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

At this year's Defcon Lock Picking Village, Ioactive's Mike Davis will present a method for cracking high-security locks made by Dormakaba Holding, a Swiss company. The locks are used in very high-stake applications, from security ATMs to Air Force One, as well as guarding classified and sensitive materials on US military bases.Davis discovered a side-channel vulnerability that uses a $5,000 oscilloscope to detect power fluctuations in the lock, from which he can derive the bitstream traversing the lock's subcomponents, allowing him to unlock it without the key.Davis demonstrated his findings to Dormakaba a year ago, and the company has largely stonewalled since, though it did hire outside auditors to investigate its Cencon and Auditcon locks and subsequently declared their findings to be proof that no one needs to worry about Davis's attacks.However, the newest model of the company's X-10 lock does not leak voltage information, but the company insists that this design improvement is unrelated to Davis's findings. Dormakaba also says that because they have never heard of anyone using Davis's attack in the wild, no one should worry about it. The president of Dormakaba's X-10 division, Eric Elkins, said that Davis should not present his findings in public to "a group of hobbyists or hackers or whatever you want to call them" and instead should confine his disclosures to "the government." Despite having had a year since Davis made his disclosures to Elkins's parent company, Elkins said he was not familiar with Davis's attack and couldn't comment on how severe they were. Read the rest

Snoopy has been a NASA mascot for more than 50 years going back to the Apollo missions. Now, Timex has released a wonderful "Snoopy In Space" collection of wristwatches. The watches in the line start at $89. Here's NASA on the space agency's history with the Peanuts gang:NASA has shared a proud association with Charles M. Schulz and his American icon Snoopy since Apollo missions began in the 1960s. Schulz created comic strips depicting Snoopy on the Moon, capturing public excitement about America’s achievements in space. In May 1969, Apollo 10 astronauts traveled to the Moon for a final checkout before lunar landings on later missions. Because the mission required the lunar module to skim the Moon’s surface to within 50,000 feet and “snoop around” scouting the Apollo 11 landing site, the crew named the lunar module Snoopy. The command module was named Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s loyal owner.'All Systems Are Go!' with Timex 'Snoopy In Space' watch collection (collectSPACE)NASA image below: "Headed for the launch pad, Apollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford pats the nose of a stuffed Snoopy held by Jamye Flowers (Coplin), astronaut Gordon Cooper’s secretary." Read the rest

Pippin Barr (previously) writes, "I have a history of making variations on existing games (see also: PONGS, BREAKSOUT, SNAKISMS), and Chesses (source, CC BY-NC) is a continuation of that. I find chess a really interesting game to play around with because it's so classic and sort of monolithic - it's fun to mess with tradition. Other than kind of formal enjoyment involved, I suspect the variations might level the playing field a bit and allow non-experts (or even non-players?) to play some chess."Chesses essentially arose from my interest quite a while ago (like in 2014) in "gravity chess", which would be played with the board rotated 90 degrees such that when you play a piece out into space it falls to the bottom. In fact, I worked on this for a little while with Tom Curtis, but we ran out of steam somewhere along the way (he was doing all the work, to be fair) and it didn't materialise. Now that I'm a better programmer than I was, and pretty comfortable with chess programming in JavaScript thanks to previous projects (Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: Chess Edition and Rogess), I figured I could make a move on it.I went through a larger set of ideas for chess variants that might be interesting specifically played via a computer (rather than just playing on a chess board), and of course culled some (fare thee well, Mirror Chess, Swaps Chess, and Pawn Chess). Mostly I tried to end up with a set that I think are genuinely somewhat interesting to play - both just to try to understand how to do anything sensible, and then beyond that to try to play "well" in the new version. Read the rest

Anish Athalye and friends added a touchscreen to a MacBook with only a $1 camera part. How'd they do it? Magic? No. Software. And ingenuity.The basic principle behind Sistine is simple. Surfaces viewed from an angle tend to look shiny, and you can tell if a finger is touching the surface by checking if it’s touching its own reflection.Kevin [Kwok], back in middle school, noticed this phenomenon and built ShinyTouch, utilizing an external webcam to build a touch input system requiring virtually no setup. We wanted to see if we could miniaturize the idea and make it work without an external webcam. Our idea was to retrofit a small mirror in front of a MacBook’s built-in webcam, so that the webcam would be looking down at the computer screen at a sharp angle. The camera would be able to see fingers hovering over or touching the screen, and we’d be able to translate the video feed into touch events using computer vision.Anish, clean your screen! Read the rest

