Boing Boing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TONIGHT: "The Squad" claps back at President Trump! #LSSC pic.twitter.com/AUzgmVdKbE— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) July 17, 2019 Comedy shows have been our source of truth for too long. Read the rest

Fifty years ago today, a Saturn V rocket launched with Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins on board. On July 19, Armstrong became the first human to step onto the moon. Above is almost five hours of CBS News's coverage of the historic Apollo 11 mission to the moon. And that's the way it was.More: "Apollo 11 launch: Watch the most memorable moments from CBS News' coverage" Read the rest

Throwflame, the Ohio-based supplier of flamethrowers, announced the TF-19 WASP Flamethrower Drone Attachment designed for the DJI S1000 drone. The WASP contains a one gallon fuel tank for 100 seconds of flame with a 25-foot range. Why would you need a flamethrower, much less one that flies? According to Throwflame, here are some worthy applications:Prescribed agricultural burnsGround clearingSnow and ice removalIncinerating weeds and pesky insect hivesPyrotechnic events and movie propsFirefighting and trainingGrassland managementWhat could possibly go wrong? Read the rest

Endless casts of land crabs have invaded a neighborhood in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Apparently heavy rains have driven the crustaceans to seek shelter in people's homes. Groceries have reported a run on butter. (OK, that last part isn't true.)“My wife stands out here with a broom when I’m trying to back the car out to keep them from running into the garage because once they get in there there’s a million places they can hide and you only find them once they die,” Bill Paterson told WPBF. Read the rest

Orix Auto charges $4 to rent a car for 30 min. The car-sharing company has more than 12,000 parking places, so cars are readily available. Orix learned that a large number of its 230,000 users rent cars and don't drive them anywhere. So they looked into it and discovered that people were using them to take naps, eat lunch, do work, change clothes, recharge cell phones, and store things (when storage lockers at train stations weren't available).From Asahi:"I rented a car to eat a boxed meal that I bought at a convenience store because I couldn't find anywhere else to have lunch,"said a 31-year-old male company employee who lives in Saitama Prefecture, close to Tokyo.“Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe.”Easy accessibility is a big advantage of car-sharing services. Customers can reserve vehicles any time 24 hours a day on their smartphones for immediate use.Image: Orix Auto Corp.[via The Verge] Read the rest

Lou Cabron writes, "Jonathan Coulton re-visited his album/graphic novel 'Solid State' (previously) over the weekend with new comments about how it applies to today's world. 'When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now',' Coulton said in 2017 (in an epilogue to the graphic novel). So what does he think today?" "I feel like when I wrote it, we were still in a kind of slow motion cultural digital apocalypse. And then Trump was elected, and it made me think we were much further along than I had feared. Suddenly my worries about us being mean to each other on the internet felt a lot less pressing." But he still has a very hopeful and positive message for our current moment in time. "I think a lot of it still applies. Basically, the internet and social media are technologies that are way too powerful for us to use responsibly right now. This is a common cycle with tech of course, somebody makes a thing that breaks all the rules, people abuse it, it beats us up for a while, and eventually we figure out how to manage it better. I still believe we're in the middle of that kind of cycle. It's exposed how small and scared and nasty we all are, and my hope is that we will eventually see that and learn how to be better humans." Or, as Coulton says at the end of his graphic novel. Read the rest

In a Fox & Friends newsbrief, Thiel spurred President Trump to promise to look into baseless claim that Google committed treason.

As innocent people sat on a sidewalk bench in Beirut, pranksters walked by them, tripping over nothing. The pranksters were spaced out through the flow of pedestrian traffic, to make it seem more real. The people who saw the trippers were mystified. Read the rest

"The person who sends me a screenshot of the best manbaby fan reaction to this wins a chocolate fish," tweeted Sacha Judd, linking to a GQ article with the headline: "Actress Lashana Lynch Is the New 007 in the Upcoming James Bond." The manbabies did not disappoint, as you can see from the replies to her tweet.The person who sends me a screenshot of the best manbaby fan reaction to this wins a chocolate fish. https://t.co/DyJYHUJyTb— Sacha Judd (@szechuan) July 14, 2019Tag for this post swiped from @scalzi Read the rest

