Boing Boing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lospec offers various tools and tutorials for creating "digitally restrictive art", typically pixel art that restricts the pallette and resolution in honor (or explicit imitation) of retro computer hardware.The biggest collection of pixel art tutorials on the net! Search by topic, author or medium to find the perfect article, video, image or book for you.A searchable collection of palettes for pixel art. Every palette can be downloaded in 6 different formats, and imported into nearly any software used to create pixel art.The Lospec Pixel Editor is a free, easy to use tool for creating pixel art that you can use right in your browser.It's the work of Sam Keddy, who operates a patreon that you can pledge to to help further develop the site. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH spunky little Donald is harassed by the most unfair witch hunt in history just because he got caught being doing crime

Everybody's an expert when it comes to packing before a vacation. It's great that you squeezed all that stuff into a carry-on. Now, what happens when you find that must-have pair of shoes or holiday gift? Your options are paying to ship the items or getting an extra bag, and neither of those is ideal.Turns out there's a travel bag that solves that problem so easily, it's kind of embarrassing that no one's done it before. At least, not as well as the Rollux 2-in-1 Expandable Suitcase:The simple folding design means you can convert this carry-on bag into a full-size suitcase, more than doubling its carrying capacity in seconds. It's intuitive enough for even the busiest traveler to collapse or expand without instructions, and that extra space can be a godsend for long trips. When you get to your destination, just fold it up and save yourself extra space in the hotel closet. While in its carry-on mode, it can even be worn as a backpack if you're hoofing it for awhile.This isn't a one-trick pony, either. There's plenty of thought put into the polypropylene material, which has durability and flexibility to spare. Need to pack a few extra shirts in? Feel free to stretch it out. And it's water-resistant, too - a big plus for long hikes in unfamiliar territory.The modular design doesn't stop with the interior. The wheels are sturdy but can be easily removed if you need that extra inch or two of space in the overhead compartment. Read the rest

If you're looking to refresh your social media avatars for Halloween, use this generator by Olivia Haines to create ghosts, vampires, witches and more. I went with bloody mummy:(Via Kalonica.) Read the rest

The verification requirements on the neighborhood app Nextdoor effectively make the app an unwelcome place for homeless people. If you do not have a fixed address, you cannot complete the verification process to use the service. Because homeless people are excluded from neighborhood discussions on Nextdoor, echo chambers that demonize the homeless seem to proliferate on the platform.From Rick Paulas at OneZero:Search for the word “homeless” in your own Nextdoor neighborhood forum, and you’ll almost certainly see similar sentiments posted: The homeless are causing a problem, and they must be dealt with.Other social networks often contain their fair share of anti-homeless sentiment too — the Twitter hashtag “cleanupSF” has become a shorthand call to push out San Francisco’s homeless population, and “neighborhood watch” Facebook groups are common forums for similar conversations. But Nextdoor stands out. For one, homeless individuals without mailing addresses cannot join Nextdoor, even if they’re permanent residents of the neighborhood. For another, the platform’s private setting means that posts simmer and boil over into a mob-with-pitchforks mentality. It has all created an environment where landlords, homeowners, and renters feel safe to vent their frustrations and unfounded suspicions — actions that can have direct consequences for the homeless.Nextdoor, launched in 2011, has always been defined by a user’s identity and location. To sign up for a Nextdoor account in the U.S., users must verify that they have a physical address located within one of the over 202,000 chunks of land that have been designated as a “neighborhoods.” Once verified, users have access to a private forum populated by others living within the same designation. Read the rest

Tea time, happy mutants! PG Tips 'Extra Strong' is not as pitifully weak as PG Tips 'Gold' offering. Belly up to the bar and get your tea on!Over the course of the last year, I've mostly leaned into coffee and espresso to make life liveable. They supply the necessary energy to do that which must be done. 5-6 double shots of espresso on my Rancilio Ms Silva was a normal morning until I packed that darling machine into storage. 32-64 oz of french pressed medium roast was my ritual whilst living la vida #vanlife. Now-a-days its been liters of drip coffee.A recent day where I unintentionally skipped the coffee nearly crippled me. Shit man, that was some bullshit withdrawl symptoms. Coffee isn't nearly as much fun as things that are far easier to kick.I have said it before and will say it again: There is no room for amateurs in the drug culture.I couldn't find the best tea in the universe, Barry's Gold Blend, in any local market. I did not want to wait for Amazon to deliver it. I bought a box of PG Tips 'Extra Strong' and it gets the job done!PG Tips 'Extra Strong' is only extra strong if you are in the UK. This is a dark black tea that is a lot like Barry's but has a bit more of a malty tone to it. It is not like "Whoa, existential crisis!" black, but PG Tips 'Extra Strong' is someplace between deathrock and skate punk. Read the rest

