Boing Boing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh it's exciting when a wrestler strikes gold with a ridiculous gimmick. Fandango's refusal to wrestle, the taunting tranquilo pose, Damien Sandow's turn as the Miz's stunt double "Mizdow":And although ESPN insists on covering wrestling as a sport, this is the correct take:Right now, the best gimmick in wrestling is Orange Cassidy, a guy who mostly wrestles with his hands in his pockets, but still manages to show impressive athleticism. Listen to the crowd's enthusiasm for his antics:This guy Orange Cassidy is the best thing going. pic.twitter.com/xRrv2bdam2— Taco Trey Kerby (@treykerby) October 31, 2019.@OrangeCassidy nearly cripples @NickJacksonYB and @MattJackson13 with these devestating kicks #AEWDynamite pic.twitter.com/EsbFqpCvMc— All Elite Wrestling (@AEWrestling) October 26, 2019At a recent bar match, he and Priscilla Kelly dressed as one other:Orange Cassidy vs Pricilla Kelly @BarWrestling ? #thisiswrestling pic.twitter.com/XOIC3PWaFD— Eric Denton (fka @LAAngelsInsider) (@JabronieRamone) November 1, 2019This is why I’m a @BarWrestling regular!!! @orangecassidy vs @priscillakelly_ pic.twitter.com/a1cNFyWhbE— Shane Liu (@maishane) November 1, 2019Well there's the match of the night before it starts @BarWrestling @orangecassidy @priscillakelly_ pic.twitter.com/uSdZVBKJ8M— Cakeob (@Cak3ob) November 1, 2019I don't know how Priscilla Kelly is still standing after that one @BarWrestling #FreshlySqueezed pic.twitter.com/EgsSxne9vI— Sandy R (@sandradeeflat) November 1, 2019@BarWrestling @orangecassidy @priscillakelly_ @TheJimCornette pic.twitter.com/MJBDlMRwPm— James Ward (@jumygrease) November 1, 2019His look works for Halloween, too:Dress up day in school. @CodyRhodes @dustinrhodes @AEWrestling @MattJackson13 @NickJacksonYB @madmadref @orangecassidy #ClementineCassidy pic.twitter.com/jA81ildxjN— Derek Richardson (@DerekEsquire) October 30, 2019 Read the rest

Before they had their historic first flight in 1903, the Wright Brothers had to endure countless failures, crash landings, and false starts. One wonders what they'd make of today's drones, which any non-pilot can just turn and launch with no training.Or better still, this DIY Drone Builder Kit, which not only lets you fly a drone but design and build it from base to rotors.The unit's biggest feature is the Circuit Scribe conductive ink pen, which lets you literally draw your own circuits onto the base, connecting the rotors to the battery. The kit comes with its own rudimentary cardboard arms that are designed to lock together, but you can use any lightweight material that will hold the ink.Suffer a crash landing? Remake the arms out of your own recycling bin. Want to experiment with your own wild designs? Cut out a base and attach the rotors. It's a great gift for any maker, aspiring or established.The DIY Drone Builder Kit is now 40% off the retail price. Read the rest

Joan and Peter Foldes directed this incredible animation, titled "A Short Vision," in 1956. The couple created the film -- based on a poem by Peter -- in their kitchen. It was funded by a grant from the British Film Institute's Experimental Film Fund. From Wikipedia:Ed Sullivan saw A Short Vision in England, and promised an American showing. He said his motive was a "plea for peace" However, he may have shown it because of his relationship with George K. Arthur, A Short Vision's distributor. Ten days after he saw it, Sullivan showed A Short Vision on his popular Sunday night show The Ed Sullivan Show on 27 May 1956. Sullivan told the audience to tell their children in the room to not be alarmed, because of its animated nature. The film was very popular, and it was shown again on 10 June; Sullivan told parents to take children out of the room.More on the film's history here: "A SHORT VISION: Ed Sullivan’s Atomic Show Stopper" (CONELRAD) Read the rest

States' rights are one of the greatest impediments to reducing gun violence in the United States.This was something I noticed when I chronicled the journey of getting my gun license in Boston. It's also all-but-confirmed by the recent release of the ATF's gun tracking data. From The Trace:According to the most recent ATF statistics, released in August, the bureau traced 332,101 guns in 2018. The average time-to-crime of those weapons was 8.8 years. That’s why a particularly short time-to-crime raises red flags for law enforcement, since it often suggests the weapon was acquired for criminal purposes.[…]In California, for example, 12 percent of the guns recovered in the state had a time-to-crime of less than one year. When you isolate only those guns that originated in Nevada and were recovered in California, the figure jumps to 23 percent — almost one in four. (Nationally, 10 percent of all guns had a time-to-crime of less than one year.)For the pro-gun NRA crowd, this essentially proves that gun regulation doesn't work; that's a reason they love to talk about Chicago so much, even though most of the illegal guns there come from Indiana. But I don't actually buy that at all. The issue is and always been about ease of access. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to navigate the black market, trading Bitcoin over Silk Road just to get a gun. If you live in California, and have a cousin in Nevada (or even just know a guy who knows a guy), it becomes less of a "black market" trade, and more of a favor. Read the rest

