Boing Boing

[My EFF colleague Katharine is back with a very important message about a singularly stupid and dangerous legislative proposal that is steamrolling through Congress; even by the standards of stupid and dangerous Congressional copyright rules, this one is an exception -Cory] Every year, for a couple of years now, Congress has debated passing some version of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act). It’s supposed to be the answer to artists’ prayers: a quicker, cheaper way to deal with infringement than going to court. But the way this bill is written (and re-written, and re-written, and re-written) doesn’t do that. It just makes it easy to bankrupt people for sharing memes.The CASE Act creates a small claims court for copyright claims. Sort of. The maximum amount that can be awarded is $30,000 per proceeding. And the CASE Act allows statutory damages for unregistered works, which is not permitted in courts—so you might actually end up owing more in the “small claims” framework than in a lawsuit. This might be a “small claims” framework in a legal sense, but for the almost 40% of Americans who would have trouble coming up with $400 in an emergency, it won’t feel that way.And it’s not a court, either. What the CASE Act actually creates is a Copyright Claims Board staffed by Copyright Claims Officers in the Copyright Office. That means your case won’t be heard by a real judge (much less a jury), and many of the hard-won protections you get in court—like a growing understanding of the importance of fair use—may not apply. Read the rest

I bought this wall-mounted magnetic strip in 2015 to have easy access to tools I need for simple household tasks: opening packages, hanging pictures, assembling furniture, tightening loose nuts, installing door locks, measuring things, simple plumbing repairs, etc. It's much better than keeping the tools in a kitchen drawer, because I can instantly find the tool(s) I need. The magnet is very strong, so I don't have to worry about a tool falling off. The strips come in various lengths. The one I bought is 24 inches long. The shortest I've seen on Amazon is seven inches. Read the rest

The US government has enlisted the aid of high tech companies to find and hound people it allegedly overpaid decades ago for food stamps and other assistance benefits. The letters inform recipients that they have no right to contest or appeal the alleged debts (often for thousands of dollars) because they were incurred over thirty years ago and the time period to appeal expired long ago. If the recipient of the letter doesn't pay, the state will tell the Department of Treasury to withhold tax refunds, military retirement pay, and social security disability checks.From The Guardian:In the private market, a zombie debt is a debt that is past its statute of limitations, not owed, paid in full, or otherwise contested, yet which has found its way into the hands of a collection agency intent on pursuing payment by any means necessary.Those agencies are known to harass, threaten and trick consumers into paying out-of-date private debts, which they buy for pennies on the dollar. In 1977, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was passed to protect people against the aggressive tactics collection agencies use – calling at all hours, contacting employers, deception, publishing debtors’ names – and to require that creditors prove that a debt is actually owed.Unfortunately for Team 3335, the “overpayment” they’re battling is government debt; they enjoy none of these protections. If private zombie debt is surprisingly easy to kill – asking a collection agency for proof the debt exists can often make it vanish forever – government zombie debt is just the opposite, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the most difficult times in people’s lives, over and over again. Read the rest

One of the coolest initiatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation is the Electronic Frontier Alliance, a network of autonomous community groups that work on local issues with support from each other and EFF: everything from getting facial recognition banned in their communities to forcing local police departments to seek public comment on new surveillance tech initiatives.EFF is currently hiring a community organizer to run the EFF side of this effort: the gig involves traveling around to different EFA groups, training and mentoring community organizers, bridging between technologists and other EFF-affiliated groups and community activists and more.The Organizer will support the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s local advocacy efforts, and engage in outreach to community groups, with a focus on technical communities and hackerspaces. Working closely with the Activism team, the Organizer will spend part of their time traveling throughout the US to speak at events and facilitate workshops, and part of their time at our home office in San Francisco working to grow our national network by developing remote relationships with organizers and coordinating outreach to new groups. Regardless of location, a portion of this individual’s time will be spent documenting outreach efforts by conducting interviews and writing case studies.The ideal candidate will have passion for protecting digital freedom, value tools and resources that empower people to share knowledge and creativity freely, and have the ability to think critically and prioritize time effectively. You excel at bringing people together to work for a common purpose. You’re adept at implementing: finding solutions and adapting to changes as ideas turn into projects and campaigns. Read the rest

"Right now, most Americans are in a perpetual police lineup because they got a driver's license," says Clare Garvie, a Washington DC privacy expert. In this New York Times video, Garvie says that driver license photos are scanned and translated into a "face print" that face recognition software can use to compare photos and find matches. "Now any police officer can run searches against your face for any reason."Image: New York Times Read the rest

