dj BC (previously) writes, "You might be familiar with my Beastles mashup project from some years ago. The album "Ill Submarine" is dropping on TAPE on Cassette Store Day, October 13th 2018! I guess tapes are unpopular enough that no one anticipates copyright lawsuits. Speaking of copyright fear, the vinyl editions of this project, and of Wu Orleans, are not being pressed any more. So if you see one, get it." Read the rest

Inventor Ivan Cash of Oakland, California was inspired by the 1988 cult classic They Live to create screen-blocking glasses. In the movie, a drifter (played by Roddy Piper) discovers a box of sunglasses. He puts on a pair and soon learns they reveal hidden messages behind advertising and that many people in charge are actually aliens. Now, Cash's IRL Glasses don't reveal hidden messages but do mask most TV and some computer screens. When you look through the lenses, the screens just go black. Plus, they double as sunglasses that look like the ones from the movie.IRL Glasses are in beta. This means they are compatible with most TVs (LCD/LED) and some computers (LCD/LED). IRL glasses do not yet block smartphones or digital billboards (OLED). If you'd like to CONSUME a pair for yourself, he's got a Kickstarter going for them until the end of the month. The price now is $49 and will be $79 after the campaign is over. (swissmiss) Read the rest

Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been under a lot of pressure this last week to defend his good name, and you can betcha that he – like many powerful men before him – have faced accusations of bad behavior with the help of Denietol, which "permanently erases the memory of what you did." Watch this hilarious ad from Jimmy Kimmel Live that shows how well this new medication has helped not only Kavanaugh, but other influential gentlemen such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. As Kimmel says, bad behavior "is something that men have been struggling with for many years, and now, at long last, there is hope." Read the rest

A "Devil's Triangle" is a widely used term for an act of sexual congress between two men and a woman; but during his hearing, Brett Kavanaugh nonsensically insisted that this was some sort of drinking game.Over at Urban Dictionary, the crowdsourced lexicographers are desperately attempting to integrate the would-be Supreme Court justice's definition into the entry for Devil's Triangle:From Ted_Cruz_is_the_Zodiac_Killer: A made up game of quarters with three cups arranged in a triangle. The rules are unknown because the inventor of the game, Brett Kavanaugh, could not explain them under oath."Hey Renate? Want to play devils triangle with Mark and I?" Brett asked.From Fancy Rants: A pretend drinking game made up on 9/27/18 by "Honorable" Brett Kavanaugh when faced with credible allegations of sexual assault put forward by no less than four (so far) women. Devils triangle is a threesome with two men and one woman, not a drinking game like Quarters, as Kavanope would like everyone to believe. Devils triangle can also be defined as a lie told under perjury when a belligerent white male feels cornered when confronted with his own disgusting behavior, most likely with the blessing of a patriarchal and mysogynistic system."Devils triangle is a game like Quarters, except its nothing like Quarters and its actually code for a sexual threesome. Please believe me I have told myself these lies so many times I am beginning to believe them. Help I'm a scared white male!" --Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Hearings"Can you believe the Devils Triangle that that guy just offered under oath?! Read the rest

Feizhai kuaile ("fat otaku happiness") is a semi-ironic term used by young Chinese people on social media to celebrate slacking off with sedentary activities and high-calorie snacks, which are given ironic nicknames (pizza is "fat happy pancake" and Coke is "fat happy water")."Fat happy" living is a rejection of society's high expectations of academic and professional success attained through constant work, and the embrace of "pure and instant happiness" (not to be confused with "decadence and self-abandonment," which is apparently antithetical to "fat happy" living).It's not clear how "fat happy" fits in with the resurgence in labor-oriented Communism among young Chinese people.To be clear, “fat happy water” is not water at all, but rather another name for Coca-Cola. More than any other product, the carbonated concoction can be credited for giving birth to the feizhai subculture sweeping across Chinese social media. For less than 3 yuan ($0.44), many young people consider a can of Coke a sweet substitute for slightly larger bottle of water costing slightly less.“Since drinking water makes me fat too, why don’t I just drink Coke?” wrote one user on microblogging platform Weibo, apparently in need of a physiology lesson. “Fat happy water” has become such a common term that it has even spawned its own merchandise — including water bottles, umbrellas, and hoodies — on e-commerce site Taobao.Corpulence Is Bliss: The Chinese Embracing ‘Fat Happy’ Culture [Liang Chenyu/Sixth Tone](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Who is this man? Dorset Police hope he can help them with their enquiries.A woman confronted a suspected thief and took his photo as he was sitting in her stolen car. She spotted two men parked in her silver Ford Fiesta just two streets from where it was stolen in Lowther Road, Bournemouth, following a house burglary the night before. Read the rest