Lekholm's DM48 is a full-featured MIDI harmonica, with twelve pressure-sensors, one-button presets, and "adjustable breathing resistance." (Thanks, Gnat) Read the rest

Edelman is one of the world's leading PR firms, and despite the fact that they're the go-to if you want to launder the reputations of the House of Saud or the Transcanada pipeline by running massive fake-grassroots campaigns on social media, they also bill themselves as an ethical firm, refusing to take engagements for coal, tobacco or gun companies (they will, however run smear campaigns against vegan mayo).So when Edelman took on the GEO Group (previously), a titan of American private prisons that had lately branched out into running US concentration camps with lethally bad conditions, its own employees staged a revolt, which led to Edelman firing GEO Group as a client.The Edelman employee who pitched the GEO Group was a new hire: Lisa Ross, who'd just left the Trump White House where she'd served as deputy press-secretary (GEO are bigly Trump campaign donors). The slide deck Ross used to pitch GEO warned that "activists are using controversies around immigration to drive a wedge between you and your stakeholder...your current culture and structure are not prepared for this fight." They proposed to solve this by "proactively correcting the record."Edelman employees discovered that their employer was working for GEO when the news leaked onto Fishbowl, a corporate networking tool. Edelman's spokesperson told the NYT that they resigned the account because "Edelman takes on complex and diverse clients...We ultimately decided not to proceed with this work." But Edelman employees say that during the meeting where they were informed that the account was canceled, company management "took the opportunity to basically shame us for ruining the work for the company because they couldn’t trust us not to leak it to the press."How bad is GEO Group? Read the rest

“You have the right to remain silent.” We’ve heard the Miranda warning countless times on TV, but what good is the right to remain silent if our own cellphones testify against us? Imagine every incriminating and embarrassing secret our devices hold in the hands of prosecutors, simply because you’ve been accused of a minor crime. This is the brave new world that Attorney General Bill Barr advocated when he recently addressed the International Conference on Cyber Security and called for an end to encryption as we know it. Encryption is indispensable to modern privacy. Without it, every message might be read by a third party, and every phone and laptop easily copied by an intruder. Encryption is the digital lock which gives us the security to trust our financial data and inner-most thoughts to the cloud, and without which everything, and I mean everything, in our digital lives might be exposed. Without strong encryption, police officers can potentially transform our cellphones and computers into a de facto government tracking device. It’s odd hearing this call for surveillance coming from Barr of all people. As general counsel at Verizon, he preached about the “freedom to innovate”, opposing net neutrality rules that would block internet service providers from shaking down websites and apps to get faster speeds and better access to potential users. What could more stifle the innovation of every single American than the knowledge that anything we say or do on our devices can be monitored at the request of the police? Read the rest

It's a real life Corgi hamster wheel!This behavior may be what the AKC calls “Frapping,” – corgi code for “frantic random acts of play,” which usually conclude with dramatic slides or fanciful choreography sequences.Watch this truly wonderful iPhone video of Allycorinne's corgi and UNMUTE for maximum enjoyment.A meatball spinning for 60 seconds Read the rest

Cookbooks by Vincent and Mary Price are amongst my very favorite.This new edition of Cooking Price-Wise is certainly a family affair. Originally published as a compendium of recipes shared on Price's titular UK television programme 'Cooking Price-Wise,' daughter Victoria and son V.B. have both added memories, stories and personal anecdotes that make this the version to own.The Price Family's cookbooks are marvelous. In addition to being an authority on art, cuisine and a wonderful actor, Vincent Price was a master storyteller. Recipes are recollection! They involve tales of their origin or other anecdotes that make the dish more than just delicious as prepared.Cooking Price-Wise is no different! This wonderful book is jammed to the brim with recipes and Price family history. Victoria Price included sections of The New Dr. Price Cook Book and shares the story of Dr. Vincent Clarance Price, the grandfather of Vincent Price, who invented Baking Powder and began a long culinary legacy.Organized by the types of food Vincent Price was working with during the filming of his UK based TV show, there is a section on Bacon.Due to the nature of his programme, all the ingredients were generally available in most UK markets at the time of filming. Price and the writers were absolutely certain they needed to make these dishes accessible to the folks who were watching, so generally, you will not go off on a wild goose chase although internet ordering has made that less an issue in many places. Read the rest