In early 2018, Apple SVP of internet software and services Eddy Cue and SVP of internet software and services Morgan Wandell instructed TV creators it had commissioned to produce content for Apple TV Plus to avoid plots and scenarios that held China and the Chinese state up in a critical light. Buzzfeed quotes an anonymous showrunner who says this is common practice in all of Hollywood's streaming giants, who fear that upsetting the Chinese state could result in a blockade of all their offerings (China permanently blocked Apple's Ibooks and Itunes Movies in 2016 over similar concerns).These were hardly the first of their kind. In the second half of 2018, Apple challenged or rejected just two of 56 app takedown requests from China, removing 517 apps at the government’s behest, according to the company’s transparency report. Apple said the vast majority of these apps were for porn and gambling, but it has also removed an unspecified number of virtual private networking and news apps. Apple provided customer data to the Chinese government 96% of the time when it asked about a device, and 98% of the time when it asked about an account. In the US, those numbers were around 80% and the US government did not make any app removal requests.In September, Apple seemed to brush off the seriousness of an exploit attack directed at the Uighur ethnic minority. “The sophisticated attack was narrowly focused, not a broad-based exploit of iPhones ‘en masse,’” Apple said in a blog post acknowledging the attack. Read the rest

Esmée Kramer is student in network and systems engineering. Check out this amazing raptor costume. I hope she skins it!Image: YouTube Read the rest

Monstrous Incantation makes dice containing items ranging from ghoulish, to beautiful, to adorable: You can peruse the shop or order a commission here. Read the rest

Sure has been one heck of a news week. And it ain't over yet. On air Friday afternoon on Fox News, anchor Shepard Smith (Shep Smith) told viewers he has requested that management release him from his contract, and says Fox has granted this request.“Even in our polarized nation, it's my hope that the facts will win the day,” he said in an on-air farewell.[ Read Rob Beschizza's post on Shep Smith's departure]Full video: Shepard Smith's final sign off from Fox News pic.twitter.com/5fgyM81Gbj— Jon Passantino (@passantino) October 11, 2019From Variety:“Recently I asked the company to allow me to leave Fox News and begin a new chapter. After requesting that I stay, they graciously obliged,” Smith said in a statement. “The opportunities afforded this guy from small town Mississippi have been many. It’s been an honor and a privilege to report the news each day to our loyal audience in context and with perspective, without fear or favor. I’ve worked with the most talented, dedicated and focused professionals I know and I’m proud to have anchored their work each day — I will deeply miss them.”The unexpected departure takes place just a day or two after Fox big boss Rupert Murdoch is reported to have had dinner with Donald Trump's manifestly corrupt attorney general and dirtywork-doer Bill Barr.Surely not related.Why did he leave?“Tensions with Fox's opinion shows was the breaking point for Shep Smith, a well-placed source confirms” to Brian Stelter at CNN. Read the rest

Macarthur "Genius" Kelly Link and her husband Gavin Grant are the forces-of-nature behind the amazing Small Beer Press ( Read the rest

13 years ago, World of Warcraft was embroiled in a scandal when company management backed up a moderator who punished a player for advertising an LGBTQ-friendly guild, who argued that advertising the fact that you're queer violated the game's hate speech laws by provoking homophobes to send hateful messages to group members.After a predictable amount of opprobrium, the company finally reversed itself, but apparently it has no institutional memory because it has literally done exactly the same thing again.A guild in World of Warcraft Classic called GAY BOYS just had its name summarily changed to Guild ZFXPK and its founder was temporarily suspended. When the players involved queried the action on a forum, a Blizzard representative confirmed that they'd been punished because advertising the fact that they are gay invited slurs: "Picking a name that you can identify with without also using words that would illicit [sic] a reaction from other players would be far more beneficial."The guild's members are awaiting a response to their appeal of the automated name change; they plan to march as their virtual selves on their WoW Classic server Blaumeux as an "in-game protest." Jilani forwarded Blizzard's notice about the guild's name change to Ars Technica, and it did not include any clarification about what rules the guild's name may have violated.World of Warcraft celebrates 15 years with a $100 Firelord statueBlizzard did not immediately respond to Ars Technica's questions about the affected guild's automatic name change or about how coordinated reports may have been gamed by abusive users to target a minority group within WoW. Read the rest

Apple can't seem to figure out how to kowtow to China without losing face in the US. Apple has banned the controversial Hong Kong protest app HKmaplive yet again, as our Cory Doctorow and Rob Beschizza each covered previously today. Tim Cook is reported to have sent around an internal email at Apple in which the CEO claims the banned app in Hong Kong “was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence.” Yeah. That sure sounds like BS to me.Here's a pastebin link making the rounds that purports to be Cook’s company-wide email. It's been validated.“I’ve seen a copy of Cook’s company-wide email, and the copy reproduced here is accurate,” writes John Gruber at Daring Fireball. “Maciej Ceglowski — who has been in Hong Kong for weeks — responds...”[Writes Ceglowski here —-]The first allegation is that “the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence”. This makes no sense at all. The app does not show the locations of individual officers at all. It shows general concentrations of police units, with a significant lag.As the developer and @charlesmok, a Hong Kong legislator, have pointed out, the app aggregates reports from Telegram, Facebook and other sources. It beggars belief that a campaign to target individual officers would use a world-readable crowdsourcing format like this.Moreover, what are these incidents where protesters have targeted individual police for a premeditated attack? Can Mr. Cook point to a single example? Can anyone? […]So not only is there no evidence for this claim, but it goes against the documentary record of 18 weeks of protests, and is not even possible given the technical constraints of the app (which tracks groups of police). Read the rest