Mountain Dew made a place in the market by tasting like crap and having more caffeine than a handful of No-Doz. The flavors are all "SUGAR." They are nearly indistinguishable to an over 8-year-old palate. This new Dew, however, is for gamers and has a resealable lid because angry young men like to conserve!That said, this dude at Kotaku seems to know his Mountain Dew:That fancy resealable lid is a real pain in the ass to open. The directions are simple, but actually getting it to pop open was annoying and felt poorly designed for people with bigger hands or fingers. After struggling for far too long, I finally got it to pop open and my hand was covered in Game Fuel. It wasn’t a great experience. And then I finally tasted Game Fuel.I should say before I explain how awful this stuff tastes, that I drink a lot of energy drinks and used to drink a lot of soda. I like Mountain Dew, even if I avoid it these days to save my teeth. I even liked some of the Game Fuel flavors that existed years ago. I also have enjoyed Mountain Dew Kickstart and Black Label. I say all this to assure you that I am very well acquainted to overly sweet, sort of bitter and a little too dry sodas and soft drinks. Read the rest

Back in 2017, The Nation ran a superb, in-depth story on "heirs' property," a legalized form of property theft that allows primarily rich white developers to expropriate land owned by the descendants' of Black slaves.Now, an in-depth Propublica investigation returns to the American south and its landgrabbing white grifters, with a piece that blends the personalities of the brave Black landowners who are willing to serve long jail sentences rather than cave in to legalized theft (brothers Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels are two of the longest-serving inmates for civil contempt in American history, having spent eight years in lockup for refusing to knock down their ancestral homes).To understand how heirs' property expropriations work, you have to place them in the context of Black expropriation, which starts with the expropriated bodies of kidnapped Black people who were enslaved, and continues through the ages: the (marshy or arid) properties deeded to formerly enslaved Black people who carefully worked the land and prospered until white mobs came and chased them away with arson, murder and threats; many of the ones who stayed were chased off with massive tax-hikes directed at Black landowners (in South Carolina, property taxes levied on Black lands went up as much as 700% in a decade; Hilton Head had thousands of acres of heirs' property and now it has fewer than 200). As the remaining property owners began to die off, they were (correctly) mistrustful of white southern lawyers, so they did not draw up wills, leaving their family land to their descendants through a regime called "heirs' property," under the incorrect view that this would keep the land in the family. Read the rest

Computer scientist Alan Turing, key to decoding Nazi communications during World War II, is to be the face of the new £50 banknote. The BBC:The work of Alan Turing, who was educated in Sherborne, Dorset, helped accelerate Allied efforts to read German Naval messages enciphered with the Enigma machine.Less celebrated is the pivotal role he played in the development of early computers, first at the National Physical Laboratory and later at the University of Manchester.In 2013, he was given a posthumous royal pardon for his 1952 conviction for gross indecency following which he was chemically castrated. He had been arrested after having an affair with a 19-year-old Manchester man.Also, artist Turner on the Twenty:The Jane Austen tenner entered circulation in 2017. Churchill's on the fiver. Queen Liz is, of course, on all of them.There hasn't been a £100 in circulation from the Bank of England for decades (The Bank of Scotland has one, with founder Archibald Campbell on it). They should do a run and put Ira Aldridge or Mary Seacole on it. Read the rest

The Social Security Administration has a tool for looking up deaths in the USA that took place within the past three years, but older deaths are in the Social Security Death Master File (aka Death Index); you can buy a limited version of that from the SSA for $2.3k + $3.4k/yr; the SSA has quoted access to the full version at $5.2k. Sai is crowdfunding to buy the full Death Index, which they will then publish online, for free, for all. As they say, "It is extremely useful for genealogical and medical research, preventing fraud, etc."They're also suing the SSA to just publish this themselves: Congress already ordered them to do so.The database includes "Name (first, middle, last, & suffix); date of birth & death; SSN; validation (Verified: Report verified with a family member or someone acting on behalf of the family / Proof: Death certificate etc observed by SSA); record update date; and record update code (add/change/delete)."Think this is a rather un-“open” approach to providing something that Congress required to be publicly available. We would like to start litigation — but also to also pre-pay the requested $5.2k as a surety, so that they cough up the database now and we have a non-hypothetical fee charging to litigate. It would be very interesting to see, for instance, how exactly they spend 150 hours “searching” for a single database file.We will make all received information publicly available, for free, both as flat files and through a Google BigQuery database. Read the rest

