Boing Boing

Climate change. Pandemics. Nuclear war. While these are undoubtedly devastating realities or possibilities, could they wipe out humanity entirely? Highly unlikely, writes Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute. From Quartz:A century ago, the Spanish flu caused a staggering 20-50 million deaths, more than WWI. Still, the toll amounted to less than 3% of the world population. As ghastly as it was, the Spanish flu didn’t even rise to the level of decimation; viruses can slay, but they can’t annihilate. If past mortality is prologue, a millennial has less chance of succumbing to a new pandemic than dying in an auto accident.OK, well what about climate change, now recognized as a non-hoax by 75% of Americans? It’s not the heat per se that will waste us, but the knock-on effects. Low-lying nations will turn into aquariums and Caribbean countries will be pummeled and pelted by savage storms....The World Health Organization estimates that between 2030 and 2050, 5 million people will perish due to the consequences of climate change. Nonetheless, if aliens visit Earth in 2050, they’ll still find billions of humans. Indeed, probably more than walk the planet today...However, there’s at least one lethal bullet we might never be able to dodge: a gamma ray burst. This cosmic phenomenon could sterilize our planet in short order. Such bursts are not frequent—they’re thought to be the final gasps of collapsing, massive stars—but if one were to occur in our own galaxy, the results could be truly catastrophic, resulting in destruction of our protective atmosphere. Read the rest

If you're in China, Iran or some other country whose national firewall blocks BBC News, you can still access it over the Tor network at bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion, which mirrors the main BBC News site as well as BBC Mundo and BBC Arabic.A statement from Auntie says: "The BBC World Service's news content is now available on the Tor network to audiences who live in countries where BBC News is being blocked or restricted. This is in line with the BBC World Service mission to provide trusted news around the world."BBC News joins Tor to reach users other news sites aren't allowed to [Chris Merriman/The Inquirer](via Memex 1.1) Read the rest

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has developed a new form of liquid metal with very strange conductive properties. Usually, when a flexible, conductive material is stressed or stretched, its electrical conductivity drops and resistance increases when it's stress or stretched. Just the opposite, Air Force's novel "Polymerized Liquid Metal Networks... can be strained up to 700%, autonomously respond to that strain to keep the resistance between those two states virtually the same, and still return to their original state." The researchers published their results in the scientific journal Advanced Materials. From the Air Force:It is all due to the self-organized nanostructure within the material that performs these responses automatically.“This response to stretching is the exact opposite of what you would expect,” said Dr. Christopher Tabor, AFRL lead research scientist on the project. “Typically a material will increase in resistance as it is stretched simply because the current has to pass through more material. Experimenting with these liquid metal systems and seeing the opposite response was completely unexpected and frankly unbelievable until we understood what was going on.”Wires maintaining their properties under these different kinds of mechanical conditions have many applications, such as next-generation wearable electronics. For instance, the material could be integrated into a long-sleeve garment and used for transferring power through the shirt and across the body in a way that bending an elbow or rotating a shoulder won’t change the power transferred. Read the rest

Oleg Dolya (last seen here for his amazing procedural medieval city-map generator) is back with a wonderful procedural one-page dungeon generator that produces detailed, surprisingly coherent quickie dungeons for your RPG runs (it's an entry in the monthly challenge from /r/procedural generation). Read the rest

Tusalava (1929) is a splended experimental animation by New Zealand avant-garde filmmaker and kinetic artist Len Lye. The original film featured a piano score by Jack Ellitt that has unfortunately been lost. (The video above has contemporary music by Andrew Pask who uploaded the film to YouTube.) From the Len Lye Foundation:The film imagines the beginnings of life on earth. Single-cell creatures evolve into more complex forms of life. Evolution leads to conflict, and two species fight for supremacy. The title is a Samoan word which suggests that things go full circle. In this film Lye based his style of animation partly on the ancient Aboriginal art of Australia. Tusalava is unique as a film example of what art critics describe as “modernist primitivism”. In contrast to the Cubist painters (who were influenced by African art), Lye drew upon traditions of indigenous art from his own region of the world (New Zealand, Australia and Samoa). Read the rest

I bought a USB microscope a few years ago because I wanted to examine kitchen knife edges after I sharpen them using different sharpeners. I'm still having fun with it. The tiny millipede in the video above is in a cup the size of a penny. Here are some images I've captured so far:Groovy Squirmy millipede.A Trader Joe's roasted and salted peanut. (See image full size)A playing card.My arm hair.A leaf, with what looks to be some kind of parasite.Smaller than a prescription pill bottle, the microscope has a USB cord that can be plugged into any computer. Download the software here and start looking up close at money, leaves, circuit boards, bugs, skin, hair, and anything else.The scope has a built-in, adjustable-brightness LED for illumination. The brightest setting is not always the best --- try different levels of illumination and let the software auto-adjust the contrast. I also learned that in order to see things at the maximum 250X magnification you need to follow the instructions in the FAQ.It comes with a suction-cup gooseneck mount that is very stable, and a plastic board with a grid pattern, which helps you align and locate the thing you are looking at. You can also simply hold the scope against things. The software takes still photos and videos, and hasn't crashed on me yet (the earlier version was buggy).For the price, the microscope is an amazingly entertaining device and I find myself grabbing it to check out all sorts of things, including splinters, skin cuts, bugs, and playing card designs. Read the rest

