Political gerrymandering not an issue for the courts, SCOTUS rules 5-4.

Research has shown that two kinds of videos are sure to cheer you up. The first kind is baby animals. The second kind is jackasses ruining their $330,000 cars. This video is of the second kind.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Kickstarter has a lengthy piece on Medium discussing frequent BB contributor Andrea James's Transphobia project (previously). and the broader issues surrounding transgender reporting, the bias within it, and the lack of transgender representation (and outright exclusion) from reporters on the subject. James has three foundational goals for The Transphobia Project: “More trans journalists employed full-time at media outlets; coverage of trans issues to include input from trans editors and fact-checkers; and more non-trans journalists to be aware of how to avoid bias in trans coverage. I hope my project will help editors and publishers identify those with a history of fair and accurate coverage on trans topics, [and] those who don’t have that history. Finally, I hope it will help media consumers see when trans coverage contains bias, both pro- and anti-trans.”At a time when LGBTQ+ tolerance is actually decreasing among youth, holding media to account for both how, and by whom the public receives unbiased reporting on these topics may be even more important than in the past, to stave off what USA Today reports as a "looming social crisis in discrimination." I'm a supporter of her project on Kickstarter, and I hope you will be, too. Read the rest

Germany's auto regulator has ordered Daimler to recall 42,000 Mercedes diesels because the company installed illegal software in their engines that gimmicked the engine's thermostat, which would allow the manufacturer to selectively tune its cars' emissions. Daimler disputes that the software is illegal and has said it will appeal (it says it showed the regulator the software in question last year); but it has formally advised investors to expect a one-time writedown of hundreds of millions of euros over the recall.Today, the Daimler vehicles in question are Mercedes-Benz-brand vehicles that are only sold in the EU. According to a WSJ source, the issue relates to a coolant thermostat in the cars that protects parts of the engine. The related software is found on vehicles made between 2012 and 2015. The WSJ says the type of coolant thermostat used on the diesel vehicles in question is generally found on cars with catalytic converters that don't use selective catalytic reduction, an emissions-reduction technique that uses urea to reduce nitrogen oxides to less-harmful forms. But the GLK 220 CDI 4MATIC Mercedes-Benz models that must be recalled do appear to use selective catalytic reduction.German regulator says it discovered new illegal software on Daimler diesels [Megan Geuss/Ars Technica](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

"Shhh!" says Gong Master Sven. One does not simply bash the gong. Read the rest

Megan Rapinoe, co-captain of the United States women's national soccer team did not sing the National Anthem before the Women's World Cup game with Thailand on Tuesday. She does not expect to be invited to the White House, and if she ever is, she made it clear she doesn't intend to go:“I’m not going to the fucking White House.” - @mPinoe pic.twitter.com/sz1ADG2WdT— Eight by Eight (@8by8mag) June 25, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

Woody and Buzz's friendship catchphrase -- "The important thing is that we stick together!" -- becomes quite literal in these new mismatched "Toy Story 4" sneakers. You get one shoe fashioned after Sheriff Woody and the other after Buzz Lightyear. Reebok collaborated with Pixar and BAIT on this limited-edition Instapump Fury model in anticipation of the film's release. No word on when they drop or their cost.(HYPEBEAST) Read the rest

Mary Annaise Heglar of the Natural Resources Defense Council is tired of her friends confessing their environmental sins to her, like using disposable containers; as she points out, climate change is a systemic problem, not an individual one, and the Ayn-Rand-ish framing of all problems as having individual causes with individual solutions is sheer victim blaming.If you live in a US city, chances are your biggest contribution to climate change is your car -- and you, personally, cannot dig your own subway (no matter what Elon Musk may think). Collective problems have collective solutions.The most meaningful individual action you can take is to vote for and support politicians who will support the Green New Deal.The belief that this enormous, existential problem could have been fixed if all of us had just tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous; it’s dangerous. It turns environmentalism into an individual choice defined as sin or virtue, convicting those who don’t or can’t uphold these ethics. When you consider that the same IPCC report outlined that the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions come from just a handful of corporations — aided and abetted by the world’s most powerful governments, including the US — it’s victim blaming, plain and simple.When people come to me and confess their green sins, as if I were some sort of eco-nun, I want to tell them they are carrying the guilt of the oil and gas industry’s crimes. That the weight of our sickly planet is too much for any one person to shoulder. Read the rest

