Majestic Trinkets created a double-layered D20 that looks like something right out of a dingy pub in Waterdeep. It's $80, but think how quickly you'll win it back! This die is perfect for the most extra member of your adventuring party.This is the regular gaming D20 in my 'Advantage' design family of dice. It is mathematically balanced in CAD software design to ensure that the die is centered and fair.A 'clean' roll where the inner die settles with the outer die may not happen with every roll. When rolling on a flat surface, like a table or dice tray, it settles roughly 40% of the time. When rolling with a dice tower, it settles roughly 70% of the time. If it did not settle, give it a little shimmy on the surface it's laying and it should settle. Read the rest

When replacing a watchband, or fixing one where the spring bar has gone awry, this super cheap tool and set of springs will come to the rescue.Much like an eyeglasses repair kit, a watch spring bar tool is never around when you need one. Trying to push that tiny pin in and get the spring to engage, or disengage, is maddening. If I do not just break the spring bar and send bits a flying, I'll find some tool around the house to try that invariably scratches the lugs on my watch.This cheap box of springs and a removal tool can sit in my desk drawer and just always be there. The set comes with replacement tips for the tool, and 108 spring bars in the standard sizes.Watch Spring Bar Tool Set for Watch Wrist Strap Repair Kit, 108PCS Extra Watch Band Pins via Amazon Read the rest

Oh, this is too good. After Bowie died in 2016, YouTuber George Dillon made this video of Laurel and Hardy dancing to "The Jean Genie" to honor the late rockstar. It really works. He also did a similar treatment for "Rebel Rebel":Joy!(Soap Plant WACKO) Read the rest

I hear endless stories of grief from the friends I have who try to make ends meet working for these services.Jalopnik's Dhruv Mehrotra and Aaron Gordon share the terrible economics:But Dave, who was granted anonymity out of fear of being deactivated by the ride-hail giant for speaking to the press, had no real choice but to wait. The passenger had requested the stop through the app, so refusing to make it would have been contentious both with the customer and with Uber. The exact number varies by city, but drivers must maintain a high rating in order to work on their platform. And there’s widespread belief among drivers that the Uber algorithm punishes drivers for cancelling trips.Ultimately, the rider paid $65 for the half-hour trip, according to a receipt viewed by Jalopnik. But Dave made only $15 (the fares have been rounded to anonymize the transaction).Uber kept the rest, meaning the multibillion-dollar corporation kept more than 75 percent of the fare, more than triple the average so-called “take-rate” it claims in financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Had he known in advance how much he would have been paid for the ride relative to what the rider paid, Dave said he never would have accepted the fare.“This is robbery,” Dave told Jalopnik over email. “This business is out of control.” Read the rest

In an effort to fight cynicism, David Byrne has started a new online editorial project called Reasons to be Cheerful. It's described as a "self help magazine for people who hate self help magazines."He writes:It often seems as if the world is going straight to Hell. I wake up in the morning, I look at the paper, and I say to myself, 'Oh no!' Often I’m depressed for half the day. I imagine some of you feel the same.Recently, I realized this isn’t helping. Nothing changes when you’re numb. So, as a kind of remedy, and possibly as a kind of therapy, I started collecting good news. Not schmaltzy, feel-good news, but stuff that reminded me, Hey, there's positive stuff going on! People are solving problems and it’s making a difference!I began telling others about what I’d found. Their responses were encouraging, so I created a website called Reasons to be Cheerful and started writing. Later on, I realized I wanted to make the endeavor a bit more formal. So we got a team together and began commissioning stories from other writers and redesigned the website. Today, we’re relaunching Reasons to be Cheerful as an ongoing editorial project.We’re telling stories that reveal that there are, in fact, a surprising number of reasons to feel cheerful -- that provide a more optimistic and, we believe, more accurate depiction of the world. We hope to balance out some of the amplified negativity and show that things might not be as bad as we think. Read the rest

Give Analyze Words a Twitter handle—perhaps your Twitter handle!—and it will perform a personality analysis based on all the words it finds. My report is embedded above; I am a spacy, sensuous valley girl. Read the rest

PC gamers, choose your weapons. We've sniffed out summer discounts on a truckload of gear from Azio, a company that gets high marks from users for style as well as performance. Here are a few of our favorites from their diverse line of keyboards and mice.Azio Vision KB505U Backlight KeyboardWhen you're on a raid, you can't take time to hunt for keys. Azio's Vision is the perfect example of the company's trademark, gamer-friendly innovations. Extra-large print keys and backlighting (in your choice of three colors) combine to make things easy to find no matter what the lighting. There's also built-in multimedia controls and quick-access hotkeys to make things a breeze no matter what game you're playing. Pick up the Azio Vision KB505U Backlight Keyboard now for $24, nearly 20% off the list price.Azio GM2400 Gaming MouseThe GM2400 is built for speed, and that starts the moment you plug in the USB. The mouse is plug-and-play, with no software installation needed. From there, you can adjust the DPI setting with onboard controls and use the side buttons to turn on a dime in your most hectic firefights. Get the Azio GM2400 Gaming Mouse for $15, down 24% from the MSRP.Azio MK MAC USB KeyboardMac users will wonder what they did without this one. Bold, backlit keys convey authority, and you can access Mac features like Launchpad with the click of a single button. And if you have to press more than one, that's ok too: Like all Azio keyboards, this one comes equipped with 6-key rollover capability. Read the rest