Bird Scooter really is the Uber of scooters: vastly overcapitalized, vastly overvalued, incapable of turning a profit...ever.According to a report in The Information, Bird lost $100m in the first quarter of 2019 (the company denies this); and is now seeking an additional $300m in investment capital. (Xeni wrote about this on Thursday)Bird's business model (such as it is) involves flooding cities with unlicensed, illegal, dangerous (really dangerous) electric scooters that block sidewalks and impede wheelchairs, strollers and pedestrian traffic. The scooters themselves are so flimsy that they are prone of wearing out before Bird can break even on their purchase price, which is why Bird does not pay to recover its impounded scooters from city property. Unfortunately for Bird, this means that people who want a cheap scooter can buy one for pennies on the dollar at a city auction and then cheaply swap in their own control unit (this fact is so distressing to Bird that they threatened to sue me in a failed attempt to censor my reporting on it).There is no way this can ever be profitable, not even by paying starvation wages to the gig-economy workers who drive around and around, humping scooters back to their charging stations.Bird has already raised $718,000,000 from investors. If The Information's report is true, the company has burned through most of that, which means that the auctioneers might soon be able to give you a stellar deal on a Xiaomi Mi Electric Scooter. Read the rest

Back in 2010, It Books published Mary-Lou Weisman's biography of MAD Magazine icon Al Jaffee: Al Jaffee's Mad Life: A Biography; I missed it then but happened upon Arie Kaplan's 2011 writeup in The Jewish Review of Books this morning and was charmed by the biographical sketch it lays out.Jaffee previously) invented some of MAD's most enduring regular features, including the iconic back-page fold-ins and the "Snappy answers to stupid questions" section. But his story starts in Zarasai, Lithuania, where he grew up with his mother and younger siblings. Jaffee had been born in Savannah, Georgia, but his mother brought him back to the shtetl and left his father behind in the USA. Jaffee's mother was neglectful and indifferent, and when he could, he returned to America without her at the age of 12 -- she is believed to have been murdered by Nazis a few years later.Jaffee's father, meanwhile, used to send him American comic strips rolled into cardboard tubes, inspiring his love of the form. In 1936, Jaffee's teachers at the Bronx's Herman Ridder Junior High School tested Jaffee's class for arts aptitude, and sent him on to art school, along with his classmate, Wolf William Eisenberg -- who would later change his name to Will Elder.The Jewish Review of Books article examines Jaffee's relationship with Judiasm: he was an atheist who still drew illustrations for publication in Orthodox newspapers (he did it out of a fondness for "the kind and gentle souls of the people of Orthodoxy . Read the rest

Acosta calls his role at the Labor Department "the honor of a lifetime."

If you're going to Starbucks to have some coffee and read the newspaper, BYON: Bring your own newspaper.On Friday, the Seattle-based coffee chain said it's going to stop selling The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today at its 8,600+ coffeeshops around the U.S.Why? Starbucks says too many people read the paper without paying for a copy.The New York Post cites a source at Starbucks, saying the company is removing newspapers and other goods from retail shelves in part because of “shrinkage,” what people in the industry sometimes say when they mean goods that tend to be shoplifted.“We will also remove shelving fixtures that display whole- bean coffee and different grab-and-go snacks,” a Starbucks spokeswoman told the New York Post.Excerpt:Starbucks has been selling the papers in its stores for nearly two decades, starting with the Times in 2000 and expanding to add the Journal and USA Today in 2010. But many Starbucks customers take them off the rack, read them while they finish their lattes, and then either leave them on the table or walk off with the daily paper without paying.“Some may have thought it was free, like USA Today in hotels,” said one industry insider.Starbucks confirmed the decision on Thursday.“As part of our continuous efforts to enhance the overall experience in our stores for both partners and customers, we are removing select fixtures from our retail lobby in September,” a Starbucks spokeswoman said.Starbucks will stop selling newspapers in September [Keith J. Read the rest