The best part of Dave Goetzinger's (AKA Handgun Safe Research) total ownership of the Amarey HFGS-089 gun safe is that he shows a relatively difficult exploit to open it before showing the insanely easy one: "Bolting the safe down to prevent attack with a paperclip is pointless." [via]Amarey's handgun safe is going to get somebody killed. That's my prediction. Somebody, possibly a child, is going to take a hit with a hollow point, and aside from local newspaper coverage--a few dismal inches in a column of city news--no one will know about it.He writes that this is the only device he's examined "vulnerable enough that a child could open it" and that the manufacturer is no longer in the business. A common target of his investigations are cheap, Chinese-made biometric models imported by local companies who stamp red-blooded American branding on them. Here's another terrible gun safe, the GunVault SVB 500, which can be opened with a gum wrapper.He recommends the AMSEC Heavy-Duty Pistol Safe, the Stealth Handgun Safe, and this auto model from Fort Knox [Amazon]. They're much uglier and heavier than the cheap models, but this is where I'm keeping my Beanie Babies. Read the rest

Based on a new study of the safety and abuse potential of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic drug in magic mushrooms, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers recommend that "psilocybin should be re-categorized from a schedule I drug—one with no known medical potential—to a schedule IV drug such as prescription sleep aids, but with tighter control." From Johns Hopkins:"We want to initiate the conversation now as to how to classify psilocybin to facilitate its path to the clinic and minimize logistical hurdles in the future," says Matthew W. Johnson, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We expect these final clearance trials to take place in the next five years or so."Following the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, any drug with the potential for abuse is categorized based on criteria that take into account whether the drug has accepted medical use, and its safety and the potential for abuse. Schedule IV drugs are those that have a low potential for abuse or dependence.Although preliminary research studies suggest that psilocybin may be effective for smoking cessation and for disorders such as cancer-specific depression and anxiety, it must clear phase III clinical trials before the Food and Drug Administration can be petitioned to reclassify it.Highlights from their scientific paper published in the journal Neuropharmacology:• Psilocybin mushrooms have been used for millennia for spiritual and medical purposes.• Animal and human studies indicate low abuse and no physical dependence potential. Read the rest

While older players do frequently get confused, we've been having a lot of fun on the Fortnite Over Forty discord. Read the rest

People were enjoying drinks while watching horse races on a screen at a betting bar north of Paris when a real-life race horse charged into the bar. It galloped and bucked its way alongside the bar counter, where patrons ran for their lives. According to the Independent:The horse's trainer, Jean-Marie Beguigne, said the horse had dumped her rider at the Chantilly race course stables, less than a mile away, and made a run for it.Mr Beguigne said the horse had a tendency of trying to escape but said it was “exceptional” that it had made it as far as the bar. The horse broke a table and a couple of chairs, but nobody was injured, and the feisty horse seemed just fine after its romp in the bar. Read the rest

Bill Cosby has justly been whisked away to prison for the next three to ten years. Cosby--let's just go ahead and assume his prison name will be Puddin'--is being shipped off to the Phoenix State Correctional Institution (SCI Phoenix) to serve his time. It's not a nice place: according to The Root, the clink where Puddin' will be spending his twilight years is rife with racism. Racial slurs, religious discrimination and other demeaning personal attacks are purportedly inflicted upon the prison's population by the facility's staff on a routine basis. Mind you, the staff aren't one hell of a lot safer. It's a high caliber shitshow. From The Inquirer:In letters and phone calls to family and reporters, and in official grievances, they've reported a raft of complaints about the conditions in the new prison and, especially, about loss, vandalism, or destruction of their personal property during the move. Several described racial slurs and graphic imagery drawn on photographs of their loved ones — acts the inmates describe as "hate crimes."One man, Malik Gilmore, provided copies of photographs he said were defaced by the DOC's specially trained Corrections Emergency Response Team, which managed the move: one with a swastika inked on his brother's forehead, another with a penis drawn over his son's mouth. Another, Eugene Myrick, found "squeeze cheese" poured into a box containing the legal documents for his case, which is active in Philadelphia courts. And Carmen Calvanese said that during the move, he had inconsistent access to the insulin needed to regulate his Type 1 diabetes, and that he ended up in a hospital intensive-care unit as a result. Read the rest

Cats have a tendency to fit themselves into places that they have a hard time getting out of: behind refrigerators, the highest branches of a tree or, in this case, underneath a shed. Fortunately, for this kitteh, a bunny was on standby to help extricate it from its self-imposed prison. Read the rest

As today's businesses grow, so too do their IT needs. That's why demand (and pay) is high for experts who can keep these businesses online. Now, demand alone won't get your foot in the door, as employers expect you to bring some certifications to the table that validate your skills. There are plenty of certifications out there, but choosing ITIL could take you further in your career. The Ultimate ITIL Certification Training Bundle can help you get certified, and it's on sale for $49.ITIL is a set of detailed practices for IT service management that focuses on merging IT services with the needs of business. By introducing ITIL practices into a workplace, you can better help a business create cost-effective practices, manage risk, and ultimately build a more stable yet scalable operation. This collection features 14 courses on the IT service lifecycle, operational support, and other ITIL concepts. In addition to getting valuable ITIL knowledge, each course will reward you with PDUs that you can then use to qualify to take the necessary certification exams.The Ultimate ITIL Certification Training Bundle usually retails for $3,499, but you can get it through the Boing Boing shop for $49. Read the rest