Last month a Japanese entertainer named Ena Matsuoka was attacked in front of her home in Tokyo. Her alleged attacker, an obsessed fan, was able to figure out where she lived by zooming in on a high resolution photo and identifying a bus stop reflected in her pupils. According to Asia One, the alleged attacker "even approximated the storey Matsuoka lived on based on the windows and the angle of the sunlight in her eyes."Image: Twitter/matsuokaena, screengrab/Internet, Asia One Read the rest

Evolutionary psychologist Katja Liebal literally wrote the book on Primate Communication. A professor of developmental psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin, Liebal's research focuses "on the cognitive and communicative skills that might be uniquely human and those shared with other primate species." According to BBC Earth, Liebal observes chimps in "hopes to compile the world's first chimpanzee dictionary."I think learning chimpanzee should be an educational requirement beginning in elementary school to prepare our children for when, y'know, they take over.(via The Kid Should See This) Read the rest

A favorite kitchen chemistry (and physics) experiment of kids (and adults), Ooblek is the weird result of mixing cornstarch with water. Now, MIT engineers have developed a mathematical model that can predict and simulate how the non-Newtonian fluid switches between liquid and solid depending on the pressure applied to it. From MIT News:Aside from predicting what the stuff might do in the hands of toddlers, the new model can be useful in predicting how oobleck and other solutions of ultrafine particles might behave for military and industrial applications. Could an oobleck-like substance fill highway potholes and temporarily harden as a car drives over it? Or perhaps the slurry could pad the lining of bulletproof vests, morphing briefly into an added shield against sudden impacts. With the team’s new oobleck model, designers and engineers can start to explore such possibilities.“It’s a simple material to make — you go to the grocery store, buy cornstarch, then turn on your faucet,” says Ken Kamrin, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “But it turns out the rules that govern how this material flows are very nuanced...”Kamrin’s primary work focuses on characterizing the flow of granular material such as sand. Over the years, he’s developed a mathematical model that accurately predicts the flow of dry grains under a number of different conditions and environments. When (grad student Aaron) Baumgarten joined the group, the researchers started work on a model to describe how saturated wet sand moves. It was around this time that Kamrin and Baumgarten saw a scientific talk on oobleck. Read the rest

My friend Maureen Herman (former bassist for Babes in Toyland) is writing a book called "It's a Memoir, Motherfucker." Here's an excerpt in which she gives her account of living life with an invisible disability and how those who do not suffer can best support those in their lives who do. -- MarkI think when the chasm between who you really are and who people think you are is too wide, that's where true despair lives. It makes you feel so literally alone, to feel you are the only one who knows you. Loneliness of being unknown, that is the dullest, greyest, flattest, and most overwhelming of voids a human can experience. Prolonged periods of that dehydrate your soul. They may be biochemical, delusional, or situational, or some combination thereof, but what I do know is that at some point, it is literal agony.Short term gratification fills the gap. It gets you through. When people tell you how much you've accomplished, and what great things lie before you, it sounds like the teacher talking in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Blah blah blah. It means nothing. Some of us have minds live with no sense of the long game. So when people ask how someone could kill themselves when they had done such great things and had the world at their feet, I understand how they could. You don't take any of that into account. It's meaningless. Your only reality is how you feel right now, and when it is that deafening void, and no drink or drug or relationship or amount of positive attention can mute it, it feels permanent. Read the rest

I don't know who thought that "beating a black balloon with a bat" was the best way to decide and announce a baby's gender for them. But the balloon baby clearly looked at the available options and chose "ascension" instead.I hope the parents are happy with that, because I'm pretty sure this guy's not having any more kids after this.https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GloriousFineBergerpicard-mobile.mp4 Read the rest

Hunter Biden was getting $50,000/month to sit on the board of Burisma, an oligarch-controlled Ukrainian energy company, a job for which he had no qualifications, apart from his surname, which was part of a concerted effort to launder the company's reputation after the collapse of the regime of the oligarch-friendly, Russia-facing Viktor Yanukovych.But the prosecutor that Joe Biden got fired was another remnant of the corrupt Yanukovych regime, and he was extremely friendly to Burisma. When he got fired, it was bad news for the company that was paying Joe's sun Hunter $600k/year to rent out the family name.So Joe Biden wasn't trying to get a prosecutor fired to protect his son. But he was allowing his son to sell his family name to corrupt enterprises to help protect their reputations.Indeed, the Biden family -- like so many politically connected families -- have a long and dishonorable history of cashing in on their political connections. Joe's brother, James, courted investors by telling them that "We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden...We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company." (James Biden denies this but multiple sources with no reason to lie confirm it).Every family has its grifters and problem children: Hunter is clearly one of those, from his expulsion from the Navy after failing a cocaine test to his work with Bohai Harvest RST, who profited by investing in the facial recognition tech that is being used to round up Chinese Uyghurs and send them to torture camps. Read the rest