We've been living, full-time in a 40-foot motorhome for a few years now! It's been great! But we're thinking seriously about downsizing. While we've got all of the room that we could want, our 2004 Newmar Kountry Star is less than ideal for getting into some of the rougher terrain terrain that we like'd like to explore and enjoy. If money was no object (which it is) and I could have any RV I wanted (which I can't), I'd love to get my hands on an Earthroamer. Based in Colorado, Earthroamer specializes in creating made-to-order expedition vehicles designed to allow a few happy campers to live off-grid, in the lap of luxury for long periods of time. Unless I write multiple New York Times bestsellers which get optioned into feature films and sell illicit street drugs in my spare time, it's not going to happen. But a fella can dream.Image via Earthroamer Read the rest

Jimmy Kimmel hosted a game show called "Let's Make a Dope Deal" with customers at a weed store drive-thru in Las Vegas. People who correctly answered questions won not-so-fabulous prizes, like snow globes and Hot Pockets. Read the rest

Oddly, convicted sex offender didn't ask feds to return his child porn stash

A company in Japan has made t-shirts that give the illusion that you can -- kind of -- see through them. The one for women hints at a busty chest in a lacy bra, and the one for guys suggests six-pack abs. The "delusional mapping T-shirt with a faint view of the valley" and the "delusional mapping T-shirt with faint muscles" (loosely translated) each cost approximately $36 (Â¥ 3,888).(Oddity Central) Read the rest

This video from Bohemian Browser Ballett on Germany's public broadcaster Funk is absolutely genius: a comic dialogue between a literal uniformed Nazi officer outraged that someone had the temerity to call him a Nazi: "Just because someone doesn't share mainstream opinion it doesn't mean he's a Nazi. Maybe I'm a concerned citizen who is afraid of foreign domination!" (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Billy Green writes, "This is video I shot at the Boing Boing Picnic in 2010. Music by Dr. Popular recorded live at the picnic." Such fantastic footage! Read the rest

In Social Connectedness in Urban Areas (Sci-Hub mirror), a group of business and public policy researchers from Facebook, NYU and Princeton study anonymized, fine-grained location data from Facebook users who did not disable their location history, and find that the likelihood that New Yorkers will remain friends is well correlated with the ease of commuting between their respective homes on public transit.The negative effect of distance on friendships is both intuitive and validated through empirical research, but the paper finds that the effect size for longer commutes is much more pronounced than mere distance: while a 10% increase in distance correlates to a 10% decrease in a reduction in Facebook friendship, a 10% increase in commute times correlates to a 15% reduction in friendships.For now, the researchers haven’t done work to suggest that the relationship between friendship and public transportation travel time holds for places outside of New York City. And it’s true that in the US, New York is sui generis—no other city has such a well-developed and widely used transit system. But researchers think it’s possible that transportation determines “friendships” elsewhere, too. “I think if you did this for a city that’s not New York, public transit wouldn't matter, but road routings would matter,” says Leah Brooks, an economist at George Washington University who has studied cities and transportation systems. It’s very possible, she says, that two neighboring suburban areas might not have a lot of social connections if there’s not an easy way to get between them. Read the rest

Hardly a day goes by that I don't use my Instant Pot to make chili, curry, soup, or yogurt. I paid about $100, but right now this 6-quart model is just minus another $10 when you click the coupon button on Amazon's product page. Read the rest

YouTuber Tom Scott created a 15-part series on how to create a smartphone app - not really the tech details, more like the foundations and basics you need to know. He spends a lot of time telling you why you probably shouldn't make an app and why you will regret it if you do. Tech support, for instance, is a nightmare.In the first episode, he interviews the Adrian Hon, creator of Zombies, Run!, which has been downloaded over 4 million times. Read the rest

"All work and no play makes Jim a dull boy."Another top-shelf deepfake from Ctrl Shift Face. Read the rest

Trump and his fan base became upset when a man at a June 2018 rally held up a photo of a smiling Donald Trump with his old friend, sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump ordered the man to be removed, delivering a scorching witticism as the protester was being hauled away by security: "Was that a man or a woman? Because he needs a haircut more than I do"A protester was kicked out of this Trump rally in June of last year for holding a photo of the president and Jeffrey Epstein pic.twitter.com/wXdpSrA816— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 9, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