[I ran a review of this in June when the UK edition came out -- this review coincides with the US edition's publication] Rob Smith is an eminent computer scientist and machine learning pioneer whose work on genetic algorithms has been influential in both industry and the academy; now, in his first book for a general audience, Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All, Smith expertly draws connections between AI, neoliberalism, human bias, eugenics and far-right populism, and shows how the biases of computer science and the corporate paymasters have distorted our whole society.Smith's book weaves the history of science and mathematics' contribution to our understanding of probability and uncertainty, the philosophical quest for an understanding of the true nature of reality and its relationship to our perceptions and ruminations, the inextricable stories of evolutionary theory and eugenics, and the long project to design a thinking machine to show how the imperatives of neoliberalism and its way of valuing (and discounting) people combined with some of computer science's most ill-advised and habitual simplifications to produce a form of statistical tyranny, one that tries to force humans to simplify their behaviors to suit the models, rather than adapting the models to suit the humans.On the way, Smith shows how the parts of machine learning that do work refute some of the uglier philosophical ideas that have risen in currency as algorithms have taken over our society -- just as the Victorians had their "blind watchmaker," the rise of evolutionary algorithms has given a new lease on life to eugenic theories about survival of the fittest and the need to purify and protect the "best" among us. Read the rest

The U.S. government will launch a program about a month from now to help state officials prevent ransomware attacks on voter registration databases and systems, ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency program is designed to teach state election officials how they can prevent ransomware infestations and other internet-based attacks that represent as an increasingly grave threat to election security. Voter registration databases are particularly ripe targets for ransomware, a type of attack in which the attacker sends a virus that can cripple entire city computer networks. Such incidents have already happened in major cities throughout the United States, most recently in Texas, Baltimore, MD, and Atlanta, GA.CISA won't be offering states “advice on whether a state should ultimately pay or refuse to pay ransom to a hacker if one of its systems is already infected,” Reuters reports:These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data, according to current and former U.S. officials.“We assess these systems as high risk,” said a senior U.S. official, because they are one of the few pieces of election technology regularly connected to the Internet.(...) “Recent history has shown that state and county governments and those who support them are targets for ransomware attacks,” said Christopher Krebs, CISA’s director. Read the rest

Security at La Perla, a downtown bar in Los Angeles, aggressively forced out at least two transgender women and "several gay men," according to CBS.Cellphone video of the incident shows Jennifer Bianchi, one of the women, repeatedly saying, “Don’t touch me like that.”A friend of hers is shown being pulled off a chair and carried out the door.“I think it was really wrong and humiliating,” Bianchi says, “Hurtful.”The group at the bar was comprised of staff and volunteers from a local nonprofit, Bienestar Human Services who were there to support DTLA Proud, an annual two-day festival held in Pershing Square that celebrates the LGBTQ community.Image: Youtube Read the rest

Illegitimate US president Donald Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron’s respective governments have struck deal to end feud over France’s tax on tech giants.Trump still won't directly answer when asked if he'll abandon his threatened retaliatory tariffs on wine imports, joking "I can confirm the first lady loved your French wine.”“We have reached a very good agreement,” Macron said at a joint news conference with Trump as the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Biarritz, France, ended on Monday.From Bloomberg:The law Macron signed imposes a three per cent tax on the revenue of technology giants such as Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Trump objected to France taxing U.S.-based companies.The tax, retroactive to January, affects companies with at least 750 million euros (US$845 million) in global revenue and digital sales of 25 million euros in France. While most of the roughly 30 businesses affected are American, the list also includes Chinese, German, British and French companies.“We are pushing for international rules on this,” Macron said. “It is not against any company in particular, it’s just to solve the problem.”PHOTO: Reuters Read the rest

