Dan Mallory is the latest in a long line of people — otherwise middling in talent, white of skin and surburban of origin — to make it big in publishing by fabricating their life's travails and tragedies. "Want to sell a book?" writes Jessa Crispin. "Start lying."But there is another story these fakes are telling that we want to hear: the story of redemption through the written word. Even if you come from the most hardscrabble of circumstances, even if you have been wiped out by the tidal waves of fate, you can better yourself and your life through literature. It’s the literary version of the American dream, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but in this case, your bootstraps is your manuscript. Read the rest

In this 1939 newsreel, the great Lucille Ball demonstrates the Sonovox, a device that brings amplified sound effects from vinyl records into the throat where the tongue and lips modulate it. Here's the patent for the Sonovox, invented by Gilbert Wright and used in TV advertisements, the movie Dumbo (1941) for Casey Junior the train's voice, and the "days of the week" radio jingle that was included on The Who Sell Out (1967).Of course the Sonovox begat the "talk box" that routes an amplified instrument's sound from a small speaker into the musician's mouth via a rubber tube so they can shape the tone as if they're speaking. In the rock arena, Peter Frampton made the talk box famous on the track "Do You Feel Like We Do" (1973).More on all this in my post last year featuring Pete Drake's beautiful pedal steel "talk box" tune "Forever" from 1963, long before Peter Frampton showed us the way.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Scientists wanted to know how maggots devour food so quickly, so they conducted an experiment. They fed 10,000 maggots a cheese pizza, which disappeared in 2 hours (but only about 30 seconds in this sped-up video) and noticed an interesting "fountain" pattern of movement amongst the fly larvae that allows them to burn through food at a fast clip. According to ScienceMag.org:The team searched for patterns in the squirming mass by tracking the flow of individual maggots with software used to model the movement of fluids. Despite the appearance of chaos, the larvae moved like water being pumped through a fountain, the researchers report today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Hungry maggots pushed toward the food from the bottom, and satiated larvae were pumped up and over the top of the pile to the back of the line.This fountain of larvae allows hungry grubs to replace the ones surrounding the food that have stopped feeding, which keeps the eating machine humming. The researchers say better understanding the process could help grub farming companies scale up and turn even more food waste back into food. Read the rest

Here are three lateral thinking puzzles that were new to me. They're from the book, Lateral Thinking Puzzles (1991), by Paul Sloane.Death in the FieldA man is lying dead in the field. Next to him is an unopened package. There is no other creature in the field. How did he die?Death in RomeMr. Jones is reading his daily newspaper. He read an article with the following headline: “Woman dies in holiday accident.“ It goes on to say, “Mrs. Rigby-Brown, while on holiday with her husband in Rome, fell to her death from the balcony of her seventh-floor room.“Mr. Jones turns to his wife and says “That was not an accident. It was murder.“ He had never met either of the Rigby-Browns, so how could he know it was murder?Image by S.Borisov/Shutterstock Read the rest

Regulators in Germany ruled that Facebook must cut the data it gathers about people who aren't using its app or website or get their consent. Facebook says it intends to appeal the ruling.The watchdog has carried out a probe into the social network following concerns that members were unaware of the extent of the firm's activities. It covered data gathered from third-party sources as well as via Facebook's other apps, including Instagram.The US firm has said it will appeal. Specifically, the FCO has ruled that:• Facebook's various services can continue to collect data, but they cannot combine it with the user's main Facebook account unless the member gives their voluntary consent• collecting data from third-party websites and assigning it to a Facebook user's account is likewise only allowed if that member has given the firm permissionFacebook hitches a ride into browser sessions through like buttons, sharing widgets, ads and other non-obvious page elements. Like certain Google services, it's essentially unavoidable without installing browsers plugins to control them. Read the rest

A college student in North Carolina heard rattling in her closet that sounded like a raccoon, but she thought it was a ghost. She'd had other strange things happen in her apartment, like finding strange handprints in her bathroom, and having some of her clothes disappear. She worked up the courage to ask through the closet door, "Who's there?" And someone answered back, "Oh, my name is Drew." Turns out a 30-year-old gentleman was hiding in her closet, wearing her clothes.According to Vice:As horrifying as the whole thing might be, Maddie—who has declined to reveal her last name—apparently didn't think [Andrew] Swofford posed any sort of immediate threat. She reportedly kept up a conversation with him and let him roam around her home while she called for help.“He tries on my hat," she said. "He goes in the bathroom and looks in the mirror and then is like, ‘You’re really pretty, can I give you a hug?’" According to Maddie, he never actually tried to touch her.When Maddie's boyfriend arrived, Swofford took off, but was arrested at a gas station shortly after. Strangely enough, this wasn't the first time she's had an intruder in her place. In December she found two men in her living room. This might explain the mysterious handprints and missing items. And in both cases there were no signs of entry. I'd say it's moving time.This is Andrew Swofford. A UNCG junior got home on Saturday, to find him in her closet, wearing her clothes. Read the rest

Is Facebook following government orders in Myanmar?

