The second Lego movie includes a memorable scene in Apocalypseburg, an homage to the final scene in Planet of the Apes, complete with a Beyond Thurderdome-style settlement in Lady Liberty's tilted shadow; this is now immortalized as a $300 Lego set. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

I've had quite a few fun afternoons playing with dry ice from making spooky fog in the kitchen to exploding plastic bottles in the yard. But I've never had the opportunity to pour hot lava over dry ice. In this video, the lava is 1400 °C and the dry ice is -78C°. So cool! And hot! Read the rest

It took place a few weeks ago, but it's a good day for it all the same.Credit: NASA, ISS, Riccardo Rossi (ISAA) Music: Inspiring Adventure Cinematic Background by Maryna Details: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181126.html Comments: http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod... Attribution: NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Read the rest

Filmmaker Benjamin Lancaster spent four years secretly shooting a science fiction movie called "The Further Adventures of Walt's Frozen Head," working with actors Daniel Cooksley and Ron Schneider to make a movie about a WDW cast-member who discovers the (urban)-legendary frozen head of Walt Disney, kicking off a series of adventures around the park. The movie premieres online later today. This is (at least) the second time someone has secretly shot a movie at Walt Disney World. (Thanks, Hugh!) Read the rest

The binoculars I bought at a very steep discount are on sale again, and this time they are even cheaper. Use code 63U3YPBN to get them at the sale price. I bought a second pair so Carla and I will each have one for the upcoming Rolling Stones concert. Read the rest

Back in 2016, the Dr Seuss estate won a preliminary court action against "Oh, The Places You'll Boldly Go!" a crowdfunded parody of Dr Seuss's "Oh the Places You'll Go!" and Star Trek, written by veteran Star Trek creator David "Tribble" Gerrold and illustrated by the comics giant Ty Templeton. In 2017, Comicmix, the publisher, secured a partial legal victory, but the Seuss estate wasn't done -- they have been litigating ever since, but now it appears the fight is done, and Comicmix has prevailed, with a Southern District of California judge declaring, in no uncertain terms, that the mashup was protected by fair use. The judgment is long and well-reasoned and comprehensive, and not the sort of thing that you'd expect to go on appeal to the Supreme Court (though who knows: the court has been terrible on copyright, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg never met an expansive theory of copyright she didn't like).Timothy Geigner has published a detailed analysis of the judgment on Techdirt. It's quite an amazing read: the judge is very clear that no one is going to mistake Comicmix's parody for the Dr Seuss original, nor would they buy the parody as a substitute for Seuss, and the court is especially down on the Seuss estate's theory that the (terrible) decision in Oracle v Google means that mashups are illegal. Examining the cover of each work, for example, Plaintiff may claim copyright protection in the unique, rainbow-colored rings and tower on the cover of Go! Read the rest

The new EU Copyright Directive will be up for its final vote in the week of Mar 25, and like any piece of major EU policy, it has been under discussion for many years and had all its areas of controversy resolved a year ago -- but then German MEP Axel Voss took over as the "rapporteur" (steward) of the Directive and reintroduced the long-abandoned idea of forcing all online services to use filters to block users from posting anything that anyone, anywhere claimed was their copyrighted work.There are so many obvious deficiencies with adding filters to every message-board, online community, and big platform that the idea became political death, as small- and medium-sized companies pointed out that you can't fix the EU's internet by imposing costs that only US Big Tech firms could afford to pay, thus wiping out all European competition.So Voss switched tactics, and purged all mention of filters from the Directive, and began to argue that he didn't care how online services guaranteed that their users didn't infringe anyone's copyrights, even copyrights in works that had only been created a few moments before and that no one had ever seen before, ever. Voss said that it didn't matter how billions of user posts were checked, just so long as it all got filtered.(It's like saying, "I expect you to deliver a large, four-legged African land-mammal with a trunk, tusk and a tail, but it doesn't have to be an elephant -- any animal that fits those criteria will do). Read the rest