Securing Our Cyber Future, Stanford Cyber Policy Center's new report on election security, depicts a US electoral system whose glaring vulnerabilities are still in place, three years after the chaos of the 2016 elections.It's not all terrible: digital-only voting machines are dwindling away, with the majority of voting machines delivering a voter-verified paper ballot that can be manually recounted by auditors or if there is a question of fraud or malfunction, but there are still plenty of digital-only systems in the field, and across the board, voting machines are aging, error- and fault-prone, and generally insecure, with vendors who would prefer to bluster and threaten critics than fix their products.There's some progress on eliminating the voting-machine business altogether, with a free/open source system emerging from Los Angeles County's election authorities -- LA County is a national leader in election security and inclusiveness, with an 11-day voting window, available paper ballots for all, and a slate of accessibility features in its machines.But LA County is an exception, and between the poor-quality systems in place nationwide, intransigence from Senate Republicans on allocating funds for election security, and the diplomatic chaos that has failed to produce any international norms on election meddling, 2020 is looking like a potential shitshow to put 2016 to shame.Replacing insecure and aging voting machines around the country, introducing post-election audits in the dozens of states that don’t yet have them, shoring up election network defenses, and expanding security personnel all take money. And while independent, locally adjudicated elections are a cornerstone of US democracy, researchers say that federal funding is still badly needed to make sure all election systems around the country have high-caliber security defenses in place. Read the rest

With trustbusting in the air and Big Tech in the crosshairs, Bloomberg's Dina Bass reflects on the antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s, which the company bungled badly (but still survived, thanks to a judiciary in thrall to a bizarre theory of antitrust that has no problem with monopolies).Bass uses the Microsoft case to come up with some general advice for the Big Tech companies, and there's some revealing truth in the advice that inadvertently points the way to a better future for antitrust and also answers some of the critics of trustbusting.For example, Bass advises companies "Don't even put up a fight about whether you have a monopoly" -- because modern, post-Reagan antitrust is incredibly monopoly-friendly, there's no reason not to enthusiastically admit to having one. Just argue that your monopoly isn't doing anything illegal (like raising prices) and you'll do just fine (some legal scholars beg to differ), but in any event, it's a good reason to revisit the post-Reagan consensus on antitrust).Bass also cites Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith lamenting "the distraction the case caused, and cited it as a reason the company missed out on the search market," and also unnamed experts who have "pinned Microsoft's abysmal performance in mobile computing partially on constraints and distractions from the case."Another way to look at this is that it validates the theory of modern trustbusters, which holds that even if company breakups are likely to be tied up in courts for years, they still do good, by disciplining monopolists so they don't crush new entrants into the market lest it hurt their antitrust case (or draw the attention of the trustbuster who is currently raking their competitor over the coals). Read the rest

How far the mighty have fallen! I remember the global spectacle of MickeyD's opening in Moscow. Likely the highwater mark for the Golden Arches.CNN:Last year, the burger chain switched to fresh beef quarter-pound burgers from frozen at most of its stores in the contiguous United States. That change has led to a 30% spike in sales of quarter pounders on average over the past 12 months, the company said Monday. It also helped McDonald's (MCD) burgers gain market share in what the industry calls the "informal eating out" category for the first time in five years, the company said.McDonald's made the change to appeal to consumers' growing interest in ingredient transparency. Buyers today want to know where their food comes from, Marion Gross, the company's chief supply chain officer for North America, told CNN Business.I am not sure people REALLY want to know where that McDonald's beef came from. Rumors regarding "the special sauce" plagued my childhood. Read the rest

If you haven't seen them already, do check out Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts. They're delightfully retro and great under-five-minute escapes. The latest one, Our Floating Dreams, has Mickey and Minnie speaking Thai! (Likecool) Read the rest

My guest on the Cool Tools podcast this week is Stephen Wolfram. Stephen is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; he's the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, Stephen has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinkingâand has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes:Wolfram|AlphaWolfram Alpha is a thing for answering questions using computational knowledge. And I use it every day for all kinds of things. If I'm going to walk outside I go to Wolfram Alpha, usually on my phone, and just type in sunburn. And it will figure out based on where I am predictions for UV index and so on. Plus, skin type data and so on and will tell me what the expected time for me to get sunburned is. It gives you sort of an information presentation. Here's another thing you can do. You can just go to Wolfram Alpha and type in some first name. Like Kevin, for example. And this is a good party trick. Because it knows how many people called Kevin have been born every year since the late 1800's, and it knows mortality tables and so on. It can figure out what the distribution of Kevins in America is. Read the rest

