Boing Boing

Two Proud Boys, members of the violent far-right street gang founded by Gavin McInnes, were jailed for four years Tuesday. Maxwell Hare, 27, and John Kinsman, 32, were convicted of gang assault and rioting for attacking protestors outside a speech given by McInnes to New York City's Metropolitan Republican Club. Judge Mark Dwyer called them McInnes' “soldiers” and compared them to Nazi Brownshirts: “I know enough about history to know what happened in Europe in the '30s when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system.”The BBC:The Proud Boys describe themselves as "proud Western chauvinists" and advocate political violence. The group has chapters across North America and beyond - including in the UK and Australia.Hare and Kinsman were jailed in a case that centres of a fight that erupted after a speech by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes at Manhattan's Metropolitan Republican Club in October 2018.CCTV footage showed the Proud Boys members beating up a group of four anti-fascist activists - known as "antifa" - who had come to protest against Mr McInnes' appearance.This incident was obscured by serious failures of journalism. The NYPD initially implied that the Proud Boys were the victims and some media thumbed the scales for days afterward, casting the beatings as acts of self-defense against Antifa. 4/6 The brand new footage shows what followed: two Proud Boys went east on 82nd Street, approaching protesters who were perhaps 100 feet away from Park Avenue. Read the rest

IVF had been available in Poland for years, but, as Anna Louie Sussman explains for The New Yorker, it became a wedge issue:Anti-IVF rhetoric takes a number of forms. Polish politicians and religious leaders have sometimes described IVF using nationalistic overtones that scholars have connected to a resurgent anti-Semitism. Catholic media routinely depict children conceived through IVF as unnatural and genetically suspect; in a survey of Polish articles about IVF children, Radkowska-Walkowicz found that they were often characterized as suffering from physical deformities, such as a protruding forehead or dangling tongue, or from mental illnesses, including “survivor syndrome” in relation to unused embryos. (There is no evidence for these claims.) These purported defects are said to go undetected—and so, Radkowska-Walkowicz writes, IVF children are imagined to lurk among the general population, their “biological otherness” polluting the Polish body politic.Other IVF opponents position themselves as protectors of frozen embryos. In Poland, the political scientist Janine P. Holc writes, the embryo is sometimes seen as “the purest citizen”—an unformed innocent in need of protection by the Polish constitution. Anna Krawczak, a doctoral candidate at the University of Warsaw and the former chairperson of the patient-advocacy group Nasz Bocian (the name means “Our Stork”), which has fought for a more inclusive IVF law, told me that IVF opponents have found inventive ways of linking the procedure to abortion. Protesters gather in front of IVF clinics holding posters that show images of human fetuses, icy blue against a black background....Some of the lawyers and doctors I spoke to believe that, although most media coverage of the IVF law focussed on how single women would be affected, its restrictions were actually designed with queer people in mind. Read the rest

Kaleb J. Cole (aka "Khimaere") is the 24-year-old leader of the Washington State cell of the Atomwaffen Division, an international network of violent Neo-Nazis. Aside from generally spewing hateful rhetoric, Cole had also been seen participating in Atomwaffen's "Hate Camps," sharpening his rifle skills for more extremist violence.Fortunately, he no longer has access to any guns. From The Daily Beast:[Cole] had his guns seized on Oct. 1st, according to King County Court records. The move came after the Seattle Police Department filed a 62-page “Extreme Risk Protection Order” petition against Cole on Sept. 26, according to electronic court records. Among the weapons that had been in Cole's possession were a pistol and an AK-47 variant with a high-capacity drum magazine.To be clear, Cole has not been charged on any specific crimes. As far as anyone's aware, he hasn't killed anyone—at least not yet, although there is arguably reason to believe that he plans to. In addition to the target-practice videos where he can be seen chanting "Race war now" with the rest of his buddies, Cole has openly admitted to his fascist beliefs, and support for armed insurrection.Again: not technically crimes. But valids cause for concern. That's where the "Red Flag" or "Extreme Risk" laws come in. They're basically restraining orders, but for guns.One of the biggest struggles with reducing gun violence in America is that a lot of the proposed legislation also infringes on civil liberties. For example: the various "No-Fly Lists" that the government maintains have no clear criteria or due process, which ends up punishing people innocent Muslims, government employees, and literal fucking babies. Read the rest

Trump said he was being "lynched" today, an appalling but somewhat successful attempt to distract the media from devastating House testimony that he demanded Ukraine's president publicly announce an investigation into Joe Biden in return for military aid. Even Republicans were united in condemnation of this comparison, but for one: the oleaginous lickspittle Lindsey Graham, who repeated the term in Trump's defense. Susan Rice, a former national security advisor, called Graham a "piece of shit" in response. Even by the hardening standards of 2019, things are getting sharp. Read the rest

Recomendo is weekly newsletter that gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff. I write it with Kevin Kelly and Claudia Dawson (my colleagues at Cool Tools Lab). You can subscribe to it here. We also published a book with our favorite Recomendo tips. To give you an idea of what Recomendo is like, here's the latest issue of the newsletter:More Chinese science fictionA red-hot area in science fiction these days is China. Like many fans who enjoyed The Three Body Problem, I wanted more. So the translator of that mega hit, Ted Liu, has translated two volumes of Chinese short stories with a sci-fi/fantasy focus. The first anthology, Invisible Planets, is a sampler offering lots of magical realism, fantasy and a few hard-science pieces. The second, Broken Stars, has more speculative fiction, and feels more Chinese. As in any anthology, the quality is uneven, but a few stories are standouts and I got a solid feel for this embryonic movement. — KKCut out everything that’s not surprisingDerek Sivers was the founder of CD Baby and maintains an interesting essay blog. One of his recent posts offered good advice for writers and speakers: “People only really learn when they’re surprised. If they’re not surprised, then what you told them just fits in with what they already know. No minds were changed. No new perspective. Just more information. So my main advice to anyone preparing to give a talk on stage is to cut out everything from your talk that’s not surprising.” — MFShower with fresh EucalyptusI’ve been hanging fresh Eucalyptus in our shower because it’s said to reduce sinus inflammation, which I struggle with, but mostly because it makes showering feel like a spa experience with it’s soothing scent and how it looks so pretty. Read the rest