SoftBank is paying WeWork founder and former CEO Adam Neummann nearly $1.7 billion to go away.Business Insider:"It's stone-cold crazy," said Eric Schiffer, CEO of the Patriarch Organization, a technology and media private-equity firm. "I think SoftBank blinked, and Neumann walks away with one of the biggest hauls in modern history when he should have gotten very little."The embattled office-sharing startup was fighting to stay afloat after its initial public offering failed and Neumann stepped down as CEO last month. WeWork's board this week was also weighing a buyout from JPMorgan, Business Insider reported.SoftBank's buyout values the company at $8 billion, down from the $47 billion valuation it gave the company earlier this year. As part of the deal, Neumann is expected to sell nearly $1 billion worth of stock to SoftBank and receive $500 million in credit as well as a $185 million "consulting fee," according to The Journal. Read the rest

Google has blinked in the ongoing attempt to organize Youtube creators in a new organization called Fairtube, under the umbrella of the powerful German trade union IG Metall.After cordially ignoring the union -- which has German law on its side -- and its countdown clock for Youtube to come to the table, Google finally reached out to the organizers, with only eight hours to go. Then, at the last minute, the company changed the terms of the meeting, insisting that no actual Youtubers could be present -- only union officials.The union's demands are pretty reasonable: they just want Youtube to explain what the rules are. That is, which topics will get your video demonetized or have its comments frozen, what words are you allowed or prohibited from saying, and so on. There is a rulebook -- leaks reveal that Youtube's content moderation makes reference to some kind of official policy -- but it's clearly not the same guidelines that Youtube provides to the creators who make the work that powers the site.These creators say that they can work for weeks or months on something for their channels, only to have it demonetized, blocked, or locked for commenting for reasons that they struggle to comprehend. This is why so many Youtube videos end with exhortations to like or subscribe or comment -- Youtubers have folk-theories about what makes a video acceptable or unacceptable to the black box that moderates their creative labor.It’s tempting (and easy) to paint Google and YouTube as worker-stomping monopolists, but not even disgruntled creators see them that way. Read the rest

Kate Klonick (previously) logged into Twitter to find that her trending topics were: "Clarence Thomas," "#MakeADogsDay," "Adam Neumann" and "#Lynching" (if you're reading this in the future, Thomas is the subject of a new documentary and Trump just provoked controversy by characterizing impeachment proceedings as a "lynching.")She uses this as a jumping off point to demonstrate the complexity of automated content moderation, raising six questions, starting with "Please imagine if the top trend and the bottom trend were next to each other" and "Please imagine if the bottom trending word was proximate and ABOVE the first trend."But the real meat comes in the last two questions: "Imagine you are Twitter. What do you do about any of it? Do you delete the trends? Do you keep them up? Do you move the ad? Do you make sure those two trends NEVER get lined up together to prevent bad optics?" and "Now write a law that fixes all of this."The platforms are sick and broken, and when something is broken it's tempting to do something -- anything -- and declare it fixed ("Something must be done; there, I've done something"). Pretending that this kind of dysfunctional moderation at scale is the result of negligence or intransigence (rather than, say, the curse of bigness) is not helpful. Read the rest

AOC forces Zuckerberg to stumble all over himself."So, you won't take down lies or you will take down lies? I think that's just a pretty simple yes or no."Complete exchange between @RepAOC @AOC and Mark Zuckerberg at today's House Financial Services Cmte hearing. Full video here: https://t.co/heT7Psnlp1 pic.twitter.com/0iiWtfU5gQ— CSPAN (@cspan) October 23, 2019 Read the rest

Next up: Pokemon vs actual pets.(h/t Adam Savage) Read the rest

Core77 has photos from the pages of Toshi Omagari's book Arcade Game Typography (only 1000 copies available in hardbound edition, here's the paperback), which reproduces arcade video game pixel typography from the 1970s-1990s.From the book description:Arcade Game Typography presents readers with a fascinating new world of typography – the pixel typeface. Video game designers of the 70s, 80s and 90s faced colour and resolution limitations that stimulated incredible creativity: with letters having to exist in an 8x8 square grid, artists found ways to create expressive and elegant character sets within a tiny canvas.Featuring pixel typefaces carefully selected from the first decades of arcade video games, Arcade Game Typography presents a previously undocumented ‘outsider typography’ movement, accompanied by insightful commentary from author Toshi Omagari, a Monotype typeface designer himself, and screenshots of the type in use. Exhaustively researched, this book gathers an eclectic typography from hit games such as Super Sprint, Pac-Man, After Burner, Marble Madness, Shinobi, as well as countless lesser- known gems. The book presents its typefaces on a dynamic and decorative grid, taking reference from high-end type specimens while adding a suitably playful twist. Unlike print typefaces, pixel type often has bold colour ‘baked in’ to the characters, so Arcade Game Typography looks unlike any other typography book, fizzing with life and colour. Read the rest

Where would the tabloids be without the British Royal Family?