Such a soothing video.Potatoes make everything better. 🍟 🍟 🍟 How curly fries are cut Read the rest

In the late 19th century, artist/astronomer Étienne Léopold Trouvelot (1827-1895) painted thousands of stunning works illustrating the beauty and science of the known planets, comets, and celestial phenomena. The Huntington Library near Los Angeles holds 15 of Trouvelot's chromolithographs that were published in 1882 in two portfolios, the Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings:Initially, the Astronomical Drawings portfolios were sold to astronomy libraries and observatories as reference tools, but as early 20th-century advances in photographic technology allowed for more accurate and detailed depictions of the stars, planets, and phenomena, Trouvelot’s prints were discarded or sold to collectors.Radiant Beauty: E. L. Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings (The Huntington) Read the rest

Churlish Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh put on quite a show yesterday. He yelled, he gnashed his teeth, he blamed the Clintons and liberals, he warned that the world would end, he got choked up recalling his days as an untouchable prep-school beer guzzler, and he told demonstrable whoppers. There's an acronym that sums up his petulant, aggressive behavior: DARVO. It stands for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." From University of Oregon psychology professor Jennifer J. Freyd:The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim -- or the whistle blower -- into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of "falsely accused" and attacks the accuser's credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.Institutional DARVO occurs when the DARVO is committed by an institution (or with institutional complicity) as when police charge rape victims with lying. Institutional DARVO is a pernicious form of institutional betrayal.Here's a Daily Kos article, "Kavanaugh's opening remarks are a master class in a common sexual abuser defense tactic", that shows how Kavanaugh used the DARVO strategy to win over the judiciary committee. “YOU’LL BE SORRY, PEE-WEE HERMAN!” pic.twitter.com/Hys99RKS7F— Christopher Cooper (@ARTofCOOP) September 27, 2018 Read the rest

This stubby screwdriver fits into tight spaces.It took longer to find a screwdriver that fits than to remove the screen from my espresso machine, and clean the whole thing out. All the "short" screwdrivers I found have tiny blades or heads, mostly they are for glasses or tiny electronics repair. I broke two. A short wide bladed flathead screwdriver evaded me.This model lets me switch tips and will work for nuts as well as screws. Stubby made my day work out.Included are tips for 3/16-Inch and 1/4-Inch slotted, #1 and #2 Phillips, 1/4-Inch and 5/16-Inch nut drivers, and I am sure many of the tips from multiple other sets will fit.Stubby Screwdriver and Nut Driver 6-in-1 Multi-Bit, 2 Philips, 2 Flat Heads, 2 Nut Drivers Klein Tools 32561 via Amazon Read the rest

A silver tankard stuffed with lettuce was the prize at Norfolk, England's snail racing championship, with more than 150 gastropods in competition.The snails are placed on a special damp cloth marked with three concentric circles and the creatures race 13 inches (33 cm) to the outer ring.“We take this seriously,” snail racer John McClean told Reuters.“We have got training slopes. We look at diet, we are drug compliant as well. It is the whole thing when you look at elite sports.” Read the rest

: (◕(' 人 ') ◕) : Oh, the huge manatees! Need a mental health break? Step on in to our transparent canoe. 🛶The guy who runs the 'See Through Canoe' company in Florida makes and sells transparent canoes, and shares awesome wildlife encounters he has along the waterways of Florida. I love watching these, and find them very calming on difficult days. View this post on Instagram There's nothing like the experience of canoeing at night. In a transparent canoe. In deep water. Alone. . #canoeing #Kayaking #night #creepy #different #Canoe #awesome #amazing #stingray #Dolphins #fish #florida #Nature #ocean #saltlife #transparentcanoe #glassbottomboat #glassbottomkayak @naturee @oceanarmor @theocean24 @animalplanetA post shared by See Through Canoe (Since 2007) (@seethroughcanoecompany) on Sep 12, 2018 at 12:37pm PDT From the owner and filmmaker:Getting out & taking these videos is the best part of what I do, & I enjoy sharing them with other nature lovers. And I would still be taking and sharing these videos even if I didn't have the company.You can follow my adventures & wildlife encounters on the See Through Canoe company FaceBook page.[ALL of the images and photographs in this post courtesy of SeeThroughCanoeCompany] Read the rest

This recently-discovered dinosaur weighed 26,000 pounds when it stomped around South Africa's Free State Province 200 million years ago. The University of the Witwatersrand researchers who found the animal's fossils dubbed it Ledumahadi mafube which in the South African language of Sesotho means "a giant thunderclap at dawn." Like the brontosaurus, it walked on four legs and ate plants. From CNN:Apart from its massive size, there are other evolutionary details about the new species that make it entirely unique, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology."It shows us that even as far back as 200 million years ago, these animals had already become the largest vertebrates to ever walk the Earth," Choiniere said.The researchers believe that Ledumahadi was a transitional dinosaur, an evolutionary experiment itself during the Early Jurassic period. The forelimbs of this dinosaur are more "crouched," while being very thick to support its giant body. Read the rest