When asked how his school taught The Holocaust, Spanish River High School principal William Latson said that "I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event" and that “you have your thoughts, but we are a public school and not all of our parents have the same beliefs.”After a year of anger in Boca Raton, Florida, Latson was finally removed from the job, reports CBS News.The school district did not initially punish Latson for his comments. Instead, he received counseling and was encouraged to expand his school's Holocaust curriculum, according to CBS West Palm Beach affiliate WPEC-TV. The district said Latson also visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum to increase his "personal knowledge" of the genocide. But the district announced Monday that Latson would be immediately reassigned because "his leadership has become a major distraction for the school community." ... The district said Latson had "made a grave error in judgment in the verbiage" of his email to the parent. Read the rest

I occasionally need to use an Android device to get things done for my day job. I like the flexibility of the operating system: I can tweak to my hearts content. An Android phone often runs cheaper than a handset from Apple and, in some cases, boast photo snapping capabilities that kick the bejesus out Apple's Designed in Cupertino camera app and optics. But when I read shit like this story from The Verge, I'm reminded, once again, about why I put up with the walled garden and stuffy familiarity of iOS.From The Verge:Even if you say “no” to one app when it asks for permission to see those personally identifying bits of data, it might not be enough: a second app with permissions you have approved can share those bits with the other one or leave them in shared storage where another app — potentially even a malicious one — can read it. The two apps might not seem related, but researchers say that because they’re built using the same software development kits (SDK), they can access that data, and there’s evidence that the SDK owners are receiving it. It’s like a kid asking for dessert who gets told “no” by one parent, so they ask the other parent....That’s in addition to a number of side channel vulnerabilities the team found, some of which can send home the unique MAC addresses of your networking chip and router, wireless access point, its SSID, and more. “It’s pretty well-known now that’s a pretty good surrogate for location data,” said Serge Egelman, research director of the Usable Security and Privacy Group at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), when presenting the study at PrivacyCon. Read the rest

Police banned a woman from a Walmart in Wichita Falls, Texas after she allegedly ate half a cake while shopping and then, at check-out, insisted that she should only pay half-price for what was left. This follows on another unusual Wichita Falls Walmart incident a few months back when a different woman spent several hours zipping around the store parking lot while gulping wine from a Pringles can. She, too, was banned.(My9nj) Read the rest

As Bruce Lee once said, "Showing off is the fool's idea of glory." Read the rest

In early June, protesters surged into Hong Kong's streets to protest a change to the country's extradition rules that would allow the Chinese state to demand the extradition of political dissidents to the mainland; as the protests grew, Hong Kong's puppet government had no choice but to withdraw its proposal -- but that wasn't enough, and millions of people poured into the streets, demanding the resignation of administrator Connie Lam and the release of imprisoned demonstrators.The protests are not abating: ever-larger crowds are packing the streets, staging careful and measured acts of vandalism whose delightful details made them darlings of popular sentiment.The state has seized on the vandalism as a pretense for a militarized crackdown, which has not kept the protesters down but it has moved public sentiment -- in favor of the protesters, who continue to demand the executive's resignation.Sum Lai, a 53-year-old housewife and mother of two, said those who condemned the youngsters for vandalising the Legco building did not understand them.“Did the government even raise an eyebrow when a million or 2 million people took to the streets?” she said, referring to two mass rallies in June. “The young people didn’t want to storm Legco but the government was pushing them too hard.”After organisers announced the end of the protest at around 7.30pm, hundreds continued to linger outside West Kowloon station, while hundreds more spilled out onto Canton Road again, saying they were “going shopping”.They taunted and abused police officers trying to reopen the road, targeting and surrounding Chief Superintendent Rupert Dover in particular as one of the commanders on the ground when tear gas was first used against extradition bill protesters on June 12. Read the rest

