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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

Victoria Hogan writes, "My fiancee and I made a short film about creativity, yearning, and the scary forces of technology that might interact with those desires. More than a few people have called this a ‘Three Minute Black Mirror Episode’ - though to me, it’s more about living with the difficulties of pursuing your passion vs. stepping out of those difficulties for less gratification but more equanimity. I wanted to leave the ending open-ended rather than provide an answer/solution to this subject, though I do think the topic doesn’t have a clear answer, and is worth discussing." Read the rest

There's a viral review of a southern plantation tour making the rounds in which a white person complains that the tour was "extremely disappointing" because of the "lecture on how the white people treated slaves" from a tour guide who was "radical about slave treatment."Michael Twitty is a Black chef and culinary historian who works as a plantation tour interpreter and who wrote The Cooking Gene, billed as "a complex weaving of food history and politics, genealogy and genetics, and ... surprising truths about family, identity, and the destiny of the Southern table."In a superb, heartfelt essay, Twitty explains how his work at a plantation museum is "an act of devotion to my Ancestors" by exploring how the food of enslaved people "contained whole narratives that reached into spirituality, health practices, linguistics, agricultural wisdom and environmental practices."Twitty recounts the daily round of an interpreter at a plantation museum, and the window it affords into contemporary attitudes towards slavery and genocide, and how he tries to use his position to shed light on "unexamined whiteness" by refusing to participate in the furtherance of the myth of plantations as "American Downton Abbeys."But because enslavement was so damn fuzzy…we forget that those maudlin moments of blurred lines passed down by sentimental whites were purchased with pain. I tell my audiences that enslavement wasn’t always whips and chains; but it was the existential terror that at any moment 3/5ths could give way to its remainder, and unfortunately often did. Read the rest

The 1977 BMW R100RS was produced 1 year after the BMW R90S. The fairings were designed by the same guy, the legendary Hans Muth.I think the S fairing is the greatest thing ever. I hate the RS fairing, but my personal BMW guru and advisor, Dan, assures me it quite beautiful. $18,500 beautiful? I have seen the RS on Craigslist for $3500-6500 in fantastic shape. Monsters cut them up and make cafe racers out of them. This bike must be in FANTASTIC shape.MaxBMW shares very little info about why this bike is worth your consideration.1977 R100RS Previously restored by MAX BMW and serviced regularly since 2011. Excellent shape bike that is ready to ride! Full list of work available upon request.It will totally crack me up when we see this bike purchased and then hacked into some unfaired thug cafe racer with knobby tires and a high pipe. Read the rest

Congratulations, Dick Braine.The BBC:In a ballot of members, Mr Braine received 53% of the vote - more than double that of his closest rival. Mr Braine was the favoured candidate of his predecessor, Gerard Batten, who resigned after UKIP's poor performance in the European elections in May. Read the rest

Torture apologist/homophobe/racist Jair Bolsonaro -- whose successful election to the Brazilian presidency was the result of a conspiracy among the wealthy and senior prosecutors and judges, who subverted the justice system in order to ensure that his rival was kept off the ballot -- has presided over record-breaking Amazon deforestation.The deforestation was revealed by a Brazilian government report, and Bolsonaro's only response to it so far has been to fire the minister who oversaw the report's production.This week, a journalist pressed him on the question of deforestation, agriculture and the climate, to which Bolsonaro responded that "It's enough to eat a little less. You talk about environmental pollution. It's enough to poop every other day. That will be better for the whole world."Official figures suggest that the biggest reason for felling trees there is to create new pastures for cattle.Over the past decade, previous governments managed to reduce deforestation by means of concerted action by federal agencies and a system of fines.But Mr Bolsonaro and his ministers have criticised the penalties and overseen a dramatic fall in confiscations of timber and convictions for environmental crimes.Jair Bolsonaro: 'Poop every other day' to protect the environment [BBC](Image: Fábio Rodrigues Pozzebom/Agência Brasil, CC-BY, modified; Dikshajhingan, CC BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