Most U.S. adults answer fewer than half questions correctly on digital know-how quiz, and many struggle with cybersecurity and privacy

Zebras may have evolved their distinctive stripes as a way to interfere with flies' vision. Flies have difficulty landing on black-and-white surfaces because the light polarization screws up their ability to decelerate.Recently, researchers in Japan painted black cows with zebra-like white stripes and discovered that flies stay away from them. Whoever painted the cows did good work, they look dapper. From CNN:A team of Japanese researchers recruited six cows and gave them each black-and-white stripes, black stripes and no stripes. They took photos of the cow's painted right side, counting the number of bites as they happened and watching how the cows reacted.While unpainted cows and cows with black stripes endured upward of 110 bites in 30 minutes, the black-and-white cows suffered fewer than 60 in the same period, researchers found.Image: PLOS/Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Read the rest

Elly Blue has kickstarted a series of successful feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies; her latest is Dragon Bike: Fantastical feminist bicycle stories, for which she is seeking $6,000 ($10 gets you an ebook, $13 gets you a printed book, $15 gets you a book and a poster).Blue's anthologies pay the authors a proportional share of the income from the Kickstarters, and you can top that up by directly tipping the authors through your pledge.Blue adds: "Bikes in Space volume 6 is all about dragons...featuring heroines oozing with agency, dragons of the friend and foe varieties, and a fun mix of genres, from hard scifi to high fantasy to cyberpunk. This is the best of these yet, and it's a real emotional rollercoaster. Perfect for people who miss the drama of Game of Thrones but not the rapeyness. On a different note, we're asking all our backers to boost the value of their pledge by asking Kickstarter's senior leadership to voluntarily recognize their workers' wish to unionize. You can find more at kickstarterunited.org -- if Boing Boing were to write about this I know it would have a real impact."The stories for this volume are already in hand and they sound great:* A kid on a generation ship enlists the imagination of her community to save her moms' pizzeria* With the support of her coven, a talented witch works to redeem an unthinkable crime* Two elite dragonbike racers meet cute, and the stakes of winning change completely* Quarantined on a remote moon, a family makes some unusual allies* As a dragon terrorizes the countryside, a midwife faces an ethical dilemma* A bike mechanic with a vast hoard yields some treasures to those most in need* And much more! Read the rest

Being a global multinational sure is hard! Yesterday, World of Warcraft maker Blizzard faced global criticism after it disqualified a high-stakes tournament winner over his statement of solidarity with the Hong Kong protests -- Blizzard depends on mainland China for a massive share of its revenue and it can't afford to offend the Chinese state. Today, outraged games on Reddit's /r/hearthstone forum are scheming a plan to flood Blizzard with punishing, expensive personal information requests under the EU's expansive General Data Privacy Regulation -- Blizzard depends on the EU for another massive share of its revenue and it can't afford the enormous fines it would face if it failed to comply with these requests, which take a lot of money and resource to fulfill.Being a multinational is indeed hard, but it's cute to see global capitalism's potential downfall in the welter of jurisdictions the largest corporations seek to have a presence in so that they can maximize their profitability.o, if you want to submit a GDPR request, and live in the EU, you can use the following form letter, addressed to the data protection officer for Blizzard (DPO@Blizzard.com) or Activision (activisiion actually has an existing portal):To Whom It May Concern:I am hereby requesting access according to Article 15 GDPR. Please confirm whether or not you are processing personal data (as defined by Article 4(1) and (2) GDPR) concerning me.In case you are, I am hereby requesting access to the following information pursuant to Article 15 GDPR:* all personal data concerning me that you have stored;* the purposes of the processing;* the categories of personal data concerned;* the recipients or categories of recipient to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed;* where possible, the envisaged period for which the personal data will be stored, or, if not possible, the criteria used to determine that period;* where the personal data are not collected from the data subject, any available information as to their source;* the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) GDPR and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for me. Read the rest