Anna Lind-Guzik ("a writer, attorney, and scholar of Soviet history, international law, and human rights, with degrees from Duke University, Harvard Law School, and Princeton") has written an essay defending Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's use of the term "concentration camps" to describe the facilities in which America has imprisoned brown-skinned asylum seekers who have presented themselves at the nation's border.Lind-Guzik -- who is Jewish -- points out that the term "concentration camp" predates the Holocaust, and that the US refered to the internment camps where it illegally imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII as concentration camps. There's no question that as a matter of linguistics, "concentration camp" is the right word for what the US is doing on its border.More pointedly, Lind-Guzik defends comparisons to the Holocaust, because "the lessons of the Holocaust will be lost if we refuse to engage with them...Locking up refugees in camps is the real betrayal of the legacy of the Holocaust... 'Never again' means we must work to deescalate before atrocities rise to the horrors of Auschwitz."She closes with this: "In memory of the 6 million Jews who perished because they were considered less human, I will not accept my government treating migrants like animals. And as the daughter of a Soviet Jewish refugee, I will not accept the criminalization of stateless people."I'm also the son of a Soviet Jewish refugee, and I agree. What's more, as a "white-passing" Jew, I've watched with increasing unease as my fellow Ashkenazis have thrown their lot in with white supremacy, making common cause with white supremacists who support apartheid in Israel as part of a deranged end-times prophecy (liberally salted with racism and Islamophobia) and with white supremacists in the GOP who defend white privilege with every weapon at their disposal. Read the rest

Protect your 'text neck'

Laanlabs's showreel for 6d.ai meshing technology is an augmented reality demo in which virtual cockroaches crawl all over a very real kitchen. It's the best use of augmented reality I've ever seen. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

“Words are powerful and can make change when understanding appears impossible.”

“A myth of the anti-vaccine movement is that it emerged organically through the rise of social media,” says Washington Post investigative reporter Amy Brittain. “We looked into the $$$ behind the movement and found a well-funded operation, driven largely by one Manhattan couple who gave millions to the cause.”Brittain's report with Lena H. Sun in today's Washington Post lays out how New York millionaire couple Bernard and Lisa Selz became “significant financiers of the anti-vaccine movement, contributing more than $3 million in recent years to groups that stoke fears about immunizations online and at live events — including two forums this year at the epicenter of measles outbreaks in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.”Excerpt:Hedge fund manager and philanthropist Bernard Selz and his wife, Lisa, have long donated to organizations focused on the arts, culture, education and the environment. But seven years ago, their private foundation embraced a very different cause: groups that question the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.How the Selzes came to support anti-vaccine ideas is unknown, but their financial impact has been enormous. Their money has gone to a handful of determined individuals who have played an outsize role in spreading doubt and misinformation about vaccines and the diseases they prevent. The groups’ false claims linking vaccines to autism and other ailments, while downplaying the risks of measles, have led growing numbers of parents to shun the shots. As a result, health officials have said, the potentially deadly disease has surged to at least 1,044 cases this year, the highest number in nearly three decades. Read the rest

These guys really aren't even trying to hide how feckless and corrupt they are anymore, are they. On 'All in With Chris Hayes' this evening, Republican congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin made the argument that a robust economy in Wisconsin during the presidency of Donald Trump means it's perfectly okay for Donald Trump to commit impeachable offenses.Sean Duffy is on Twitter, and he encourages the good citizens and voters of the 7th Congressional District of Wisconsin to contact him, because he is “here to serve you, and so is my staff.” Watch.GOP Rep. Sean Duffy says the strong economy in Wisconsin means it's okay for Trump to commit impeachable offenses. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/5ek3h3we1d— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) June 19, 2019 Read the rest

'Lock Her Up' and 'acid washed' also made a comeback in Trump's rally-rant.

The looming threat of mass-unemployment driven by automation has been grossly overstated: while it's true that "truck driver" is one of the most common jobs in America, the vast majority of truck drivers are not long-haul drivers, which are the drivers at risk of having their jobs automated out of existence.What's more, the US Standard Occupational Survey conflates "truck drivers" with "driver/sales workers" -- meaning that the oft-cited figure of 3,000,000 US truck drivers is grossly inflated.Truck drivers don't just drive trucks: they engage in a wide variety of non-driving, difficult-to-automate tasks: "checking vehicles, following safety procedures, inspecting loads, maintaining logs, and securing cargo"; as well as a variety of customer service roles and so on. Short-haul truckers have an even wider variety of tasks, navigating city streets and dealing with complex situations involving multiple vehicle types.That said, trucking remains one of the most exploitative industries in America.Several reasons account for our differing opinion. First, the number of truck drivers that can be potentially affected by automation is fewer than many have assumed, because of misunderstandings about the nature of the occupational classification system. Second, although the occupational designation of heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver makes the primary task of the job—driving—apparent, it is important to note a number of non-driving tasks required of truck drivers, many of which are less susceptible to automation. Third, and most important, the requirements of autonomous vehicle technology, combined with complex regulations over how trucks can operate in the United States, imply that certain segments of trucking will be easier to automate than others. Read the rest

As one YouTube commenter wrote, "These are the faces of people who regret learning English." Read the rest