With the gains real estate has made over stocks in the past 25 years, it's easy to see why the rich constantly use it to expand their wealth. What's slightly less obvious is why only the rich seem to ever break into real estate investment.There are a lot of reasons, but a couple of big ones stand out. First, money. Most private equity real estate funds require their investors to be accredited, and that takes a pretty significant six-figure income. And if you want to buy and renovate properties, you need to deal with the hassle of being a landlord, or the additional expense of hiring a property manager.DiversyFund sidesteps both of those traps. It's a real estate investment trust with a vertically-integrated structure, meaning everything is in-house. Scouting, property management, renovation, sales and everything in between is essentially handled by the same team. That means a major cut in extraneous middleman fees, which in turn lowers the fees for the investor.Second, it's not a private equity fund. That allows investors in the door with as little as a $500 seed. That initial investment gets spread across several multi-family properties, which then start the process of renovation and resale - and since DiversyFund doesn't make gains unless you do, you can be confident that your money is working for you.Get all the details at DiversyFund now, and see how they're opening up a market that used to be an exclusive financial playground for the 1%. Read the rest

Next week, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) will host its inaugural Symposium on Computer Science and Law, whose sponsors include Palantir, Peter Thiel's notorious surveillance-tech company, which just renewed a $49m contract with ICE to provide technological aid for ICE's ethnic cleansing program, which has included mass family separations and the deaths of children in custody.A group of activist campaigners including Make the Road New York and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) are calling on ACM to cancel Palantir's sponsorship of this event. I am on the secretariat for the ACM's Technology Policy Committee, and I agree with the call, though I am not able to speak for the USTPC itself, so I have signed the petition in my personal capacity.Palantir sells two tools to ICE. The first, Investigative Case Management (ICM), is “mission critical” to ICE’s efforts, according to government documents, and was used at the border to investigate the families and sponsors of children who crossed the border alone. The operation, designed specifically to dissuade children from joining family in the United States, resulted in the arrests of at least 443 people over 90 days.Palantir’s second tool, FALCON, is used by agents that lead workplace raids, which increased by 650%during President Trump’s first year in office. It has led to the arrest of thousands of vulnerable workers every year just for being undocumented. During a raid in which ICE agents hit 7-11s nationwide, all agents were told to download Palantir’s FALCON mobile app for use during the raid. Read the rest

Sean Carroll is a physicist at JPL and the author of many popular, smart books about physics for a lay audience; his weekly Mindscape podcast is a treasure-trove of incredibly smart, fascinating discussions with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.The latest episode (MP3 is a 1h+ interview with me, on wide-ranging subjects from adversarial interoperability, inequality and market concentration; science fiction and its role in political discourse; and the power and peril of technological self-determination.For those of you who prefer to read, Carroll is kind enough to provide a full transcript.0:02:52 SC: So here’s an ambitious question to start us off then. We’re clearly not in equilibrium; the internet and the way that we use it is changing rapidly. Do you see us approaching a future internet equilibrium? Even if you can’t say exactly what it is, can you imagine various forms of steady states that we will eventually reach in terms of how we use the internet and how it affects our lives, stuff like that?0:03:16 CD: I think there’s actually a risk of that. I would not call that a good outcome. As other people have observed, the web has become five websites filled with screenshots from the other four, and that domination of the web by a small number of firms that continues to shrink, and who clearly carve out competitive niches for one another, and occasionally compete with each other, but mostly are content to just sit pat, that has been, I think, a net negative for the internet, and for human thriving, and for things like human rights. Read the rest

In 2017, Carroll, Iowa police officer Jacob Smith resigned from the force after a disciplinary investigation regarding sexual encounters between Smith and teenaged girls.The Carroll Times Herald, published by the local Burns family since 1929, revealed the circumstances of Smith's departure from the force, including a comment by Smith's ex-wife accusing the disgraced former cop of being a "pedophile" and revealing that Smith's previous employer, another Iowa police department, had fired him for inappropriate sexual behavior with a teen girl.Despite the fact that everything the Herald reported was true, Smith (who admitted his sexual conduct "wasn't right" and "looks like shit") was still able to launch a ruinous libel suit in retaliation, thanks to Iowa's failure to enact anti-SLAPP laws to prevent this kind of conduct. The judge found that the Herald's report was accurate and that Smith's wife's "pedophile" accusation was protected speech, and the Herald carried libel insurance, but they still ended up $140,000 in debt for the portion of the legal fees not covered by their insurer.Now, the paper is on the brink of bankruptcy, and begging for money on Gofundme. As Tim Cushing points out on Techdirt, the lawsuit arrives just as far-right figures like Devin Nunes and Donald Trump are promising to make it easier to sue the press, and also as wave after wave of ghastly revelations about sexual abuse by powerful men are coming to light. Not every defendant will be so lucky. Surviving a baseless lawsuit takes money and time. Read the rest