Humans contract the Guinea worm parasite by ingesting water containing fleas infected with guinea worm larvae. The devastating and nightmarish symptoms don't show up until around a year later:a stringy worm that is 60 to 90 centimetres erupts through the skin on the leg or foot. Its excruciatingly painful journey out of the body can take weeks. To relieve the burning sensation, many people wade into the nearest body of water — often the same pond from which they drink. When an adult worm enters the water, it releases larvae, and the cycle starts anew.Because scientists thought the parasite required on humans for transmission, it was believed that Guinea worm could be eradicated. In 1986, The World Health Assembly endorsed a plan targeting the parasite for extinction through the use of larvicides, and by educating people to use water filters and stay out of bodies of water if infected. The plan largely worked:An international partnership — led by the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia — has reduced the number of new infections from 3.5 million per year in 1986 to just 28 in 2018.Unfortunately, new cases indicate that animals might be able to transmit guinea worms after all. Cases in Chad may be related to dogs in a way scientists don't yet understand. Other pockets of contamination have also been discovered:The discovery in 2013 of infected baboons — a first — in a small forested area in southern Ethiopia also has researchers scratching their heads. Read the rest

Nature's li'l hackers break into security contractor's van

On a solo New York Comic Con panel this past Friday, Paul Reubens shared wonderful stories from his prolific career, prompted by questions from fans in the audience. One fan asked if Paul had any favorite moments working with Tim Burton, and that got him talking about how Pee-wee's Big Adventure became Burton's directorial debut (starts at 8:57). It's a long story, as he admits, but ultimately a real Hollywood fairytale. Shelley Duvall plays a part in the story, as does Maryedith Burrell. Sly Stallone plays a part too but may just now be finding out his influential role. As Paul tells it, back in the day, he offered Warner Bros. "150 to 200" names of working directors to choose from, they declined all but one. He was disappointed in their choice and stalled in the hopes of getting a better one. "I had just worked like 10 years to get to the point where I'm sitting in Warner Bros. office with the presidents... and I have the opportunity to make a movie, and that's like the wrong director. That's not the right director. And I was completely inspired... and I don't think he knows to this day that he was such a strong inspiration... I was, at the time, completely inspired by Sylvester Stallone because, I'm not kidding, you probably... know this story, maybe some of you don't... Sylvester Stallone, when he made Rocky, very famously said 'no' to every single opportunity... that didn't include him starring in it. Read the rest

Need earbuds that can last and don't sound like they're underwater? These Bluetooth earpieces can compete with the sound of AirPods and Beats Pro for a fraction of the price. From sleek ergonomic tech to long-lasting audio that's perfect for a hike, there's a set here for every lifestyle.CRESUER TOUCHWAVE True Wireless Stereo EarbudsA simple touch lets you answer calls or skip songs with these earbuds, made for those who like their audio equipment to be intuitive and unobtrusive. Bluetooth 5 connectivity makes sure the music comes through clear and non-stop, and the casing provides maximum protection from dust and moisture. A set of CRESUER TOUCHWAVE True Wireless Stereo Earbuds is now 33% off the retail price.Brio Phantom X7 True Wireless Earbuds + Charging CaseTalk about playtime: The Phantom X7s pack 8 hours of listening time on their own, but that stretches to 100 hours once you figure in the charging case. The case even charges wirelessly, and you juice up your smartphone or other devices with it by USB. Get yours now for a full 60% off the list price.xFyro ARIA True Wireless Bluetooth EarbudsHere's some tech for the true audiophile, designed by working sound engineers with CVC noise isolation. They're IP67 waterproof and fully compatible with Siri or Google Assistant for smooth operation. Take 60% off the retail price now on the xFyro ARIAs.XT9 True Wireless Fitness Headphones with Charging DockThese buds are designed to stay put, but the beat keeps going even if you take one out. Read the rest

Imagine sitting on the couch sippin ur drink and... pic.twitter.com/ipAYrWiNOx— Dj Candlest🕯ck (@candlestickem) October 6, 2019 Holy cow! Thank goodness no one was hurt!(h/t @NekoCase) Read the rest

“Shocking charge blows lid off 22-year cover-up” screams the cover of this week’s National Enquirer. “Diana’s Killer Found!”

My guest this week on the Cool Tools show is David Moldawer. David is a Brooklyn-based writer and book collaborator who spent more than a decade as an acquiring editor in New York City publishing. He was an editor on a number of books I've written. He also writes a weekly newsletter for nonfiction authors and experts who aspire to be authors called The Maven Game.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageRaw transcript excerpts:FocusmateFocusmate has been transformative for me over the last few months. It’s very simple. It pairs you with a random person via webcam and you work together for 50 minutes at a time. So it’s like having a virtual coworking partner. So what happens is you have a calendar and you pick a slot. Let’s say I want to work at 9:00 AM — it’ll say “You’re working with John or Bill or Melinda at 9:00 AM,” and at that time I click start and it brings up a typical webcam, video-chat-kind-of window, and the other person’s there sitting at a desk and I’ll say “Hi, what are you working on?” They’ll say, “Oh I’m grading something because I’m a teacher.” And I’ll say, “Okay great. I’m doing some editing because I’m a book collaborator,” and that’s it. And then we’ll just sit there and work with the webcam going. Nobody really watches each other. Read the rest