The high resolution imaging science experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image in the Red Planet's Hellas Planitia region. According to the University of Arizona researchers who operate the HiRISE camera for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shapes like this "are the result of a complex story of dunes, lava, and wind." But they also note that "enterprising viewers will make the discovery that these features look conspicuously like a famous logo."They add that it's a coincidence, but we know better. "Dune Footprints in Hellas" (University of Arizona)Full image below depicts area 5 km across: Read the rest

I've been using this 10.5" cast iron griddle at my brother's place, and it is just great.I keep a #9 cast iron skillet on my stove at almost all times. My brother prefers a cast iron griddle. I can see the attraction.The griddle is great all the things I do with a skillet, and also serves as a pizza stone. The lack of sidewalls can make grease management a bit more of a chore, however when making pancakes or otherwise looking to get under and flip frying items things become a lot easier. I didn't notice how much angling around and dickery goes into using my skillet.Eggs over easy are a lot easier to wrangle.I have a #8 'Chicken Pan' that is essentially a very deep walled skillet (with a self-basting lid) that I use for fried chicken. I could use that for deep frying, and a griddle for everything else... however I'm awfully fond of my skillet.I have a griddle I picked up at a cast iron flea market ages ago, and never bothered to refinish. My brother has this Lodge item and it is wonderful. It will serve for generations.Lodge 10.5 Inch Cast Iron Griddle. Pre-seasoned via Amazon Read the rest

Steve Parks, a digital services director, recently visited a small cafe in north London called Eggs & Bread. His modest meal of a boiled egg, a slice of toast, and a mug of tea set him back £20 ($25). The good news is that the cafe, which has been in operation since the fall of 2018, gives meals away. They don't even drop a bill on your table. You can just eat and leave. But you can drop money into a donation box on they way out, which is what Parks did.Thread by @steveparks: "£20 for a boiled egg, one piece of toast and a mug of tea? The story of a modern London cafe... (Read to end of thread before commenting!) S […]"Image: Steve Parks/Twitter Read the rest

Soon-to-be-former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told a reporter on Tuesday how she hopes to be remembered, “I hope that it will be that I showed up every day and I did the very best job that I could to put forward the president’s message ... to do the best job that I could to answer questions. To be transparent and honest throughout that process and do everything I could to make America a little better that day than it was the day before.”"The miserable have no other medicine but only hope." -- ShakespeareImage: Michael Candelori/Shutterstock[via The Hill] Read the rest

On a recent episode of SiriusXMU Sessions, Karen O and Danger Mouse recorded this stark and lovely cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" from 1972. The performance follows the release of their collaborative LP Lux Prima. Read the rest

California's 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that inmates can have a small supply of marijuana behind bars but "smoking or ingesting cannabis in prison remains a felony.” The ruling overturned convictions of five inmates busted for possessing marijuana in prison. From KTLA:“The voters (who in 2016 passed Proposition 64 legalizing marijuana) made quite clear their intention to avoid spending state and county funds prosecuting possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, and quite clear that they did not want to see adults suffer criminal convictions for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana,” Sacramento County Assistant Public Defender Leonard Tauman said in an email. The appeals court “quite properly honored what the electorate passed..."While prison officials can still punish inmates for violating the rules, “this ruling will prevent inmates from having years added to their sentences for simple possession, reducing overcrowding and saving $50,000-75,000 a year in unnecessary costs,” said Assistant Public Defender David Lynch.image: Ahston / CC BY 2.0 Read the rest

I admire Chuck Jones and all the great work he did on Looney Tunes cartoons. That said, I don't like Road Runner. It suffers from the same problem that Scooby Do, Where Are You? and Dora the Explorer have - the same story told again and again. I also didn't like the smug bird, and when I saw this photocopy office art many years ago I knew others shared my sentiment:I just came across these 9 rules that Chuck Jones created for Road Runner cartoons. Constraints are often a good thing for creative projects, but in this case, they resulted in a repetitive, unfunny cartoon series. Read the rest

When I struck out looking for this video I was hoping I'd find some really complex contraption inside old ice cream trucks. Read the rest

