Boing Boing

You may have noticed of late that things in America are becoming less, well, American.A cruel misogynist with dangerously racist beliefs is running the show. Nazis and bigots of all stripes no long fear giving voice to their hatred in public. The nation's journalists and the free flow of information are under attack. The government is working hard to defund the healthcare apparatus designed to protect the country's most vulnerable citizens. Piece by piece, the country's institutions, its heart and soul are being torn asunder, paving the way for something new. After reading Timothy Snyder's most recent book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, I gotta tell you, if you're scared of the outcome of all of this, chances are you're likely not scared enough.Snyder is a scholar who specializes in the history of the the 20th century and, more pointedly, the holocaust. His knowledge of how a country's slow slide into fascism at the whim of a tyrant can occur is beyond reproach, given his academic street cred: he's the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, a Committee on Conscience member at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. What I'm getting at is that he knows from bad shit, how it starts and historically, how it's gone down. With the current political and popular climate in a number of nations around the world, he's concerned that the ugliest parts of humanity are ready to rear their heads once again.On Tyranny's only 126 pages long. Over the course of the book's 20 easy-to-read chapters, Snyder explains the signs that can be seen in the lead up to a fascist regime, sites brutal examples of where these signs have pointed to in the past, and what we as individuals can do to stand against the tide of such authoritarianism and hatred. From the book:"The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wider than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or Communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience."No matter which side of the political fence you walk on, the lessons that the book offers make for essential reading. If you're interested and can't find the book at your local library, getting your hands on a copy of your own won't cost you much. Amazon's got it in paperback for $6.39, as an audiobook for $5.95 and Kindle owners can read it for just $3.99. That's a small price to pay for a tool that'll help you know fascism when you see it and how to stand against it when it comes.Image via Seamus Bellamy

The European Journal of Internal Medicine published a study that found 93.7% of seniors benefited from cannabis treatment.During the study period, 2736 patients above 65 years of age began cannabis treatment and answered the initial questionnaire. The mean age was 74.5 ± 7.5 years. The most common indications for cannabis treatment were pain (66.6%) and cancer (60.8%). After six months of treatment, 93.7% of the respondents reported improvement in their condition and the reported pain level was reduced from a median of 8 on a scale of 0-10 to a median of 4. Most common adverse events were: dizziness (9.7%) and dry mouth (7.1%). After six months, 18.1% stopped using opioid analgesics or reduced their dose.This goes against US Attorney General Jeff Sessions claim that cannabis use leads to more opiate use.Image: Stay Regular

Details have emerged about Karen Smith, the teacher who allegedly assaulted a boy who did not stand for the pledge of allegiance. The BBC reports that she was charged with "child abuse - recklessly and with injury" and with third-degree assault after picking him up by the clothes and dragging him out of class.Local school officials say students can sit or stand during the pledge. Federal law permits students to sit.The school district released a statement to parents after the arrest saying they "are co-operating with the District Attorney's Office and respect their decision on this matter"."We are unable to comment further because it remains a personnel matter that the school district is actively investigating." If the reporting is true, it wasn't simply inappropriate or excessively physical discipline: Smith committed an act of political violence against a child.

Trump's self-aggrandizing military parade, with flown-in tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, will cost cost $10M-$30M, according to the White House budget director. Trump's self-aggrandizing military parade, with flown-in tanks rolling down the streets of The president has said that he wants to celebrate the armed forces with a spectacle akin to the Bastille Day parade in France.Trump's self-aggrandizing military parade, with flown-in tanks rolling down the streets of The last such celebration in Washington occurred in the summer 1991 when the end of the 41-day Persian Gulf War was celebrated with a $12 million dollar victory parade.Trump's self-aggrandizing military parade, with flown-in tanks rolling down the streets of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said earlier this month that he is working to develop plans to fulfill the president’s request.Trump's self-aggrandizing military parade, with flown-in tanks rolling down the streets of “We’re all aware in this country of the president’s affection and respect for the military,” Mr. Mattis said. “We have been putting together some options, we will send them up to the White House for decision.”Trump's self-aggrandizing military parade, with flown-in tanks rolling down the streets of Some Republicans have been reluctant to endorse a military parade. Last week, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said “confidence is silent and insecurity is loud” and that the United States did not need to show off its power.According to Wounded Warrior, there are over 50,000 homeless veterans in the United States.Image by Chmee2 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