Patrick Kehoe, 23, was arrested Thursday at Dublin airport after "running after the plane on the tarmac". He had missed his flight.Witnesses said a man in his 20s broke through an airport door and ran toward the Ryanair plane, which was about to take off for Amsterdam, at around 7 a.m. The airport said that a man became “agitated” after he and a woman arrived at the gate too late for their flight. It said the man “broke through a door and made his way onto the apron, trying to flag the aircraft down.” Read the rest

John Frost writes, "Travis, a railroad engineer, recreated iconic buildings from Disneyland's Fantasyland in his spare time. The result is an incredibly detailed and faithful recreation of facades to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Scary Adventures and more."“I drew a scale plan of what space I had to work with then laid out walls where I felt would work,” said Travis. “Upon going through photos I took at Disneyland, I noticed that several of my wall plans lined up with the Fantasyland exteriors in my pictures. It must have been a subconscious inspiration.”Although he started the project in 2006 and worked on it from time to time, he began to get serious about completing it in 2015. He created a lot of the specialty pieces himself to get an accurate recreation of the exteriors.“I have many thousands of reference pictures collected from the internet, taken my me or by friends at my request for images of certain items or from certain angles,” said Travis. “From those I have tried to, within reason, faithfully reproduce those exteriors.”Disneyland’s Fantasyland recreated in incredible detail in a basement [John Frost/The Disney Blog] Read the rest

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian academic whose mysticism-soaked misogyny revolves around the social hierarchy of some lobster species and the literal existence of witches and dragons; somehow, when this rubbish is blended with anodyne life advice for angry manbabies, it creates a potent elixir that transforms internet dudes into an army of argumentative internet assholes.Peterson's principal grievance against progressive movements is that it interferes with his free speech rights (for example, he was very upset that he might have to refer to a hypothetical nonbinary student using a gender-neutral pronoun). But as much as Peterson loves free speech, he's not very good at sharing. He has sued and threatened to sue numerous critics, on flimsy and absurd grounds, in ways that, in my opinion, were designed to intimidate them into silence and forced apology rather than face his deep-pocketed legal weapons.Mike Masnick is definitely from the free speech wing of the free speech party and has faced extinction-level lawsuits over his willingness to criticize figures with expensive counsel and a willingness to use the law to stifle critics.Masnick called out Peterson's censorious hypocrisy in a sensible post that pointed out that defenders of the right to speak critically and offend people are assholes if they sue people who speak critically and offend them.Predictably, the Gamma Lobsters of Jordan Peterson's army came out in force to jordansplain that free speech is improved when wealthy, powerful people sue their critics.In response, Masnick has published a followup post with 12 rules for not being a total free speech hypocrite, which attempts the impossible: explaining the importance of consistency in free speech argument to people whose status as members in good standing of a personality cult requires that they deny this. Read the rest

You know we’re in for a fun week with the tabloids when the National Enquirer cover on “America’s Worst Sex Abuse Churches,” along with its handy guide – “Is Your Priest a Pervert?” – is topped by the banner: “Flip Over The Cover For 5 More Exclusives!” You turn the page with eager anticipation, and find . . . an ad for a walk-in bathtub. Perhaps the deception is designed to make you feel dirty, boosting sales for the tub?It’s a bait-and-switch tactic that seems to embody this week’s tabloid offerings.“Dying Perv Cosby Begs for New Kidney!” proclaims an Enquirer story about newly incarcerated sex offender Bill Cosby. Wouldn’t you think his defense attorneys might have mentioned this at his sentencing? Especially since his daughter Ensa died at 44 from renal disease in February. An unnamed source claims that Cosby refuses to have kidney transplant surgery at the hospital because “he’s convinced the hospital staff will sedate him, steal his organs and then sell them to settle up his unpaid legal bills.” Right. Because transplant surgeons are begging for organs from 81-year-old donors, and routinely offer their services to lawyers to recover debts.The British Royal Family continues to be an easy tabloid target, famed for its reluctance to sue for libel. "Queen Destroys Diana Murder Evidence – To Prevent Charles’ Arrest,” reports the National Examiner. That explains everything! Criminal mastermind Elizabeth “concocted a massive cover-up” after “conniving love rat” Charles “confessed to masterminding the murder of his ex-wife.” "She ordered MI6 agents to impound Diana’s death car, destroy damning tissue samples and do everything to hide the truth.” Right. Read the rest