In late July, FBI director Christopher Wray testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that his bureau had made 100 domestic terror arrests; later, an FBI spokesperson reduced that claim to 90 arrests -- but when Propublica called the FBI for a list of domestic terror addresses, the Feebs couldn't name one single instance in which they'd made a domestic terror arrest.Propublica's Fritz Zimmermann recounts the bizarre story of trying to get FBI press officers to explain how it could be that the FBI was certain enough of this figure to provide it under oath to the Senate, but also so fuzzy on it that they can't list a single instance in which it happened.We tried again: “Thanks for your reply! What I mean is: you clarified the number, so despite DT subjects being charged under ‘other federal, state, and local charges,’ as you wrote, the FBI obviously has information about all these cases. And this is what I’ve been originally asking for. So I would be glad if you could give me the following information about as many of the 90 arrests as possible: who was arrested, where, when and what the allegations were. If you are unable to provide this information or a comprehensive list of press releases I would like to know why.”On the phone, she again cited the figure of 90 arrests, adding, “These are people that the FBI arrested as a result of a domestic terrorism investigation.”But she also repeated that the bureau couldn’t give us any information, even press releases, about these arrests. Read the rest

The groundbreaking Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle is celebrating its 21st anniversary by having a show with a bunch of artists who've shown their work there over the years. The show is called "Ace of Spades, Queen of Diamonds" and runs through September 8, 2019. Read the rest

James Daunt gave up a brief career in banking and opened a small, family-owned chain of London bookstores bearing the family name (the original store, in Marylebone High Street, is literally the most beautiful English-language bookstore I've ever set foot in); in 2011, he took over management of Waterstones, the UK's last, foundering bookstore chain, and effected a miraculous turnaround by devolving purchasing to the managers who knew local tastes best, ending the practice of soliciting "co-op" payments from publishers to order in and stock massive piles of their frontlist titles, most of which would end up being returned.Daunt is now moving to New York to assume control of Barnes and Noble, following a private equity takeover of America's last major bookselling chain (Borders failed in 2011, the same year Daunt took over Waterstones).B&N has been in steady decline for a decade, losing $1b in its valuation (and also losing $1b on its Nook e-reader product). A few years back, the company laid off its most experienced booksellers in a nationwide bloodbath that shed its highest-waged employees, at a terrible price. Hundreds of stores have shuttered since.Daunt has vowed to purge B&N of the "piles of crap around the place" (e.g. the creeping tide of scented candles, jigsaw puzzles, and ancient remainders) and to revitalize the stores, which, he says, are "a bit unloved, the booksellers look a bit miserable, it’s all a bit run down."B&N will also borrow Daunt's "merit-based" promotions system, where the national HQ chooses a book of the month and a book of the year, without seeking payment from publishers, and rockets those books to national bestsellerdom. Read the rest

Shadow-banning is a process that dates back to at least the 1980s, with Citadel BBS's "twit bit," which would allow users to post replies to forums that they could see, but no one else could see.That hasn't stopped Facebook from claiming to have invented shadow banning in is application for United States Patent 10356024, "Moderating content in an online forum," which claims that current/former Facebook employees Jeffrey Andrew Kanter, Mitu Singh, and Daniel Gregory Muriello "invented" a bunch of moderation techniques that have either been done before or are incredibly obvious, or both.Patents are a gigantic dumpster-fire, and software patents doubly so. First, there's the common practice of filing patents for obvious things and then adding "with a computer" and hoping the patent gets issued. Then there's the practice of just filing patents for things that already exist and hoping that the patent examiner misses the fact that you're patenting something someone else invented years ago.Finally, there's the universal practice among patent lawyers of drafting patents combine deliberately obscure language with a set of claims that begin with stupidly broad language ("a method and process for doing anything, anywhere") and then narrow down to something niggling and tiny and irrelevant, both in the hopes of slipping one past an overburdened patent examiner and also to intimidate future competitors who might be confused about which parts of the patent the examiner found valid and which parts were struck out because "doing anything, anywhere" is not a patentable invention. Read the rest