This is such a cool idea for a game. In Hey Robot you are challenged with asking Alexa (or another voice assistant device) a question that will make it say a certain word. From the Kickstarter:At the beginning of the game, you deal out a grid of cards with words on them. Then teams alternate trying to capture a word by asking The Robot a question that will get them to say that word in their response. (They can't say any form of the word in their question.)For example, Team 1 might pick VAMPIRE.After a brief huddle, they decide to ask: "Alexa, what is a creature that is scared of sunlight?" hoping Alexa will say the word "vampire" in her response. Instead, she'll tell you about heliophobia — the fear of going out into the sun. Groan. Because they missed with their question, Team 1 puts a bonus point token on the VAMPIRE card, increasing its value.Now it's Team 2's turn. After some deliberation, they choose VAMPIRE as well. They ask: "Alexa, who is Dracula?" Alexa answers,Boom! Everyone cheers because Alexa said the word "vampire" in her response. Team 2 gets three points -- the two points printed on the card, plus the additional bonus point token. Now they must add a bonus point to one of the four cards touching the card they just captured. Read the rest

At 19-hours and 16-minutes, the recent Qantas' non-stop flight from New York, 'Murica to Sydney, Australia is the longest haul to be had on a commercial flight. Currently, the this long-ass trek isn't an option for the traveling public to undertake. Rather, the flight seen in this video is one of three that Qantas is has planned, during which it'll be studying the physiological and physiological effects that being on an airplane for so long could have on a passenger.Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest

Researchers at the University of Richmond in Virginia trained rats to hop into little cars and drive them to collect food. The rats' success suggest their brains have more plasticity than previously assumed.From New Scientist:They constructed a tiny car out of a clear plastic food container on wheels, with an aluminium floor and three copper bars functioning as a steering wheel. When a rat stood on the aluminium floor and gripped the copper bars with their paws, they completed an electrical circuit that propelled the car forward. Touching the left, centre or right bar steered the car in different directions.Six female and 11 male rats were trained to drive the car in rectangular arenas up to 4 square metres in size. They were rewarded with Froot Loop cereal pieces when they touched the steering bars and drove the car forward.The team encouraged the rats to advance their driving skills by placing the food rewards at increasingly distant points around the arena. “They learned to navigate the car in unique ways and engaged in steering patterns they had never used to eventually arrive at the reward,” says [Kelly] Lambert.Image: Kelly Lambert/University of Richmond Read the rest

In this video, a pair of rams chance across a boxing bag left dangling from a branch in the woods. Battle commences. A day later, they are ultimately victorious.Dodge and Thunder discover the heavy punching bag hanging from a treeThere is an entire channel of this stuff. Read the rest

In this very relaxing video, a man tends with infinite care to the precise ecology of his unfertilized nanotank: a tiny yet thriving 5-gallon world of flora and fauna. The best moment comes when he drops a slice of boiled cucumber in. A redditor explains the significance:The only caveat is that this person has not used fertilizers or CO2, which most people who care for planted tanks do. He’s a achieved a really beautiful tank even without those components. It does help that this is a really small tank, though. However, smaller tanks are a lot more fragile and prone to failure because of their size. Even minute changes will in nitrate/nitrite levels can be devestating. The cool thing about naturally planted tanks is that they eventually form a self sufficient ecosystem that can balance itself very well. Read the rest

From the people who brought you Universal Paperclips and Drop 7, and highly recommended by the designer of QWOP and Getting Over It, is an incredible marketing pitch for a new game. And the game sounds good. Hate your Alexa or Google Home? Think they're useless? Hey Robot turns their shortcomings into a positive:Hey Robot is a party game where two teams compete to get their smart speaker to say a specific word. It's a bit like Codenames or Taboo, if the friend you were playing with had an encyclopedia and was also very, very drunk. It's a hilarious, smart and strategic game for people who own a Google Home or Amazon Alexa and have no idea what the heck to do with it.Hey Robot is created by Everybody House Games — Hilary, Mara, Frank and James Lantz. We're a family that's been making games for decades, including Universal Paperclips, Invisible Inc and Drop7. We've always been obsessed with board games and the funny ways we interact with technology in our day-to-day lives. Hey Robot is the intersection of those interests and the result of months of trying to invent fun things to do with our Alexa.Hey Robot plays well with any group size, from 2 players up to as many people as you can fit around a flat surface. ...The game is really that simple. But while the rules are easy to understand, achieving a mind meld with your Robot can take a lifetime. Alexa and Google are both the smartest and stupidest people in the room, so asking the right question in the right way requires knowledge, cleverness and strategy. Read the rest

39 bodies found in a truck in Essex, England, were identified Thursday as Chinese nationals. Police have not confirmed whether they were victims of a human trafficking or human smuggling operation, but charged the driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, with murder.The truck was found on a street at the heart of the usually busy industrial area. Police -- who were called to the scene at around 1:40 a.m. on Wednesday -- said the victims were found dead on the scene.Road haulage experts said the truck appeared to be refrigerated. That could mean freezing temperatures of anywhere between -5 to -10 degrees Fahrenheit (-20C to -23C), Richard Burnett, chief executive of trade body the Road Haulage Association, told PA news agency, making conditions "absolutely horrendous" for anyone stuck inside."I can't overstate how big a tragedy it is that 39 people felt like they had no better option than to get in the back of this truck and obviously it's ended in an absolute tragedy," Matthew Carter, an emergency communications delegate for the British Red Cross, told CNN at the scene on Wednesday. Read the rest