The Audubon Society's tribute to John James Audubon's Birds of America (originally published between 1827 and 1838) features all 435 of Audubon's vibrant, beautiful portraits of the birds he studied, along with his notes on their behaviors and other characteristics (the site also includes audio samples of each bird's call).The collection can be sliced in many ways: chronological, alphabetical or by state.The illustrations are gorgeous, and the hi-rez scans are enormous -- 11,000+ pixels wide!John J. Audubon’s Birds of America [Audubon Society](via Open Culture) Read the rest

Radical librarian (and warrant canary inventor) Jessamyn West (previously gave this year's Alice G Smith lecture at the University of South Florida's School of Information. It's called "Social Justice is a Library Issue; Libraries are a Social Justice Issue."The talk crib and slides are all online but the long and the short of it is that being a place devoted to universal access to all human knowledge is, and always has been, a radical act -- and putting that into practice requires specific skills and policies that librarians all over the world have spent generations creating, and are still inventing today. So my response to people asking why I am making things political is often just to restate that I am just trying to help people achieve equity which is not the same as equality. Equality always implies that we are all starting from the same place, so it's fine if we have, from today forward, equal opportunities. This ignores a great deal of history. But the awkward part is that sometimes getting at this equity can mean rebalancing things from where they are now. Doing this in response to social issues is considered social justice. OK then.As I said before, representation matters. Libraries are, nominally for everyone, but does everyone feel included, does everyone feel like the library is the place for them? My public library specialty is outreach. Basically (at least partly) figuring out who is in your community, subtracting everyone who is coming in to the library and figuring out if there is anything you can do about the ones who don't come in. Read the rest

In 1969, Jonny Cash wrote "Wanted Man" for Bob Dylan. That same year, Cash recorded it himself for his live record At San Quentin. Now though, Dylan has released this killer original demo of the tune as he played it in Nashville with Cash and Carl Perkins on drums. It's included on the forthcoming box set Bob Dylan (Featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967-1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15.(Rolling Stone) Read the rest

Phil from Adafruit writes, "For a limited time, whenever you buy a Circuit Playground Express the regular price of $24.95 here, on this page, Adafruit will automatically donate one to Black Girls CODE. Black Girls CODE's goal is to empower young women of color ages 7-17 to embrace the current tech marketplace as builders + creators.Black Girls CODE's vision is to increase the number of women of color in the digital space by empowering girls of color ages 7 to 17 to become innovators in STEM fields, leaders in their communities, and builders of their own futures through exposure to computer science and technology. To provide African-American youth with the skills to occupy some of the 1.4 million computing job openings expected to be available in the U.S. by 2020, and to train 1 million girls by 2040.Circuit Playground Express - Black Girls CODE [Adafruit](Thanks, pt!) Read the rest

Sayragul Sauytbay is a Chinese Muslim of Kazakh descent who escaped en route to one of the notorious Xinjiang province concentration camps for Muslims in 2018, after she was sentenced to serve as a regular inmate following her release after more than a year's incarceration as a camp teacher; after she escaped into Kazakhstan, she was given asylum in Sweden.Sauytbay, a 43 year old teacher, says she was taken by armed guards to a concentration camp in November 2017, where she was forced to watch as other Muslim women were gang-raped by guards; she says that inmates who expressed disgust or outrage were led away and never seen again.Sauytbay says she was under constant video-surveillance, forced to sleep in overcrowded conditions with a bucket to use as a toilet, and with access to the bucket limited to a few minutes a day, and with the bucket only emptied once/day.Sauytbay says that inmates were also forced to serve as subjects in dangerous medical experiments, and that some victims of this treatment were "cognitively weakened" or stopped having their periods and became sterile.The "re-education" components of Sauytbay's incarceration included forced conscumption of pork and a requirement to chant pro-China, pro-Xi Jinping slogans. Inmates were forbidden to speak, laugh, cry or answer questions.Ms Sautybay said women were systematically raped and that she was forced to watch a woman be repeatedly assaulted.“The policemen ordered her to disrobe and simply raped her one after the other, in front of everyone,” she told Haaretz. Read the rest

The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching” (ACCESS) Act was introduced by Senator Mark Warner [D-VA] and co-sponsored by Senator Josh Hawley [R-MO] and Senator Richard Blumenthal [D-CT]; it mandates the creation of "third party custodial services," regulated by the FTC, that will allow uses of Facebook and other Big Tech platforms to switch to smaller, direct competitors who would then act as an intermediary between these new entrants and the platforms.The requirement to open their systems to third parties would take effect 120 days after the bill's passage.This idea is fantastic in concept: as the bill's authors note, interoperability has always been a key to keeping tech markets competitive, and the creation of third-parties that act as conduits -- rather than as service providers themselves -- is a kind of structural separation that could keep everyone's incentives aligned. As intermediaries, rather than as service providers, the third party custodial services would be limited by FTC rules and thus (theoretically) not in the business of locking in or abusing their users.One important note is that mandated interoperability is not enough: there will be legal, legitimate, pro-competitive activities that aren't in the remit of the third-party custodians, activities that would fundamentally challenge the platforms. For this reason, it's vital that mandatory interoperability should be the floor, not the ceiling, on interop -- we must preserve adversarial interoperability as the upper bound on interoperability. If approved, the ACCESS Act would allow users to sign up for a third-party data management service that would work as an intermediary for managing their privacy and account settings across platforms. Read the rest