38.8% more than the same period a year ago

Cops are increasingly turning to commercial gene-testing services to solve crimes, using a process called "genetic genealogy" that uses the records of people who are near-matches for DNA from crime scenes to zero in on suspects; that's how they caught the Golden State Killer, but cops don't just ask genetics services for data when they're after killers, sometimes they deputize these services to help them solve petty crimes.Services like 23andme and Gedmatch are amassing titanic databases of genomes from the public and it only takes one person from your family to implicate everyone else they're related to in police dragnets.What's more, the commercial services reserve the right to act unilaterally in sharing their data, and this "voluntary" sharing is effectively unregulated. Even where services let you opt out of having your DNA used by cops, your relatives may not be so conscientious, making your decision irrelevant.Without legal limits, genetic genealogy will become a more popular tool for the police. Rather than wait for the courts to deal with difficult and novel issues about genetic surveillance and privacy, state legislatures and attorneys general should step in and articulate guidelines on how far their law enforcement agencies should go. Congress and the Federal Trade CommissionThe United States' primary consumer protection agency, the F.T.C. collects complaints about companies, business practices and identity theft under the F.T.C. Act and other laws. The agency brings actions under Section 5 of the F.T.C. Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive trade practices. GlossaryClose X should take further steps to protect the privacy and security of consumer genetic data. Read the rest

Stalkerware -- spyware sold to people as a means of keeping tabs on their romantic partners, kids, employees, etc -- is a dumpster fire of terrible security (compounded by absentee management), sleazy business practices, and gross marketing targeted at abusive men who want to spy on women.To make matters worse, many security companies refuse to treat stalkerware as malware, and cops around the world make liberal, illegal use of it.Now, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab (previously) has released an interdisciplinary report into the stalkerware industry, which systematically affirms that the stalkerware industry markets itself explicitly to abusive men who want to target women (including ex-partners and stalking targets); that its information security practices put all the data gathered via its products at risk of being breached and dumped; and that it is violently out-of-compliance with Canadian law (as the report dryly notes, "there were significant and disturbing failures by the companies in this study to obtain meaningful and ongoing consent").In some ways, there's nothing new in this report; but it's fantastic to have all these scattered reports of the problems with stalkerware summarized in a single report, with extensive references and accompanying legal and security analysis.Intimate partner violence, abuse, and harassment is routinely linked with efforts to monitor and control a targeted person. As new technologies have seeped into everyday life, aggressors have adopted and repurposed them to terrorize, control, and manipulate their current and former partners. When National Public Radio conducted a survey of 72 domestic violence shelters in the United States, they found that 85% of domestic violence workers assisted victims whose abuser tracked them using GPS. Read the rest

The United Kingdom's security minister, Ben Wallace, really gets Lord Varys from Game of Thrones, you know? The Spider had it going on, man. He was hip and, also, with it. That imaginary man who had his love pump lopped off knew from HUMINT, apparently.From The Telegraph:Ben Wallace says there is “increasing scope” to recruit “juvenile” undercover agents because of the growing numbers of children involved in serious crime both as perpetrators and victims.Records show the children - most aged 17 - have already been used as “covert human intelligence sources” (CHIS) by police in the past three years to provide information on murder, gang violence, drug dealing and the use of weapons.The evidence emerged in a legal challenge in the High Court by campaign group Just for Kids Law who maintain there are a lack of safeguards to protect the children from potential physical and emotional harm. They claim the failings are a breach of the children's human rights.Little Birds! Wallace's bullshit is currently before the courts in England as the Home Office is pushing to raise the current amount of time that folks under the age of 18 can work as an undercover informant from one month to four.With no guaranteed protections against the type of psychological or physical trauma that they could potentially endure, even if they're not caught snooping, I can't think of anything less scrupulous than to enlist a child to keep tabs the sort of individuals that governments at the local or state level count among their enemies. Read the rest

LA's homelessness epidemic continues to rage unabated as housing prices soar and wages stagnate; the result is a "wheel estate" boom of people living in cars and vans, with the greatest proportion of vehicles-dwellers being seniors, families with children, and working people.With 16,000 Anglenos living in their vehicles, there is a desperate need for safe overnight parking. Some volunteer groups -- churches, etc -- have provided these, but the city is taking over (as it should) and trying to establish standards that include case workers and security (also really important), but in so doing, they've priced the provision of overnight parking out of the range of many of the volunteer groups, while also not providing enough space on its own. The city is on track to provide a mere 300 overnight spaces in LA -- double the number that exist now, still far, far short of the mark.Overnight safe parking is essential for families (whose kids need to sleep near their schools) and working people (who won't be able to keep their jobs if they have to park far from work). Providing inadequate parking is better than banning it, but falls short of the mark of solving the city's housing crisis.Marston, with the L.A. program, said the security guards are intended to help working people sleep better, “to truly get a good night’s rest and be productive the next day,” so they can get out of homelessness faster.Similarly, the case management model emerged because “[clients] are at work during the day and our system doesn’t work with their schedule.”For some, like Yunus Rajabiy, safe parking’s social services were critical. Read the rest