Science fiction author, librettist, singer and historian Ada Palmer (previously), science and piracy historian Adrian Johns, and I have teamed up to create a seminar series at the University of Chicago called Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions, which compares and contrasts the censorship regimes and moral panics that flourished after the invention of the printing press with modern, computerized efforts to control and suppress information.We're putting on seven free, public seminars at the University of Chicago, with guest lecturers from a variety of disciplines, drawn from diverse institutions including the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and from diverse specializations including colonial censorship in occupied Korea under Japanese rule, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, contemporary state document redaction, and the literary consequences of colonialism in Sri Lanka (to name just a few).We're also putting on an exhibition at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Library, displaying censored materials selected and analyzed by a team of over 30 student researchers. Though the seminars and exhibition are fully funded, we're kickstarting a fund to pay for professional videography to produce accessible, subtitled, professional videos of the seminars and a catalog of the exhibition. We're looking to raise $5800. Premiums include printed copies of the catalog, a set of documents for you to expurgate at home (!), a redaction of your name in the official thank you page, autographed copies of the catalog, a personalized, autographed copy of one of Ada's or my novels, the ability to submit a question to the seminar, and chats with Ada, me, or one of several of our expert lecturers -- or, at the $400 level, you get a personalized tour of the exhibition with Ada. Read the rest

In 1769, a Peruvian noblewoman set out with 41 companions to join her husband in French Guiana. But a series of terrible misfortunes left her alone in the Amazon jungle. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Isabel Godin des Odonais on her harrowing adventure in the rain forest.We'll also learn where in the world "prices slippery traps" is and puzzle over an airport's ingenuity.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

This is Kiko the cat. Her human companion, Leah Piercey of Newfoundland, Canada, has just learned that Kiko enjoys getting her rump massaged by a severed, mechanical crawling Halloween hand. Hilarious? Or confirmation that cats don't actually need us?(Tastefully Offensive) Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Young Brett Kavanaugh attends Yale and continues his charmingly roguish antics, with the help of Donald J. Trump.

I love the Punkt MP01, a basic candybar-style cellphone whose few features are polished to perfection. But it has a big drawback: as a 2G device, it's effectively locked to T-Mobile in the U.S. and coverage is getting patchy. Enter the Punkt MP02, a 4G version with some other interesting upgrades: it's also a WiFi hotspot, it's the only non-BlackBerry handset to come with BlackBerry Secure Software, and it runs a customized version of Android, cut to the device's monochrome and minimalist design requirements. It'll be $349 when released, though, so you are certainly paying for your less-is-more. Read the rest

I am super happy with these low-carb but high-fat Butter Pecan Cookies.I went to Los Angeles a few months ago, and was body shamed. Body shaming assholes are flaming assholes, but the flaming asshole was right and I needed to lose some weight.Sigh.I went back to eating a super low-carb diet. It has worked for me many, many times. When I was in the best shape of my life, I was eating low-carb and training for marathons. I like low-carb diets.I also like cookies.Cookies are mostly flour, sugar and butter. Butter was no problem. Flour, I figured they are nut cookies, use a nut flour, right? While it seems antithetical to by-pass PECAN FLOUR in a Butter Pecan cookie, I found that pecan flour was too carb-rich, too calorie-rich and most-importantly-of-all had a strangely dilutive effect on the toasted pecan flavor. I think Butter Pecan cookies need to distinctly taste like butter and pecans.Turns out the far more readily available almond flour was the one for me. Easily found at most super markets, I have tried both the Trader Joe's brand Almond Flour and the Bob's Red Mill. While I always have a penchant for Oregon's finest things, I can discern absolutely no difference between the two.Replacing sugar was a pain in the ass. I did a lot of research, and then I talked to my fellow Boing Boing editor, and cookie eating pal, Xeni. I tried sweeteners with erythritol and xylitol. Not good. Read the rest

Here are soccer legend Pelé, comedy actor Don Knotts, and since-disgraced baseball hit king Pete Rose pitching the Atari Video Computer System in 1978. "Don't just watch television tonight - play it!" Read the rest

Big Tech companies -- like all the apex predators of all the world's concentrated industries -- is swimming in cash; but unlike those other firms, Big Tech is not using the cash merely for financial engineering; it's doing actual engineering, sinking $80B this year into capital expenditures that will form a wall around the industry's incumbents, which new firms will have to scale in order to challenge them.The new equipment includes robotic manufacturing plants, huge data-centers, undersea data-cables, and other infrastructure that might have been provided by a patchwork of service firms in an earlier era.The focus on infrastructure spending is a mixed bag: owning tech infrastructure is always a gamble, betting that it won't go obsolete before the owners have finished amortizing its purchase; if there are major breakthroughs in any of these technologies, new companies can avail themselves of them without having to take a painful write-down on last-generation tools.And of course, infrastructure spending does not contribute to inequality the way stock buybacks do. But Google parent Alphabet Inc. and the other four dominant U.S. technology companies—Apple, Amazon​.com, Microsoft, and Facebook—are fast becoming industrial giants. They spent a combined $80 billion in the last year on big-ticket physical assets, including manufacturing equipment and specialized tools for assembling iPhones and the powerful computers and undersea internet cables Facebook needs to fire up Instagram videos in a flash. Thanks to this surge in spending—up from $40 billion in 2015—they’ve joined the ranks of automakers, telephone companies, and oil drillers as the country’s biggest spenders on capital goods, items including factories, heavy equipment, and real estate that are considered long-term investments. Read the rest