At the end of a 1977 bootlegged videocassette of Disney's Fantasia, a fine bit of mockery from Miracle Productions Company, "leaders in illegal Betamax recording since '76." (r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

SL Huang got a degree in math from MIT, then became a martial artist, stuntwoman and weapons expert; her debut novel, Zero Sum Game, features an ass-kicking action hero called Cas Russell, who combines all of Huang's areas of expertise: Russell is a ninja-grade assassination/extraction contractor whose incredible math skills let her calculate the precise angles needed to shoot the bolts out of an armored window as she leaps towards it from an adjacent roof; to time a kick so that it breaks her opponent's jaw without breaking his neck, or to trace back the path of a sniper's bullet with eerie accuracy and return fire.Apart from her math ability, Russell is a classic action hero: an enigma with a shadowy past whose hard-boiled cynicism is a mask to cover her own shattered psyche. But that mathematical difference is a game-changer. Huang's own math background shines through here, conveying a way of thinking that is both plausible and alien, conveying a way of seeing and being in the world that is different from the experience of 99.99% of us. Huang's skilled weaving of math into action scenes -- featuring every kind of explosive, firearm, blade, vehicle and bare-hands mayhem -- elevates the story to something that is both fresh and exciting.Zero Sum Game sees Russell pitted against several shadowy conspiracies -- G-men, secret government projects, criminal underworlds -- that she has to navigate via tenuous alliances with a PI, a super-hacker (Huang's math and computer science background make this one particularly interesting), and a vengeful psychopath whose deep Christian faith and strange code of honor make him her only friend in the world. Read the rest

Turn the volume up. [Filmed by @cghgreen] Read the rest

Last weekend, long-distance runner Lenny Maughan ran 28.93 miles through the hilly streets of San Francisco to complete this mapped portrait of Frida Kahlo. Visible through the Strava fitness app, his "Frida Run" took him six hours and eight minutes to finish and was carefully planned out before he left his house. This isn't his first specially-mapped run, he's added over 30 pieces to his "Running Art" project in the past three years (some of those are visible here).SFGate:He describes the process of planning a piece as pretty analog. He prints out a paper map and highlights his route. He usually goes through several different iterations of the map before he sets off on a run. While he's on the road, he must be very careful to follow it – if he makes a wrong turn it has the potential to ruin the whole piece."You can't see the lines drawn until after you finish your run, so it's such a joyful feeling when you put in all of that work and you finally finish and get to see what you envisioned at the end," recounts Maughan..."San Francisco is my canvas. I use the streets as framework for what I want to do, find shapes, and make it work. Kind of like how little kids look up at the clouds."image via Lenny Maughan/Strava(RED) Read the rest

Everything's a computer these days, obviously, but this one is surprisingly elaborate given the apparent simplicity of what it does. Lisa Braun on Twitter: "Here is my little thread about Lightning video adapters – also known as Haywire – which are actually computers that feature Apple Secure Boot and run Darwin kernel."Now you know why they're so unreliable! "Haywire" indeed! Read the rest

We're told that these French bulldogs made mischief with a bag of green food coloring but I suspect that an accidental overdose of gamma radiation altered their body chemistry. Read the rest

Two years ago, the EU Aviation Safety Agency warned that some Airbus 350s required a hard reboot every 149 hours to be safe to fly; two years later, most of the affected planes are still being rebooted to cope with the bug.At least they don't have to close and open all the windows.The revised AD, effective from tomorrow (26 July), exempts only those new A350-941s which have had modified software pre-loaded on the production line. For all other A350-941s, operators need to completely power the airliner down before it reaches 149 hours of continuous power-on time.Concerningly, the original 2017 AD was brought about by "in-service events where a loss of communication occurred between some avionics systems and avionics network" (sic). The impact of the failures ranged from "redundancy loss" to "complete loss on a specific function hosted on common remote data concentrator and core processing input/output modules".Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours [Gareth Corfield/The Register](via /.)(Image: Don-vip, CC-BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

