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A man was kicked off an American Airlines flight Thursday after putting on a gas mask and refusing to remove it. Other passengers began to "panic", according to reports, and the flight was delayed an hour until he was kicked off.Joseph Say posted a photo of the masked man on Twitter. Mr Say said he initially thought the gas mask was related to the new coronavirus, which has killed 259 people in China."But then I noticed it didn't have the filter, so that didn't really make sense," he added. "What we heard from the lady sitting next to him was he said he wanted to make a statement. I don't know what the statement was," Mr Say said. @AmericanAir , Just FYI flight 2212 to Houston was delayed an hour because you let this guy on the plane wearing a gas mask. This then panicked people on the plane and we had to wait for him to be escorted off. @abc13houston @KHOU @HoustonChron @KPRC2 @FOX26Houston #trainbetter pic.twitter.com/mZkWea606d— Joseph D S❄️ (@ThePlatypusesTX) January 31, 2020 Read the rest

As part of the Nepal government's new tourism campaign, officials commissioned more than 100 huge yeti statues designed by Ang Tsherin Sherpa to be painted by various artists and placed around the world to build excitement about visiting the region. A very fun idea but many people in Nepal don't think the statue looks anything like their beloved beast. From the BBC:"In folk tales, the yeti has been described as a big monkey-like creature," Ram Kumar Pandey (author of several books about the yeti) tells the BBC. "However, the recent logo depicts it as a sumo wrestler. This does not at all match with the mythical character that has been described in many folk tales...""I did not make yeti's sketch by reading any book," (yeti statue designer Ang Tsherin Sherpa) explains. "On the basis of stories that I heard in my childhood, and having Lord Buddha at the back of my mind, I made the design."There was, however, at least one more practical reason behind his choice: Sherpa says he did not make it furry as depicted in yeti-related literature in order "to make it easier to paint". Read the rest

Now that Viagra is available over the counter in some parts of the world or is easily available online with or without a prescription, many young men without erectile dysfunction are using it recreationally. This episode of Vice High Society looks into the trend, hosted by a "healthy 24-year-old man" who takes Viagra. Read the rest

Last October, two Amazon employees -- Maren Costa (UX designer) and Jamie Kowalski (software engineer) spoke on the record to the Washington Post about their employer's complicity in the climate crisis, including the provision of cloud computing services to energy company in search of new sources of fossil fuels.Amazon threatened to fire them. Rather than shutting up, the two employees recruited fellow members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice to publish 357 on-the-record, attributed condemnations of Amazon's climate policies from current Amazon tech workers.It's the latest installment in the tech worker uprising in which tech workers are realizing that the high demand for their skills and massive talent shortage gives them incredible leverage over their employers. Tech workers are a critical part of the fight for a better world, because they can both hold their employers to account and provide accurate assessments of the culture, choices and decisions that feed into our current tech landscape. “Amazon’s main principle is Customer Obsession, it is time to broaden it and get obsessed with Humanity. Collaborating all together we can save our Planet. With great power comes great responsibility — Amazon should make drastic changes in the way it operates, shift company goals and values to be an example for other corporations. Amazon’s order of 100,000 electric vans is the right move for our supply chain’s future and is also a step in the right direction that sends a signal to the market to help the transition to clean technology. Well done! Read the rest

In 2002 Nintendo released Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube. One of the great things about the title (which was not well received when it first came out but is now rated highly in the Zelda pantheon) it its pioneering use of cel shading - a stylistic technique to add shading to 3D graphics to make them look less realistic (in a bad way) and more cartoony (in a good way). Even Breath of the Wild puts the cel shading aesthetic to good use.In the 14-minute video, "How The Wind Waker Defined Cel Shading," Michael "Jasper" Ashworth goes into interesting detail about how Nintendo "was able to pull off cel shading at a time when nobody else was able to."If you are at all interested in 3D graphics, and the history of video games and how they were made, Jasper's video channel is a must-watch. My 16-year-old daughter told me about him a while back. He only has about 30k subscribers, and he deserves 100 times that number, given the quality of his work. Read the rest

Wine has been in the historical record since 6000BCE, American ingenuity "improved" it. Read the rest

My God, it's full of stars!To create this unprecedented view of the Milky Way, ESO combined thousands of individual images from VISTA, taken through three different infrared filters, into a single monumental mosaic. These data form part of the VVV public survey and have been used to study a much larger number of individual stars in the central parts of the Milky Way than ever before. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view for optical telescopes. The results are truly mesmerizing!More info here. See a zoomable version of the image here.Image: ESO/VVV Survey/D. Minniti (CC BY 4.0) Read the rest