Philadelphia's Mutter Museum (previously) is one of my favorite museums in the world: built from the private collection of pathologist Dr Thomas Dent (who aggregated the collections of many other pathologists), it is a solemn and moving place to see the incredible breadth of human physiognomy and pathology.One of the star exhibits at the Mutter is the skeleton of Harry Eastlack, who lived and died with the rare genetic disease fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), which causes the slow, relentless growth of a second skeleton within your body. We're proud to help release the short documentary "Skeleton Boy," which tells the story of Eastlack and Dr Frederick Kaplan, the FOP researcher who discovered the gene implicated in FOP, as well as Carol Orzel, a fellow FOP sufferer who was so inspired by Eastlack's story that she donated her skeleton to the Mutter.Skeleton Boy is part of "The Face Phantom: Tales Inspired by the Mütter Museum, from Metabook.Here's a word on the video from its director, Benjamin Alfonsi: "I wanted to make a short documentary about Harry Eastlack as a tribute and also to bring attention to the disease from which he suffered, FOP. When I learned that the remains of another FOP sufferer, Carol Orzel, would be displayed alongside Harry's, I knew I had to update the film to include her. I found their stories moving and strangely inspiring, and I hope others do too." Read the rest

Just look at it.(Thanks, Anon Reader!) Read the rest

In a very short time, Sarah Gailey has distinguished themself as one of science fiction's best new writers, combining an inimitable voice with a bag of fresh and original narrative tricks. Now, in their first full-length novel, Magic for Liars, Gailey goes all-out in a magical murder mystery that's both a first-rate whodunnit and an unmistakably Gaileyish, chewy tale of high emotional stakes.Ivy Gamble is a private investigator who specializes in tracking down straying husbands, insurance cheats, and unfaithful wives -- anything to keep her from dwelling too much on her estranged twin sister Tabitha, a powerful mage who left the family when they were both teens, to complete her magical training. Tabitha now teaches the next generation of mages at the elite Osthorne Academy.This is a pretty good tactic, until Ivy lands her first ever murder: a teacher whose grisly death has been ruled an accident by the magic authorities, but whom the headmaster is convinced was murdered.From Rowling's Hogwarts to Grossman's The Magicians, fantasy writers have spent the century redefining the "school for magic," continuing the work Diane Duane started in the 1980s. Gailey's magic academy setting is thus familiar enough -- not as treacly as Hogwarts and not as alienated as Brakebills, but still gritty and delightfully messed up, and full of mystery -- the perfect backdrop for a murder mystery.But unlike the rest of the canon, Gailey's PoV character is one of us, a muggle, a non-magical, and the magic of Gailey's mages is seen through her eyes, which makes it all the more magical (shades of Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky, here), and while Ivy is every bit as tortured by the impact of magic on her family as Harry Potter, every bit as tormented as Quentin Coldwater, her enmeshed in a set of complex relationships that are incredibly nuanced and complex and fascinating. Read the rest

The New York Times has inaugurated its "Op-Eds From the Future" ("science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write op-eds that they imagine we might read 10, 20 or even 100 years in the future") with a piece from Ted Chiang (previously) that imagines a future in which genetic engineering of human embryos is commonplace, leading to a well-intentioned attempt at preventing literal speciation into the haves and have-nots by subsidizing "intelligence boosting" genetic manipulation for lower-income families.Chiang's editorialist is looking back on the long-term effects of this Gene Equality Project and observing that despite closing the genetic gap, in 2059 the children of poorer families are still not attaining the wealth and privilege of the children of the rich. And while some of this might be attributed to the optional genetic manipulation that the wealthy can choose (selecting for tallness, say), the ultimate conclusion is that America is no meritocracy: the most reliable way to become a rich and powerful person in the USA is to have the self-discipline and foresight to choose really rich parents.It's a great pricking of the bubble of the cherished American myth of social mobility and meritocracy -- a myth that leads people to resolving the apparent contradiction of a "hereditary meritocracy" by turning to eugenics (cue the president boasting about his "good blood"). It's also an important counterpoint to Jim Hughes's excellent 2005 Citizen Cyborg, which warns that left to its own devices, any transhumanist project will create a have/have-not dichotomy that's embedded in our germ plasm. Read the rest

Hey @realDonaldTrump, we read the story about the sailors on a US warship being ordered to hide from you because you’re triggered by the name on their hats. So we turned Madame Tussaud's into a giant USS John McCain baseball cap. Welcome to London! pic.twitter.com/KuynOwupFm— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) June 3, 2019 Thank you, London. Read the rest