Approximately once every ten minutes, the Bitcoin network issues one "miner" with a block reward of freshly minted bitcoins. When bitcoin launched in 2009, the block reward was 50 bitcoins. Every four years, the reward is cut in half. Currently the block reward is 12.5 BTC. In May 2020 it will go down to 6.25 BTC. (Here's an interesting page with live data about bitcoin and mining rewards.) The only other incentive besides block rewards are transaction fees miners require to add a transaction to a block.So what happens when the mining reward becomes so small as to be inconsequential (it will reach zero in about 120 years, and the reward we be on the order of 0.00000001 BTC, or about 1/100 of a penny at the current exchange rate). In this video Heidi of Crypto Tips describes of the scenarios that could play out.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Ross Ulbricht, the creator of The Silk Road darknet marketplace, is serving a double life sentence plus forty years with no possibility for parole for "money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the Internet." [Wikipedia] Above, a detail from his incredible drawing of his cell and cellmate at the MCC (Metropolitan Correctional Center).In a Medium essay titled Life in a Box, Ross writes:Try, if you can, to imagine being in this 65-square-foot cell, just you, your cellie and a pet mouse. Mail comes in and out. You get the occasion visit or phone call, but otherwise this and the prison is your universe. Now imagine living here day after day. You lay down in the bunk at night and wake up in it every morning. You eat here. Some days you weep here. Year after year, this is it. No breaks, no weekend off, and you are told you will never be let out, ever.What can one live for under these conditions?Surprisingly, there is much. At the very least, I know that rarefied states of mind, states of pure bliss that dedicated monks experience after many years of devotion, are available to me if I live a spiritual life in here. I know also that all the world’s knowledge is still available to me between the covers of books (some I was reading at the time I drew “Life in a Box” can be seen stacked on my bunk). Read the rest

Nepal is banning disposable plastic soda bottles and other single-use plastic items in Khumbu, the region where Mount Everest is located. In May, volunteers collected more than six thousand pounds of trash from the mountain. This new ban is meant to reduce the amount of garbage left by tourists and climbers on Everest and in the villages surrounding it. From CNN:Nepalese authorities said they will ban plastic soft drink bottles and single-use plastics under 30 microns thick (0.0012 inches, or 0.03 millimeter) in the Khumbu region... The ban will prevent hikers from bringing the plastic goods in -- and stop shops from selling them.The rules won't come into effect until January next year, and won't apply to plastic water bottles, said Ganesh Ghimire, the chief administrative officer of Khumbu Pasang Lhamu rural municipality."We are consulting with all sides about what can be done about plastic water bottles," he told CNN Thursday. "We will soon find a solution for that."image: "The sun rising on Everest in 2011" by Sebastian Werner (CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

Last year, Shanee Stopnitzky dropped her doctoral studies in marine biology for another soggy pursuit: submarines!Picking up a pair of used submarines (apparently they're not just for the Canadian Navy anymore), she and a team of volunteer enthusiasts set to repairing, upgrading and making the wee underwater vessels the bad ass exploratory monsters they were always meant to be. Read the rest

One of the greatest cartoon series of recent years, Adventure Time ran for ten seasons on Cartoon Network. Created by Pendleton Ward, the original short above was produced for Frederator Studios' Random! Cartoons show and aired on the Nicktoons network on January 11, 2007. Finn was named Pen.More at the Adventure Time Wiki. Read the rest

In the latest issue of the What's in my bag? newsletter (published by Cool Tools, which I edit), my friend AJ Jacobs talks about four things he keeps i his bag:A.J. Jacobs is a writer, lecturer and human guinea pig. He is the author of four New York Times bestselling books, including “The Year of Living Biblically” and “The Know-It-All.” He is a contributor to NPR, the New York Times and Esquire magazine and is a frequent TED speaker. His most recent book is “Thanks a Thousand.”Life Changing Questions ($24)My friend — the social scientist and mathematician Spencer Greenberg — developed a deck of cards he calls “Life Changing Questions.” And they are just what they sound like. Each card has a Big Question printed on it (e.g. “What have you changed your mind about?” or “What would you do if you had one week to live?”) Spencer’s research shows these questions are the ones his test subjects find most valuable in reassessing their lives. I like to break the cards out at dinner with my family and use them as conversation prompts. They are much better than arguing over screen time.ReMarkable ($499)This is an unusual tablet. Its main purpose is to allow you to take handwritten notes on the impressively paper-like interface. It’s too expensive for what it is, but I still recommend it because it’s helped reduce my habit of having dozens of spiral-bound notebooks strewn about my office. Read the rest

With all pretense having long been abandoned disinformation professional Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who shamelessly lied on behalf of the Trump Administration, will be joining the Fox News payroll.Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles!The Hill:Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is joining Fox News as a contributor, the network announced Thursday.Sanders, who left the Trump administration roughly two months ago, will appear on various Fox platforms to provide political commentary. She will make her first appearance on "Fox & Friends" during its Sept. 6 broadcast. Read the rest

This guy collected a gallon of seawater, some sand, and seaweed, poured it in a jar, and sealed the lid. He inadvertently collected a lot of tiny animals, too, and a year later the jar is a vibrant closed ecosystem, though it seems to be in a bit of decline due to a massive heat wave.From the YouTube description:A year ago I made this huge natural native saltwater ecosphere in a jar. It has had a lot of ups and downs, but to this day is still very successful. The ecosphere has housed crabs, starfish and a lot more and is currently still housing a lot of crustaceans, paramecium, worms, other invertebrates and even spionid worms. Image: YouTube/Life in Jars Read the rest