Company executives typically know two things about the cloud: They need to be on it, and they need it to work smoothly. Which means that if you know your way around Google Cloud, you're going to have employers that want you to lead them through.The Complete Google Cloud Mastery Bundle is just the online package for those who want to breathe that rarefied air.The eight-course bundle gives a broad overview of Google's cloud networking structure for those who haven't worked with it, but it hardly stops there. The goal of this series is to get IT professionals hired as a certified Google Cloud architect. (There's an entire exit class dedicated to the certification exam.) Once you're past the intro courses, you'll learn how to manage data storage, set up DevOps and troubleshoot security issues on one of the fastest-growing platforms out there. There's even a course that teaches AWS users how to transfer that knowledge to the Google Cloud Platform.Right now, you can get the Complete Google Cloud Mastery Bundle for $39, a full 97% off the cost of the individual courses. Read the rest

A man was arrested at a Missouri WalMart wearing body armor and carrying "tactical weapons" -- legal carry in the state. They're holding him while they figure out what to charge him with, if anything. Officers responded to a call of an active shooter at the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Springfield, Police Lt. Mike Lucas said. But no shots were fired and no one was injured, police said. The man was pushing a cart and recording himself walking through the store with a cell phone when the manager pulled the fire alarm to notify customers to escape, according to CNN affiliate KYTV."His intent was not to cause peace or comfort to anybody that was in the business," Lucas said. "In fact, he's lucky to be alive still to be honest."The facts are still to emerge, not least details of his actions while heavily armed in public. But the implication from the early reporting suggests that he's a provocateur, not a terrorist, that the "active shooter" report was false, and that it'll be tough making serious charges stick.In any case, his behavior and the authorities' reaction to shows the sand is shifting under open-carry, at least the long-barrelled sort intended to intimidate people and provoke a reaction. A hostile police response is now incoming, even for the whites (though note that this guy was detained by an off-duty firefighter, pulling their own gun in public).Consider this tweet, doing the rounds the last couple of days:The answer is "leave, 'cause if someone calls the sheriff that saloon's gonna be full of holes." Read the rest

For this, the internet was created.m1oberon you are legend.Unmute this masterpiece.Chicken Fur Elise w/soundNot enough upvotes in the world.SONG — Beethoven: Bagatelle in A Minor -"Für Elise." Read the rest

This amazing aquatic Godzilla cosplay with lights and flotation is the creation of Labinnak & Mangoloo Cosplays in Virginia. Wowza! At IMGUR and Reddit, where I spotted this, Mangoloo shares:The key to waterproofing cosplays.... a ton of plasti dip.Anyways I built a Godzilla swimsuit cosplay for a waterpark convention called Colossalcon.The entire build is mostly foam clay. I hand sculpted E V E R Y T H I N G. Then I used transparent foam that I airbrushed blue that I put waterproof tea lights behind. The tail is essentially a pool noodle covered in tulle. My goal was to get the tail to float and the pool noodle and all the tulle super helped.I plan on making the Jaws Shark next for Colossalcon East.I super love making monsters and pushing my cosplays further creatively.Here is a video I have of my cosplay in water.Godzilla cosplay FLOATS and LIGHTS UP in waterMore on @labinnak here, and follow their work on Twitter.BTW, people were jerks about it, and here's how @Labinnak replied.Someone actually told me that my "acting" was bad as Godzilla.Me: *living the best life as Godzilla*The biggest reason why I cosplay is because it is FUN. I love building cosplays, wearing cosplays, and even derping around in cosplay. pic.twitter.com/SgBOLWwGCd— Labinnak & Mangoloo Cosplays 🦈 Colossalcon East (@LMcosplays) August 8, 2019 [via IMGUR] Read the rest