Landon Meir creates convincing "Hyperflesh" masks of celebrities like Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson: View this post on Instagram #sdcc #theoffice #hyperfleshA post shared by Landon Meier (@hyperfleshdude) on Jul 19, 2019 at 3:02pm PDTThe creepiness factor really ramps up when his Danny DeVito mask meets "sexy time":Earlier this month, Jimmy Kimmel introduced DeVito to the mask:If you'd like one for your own sexy time usage, the mask is actually up for bid right now. Read the rest

The "Straight Pride" Parade that was held in Boston in the end of August was just another example of thinly-veiled alt-right trolling. Unfortunately, it also worked. A hateful parade of a hundred-or-so people managed to divert hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars into overtime police coverage and shutdown streets during the busiest weekend in the city (Labor Day + college move-ins = hell).Thanks to WBUR, we now know that that cost included 9,000 hours of overtime work for local police officers—the equivalent of 4 years of full-time policing service. And none of it was officially caught on film, despite the police aggressions caught on social media and the 3 dozen counter-protestors who were arrested during the parade.Shameful Display by the @bostonpolice at #StraightPrideCharging into protestors who were protesting peacefully on the sidewalk, beating, arresting, and pepper spraying.Make no mistake straight pride is hate pride and cops are here to protect and uphold white supremacy. pic.twitter.com/ey2Rc4uneA— Ian🎃Gobblins👻 (@deluxian54) August 31, 2019Boston Police Department spraying pepper spray into the crowd of protestors of the Straight Pride Parade #boston #straightpride #cityhall #pepperspray #protests #policebrutality pic.twitter.com/TLTIbdcu2A— Lizzie Heintz (@lizzieheintz) August 31, 2019(Coincidentally, the Massachusetts State Police Union was also embroiled in an overtime scandal in the months leading up to this parade.)There are plenty of pros and cons to debate around the use of body cameras for police officers. In this case, it means that the public only has access to choppy, not-necessarily-reliable videos that arguably paint a picture of excessive police aggression against protestors. Read the rest

Tan Youhui, a businessman in Guanxi, China, paid a hitman $282,000 to take out a competitor. But that hitman hired another hitman, offering $141,000 for the contract. That hitman hired another hitman. He subcontracted too. Then that hitman hired another hitman. And that hitman approached the target, a Mr. Wei, and proposed they fake his death, so everyone gets paid and no-one gets hurt. Unfortunately for Tan and all five hitmen, Wei went to the cops.The BBC summarizes:The saga of the subcontracted hitmen dates back to a professional dispute in 2013, when Mr Wei took legal action against Tan's firm, the Nanning Intermediate People's Court said on its website. Scared of losing money fighting a lengthy court case, Tan contacted hitman Xi Guangan and offered him ¥2m ($282,000) to kill Mr Wei. Xi accepted the job but shortly afterwards asked another hitman, Mo Tianxiang, to kill Mr Wei instead, offering him ¥1m. After Mo accepted, Xi renegotiated with Tan to be paid another ¥1m after the killing. ... [more hitmen] ... Instead of carrying out the murder, Ling met up with Mr Wei in a cafe, told him there was a hit on him and proposed a plan - that the two of them fake the murder. nMr Wei agreed to pose, gagged and bound, for a photo that Ling could take back to Yang Guangsheng - before later reporting the case to the police.The best part: each bad guy in the chain got progressively more lenient sentences, with Tan off to jail for five years and the hit men receiving 42 months, 39 months, 39 months, 36 months and 31 months. Read the rest

Most of us don't think about our toilet brush any more than we need to, and why would we? It's gross. But frankly, that's why most brushes - and therefore most toilets - are filled with even more bacteria and germs than we might think.Luckily, the LUMI Self-Sanitizing Toilet Brush & Base is here to restore honor to your "throne," not to mention cleanliness. And best of all, once you get it, you won't have to think about it any more than you ever did.Here's the gist: The normal process of cleaning a toilet involves brushing it, then rinsing that brush, then sticking it back into a base. That base is usually covered to keep the unsightliness at bay, which is to say that it's a tight, enclosed area. In other words, the perfect breeding ground for germs and bacteria.The LUMI addresses that folly with a truly innovative base. It's equipped with sensors that detect when the brush is sheathed. Once that happens, a series of 3 UV lights pop on and are reflected by an aluminum coating in the base. That bombardment kills common germs and bacteria like E. coli and staph, preventing them from thriving off the moisture on your brush (or your bowl). There's even a reservoir beneath the brush to catch that moisture, allowing it to dry more effectively.The actual brush is no slouch either. The ergonomic handle is made of high-quality HDPE and the head is removable if you need to replace or facilitate a deeper cleaning. Read the rest