Thermochromic materials change color as they heat or cool. You know the mood ring? Like that!Now comes a much weirder and more delightful use of this technology: A seven-segment thermochromic display. Each segment is blackish in color when cool, but slowly changes from reddish to yellow to green as it heats up.Behind the scenes is some nifty hardware work by the physicist Moritz v. Sivers, as this post in Hackaday describes ...To achieve the effect, he first cut each segment out of copper. The crystal sheets were applied to the segments, thanks to their handy self-stick backing, and the excess was carefully trimmed away. Each segment was then mounted to a TES1-12704 Peltier module by way of thermally conductive epoxy. TB6612FNG motor controllers and a bevy of Arduino Nano’s are used to control the Peltier modules, raising and lowering their temperature as necessary to get the desired effect.It's pretty mesmerizing to watch in action, since the segments glow and recede so slowly --- a witty inversion of the snappy speed at which we normally expect digital readouts to move. I'm now dreaming of having an entire wall of these things as the output for the world's most glacial word processor, where you have to voluntarily ease your typing speed down to 5 WPM so the display can catch up. Read the rest

In an apparent attempt to soften criticism of its business practices under President Donald Trump, Amazon is offering lawmakers private tours of its giant warehouses.The Washington Post reports today that over 560 federal, state and local policymakers and their staffs have visited warehouses in 2019, as President Trump and several Democratic would-be rivals dunk on the retailer’s tactics.Each visit to a business in our state is a great reminder: Tennessee is a fantastic place to do business! It was great to tour the @amazon fulfillment center today in Chattanooga. #AmazonFCTours pic.twitter.com/PE58aDfc8m— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) August 15, 2019From The Washington Post -- which, by the way, is owned by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos:For years, critics have accused the company of underpaying and overworking warehouse employees. In the United States, Amazon employs about 250,000 typically hourly workers, many of whom perform strenuous and mundane jobs such as walking many miles a day, picking items off shelves or packing up boxes. In response, the online retail giant has started a campaign to try to turn the tide — particularly as regulators take a closer look at the company for possible abuse of power.The efforts, though, haven’t seemed to tone down the political rhetoric.The company unleashed a squad of warehouse workers on Twitter about a year ago to rebut the narrative of harsh working conditions. “FC Ambassadors,” who have written that they tweet during their shifts, have opposed unionization efforts, and one even noted that he can “use a real bathroom when I want.” Some of the tweets have been ridiculed on social media for their bot-like responses. Read the rest

Google and Mozilla are making changes to their respective web browsers to try and thwart the notoriously corrupt government of Kazakhstan's efforts to launch a surveillance operation against its own citizens. Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), and now Apple (Safari) are all blocking a root certificate from the Kazakhstan government in their browsers which could be used to intercept encrypted traffic that goes to and Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, or any other news or communication app people might be using there.Google and Mozilla were first to take action. Later today, an Apple spokesperson began telling reporters that Safari is now also blocking the root certificate as well. “We have taken action to ensure the certificate is not trusted by Safari and our users are protected from this issue,” said the unnamed Apple spokesperson.Better late than never, but these moves by US-based tech companies are too late to protect all Kazakh users from harm. The Kazakhstan government launched the root certificate last month, and since then, the government has been able to monitor the encrypted internet activity of any users who installed it.From Engadget's Amrita Khalid:The nation forced ISPs to cooperate by making it mandatory for all customers to install the certificate in order to gain access to the internet.Turns out that the root certificate was a Trojan Horse. It allowed the Kazakhstan government to perform a "man-in-the-middle" or MitM attack against HTTPS connections to a list of 37 domains, including Facebook, Twitter, Google and more, according to a study published by University of Michigan's Censored Planet. Read the rest

Look at this cute kitty getting a little taste of ice cream on a spoon from her human. Not an every day thing, but it's okay as a fancy once-in-a-while.“This is Hallie,” says IMGURian DOWNVOTEALLEMOJIS, who adopted her. “Named because we found her abandoned on a Halliburton well site in the dead of winter.” “Kept her warm in the diesel truck and fed her cans of tuna.” “Had her almost 2 years now. She’s a lucky girl! And so are we.”What kind of ice cream?“Strawberry, my favorite.” Her first ice cream Read the rest

I've owned quite a few vegetable peelers, and the Kuhn Rikon model (3 for on Amazon) is my favorite. The blade is very sharp and it easily skins sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and even jicama. They are really cheap, too. Buy a 3-pack and share them with your friends. Every time they accidentally cut their finger using it, they'll think of you. Read the rest