Angélique Kidjo is a Beninese musician of enormous talent and repute (and three Grammys!); with 10 brilliant albums to her credit; album number ten is special, though: a tribute to Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light (available for $7.92 as DRM-free MP3s); I've been listening to it all morning and, speaking as someone who would give any of the Talking Heads principals one of my kidneys if need be, I am head-over-heels in love with this album: Kidjo is touring the world with it and judging by the videos, she's an electrifying performer. Read the rest

Sometimes life comes at you fast, and you just have to make the best of a challenging situation.This clever birdie finds a way to make it work.Clever Read the rest

Since 2016, there have been multiple instances of attacks on keyless entry car-locks, and there's a burgeoning industry of expensive ($5000) aftermarket alarm systems that are billed as protecting your car from these radio attacks on its security.Pen-Test Partners evaluated several of these systems and found that the two leading models, Pandora and Viper (AKA "Clifford") were very defective, with a mix of vulnerabilities that allow attackers to track cars in realtime, extract the car and its owner's details, disable the alarm, remotely enable/disable the immobilizer, stop the car while it's in motion, eavesdrop on the in-car mic, and even steal the car.Pen-Test Partners attacked the companies' APIs, which allow their apps to communicate with and configure the in-car systems; by modifying the parameters in API calls, they were able to hijack users' accounts, changing the associated email and password. Once that is done, "It’s possible to geo-locate and follow a specific vehicle, then cause it to stop and unlock the doors."There's plenty of room for research on even more extravagant attacks: the alarm systems interface with cars internet networks over the CAN bus -- a common data infrastructure system that all the car's subsystems use to talk to each other. Pen-Test Partners estimates that $150B worth of cars are exposed via these flaws -- about 3M high-end cars.This is a superb example of how security systems can expose users to risk: once you design a system that treats the person using it as an adversary and a remote party as trusted, then, by design, a remote party who compromises the system can attack the person who's using it. Read the rest

When critics want to dismiss Bernie Sanders's bid to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, the say that he is too old and too white, and incapable of bringing young people and racialized people to the polls, the way that, say, Obama did in 2008 (after all, American politics is as much a contest of who votes and who doesn't as it about whom they vote for).The same people who say this often have other iron laws of Democratic policy, like "Democrats can't support Medicare for All" and "Democrats can't support a Green New Deal" and "Democrats shouldn't try to tax the rich." When they say this, they really mean "Establishment Democrats' big-money millionaire/billionaire donors won't back Democrats who support these policies," and so, despite the enormous popularity of these policies, the Democrats shouldn't run on them.Sanders favors all of these policies, and more, and so it's no surprise that his critics are grasping at (evidence-free) straws to neg him in the public sphere, but of course, reality has a well-known left-wing bias, so it's no surprise that they're (very, very) wrong.For example, Sanders is beating Kamala Harris 2-to-1 in polls of African American voters (possibly because Harris supported the preservation of forced prison labor, joked about her actions to jail parents whose kids were truant, and let Steve Mnuchin walk away from grotesque financial crimes that victimized poor people and stole their homes). And 18- and 19-year-old first-time voters are big on Sanders because his policies matter more to them than his age, especially his support for immediate, meaningful action on climate change -- even though Sanders will be dead before climate change makes most of the USA uninhabitable, these kids won't be, and they know it. Read the rest

Would-be Democratic Presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren (I've donated to her campaign, as well as Bernie Sanders') has published her latest policy prescription: a plan to break up Big Tech monopolists to protect the public's privacy and the interests of small-business competitors.Under Warren's plan, large tech companies (with more than $25b in global revenues) would be designated "platform utilities" and would be required to give all commercial users "fair, reasonable and nondiscrimatory" access to their services, and the owners of these utilities would be prohibited from participating in their marketplaces -- that would mean, for example, that Amazon would have to accept all sellers on the same terms, and would not be allowed to sell its own products to compete with them.Companies with annual global revenues of $99m-$25b would also be platform utilities, but would be permitted to sell on their own platforms.Enforcement would come through a right for state Attorneys General and private parties to sue platforms for violating the deal, "to enjoin any conduct that violates these requirements, to disgorge any ill-gotten gains, and to be paid for losses and damages." Violators will face statutory damages of 5% of global revenues.Next, Warren will force tech giants to divest themselves of former competitors that they acquired: Amazon would have to sell off Zappos and Whole Foods; Facebook would have to sell of Instagram and Whatsapp; and Google would have to sell off Waze, Doubleclick and Nest.Then there's a bunch more squishy stuff, like "we must ensure that Russia — or any other foreign power — can’t use Facebook or any other form of social media to influence our elections" and "We must help America’s content creators — from local newspapers and national magazines to comedians and musicians — keep more of the value their content generates, rather than seeing it scooped up by companies like Google and Facebook" (this rhetoric is scarily similar to the notional basis for Europe's terrible Article 13 proposal, but there are some ways to imagine it going well, if we keep in mind that enriching media companies has little relationship to enriching creators). Read the rest