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking to ban emotional support animals from airplane cabins, reports Roll Call. Under the proposed rule, only specially trained dogs that assist disabled people would be permitted on planes.From Roll Call:The rule comes amid a spate of high-profile stories of airplane passengers trying to bring support animals, including miniature horses, capuchin monkeys and peacocks, on airplanes. Airlines facing such menageries had little specific guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration."Airlines want all passengers and crew to have a safe and comfortable flying experience, and we are confident the proposed rule will go a long way in ensuring a safer and healthier experience for everyone," said Nicholas E. Calio, CEO of Airlines for America, a trade association.Cats, rats, capuchin monkeys and any animal other than a dog would not qualify as a service animal under the rule, which would limit the number of service animals a passenger can bring to two. Read the rest

Cities across the US have been holding gun buyback programs since at least 1974. Most of these events have been organized by local police departments, who typically offer between $50 and $250 in cash or gift cards in exchange for a turned-in firearm with no questions asked.The Episcopal congregation at the Church of the Holy Cross in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania tried their hands at a similar program on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, largely inspired by a double homicide that occurred in front of the church in November 2019. Church leaders had planned to remain available all throughout the afternoon, offering $100 per gun.In the first 40 minutes, more than 50 people showed up, and the church ran out of the $5,000 they had budgeted for the event.Many gun advocate argue that events like these are nothing more than symbolic acts of virtue-signalling that ultimately make no real impact on curbing gun violence. And statistically speaking, they're probably right. But that shouldn't diminish the hope, inspiration, and community building that can be derived from such events.That's why the Church of the Holy Cross is planning to hold another similar event soon. If you do want to donate to the cause to help buy back more guns, you can send money directly to the church at 7507 Kelly Street in Pittsburgh; unfortunately, they don't take donations online.With so many guns turned in, Pittsburgh buyback program runs out of money in 40 minutes [WPXI]Image via Frankie Leon/Flickr Read the rest

Bees are big business. Almonds are in big demand as a cash crop in California, ever the more so as the almond milk trend grows. Growers use bees to pollinate the trees. The bees are already challenged enough as it is -- now there are bee stealing criminals who drive around stealing them. One such theft happened in Northern California on Friday, the Oregon-based beekeeper whose bees were stolen says.“It’s hard enough keeping the bees alive without someone stealing them. It’s frustrating,” Potts told KCRA-TV.From KCRA-TV's video interview with the beekeeper, who says the theft represents about a third of the bees in his operation:In his 15 years of business, this is the first time someone has swiped his hives. Potts estimates the theft will cost him about $44,000 in lost revenue.“I would like to catch them, and I think a lot of the beekeepers out here, they’re looking for them too,” he said.Potts said the theft impacts more than just him. “This affects the farmer, too, because there’s going to be a shortage of bees,” he said. “Luckily, I have enough to cover what I did, or what we lost. But it affects the farmer, and it affects the farmers all the way in Oregon and Washington because of the loss of the bees.”[via AP] Read the rest

Blokus Duo is a fun strategy game for two people. Players take turns placing their tiles on a grid, making sure the tile touches another of the same color on a corner only. When no more tiles can be placed, the player with the fewest remaining pieces wins. Amazon has the game on sale now for Read the rest

Spring doesn't officially start until March, but you might want to start your spring cleaning a little early in the office supply closet. You're going to need the extra space.HP is holding a massive "Back to Business" sale on a vast array of its gear. And when we say "gear," we're not talking about a few outdated printers and some toner. You can expect to take up to 62% off everything from high-end ZBook Workstations to premium laptops and printersGiven HP's profile in the modern office, that's a big deal. There's hardly a workspace that doesn't use at least some of their tech if not a whole suite of laptops, printers, and monitors, all synced up and doing the heavy lifting for your workload, day after day.Whether you're managing the hardware for a company or just your own business at home, this might be just the right time to replace or upgrade that equipment. We're seeing deals like $750 off an HP Pavilion 15Z Touch laptop, equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 processor and 256 GB of SSD storage. Other laptops include an HP 340S G7 Notebook, fully customizable with a 14" screen for just over $435. For laptops especially, you won't find these prices again for a long time.There's also a number of printers on deep discount. For light desktop duty, you can get the HP Envy 5055 - easy to set up and capable of printing 10 pages per minute. That one is more than 50% off. Read the rest

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