In Derry, New Hampshire, a time capsule from 1969 was finally opened on its 50th anniversary yet it was completely empty. The time capsule was inside a small safe with the combination on the back. It was originally stored at the town's municipal building and then moved to the library. From WMUR:"We were a little horrified to find that there was nothing in it," library director (Cara) Potter said.Derry historians and town officials were notified, but no one holds a list of what was originally put inside....Potter said she was told the time capsule was kept at the old municipal building in town. When it was torn down, it was brought to the library, where it has been ever since."It could have (been opened) at any point," Potter said. "We have even speculated that nothing was actually put in there in the first place. We just don't know." Read the rest

Apparently, July 20, 2019 was that fellow's lucky day. Read the rest

Sam Trail says he and his wife boarded a United Airlines plane only to discover that their seats had been vomited on by a previous passenger. They say that when they alerted a crew member, they were given a wad of paper towels and warned that they would be blamed for a departure delay if they insisted on having the seats cleaned by a cleaning crew.From Click2Houston:Sam Trail, of Houston, said he and his wife were forced to sit in a seat with fresh vomit on the back, of the seat in front of them, the floor and the seat itself."The seat in front of me was covered with vomit," Trail said. "They kept boarding the people and so we couldn't move. We basically had our luggage in our laps trying to avoid contact with the vomit."Eventually a person came on board with a spray bottle and paper towels and cleaned up some of the vomit.Image: Click2Houston Read the rest

On the Under the Knife show, Dr Lindsey Fitzharris elucidates the weird history of "anthropodermic bibliopegy," the weird practice of binding books in human skin, including the doctor who bound case histories in the skins of his dead patients, and the murderer who asked to have his biography bound in his skin and presented to the lawman who caught him after his execution. Other common ways to procure human skins for the practice included grave-robbing (Andrea wrote about the Burke and Hare editions back in 2016). (Thanks, Allen) Read the rest

Mexico City judge Víctor Octavio Luna Escobedo gave two people permission to use 500 milligrams of cocaine per day, saying the drug conveys benefits such as "tension relief, the intensification of perceptions and the desire [to have] new personal and spiritual experiences." According to Newsweek, the two happy cokeheads musn't sniff the drug while "working, driving or operating heavy machinery ... they are also not allowed to take the drug in public, in the presence of children, or encourage others to consume it."Image: Pixabay. Public domain Read the rest

Amsterdam's Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (AKA "The Ritman Library) houses more ths 25,000 occult texts, covering "Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Theosophy, alchemy, mysticism, Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Anthroposophy, Catharism, Freemasonry, Manichaeism, Judaica, the Grail, Esotericism, and comparative religion."The library has begun to scan and post its core collection to an online archive called The Hermetically Open Archive. The project was underwritten by Dan Brown in thanks for the library's contributions to his books "The Lost Symbol" and "Inferno" (the library houses the first illustrated edition of Dante's "Divine Comedy," from 1472).Though the scans are all in the public domain, the library uses Javascript tricks to try to block scraping, though, according to Maika at Haute Macabre, there are plans to enable downloading in the future.Haute Macabre has assembled a kind of highlight reel of the collection, which has some gorgeous illustrated texts in it. Hermetically Open [Ritman Library]Bury Us Beneath Occult Books: The Ritman Library Digitized [Maika/Haute Macabre] Read the rest

Air Canada flight 759's captain and co-pilot had been awake all day and were coming into San Francisco in the early hours of the morning, at the lowest point of their circadian cycle. A runway was closed for resurfacing, but they forgot or missed the note, and as a result almost landed on a taxiway full of planes getting ready to take off. It could well have been the worst airline disaster in American history. [via MeFi] At that point he noticed that the position of Air Canada flight 759 looked “very strange.” Flight 759 overflew United Airlines flight 1 at an altitude of 100 feet and kept descending, headed straight for the Philippine Airlines A340. But with its landing lights on, the huge A340 was almost impossible to miss from such a close vantage point. At an altitude of 84 feet, both pilots on flight 759 called for a go-around simultaneously, and the captain advanced the throttles to abandon the approach. While the engines spooled up, the A320 dropped to a low point of about 65 feet, coming a hair’s breadth from clipping the 55-foot-tall vertical stabilizer of Philippine Airlines flight 115. 10 feet from contact, but it would have been followed by a far worst collision with the next jet on the taxiway, with a similar result--and death toll--to the Tenerife disaster. Read the rest