What do Jesus Christ, Herman Munster, TinkerBell and Elvis Presley have in common? Readers of this week’s Globe magazine can choose between life-like statuettes of all four, and I can’t help wondering which will be the biggest seller, and what that might tell us about those tabloid lovers.The bronze Jesus lights up as a “radiant testimony to faith,” while Elvis sings, Herman Munster plays his TV show’s theme song, and TinkerBell . . . well, she just stands there looking cute, inviting you to “put your faith in pixie dust,” which is probably not dissimilar to what Jesus is offering.Who are these tabloid readers, who are also met with ads offering a mirrored music box to present to “My Granddaughter,” a KISS decanter set, liver cleanse pills, a walk-in bathtub, compression socks and a no-collateral $35,000 loan? Is their target audience really aging diabetic grandmother glam rock fans with a nostalgia for ‘50s pop music and ‘60s TV? The tabloids certainly continue to linger nostalgically over ancient stories, re-telling them as if new again. “Got Him!” screams the cover of the National Enquirer, now accusing actor Robert Wagner of the “premeditated murder” of wife Natalie Wood, and promising that “new evidence” means the actor “will die in jail.” No, he won’t. The “new evidence” is yet another rehash of old information, whipped up by the co-author of a 2011 book about Wood’s death. Don’t expect to see Wagner doing a perp walk any time soon.O.J. Simpson has vowed to “decapitate” Kim Kardashian, claims the Enquirer, which will come as no surprise to its readers who last year were told that O.J. plans to “kill everyone” who ever crossed him. Last August they ran a variation on this theme, claiming that Simpson planned to murder Kim’s mother Kris Jenner, claiming: “O.J. blames Kris for everything. Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s all her fault.” And now it’s apparently Kim’s fault. I’m sure Kris will be relieved.“Queen bans Fergie from Harry’s wedding!” declares the Globe cover, which would be fine if the Queen actually wrote Prince Harry’s wedding guest list, but it’s not her wedding, not her list. Expect the toe-sucking, Royal influence-peddling Duchess of York to appear at some point on the couple's happy day.Paul McCartney is blamed by the Globe “for daughter’s mental breakdown,” claiming that the “superstar drove her into insane asylum.” Daughter Heather McCartney apparently found it “hell being part of a superstar family.” I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. When did Heather seek help in a mental institution? In the 1980s, the rag reveals deep into its story – some 30 years ago. How is Heather today, you wonder? “Doing great,” an unnamed source tells the Globe. And this is what passes for breaking news in the tabloids.Slightly more contemporary, the Globe reports: “Obama deliberately let war heroes die!” A Veterans Affairs contractor allegedly denied medical claims for profit while Obama was president, and thus “Obama has blood on his hands!” No doubt Obama personally ordered the scandalous fraud, The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that a whistleblower’s False Claims Act suit can proceed to trial, but the Globe reports this as if the allegations were proven and the case won, which is hardly the case.Us magazine devotes its cover to the "Sex & The City" cat fight between Sarah Jessica Parker and nemesis Kim Cattrall, reporting: “The Feud Gets Worse: Bullying, Lies & Betrayal.” Evidently they have been warring since SATC’s second TV season, and the chances of a third SATC movie are dead. Not that you’d know it reading People magazine’s cover story on Sarah Jessica Parker, who tells all about “motherhood, marriage and four decades of fame.” But her feud with Cattrall – not so much. “There was no fight,” she tells the mag. “It was completely fabricated.” Then how do you explain Cattrall’s recent social media post attacking SJP: “You are not my friend” . . ?Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us to tell us that Zoe Saldana wore it best, TV’s "The Bachelor" star Arie Luyendyk Jr. has a tattoo of Les Miserables’ Jean Valjean’s prisoner number “24601” (perhaps Arie was also harshly persecuted for stealing a loaf of bread?), that U.S. Olympic snowboarder Jamie Anderson takes no chances and carries "a religious charm and a lucky stone” in her Ralph Lauren bag, and that the stars are just like us: they browse in bookstores, haul groceries, and pull up to the McDonald’s drive-through window.The National Examiner offers us the week’s most practical news you can use: “10 amazing uses for kitty litter.” Apparently it can be used as a trash can deodorizer, paint thickener, pest repellent, grill liner, cell phone dryer, shoe de-stinker, sidewalk slip-preventer, and as a beauty mask – though presumably that works best before your cat gets to it. How about a feature next week on Ten Amazing Uses for the Tabloids? Cat litter should be top of the list.Onwards and downwards . . .