Propublica and Politico have teamed up for a long, beautifully reported expose on the Conservative Majority Fund and other PACs that senior Republican operators founded to solicit millions from donors (many of them elderly and on low, fixed incomes), allegedly to combat racist, far-fetched Obama plans they claimed were in the offing, but almost all of the money ended up in their own pockets.At the heart of the scandals is Kelley Rogers, a top Republican operator whose past is shot through with other fundraising scandals, whose Infocision Management Corp raised more than $10m for the Conservative Majority Fund but only dispersed $48,000 to campaigns and committees, keeping the rest to pay for its boiler-room phone-banks and massive executive salaries.Infocision worked on behalf of the American Conservative Union, pushing racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama through direct email, mail and phone solicitations, often to elderly conservatives on fixed incomes (the scripts included special pitches for low-income prospects). Eventually, the ACU and Infocision parted ways, though there's evidence that Infocision continued to invoke the ACU's name in its fundraising for some time and stopped after legal threats from the ACU.Infocision went on to back its own, unaffiliated PAC, the Conservative Majority Fund. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision (which reclassified political spending as a protected activity under the First Amendment, effectively equating money and speech) opened the door to grifty, deceptive PAC fundraising, and neither law nor regulations offer meaningful protection to people targeted by scammy fundraising appeals.“At the time they called, it seemed like such an important thing,” Miller said in a phone interview. Read the rest

The Justice Department is expected to approve a $26 billion deal between mobile carriers Sprint and T-Mobile on Friday.Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, head of the department’s Antitrust Division, will announce a significant merger enforcement action on Friday, the Justice Department announced earlier today.Reuters: The expected approval, which would put the deal over a major hurdle, will come with conditions and a consent decree that will require the carriers to sell assets including the prepaid brand Boost Mobile to satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp, people briefed on the matter told Reuters.Prepaid wireless phones are generally sought by lower-income people who cannot pass a credit check.Dish will also get first rights to buy tower leases that T-Mobile decides are redundant following the deal, a source said.T-Mobile, the third largest U.S. wireless carrier, pursued the deal in order to seek scale to compete with bigger rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.PHOTO: Shutterstock Read the rest

Magic! Read the rest

Laina is the young woman who became internet famous some years back for being the face of the "overly attached girlfriend" meme. She started a YouTube channel to capitalize on her fame and it turned out that she is smart, funny, and talented, and she gained a huge following‹. But a year ago she stopped posting. In this new video, which she says will be her final one, she speaks about her struggles with "mental health, depression, anxiety, psychiatry, and my personal experiences." Read the rest

Gabbard lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Los Angeles federal court, is reportedly the first time a presidential candidate has sued a major technology firm.

The death is the 7th in ICE custody since October 2018

(Thank you, Shaft!) Read the rest

After weeks of mass demonstrations touched off by the publication of a trove of leaked chats and evidence of mass corruption by Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism, Ricardo Rossello has done what he swore he would not: resigned.Rossello's departure was preceded by so many other high-profile resignations that the governor pro-tem will be Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, as the secretary of state position is currently vacant. For the next 17 months, Puerto Rico's government will be "virtually symbolic," and "largely ceremonial," in the words of University of Puerto Rico economist Juan Lara.Puerto Rico has been battered by a series of catastrophes, all stemming from its colonial past: first there were the Wall Street banks that arranged to flog off incredible quantities of state-issued bonds, pocketing hundreds of millions in fees. Then there was Congress's unwillingness to support Puerto Rico through the inevitable insolvency, as they would have done for a majority-white, majority-wealthy US state. Then came the official federal overthrow of Puerto Rico's government and its replacement with appointed finance-sector managers who oversaw a reign of austerity that saw cuts to schools, hospitals, pensions and infrastructure, leaving the island terribly vulnerable to any kind of shock -- including Hurricanes Maria and Irma, which flattened the island and tore through the weakened, brittle infrastructure like wet kleenex. The island was plunged into powerless darkness for months, while the racist president of the USA literally threw paper towels at them while belittling the country's few principled leaders.Then came the mercenary occupation, and the ghastly lies about the death-toll, the sweetheart deals for politically connected Trumpland cronies, the coverups, and even Mark Zuckerberg laughing his way through a VR tour of the ravaged island, even as ethnic-cleansing corporate titans moved in to refashion the island as a bolt-hole for the super-rich with a captive workforce of groveling untermenschen to clean their toilets and rub their backs. Read the rest