MIT researchers developed a robot that can play Jenga based on a novel approach to machine learning that synthesizes sight and touch. From MIT News: Alberto Rodriguez, the Walter Henry Gale Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says the robot demonstrates something that’s been tricky to attain in previous systems: the ability to quickly learn the best way to carry out a task, not just from visual cues, as it is commonly studied today, but also from tactile, physical interactions.“Unlike in more purely cognitive tasks or games such as chess or Go, playing the game of Jenga also requires mastery of physical skills such as probing, pushing, pulling, placing, and aligning pieces. It requires interactive perception and manipulation, where you have to go and touch the tower to learn how and when to move blocks,” Rodriguez says. “This is very difficult to simulate, so the robot has to learn in the real world, by interacting with the real Jenga tower. The key challenge is to learn from a relatively small number of experiments by exploiting common sense about objects and physics.”He says the tactile learning system the researchers have developed can be used in applications beyond Jenga, especially in tasks that need careful physical interaction, including separating recyclable objects from landfill trash and assembling consumer products.“In a cellphone assembly line, in almost every single step, the feeling of a snap-fit, or a threaded screw, is coming from force and touch rather than vision,” Rodriguez says. Read the rest

Not much detail on this patented houseplant and its terrifying license "agreement": redditor GooberMcNutly posted it a few hours ago and hasn't said anything else about it. Plants are patentable, and in theory patents reach into private conduct. Whatever the story, this is some primo late-stage capitalism right here. Read the rest

Last month, it seemed like Europe had been saved from a dangerous attempt by corporate lobbyists to hijack copyright legislation in order to add a few points to their balance sheets, at the cost of a free, fair, open internet. Now, thanks to Germany's decision to turn its back on small European tech companies, the EU is poised once again to hand permanent control over Europe's internet to the United States’ Big Tech sector, snuffing out the small- and medium-sized enterprises of Europe.The new European Directive on Copyright in the Single Market is a grab-bag of updates to EU-wide copyright rules, which have been frozen in time since their last refresh, in 2001. But the Directive been imperiled since last spring, when German MEP Axel Voss took over as rapporteur, and promptly revived two controversial, unworkable clauses.To remain credible, the EU must reject this haggling between giant commercial interests—and put the public good first.Voss's deadly pet ideas were, first, a proposal to let news sites decide who could link to them and to charge for the privilege (Article 11); and second, a proposal to require every platform for public communication to invent and deploy copyright filters that would prevent any user from infringing copyright, even momentarily, by suppressing any communications that appeared to contain a copyrighted work of any kind (Article 13).The response was swift and decisive: more than a million Europeans promptly wrote to their MEPs to demand that the Directive be voted on clause-by-clause, allowing for Articles 11 and 13 to be amended. Read the rest

The difficult decision of whether or not to store your priceless art collection on your super-yacht just got easier: after a series of high-profile debacles in which multi-million-dollar paintings were damaged by poorly trained yacht crews (like the ham-fisted swabbies who didn't use the correct technique to clean a $110.5m Basquiat after the fruit of His Lordship's loins covered it in breakfast cereal), a boutique industry of specialist consultants has emerged to train your yacht's crew in art preservation.At £295/day, it's a steal.There are superyachts with “better collections than some national museums,” Mather-Lees said, describing one yacht with more than 800 pieces of art that are worth more than double the vessel itself. “Obviously they [the owners] want to show off their art collection when guests come on board … It acts as an icebreaker, and says volumes about their taste,” she told an audience of more than 100 people at the Superyacht Investor conference in the Landmark Hotel. “But yachts are not art galleries and when something goes wrong it’s obviously very unfortunate and a big burden on the crew and the owners become very unhappy.”Discretion is required in both the art world and on superyachts, but Mather-Lees said Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the owner of Manchester City and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, has several hundred pieces aboard his £350m superyacht Topaz.A reporter looking in the windows of Joe Lewis’s £200m superyacht Aviva, when it moored on the Thames last year, discovered Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1974–1977 was hanging in gold frames on the lower deck. Read the rest

The latest XKCD strip, "Sharing Options/#2016" is a brilliant and trenchant surfacing of the hidden rhetoric of social media, where your options are "permanently share with billions of people, including internet scammers, random predatory companies, and hostile foreign governments" or "a small set of 300 or so approved friends," and when this is questioned, the social media companies profess an inability to understand what other options could exist.To which the voice of XKCD replies: "I mean...there are numbers between 300 and one billion."The thing I love about this is the way it exposes how demands are disguised as observations: just as when Zuckerberg says that "privacy is no longer a social norm," he means "I demand that you extinguish the social norm of privacy," when a company says "it is impossible to implement a sharing setting that sits between 'trusted friends' and 'the world, forever," they mean, "I demand that you choose among those two options, because a company with just those two options is more profitable and easier to operate."This is a cheap and obvious rhetorical trick, but it's surprisingly effective: think of Margaret Thatcher's pronouncement that "there is no alternative," which really meant "stop trying to think of alternatives."What's more, this trick poisons the well. There are, in fact, things that seem plausible if you don't understand technology but which are obviously impossible if you do understand it (making crypto that works except when the police need it to stop working; making computers that run all programs except the ones you don't like; making filters that stop copyright infringement but not legitimate speech). Read the rest