Salon announced this week that visitors who insist on using an ad blocker must either disable it or mine cryptocurrency for the site.For our beta program, we’ll start by applying your processing power to mine cryptocurrencies to recoup lost ad revenue when you use an ad blocker. We plan to further use any learnings from this to help support the evolution and growth of blockchain technology, digital currencies and other ways to better service the value exchange between content and user contribution.Your unused processing power are the resources you already have but are not actively using to it’s full potential at the time of browsing salon.com. Mining uses more of your resources which means your computer works a bit harder and uses more electricity than if you were just passively browsing the site with ads.Who will be the first to sue Salon, claiming the mining software melted their laptop?

In 1990, once NASA's twin Voyager probes had completed their grand tour of the solar system, it came time to shut off their cameras to preserve power and memory for the other scientific instruments onboard. But before that happened, there was one last photo opportunity not to be missed. Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager Imaging Team, persuaded NASA engineers to turn Voyager I’s cameras back toward the sun and take the first ever ”portrait” of our solar system from outside of it. Taken on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1990, thirty-nine wide-angle views and twenty-one narrow-angle images were combined into the single mosaic image below, a “Solar System Family Portrait,” albeit without Mars, Mercury, or Pluto. Centered in a scattered light ray caused by sunlight in the camera’s optics is a tiny speck, just .12 pixels in size, seen in the image above. That’s Earth from 4 billion miles away -- the “pale blue dot” as Sagan called it.“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” Sagan wrote. “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”Below, Sagan's inspiring Pale Blue Dot speech:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5FwsblpT8

Yorkshire artist James Brunt uses rocks and all sorts of other natural objects like sticks, leaves and nuts to create lovely symmetrical mandalas for strangers to find while out and about. (more…)

Here's a story of an Internet-addicted Uber passenger looking for humanity, told with a deck of cards and slight of hand. It's also a clever ad for the kickstarter game Sin Rummy. Although Mark, who belongs to a monthly magic club, knows how the magic part of this is done, I found it captivating and baffling. Kickstarter ad or not, it's worth a watch.

In an inevitable development, Giphy, which created a very handy platform for creating GIFs from existing content, is now bringing influencers into their studios to deliberately create original GIFs in hopes of getting some of that seconds-long heat for brands. (more…)

You can't game your way out of the ludic loop any more than you can smoke your way out of a crack habit, but Katie Bloom's found some interesting apps that aim to help us take back control.My favorite tool for doing this is Forest, an app that costs $1.99 and looks like it was designed for children, which is sort of pleasantly degrading. It’s been the #1 productivity app in the App Store for over a year; its only purpose is to help you stop touching your phone. Tap a button, sprout a little digital plant, and leave your phone alone until the allotted time is up. I use Forest every day, which has made me realize how often I pick up my phone for no reason, a feeling like walking into a room only to forget what I was planning to do there. It is depressing but instructive. As the stakes are technically nonexistent, I imagine this app is only truly useful for Catholics and others with a highly refined guilt palate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orv9OJDUnWM&feature=youtu.beWelker turns up in the credits of seemingly ever cartoon that involves precisely customized animal noises. Seeing him work is a lot of fun, claw gestures and all."Great. Yeah, that was good."

Peter K. Rosenthal faces an existential crisis after watching 'Fifty Shades Freed' and learning the nature of his predicament. For as long as I remember I've been imprisoned here, forced to watch an endless cavalcade of rote, insipid moviemaking. ... Every DVD I watch is slipped in on a tray. Recently, for some reason, they've also been putting this revolver on it.

In this security-camera video, an attempted break-in somewhere in China goes very wrong almost from the outset. [via]

French food artist/animator Alexandre Dubosc has done it again. He's created another incredibly impressive zoetrope, this time with a cat theme (previously). It's called "Gâteau Gato" ("cat cake") and it is really quite a delight to watch. I'm not sure which I like better, the curling cookie tongues or the little white mice scurrying away. Fortunately, I don't have to decide.Dubosc doesn't say how long the cake took to bake, assemble, and film on its "making of" page, but given how detailed the piece is, I'd say many, many hours.

See the tiny dot in the center of the photo above? That's a single strontium atom, visible to the naked eye. University of Oxford quantum physicist David Nadlinger's photo (full image below) won this year's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's scientific photography competition. “The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the miniscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality," Nadlinger says. "A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed the numbers to be on my side, and when I set off to the lab with camera and tripods one quiet Sunday afternoon, I was rewarded with this particular picture of a small, pale blue dot.”From the EPSRC:'Single Atom in an Ion Trap’, by David Nadlinger, from the University of Oxford, shows the atom held by the fields emanating from the metal electrodes surrounding it. The distance between the small needle tips is about two millimetres.When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet colour the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph. The winning picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap.Laser-cooled atomic ions provide a pristine platform for exploring and harnessing the unique properties of quantum physics. They can serve as extremely accurate clocks and sensors or, as explored by the UK Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub, as building blocks for future quantum computers, which could tackle problems that stymie even today’s largest supercomputers.See all of the stunning prize winners here: "Single Trapped Atom Captures Science Photography Competition's top prize" (EPSRC)

Are you a left-wing authoritarian, a right-wing authoritarian, a left-wing libertarian, or a right-wing libertarian? I took this 6-page online test and was not surprised to learn that I'm in the left libertarian quadrant, right next to Bernie Sanders. Take the test here and report your results in the comments.