The queue area at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland features a row of changing portraits wherein paintings everyday scenes are revealed as sinister and haunted (originally the effect was done with crossfading slide-projectors; now it's done with an amazing, crisp electroluminiscent effect).There were a lot of potential gags designed for the hallway (for example, the miser who spontaneously combusts!), and while the paintings the Imagineers settled are part of the best queue in theme-park history, I can't help but wish a few of those nearly-was gags had made it into the ride.One example is "The Stab," based on a well-known Currier and Ives print, which Imagineer Marc Davis reimagined as a murder scene. As the Long Forgotten Blog writes: "So it's another example of Marc riffing off of a known image, in this case wickedly reading murderous intent in this dear lady's so seemingly innocent eyes. You know, her face does seem to me to have an utter blankness about it, despite the Mona Lisa smile, that allows the viewer to imagine virtually any thought lurking behind it."Long Forgotten also mentions that my friend (and sometime Boing Boing contributor, and former Imagineering colleague) Chris Merritt is just wrapping up an astounding, two-volume history of Marc Davis that comes out on Labor Day. Chris was Davis's protege, and the rarities, never-seen sketches, and insider dope he has on Davis are absolutely mind-blowing. I've pre-ordered my copy: it's a $105, slipcased, two-volume hardcover set. Read the rest

The Obamas released their first film with Netflix, which started streaming today — a documentary called American Factory.From Fast Company:Called American Factory, the documentary follows the events of when a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in an abandoned General Motors plant in Ohio and hires 2,000 blue-collar American workers to work alongside Chinese immigrants. As France24 explains:In the new documentary’s early scenes, genuine attempts by the US and Chinese workers to bond with their new colleagues, including fishing and shooting lessons and shared Thanksgiving dinners, appear to bear some fruit.But as the new Chinese owners become alarmed by heavy financial losses, they fire the American middle managers and increasingly invoke their Chinese replacements’ sense of nationalistic pride to spur harder work, leaving the workforce ever-more divided.According to Fast Company, the reviews "have been off the charts." And the Obamas have four more films in the works.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH it's a race against the clock, as Terrorism Detective must find the puzzling factor inspiring recent terrorism violence!

I'm a fan of Todd Thyberg's design work and when he told me he had a kickstarter for a project with a H.P. Lovecraft theme, I asked him to describe the project for Boing Boing. Here's what he wrote:Are you a fan of horror, expeditionary adventures from the days of old, or the tactile sensation of letterpress printed goods? Then have I got a book for you! This one, live on Kickstarter right now, is Angel Bomb's largest and most ambitious project to date!The Miskatonic Papers is an experiential book; you don’t just read it, you explore and experience the mystery assembling it from various pieces. It’s like breaking open a time capsule and then trying to figure out what happened over 100 years ago. Composed of 50 printed pieces including letters, telegrams, drawings, newspaper clippings, a broadside, burned tatters of found stationery, and a journal which was written by hand and printed by letterpress. All of these items, letterpress printed, hand stamped, aged and weathered, comprise this Stygian work of unnameable horrors. You'll even receive a cast resin fragment of the artifact that lies at the heart of the story; painted, aged and imbued with evil.This is my fourth book, inspired by early 20th century author and creator of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Growing up reading Lovecraft’s stories, I fell in love with his dark horror and esoteric language. His creepy New England settings and monsters from beyond the furthest reaches of space and time inspired this young teenager, eager for an escape from his small North Dakota town. Read the rest

These air mattresses were set up in a grassy Denver area for a four-night "Bed Cinema" event last weekend, but began to charge across the park with the help of a wind gust. Some of them even hopped a fence and made a surprise visit to folks hanging out at a pool.Via: NBC NewsImage: Youtube Read the rest

Founded in 1623 in Turkey and now based in Norwell, Massachusetts, Zildjian has manufactured cymbals continuously for almost 400 years. This is how they do it now. Read the rest

Last weekend, Jeanette Ng won the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the 2019 Hugo Awards at the Dublin Worldcon; Ng's acceptance speech calls Campbell, one of the field's most influential editors, a "fascist" and expresses solidarity with the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.I am a past recipient of the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer (2000) as well as a recipient of the John W Campbell Memorial Award (2009). I believe I'm the only person to have won both of the Campbells, which, I think, gives me unique license to comment on Ng's remarks, which have been met with a mixed reception from the field.I think she was right -- and seemly -- to make her remarks. There's plenty of evidence that Campbell's views were odious and deplorable. For example, Heinlein apologists like to claim (probably correctly) that his terrible, racist, authoritarian, eugenics-inflected yellow peril novel Sixth Column was effectively a commission from Campbell (Heinlein based the novel on one of Campbell's stories). This seems to have been par for the course for JWC, who liked to micro-manage his writers: Campbell also leaned hard on Tom Godwin to kill the girl in "Cold Equations" in order to turn his story into a parable about the foolishness of women and the role of men in guiding them to accept the cold, hard facts of life.So when Ng held Campbell "responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Read the rest

I've been putting up with a heart murmur for a few decades now. It's never been a big deal. During my last physical, however, my doctor took a renewed interest in what's going on in my chest. I'll be going in for a stress test on my ticker, in a little under a month. Since I got the news, I haven't been able to get this song out of my head.Honestly, there's worse ear worms to suffer. Read the rest