Smoking my dinner is the latest in slow and low cooking for me.My brother, the actual bonafide chef in the family, got me addicted to smoking meat. While I've long been an enthusiast of sous-vide cooking, Brother Ben swears by his offset smoker. After visiting with his family for a bit, and eating a lot of barbeque, I was sold.Smoking uses the same principles as sous-vide and also imparts a smokey flavor to your food. Thick, tangy and overpowering smoke, or just very delicate -- the choice is yours, sort of. Rather than immersing your food in a temperature monitored water bath, ala sous vide, smoking surrounds the food in warm smoke. You can find temperate controlled systems to make it a lot easier but that removes the fun of playing with fire for hours and hours.Sous vide is easy, however, you plug in a circulator, put your meat in a plastic bag and away you go. Can smoking meat be as easy? After eating a few delicious meals of smoked salmon, turkey, pork and beef at my brother's, I wanted to spend my long days hanging around a campsite, living la vida Vanagon, smoking meat.Offset, upright, pellet, gas, electric? What kind of smoker was the right one for me? My brother and I started watching lots of YouTube videos and it looked like a 'bullet smoker' also known as a 'water smoker' was the right way to go, for me. Bullet smokers have a fire right at the bottom, a water bath in the middle and a smoke/cooking chamber up top. Read the rest

The excellent "Then & Now Movie Locations" visited the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park where some of the Tatooine shots were filmed for Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). It's a beautiful locale but I can understand why Luke would want to be teleported off this rock.For more shots of terrestrial locations used for Tatooine, here's a 2015 article from The Guardian about the remains of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's homestead in the Sahara desert. Read the rest

This is post is part of a series of reviews of Federal, State, and County provided campsites along California's amazing coastline.I mistakenly thought Gaviota State Beach was Refugio State Beach. It is not.Another parking lot style campsite adjacent to a fairly lovely California beach! Gaviota features a lot of bunnies, all of whom appear to have massive ticks in their ears, cold showers, and an all-night party. This is my least favorite style CA campsite, but my daughter really loved it.Located 33 miles north of Santa Barbara, Gaviota is very popular with RV campers. The site I was in had no RV hookups and was your typical CA picnic table and shitty fire ring. There was no shade to be found and somewhat, unfortunately, a large group of RV campers had decided to leave open spots between their family of trailers when they booked in. This had several folks, not in their party, trapped inside of their large group free for all.Aside from toddlers wandering around a field of open fire pits, and the occasional off-leash pitbull, we had a lovely overnight stop. I was glad I did not book a second night and we simply continued down the coast. I had thought this site was Refugio, which similarly is right on a beach with a very mild break, perfect for kids to boogie board or body surf. There are a few really great beachside camping spots in the Santa Barbara area. I am looking forward to El Capitan and Jalama. Read the rest

The hundreds of men dressed in white who beat up Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters last week were thought to be affiliated with the notorious triad organized-crime gangs, but according to the AP, the triads' main role in the violence was to round up people in "rural areas" like Yuen Long and paying them to participate in the beatings.The AP cites T. Wing Lo, "an organized crime expert at the City University of Hong Kong," who estimated that the bill for the violence would be on the order of HKD10m/USD1.28M, and that the individual thugs would likely be paid HKD2000/USD250 for their participation.Triads have previously been used as recruiters to commit violent assaults on both pro-democracy and anti-democracy protesters, and have no particular ideological commitment either way (Lo: "The Hong Kong triad only works for money, not for political ideology. They will work for anyone").The AP doesn't say who paid the thugs, but they quote the University of Toronto's Lynette Ong, who studies markets for hired thugs in China and Hong Kong, as saying that the Chinese government has hired thugs to do this kind of thing during previous periods of unrest.Who are the men in white behind Hong Kong’s mob attack? [Yanan Wang/AP](via Naked Capitalism)Ahead of today’s march, Hong Kong protesters have put together this video reading out their manifesto. The same manifesto was read out during the parliament siege on Jul 1. This version is in English and very much aimed at an international audiencehttps://t.co/5fdwc0SfKa— Jerome Taylor (@JeromeTaylor) July 21, 2019 (Image: @CraigChoy)Internet video shows triad members in Yuen Long of #HongKong gather & pose threat to peaceful protestors. Read the rest