When Melissa Elmira Yingst and Socorro Garcia checked in for their flight at Detroit, they were told they'd get a seating assignment together. But at the departure gate, the request was denied—and they claim the gate agent would not communicate with them except by talking at them. Thing is, they're both deaf.The gate agent rolled her eyes at us. Melissa asked for her to write. After a few moments, she finally wrote on a piece of paper and said, the flight is full and can’t book us together. I wanted to continue to communicate and decided to try and write on that same paper but instead of giving us the paper we asked for, she crumbled it in front of us and threw it in the trash.”Yingst says she pleaded with the agent — who allegedly refused to give her name but whom they identify as “Felicia” — to write down her end of the conversation, arguing that she was “denying us our communication access” by not doing so.Here's where they story diverges: one of the women says "Felicia" pushed her when she tried to retrieve the note. But "Felicia" claims she was assaulted. In any case, "Felicia" summoned airport security and the women were removed from the flight.Delta is backing its gate agent, stating that the women were barred from the flight because Garcia went behind the gate desk and "pushed" the gate agent when trying to retrieving the crumpled up paper. The women deny this and say Delta falsely told the media it had reimbursed them. Read the rest

"My child bit me." "I had a boyfriend who punched me in the face." "I tried to cut myself." "Broke my femur bone in a car accident." "Breast implants." These are quotes from five of the one hundred people in this video talking about how they got their scars.Image: The Cut/YouTube Read the rest

Julie McDowall experiences synaesthesia, a cross-wiring of sensations where sights may have sounds, numbers may spark smells, or, in her case, words trigger tastes. What does your name taste like?Catherine is a Rusk dipped in chocolate and coffeeAntonio is a bowl of Frosties, turning soggy.Rebecca is shortbread and Feeney is a watery, weak onionPaul...the fondant inside a Creme Egg.Bryan is coconut caught between my teethThough literally experienced by McDowall thanks to an exceptional brain condition, her definitions are clearly just right. It reminds me of The Meaning of Liff. Someone should give McDowall a book deal to write The Meaning of Biff. Read the rest

Resident Evil 2 is a just-released remake of the Capcom classic, updated with ultra-realistic performance-captured animation. DPO23 hacked the game's configuration to exaggerate characters' facial movements 500%. It's an unsettling illustration of what lies beneath cutting-edge graphics tech—and far scarier than the zombies. (See DP023's YouTube channel for more) Read the rest

"Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” ― John Lennon Read the rest

You may have heard that artist Anish Kapoor has an exclusive license to produce art using Vantablack, a pigment made from carbon nanotubes that absorbs up to 99.96% of visible light. Covering an object with Vantablack makes it look like the object, and everything behind it, has been removed from the universe. Artists who are not Anish Kapoor are understandably upset that Kapoor has a lock on Vantablack. Many people have tried to create pigments as dark as Vantablack, and the person with the most success so far is Stuart Semple. He created Black 2.0 a few years ago, and now he is Kickstarted a new formulation, Black 3.0, which absorbs between 98 and 99% of visible light.The Kickstarter includes the following caution: "By backing this project you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not backing this on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor." Read the rest

Casey Hathaway, age 3, was lost for three days in the woods of Craven County, North Carolina before police found him alive and well. He had survived pouring rain and near-freezing temperatures. According to Hathaway, a bear looked after him in the forest."He made a comment about having a friend while he was in the woods -- his friend was a bear," Maj. David McFadyen of the Craven County Sheriff's Office told CNN. "In the emergency room he started talking about what happened in the woods and he said he had a friend that was a bear with him while he was in the woods."It is true that there are bears in those woods. Read the rest

South Carolina has a bill in the works to become the 34th state in the nation to legalize medical marijuana, and Attorney General Alan Wilson is freaking out. He went to the Statehouse lobby and stood in the middle of a row of serious-faced white-robed doctors and called marijuana “the most dangerous drug” in America. Marijuana, he says, causes addiction, traffic accidents, and deaths by overdose. ("A fatal dose of marijuana would require ingestion of fifteen hundred pounds in fifteen minutes," says David Schmader, author of Weed: The User's Guide.)Here’s the clip of AG Alan Wilson starting off the press conference today on medical marijuana. Some Republicans and Democrats are trying to legalize cannabis for medical purposes this year in South Carolina. pic.twitter.com/UwZ9NlSRTN— Andrew Brown (@Andy_Ed_Brown) January 23, 2019From the Post and Courier:“They use words like stoned, high, wasted, baked, fried, cooked, chonged, cheeched, dope-faced, blazed, blitzed, blunted, blasted, danked, stupid, wrecked — and that’s only half the words they use,” Wilson said. “Are these consistent with something that describes a medicine?” Someone needs to use that as a song sample.Image: Screenshot of Andrew Brown's Twitter video Read the rest