So THIS is how you do it.I never knew!“Step 1: Don’t cut off your hand with that ridiculously sharp knife.”It's probably also easier without the tree attached.How to effectively slice a pomegranateThis video isn't sourced, but it's making the viral rounds this week. Super satisfying fruit content.How to effectively slice a pomegranate pic.twitter.com/WdeQwvqeMF— Engineering (@engineeringvids) October 19, 2019Once you slice the thing open, remember the other trick to separate the arils from the white pith: put it all in a bowl of water. The pith and arils will separate, and you skim the floating pith off the water and eat your arils.We've been writing about pomegranates on Boing Boing for more than a decade. Here's a pomegranate appreciation post from 2008. There are other fruits you are probably slicing wrong.How to effectively slice a pomegranate [IMGUR, mysteriouscreation9] Read the rest

“Corgi’s first pumpkin patch.”What an adorable critter I mean a terrifying spider!Photo and video by the dog's human, @whynothmm.Check it out with sound.Corgi’s first pumpkin patch[IMGUR] Read the rest

This is a seriously impressive mechanical restoration project. IMGURian @gerleatherberman did a full restoration of an antique fan they say is a Westinghouse from 1919. Absolutely incredible.Here are some wonderful shots of the inner workings and outer details.And... ta-daaa....Here's a front angle shot after restoration.Go check out the entire gallery.Antique Fan Full Restoration - Westinghouse - Year 1919 164848G[via IMGUR] Read the rest

I have two Echo Dots, and I talk to them many times a day - to play news, podcasts, and audiobooks, get weather reports, control our security system and wifi power switches, set timers and alarms, and learn if old celebrities are still alive. If you're concerned about your privacy, don't get one of these and keep your phone in the refrigerator when you aren't using it. If you are as reckless as I am, now's your chance to get an Echo Dot for just . This includes a one-month auto-renew subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited (which you can cancel before it auto-renews). Read the rest

The problem with tipping is that employers pay employees less than they should. I much prefer the way things work in Japan, where there is no tipping and no uncertainty. That said, until restaurants, delivery services, and ride hailing apps in the US start paying their workers a fair wage, it's best to tip workers. This Vox video explains why tipping for ride-hailing services remains confusion and contentious.Image: Vox/YouTube Read the rest

I've come across antlion traps in Colorado. It's incredible to see the little legs of an antlion poking out from the bottom of a small pit, flicking dirt at any ants that come near, causing them to tumble down to the inclined sides of the pit into the jaws of the antlion. If you haven't seen an antlion trap in person, this BBC Earth video is the next best thing.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Miles Taylor as chief of staff to DHS undersecretary Kirstjen Nielsen, publicly defending his boss's implementation of the #MuslimBan ethnic cleansing policy and helping to implement the family separation #KidsInCages policy.Now he is a Google "government affairs and public policy manager" who styles himself the company's "head of national security policy engagement."Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Taylor has been on the job for a little more than a month. His boss is Johanna Shelton, a longtime Google public policy director and former Democratic congressional staffer. Further up the chain, Taylor is overseen by Mark Isakowitz, the public policy vice president, who's another recent hire and former top aide to Republican Sen. Rob Portman; Karan Bhatia, the vice president of global public policy who served for six years as a senior official in the George W. Bush administration; and Kent Walker, the senior vice president and chief legal officer.As a counselor to then–acting DHS secretary Elaine Duke, Taylor called the screening and vetting standards at the country’s borders “no longer adequate to combat terrorism” as the agency recommended an updated policy to replace expiring parts of Trump’s travel ban in September 2017. He went on to serve as the deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff to Nielsen, whom Trump appointed to the top DHS role in December 2017. Nielsen oversaw the administration’s family separation policy for immigrants at the southern border. She resigned in April.A Top DHS Staffer Who Defended The Muslim Travel Ban Now Works At Google [Ryan Mac/Buzzfeed](via Ernesto Falcon)(Image: Quinn Dombrowski, CC BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

Next Saturday, Made In Space's Plastic Recycler will be delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) to convert certain waste plastic into feedstock for the company's Additive Manufacturing Facility, a 3D printer operating aboard the ISS (image below). From Made In Space:The Plastic Recycler was developed through a partnership with Brazil-based, Braskem, Americas’ largest thermosplastic resin producer. The partnership adopted Green Plastic, a bio-based resin made from sugarcane, for the printing of tools and spare parts by astronauts. GreenTM polyethylene is made from ethylene derived from sugarcane ethanol.From Braskem's prior description of the device:The machine consists of a plastic crushing and extrusion system that produces a filament that can be used by the 3D printer already installed on the ISS. The recycler will allow astronauts to, among other applications, use the Green Polyethylene tools and parts previously fabricated by the 3D printer, as well as other plastic materials already on the ISS that no longer are being used, such as food packaging.More at Space.com: "Plastic Recycler Will Turn Space Station Trash into 3D Printing Stock" Read the rest