Let's get this done and get home. No time for lollygagging.This “Pup knows what he's about.”Pup knows what he's about. Read the rest

x6udpngx's x6ud is a single-purpose search engine that offers high-quality animal photographs for use by artists seeking reference material. It also has a 3D head that you can rotate Read the rest

What an amazing DIY castle playroom-bedroom for some seriously lucky grandkids. Truly epic, from IMGURian jshepherddesign2000.About the top image: “Mural and drawbridge bed. Chains are plastic and easily removed as well as breakaway from the top for safety.”The "curtain" and "stained glass" in the image below? Trompe l'oeil. “All one piece of art printed on fabric.”Wow. I'm an adult and I seriously want this!Original below.Our DIY Medieval Castle playroom/kids bedroom for our grandkids. Read the rest

The Apollo 11 documentary is premiering in theaters tomorrow. It makes use of a "newly discovered trove of 65mm footage," which is very crisp, making it look like it was shot yesterday instead of 50 years ago.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Measles is no joke. Anti-vaxxers are dangerously inviting infectious disease back into our society.NBC:In the Washington county that is home to one of the nation’s largest measles outbreaks, the effects go far beyond the 71 confirmed cases.The Seattle Times reports over 800 students considered exposed to the highly contagious disease in Clark County have been ordered to stay away from classrooms for up to three weeks, disrupting their education.Since January, field trips, after-school activities and an assembly honoring Martin Luther King Jr. have been canceled or postponed. Some students are doing homework off prepared handouts; others are using school-issued laptops to keep up. Read the rest

Full Frontal's Samantha Bee presents the Sackler family, "art patrons, cosmopolitans, and, believe it or not, almost single-handedly responsible for the nationwide opioid crisis."The Sacklers aren't just rich. They are rich. They have wings named after them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, an entire museum at Harvard, a center at the Guggenheim...So how do you get to have this many museums name shit after you? By having a fortune of $13 billion, which you, whoops, largely made by creating the opioid crisis. The Sacklers' family business, which they own in full, is Purdue Pharma, a company best known for developing OxyContin, one of the most prescribed and abused opioids in the United States. Read the rest

House Democrats have made good on their promise to introduce the Save the Internet Act, legislation mandating Network Neutrality, which would force the FCC to reinstate the policy that Trump's Chairman Ajit Pai used a string of dirty tricks and illegal maneuvers to destroy.Such legislation cannot pass without the support of Senate Republicans, but it's still a canny move by the Democrats, since many of those Republicans represent the largely rural states that are ground zero for the worst price-gouging and under-servicing by the telcoms industry, and Net Neutrality enjoys broad bipartisan support (83%!!), so forcing Senate Republicans to go on the record about the rule before the 2020 elections will do good for the Democrats' election plans even if they can't get the bill passed. The legislation is being lead-sponsored by Massachusetts Sen. Edward J. Markey in the Senate and Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle in the House. Markey also tweeted out a copy of the bill on Wednesday, saying nearly every Democrat in the Senate had joined him to introduce it.Save the Internet Act [Ed Markey/US Senate]Democrats introduce 'Save the Internet Act' to restore net neutrality [Marrian Zhou/Cnet] Read the rest