Students at Mackie Academy secondary school in Aberdeenshire, Scotland created a piece of high art on the playing field. While the act occurred last year, its documentation -- which was actually the real prank -- apparently lives on in Google Earth.“I’m sure there is lots of penises drawn in lots of places around the school and many other schools across the country, but this really is impressive," said one former student.(The Scottish Sun)Of course, they weren't the first students to play this particular, er, long game. For example: "Suspected high school prank goes unnoticed by APS for years" Read the rest

The immense sense of vicarious satisfaction I feel watching this gives me hope for the machines that will replace us. [via r/perfectfit] Read the rest

During the 1960s and 1970s at Bell Labs, the intersection of science and art was rightfully recognized as an extremely fertile ground for creative and technological experimentation. New York City's avant-garde artists collaborated with Bell Labs engineers to develop new tools, technologies, and creative practices that continue to shape our digital world today. It was in Bell Labs' hotbed of digital creativity where composer and software engineer Laurie Spiegel helped make the future of electronic music. Waveshaper TV produced a multi-part interview with Spiegel whose seminal works, including The Expanding Universe, are available in stunning editions from the Unseen Worlds label.I was particularly excited about Part 2 of the interview with Spiegel, released today and seen above, because it focuses on how she came to contribute an audio manifestation of "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds" ("Music of the Spheres") to the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials attached to the Voyager I and II space probes launched in 1977. The Golden Record tells a story of our planet expressed in sounds, images, and science: Earth’s greatest music from myriad peoples and eras, from Bach to Blind Willie Johnson to Chuck Berry, Benin percussion to Solomon Island panpipes. A short segment of Spiegel's "Music of the Spheres" opens the Voyager Record's "Sounds of Earth" segment, a collage of dozens of recordings that represent our planet, from birds and chimpanzees to thunder, a baby's cry, laughter, and a kiss.Two years ago, my friends Timothy Daly, Lawrence Azerrad, and I released the Voyager Golden Record on vinyl for the first time as a lavish box set. Read the rest

In an absolutely epic Twitter thread (unrolled here) author CZ Edwards lays out an incredibly compelling explanation of spiralling real-estate prices: oligarchs need to launder a lot of oil money -- think Russia, Iran, ex-Soviet basket-case states, Saudi -- and so they plow the money into offshore Real Estate Investment Trust that then cleans it by outbidding any actual real-estate investors or would-be homeowners, bidding up and snapping up all the property in desirable cities, and then realizing the rental income-flows as legitimate, clean money.It's as neat and compelling a way of describing the link between oligarchy and spiraling real-estate prices as you could ask for. Shelter is not optional, so people will spend whatever it takes to get a roof over their heads. Cities are not infinitely sprawlable, so it's possible to corner the market on places to live in them. Eventually, the parasites will devour the hosts and leave the cities empty shells (ahem, Venice), but by then the money-launderers have sold up and moved on.And of course, since real-estate is a great way to launder money, real-estate developers are often mobbed up af, which explains a lot about the president and his grifter inner circle.Edwards points out that her work on money-laundering came out of her research on a novel called "Rien's Rebellion: Kingdom" (" Once upon a time, a nation’s fate depended on an informant, a lawyer and a warrior. They all lived under a good Monarch’s leadership. Until he was assassinated."). Read the rest

Everybody's on Instagram to be seen, but what separates the average selfies-and-food account from the true influencers? Chances are, it's not random chance. Check out our favorite online tools geared to get you the kind of visibility advertisers dream of, from educational courses to optimizing apps.PostFly Instagram AutomationIf you're looking to get the most out of your Instagram account, do what the big brands do: Enhance it with automation. There no business too small to benefit from a PostFly setup, which can schedule your posts, automatically like your followers' content, and even sniff out new followers for you based on relevance. It's the best way to free up time and still keep your public face personal and accessible. Right now, a lifetime subscription to PostFly Instagram Automation is 96% off at $39.Instagram Master ClassNo matter how artful your posts are, there's a definite science to grabbing an Instagram following. Digital agent Evan Kimbrell helped oversee the social media strategies of Fortune 100 companies, and he shares those secrets in this 22-hour online course. Through targeted hashtags and strategic automation, you'll be able to bump up your numbers to the thousands in no time. Originally priced at $199.99, the Instagram Master Class is currently on sale for $11.99.Savvant Instagram OptimizerDon't just throw posts to the wall and hope they stick. With Savvant's complex analytics, you can find out what draws likes, why and from where. Based on its algorithms, the app can choose the best hashtags and keywords for you, and suggest the content that's really going to drive your brand no matter what it is. Read the rest

All in the form of signature character Richard Sharpe — add Ed Stark and we'd be here all weekend. Read the rest

From the archives of Germany's public broadcasting institution WDR, this televised concert video of Kraftwerk from 1970, the year of the band's formation. Even then, their post-Krautrock motorik dynamism is trance-inducing. Far fucking out.(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