Louisiana police officer Charlie Rispoli is out of a job for posting to Facebook his belief Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deserves to be assassinated. Officer Rispoli wrote the post after reading one of the countless fake news stories that are Facebook's stock-in-trade. The fake story, which originated on a parody but quickly took on a life of its own as a real story on Facebook, claimed that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought US military personnel were overpaid, which is false. Officer Rispoli shared the bogus story with the comment, "This vile idiot needs a round......and I don't mean the kind she used to serve," (referring to her previous job as a bartender). Another Louisiana officer, Angelo Variscom, liked Officer Rispoli's post so he was fired, too.From Gizmodo:Ocasio-Cortez was also singled out in a Facebook group comprised of current and former members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that was recently revealed by the news outlet ProPublica. One of the Facebook posts in the group showed a photoshopped image of President Trump participating in a violent sexual assault of Ocasio-Cortez. Last week, the congresswoman asked Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan about the posts in an opening hearing.“Those posts are unacceptable,” McAleenan said. “They are being investigated but I don’t think that it’s fair to apply them to the entire organization or that even the members of that group believed or supported those posts.”But the the image wasn’t out of character for the group and it wasn’t comprised of just a small minority of CBP. Read the rest

Over at my other website, Cool Tools, we just posted a new video produced and hosted by my old MAKE colleague, Sean Michael Ragan, about steel rules. I had my doubts that a 10-minute video comparing 6-inch precision steel rules would hold my interest, but it did! Sean looks at rules under a microscope and points out the differences between three brands of rule. I would have thought the cheap General tools rule would be about as good as the Starrett that costs four times as much, but Sean's video convinced me that it really is worth spending the extra money for the Starrett.Tools (Recommended):Starrett C604RE-6 6" Rigid, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")Starrett C636EM-6 6" Rigid, US/Metric (36 - 1/32", 0.5mm, 1/64", 1mm)General Tools 676 6" Rigid, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")General Tools CF667ME 6" Rigid, US/Metric (31 - 1/32", 1/64", 0.5mm, 1mm)Related tools mentioned:PEC Tools 402-006 6" Rigid, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")Starrett C304SRE-6 6" Semi-Flexible, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")Starrett C304R-6 6" Full Flexible, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")General Tools 616 6" Flexible, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")PEC 262-006EZ 6" Rigid, Black Chrome, US/Metric (31 - 1/32", 1/64", 0.5mm, 1mm)PEC 262-006TN Tools 6" Rigid, TiN, US/Metric (31 - 1/32", 1/64", 0.5mm, 1mm)Image: YouTube/Cool Tools Read the rest

Two police officers in Louisiana lost their jobs this week after one said Democratic Party legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot and the other signaled their agreement. Charles Rispoli wrote that she "needed a round" and Angelo Varisco "liked" the post. Rispoli was responding to a fabricated news item falsely reporting that Ocasio-Cortez had called for US troops to get a pay cut."This vile idiot needs a round...and I don't mean the kind she used to serve," he wrote.Ms Ocasio-Cortez, 29, worked as a waitress and bartender before stunning the political world last year by defeating veteran Joe Crowley in their party's congressional primary in New York City. Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson told reporters that both Charles Rispoli and a fellow officer who "liked" the post, Angelo Varisco, had been fired."These officers acted in a manner which was unprofessional, alluding to a violent act to be conducted a sitting U.S. congresswoman," Mr Lawson said.The extent to which U.S. policing is infested with and inflitrated by white supremacists is still more or less ignored, despite the FBI's own investigation and plenty of reporting on the matter. Read the rest

In this video, a FedEx delivery driver demonstrates the proper form for hurling a television set over a 6ft fence. Read the rest