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One of the most interesting things about programming is that it forces you to decompose seemingly simple ideas into a set of orderly steps, and when you do that, you often realize that the "simplicity" of things you deal with all day, every day, is purely illusory and that these are actually incredibly complex, nuanced, fuzzy and contradictory: everything from peoples' names to calendars to music, art, email addresses, families, phone numbers, and really, every single idea and concept.It turns out that "plain" text is also fantastically complex. Alexis Beingessner's daunting list of the problems of text rendering makes that clear.And once you've got the text to render, you have to edit it, and that turns out to be even harder, as Robert Lord describes in an essay recounting the lessons he learned spending several years merely implementing a text-selection library.Jonathan Blow, in a talk about how software is getting worse, points to the example of Ken Thompson’s text editor, which Ken built in a single week. Plenty of the code in this blog post is accidental complexity. Does Windows need 128 interfaces and 8 kinds of locks to provide text input? Absolutely not. Are the bugs we’ve found in TextEdit disappointing, and a result of a complicated editing model? Yes. Are the wealth of bugs in modern programs something we should be worried about? I’m worried, at least.But at the same time, Ken Thompson’s editor was much, much simpler than what we expect from our text editors today. Read the rest

Olivia Newton-John is auctioning off hundreds of personal items from her career to benefit the Cancer Wellness & Research Centre she built in Australia. Her iconic "bad Sandy" leather jacket and stretch pants are expected to go for as much as $200,000. From CNN:Ahead of the auction, Newton-John revealed that she had to be sewn into the high-waisted pants. "The pants have a broken zip and I had to be stitched into them because they were made in the '50s," she told Reuters Television...A custom Pink Ladies jacket given to her by the "Grease" cast and crew will also go under the hammer and is expected to fetch between $2,000 and $4,000.More here: "Property from the Collection of Olivia Newton-John" (Julien's Auctions) Read the rest

Ticks that spread encephalitis have been found in Britain, say researchers. Encephalitis can cause confused thinking, seizures, and problems with senses or movement, but is only rarely serious.Public Health England (PHE) says it has confirmed cases of tick-borne encephalitis virus in ticks from two parts of England - Thetford Forest and an area on the Hampshire-Dorset border.PHE says the risk to people is still "very low".It is monitoring the situation to check how common the infected ticks may be. Is this a Brexit story? This explains everything. Read the rest

Corridor produced this excellent parody of Boston Dynamics' robots and the style of its promotional videos. It could be the trailer for a new Neill Blomkamp or Paul Verhoeven movie, but where the satire is immediately transformed into stress because there's very little about it that seems unlikely or even beyond the fairly immediate future.Bosstown Dynamics has a new robot in town. You'll see it in the army soon!The unnerving way they abused the robots in early Boston Dynamics videos, I bet they regret that. Read the rest

Agents of the U.S. government have issued multiple subpoenas and conducted searches of various properties in the course of investigating Rudy Giuliani's “Fraud Guarantee” associates, and in one instance feds literally blew the door off a safe to access its contents, reports CNN. From CNN:The subpoena to Steven Fruman is the latest indication of prosecutors' actions since the rushed arrest two weeks ago of his brother, Igor Fruman, and another defendant, Lev Parnas, at a Washington-area airport. Since then, investigators have doled out multiple subpoenas and conducted several property searches, in one case blowing the door off a safe to access the contents, sources tell CNN.Federal prosecutors told a judge this week that they are sifting through data from more than 50 bank accounts. In addition, they've put a filter team in place as they examine communications obtained via search warrant and subpoena, sensitive to material that could be subject to attorney-client privilege because Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, counted Parnas as a client. A filter team is a separate set of prosecutors who are assigned to examine evidence and set aside material that is privileged.Since the October 9 arrests, federal agents visited the New York home of Steven Fruman and served him with a subpoena from Manhattan federal prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said.Attorneys for Steven and Igor Fruman declined to comment, as did the Manhattan US Attorney's office.Feds blow door off safe, issue subpoenas as probe into Giuliani associates escalates [Erica Orden and Evan Perez, CNN] Read the rest

The bizarre move worries public health experts

Case triggered by fatal car crash involving Trump resort customer

Don't be fooled -- the pandas in a new animal cafe in Chugdu, China are actually Chow Chow dogs with dyed fur. From the BBC News:(The cafe owner) tells Hongxing News that he imports his dye from Japan and has hired special staff for dyeing the dogs."Every time we dye it costs 1,500 yuan [$211; £163]," he says. "The dye is really expensive." He says that this is to ensure the quality of the dye, and says that it in no way affects the animals...But it has also raised a lot of concern. One vet, Li Daibing, told Hongxing News that he urged people not to dye their pets, saying: "This could damage their fur and skin." Read the rest

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