Just days after LA teachers declared victory in their strike for better classroom conditions and limits on charter schools, their colleagues in Denver -- another "blue state" -- have voted to walk off the job, with a very similar set of demands.Last year's #RedForEd strikes were concentrated in Republican-dominated red states, but beating up on teachers and advocating through charter-school privatization of public system is a bipartisan disease, with many establishment Democrat backers.California's not done, either: Oakland teachers have seen a steady decline in their funding and working conditions, a phenomenon that has tracked closely with the number of black and brown students in their classes (and the siphoning off of privileged and wealthier white students into charter schools). ARLENE INOUYE: Yes, and we’re excited for the educators in Denver that they’ve taken this step.And I feel like what we’ve learned through the years is that when you communicate clearly what the message is and you reach out to parents and community, our collective power is what got us to win. We have a chapter leader in every single school. And we have teams now, organizing teams, at every school. And we have constant communication. I think, as you see, Amy, when you talk to anybody, any teacher or parent out there that were on the picket lines, they will tell you the same message, why we’re fighting. And it’s very clear to us.And I think by being able to organize across the board and bring in the voices, the ordinary voices of our parents and our educators—and I, myself, by the way, am a speech and language specialist. Read the rest

Records in a class-action lawsuit uncovered Facebook's "multi-year effort" to bilk money from kids who unwittingly spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on games on Facebook, who refused to refund the money when the kids' parents complained.From Reveal:Facebook encouraged game developers to let children spend money without their parents’ permission – something the social media giant called “friendly fraud” – in an effort to maximize revenues, according to a document detailing the company’s game strategy.Sometimes the children did not even know they were spending money, according to another internal Facebook report. Facebook employees knew this. Their own reports showed underage users did not realize their parent’s credit cards were connected to their Facebook accounts and they were spending real money in the games, according to the unsealed documents.For years, the company ignored warnings from its own employees that it was bamboozling children.A team of Facebook employees even developed a method that would have reduced the problem of children being hoodwinked into spending money, but the company did not implement it, and instead told game developers that the social media giant was focused on maximizing revenues.When parents found out how much their children had spent – one 15-year-old racked up $6,500 in charges in about two weeks playing games on Facebook – the company denied requests for refunds. Facebook employees referred to these children as “whales” – a term borrowed from the casino industry to describe profligate spenders. A child could spend hundreds of dollars a day on in-game features such as arming their character with a flaming sword or a new magic spell to defeat an enemy – even if they didn’t realize it until the credit card bill arrived. Read the rest

Even though jet travel is a major contributor to global warming, the pluto-kakisto-klepto-cracy coming to the World Economic Forum in Davos will arrive in an estimated 1,500 private jets. One of the topics that the 0.001% will be discussing at the Swiss Ski resort is global warming. From Inquisitr:In general, private jet travel to the event has increased by about 11 percent year over year, according to the Air Charter Service (ACS), which charters aircraft for cargo and private use.“There appears to be a trend towards larger aircraft, with expensive heavy jets the aircraft of choice,” said Andy Christie, private jets director at the ACS. “Gulfstream GVs and Global Expresses [were] both used more than 100 times each last year.”Image: Tyler Olson/Shutterstock Read the rest

Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, a United States Department of Defense research facility, developed laser systems that can "transmit various tones, music and recorded speech at a conversational volume" to specific people without the recipient wearing any special equipment. Basically, the operator points a laser at someone from a distance and that individual hears the transmitted audio even though others in the area don't. Conspiracy theorists, start your engines. From the Optical Society of America:"Our system can be used from some distance away to beam information directly to someone's ear," said research team leader Charles M. Wynn. "It is the first system that uses lasers that are fully safe for the eyes and skin to localize an audible signal to a particular person in any setting..."The new approaches are based on the photoacoustic effect, which occurs when a material forms sound waves after absorbing light. In this case, the researchers used water vapor in the air to absorb light and create sound...One unique aspect of this laser sweeping technique is that the signal can only be heard at a certain distance from the transmitter. This means that a message could be sent to an individual, rather than everyone who crosses the beam of light. It also opens the possibility of targeting a message to multiple individuals."New technology uses lasers to transmit audible messages to specific people" (Phys.org via The Daily Grail)"Photoacoustic communications: delivering audible signals via absorption of light by atmospheric H2O" (Optics Letter) Read the rest

Libertycon is the annual conference of Students for Liberty, a libertarian youth group, held in DC; at this year's conference, Google was the $25,000 platinum sponsor, while Facebook and Microsoft were each $10,000 sponsors.Libertycon's other sponsors included three notorious climate denial groups, including the CO2 Coalition, backed by billionaire family foundations (including the Mercers' foundation and the Koch foundation), who argue that increased atmospheric CO2 is "good news" for the planet; they distributed literature to "explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide" because "more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families" and the "recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life."The conference featured a presentation by Caleb Rossiter, a retired stats prof who sits on the outer fringe of the climate denial movement; he praised higher atmospheric CO2 levels ("I'm cheering") and claimed that "There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency." He also claimed that increased CO2 levels "improve life expectancy"The Big Tech companies claim that their sponsorship of Libertycon is part of their wider political event funding that crosses party lines and is nonpartisan in nature. But conferences that give platforms to climate deniers are not part of the normal political discourse: they are as dangerous and beyond the pale as conferences that feature eugenicists. I believe that those people should be allowed to have conferences! But I also think that anyone who gives those conferences a dime is either an immoral opportunist or a sociopath. Read the rest