Cynthia Newman, dean of the college of business administration at Rider University in New Jersey, has resigned from that position after her school denied Chick-fil-A a campus location "based on the company's record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community." (Newman will continue as a tenured professor though.) According to the university administrators, Chick-fil-A's "corporate values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider."I first suspected Newman stepped down because she loves Chick-fil-A's waffle fries so much, but she says she actually has "a problem with University leadership passing judgement on Chick-fil-A’s values which are reflective with the values of the Christian as well as other faiths.” “I endeavor every day to do exactly what Chick-fil-A puts forward as its overarching corporate value: to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to me and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with me," Newman said in her resignation speech.From CNN:Newman wrote that she asked administrators to apologize for offending Christians, but ultimately decided to step down after the university stuck to its original stance."While we respect Dr. Newman's personal decision, we maintain that the decision about choosing an on-campus restaurant franchise was in no way a judgment on religious values," Kristine Brown, a spokeswoman for Rider University, said in a statement to CNN."Rather, our intention was to foster a sense of respect and belonging of all members of the campus community, including those who identify as LGBTQ+."More in the Rider University newspaper: "Dean steps down from position due to religious beliefs" (The Rider News) Read the rest

A new report from Data & Society (previously) goes into depth on the ways that employers are increasingly rolling out workplace surveillance and monitoring technologies that "exert greater control over large workforces, rapidly experiment with workflows, detect deviant behavior, evaluate performance, and automate tasks."While some of these technologies offer legitimate solutions to real problems, they're more often deployed in ways that simultaneously make life harder for workers and make it harder for workers to push back against employer overreach.The report is a neat illustration of what I've called the adoption curve for oppressive technology, which goes, "refugee, immigrant, prisoner, mental patient, children, welfare recipient, blue collar worker, white collar worker." Remote monitoring and time tracking through GPS-location, computer monitoring software, app-based activity trackers, and remote sensors allow managers or clients to manage large groups of workers indirectly. Many workers on platforms are classified as independent contractors despite the company having significant control over worker actions. Gig platforms like Handy.com and Uber, for example, use apps to decentralize their control of worker activities, but still collect detailed data about trips, communications, and pay. This information can allow companies to nudge workers in ways that advantage the company, but not necessarily the worker (such as directing workers to perform a poorly compensated task that they might not accept if given more information). Recently, Instacart came under scrutiny for using tips that drivers receive in order to supplement pay when they didn’t earn enough to meet the minimum wage. Read the rest

An hero cat of unknown origin bravely fights off invisible attackers.Hang in there kitteh, you can do it.Fighting off your dream attackers.[via] Read the rest

If someone wants to steal your phone number -- say, to intercept the two-factor authentication SMSes needed to break into your bank account or other vital service -- they hijack your SIM by impersonating you to your phone company (or by bribing someone at the company to reassign your phone number to them), and this has made the security of phone numbers into a top concern for security experts and telcoms companies, as there are millions of dollars at stake.Enter Comcast, all-time champion "most-hated company in America," whose Xfinity Mobile cellular service assigns the same unchangeable PIN to every customer: 0000.But don't worry, Comcast says that this only puts you at risk if you recycle user-names and passwords, and nobody does that.Because of that 0000 PIN, getting a victim's Xfinity Mobile account number was the main obstacle for attackers. A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that this account number is available only by logging into the Xfinity Mobile Web portal and is therefore protected by a Comcast's user's password. Comcast told Ars that it does not send out paper bills for Xfinity Mobile and does not include that account number in emails to customers, cutting off two potential ways that attackers could get the account number.Comcast indicated that the number-porting attack affected only customers who reused passwords across multiple sites.Comcast set mobile pins to “0000,” helping attackers steal phone numbers [Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica](Image: Specious, CC-BY-SA)(via /.) Read the rest

Samsung and Huawei wowed early-adopters (and their creditors) this week with cutting-edge designs for foldable tablet-phones. LG's genius answer is to just clip two screens together. The BBC:It has created a second display as a detachable accessory. The end result may look less elegant thanks to the gap between the screens, but it is likely to cost less. The 6.2in (15.7cm) V50 ThinQ handset and its matching Dual Screen add-on both use OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. Read the rest

Ken Gude, senior fellow at Center for American Progress in Washington DC, wrote a Twitter thread listing all the felonies Trump may have committed, based on Michael Cohen's congressional testimony yesterday.Thread by @KenGude: "I don't think people have appropriately processed the incredible number of felonies that Cohen directly implicated Trump in today. And its u […]"Image: Federico Fazzini/Shutterstock Read the rest