As long we've had electronic mass media, audiences and creators have benefited from periods of technological upheaval that force old gatekeepers to compete with brash newcomers with new ideas about what constitutes acceptable culture and art. Those newcomers eventually became gatekeepers themselves, who then faced their own crop of revolutionaries. But today, the cycle is broken: as media, telecoms, and tech have all grown concentrated, the markets have become winner-take-all clashes among titans who seek to dominate our culture, our discourse and our communications.How did the cycle end? Can we bring it back? To understand the answers to these questions, we need to consider how the cycle worked — back when it was still working.How Things Used to WorkIn 1950, a television salesman named Robert Tarlton put together a consortium of TV merchants in the town of Lansford, Pennsylvania to erect an antenna tall enough to pull down signals from Philadelphia, about 90 miles to the southeast. The antenna connected to a web of cables that the consortium strung up and down the streets of Lansford, bringing big-city TV to their customers — and making TV ownership for Lansfordites far more attractive. Though hobbyists had been jury-rigging their own "community antenna television" networks since 1948, no one had ever tried to go into business with such an operation. The first commercial cable TV company was born.The rise of cable over the following years kicked off decades of political controversy over whether the cable operators should be allowed to stay in business, seeing as they were retransmitting broadcast signals without payment or permission and collecting money for the service. Read the rest

Update: Justin Reese from Abstractions writes, "policy changes were implemented last night and additional changes were made this morning." He adds, "The article was also inaccurate from the start by calling the wristbands surveillance devices in the title. They are only used to control access and don't track where users are or have been except in the case where the attendee has given explicit permission in their profiles to share with sponsors and completed a double opt-in by scanning their ID at the sponsor table (the read range is about 2"). Unless we receive a double opt-in, the ids on the wristband are never associated with a user. It is no more a surveillance device than any other conference badge. I'd appreciate a retraction of this inaccuracy and an update regarding our policies."Reese is correct that the manufacturers design RFID chips to be read from inches; however, that doesn't mean that they can't be read from longer distances (for example, distant, directional antennas can read them at longer distances while they are being energized by a nearby reader). Likewise, the idea that users can't be identified from persistent, anonymous identifiers is incorrect. It's a pretty good example of how a thin understanding of privacy issues in wireless technologies and statistical analysis can result in selecting authentication systems that expose users to privacy risks.Sumana Harihareswara (previously) writes, "The Abstractions tech conference (Aug 21-23, in Pittsburgh) doesn't tell attendees this before they buy a ticket, but attendance requires you wear their wristband with an embedded tracking chip -- and that you don't take it off at night or in the shower till the conference ends. Read the rest

Writing on Crooked Timber, John Quiggin (previously) responds to the epidemic of elderly reactionaries piling vitriol and violent rhetoric on the child activist Greta Thunberg and asks, why not let kids vote?Quiggin points out that all the arguments against letting kids vote are also arguments for preventing older adults from voting: "Over 60 voters are, on average, poorly educated (the school leaving age in Australia was 15 when they went through and I assume similar in most places), and more likely to hold a wide range of false beliefs (notably in relation to climate change)."Older voters delivered Brexit, Trump, Boris Johnson, Pauline Hanson, and "respond to unrealistic appeals to nostalgia, wanting to Make America Great Again, and restore the glories of the British Empire, while dismissing concerns about the future."He says all of this isn't an argument for banning older voters, but for including younger people in elections. He points out that one of the main arguments against this -- that enfranchising teens will merely give an extra vote to their parents -- is the same argument that was deployed against giving women votes (that it would end up being an extra vote for their husbands and fathers).Of course, we can’t do that kind of thing in a democracy,. That’s why we should act consistently with the core democratic principle that those affected by a decision should have a say in making it, unless they are absolutely disqualified in some way. In my view, that makes an open-and-shut case for lowering the voting age to 16. Read the rest

Terrence Malick's makes haunting, sad, beautiful films. Also, they are weird. I swear, I've seen The Thin Red Line 50 times and I'm still not entirely sure what the hell it's all about. Given the subject matter, I'm hoping that we all have better luck with Malick's latest work A Hidden Life, given its subject matter.A Hidden Life is based on the true life story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who, because of his deep religious conviction and a dire need to not be a bag of murdering, racist pig shit, refused to fight for Germany during World War II. He was executed for standing up to the Nazi's hateful bullshit—because that's what fascists do once they're in power and you disagree with them.Anyway, fingers crossed for this one. Let's hope it's better than Knight of Cups. Read the rest