On Sunday, Ozzy Osbourne launched pre-orders for this darling plushie bat with a detachable head, and it has already sold out. Today is the 37th anniversary of Ozzy's show at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa during which he bit the head off a real bat. From a January 22, 1982 article in the Des Moines Register: Osbourne reportedly put a dead bat in his mouth, bit its head off and threw it back into the crowd of about 5,000 at the auditorium Wednesday night.Some skeptics think the whole thing was a publicity stunt – even the taking of the first of a series of five rabies shots at a Des Moines hospital after the concert.But Mark Neal, 17, of Des Moines said he threw the dead bat onto the stage, saw Osbourne pick it up, bite its head off and then throw it into the audience.“It really freaked me out,” Neal said. “I won’t get in any trouble for admitting this, will I?”After the show, Osbourne went to Mercy Hospital Medical Center, and was referred to Broadlawns Medical Center because rabies vaccine was available there.Today marks the 37th Anniversary since I bit a head off a f*cking bat! Celebrate with this commemorative plush with detachable head.https://t.co/Of23jCDtaa pic.twitter.com/U8ZkmOYOey— Ozzy Osbourne (@OzzyOsbourne) January 20, 2019 Read the rest

Watch marine biologist Ocean Ramsey (yes, Ocean is her first name!) swim with a 20-foot great white shark off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. First spotted off Guadalupe in 2014, this animal, nicknamed "Deep Blue," is thought to be the largest great white in the world. They're definitely going to need a bigger boat.“We never would have imagined we would be fortunate enough to be graced with the presence of this massive, big, beautiful, female white shark," says Ramsey, who at the time was observing tiger sharks with her One Ocean Research team. “It fills my heart with joy and takes my breath away.”(NBC News) View this post on Instagram Beyond magic! Please #helpsavesharks !!!! Incredible swimming with “Deep Blue” one of the largest great white s for hour! Just using our @oneoceandiving boat as a scratching post, so mellow and beautiful. Help ban the purposeful killing of sharks and rays with @oneoceanconservation this year & in your local/international community ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ AHHHHHHMAZING!!!! #Beyondwords still out to sea/going back in 😍😍😍😍😍😍 vid shot by @oneoceandiving Shark specialist & my amazing #seaster @mermaid_kayleigh out with @juansharks @forrest.in.focus @camgrantphotography @oneoceanresearch A post shared by Ocean Ramsey #OceanRamsey (@oceanramsey) on Jan 15, 2019 at 5:54pm PST Read the rest

MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAAT!I haven't paid attention to Mortal Kombat since the 1995 movie. There was a time it was my go-to coming down off of hallucinogenic drugs film. This game trailer would have made my eyes explode out of my head.I do not put a lot of stock in the whole "video games are making kids violent" thing. Kids can't develop magic superpowers that allow them to flash freeze the freshly-ripped-from-a-body-with-the-eyes-still-a-blinking-skull and then grind it to dust in front of their remaining opponents. They just can't.I kinda of sort of remember the Mortal Kombat storyline as being pretty much over in the 1995 movie. The great battle only comes around every 1000 years? I dunno. MORTAL KOMBAAAAAT!!!! Read the rest

Over the weekend in St, Petersburg, Kentucky, Cody Lutz, his fiancee, and her sister built a beautiful 9-foot snowman in their yard. When Lutz returned home from work this week though, he noticed tire tracks on his lawn. From WLWT:There’s now a massive stump now exposed, with a snowy imprint of a bumper stuck to it.“You reap what you sow,” Lutz said. “Still standing and still smiling, Frosty certainly had the last laugh!”(Thanks, Rick Pescovitz/Under the Weather!) Read the rest

If you roll up a copy of this week’s Globe tabloid into the shape of a seashell and hold it to your ear, you can hear the sound of President Trump screaming. Just because they’re packed with fact-challenged celebrity gossip doesn’t mean that the tabloids can’t give us insight into American politics. President Trump has long used the National Enquirer and Globe as mouthpieces for his thoughts, and this week it appears that trend continues. Just because Globe and National Enquirer chief David Pecker has been granted immunity by Robert Mueller’s investigation into former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in exchange for spilling the beans about covering up scandals it uncovered on the president, that apparently doesn’t mean the magazine has ceased in its slavish devotion to the man who believes that cold hamburgers are an appropriate breakfast (or lunch) of champions. Which is why it’s illuminating to see this week’s Globe effectively demonize conservative talk radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh for almost single-handedly helping to “shut down the government.”Forget President Trump’s order to close down the government, the Democrats’ inability to find a compromise that doesn’t involve building a wall along the border with Mexico, and the Republicans’ refusal to stand up to Trump. As far as the Globe is concerned, it wants its readers to know that Limbaugh, dubbed on its front page the “Most Powerful Man in Politics” – is the one most responsible for the shutdown, thanks to his repeated radio attacks on immigrants.“He demanded GOP legislators and the White House refuse to support any funding bill to keep federal agencies operating unless the legislation financed building the wall,” reports the Globe. Read the rest

