simply lists of scores, football plays, or marathon finishing times. (The Kenyan runners who won the New York City marathon were unnamed in a headline and described as "cantering," which is something horses do, not people, a phrasing I argued on Twitter was, uh, problematic.) Attempts at cusses were embarrassing: a few things "sucked" or were "dumbass." The headlines were dizzying verb-thickets that had to be read multiple times to be vaguely comprehensible. After a few days of these horrific word-manglers appearing on the site, whether they were his malformed children or not, Editorial Director [Paul] Maidment resigned, citing an "entrepreneurial opportunity" he simply had to pursue. Read the rest

Got some aches that a lazy rubdown won't put a dent in? Give your muscles an early Christmas with these massage guns. If you've never tried one, they're all designed to bring deep tissue relief, and they're all at Black Friday prices now.JAWKU Muscle Blaster V2 Cordless Percussion Massage GunThis cordless massager exerts up to 56 pounds of pressure, but you can tweak the vibration strength to suit any ache. With 4 hours of battery life, it's the perfect accessory to any after-workout routine. And with noise reduction technology, you won't interrupt anybody else's.Sale Price: $249.99MSRP: $299.99Heroproof® BFGun X300 HyperDrive Percussive Therapy Muscle MassagerWth five different attachments, this versatile massager can target any trouble spot from tiny trigger points to broad muscle groups. WhsperDrive technology keeps it super-silent while it increases blood flow and stretches tissue.Sale Price: $259.95MSRP: $299.95Vortix Muscle Massager 2.0The simple, ergonomic design makes this easy to use for anyone who needs quick relief. You can choose between 6 speeds and 4 adjustable heads to deliver the precise amount of vibration your muscles crave. Goodbye lactic acid, hello blood flow.Sale Price: $174.99MSRP: $199.99TimTam All-New PowerMassager™Loosen up those knots with this extremely light and portable massager. It's anything but light on pressure, though: The TimTam can vibrate at up to 2,500 strokes per minute and do it at a mere 25 dB. The 90 degree articulating head is great for reaching tough spots, too.Sale Price: $199.00MSRP: $249.00Vortix Muscle MassagerThe original Vortix sports a firm grip and six adjustable speed settings that allow you to tackle any areas of stiffness or spasming. Read the rest

Mangoes spilling from an overturned tractor trailer caused a messy morning commute on Maryland beltway.The mango truck overturned early Wednesday morning on I-495 in Bethesda. Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service spokesman Pete Piringer told a reporter that one person suffered minor injuries.No word on what caused the truck to roll over, but the Washington Post reports traffic was backed up for miles when two lanes of the highway were closed around 6am.[PHOTO: Mangoes, by Peter Griffin, public domain] Read the rest

The Alien Cathouse near Las Vegas is the "final frontier of sexual adventure," a popular refuge for anyone seeking a little action in their own Area 51. From their website:On an interstellar mission to bring erotic pleasure to the entire universe, the Cosmic Kittens from the planet Venus 69 set out on a fantastic voyage across deep space — but a freak mishap caused their starship to crash land on planet Earth just outside Nevada’s mysterious Area 51 Air Force facility. Now, stranded on a strange planet populated by so many repressed men and women fraught with a galaxy’s worth of lust, the Cosmic Kittens have vowed to use their extraterrestrial sexual prowess to help horny Earthlings satisfy their insatiable carnal desires.In addition to escorts, fetish services, and plush alien dolls already offered at the Cathouse, they'll soon be offering a cutting-edge teledildonics program. According to the Daily Mail, the Cathouse is investing heavily in KIIROO's remote sex robot technology, so that customers can enjoy their services even in a galaxy far, far away. "Visitors" to the remote alien brothel would need to provide their own Interactive Vibrating Masturbator for Men or OhMiBod toy and presumably a stable wifi connection in order to get the full haptic experience.The Cathouse’s Rod Thompson told Daily Star Online why they have added a robot to their line-up: "For clients that have certain … fetishes that courtesans might not be interested in, the robot could fulfill those."Asked how the Cathouse’s flesh-and-blood denizens felt about working alongside an AI rival, Rod said they were all for it: "The Courtesans are actually excited about the additional revenue stream to Alien Cathouse, and themselves … as well as the additional opportunities that might present themselves for interested parties wanting to party with a real flesh and blood courtesan and with an AI sex robot at the same time."It's only fitting that the most technologically advanced brothel in the country would be sci-fi themed. Read the rest

Ever wonder what the song "Let it go" from Disney's hit movie Frozen would sound like in Klingon? Me neither but then again, something like that would never even occur to me. But it did occur to Jen Usellis, who performs as the Klingon Pop Warrior. Listen as she belts out her Klingonese version, called "yIbuSQo'":Nerdist:After Reddit user staq16 posted the song to Reddit’s Star Trek subreddit earlier this month, the track quickly earned mad parmaq from the forum’s community. However, while most users thought the song was on point, some took issue with the fact that Klingons are known for not enjoying the cold—nor letting things go. They also apparently don’t do a lot of other things.(Geekologie) Read the rest

Adafruit has a tutorial on how to make a pendant that looks like a tiny Game Boy and has a display with endlessly scrolling Mario style clouds. Read the rest