Fallout 76 has been... not so great. Plagued with problems, bugs and angry players, it was a highly anticipated game that shit the bed almost immediately after its release. Instead of changing the sheets, Bethesda has seen fit to longe in the bed it pooped in. Certainly, they've made efforts to sort the multiplayer survival game out into something playable, but It's fair to say that the damage to the title's reputation has been done.So, it's surprising to hear that Bethesda thinks that charging players a monthly premium to mess about with private servers and a few additional perks would be a great idea.From The Verge:...a $12.99 monthly subscription it’s calling Fallout 1st, which will grant access to premium features. In particular, the membership — Bethesda is calling it a membership and not a subscription — “offers something players have been asking for since before launch: private worlds for you and select friends.”You’ll get some other perks, too. There’s a “scrapbox” storage container for holding unlimited materials, a monthly deposit of in-game Atoms currency for you to spend, exclusive outfits and other cosmetics, and a new fast-travel option called survival tent. Overall, these appear to be a mix of items you might normally spend real money on in any given month in Fallout 76, and the private world feature, which arguably is the only real benefit here.I can see how being able to build and play on a server without being attacked every five minutes by other players would be appealing. Read the rest

Jane Buckingham, a popular parenting advice book writer, was sentenced to just three weeks in prison for paying $50,000 to have someone take a college entrance exam for her son. She is the founder of a boutique marketing agency called Trendera, which counts Target, Nickelodeon, Hearst, Stubhub, and Hilton Worldwide among its clients.From CNN:As part of the test-cheating scheme, according to the complaint, Buckingham gave scam mastermind Rick Singer an example of her son's handwriting so that the proctor, Mark Riddell, could imitate it for the exam. Singer and Riddell have both pleaded guilty.Buckingham's son ultimately received a score of 35 out of 36 on the ACT. She then wired $35,000 to a bank account controlled by Singer's sham charity and informed him that she would seek to have her former spouse pay the remaining $15,000, the complaint states.On May 8, 2018 Buckingham posted a graphic that said DONT CHEAT (sic) to her Instagram account, along with the comment: "Apply it to all aspects of life and you’ll probably be ok." A month later Buckingham was recorded by the FBI making arrangements to pay someone to pretend to be her son and take a college entrance exam in his name.Author and CEO Jane Buckingham gets 3 weeks in prison for college admissions scandal. https://t.co/ek3srW9uXc— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 24, 2019Image: Trendera.com Read the rest

When he's not playing drums for bands like Motion City Soundtrack and Tiny Stills, Tony Thaxton hosts a number of wacky podcasts — including a series of weekly Star Wars comedy music videos. Over the course of two years, Thaxton cranked out more than 100 Star Wars-themed songs under the name "Cloud City Soundtrack." While he's finally burnt-out on Tibana gas and has moved onto other Patreon projects, he has released a "best of" Cloud City Soundtrack compilation on BandCamp, with 19 songs featuring fan favorites such as Lando, Greedo, and Admiral Ackbar, as well as some deeper cuts into Star Wars lore like Bor Gullet and Ric Olié.And honestly the songs are just delightful in that Weird Al-kinda way, so it's absolutely worth a listen.Star Wars Songs by Cloud City SoundtrackImage via Flickr Read the rest

If you're just jumping into app development for Apple's devices, you've picked a heady time. The new iOS 13 has a ton of new features: A versatile SwiftUI language, a boosted role for Siri and a more robust Photos app, just to name a few. And if you're making the transition from iOS 12? Get ready, because all that new functionality means a steep learning curve.Either way, you're going to need the Complete iOS 13 & SwiftUI Developer Bundle. It's a four-course marathon with almost 50 hours of content, all designed to get you coding for the new Apple operating system.In it, you'll learn what's new in the streamlined Swift 5 programming language. Coding challenges will allow you to build apps, troubleshoot bugs and weave in Playground to check your data.Two full courses focus on SwfitUI, with tutorials and projects designed to highlight the framework's ability to do more with less code, create zippy animations and clean interfaces, integrate data with UIKit and more.Best of all, the tutorials are designed by names like Rob Percival, Nick Walter and other gurus of the development game. It really is the best way to get up to speed with Apple's most functional iOS to date. Get the Complete iOS 13 & SwiftUI Developer Bundle now for 98% off the cost of the individual courses. Read the rest

Ornithologists have determined that white bellbirds of the northern Amazon have the loudest mating call of any bird. The male white bellbird sounds off to females as close as 13 feet away with a call that can reach 125 decibels at that range. That's louder than what you'd hear holding a chainsaw while not wearing earplugs. From Discover:The mating call also comes with a strange performance. The males turn their back to the female, lower their tail and head, and puff up. “And then all of a sudden, boom,” Podos says — one note comes screeching out, and the bird flips around dramatically to sing the second tone directly into the female’s face. The researchers think this volume might damage the female’s hearing, but maybe it’s a sacrifice she is willing to make for the sake of a good mate...Species from the Amazon are under intense sexual selection pressures, so it makes sense that two of the loudest birds on record are from the region. Also, the screaming piha (another very loud bird) and white bellbirds are fruit-eaters, and (study coauthor Jeff Podos of University of Massachusetts Amherst) thinks the wide beaks needed for choking down berries could also help project loud calls. "Extremely loud mating songs at close range in white bellbirds" (Current Biology) Read the rest