Things move fast in the world of social media, and they don't slow down for marketers looking to make an impact. Whether you're grabbing eyeballs for a major company or a local business, you'll need to adjust your strategy for every platform. Don't have a strategy to begin with? That's where the Social Media Marketing Master Class Bundle can help.Taught by the gurus at Integrity Training, this is a class that's as comprehensive as it gets on a very wide topic. The 11-course bundle begins with a broad overview of marketing principles to keep in mind for any platform - analog or digital. It then shows how those rules apply to some very different arenas. You'll get lessons devoted to marketing not just on Facebook, but on its Groups and Marketplace channels. You'll be able to raise a buzz on crowded sites like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and learn how to manage reviews of your business on tastemaking spots like Yelp.With more than 28 hours of training, the Social Media Marketing Master Class Bundle is $29 for lifetime access, a full 97% off the MSRP. Read the rest

Sześć lat temu Polacy wyszli na ulice by uratować Europę przed ACTA – międzynarodową umową handlową, negocjowaną z inicjatywy Stanów Zjednoczonych, która groziła wprowadzeniem szeroko zakrojonej cenzury i nadzoru w Internecie w imię rzekomej ochrony praw autorskich.Dziś Polacy znów są w centrum uwagi, walcząc z “ACTA2”: Dyrektywą w sprawie praw autorskich na jednolitym rynku cyfrowym. Wasza pomoc nigdy nie była bardziej potrzebna!W tym miesiącu Unia Europejska wynegocjuje najnowszy (i zapewne ostateczny) kształt projektu Dyrektywy. Ku naszemu rozczarowaniu – aczkolwiek nie zaskoczeniu! – żaden z problematycznych zapisów (prowadzących do większej cenzury i koncentracji rynku niż nawet w przypadku ACTA) nie został poprawiony. Przeciwnie, zapisy te stały się pod wieloma względami gorsze.Unia Europejska i jej państwa członkowskie negocjowały Dyrektywę od września, jednak nie znalazły żadnego sposobu poprawienia jej dwóch kontrowersyjnych zapisów:Artykuł 11: mający na celu zmuszenie platform do płacenia za linkowanie do stron informacyjnych poprzez stworzenie niezbywalnego prawa do pobierania opłat licencyjnych za linkowanie przez komercyjne serwisy (gdy linki zawierają kilka słów z treści linkowanej strony lub jej nagłówka). Artykuł 11 nie definiuje „stron informacyjnych”, „platform komercyjnych”, ani „linków”, co może doprowadzić 28 krajów członkowskich UE do stworzenia 28 różnych, wzajemnie się wykluczających systemów licencyjnych. Co więcej, „niezbywalność” tego uprawnienia oznacza, że strony informacyjne publikowane na zasadach otwartego dostępu, lub takie, którym zależy na szerokim publicznym dostępie, w tym strony niekomercyjne i strony udostępniane na wolnych licencjach (np. z rodziny Creative Commons) nie mogą wypisać się z tego systemu.Artykuł 13: mający zwalczyć pojawianie się nielicencjonowanych dzieł objętych prawem autorskim na dużych platformach internetowych, nawet na moment. Read the rest

Political pranksters extrodinaire the Yes Men (previously) have printed a satirical edition of the Washington Post announcing that Donald Trump has abdicated and volunteers have fanned out across DC (where Trump is universally loathed) to distribute copies to all and sundry: you can follow their adventures at the #ByeBye45 hashtag. Read the rest

NBC declined to comment.Huffington Post:NBC News’ standards department sent an email to staffers Tuesday telling them not to directly refer to Rep. Steve King’s recent comments about white supremacy as “racist.”“Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist,” reads the email, which two NBC News staffers shared with HuffPost. “It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”The email was sent to staffers by Susan Sullivan, a senior employee in the standards division at NBC News. In a news organization, the standards department offers guidance and issues rules about what is legally and ethically appropriate to report, and about how certain topics should be covered.NBC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this article. Read the rest

Cryptocurrencies and Tor hidden services ushered in a new golden age for markets in illegal goods, especially banned or circumscribed drugs: Bitcoin was widely (and incorrectly) viewed as intrinsically anonymous, while the marketplaces themselves were significantly safer and more reliable than traditional criminal markets, and as sellers realized real savings in losses due to law enforcement and related risks, the prices of their merchandise plummeted, while their profits soared.But much of the security of dark markets was an illusion. The anonymity of cryptocurrencies could often be pierced; the services themselves could be subverted by law enforcement in order to roll up many sellers and buyers at once; and the "last mile" problem of shipping illegal substances through the mails exposed buyers and sellers to real risks.The buyers and sellers in dark markets have responded to these revelations and new facts on the ground with a range of ingenious, high-tech countermeasures.Buyers are now more likely to conduct sales negotiations through encrypted messenger technologies, and each customer is assigned their own unique contact, staffed by a bot that can answer questions on pricing and availability and broker transactions. Many of these transactions now take place through "private cryptocurrencies" that have improved anonymity functions (there is a lot of development on these technologies).Delivery is now largely managed through single-use "dead drops" -- hidden-in-plain-sight caches that are pre-seeded by sellers, who sometimes use low-cost Bluetooth beacons to identify them (these beacons can be programmed to activate only in the presence of a wifi network with a specific name: a seller provides the buyer with a codeword and a GPS coordinate; the buyer goes to the assigned place and creates a wifi network on their phone with the codeword for its name, and this activates the Bluetooth beacon that guides the buyer to their merchandise). Read the rest