John Delaney (a finance friendly millionaire) wants to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, and he thinks he knows how to win: "Medicare for all may sound good but it's actually not good policy nor is it good politics." It's an idea so unpopular with California Democrats that it attracted a full minute of heartfelt boos when he assayed it last weekend.Then there's John Hickenlooper, whose big line, "socialism is not the answer" (as a way of explaining why the Green New Deal should not be promoted) also attracted a sustained chorus of boos.Hickenlooper later explained that while he might personally not be so down on the Green New Deal and other policies put forward by the Democratic Socialist wing of the party, he was worried that "Republicans will make it seem like socialism."Because apparently Hickenlooper thinks that the job of Democrats is to make Republicans comfortable.It's another example of the true polarization in America: policies with broad popular support that undo corruption, save the planet and unwind wealth concentration; versus political "leaders" who share a bipartisan consensus that none of these are possible and the best we can hope for is that our government will act as a kind of aristocratic House of Lords that tugs gently at the golden chains that our eternal monarchs deign to submit to in a post-climate-change wasteland where most of us are valued only as organ donors for our social betters. Read the rest

While famed singer and songwriter Leon Redbone has passed away at the age of 69, the official announcement of his death claims he was 127.Variety:Singer-songwriter Leon Redbone, who specialized in old-school vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley-style music, died earlier today, his family confirmed. He was 69 — although, in characteristically whimsical fashion, the official statement announcing his death gave his age as 127.Redbone had officially retired in 2015, with a representative then citing unspecified health concerns as the reason for his being unable to continue performing or recording.A post on Redbone’s website confirming his death contained enough deadpan humor and whimsical fiction that it was almost certainly prepared in advance by the singer himself. “It is with heavy hearts we announce that early this morning, May 30th, 2019, Leon Redbone crossed the delta for that beautiful shore at the age of 127,” it read. “He departed our world with his guitar, his trusty companion Rover, and a simple tip of his hat. He’s interested to see what Blind Blake, Emmett, and Jelly Roll have been up to in his absence, and has plans for a rousing sing along number with Sári Barabás. An eternity of pouring through texts in the Library of Ashurbanipal will be a welcome repose, perhaps followed by a shot or two of whiskey with Lee Morse, and some long overdue discussions with his favorite Uncle, Suppiluliuma I of the Hittites. To his fans, friends, and loving family who have already been missing him so in this realm he says, ‘Oh behave yourselves. Read the rest

Countless times I have frantically rummaged through my camping gear, digging for toilet paper as I madly need to go. My daughter never, ever, EVER returns toilet supplies to the same place. The Booty Duty bag is a handy, one-stop kit for all your excretory waste management supplies.Camping for me involves a Volkswagen Camper. My bus starts most trips out as a well organized and carefully arranged environment. Everything from the solar panel to the BBQ is in its assigned place! I have tools, back-ups for the tools, cables, batteries, fuel, blankets, hats, sunscreen, bug repellant, you name it and someplace in that VW van you can probably find it. Zero thought ever goes into the toilet paper and supplies. They get stuffed into whatever space looks good at the moment. Then the TP is lost.Most State and Federally designated/managed camping sites have bathrooms. Government TP is like sandpaper, but it is there. When camping even a tiny bit more off the grid, you better have your own shovel and paper. Finding that shovel and paper in the middle of the night, or really any time you are in a hurry always turns into a comedy of errors.The Booty Duty is a purpose built bag that carries your roll of toilet paper and all your bathroom supplies! The bag handily affixes to your shovel and becomes a dispenser! It is thoughtfully designed to also house wet wipes, and have space for other hygiene products that may be required based on the composition of your camping party. Read the rest

"There was a phantom beep going off somewhere in my house, driving me nuts," says Steve Onotera. "So using my audio engineering skills I set about to track it down." Read the rest

The owners of the Williamstown, Kentucky creationist theme park Ark Encounter, home to a 510 foot long model of the biblical Noah's Ark, are suing their insurance carriers for not covering $1 million in damages caused by heavy rain. From Lex18:According to the suit, heavy rains caused a landslide and some structural support damage near the Ark exhibit.“Subsequent to heavy rains, a significant landslide occurred along portions of the slope, which eliminated the structural support for the roadway, caused significant damage to the road surface itself and the incorporated improvements, and rendered portions of the road unsafe and unfit for use,” reads the suit...Initially, the suit alleges, the defendants cited faulty craftsmanship as the reason for the property damage and stated they were not liable. After an appeal, they conceded that only a small amount was covered by the policy."Ark Encounter LLC Files Lawsuit After Heavy Rains Damage Property" (Lex18)Previously: "Help protest a taxpayer-funded Creationist theme park in Kentucky"image: OlinEJ (CC0) Read the rest