America has a food insecurity problem, and poor, hungry kids who can't pay their school cafeteria lunch debt are performatively ridiculed and humiliated by their schools. Despite this shaming, these kids parents refuse to stop being poor, and so schools are turning to desperate measures to provide the right incentives to these parents (meanwhile, kids from wealthy families are being offered front-of-the-line privileges in exchange for their parents' "donations").In Cherry Hill, NJ -- a suburb of Philadelphia -- students who can't pay their lunchroom debts will be barred from attending prom or going on field trips or other after-school activities.A Philadelphia businessman offered to pay off the entire student body's debt ($16,446), but the Cherry Hill district refused his offer, declaring it to be pointless since the debt would just re-occur. One in five Cherry Hill students is poor enough to qualify for a lunch subsidy.It’s unclear how many Cherry Hill parents with outstanding fees at the end of the 2018-19 school year were eligible for reduced meals. Officials have cited a $14,343 meal debt incurred by about 343 students.There have been offers to help erase the outstanding debt. But the district has said it would not accept donations because of the likelihood that the debt would then recur.Ravitz, who lived in Cherry Hill for more than 40 years, said he had hoped to work with “one or two donors to put this issue to sleep.” His fourth-generation family business operates two ShopRite stores in Cherry Hill. Read the rest

When Eunice Adekemi Olamijuwon was transfered from her job as nursing leader at Wesley Guild Hospital in Osun, Nigeria, her staff celebrated by hanging a (now-viral) banner calling her a "mischievous tyrant" and accusing her of a litany of sins, from "arrogance" to "power intoxication" to "sadism" and "witch hunting."People identifying themselves as former patients at Wesley Guild have defended the former nursing leader, accusing the nursing staff of being resentful because their boss would not tolerate lax and unprofessional conduct.Nigerians... Why??? 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/TJmB2aL6Oz— Uncle Demola (@OmoGbajaBiamila) October 17, 2019(via Super Punch) Read the rest

At last weekend's International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Cup, Indonesia’s Aries Susanti Rahayu, aka "Spiderwoman," broke the women's speed climbing record previously set in April by her competitor, China’s Song Yiling. Rahayu bested Yiling's prior record by .106 seconds which, in this game, is a lot. Speed climbing. in which climbers race to scramble a 15-meter wall, will be a new addition to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Below, more highlights from the 2019 IFSC World Cup: Read the rest

The Internet Archive's Open Library scans books that they have physical copies of, then lends the resulting ebooks to its patrons, building on the precedent set in 2014's Hathi Trust ruling.The Archive has purchased millions of books and stored them in climate-controlled warehouses, but only a small fraction of these books have been scanned to date.The Archive has a new book sponsorship program, which lets you direct a cash donation to pay for the purchase and scanning of any books. In return, you are first in line to check that book out when it is available, and then anyone who holds an Open Library library card can check it out.The prices vary based on the retail cost of the book and the estimated time to scan it. Your donations are tax-deductible.If I sponsor a book, do I get to read it first?Yes. When you sponsor a book, you have the option to be first on the waiting-list to read the title, once it becomes available.When will my sponsored book be available?We’re aiming to fulfill sponsorship requests within 1 month of receipt. Actual fulfillment time may vary depending on shipping, processing, and demand.Can I sponsor more copies of a book?Unfortunately, due to physical space limitations of the Internet Archive's physical archive facilities, only works which are not yet represented in the Internet Archive's collection are eligible for sponsorship at this time (2019-10-18). The sponsorship program is not a way to make more copies of an existing book available. Read the rest

At the height of the #MeToo movement, giant management consulting firm Ersnt and Young (AKA "EY") sent a group of women to Power-Presence-Purpose, a "leadership and empowerment" workshop led by Marsha Clark, who advised them that "Women’s brains absorb information like pancakes soak up syrup so it’s hard for them to focus" and "Men’s brains are more like waffles. They’re better able to focus because the information collects in each little waffle square."The women in attendance were counselled on "not flaunting their bodies" lest they "scramble the minds" of their co-workers, and to be "polished" with a "good haircut, manicured nails, well-cut attire that complements your body type."They were advised that women's communication styles were a problem in business, because they both "speak briefly" and "often ramble and miss the point" while their male colleagues "speak at length ― because he really believes in his idea."Marsha Clark, who led the workshop, was an exec at Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s. She is an advocate of the junk-science Myers-Briggs test, and is continuing to work with EY (though she is no longer delivering PPP in the same form). An attendee at one of Clark's PPP workshops at EY last year says that Clark spent part of the time advising the women in attendance that their brains were smaller than men's. A 55-slide leaked to the Huffington Post, who asked Harvard Business School's Robin Ely, who studies gender and the workplace, to evaluate the claims in the deck about biology, psychology and best business practices. Read the rest

Justin Trudeau is not your woke bae, he's just Joe Biden with abs: there's no policy so progressive that JT won't endorse it, provided that he never has to do anything to make good on that endorsement, which is how JT ended up being complicit in the #MuslimBan, making Canada's Patriot Act much worse, bailing out the Transcanada pipeline so in service to Alberta's filthy, planet-destroying tar sands, abandoning his promises for indigenous reconciliation, rescuing the giant Saudi arms deal, caving to Trump on NAFTA 2.0, and putting partisanship ahead of justice to get a corrupt, giant engineering company off the hook, throwing his indigenous Attorney General under the bus in order to preserve his relationship with a giant party donor.Considered in that light, his multiple brown- and blackface incidents feel like the icing on a big, inedible cake.It's hard to imagine that history will be kind to Trudeau's posterity -- after all, even Justin Trudeau took to the streets to march against Justin Trudeau's policies.Yesterday, Canadians went to the polls to elect a new parliament and Prime Minister. They dealt a brutal blow to Trudeau and his Liberal Party, voting out twenty of his MPs. Meanwhile, the Tories -- who've been riven by internal divisions as the white nationalist wing of the party has tired of being rebuffed by the Tory's plutocrat power brokers and schismed, founding their own "People's Party" -- picked up 26 seats and narrowly won the popular vote. Read the rest