BREAKING: Donald Trump asked by reporter: "Have you ever worked for Russia?" pic.twitter.com/a2ph4Raduq— Paul Lee Ticks (@PaulLeeTicks) January 14, 2019No sniffles tho. Read the rest

Following a publicity campaign to make it the most popular photo on Instagram, a photo of an egg became the most popular photo on Instagram.The campaign started off slowly, with under 10,000 likes by Tuesday. Then, the egg gained momentum. The anonymous person behind it said they were still trying to work out how, exactly, the egg achieved its dream. The egg’s Instagram story also contains a brief statement.“This is madness, What a time to be alive.” The Egg Gang also promises this isn’t the last you will hear of Egg. Read the rest

Trump isn't America's most anti-immigrant president; that honor goes to Obama, the great deporter, who also extensively tested border wall technologies while deporting 2MM undocumented people. One of the designs that Obama's DHS evaluated was steel "barriers" of the sort Trump wants to spend $5.7 billion on. In their tests, they were able to defeat the barriers with hand-held hacksaws in just a few minutes.Trump officials insist that their barriers represent an improvement on the Obama barriers, with "internally reinforced with materials that require time and multiple industrial tools to breach.""While the design currently being constructed was informed by what we learned in the prototypes, it does not replicate those designs," said Waldman. "The steel bollard design is internally reinforced with materials that require time and multiple industrial tools to breach, thereby providing U.S. Border Patrol agents additional response time to affect a successful law enforcement resolution. In the event that one of the steel bollards becomes damaged, it is quick and cost-effective to repair."The professionals on the border know that a wall system is intended not only to prevent entry, it is intended to defer and to increase the amount of time and effort it takes for one to enter so that we can respond with limited border patrol agents. Even a wall that is being breached is a valuable tool in that it allows us to respond to the attempted illegal entry."Test of steel prototype for border wall showed it could be sawed through [Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley/NBC](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Pigzbe is a digital "piggy-wallet" for children that uses its own cryptocurrency called Wollo (WLO). It has gotten $100k on Kickstarter, but that's not where the real money is. According to ICO Bench, $7,200,000 worth of WLO was sold in an initial coin offering.According to Coincodex, WLO is trading at $0.015 Read the rest

There have been several attempts to force the US telcoms industry to respect our privacy: to stop our ISPs from spying on us and selling our usage data to marketers, to stop the mobile carriers from spying on our location and selling the data to marketers (and, it turns out, stalkers and bounty hunters), and every attempt has fizzled, as telcoms lobbyists and telcoms-funded lawmakers have sold us out, saying that the privacy rules are unnecessary because the carriers wouldn't do anything too sketchy lest they suffer reputational damage.The thing is, there's no way the carriers' reputation could conceivably get any worse: just as you can't libel a scoundrel, any revelation about carrier shenanigans will only confirm our view of telcoms as the worst industry in the country, with the worst companies in the country.Relying on telcoms industry shame to rein in their worst impulses has repeatedly proven to be useless. Telcoms execs lie like crazy, and then when they get caught, they legeresplain and gaslight about it.As Karl Bode points out, there's actually a pretty easy way to make sure the carriers stop abusing us: make it illegal, and enforce the laws. Whether the solution is a new law or just the enforcement of existing rules, getting any serious location data reform efforts over the hump is going to require a critical mass of public outrage to drive meaningful change.Whether the solution is a new law or just the enforcement of existing rules, demanding the protection of your private location data is going to require a critical mass of public outrage to drive change. Read the rest

An Australian woman is in stable condition after a massive freeway sign toppled onto her car near Melbourne. The dashcam video, captured by the driver behind her, is absolutely terrifying.(I wonder if this will fit in J.K. Simmons' insurance-claim wunderkammer.) Read the rest

KARR is my second favorite animated automobile with an attitude. I love how he blew up after flying off a cliff, but was back a few episodes later looking perfect.I remembered KARR as having a different front grill scanner pattern than KITT, I was mistaken.Herbie has gotta be the best.Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, yawn. Dick Van Dyke is a treasure tho. Read the rest

Dr. Ruth Westheimer is a German-born Jewish Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the United States in 1956 and eventually became arguably the world's best known sex therapist. She's hosted multiple radio and TV shows and written dozens of books about sex. Now, the 90-year-old is the subject of a new documentary titled Ask Dr. Ruth that will premier at the Sundance Film Festival in a few weeks. Directed by Ryan White with distribution by Hulu, the film will be in theaters later this year and presumably streaming after that. Read the rest