This easy to set-up canopy is cheap AND actually easy to set up.I am spending most of my summer camping with my dogs. Shade became very important on day 2 when I realized that not having shade on day 1 toasted the back of my neck. Despite liberal smearing of 60 SPF broadspectrum sunscreen, I had to find a solution that'd work for me.I largely travel without human companionship, and when I do it tends to be of the 12-year old variety (less-than-helpful.) I needed a canopy that'd easily go up, and I wanted to be able to quickly tear the thing down if wind unexpectedly kicked up. I am trying to stay to beaches and coastal campsites, where wind can be an enemy.This EzyFast 6x6 shade does the job! It is fairly light, the manufacturer says 17lbs, and very simple to put up by my ownself. The frame is a single unit that practically expanded itself when I took it out of the bag the very first time. Once the frame is out and locked into place with handy built-on locks, you put the cover on and then extend the legs. You can weigh it down by putting stuff in the weight pockets built into the cover.The cover material is a bit thin, but it'll do. The stakes the unit came with are nearly useless, but with additional weigh in the cover it seems to stay in place just fine. If it gets windy out, however, I will lower the legs, remove the cover and go hide in the camper. Read the rest

Back in 2015, the great state of Texas passed The Compassionate Use Act, making the use of cannabis for medical purposes totally cool... in a small number of instances. Only those with epilepsy are allowed to use the plant's properties to ease their symptoms and the cannabis that they're allowed to use must contain minuscule amounts of THC. This left Texans who'd like to turn to cannabis to help ease their way out of opioid use or deal with chronic pain, to saddle up and move to a less restrictive state or risk being arrested. Recently, the state's lawmakers looked to reforming the restrictive act, Once again, too small a group of folks wound up being told that they're cool to roll with a bit of cannabis in their lives. One of the biggest groups excluded: individuals suffering from PTSD.From The Texas Observer:Activists say opposition to cannabis reform is partially based on fearmongering over alleged dangers of marijuana by Republicans and law enforcement officials, a powerful group at the Lege. False claims and junk science often go unchallenged in a vacuum created by the lack of research into cannabis. (Marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug is a significant barrier to studying the plant’s uses.) For three sessions, the Rural Sheriffs Association of Texas has peddled its report that falsely claims pot lowers IQ scores, is addictive and increases criminality. In March, Plano Police Sergeant Terence Holway told lawmakers in a committee hearing that “all drug addicts … started with marijuana.”Brian Birdwell, a GOP state senator and Desert Storm Army veteran, spoke about his “highly guarded sense of danger” about marijuana for more than 20 minutes during the Senate debate of HB 3703. Read the rest

In Technology Review, author and essayist Chuck Klosterman delivers a short introduction to the stars of space rock, from Pink Floyd (above) to Hawkwind to Spacemen 3:Space is a vacuum: the only song capturing the verbatim resonance of space is John Cage’s perfectly silent “4'33".” Any artist purporting to embody the acoustics of the cosmos is projecting a myth. That myth, however, is collective and widely understood. Space has no sound, but certain sounds are “spacey.” Part of this is due to “Space Oddity”; another part comes from cinema, particularly the soundtrack to 2001 (the epic power of classical music by Richard Strauss and György Ligeti). Still another factor is the consistent application of specific instruments, like the ondes martenot (a keyboard that vaguely simulates a human voice, used most famously in the theme to the TV show Star Trek). The shared assumptions about what makes music extraterrestrial are now so accepted that we tend to ignore how strange it is that we all agree on something impossible.The application of these clichés is most readily seen in the dawn of heavy metal. The 1970 Black Sabbath song “Planet Caravan” processed Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals through a Hammond organ to create a sprawling sense of ethereal distance. Deep Purple’s 1972 “Space Truckin’” used ring modulation to simulate a colossal spacecraft traveling at high speed. The lyrical content of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” is built on Norse mythology, but the dreamlike drone of John Paul Jones’s mellotron and Jimmy Page’s ultra-compressed guitar mirrored the sensation of exploring an alien landscape. Read the rest

Directed by Topper Carew, "Breakin 'n' Enterin'" (1983) documented the Los Angeles B-boy scene emerging at Venice Beach and MacArthur Park's Radio-Tron nightclub. Keep your eyes peeled for a young Ice-T, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers, and Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones who all appeared the following year in Breakin'. The dancing in this documentary is much better than in the feature film though -- more complex, raw, and aggressive. Read the rest