Uzaki-chan wa Asobita! (Uzaki-chan Wants to Play!) is a Japanese manga that features a young woman named Uzaki. Baka-Updates describes the manga this way: "The daily life of a quiet college student who just wants to be left alone, being teased by his cute, stacked underclassman."The Japanese Red Cross featured Uzaki in a recent blood drive poster. In the poster Uzaki is saying "Senpai, you've never donated blood? Is it maybe because you are scared of needles?"A westerner saw the poster and complained about it on Twitter, then a Japanese person translated the tweet into Japanese, resulted in a heated conversation in the Twitterverse.I the video below, That Japanese Man Yuta does a good job describing the reactions:日本赤十字社 が「宇崎ちゃんは遊びたい」×献血コラボキャンペーンということでこういうポスターを貼ってるようですが、本当に無神経だと思います。なんであえてこういうイラストなのか、もう麻痺してるんでしょうけど公共空間で環境型セクハラしてるようなものですよhttps://t.co/KV5g0W8JpK https://t.co/43EpSlzHOp— 弁護士 太田啓子 (@katepanda2) October 14, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

I am a huge fan of using this brush to spread Otter wax all over my favorite raincoats.As temperatures drop its time to get ready for the wet. It has certainly already arrived elsewhere. One of my two waxed-cotton coats was leaking last winter. The sleeve started to absorb water instead of beading.Heating up the wax and lightly brushing it on is cathartic. The results look better than spraying on Nikwax and last a lot longer. I also think the thicker wax helps protect the fabric, the Nikwax goes on near invisibly and the wax is a barrier.Round Paint and Wax Brush for Furniture Handcrafted by Stay Fine via AmazonPreviously on Boing Boing: Otter Wax, for reproofing your waxed cotton Read the rest

The "pick-up artist" community, a sexist self-improvement cult centered around manipulating and bothering women into sex, needs no introduction. Like many of its stars, Adnan "Addy A-game" Ahman is little more than an incel who graduated to sexual harassment. He's off to jail for two years, and on to the sex offender's registry for ten. BBC Scotland reports:Ahmed was convicted last month of threatening and abusive behaviour towards five women. The 38-year-old from Maryhill, Glasgow, has also been placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years. ... Five young women, aged between 16 and 21, gave evidence at his trial about how they had been intimidated by Ahmed in Glasgow city centre and in Uddingston, South Lanarkshire.Another woman broke down in court as she described how Ahmed followed her through Glasgow city centre and grabbed her head as he tried to kiss her.YouTube failed to remove Ahman's videos, many depicting him following and pestering women and girls in public, until the BBC broadcast the exposé about them that led to his charges. In one example, he boasts of exposing himself to a woman and asking her if she's ever seen circumcised dick; in others, he records sexual partners without consent and posts audio and video online."Not for the politically correct," as he used to say. Read the rest

Two new notes from the tactical evolution of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, which continues to build on its incredible iconography and its DIY hardware.Protesters in Hong Kong are now bolting barricades into the road using power drills. pic.twitter.com/k6quQGfjCP— Timothy McLaughlin (@TMclaughlin3) October 20, 2019First, using impact drivers to sink bolts into the pavement to anchor the barriers that keep protesters safe from rushes from the out-of-control, ultraviolent police (the protesters have also started cleaning up after police violence to make it clear that they love their city, just not its Beijing-collaborator government and security forces).This is an example of what sets apart HKers from other protesters around the world. These leaflets are left on "refurbished" shops to explain the reasons behind these targeted actions. Also note: *no looting*. #antiELAB #HongKongProtesters #HongKong pic.twitter.com/tB2DDmrXWi— Dr. Wong Tsu 😷 (@HongKongHFF) October 21, 2019Second, when Hong Kong protesters gather at businesses that are complicit in the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, they plaster those businesses with signs explicitly calling them out for their complicity.(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

A developer plans to transform the massive Nazi-era St. Pauli air raid bunker in Hamburg, Germany into a "design and lifestyle hotel," as described by a spokesperson for the Spanish hotel chain NS Hotel Group designing the property. The structure is currently used as a concert venue and art/music studio space. According to the spokesperson, there are plans for the rebuilt facility, seen in the rendering above, to also hold a World War II memorial. The bunker hotel project comes on the heels of other Nazi-era structures that have been redeveloped. From the New York Times:In 2018, the former Gestapo headquarters in Hamburg, where Jews, gay people, Roma and other people targeted by the Nazis were tortured and murdered, a cluster of high-end apartments, luxury boutiques and offices opened for business. Protests ensued.A never-completed holiday resort that Hitler had intended to be used for workers through his “Strength Through Joy” project has been converted to luxury apartments.The challenge when integrating these sites into modern-day landscapes is “how to reconcile commemoration and consumption or consumerism,” said Thomas L. Doughton, a senior lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts who takes students on tours of Holocaust sites across Europe to explore the politics of memory.Dr. Doughton said there were parallels to places in the United States, including plantations where African-Americans were once enslaved and the sites of atrocities against Native Americans, that have been commercialized at the expense of a blunt reckoning with historical oppression. Read the rest