Workers at Google say the company is developing an internal surveillance system that could be used to monitor the behavior of employees, and thwart dissent and labor organizing.The company says they're only trying to make it easier for workers to manage their internal Google calendars and manage meeting spam.The allegation underscores tensions between employees and Google leadership, reports Ryan Gallagher at Bloomberg News:Google employees are accusing the company’s leadership of developing an internal surveillance tool that they believe will be used to monitor workers’ attempts to organize protests and discuss labor rights.Earlier this month, employees said they discovered that a team within the company was creating the new tool for the custom Google Chrome browser installed on all workers’ computers and used to search internal systems. The concerns were outlined in a memo written by a Google employee and reviewed by Bloomberg News and by three Google employees who requested anonymity because they aren’t authorized to talk to the press.READ MORE: Google Accused of Creating Spy Tool to Squelch Worker Dissent [bloomberg.com/ via @KevinWhitelaw1] Read the rest

The property management company owned by Donald Trump's son-in-law and doer-of-hijinks Jared Kushner is accused by Maryland of unfairly charging thousands of people who live in their properties, and forcing residents to suffer in apartments infested with vermin and mold.Maryland attorney-general Brian Frosh, a Democrat, filed charges in a civil suit on Wednesday against Westminster Management and 25 property owners. The lawsuit involves 9,000 apartment rental units throughout the state of Maryland, many in Baltimore, which Kushner father-in-law Trump slurred as as “disgusting, rat and rodent infested,” earlier this year.Forsh says Kushner’s company exploits poor people and fails to perform basic maintenance.“We’re charging that Westminster and the rental property company owners in this case took advantage of consumers, primarily low and middle-income families,” Forsh said.From the Financial Times:In the complaint, Mr Frosh alleged that Westminster failed to perform basic maintenance on apartment units under its management, neglecting to address rodent infestations, water leaks and other ills.It also accused the company of collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegitimate fees from tenants, some of which allegedly came from charging prospective tenants more than the state’s $25 limit for rental applications.The attorney-general also accused Westminster of routinely withholding tenants’ security deposits at the end of a tenancy for damages that should have been regarded as normal wear and tear.Laurent Morali, chief executive of the Kushner Companies, the family’s real estate holding group, denies the charges and says they are “bogus” and politically motivated.“We refuse to be extorted by an ambitious attorney-general who clearly cares more about scoring political points than fighting real crime and improving the lives of the people of Maryland,” Mr Morali said. Read the rest

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Today Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and I published an op-ed in Buzzfeed about how grassroots activism combined with backlash from artists and fans to kill the terrible idea of using facial recognition technology at US music festivals. We wanted to tell this story because everyone needs to know that the corporate-government surveillance dystopia of our nightmares is NOT inevitable, but it's coming fast unless we organize to stop it." Read the rest

Gaggle is one of a handful of creepy companies that sell surveillance software to school districts, which monitor every keystroke and click on school networks -- they're the latest evolution in spy-on-kids tech, which started off by promising that they'd stop kids from seeing porn, then promised they could end bullying, and now advertise themselves as a solution for school shootings, under the banner of being a "Safety Management Platform."Gaggle has plenty of competition from the likes of Securely and Goguardian. The whole sector has undergone a massive buzzword-compliance overhaul and added "AI" to their products, using algorithms to decide which student keystrokes are worthy of being flagged as suspicious.But Gaggle appears to be unique in promising to help school board detect unrest among teachers so that the wave of teachers' strikes can be headed off by management. In a deleted blog post, Gaggle wrote, "Think about the recent teacher work stoppage in West Virginia. Could the story have been different if school leaders there requested search results for ‘health insurance’ or ‘strike’ months earlier? Occasional searches for ‘salary’ or ‘layoffs’ could stave off staff concerns that lead to adverse press for your school district."It's a great example of the shitty technology adoption curve: first we use creepy technology against people who don't get to complain, like schoolkids, then, once it's normalized, we work our way up the privilege gradient, inflicting it on teachers, then everyone.Avoiding bad press and preventing teacher strikes have little to do with keeping students safe, but the implied message from the post is clear: Gaggle’s clients are administrators, not the students or teachers. Read the rest

Researchers successfully taught rats how to drive small cars in the pursuit of Froot Loops cereal. Video below. Psychologist Kelly Lambert and her colleagues at the University of Richmond conducted the experiment to gain insight into animal cognition. Learning to drive also lowered the rats' stress as measured by hormone levels. From New Scientist:They constructed a tiny car out of a clear plastic food container on wheels, with an aluminium floor and three copper bars functioning as a steering wheel. When a rat stood on the aluminium floor and gripped the copper bars with their paws, they completed an electrical circuit that propelled the car forward. Touching the left, centre or right bar steered the car in different directions.The ability of rats to drive these cars demonstrates the “neuroplasticity” of their brains, says Lambert. This refers to their ability to respond flexibly to novel challenges. “I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think,” she says.Researchers could potentially replace traditional maze tests with more complex driving tasks when using rat models to study neuropsychiatric conditions, says Lambert. For example, driving tests could be used to probe the effects of Parkinson’s disease on motor skills and spatial awareness, or the effects of depression on motivation, she says. “If we use more realistic and challenging models, it may provide more meaningful data,” she says."Enriched Environment Exposure Accelerates Rodent Driving Skills" (Behavioral Brain Research) Read the rest