Glenlivet capsules are edible, seaweed-derived pods filled with whiskey that you bite into. It's pretty stupid.First of all, you can't add a drop of water to bring the volatiles to the surface of the liquor.Second of all, you can't sip it.Third of all, whatever portability benefits can allegedly be derived from consuming whiskey in capsule form ("No glass needed," as Glenlivet has it) are wiped out by the need to keep these capsules in some kind of rigid container to keep them from being burst in your bag or pocket.Glenlivet is a division of the booze monopolist Pernod Ricard, a faceless multinational conglomerate that also owns Chivas, Wiser's, Lamb's, Hiram Walker, Absolut, Dubonnet, Fuel, Ballantine's, Kahlua, Beefeater, Malibu, Tia Maria, Jacob's Creek, Jameson, Stolichnaya, Mumm, Pernod, Redbreast, Bushmills, and many others.No ice. No stirrer. No glass. We're redefining how whisky can be enjoyed. Introducing The Glenlivet Capsule Collection #noglassrequired pic.twitter.com/F4MGErsfZM— The Glenlivet (@TheGlenlivet) October 2, 2019(via CNN) Read the rest

In Ecuador.That's a double scoop of nope here, thank you.Guinea pigs have long been a traditional food in various indigenous cultures of Latin America -- most notably in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. In Ecuador, they're often roasted with salt and served with potatoes and a sauce with a peanut base. One adventurous food vendor profiled by AP is taking “cuy,” as the animal is locally known, to a new, cold level. Guinea Pig Ice Cream.Excerpt:“I was suspicious, but it was tasty,” said Marlene Franco, a 78-year-old retiree who tried a scoop at a stall next to a highway linking the Ecuadorian capital of Quito to the city of Sangolqui.The stall owner is María del Carmen Pilapaña, whose offbeat offering inspires disbelief and laughter among first-time customers. Pilapaña’s operation is small. It consists of two tables in an open area lined with dentists’ clinics and other businesses. Even so, demand is growing. Every week, the entrepreneur prepares 150 servings ($1 for a cone) of guinea pig ice cream.Cone or scoop: Guinea pig ice cream for sale in Ecuador [apnews.com, image: shutterstock] Read the rest

Over the years, there have been numerous proposals by the likes of MTV and HBO to bring Peter Bagge's seminal comic Hate to the screen. Here is a 1996 pilot short, directed by Steve Loter. While the art looks great, the voices are just... wrong. SO WRONG. Yeesh.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Don't oversleep when you have jury duty. Deandre Somerville (21) received a 10-day jail sentence and a criminal record for oversleeping and blowing off his service. He was also put on probation for a year and given 150 hours of community service.From Boston.com:Somerville lives with his grandparents and helps care for his grandfather who recently had surgery and has trouble walking. Somerville helps him around the house and takes him to therapy and the grocery store while his grandmother is at work.He was out playing basketball when his worried grandmother called to say there was a police officer at the door with a court summons.“My grandfather said, ‘Just go in and be honest,’” said Somerville. “I’ve never had a criminal background, never been arrested, never been in handcuffs. The most I’ve ever gotten was a traffic ticket so I was thinking it wouldn’t be that bad.”Inside the courtroom, he said Judge John Kastrenakes explained that Somerville’s negligence delayed the court by 45 minutes.“They handcuffed me in the courtroom after that,” said Somerville, who spent the next 10 days in jail. He said his first jail experience wasn’t scary, but he prayed daily and wrote in a notebook.Deandre Somerville served 10 days in jail, is on probation for a year and has to complete 150 hours of community service as well as write a letter of apology.https://t.co/n8KBoYbRWW pic.twitter.com/xs5ucY3xW3— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) October 3, 2019 Read the rest

My cat came inside soaking wet, so I did some investigating and found this. pic.twitter.com/s1ygmFQArp— Laura Lee (@Laura88Lee) October 3, 2019 You have been warned. Cats do take revenge. We did a further investigation, it was plotted revenge. pic.twitter.com/9lduGij4NI— Laura Lee (@Laura88Lee) October 3, 2019 Read the rest

As AOL's anime-haired "Digital Prophet", David Shing was often portrayed as a blatant poser, a voltron of web 2.0 buzzwords with a tellingly quiet social media following. But he was also a marketing director there. The excesses of the "Shingy" persona, with its silly TED talks and news appearances, dressed up a "fairly standard job" of running interference with advertisers.New York Magazine:Did the idea that anything you do can be taken out of context freak you out? Did you start second-guessing yourself?I definitely was cautious about it because when you get trolled several times, you’re kind of like, “I’m good. I’ll just put my head down and keep working and doing the work I need to do,” which is not to be invisible.Hundreds of meetings a year. I especially appreciate that "Digital Prophet" intentionally mocked the anodyne creepiness of the term Google and Facebook were using for the equivalent role—"Evangelist"—and feel rather like I should have noticed that at the time. He's absolutely a corporate talker of the marketing tribe, but what he was saying on stage (or to New Yorker profilers) was not what he was saying behind closed doors. What does Verizon get out of [AOL]?Incredible ad techHe has a 2-year-old and the 2-year-old is "screen-free." Read the rest