One night in 1631, pirates from the Barbary coast stole ashore at the little Irish village of Baltimore and abducted 107 people to a life of slavery in Algiers -- a rare instance of African raiders seizing white slaves from the British Isles. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the sack of Baltimore and the new life that awaited the captives in North Africa.We'll also save the Tower of London and puzzle over a controversial number.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Amazon's Ring surveillance doorbells are part of a secretive, nationwide police surveillance network, with cops being offered covert incentives to act as street-teams to buzz market the products, and with Amazon repeatedly misleading the public and reporters about when and how police can gain access to footage from the cameras.Enter Shaquille O’Neal, slated to be the celebrity guest at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference on October 27. O'Neal has served as a spokesman for Ring since 2016, thanks in part to his large stake in the company. His appearance at the conference will be attended by a giveaway of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of Ring gear to police chiefs.EFF is calling on O'Neal to meet with them to discuss the privacy issues raised by Ring's police partnerships.That’s why we’re turning to Shaq—and you. We’re asking for your help to tweet at Shaq and Ring and ask them to take these privacy concerns seriously. We’re hoping Shaq will sit down with us, one-on-one, and learn how these partnerships turn our neighborhoods into vast, unaccountable surveillance networks. These partnerships with Ring are #NothingButDragnet. EFF Challenges Ring Spokesperson Shaq Over Privacy Concerns [Matthew Guariglia and Jason Kelley/EFF] Read the rest

In 2017, Equifax admitted that it had doxed America by leaking the nonconsensual dossiers it builds on the nation, covering up the info while its key employees sold off their stock, and then repeatedly lying about the scope of the breach.Some of Equifax's investors have sued the company in a Georgia state court. Among the information revealed in the filings: Equifax used "admin/admin" as the login and password for a key server -- a portal used to manage credit reports.Additionally, the data stored on Equifax's servers was unencrypted.Among the first details to emerge from the breach was Equifax was its terrible IT practices, driven in part by a shopping spree in which it acquired dozens of small companies and failed to integrate them into its networks.“Equifax employed the username ‘admin’ and the password ‘admin’ to protect a portal used to manage credit disputes, a password that ‘is a surefire way to get hacked,’” the lawsuit reads.The lawsuit also notes that Equifax admitted using unencrypted servers to store the sensitive personal information and had it as a public-facing website.Equifax used 'admin' as username and password for sensitive data: lawsuit [Ethan Wolff-Mann/Yahoo](via /.) Read the rest

Last year, Adam Serwer published a phenomenal article about Trump and his supporters titled "The Cruelty Is The Point". His no-nonsense tour of Trumpdom outraged conservatives, who were uncomfortable being seen as fellow travelers to smirking alt-right trolls. Even liberal media, which patronizingly casts Trump as the sigh of the oppressed Cletus, objected to Serwer's straightforward explanation of why people support his lies, atrocities and outrages. Anyway, here's Ben Shapiro praising Trump as "so cruel" in that fawning nasal whimper of his.Incidentally I still get angry emails and tweets about how “mean” the cruelty is the point was. https://t.co/oqQcMopElS— *Palpatine voice* UNLIMITED DADPUNS🍝 (@AdamSerwer) October 22, 2019 Read the rest

An interview with the best of all Jokers, the inimitable Cesar Romero who camped it up for the Batman TV series (1966-1968) and subsequent theatrical film. Romero famously refused to shave his trademark mustache for the role so they just slathered the white greasepaint right over his whiskers. Read the rest

Naomi Wolf's formerly forthcoming book, "Outrages", is about the emergence of homosexuality as a concept and its criminalization in 19th-century England. When review copies went out, though, a serious problem emerged for its claim that many gay men were sent to the gallows by Victorian judges: they were alive after their supposed executions. Wolf had misunderstood the legal term "death was recorded" (which actually means they were pardoned), failed to realize that child rape was also charged as "sodomy" (thereby accounting for some actual executions), and the resulting lack of verifiably gay corpses threatened the book's thesis. The book was temporarily withdrawn for revisions. Four months on, however, the publisher is cutting it loose.The NYT:In June, days before the book was expected to go on sale in the United States, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt postponed the publication and recalled copies from retailers, an unusual and costly move. The publisher said at the time that “new questions have arisen that require more time to explore.” Now, it has pulled the book altogether.On Monday, a spokeswoman for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said in an email that Ms. Wolf and the publisher “mutually and amicably agreed to part company.”This suggests the book can't be rescued as credible nonfiction, a common outcome for attempts to contemporize historical interactions between sexuality and society. But Wolf's been on thin ice a long time and has few defenders. Read the rest

Bruce McCorkindale has been churning out some deliciously demented art for Inktober, recasting arthouse films with Muppets. Who knew the Muppets and David Lynch went together like peanut butter and jelly?My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #20: Snuffleupagus in David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/Y4jDciJWu7— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 20, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #16: Dr. Teeth in David Lynch's BLUE VELVET. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/ISLfZtKnfh— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 16, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #11: Oscar the Grouch in David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/cJXPzgCuTC— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 11, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #8: Elizabeth and Little Murray Sparkles in Nobuhiko Obayashi's HOUSE. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/yZltHIee5B— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 8, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #14: Waldorf in Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/4fZgPaMKEX— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 14, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #12: Zoot in Chris Marker's LA JETÉE. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/cSx2dwKUI8— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 12, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #10: Denise in Hideo Nakata's RINGU. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. Read the rest