This will make you smile. And it's real.This incredible video of a young boy in Brazil skateboarding for the first time is going viral. John has cerebral palsy, and adaptive technology -- not to mention committed parents and loving family! -- made his dreams of becoming a skateboarder come true.The company that makes these is SkateAnima, and they are based in Brazil.Look at that smile.Watch the while video, and turn the sound on. View this post on Instagram tá chovendo aqui em curitiba e vou me fazer de louca e postar esse #tbt atrasado de um outro dia chuvoso. meu filho tem 7 anos. é um menino cheio de vontades, desejos, sonhos. e um deles foi, por muito tempo, andar de skate. acontece que ele tem paralisia cerebral desde que sofreu um AVC, com 1 ano e 8 meses. e para as crianças que tem paralisia cerebral, ou qualquer outro tipo de deficiência, ter desejos e sonhos não é permitido. o mundo tá sempre nos dizendo que não. não devemos, não conseguimos, não vai dar certo, não tem adaptação. não pertencemos. por muito tempo tentei suprir esse sonho do joão com outros recursos, bike, andador, skate elétrico de dupla comigo - não recomendo para pessoas que, como eu, são capazes de tropeçar no próprio pé. nada adiantou. até que eu conheci o @skate_anima . um projeto tocado por dois caras incríveis @danielpaniagua_ e @stevan_pinto que não conseguiram ficar parados diante do sonho de uma outra jovem com paralisia cerebral. Read the rest

Edward Snowden, on virtual tour to promote his book Permanent Record, appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience. Snowden:It's not data that's being exploited; it's people that are being exploited. It's not data that's being manipulated; it's YOU that's being manipulated. Read the rest

“We're building a wall in Colorado. We're building a beautiful wall.” — Donald Trump

Apparently this is real. God help us.If this tweet from right-wing disinformation jerk Tomi Lahren is to be believed, White House staff working for so-called “President” Donald Trump are printing out tweets from various awful hate-filled accounts for him to read, which he then signs and hands out to racist admirers who come to kiss his butt.And then the butt-kissers take photos of the signed sheets of tweets and post them on social media like they're fancy trophies.An infinite loop of neo-nazi fascist stupidity.It's MAGA Sycophant Inception.What a horrible time we live in, America.It appears that the White House prints out tweets for Trump to view on hard copy and that the accounts they are picking from are…. Amazing https://t.co/WIsOpUkvmR— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 23, 2019More evidence of how pathetically narcissistic and weak @realDonaldTrump is- his staff is reduced to making printouts of positive tweets to make him feel good about himself. Thanks for sharing this Tomi, we never would have known this particular indicator otherwise. https://t.co/20gr8Ty7Nr— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) October 23, 2019Trump is getting printed-out tweets from the owner of the Gateway Pundit, the site that fell for a Jacob Wohl hoax and once claimed “Antifa super soldiers” were going to behead white parents. https://t.co/dWYnfmd3w5— Will Sommer (@willsommer) October 23, 2019 Read the rest

In 1996, AOL and Yahoo! were at the top. Things changed. They can change again.(Data Is Beautiful) Read the rest

Entomophthora muscae, the "fly destroyer," is a fungus that infects the insect and zombifies. Then, at dusk, "the fly points its wings straight up and dies in a gruesome pose so that a fungus can ooze out and fire hundreds of reproductive spores."“Oh, it’s a nightmare for the flies,” retired UC Riverside entomologist Brad Mullens told KQED's Deep Look. “If their little brains could comprehend it, they would live in fear.” Read the rest

In this recording, embedded below, Trump lawyer William Consovoy tells Judge Denny Chin that if President Donald Trump were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, he could not be investigated for the murder while in office. The context is oral arguments in Trump v. Vance, one of the legal efforts to get Trump, a famously unscrupulous and bankruptcy-prone businessman, to publicly disclose his tax returns.Here is Trump's lawyer, William Consovoy, telling Judge Denny Chin that if Trump were to shoot someone on fifth avenue, he could not be criminally investigated while in office.Very normal argument. pic.twitter.com/xlDBwmCUnR— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) October 23, 2019To most Republicans, Trump is the country. The suggestion of him doing something "wrong" is already meaningless except as a threat to them. Working with him is possible, if you're not part of the in-group, but working with them is pointless. They're either in or they're out. Read the rest

Runa Sandvik (previously) is a legendary security researcher who spent many years as a lead on the Tor Project; in 2016, the New York Times hired her as "senior director of information security" where she was charged with protecting the information security of the Times's newsroom, sources and reporters. Yesterday, the Times fired her, eliminating her role altogether, because "there is no need for a dedicated focus on newsroom and journalistic security."This is a remarkably shortsighted move on the part of the Times; as state actors, political operatives, griefers, spies and guns-for-hire seek to dominate information landscapes, the integrity of the Times's information security is every bit as important as the fire-suppression systems in its shiny new building.In her farewell tweets, Sandvik writes, "I'm grateful for the 3.5 years of collaboration and helping support brilliant journalists; it's been amazing and exciting; I remain a fierce advocate for the mission of protecting reporters & sources, and I'm very disappointed to see this chapter brought to a sudden close."If you are a source contemplating going to the Times with a story that could land you in physical, economic, or legal jeopardy, this is really sobering news: can you trust a news entity with your safety when it has eliminated the only person charged with defending it?Today the @nytimes chose to eliminate my role, stating that there is no need for a dedicated focus on newsroom and journalistic security. I strongly believe in what I do (and what we did), and to say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. Read the rest