El Pais reports that a mother and her daughter were arrested after hiring a man to kill a swindler, then complaining to police when he failed to do the job.To be able to start working on the operation and locate the target, the fake spy requested a kind of deposit, of €7,000. This, he claimed, was the money needed to pay his informants and locate hitmen who could carry out the operation. But time passed, and the hit did not take place.The fake hitman was also arrested and charged. The alleged swindler was finally found—to ensure he lives—and may finally face charges of his own in what Spanish police have named "Operation Kafka."Photo:Shutterstock Read the rest

Paper Girls is Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's outstanding, Stranger Things-esque all-girl time-travel adventure comic, and after four years, the pair have completed the story, tying up the increasingly complicated braided timelines of their tale in a fantastically satisfying bow.Paper Girls tells the tale of a group of young girls who deliver a local newspaper in 1980s Cleveland, facing down bullies, sexism, and parents, but whose lives change when, one morning, they are catapulted into a time-travel adventure that has them ranging up and down the timeline from the human race's earliest days to the very last moments of our planet, as they become pivotal figures in an existential war between time-travelers from different eras.On the way, they encounter their older selves (and clones of themselves) as well as dinosaurs, mecha warriors, hotshot space pilots, and all manner of treachery and skullduggery, as well as romance, bravery, self-sacrifice, and crises personal and global.Vaughan and Chiang get into some varsity-level time-travel weirdness, too, with lots of braided timelines that they need to tie up in this final volume, something they accomplish with virtuoso flair, across a series of multi-page spreads divided into horizontal slices that show the protagonists in four different times and places at the story's climax, a piece of dazzling visual storytelling that is worth all six volumes on its own.Paper Girls won Best New Series when it debuted in 2015, and it's lived up to that promise. Now that the tale is complete, it's a perfect time to re-read it from start to finish (the six collections' covers piece together to make a single, giant image, hinting at lots more premeditated goodies that will pay off now the project's over), or to gift the set to a friend. Read the rest

A coroner's report seems to suggest that two English rugby players who died of a heroin overdose were seeking brown sugar in the wee hours of the morning in Sri Lanka, but accidentally purchased a kind of heroin nicknamed "brown sugar." From The Guardian:An inquest at Crook coroner’s court heard that the two men, who were “not habitual drug users”, had taken a substance known locally as “brown sugar”, a cheap version of heroin....The coroner, Crispin Oliver, said the men purchased the drug on the way home from the nightclub. He said: “They had no prior knowledge of this substance. They would not have known that it was heroin.“I am satisfied that these were not drug users, I think this was a one-off occasion, it was certainly a mistake and it was certainly an accident.”Crispin added: “I hope this serves as a warning to people when they travel to far parts of the world that they have to be very careful about what they are encouraged to purchase and take.”Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash[Thanks, Julian] Read the rest

Kiyo Yamauchi retweeted a tweet written in Japanese, which has a photo of an acorn. He said, "The tweeter found an acorn at a shopping mall and he brought it to the lost and found just in case a child has dropped it. At the lost and found there was the mother and the daughter who were there looking for it."The story takes a huge turn as the mother had a Twitter account and found his tweet. She sent a DM to him saying that the daughter can't stop talking about him and wants to be his wife one day. The original tweeter says it was his first time he got a marriage proposal. So cute.— Kiyo Yamauchi 🍱 (@kiyotoshi_y) October 2, 2019 He followed up with this: "The story takes a huge turn as the mother had a Twitter account and found his tweet. She sent a DM to him saying that the daughter can't stop talking about him and wants to be his wife one day. The original tweeter says it was his first time he got a marriage proposal." Read the rest

Elena Botella worked at Capital One -- one of the US's leading issuers of subprime credit-cards -- for three years; in a fascinating first-person account, she describes how Capital One's youthful, smart, principled and caring staff created a culture in which the lives they were ruining were replaced by obfuscating jargon and interesting mathematics puzzles.It's the predatory lending version of The Banality of Evil, in which the poorest Americans generated $23b/year in revenue from interest alone, which was funneled into good, challenging, well-paid jobs for everyday people who managed to never think about the harms they were doing.She calls it "a conspiracy of silence" but it wasn't silence so much as metaphor and abstraction: by obsessing about the "physics" of debt and the mathematics that described it, the 3,000 white-collar workers at Capital One HQ were able to think of their work as an experimental science, in which they were using interventions (like randomly increasing the credit limits for some cardholders who were already struggling to make payments and measuring the total revenues that resulted) to uncover truths about the universe, not new techniques to ruin peoples' lives.Capital One’s culture of experimentation also acted as a kind of buffer. Fast Company has reported that Capital One runs 80,000 experiments per year. As Christopher Worley and Edward Lawler III explain in the journal Organizational Dynamics, a bank like Capital One can randomly assign differing interest rates, payment options, or rewards to various customers and see which combinations are most profitable for any given segment of people. Read the rest