Whenever I'm in Japan I marvel at the efficient, clean, quiet, and comfortable trains. The passengers are polite, and the train employees bow when moving from one car to another. Right now there is some kind of international sports-ball tournament going on in Japan, and a Japanese woman shot a video of some obnoxious French soccer fans acting like jackasses on the train. They are lying in the aisle, carrying each other, yelling, bumping into other people, and putting their dirty shoes on the seats. This Logan Paul-like idiocy would be looked down upon even on a European train, but in Japan it's unthinkable.In this video That Japanese Man Yuta shows the video and the Japanese reactions to it on social media. Read the rest

In case you missed it, some frustrated residents in the Clinton Park neighborhood of San Francisco chipped in a few hundred bucks each to purchase giant boulders to keep homeless people off their street ("anti-homeless architecture," as it's called). Boulders that the city of San Francisco aren't going to remove.Well, BB friend Danielle Baskin, who lives on that small street, thinks the rocks are "barbaric," so she did something about it.She tweets:Some neighbors pooled together $2000 to dump 24 boulders into the sidewalk as a form of “anti-homeless decoration”.The city won’t remove them, so I put their rocks on the Craigslist free section.The post was flagged and removed, of course. But she didn't stop there. She then tried to sell the rocks for $5 each and that post was also flagged and removed. The boulders belong in parks & gardens, not intercepting people trying to go about their day. pic.twitter.com/FEcMV9fgyb— Danielle Baskin (@djbaskin) September 27, 2019“Can I leave my other boulders here?” This person is either playing along or also hates sidewalks.I’m asking him if I can borrow his truck. pic.twitter.com/H0wb5yfUSn— Danielle Baskin (@djbaskin) September 27, 2019In another variation on my Craigslist post, I tried to sell the boulders for $5/each. Then I‘d give away the money to people sleeping nearby.This post was also flagged and removed. pic.twitter.com/S30bflEjK3— Danielle Baskin (@djbaskin) September 27, 2019The latest? On Friday night, the boulders were pushed into the street! Read the rest

Melvil Dewey created the Dewey Decimal system, established the first school for instruction of librarians, and was one of the founders of the American Library Association. But in June, the ALA voted to strip his name from the ALA's annual award for "creative leadership of high order." Why? The ALA cited Dewey's racism, antisemitism, and serial harassment of women. Although the decision to strip his name from the award is new, it wasn't based on a modern view of Dewey's behavior.Dewey owned a private club in New York that expressly excluded Jews and African-Americans. When that policy was publicized, Dewey received a public rebuke from the New York State Board of Regents, and ultimately resigned his position as State Librarian in 1905. Around that same time, he was also censured by the ALA for his serial harassment of women:several women complained about his improper behavior toward them—including unwanted kissing, hugging, and caressing in public. Dewey’s daughter-in-law even moved out of his home because she was uncomfortable around him.Wikipedia notes:Reports, allegations, and an investigation of Dewey's inappropriate and offensive behavior directed at women continued for decades after his departure from ALA. In 1930, he paid $2,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former secretary alleging sexual harassment.In an understatement, the Library of Congress simply notes, "His legacy is complex."Slate has much more on Dewey's history, including the problematic nature of the Dewey Decimal System itself.(Image courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta.) Read the rest

I stared at this a while in Target and a staff member eventually asked if I needed help and I slowly turned to them and whispered "kratom ranch."Kranch Saucy Sauce [Amazon] Read the rest

Annalee Newitz (previously) just published her second novel, The Future of Another Timeline, a madcap feminist time-travel novel that pits incel extremists who are trying to snuff out feminism before it can get started against a secret liberation army of feminists inspired by the (alternate history) Senator Harriett Tubman.I reviewed the book in today's Los Angeles Times.The darkness also comes through in Newitz’s misogynists, whose creepiness is never as absurd as it might be. Newitz’s Comstockers are far too real and present to be mere satire. That’s because so much of their ideology is lifted verbatim from men’s rights message boards, murderous incel (“involuntarily celibate,” a bizarre, violent eugenic conspiracy theory that blames women for men’s lack of sex) cults and “Dark Enlightenment” self-parody.The upshot is a book full of heart, consequences, stakes, action and surprises. Newitz blends exquisitely rendered historical research with a complex science fiction, the time-travel premise whose internal logic is well-thought-through, throwing up all kind of hard puzzles for her characters to solve.This is a hell of a book from start to finish and could not be more timely.'The Future of Another Timeline' pulses with a daring punk-rock, time-travel tale [Cory Doctorow/LA Times] Read the rest

Carla and I watched all 12 episodes of Fleabag in 4 nights. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a British dramedy about a London cafe owner (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) dealing with a tragedy, a neurotic sister, and a newly-widowed dad and his passive-aggressive girlfriend. It ran for two seasons and won multiple Emmys: Outstanding Comedy Series, Lead Actress - Comedy Series, Supporting Actress - Comedy Series (Olivia Colman), and another Supporting Actress - Comedy Series (Sian Clifford)I just found out Fleabag began as a one-woman show, written and performed by Waller-Bridge, funded in 2013 on Kickstarter. The campaign raised £3,955.You can watch the Kickstarter video here. Read the rest