Behold the personification of a ritalin pill and an anxiety attack. Sports Illustrated reports on Gritty, the Philadephia Flyers' new mascot.Philadelphia Flyers fans were in for a bit of a shock today: the Pennsylvania hockey team unveiled their new official mascot to the public. His name is Gritty. He looks like a rejected Muppet creation, a Where the Wild Things Are misfit or a stuffed animal gone seriously, terrifyingly rogue. He’s a bright orange, furry creature of bizarre design.This video clip shows Gritty's introduction to a group of children. The screams/cheers ratio is worthy of note. Read the rest

At a recent West Hollywood City Council meeting, a couple of guys from San Clemente had some sweet words in defense of Bird Scooters. Now, Chad Kroeger and JT Parr are no strangers to city council meetings. You may remember when they fought for their right to (house) party. A quick scan of their YouTube page reveals that they've since appeared at other council meetings and been guests on the Howard Stern Show twice.Gentlemen, respect. I'm dying over here. How do you keep a straight face when you deliver your statements?(swissmiss) Read the rest

Sasha Shulgin died in 2014 after a lifetime as a psychedelic pioneer and brilliant chemist, but the books he and his wife Ann Shulgin authored were just as radical as the lab work. Commemorative editions of PiHKAL and TiHKAL are about to be released and you can get them signed by Ann and a dozen other luminaries of the psychedelic world next month in Berkeley.Sasha Shulgin, inventor (in his lab in Lafayette) of literally 90+% of the known psychedelic compounds we enjoy today, and his wife Ann, wrote books Phenethylamines I have Known And Loved (PIHKAL) and Tryptamines I have Known And Loved (TIHKAL). The new commemorative edition of them has hundreds of candid photos (from Sasha as a boy to Ann & Sasha's courtship to photos of testing compounds, orange seventies couch and all) and a couple dozen essays from friends and colleagues. We're having a release party on 8 October at Moe's Books, and I hope to rock Ann's world with all the love from all the merry freaks whose lives they've improved over the years. It'll be an unusual opportunity to get the autograph of many of those luminaries all in one place, and Jon Hanna and David Presti will be speaking, as well as Ann, and we'll have a roundtable discussion with the contributors. Probably right up your alley and hopefully that of your readers as well.Starts 7 p.m. until 10 p.m., Oct 8., at Moe's Books on Telegraph Ave.Press release: Psychedelic Chemistry Cookbooks Reissued In Stunning Boxed Set Read the rest

Facebook's terms of service require users to use their real names; though thiis has lots of potential downsides (including allowing dictators to identify and round up opposition figures), you'd hope that it would at least be evenly applied -- for example, to law enforcement agencies like the Memphis Police Department, who use "Bob Smith" accounts to befriend and entrap activists online.US law enforcement makes quite a habit out of this kind of thing, and many forces have admitted in court to using fake Facebook identities to target suspects. Cops even get legal advice telling them this is OK, even though it violates Facebook's terms of service.The ACLU uncovered evidence of the fake Memphis PD accounts in the course of a civil rights lawsuit. EFF got the Memphis cops' Facebook accounts terminated after the news broke, and Facebook's lawyers sent a C&D to the Memphis cops telling them to end the practice.EFF's been chasing Facebook on this for four years, since the DEA was revealed to be using fake Facebook accounts in its investigations. After the Memphis incident, Facebook updated its law enforcement policies to make it clear that this conduct is not permissible.But as EFF's Dave Maass points out, Facebook users get lifetime bans for creating fake accounts. Shouldn't police departments that break the rules get equal justice?The presenter told the audience: “Police and Federal law enforcement may create a fake Facebook profile as part of an investigation and even though it violates the terms and policies of Facebook the evidence may still be used in court.”The question remains: what action should Facebook take when law enforcement intentionally violates the rules? Read the rest

Facebook usage is falling in the US and Canada, especially among young people, but it's still dominating the internet overseas, especially in countries where Zero Rating is legal.In those countries, Facebook -- more than any other technology, platform or service -- is leading the rise in authoritarianism and genocide. It's become the go-to tool for manipulating public opinion to support violence, racial cleansing and other horrors.In his latest piece, John Oliver describes how Facebook's business model, moderation tactics, and history have led to this moment -- and how Facebook has become an irredeemable cesspool, an insult to toilets, because toilets "make shit go away, whereas Facebook retains shit, disseminates shit to your acquaintances, and reminds you of shit from seven years ago while allowing corporations to put their shit in front of you. What I’m saying is there’s a purity and integrity to toilets that Facebook seriously lacks." An August investigation by Motherboard gets a shout-out in the piece, as Oliver references one of Facebook’s many internal content moderation rules—in this case, one that specifies the very specific instances in which photoshopped anuses are allowed on the site. Facebook has similar rules for hate speech (drawing the line on what’s allowed and what isn’t in often difficult ways to understand), which cut across cultures, countries, political regimes, and geographic borders.“I am not saying the challenges Facebook is facing are not significant. But for a company that moves fast and breaks things, they have sure moved slowly in trying to fucking fix them,” Oliver said. Read the rest