Sadly, it appears that the decomposed latex Leonardo suit from 1993's TMNT III failed to sell at its auction earlier this week, despite the low low estimate of £10,000-£15,000.Leonardo's (Mark Caso) costume from Stuart Gilard's family adventure sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. When their friend April O'Neil (Paige Turco) was magically transported back in time to 17th century Japan, Leonardo and his fellow turtles followed in an attempt to rescue her.This costume includes a green turtle bodysuit consisting of foam latex cast elements over a spandex base, with dense-foam chest and shell elements, leather knee and elbow pads, and a leather sheath setup for Leonardo's swords. The head included is a stunt version, also utilizing a foam latex skin over a spandex base, with cast resin teeth, high-quality eyes, a fabric bandana, internal helmet liner shell for the performer, and a zipper at the back to allow the piece to be closed. Both the body and head of the costume show substantial breakdown to the foam latex elements and require restoration. The body is currently filled with some stuffing and rests on an oversize clothing hangar -- additional work is needed to make the piece stand. Dimensions (Head attached): 185.5 cm x 81.25 cm x 38 cm (73" x 32" x 15")Keep your eyes peeled on eBay! Read the rest

Machine learning systems are pretty good at finding hidden correlations in data and using them to infer potentially compromising information about the people who generate that data: for example, researchers fed an ML system a bunch of Google Play reviews by reviewers whose locations were explicitly given in their Google Plus reviews; based on this, the model was able to predict the locations of other Google Play reviewers with about 44% accuracy.This has grave implications for privacy, as it can be used to de-anonymize or re-identify anonymized data-sets (for example, some of these statistical methods are used to make very accurate guesses about which pages are being transited through encrypted Tor connections). But machine learning systems are also plagued by adversarial examples: tiny preturbations in data that would not confuse humans but which sharply decrease the accuracy of machine learning systems (from fake roadsigns projected for an eyeblink to changes to a single pixel in an image.Wired's Andy Greenberg reports on two scholarly efforts to systematize a method for exploiting adversarial examples to make re-identification and de-anonymization attacks less effective. The first is Attrigard, which introduces small amounts of random noise into user activity such that "an attacker’s accuracy is reduced back to that baseline." The second is Mockingbird, designed to make it much harder to guess which encrypted pages and sites are traversing the Tor network, though Mockingbird requires a much larger injection of noise, incurring a 56% bandwidth penalty in Tor's already bandwidth-starved environment. Read the rest

The tldr; of Thomas B. Edsall's alarming New York Times opinion piece: Senate Republicans, Fox News, and loyalists in the military will see to it that Trump spends out his life in office.Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and one of the authors of How Democracies Die, warned that a dangerous situation could emerge if the outcome of the 2020 election is very close, “one that, broadly like 2000, hinged on one or maybe two contested states.”In that case, Levitsky wrote, "it is possible that Republicans would close ranks behind Trump, resulting in a constitutional crisis. If right-wing media and the G.O.P. politicians were to remain solidly behind Trump, as they largely have thus far in previous scandals, there would be no easy constitutional exit."Source photo by David Everett Strickler on Unsplash Read the rest

Senator Bernie Sanders is off the campaign trail "until further notice" after physicians discovered a blockage in one of his arteries and inserted two stents. He had experienced "chest discomfort" last night. From CNN:"Sen. Sanders is conversing and in good spirits," (said senior adviser Jeff Weaver.) "He will be resting up over the next few days. We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice, and we will continue to provide appropriate updates..."Sanders, who is 78 years old, felt the "discomfort" during a campaign event. Despite his age, he has been one of the most active campaigners in the 2020 Democratic primary field. Read the rest

This clip is from 2007. I have yet to prepare Christopher Walken's upright chicken with pears but I have enjoyed this video several times.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

A: This clip is an example of a certain genre of Internet video.Q: What is a supercut?Bonus video below, the time Boing Boing was part of a clue on Jeopardy! Read the rest

A truck was traveling across the Nanfang’ao Bridge in Taiwan this morning when the bridge collapsed. According to Mashable:A truck can be seen passing over the span as it falls, almost making it to the other side before being dragged down. The tanker caught fire when it landed, according to the New York Times. The driver was injured but survived. According to reports, five people are still missing after the accident. At least 12 people were injured, including the truck driver, two rescue workers, and several people in fishing boats.And via The New York Times:Maintenance consultants responsible for the bridge had in previous years found rusted cables, and several connected points had been hit by vehicles and damaged, according to The Liberty Times.The consultants had reported the problems several times to the harbor administration, but did not receive a reply, the newspaper reported. The public affairs office of the Su’ao Port branch office of the Taiwan International Ports Corporation declined to comment on the report. Read the rest