40+ years ago, extremists from the Chicago School of Economics destroyed antitrust law, pushing a bizarre theory that the antitrust laws on America's books existed solely to prevent "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices; decades later, we live in a world dominated by monopolists who use their power to crush or swallow competitors, suppress wages, reduce choice, increase inequality and distort policy outcomes by making lawmakers and regulators dependent on their lobbyists for funding and future employment.The Federal Trade Commission recently solicited comments on how it could update the Consumer Welfare Standard for the 21st century -- a move that represents an odd alliance of left-wing, latter-day trustbusters, and right wing operatives who woke up one day to discover that being blacklisted by 5 companies would make them disappear from the public eye forever.The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted an excellent and cogent set of comments to the FTC on the subject, and in a highly readable, plainspoken post, EFF activist Shahid Buttar and EFF lawyer Mitch Stoltz explain the substance and background of the comments (disclosure: I am a special consultant to EFF).EFF makes two main points here: first, that even if you're going to limit your antitrust analysis to "consumer welfare," that the power of the Big Tech platforms to surveil users, influence their behavior and censor their speech should be factored into "consumer welfare," because all of these activities materially and measurably reduce the welfare of the users of these services. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH good ol' Howard Schultz gets called a blockhead

Last October, Bloomberg published a blockbuster story claiming that some of the largest tech companies in the world, as well as sensitive US government and military systems, had been attacked through minute hardware implants that had been inserted at a subcontractor facility during the manufacture of servers from the world's leading server company, Supermicro.The story immediately drew forceful -- and unprecedentedly detailed rebuttals -- from many of the companies involved, creating a mystery that is still being debated: if Bloomberg sourced its story as carefully as it claimed, then how to explain all these detailed rebuttals? And if the rebuttals are to believed, then how to explain the dozens of people from different companies and agencies who would have had to collude to trick Bloomberg's reporters into publishing the story?Enter Andrew "bunnie" Huang (previously), one of our era's greatest hardware hackers (his book on hardware hacking is one of the best technical books I've ever read, period).Bunnie presented a 45 minute talk on supply-chain attacks earlier this month at Microsoft's Blue Hat conference in Tel Aviv (he pitched the talk before the Bloomberg story broke, but the timing was indeed fortuitous).I appreciate that 45-minute blocks of time are few and far between for most of us, but this is 45 minutes well spent. Huang walks through several techniques for sabotaging and compromising hardware, and uses his deep expertise in arranging and overseeing electronics manufacture to describe how you could pull these off in the real world, and what difficulties you'd encounter. Read the rest

For a couple of bucks, this illuminated magnifier is a great deal. I use mine all the time, especially when reading values on tiny electronic components. Read the rest

In Fort Pierce, Florida, police officer Doug McNeal arrested Zachery Moellendick, 23, and Krista Leigh, 24, for shoplifting and put them in the back of his squad car. The couple started making out so McNeal played Barry White's "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love." Later, he allowed Leigh to smoke a cigarette in the car. In the police report, McNeal admitted to seeing them kiss and "was fine with it."According to Florida Today, "The Fort Pierce Police Department said it suspended Officer Doug McNeal for 20 days without pay for the ride, which captured the couple's backseat actions on video..." Read the rest

Trailblazing filmmaker Spike Jonze made this short film, titled "The New Normal," about how America's relationship to cannabis has changed from the days when George Washington grew hemp. Read the rest

Article 13 is the on-again/off-again controversial proposal to make virtually every online community, service, and platform legally liable for any infringing material posted by their users, even very briefly, even if there was no conceivable way for the online service provider to know that a copyright infringement had taken place.This will require unimaginable sums of money to even attempt, and the attempt will fail. The outcome of Article 13 will be a radical contraction of alternatives to the U.S. Big Tech platforms and the giant media conglomerates. That means that media companies will be able to pay creators less for their work, because creators will have no alternative to the multinational entertainment giants.Throwing Creators Under the BusThe media companies lured creators' groups into supporting Article 13 by arguing that media companies and the creators they distribute have the same interests. But in the endgame of Article 13, the media companies threw their creator colleagues under the bus, calling for the deletion of clauses that protect artists' rights to fair compensation from media companies, prompting entirely justifiable howls of outrage from those betrayed artists' rights groups.But the reality is that Article 13 was always going to be bad for creators. At best, all Article 13 could hope for was to move a few euros from Big Tech's balance-sheet to Big Content's balance-sheet (and that would likely be a temporary situation). Because Article 13 would reduce the options for creators by crushing independent media and tech companies, any windfalls that media companies made would go to their executives and shareholders, not to the artists who would have no alternative but to suck it up and take what they're offered. Read the rest

#OSCARS realness.