I had thought of repainting my 1987 VW Vanagon like BA's van, but the spoiler... Read the rest

Disneyland can be a hotbed of infectious disease. A single infected-with-the-measles fun seeker can launch a multi-county disease watch, endangering folks unable to be vaccinated.CNN:A Los Angeles County resident visited Disneyland last week while infectious with measles, health officials said late Tuesday, potentially exposing hundreds of other people to the highly contagious disease.The individual went to Starbucks at 3006 S. Spulveda Boulevard in West Los Angeles early on the morning on October 16 before going to Disneyland from 9.15 a.m. onwards, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement."Anyone who may have been at these locations on these dates during these timeframes may be at risk of developing measles for up to 21 days after being exposed," the statement said.Previously on Boing Boing: Disneyland: the most infectious place on Earth Read the rest

This wooden birthday card spells "HAPPY BIRTHDAY." You can remove the letters from the card and make a little robot that holds a tiny wooden greeting card that says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY." It's only , just a few bucks more than a boring paper card you'd find at one of those fancy greeting card shops at a mall. The same company makes robot greeting cards for other occasions, too. Read the rest

Song of the South is one of the most obscure and most popular of all the Disney movies: despite the fact that Disney has not made it available for a generation, the movie is the basis for the "Splash Mountain" flume rides at the Disney parks, and the movie's theme, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" remains a familiar anthem.The movie's odd status is down to the racist themes it embodies, telling the story of a former slave who repeatedly feints towards his great satisfaction with life on a plantation, and who serves as a Magical Negro who comforts a young, affluent white boy whose parents are struggling with an unhappy marriage.Apologists for the racist themes in the film call it a product of its time, but its release in 1946 was hugely controversial (it was even controversial during its production, with civil rights campaigners writing to Walt Disney personally to ask him to halt production).How did Disney come to make this bizarre film, and how did they come to decide to simultaneously make it disappear and elevate it to a cultural touchstone? Karina Longworth is one of Hollywood's great historians. For many years, her You Must Remember This podcast was a must-listen feed of incredible tales from film's first century, digging into the truth behind scandals, skullduggery, triumph and tragedy, from the Manson Family to Marilyn Monroe.Last year, Longworth went on hiatus while she promoted her book, Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood, but a year later, she's back with a new series, delving into the secret, lost, shameful history of Song of the South. Read the rest

Inspired by Marx's aphorism that "Religion is the opium of the people," the USSR commissioned a wealth of anti-religious artwork, much of it very clever and striking. A new book called Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda, edited by Roland Elliott Brown, Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell collects the most striking examples of the form. The Guardian has a tremendous gallery of excerpts from the book.Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda, [Roland Elliott Brown, Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell/Fuse] Down with God! How the Soviet Union took on religion – in pictures [The Guardian] Read the rest

For Dragon Con, Laken Cappy cosplayed as the Haunted Mansion's psychic medium Madame Leota: View this post on Instagram Madame Leota is 99% done or dare I say...... 𝟗𝟗𝟗%......done. 👻🙃🔮🖤 #madameleotacosplay #disneycosplay #cosplay #dcon2019 #999ghostsA post shared by 🖤Laken Cappy💀 (@lakencappy) on Aug 26, 2019 at 5:31am PDT View this post on Instagram "Serpents, and spiders, tail of a rat… Call in the spirits, wherever they're at!” #disneycosplay #hauntedmansioncosplay #madameleotacosplay #dragoncon2019 #madameleota #disnerdA post shared by 🖤Laken Cappy💀 (@lakencappy) on Sep 2, 2019 at 6:34pm PDT View this post on Instagram #MadameLeota from the #HauntedMansion! Cosplayer: @lakenmo #cosplay #dragoncon #dragoncon2019 #disney #disneycosplay #hauntedmansioncosplayA post shared by David Ngo (@dtjaaaam) on Sep 11, 2019 at 8:41am PDTHer dog cosplays, too: View this post on Instagram #avengethefallen 💚A post shared by 🖤Laken Cappy💀 (@lakencappy) on Apr 25, 2019 at 1:56pm PDT Read the rest

Is UK Home Secretary Priti Patel laughing in this image? She was not, and both the BBC and interiewer Andrew Marr have apologized for his suggestion that she was. It is her normal facial expression, as Patel correctly pointed out, and not a response to Marr's discussion of people who would suffer under Brexit."Andrew Marr commented on Priti Patel laughing after he glanced up while reading a list of business leaders concerned about the impact of Brexit on their industries."He thought he saw the home secretary smile but now accepts this was in fact her natural expression and wasn't indicating amusement at his line of questioning."The statement concluded: "There was no intention to cause offence and we are sorry if viewers felt this to be the case."The top results for Patel on Google Image search (below) suggest to me that Patel's facial expressions are, perhaps unfairly, one of those British media things. It strikes me as what happens when you're trying to hold a benign, unexploitable facial expression in the presence of cameras, but don't have a lot of practice or training in such things, and end up with an unintentionally icy smirk. The context: Patel is as far right as mainstream UK conservatism gets, a former tobacco industry lobbyist who once suggested threatening the Irish Republic with the prospect of "food shortages". She was forced to resign from former PM Theresa May's government when it emerged she'd secretely met with Israel's prime minister a day before May's own official visit. Read the rest