Redditor Ch8s3 created this custom game controller by creating a new case, seating the mainboard in it and soldering new LEDs on, then swapping out the buttons for dremeled-out shell-cases from a Luger 9MM, a Remington 20, and a 12 gauge Hornady 50 caliber. It's beautiful work. Read the rest

McDonald's workers in ten US cities staged a mass walkout last week, demanding that the company take action on the rampant sexual abuse and harassment in its franchisees' stores; as the workers pointed out, the company surveils and controls their every move on-shift down to the minutest detail, but can't seem to find any way to chase down reports that women are being groped and then fired if they refuse to perform sexual acts on their supervisors. What's more, the National Labor Relations Board has already held that McDonald's has a duty to look after the workers in its franchisees' stores (and some of the harassment has taken place in stores owned by McDonald's corporate itself).The walkout was coordinated with Fight For 15, a workers' rights campaign that was started to focus on purely economic issues (a $15 minimum wage) but whose remit is broadening to include all questions of workplace justice, including harassment of low-waged workers.As an excellent segment on this week's On the Media discusses, the McDonald's walkout is a new phase in the #MeToo story, whose highest-profile beats have focused on the workplace harassment of famous and powerful women, not sub-minimum-wage women working at fast-food restaurants.The wider focus on workplace justice has hit a nerve: the organizers who coordinated the walkout have found common cause with each other and the workers they inspired and have vowed to stay together. In the meantime, the labor action has highlighted the need for a union of McDonald's workers, which could organize the workers at the world's second-largest employer. Read the rest

Sipping on whiskey is already a sophisticated experience, but that doesn't mean you can't kick it up a notch. A perfect addition to your desk or home bar, the Eravino Whiskey Globe Decanter features a beautifully etched map on the surface and an eye-catching glass ship inside, bringing an entirely new level of class to your top shelf drinks. You can get it on sale today for $24.99.This decanter can store up to 30 ounces of bourbon, whiskey, scotch, vodka or other spirits inside and comes with a tight-fitting glass knob to maintain freshness. The decanter makes for an impressive sight as your spirit's waves crash against the glass ship inside when you pour a drink, and you can easily place it anywhere thanks to the included hardwood stand.The Eravino Whiskey Globe Decanter retails for $55.99, but you can get it on sale today for $24.99 in the Boing Boing Store. Read the rest

When Vancouver tech retailer NCIX went bankrupt, it stopped paying its bills, including the bills for the storage where its servers were being kept; that led to the servers being auctioned off without being wiped first, containing sensitive data -- addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, etc -- for thousands of customers. Also on the servers: tax and payroll information for the company's employees.In August, security researcher Travis Doering of Privacy Fly found NCIX servers being sold off on Craigslist; the seller, described as "an Asian man from Richmond" who called himself "Jeff," said he bought many NCIX servers and computers, as well as hundreds of hard-drives with sensitive company data on them. Doering verified that Jeff's servers held hundreds of thousands of credit-card numbers and millions of customer orders, as well as a backup image of the personal computer of NCIX founder Steve Wu.Jeff told Doering that he had already sold copies of some of NCIX's internal data to another customer, and offered to let Doering buy the right to copy the hard-drives on NCIX's systems, rather than the systems themselves.NCIX appears not to have encrypted any of its systems.The examination portion of the meeting began to wind-down as time flew by and Jeff jumped into brokering a deal over a cup of tea. The first offer was thirty-five thousand dollars which would allow me to purchase all the desktop’s and server hardware, excluding one group of hard drives that I had analyzed which he would allow me to copy. Read the rest

"Do you remember the 21st night of September?" Happy 40th anniversary to Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," which was actually released on November 18, 1978. What's the significance of September 21 in the lyrics? Well, none."We went through all the dates: 'Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth ... ' and the one that just felt the best was the 21st," co-writer Allee Willis told NPR in 2014. "I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So ... sorry!" Do you remember? 🤔— Earth, Wind & Fire (@EarthWindFire) September 21, 2018 Read the rest

If a Bob Ross TOASTER isn't gloriously leaping over the "officially-licensed Bob Ross merchandise shark" with red, white, and blue streamers, I don't know what is! Don't get me wrong, I love every inch of its modern-day kitsch aesthetic. From Bob's smiling mug and signature on the toaster's front to the feature that actually chars an image of the late great Joy of Painting host on the bread itself, fro and all. It's truly something to behold. But I can't help but feel sad that Mr. Ross himself wasn't around to experience his fantastic late-capitalism legacy. It's touted as, "The perfect present to cheer up any artist's kitchen." You can get one for the artist in your life for $39.95.(Foodiggity, Odditymall) Read the rest

Absolutely stellar work by comic artist and "animotion" director Dmitry "Ahriman" Grozov of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Follow Ahriman on Patreon and Instagram. Read the rest