Volante Design (previously) has two new pieces: the Augment blazer and jacket, shipping on March 15 and available for pre-order today (Vest, $195: Men/Women; Blazer, $270: Men/Women), in men's sizes 37-51 (vest also in 55) and women's sizes 33-45.I'm a total sucker for contrast stitching, seams and piping and these pieces are so up my street, like a bit of golden-age Cyberdog, but straight enough that you could just squeak by wearing them to a wedding or a big day at work. Read the rest

I'm fascinated by this PDF, by Bram Lambrecht, describing the difference (with examples) between legal and illegal Lego builds. [via MeFi]In it, Lambrecht describes "the model that forever changed LEGO," an Audi TT that was difficult to put together, required the user to deform components for them to fit, and came with no instructions. As a direct result of this set, all models now produced by the LEGO Group must go through the Design Department. This ensures that nothing gets released without first being approved by a Model Committee. Sometimes lasting up to 2 or 3 days, this review allows representatives from building instructions, senior designers, engineers and the designer sit down together and build the model. The goal is to maintain an ‘only the best is good enough’ approach to our design process. A final heat test then highlights further weaknesses that must be changed before the set can be launched out onto the market. Read the rest

Are you a collector of groovy 70s decor? If so, you may have the missing pieces to the nearly-renovated Brady Bunch house. The home that served as the exterior shot for the Brady Bunch is currently being gutted and rebuilt. HGTV and the Brady kids (who are, of course, now adults) are renovating the Studio City-based property to make its interior match what we saw on television. A Very Brady Renovation, the renovations' web series, is being shown on Facebook and a call was recently put out to locate some very specific furnishings that match ones from the original set. Specifically, they are looking for the living room's credenza and the horse statue that sat on top of it (both shown above). They're also looking for the kitchen's double oven, the kitchen fridge/freezer, two fish trivets, the dining room's curio cabinet, the living room's massive table lamp and floral sofa, the antique radio from Greg's groovy pad, Alice's bedroom set, and the giraffe plushie from the girls' room. The wish list with photos is available at HGTV. Previously:-- For Sale: The real-life Brady Bunch house-- Here's the story of how 'N Sync's Lance Bass won and then lost the Brady Bunch house-- HGTV not saying how much it paid for the Brady house ($3.5M)-- All six Brady kids reunite at their TV home Read the rest

In his first U.S. TV interview, Ren Zhengfei describes Huawei as “a tomato” crushed between two superpowers.

First, Carvel made ice cream. Then came ice cream cakes. Many years later, they created a stout based on one of their most celebrated ice cream cakes, Fudgie the Whale. A collaboration with craft microbrewery Captain Lawrence Brewing Company in Elmsford, New York, Fudgie the Beer was released last Father's Day with great success.Their latest offering? Cookie Puss the beer, a limited-edition "Milkshake IPA." But, wait, it doesn't end there. There's also Cookie O' Puss the beer. A "Pastry Stout," you know, for St. Patrick's Day.Both are brewed by Captain Lawrence Brewing and will be available starting on February 26 in select East Coast locations. Fun fact: Cookie Puss is a space alien born on Planet Birthday (and it's Carvel's 85th birthday this year).For nostalgia's sake: Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Gavin Smythe, of Chagrin Falls, USA, needs his iPhone battery replaced