Deepfakes -- videos with incredibly realistic faceswapping, created with machine learning techniques -- are creepy as hell, except when they're not (then they're a form of incredibly expressive creativity with implications for both storytelling and political speech). (more…)

"Let's Ban Porn," writes Ross Douthat in the Op-Ed pages of the NY Times. Good luck with that, writes Peter Suderman of Reason, who says "Douthat's core worry is effectively the same fear that drove socially conservative criticisms of video games, action movies, and Dungeons & Dragons — that teenagers will be unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and will reenact what they see on screen in real life."Here's what would have to happen to ban porn, says Suderman:Stop the porn industry from producing porn, "forcing, at minimum, every person who has ever attended the Adult Video News Awards in a professional capacity to immediately find a new line of work."Stop websites from distributing porn.Stop everyday people who videotape themselves having sex.To be at all effective, you would also need to enforce criminal penalties against former professionals who continued to produce porn for the black market. And you'd need to penalize thrill-seeking amateurs as well, which would mean going after, and perhaps locking up, a wide array of sympathetic and otherwise law-abiding individuals from all walks of life whose only crime was to record and distribute consensual sexual activity. You'd also need to punish illicit viewers, whose numbers could easily reach into the tens of millions.This project would be difficult, unpopular, and there would be no guarantee that it would work at all. Many of the most popular domestic hubs for porn would probably move to protected locations overseas. But it is at least plausible that if you devoted sufficient public resources and effort on the part of law-enforcement, you might—might—be able to reduce, if not eliminate, porn consumption.Yet even if such a ban worked (in the narrow sense of reducing the porn viewership), you would, inevitably, also leave a thriving black market—on private websites, in hush-hush DVD-distribution networks, in windowless basement studios, and countless other forums designed to avoid the attention of the porn police.Image: "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife," by Hokusai (1814)

Radiflow reports that they discovered cryptojacking software -- malware that mines cryptocurrency -- running in the monitoring and control network of an unnamed European water utility, the first such discovery, and a point of serious concern about the security and integrity of critical infrastructure to both targeted and untargeted attacks. (more…)

I like to imagine what My Buddy would be like all grown up."Buddy" is probably doing hard time for hard crime. Where were their parents?

What started off as an experiment to see how many matches it would take to create a sphere ended up as a gorgeous video of what a 42,000-match sphere looks like when it burns. It took months and months to glue the matchsticks together, and only minutes to go from flames to black smoking ball. The fiery green sphere was shot from three different angles – watch them all, as each angle has its own dramatic beauty.

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Here's part four of my reading (MP3) (part three, part two, part one) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015's Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It's my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.MP3

I know very little about this webcomic, called "Синие Зубы городская легенда" (Google translation: "Blue Teeth Urban Legend"). The beautifully-rendered panels (many of which are animated) look like they were made on a circa-1985 Macintosh. The comic is quite NSFW, so be warned.Update: artist is Uno Moralez. Here's a 2012 interview with him. [via The World's Best Ever]

Several years ago, the Bodleian Library mounted an exhibition called Playing with History. It featured one game enthusiast's historical collection of games and pastimes with an eye toward how games have been used through the ages to address the issues, challenges, and ideals of the time. One of the more fascinating games in the collection is Suffragetto, a board game from sometime around 1908/9 (the release date is debated). Suffragetto was created by members of the militant British suffragette group known as the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). A piece on Suffrajitsu explains gameplay:Players enact the roles of either the suffragettes, represented by 21 green markers, or police constables, represented by 21 dark blue markers. The suffragettes’ object is to occupy the House of Commons with six markers while defending their home base of the Albert Hall against the police, whose object is, likewise, to occupy Albert Hall while defending the House of Commons.Apparently, the Bodleian Library copy of the over 100-year-old game is the only one known to exist. But, thanks to Suffrajitsu, you can play an online version, and thanks to GA Tech, you can also download and print the game, including the box art. Bone up, kids. We might be playing this on the streets again in the near future.[H/T Laura Spitale McGough]