Israel barred Democractic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country today, an hour after Trump tweeted that the country would show "great weakness" if it allows them to visit. Israel gave as its rationale the congresswomen's support of boycotts against the country over its treatment of Palestinians.The BBC:Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were due to visit the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem next week. Both have supported the boycott movement against Israel and Israeli law allows supporters of the campaign to be banned from visiting. ... A statement from the Israeli Interior Ministry confirming the ban said it was "inconceivable that those who wish to harm the state of Israel while visiting would be granted entry". But only last month Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer said the two Democrats would be permitted to visit "out of respect for the US Congress and the great alliance between Israel and America".Trump instantly screws over everyone who supplicates to him. Netanyahu would not have wanted the ban to appear to be a response to Trump, Trump will have agreed with that stipulation, Trump’s press secretary said it wasn’t going to happen as a response to Trump, and then minutes later Trump pre-empts Israel's announcement with a tweet that gives the impression it is happening only at his behest. It’s a perfectly Trumpian undermining of any strategizing that involves him.Post-Brexit Britain is well-positioned to be a conspicuous victim of this cycle. Some elaborate plan to announce fast-track trade deal negotiations will have been worked on for weeks that smooths out all the bumps and accounts for all the wild and wooly ways media coverage and the negotiations themselves might go. Read the rest

I've been using these heavy duty shop towels for years. Apart from being blue, they look like standard kitchen paper towels, but are much stronger. They're great for wiping off grease, and are the family favorite for cleaning up cat puke. Amazon has them on sale right now for a price that's less than regular paper towels: 3 for Read the rest

Above is a three-millimeter long maggot launching itself into the air for a distance of up to 36 times its body length. Researchers from Duke University and their colleagues studied how these larvae of gall midges leap between plants with the greatest of ease, even rivaling some jumping insects with legs. Their research could have applications in soft robotics and adhesives. From the Journal of Experimental Biology:They store elastic energy by forming their body into a loop and pressurizing part of their body to form a transient ‘leg’. They prevent movement during elastic loading by placing two regions covered with microstructures against each other, which likely serve as a newly described adhesive latch. Once the latch releases, the transient ‘leg’ launches the body into the air. These discoveries integrate three vibrant areas in engineering and biology – soft robotics, small, high-acceleration systems, and adhesive systems – and point toward a rich, and as-yet untapped area of biological diversity of worm-like, small, legless jumpers.(via Scientific American) Read the rest

I never understood how they got away with this. Read the rest

Economists are famously fragile about their field; after all, this is the field that created a fake Nobel prize to give its practitioners the veneer of credibility and empiricism that actual sciences enjoy.A favored tactic among economists is the use of complex equations that make it hard for nonpractitioners to spot the cards they're palming. Just as con-artists like to lard complexity into bar-bets to make it hard to calculate the odds, and just as casino games like craps add extra lines and payouts the table to confound your ability to spot the house advantage, neoliberal economics has weaponized equations to exclude its critics from the discussion. Sometimes, this shitty math is so terrible that it threatens the whole planetary economy.On Economics from the Top Down, York University PhD candidate in economics Blair Fix takes on the economic logic of measuring "productivity," demonstrating how it uses circular reasoning to prove that underpaid workers are receiving a fair wage. The measurement of "productivity" began with John Bates Clark, who was responding to Marxist threats to the economic dominance of capitalism, and explicitly set out to find a way to measure "productivity" that would prove that workers' low wages were fair ("It is the purpose of this work to show that the distribution of the income of society is controlled by a natural law, and that this law, if it worked without friction, would give to every agent of production the amount of wealth which that agent creates," -The Distribution of Wealth). Read the rest

A delightful midsummer moment of floral kitty zen.Enjoy this new video from kagonekoshiro, the long-running “basket cat” channel from Japan. Read the rest

The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, August 12! The meteors are particles left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. The bright moon will wash out much of the show but you could still spot ten to 15 an hour depending on where you are. Watch the skies! From NASA's Perseids page:How to Observe PerseidsIf it’s not cloudy, pick an observing spot away from bright lights, lay on your back, and look up! You don’t need any special equipment to view the Perseids – just your eyes. (Note that telescopes or binoculars are not recommended.) Meteors can generally be seen all over the sky so don’t worry about looking in any particular direction.While observing this month, not all of the meteors you’ll see belong to the Perseid meteor shower. Some are sporadic background meteors. And some are from other weaker showers also active right now, including the Alpha Capricornids, the Southern Delta Aquariids, and the Kappa Cygnids. How can you tell if you’ve seen a Perseid? If you see a meteor try to trace it backwards. If you end up in the constellation Perseus, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a Perseid. If finding constellations isn’t your forte, then note that Perseids are some of the fastest meteors you’ll see!Pro tip: Remember to let your eyes become adjusted to the dark (it takes about 30 minutes) – you’ll see more meteors that way. Try to stay off of your phone too, as looking at devices with bright screens will negatively affect your night vision and hence reduce the number of meteors you see! Read the rest