The FDA has issued a warning advising Americans not to engage in the practice of infusing plasma taken from young people's blood, a "treatment" promoted to treat "normal aging and memory loss... dementia, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and post-traumatic stress disorder."The advisory "strongly" warns Americans not to buy these treatments, saying they are neither "safe" nor "effective," and adding that "There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product.""Clinics" that offer plasma advertise that it is taken from children as young as 16 and charge as much as $8000 for a "treatment."One example is Monterey, California-based Ambrosia. (In Greek mythology, ambrosia is the food or drink of the gods and confers immortality.) It was founded by Jesse Karmazin, a graduate of Princeton University and the Stanford School of Medicine, and the company's website refers to plasma as a "medical treatment.""Young plasma treatments are intravenous infusions of plasma from young donors, who are in the age range of 16 to 25," Ambrosia's website said. The company, which notes that it treats patients who are 30 or older, boasts locations in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Tampa, Omaha and Houston. It charges $8,000 for a liter of young plasma and offers 2 liters at a rate of $12,000."Young plasma is the result of research into the science of blood," the website reads. FDA warns against using young blood as medical treatment [Susan Scutti/CNN](via /. Read the rest

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is dead at 85, reports the BBC.The German designer, who was the creative director for Chanel and Fendi, was one of the industry's most prolific figures, and worked up until his death.Lagerfeld also designed collections for his own brand and collaborated with high street brand H&M."I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that." — KL Read the rest

Just the other day I remarked that the fashion industry picked the worst possible year to try and make racist imagery cool, even as it's obvious why such an insular and privileged culture would think it clever and edgy. Hot on the heels of Katy Perry's blaceface shoes we have Vogue exec Donata Meirelles "on a throne with two black women in traditional dress standing either side of her." She quit when the photo got out.It has been suggested that the black women's clothes were similar to those worn by slaves, while the throne resembled a cadeira de sinhá - a chair for slave masters.Other pictures from the party, in Salvador de Bahia in northeast Brazil, show traditionally-dressed black women welcoming and ushering guests.Rita Batista, a TV presenter, posed the picture with an 1860 photo of a white woman sitting next to two slaves to make the implication clearer. Read the rest

New rules limiting internet freedom could be imposed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government any time after Thursday night.

Eric Bradly says:An unopened copy of Super Mario Bros., the classic video game released by Nintendo in 1985, set a world record for a graded game when it recently sold for $100,150.“Beyond the artistic and historical significance of this game is its supreme state of preservation,” says Kenneth Thrower, co-founder and chief grader of Wata Games.Due to its popularity, Nintendo reprinted Super Mario Bros. from 1985 to 1994 numerous times, resulting in 11 different box variations (according to this visual guide). The first two variations are “sticker sealed” copies that were only available in the New York and L.A. test market launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 and 1986. Of all the sealed copies of Super Mario Bros., this is the only known “sticker sealed” copy and was certified by Wata Games with a Near Mint grade of 9.4 and a “Seal Rating” of A++.“Not only are all of NES sticker sealed games extremely rare, but by their nature of not being sealed in shrink wrap they usually exhibit significant wear after more than 30 years,” Thrower said. “This game may be the condition census of all sticker sealed NES games known to exist.”A group of collectors joined forces Feb. 6 to purchase the game, including some of the biggest names in video games and collectibles as a whole. The buyers include Jim Halperin, Founder and Co-Chairman of Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas; Zac Gieg, owner of Just Press Play Video Games in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Rich Lecce, renowned coin dealer, pioneering video game collector, and owner of Robert B. Read the rest

Kashmiri saffron is the best in the world, selling for $1550 a pound. But as a result of "ongoing regional violence, droughts, and the still-unfolding effects of climate change on the land, Kashmiri saffron has slowly begun to disappear," writes Sharanya Deepak for Eater.“The saffron flower has three parts,” says Raqib Mushtaq Mir, a saffron merchant. “There’s the flower petals — that goes in for medicine, then there’s the yellow strands, which aren’t much use. The red strands, right in the middle, are pure saffron, which is what we’re looking for.” A single flower produces just three red strands; one gram of saffron is made from around 350 strands. For a kilogram of the spice, more than 150,000 flowers are sifted and scanned, and the rarity of the red strand can lead to shortcuts from less scrupulous merchants. “Often, in the market,” Mushtaq Mir says, “the yellow are colored with red and mixed into the bunch.”Image: Philippe 1 bo/Shutterstock Read the rest