Paolo Bacigalupi's (previously) A Full Life is a new short story in MIT Technology Review that traces the hard young life of Rue, whose family has to move and move again as climate disasters destroy the places they try to make their homes: the water for their ecologically sound farm dries up, then Austin becomes unlivable when heatwaves spike rolling blackouts, then Miami is washed off the map by a string of floods that overwhelm the levees built to "American standards" that were cooked by US oil lobbyists, and then life in New York comes to an end when a global financial crisis wipes out the last family member with any money -- an uncle who was an investment banker who ends up losing all the money he made shorting Miami when the crash comes.It's grim stuff, but it's also beautifully told -- and it's a tour through the many ways in which individual efforts to ensure the long-term habitability of the only planet in the known universe capable of sustaining human life are always going to be insufficient. Buried in this story about individual failures is a warning about the power of collective action.It's also a story about the kinds of intergenerational resentments that Boomers are already starting to experience, as the many crises that are swirling around climate chaos (student debt bubbles, unaffordable housing, deindustrialization, elimination of worker protections and defined-benefits pensions, deconstruction of public services) detonate.The good news is that -- as this story illustrates -- we have 100% employment for the next century in the form of rewarding, meaningful, important work on climate resilience, adaptation and remediation. Read the rest

Some people shiver with delight at whispers and certain kinds of soft sounds. A psychologist/neuroscientist at Manchester University named Nick Davis tells Wired about the science behind these "brain orgasms."Image: Wired/YouTube Read the rest

What is going on.This appears to be a slurred tweet from Rudy Giuliani piling on to an orchestrated political attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But honestly, who knows anymore? Yesterday, Trump and his party circulated a badly produced fake video that purported to show Nancy Pelosi slurring her words, in response to Pelosi's call for an 'intervention' for Trump because he is clearly nuts and unfit for office. ivesssapology for a video which is allegedly is a caricature of an otherwise halting speech pattern, she should first stop, and apologize for, saying the President needs an “intervention.” Are pic.twitter.com/ZpEO7iRzV8— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) May 24, 2019Is Rudy Giuliani okay? Someone should check on him, and then keep him locked away until mid-November 2020.Rosie Gray interprets it as best as anyone can."In a tweet on Friday, former New York City mayor and President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani made a cryptic reference to a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, misspelling the word 'apology' and attaching an unrelated gif of Atlanta Hawks team members." https://t.co/94ZuhJgDhV— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) May 24, 2019Responses from Twitter.Pete Buttigieg: I’m the only politician who appreciates the prose in “Finnegan’s Wake.”Rudy Giuliani: https://t.co/HhmzVDtSKl— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) May 24, 2019Me: *spends an entire day agonizing about sending a tweet where I left out an apostrophe*Rudy Giuliani, who is an attorney with a law degree and is employed by the President of the United States of America: pic.twitter.com/NTu6ln5KBT— maura quint (@behindyourback) May 24, 2019What is wrong with Rudy Giuliani? Read the rest

Mark Zuckerberg offered to let Chinese premier Xi Jinping name his firstborn (seriously), Apple purged the Chinese App Store of privacy tools at the request of the politburo; Google secretly built a censoring search-engine for use in China, but America's Big Tech companies are sounding the alarm that they will no longer be able to promote America's global dominance if any of the US Big Tech breakup plans are executed.Which is hilarious, because breaking up monopolies makes industries stronger, not weaker: the breakup of Standard Oil spun off companies like Exxon and Chevron, each as big or bigger than Standard was when it was split up. AT&T's breakup gave us Verizon, Qwest, and a host of other telcos. Monopolies suppress growth by clobbering companies with innovative ideas in order to preserve the status quo.By contrast, Japan encouraged and nurtured its monopolies, and lost its substantial tech lead to become an also-ran in the global tech marketplace.Sandberg made her case against breaking up Facebook explicit. In an interview Friday, CNBC asked if Facebook was prepping for a big antitrust battle. In response, Sandberg recounted recent private meetings with Democrats and Republicans in Washington. There, she said, she heard that “while people are concerned with the size and power of tech companies, there’s also a concern in the United States with the size and power of Chinese companies, and the realization that these companies are not going to be broken up.”Schmidt was less direct, but conjured the same fears of falling behind China. Read the rest

NASA invites you to enter into a drawing to have your name sent to Mars on a chip.NASA:Although it will be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send their names — stenciled on chips — to the Red Planet with NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which represents the initial leg of humanity’s first round trip to another planet. The rover is scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, with the spacecraft expected to touch down on Mars in February 2021.The rover, a robotic scientist weighing more than 2,300 pounds (1,000 kilograms), will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet."As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in Washington. "It’s an exciting time for NASA, as we embark on this voyage to answer profound questions about our neighboring planet, and even the origins of life itself.”The opportunity to send your name to Mars comes with a souvenir boarding pass and "frequent flyer" points. This is part of a public engagement campaign to highlight missions involved with NASA's journey from the Moon to Mars. Miles (or kilometers) are awarded for each "flight," with corresponding digital mission patches available for download. Read the rest