Boris Johnson is to lead the UK Conservative Party after winning 66.4% of votes cast by members in its election. As head of the largest party in Parliament, he will become Prime Minister.- Boris Johnson has won the Tory leadership election with 66.4% of the vote- He will travel to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday (July 24) and ask permission from the Queen to form a government.- More resignations from the current government are expectedJohnson defeated current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the final round of voting. Theresa May quit the post after failing to convince Parliament to pass the Brexit deal her government negotiated with the European Union. Johnson has until October 31 to figure out a better deal, but has signaled his happiness with there being no deal at all, allowing the UK to "crash out" of the EU irrespective of the economic or political fallout. Read the rest

If you suffer from sleep disorders, there are a number of methods out there to mitigate them: Ambient noisemakers, relaxation tapes, sleep masks, you name it. One thing that doesn't get tried is headphones, for good reason. Even the smallest earbuds are liable to wake you up if you roll over the wrong way.Now there's a pair specifically designed to address that problem: Bedphones Wireless Sleep Headphones.The first thing to know is that these earbuds are incredibly light and pillow-soft, with a flat design that enables you to wear them comfortably - even while sleeping on your side. All the while, the adjustable ear hooks keep them firmly in place. Whether you're listening to soft music, whalesong or just white noise to block out your partner's snoring, the 23 mm drivers and CSR Bluetooth chip will provide clear, crisp sound. And with a 13-hour life on the battery, you won't need to worry about your soundtrack cutting out in the middle of a dream.Pick up a pair of Bedphones Wireless Sleep Headphones for $99.99, a full 33% off the list price. Read the rest

I'm headed back to San Diego for Comic-Con today for a signing and giveaway for Radicalized, Tor Booth, #2701. I hope to see you there! Read the rest

I was absolutely thrilled with this hot burning, nearly smoke-free portable fire pit.If you are dispersed camping and you do not want to dig a fire pit everywhere you go, or you just want to enjoy a wood-burning fire in your backyard without scorching your pavement or yard, this fire pit has me convinced.A friend joined me at the coastal camping site I've enjoyed this week. When he asked whe he could bring I told him firewood would be awesome, as the camp hosts were selling stuff that just wouldn't burn. I'd tried lighting some charcoal and using it as a base to start my fires, but they were still just smokey and unfun. I had given up on reading by the fire with my whiskey and had taken to going to bed early.Lo and behold my friend arrived with the Solo Stove 'Ranger' -- a portable firepit that is designed to maximize airflow to the fuel, burn hot, radiate heat but thrown off almost no smoke. It is 'lightweight' for car camping uses and only weighs in around 15lbs. He took the Ranger out of its bag, threw some wood in it and then set the fire off with a tablespoon or two of the white gas I keep around for my Coleman Stove (we've both know White Gas as 'LBS' or liquid boy scout since our teens.) Instantly the fire was started and within a few moments it was roaring along!The Solo Stove only put off smoke when there was wood fuel above the top line of the stove. Read the rest

For more than a month, Hong Kong has been rocked by an escalating series of public demonstrations that have persisted in the face of violent police suppression tactics; the demonstrations were kicked off when Hong Kong's puppet regime -- elected after China banned pro-independence candidates from standing in local government races -- proposed a new rule that would make it simple for Beijing to demand the extradition of political dissidents to mainland China, where torture and arbitrary detention of political prisoners is the norm.Though the marches have seen millions of Hong Kongers in the streets, the majority of those marching were young, with a high proportion of student activists, which has allowed China apologists to write the movement off as youthful zeal in action. Now, though, 9,000 elderly Hong Kongers have taken to the streets in solidarity with their younger allies, in a "March for the Silver-Haired." The protest leaders reiterated the five demands of the #612strike movement: 1. Withdrawing the extradition bill2. Revoking the classification of protests as riots3. Dropping all charges against all extradition bill protesters4. Investigating police violence5. Enstating universal suffrage in 2020 Another massive protest is planned for this weekend.“In their fight against the extradition bill, our youth brave truncheons, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, violent arrest and, harsh punishment,” Yeung said. “We are proud of them – their determination, mobilisation and tactics, teamwork and self-organisation.”The statement also endorsed the storming of the legislature on July 1, describing it as a justifiable response by young people and a “symbolic provocation” to the Chinese Communist Party. Read the rest