A new paper by a business professor and a contract law professor evaluated the terms and conditions of 500 leading websites and found that the 99% of them required at least 14 years of education to truly comprehend, far more than the majority of US adults have attained.US courts have held that clickthrough contracts are enforceable whether or not they have been read before clicking "I Agree," but the authors propose that courts should consider whether these contracts could be read and understood in evaluating whether they are enforceable.The paper uses standard measures of readability to evaluate clickthroughs, like the Flesch-Kincaid and Flesch Reading Ease scales, and found that almost none of the agreements we are made to click through to use the internet are within the generally accepted range for contractual documents that are presented to the general public. Instead, the authors compared the contracts' readability to scientific or academic journal articles.The authors also call into question "plain language" summaries of clickthrough agreements, raising the question of which version of a text is enforceable: the version that was intended to be read and parsed by everyday users, or the fine-print it allegedly summarized?The use of deceptive and overreaching fine-print is a hallmark of grifters, and the online world is a world of grifter capitalism, where actions that are plainly unfair and immoral somehow attain the protection of the law, while any steps you take to avoid these abuses are somehow illegal.Many scholars have suggested that consumer contracts are indeed written in a way that dissuades consumers from reading them. Read the rest

Sir Patrick Stewart doesn't play the Reskian flute, or any flute for that matter. The trick worked on me at least, because I hadn't noticed even after seeing this episode several times over the last 26 (!) years. From Wikipedia:...As neither Stewart nor Hughes could play their instruments, it required a number of camera techniques to be used in order to disguise the musicians playing just off screen. Husband and wife duo Natalie and Bryce Martin played the piano and tin whistle respectively to portray Daren and Picard's abilities. Bryce had played his instrument to represent Picard's Ressikan flute since it first appeared in "The Inner Light". However, while Stewart did the majority of his flute fingering, he was doubled in several scenes by Noel Webb and John Mayham. Webb also doubled for Brent Spiner early in the episode when Data was playing Frédéric Chopin's trio in G minor.In TNG, Picard has a flute he sometimes plays. The only problem is that Sir Patrick Stewart cannot play the flute. So they have someone else's hands pretend to play it while he makes silly facial expressions, and they dub in music later.Once you see it, you can't unsee it. pic.twitter.com/5dbtyvOqjy— foone (@Foone) February 12, 2019 Read the rest

The Telegraph reports that Theresa May saves money by scraping mold off preserves and eating the untainted remains. The prime minister’s admission emerged during cabinet meeting discussions on how to reduce food waste. Ms May is said to enjoy cooking, and has a particular penchant for jam, even giving a jar to Melania Trump as part of a hamper in 2017.The cabinet meeting was at the centre of controversy on Tuesday as some government insiders complained afterwards that Brexit had not featured heavily enough in discussions.On the contrary, there has never been a cabinet discussion more clearly about Brexit.When they make the Brexit movie this is going to be the understated yet shimmeringly metaphorical scene where the full horror of what is happening finally sinks in for the viewer. pic.twitter.com/pbA4V2AWUF— Rob Beschizza (@Beschizza) February 13, 2019 Read the rest

Good luck escaping from this one.

The Taihe Gemini is a slim, battery-powered 15.6" touchscreen display that's raised more than $1m at Kickstarter. The Verge's Sam Byford took it for a spin.The pre-production version I tested has a matte 1080p touchscreen. It’s not the most beautiful display in the world, with pedestrian color reproduction at 72 percent of the NTSC gamut, but it is at least an IPS panel with solid viewing angles. There’s also a 2mm-thicker 4K model that omits touch functionality but achieves a claimed 100 percent of Adobe RGB coverage. I wasn’t able to test that version, so I can’t speak to its supposedly better color performance.The touch functionality on the 1080p model sadly doesn’t extend to its janky button-operated settings menu, but it’s actually pretty cool if you have a compatible phone with a desktop mode, like a Samsung Galaxy Note with Dex or a Huawei device that supports Easy Projection.I'm quite eager to see this myself: sounds perfect for using in portable MAME cabinets, retrofitting into dead terminal monitor cases, and other assorted witchcraft. Read the rest