NordVPN's a popular tool that many people turn to for keeping their shit private while the plumb the depths of the Interwebz. It's available to use with a number of different operating systems. While I'm not fond of what I found while writing about them a few years back (for the record, I rely on ProtonVPN for my online privacy needs) The service is good enough for a whole lot of people.Or at least it was. Because it's been hacked.From TechCrunch:The admission comes following rumors that the company had been breached. It first emerged that NordVPN had an expired internal private key exposed, potentially allowing anyone to spin out their own servers imitating NordVPN....NordVPN told TechCrunch that one of its data centers was accessed in March 2018. “One of the data centers in Finland we are renting our servers from was accessed with no authorization,” said NordVPN spokesperson Laura Tyrell.The attacker gained access to the server — which had been active for about a month — by exploiting an insecure remote management system left by the data center provider; NordVPN said it was unaware that such a system existed.NordVPN did not name the data center provider.So, that sucks.According to TechCrunch, the infiltrated server didn't contain any user activity logs, which is nice. Additionally, NordVPN's spokesperson swears that there's no way that a motivated attacker could have intercepted usernames or passwords. This of course, is like saying that you shit the bed, but the pillows are fine. Read the rest

A notorious "patent troll" — an acquirer of vague or trivial patents whose only real business is to shake down companies that offer implicated products — recently targeted GNOME, developers of a popular desktop environment for the Linux family of operating systems. GNOME fired back yesterday, asking a judge to dismiss the troll's lawsuit.First: a motion to dismiss the case outright. We don’t believe that this is a valid patent, or that software can or should be able to be patented in this way. We want to make sure that this patent isn’t used against anyone else, ever.Second: our answer to the claim. We don’t believe that there is a case GNOME needs to answer to. We want to show that the use of Shotwell, and free software in general, isn’t affected by this patent.Third: our counterclaim. We want to make sure that this isn’t just dropped when Rothschild realizes we’re going to fight this.We want to send a message to all software patent trolls out there — we will fight your suit, we will win, and we will have your patent invalidated. Read the rest

"Look into my pies"Baker Lorraine Elliott has just the thing to bake this Halloween: creepy, vanilla-scented rhubarb "eye pies." A conversation with her friend Nina inspired them:"I'm so hungry I'm going to eat someone's face off!" she said with madness in her eyes, while kneeling dangerously close to my face."How long have you been on this diet?" I asked."A day," she said solemnly....I offered her a rhubarb tart but alas that wasn't high protein enough. Moral of the story: eat pies even ones with eyes or you could possibly want to eat someone's face off.Go to her blog, Not Quite Nigella, for the recipe. (Nag on the Lake)photo by Not Quite Nigella Read the rest

If you're a coder, there's a multitude of avenues for you to take your skills. Whether you're just jumping into the world of programming or looking to rise up the ranks as an established professional, a wide base of knowledge is key. And this Premium 2020 Learn to Code Certification Bundle is a resource that's truly worthy of its name.This collection of 12 courses is designed to cover all the popular programming languages in detail, as well as emerging ones that are crucial for specialized professions like database management and platform-specific app development. If it seems like a lot, it is. And it's going to seem like a lot more to potential employers when you're able to add these skills to your resume.Inside, you'll find The Web Developer Bootcamp where you'll use NodeJS, Express and other platforms to build 13 projects including authenticated web apps. From there, you'll move on to Learn Python Programming in 150 Steps, which contains exercises and puzzles that take you through the high-level language from simple algorithms to deep learning applications.You'll also grow your understanding of Java with Learn Java Programming in 250 Steps, which teaches you clean coding with one of the most essential languages for web design. These courses only scratch the surface of what's inside, though, as there are 12 courses included total.Today, you can get lifetime access to all 12 courses for 98% off the cost of the individual courses, only $45 today. Read the rest

No Maintenance Intended is a snippet of markup (or markdown) you can add to your site or app to ensure that users understand that they're on their own and can stuff right off if they think any work is going to get done for them. Same for would-be contributors and their annoying pull requests. If you’re here, that likely means a project linked you here.Thanks so much for being interested in that project!Open Source is rewarding but it can also be exhausting sometimes. Read the rest

This is some serious Wile E. Coyote-level gopher management going on here. Read the rest

The Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College has a weekly newsletter devoted to drones. Here's a sampling of the military and domestic drone technology spotlighted this week.The BBC looked at new anti-drone devices like Raytheon's "Phaser" that may have been sent to the Middle East after the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil fields:Firing from a disc resembling a giant satellite dish atop a sand-coloured container it wipes out the digital elements inside a drone.Raytheon cannot say where the rapidly purchased Phaser has been sent, but the Pentagon has stated that it is being deployed overseas.Perhaps Phaser's biggest strength is it operates at the speed of light. That is the rate at which it fires out bursts of microwave radiation. And that can bring an approaching UAV down in a split second.The beam emitted by Phaser is 100 metres broad at a distance of one kilometre. That translates into a lot of dangerous space for an attacking UAV. Targets are tracked by an electro-optical sensor converting images into electronic signals and working in tandem with the microwave beam.The new Ripsaw M5 can launch a #FLIR SUGV, Skyraider, and features a TacFLIR 280-HD, and the 360 SA system for situational awareness! pic.twitter.com/8WFY1wQ5Rb— FLIR (@flir) October 14, 2019Textron Systems showed off a robotic tank concept:The vehicle, developed in collaboration with FLIR Systems – makers of the Black Hornet micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – and Howe & Howe uses FLIR systems technology to get a 360-degree image of its surroundings and can carry a range of payloads including a medium-calibre cannon, Javelin missile, and mine-clearing equipment. Read the rest

When Margaret Atwood published "The Handmaid's Tale" back in 1985, it was at the dawn of the Reagan era, when the gains made by feminism and other liberation movements trembled before an all-out assault mounted by a bizarre coalition of the super-rich and the (historically apolitical) evangelical movement; 35 years later, even more ground has been lost and in many ways it's hard to imagine a more apt moment for Atwood to have published a sequel: The Testaments.