Jordan Peterson, the Jungian psychologist, vaguely Gorean guru of the "masculine spirit" and crusader against political correctness, has threatened to sue author Kate Manne and Vox.com over an interview where she described portions of his book as sexist.Manne is an author and Cornell University assistant professor. Howard Levitt, Peterson's lawyer, demanded that the interview, posted as "A feminist philosopher makes the case against Jordan Peterson", be removed from the internet. Irin Carmon reports:Among the statements Levitt objected to: Manne’s contention that Peterson’s book included “some really eyebrow-raising, authoritarian-sounding, and even cruel things,” as well as her observation that “it doesn’t seem accidental that [Peterson’s] skepticism about objective facts arises when it’s conveniently anti-feminist.” The lawyer and his client were equally unhappy with this line: “I also suspect that for many of Peterson’s readers, the sexism on display above is one tool among many to make forceful, domineering moves that are typical of misogyny.”I haven't read the book Manne discussed, but among the other things Peterson is famous for is suggesting that women who wear makeup to work are hypocrites if they then complain about sexual harassment. He works, in this respect, as a gooey strand of connective tissue between the superficies of academia and the little feminine things that enrage weak men everday.Vox has no plans to remove its interview with Manne.Vox’s Sean Illing wrote that he interviewed Manne precisely because she, “unlike many Peterson critics, actively engaged with his ideas.” Says Illing of Peterson’s saber-rattling, “I found the request absurd and forwarded it to our legal advisers, who confirmed that it was baseless, and then I happily ignored it. Read the rest

Ed Whelan, the president of a conservative think tank and a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, has been promising a silver-bullet exoneration of Brett Kavanaugh, the alleged drunken teen sex pest, all week long.Kavanaugh was all set to sail into the Supreme Court until Dr. Christine Ford, a California psychologist, accused him of trying to rape her at a house party in the early 1980s, when she was 15 and he 17. Whelan's shot finally came this evening in the form of a tweetstorm that suggests a Kavanaugh classmate and supposed lookalike was the attacker Ford describes.His theory is reproduced below. It's absolutely batshit. (Whelan has doxxed foolishly in the past and had to apologize accordingly for such "uncharitable conduct".) [UPDATE 2: Whelan has apologized accordingly: "I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake."]I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake.— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) September 21, 2018[UPDATE 1: Ford denies Whelan's accusation: “I knew them both, and socialized with” them, Ford said, adding that she had once visited the other classmate in the hospital. Read the rest

Former Republican political operative David Brock has since turned on the right, but he once famously trashed Anita Hill's reputation to help ensure Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Paste Magazine's Shane Ryan noticed that in his 2002 memoir, Blinded By the Right, he detailed this moment in 1997: As I arrived at the house, which was decked out in an oversized southwestern motif more appropriate for a bachelor’s mountain hideaway, the network cameras were coming on. When I saw one of Ken Starr’s deputies, Brett Kavanaugh, who was sitting across from me, mouth the word “bitch” when the camera panned to Hillary, I excused myself and sat in the darkened pine-scented dining room alone, smoking.There's an idea that everything liberals and the left thinks disqualifies Kavanaugh — especially being a blackout-drunk teenage sex predator — only makes him more popular among conservatives and the right. This quote fits that idea so perfectly it could hardly be more on-the-nose. Read the rest

Lightning cables typically fray at the ends causing the wire to break. I wish Apple used plain old microUSB cables, because I have about 100 of them for other devices and they seem to last longer than Lightning cables. Instead, I have to constantly buy replacement Lightning cables. These Lightning cables have connecters at right-angles to the cable, which might reduce the wear and tear. The cables themselves are braided, too, for additional robustness. They are MFi Certified. Read the rest

In 2013, Deputy Luis Ortiz was the "school resource officer" at Etiwanda Intermediate in San Bernardino County, California, when he arrested a group of 12- and 13-year-old girls, cuffing them and taking them to jail in a police vehicle; at the time and afterward, Ortiz said he arrested them "to prove a point" because he felt they were "unresponsive and disrespectful" and in his belief, introducing them to the criminal justice system would make them "mature a lot faster."The girls had been involved in "ongoing incidents of bullying and fighting." Ortiz had been called in to "mediate the conflict." When he decided he couldn't tell who the victims were and who the bullies were, he arrested all of them, "within minutes."Ortiz is the subject of lawsuits over his conduct, and he has been seeking to use "qualified immunity" (which protects individual officers from civil liability for actions taken in the course of their duties) to escape the suit.The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court just told him to go fuck himself. The lawsuits will continue. At the time of the students’ arrest, it was clearly established that a police seizure at the behest of school officials must, at a minimum, be “reasonably related to its purpose, and must not be ‘excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.’” Defendants do not—and indeed, cannot—meaningfully contest Deputy Ortiz’s motivation for the arrests, which he stated multiple times. No reasonable officer could have reasonably believed that the law authorizes the arrest of a group of middle schoolers in order to prove a point. Read the rest