The software developer Simone Seagle has taken the images of several paintings in the Met collection – released on open access – and transformed them into lovely and moody animated interactives.You can see a bunch of them here on her own web site, and at the Met's site she's written an essay meditating on the process. It's an ode to the enormous creativity that's uncorked when we legally allow artists (encourage them, even!) to transform the works of their forebears ...Beyond the joy I get from creating these interactives, I have two other goals—first, to engage with some of my favorite works of art and share them, and second, to demonstrate how math and programming can combine with these works of art to create something new. As I look through The Met's online collection, I try to imagine how each piece would come to life if it could. I choose art that resonates with me personally, and also make sure that the work's tone won't make cutting it up and animating it seem disrespectful. Many pieces of art would need an expert animator to bring them to life convincingly—especially the nearly photorealistic classical paintings. I create more generative types of animation that involve moving and flexing different elements, which is more suited to highly stylized works of art, like those produced around the turn of the 20th century: Art Nouveau, Modernism, Expressionism, and Impressionism. These are some of my favorite works and styles, with pieces that are colorful, exuberant, and not too difficult to pick apart for animations. [snip]Sometimes I wonder what the artists would think if they saw what I was doing. I hope they would appreciate it, but I'll never know. And perhaps it doesn't matter—that's the beauty of what The Met has done with Open Access. The art that was just for a few now belongs to all, and those with the will and imagination can play with, modify, and augment these works as they see fit. I come to these pieces with my own background and perspective, but there are millions of different ways to approach them for millions of different purposes. I am excited to see what comes next(Animated gif used with permission of Simone Seagle)

There should be a rule with amazing trick shot videos like these that the number of takes for each shot be placed in the annotations. (more…)

Gregory Kaczor had a lifelong dream to skate across Lake Baikul, and he made this lovely documentary of his travels. It's cool how he uses chunks of ice to secure the tent, and the clarity of the ice and water below is something to behold. (more…)

https://youtu.be/_k02Waw4WXkJudy Blume is Amanda Palmer's ballad in honor of the author's 80th birthday, celebrating her decades of service in helping young women to navigate a world that labels them as crazy and vain, the nagging sense that it's "just me": "The experiences of her teenage characters ― Deenie, Davey, Tony, Jill, Margaret ― are so thoroughly enmeshed with my own memories that the line between fact and fiction is deliciously thin. My memories of these characters, though I’d prefer to call them “people” ― of Deenie getting felt up in the dark locker room during the school dance; of Davey listlessly making and stirring a cup of tea that she has no intention of drinking; of Jill watching Linda, the fat girl in her class, being tormented by giggling bullies ― are all as vivid, if not more so, as my own memories of kissing Stephen Lee in our elementary school’s auditorium closet atop a pile of gymnastics mats (fourth grade), of being teased by Mike O’Curtin for being too flat-chested (all of sixth and seventh grades), or of discovering that an empty plastic ice pop sheath makes a pretty good dildo when filled with warm water (summer of eighth grade. And believe me, it was a truly great summer.)"

From the galleries, the music grows louder and more complex as the slaves, surgically operated upon to sing but one perfect note each, are stimulated to more passionate efforts. Even the young emperor is moved by the sinister harmony of their song which in few ways resembles anything previously uttered by the human voice. Why should their pain produce such marvellous beauty? he wonders. Or is all beauty created through pain? Is that the secret of great art, both human and Melnibonean?The Emperor Elric closes his eyes. — Michael Moorcock, Elric of Melnibone

Tom Blachford chronicled Palm Springs at midnight (previously). Now he's back with Nihon Noir, a Blade Runner inspired look at Tokyo at night, like this imposing shot of the Edo-Tokyo Museum. (more…)

Never let your pristine kicks touch the filthy ground with these thick-soled shoe-sandals. They strap onto another pair of shoes, in this case a pair of military-style, high-top sneakers.Both pairs are the latest offerings of Chinese fashion brand Sankuanz who unveiled the bulky combo on the runway at Paris Men's Fashion Week in late January.NPR reports:[Sankuanz] sent male models down the runway wearing high top sneakers — that never actually touched the runway."They're transformable sneakers that have an outer layer of protective sandal that you can enter Velcro into and you can strap them on or off," is how Sankuanz publicist Courtney Wittich describes the concept.But ultimately, they look like big-cushioned, rubber and plastic orthopedic Birkenstocks — with Velcro straps — and you strap them on top of your existing shoes.Or they look like open-concept galoshes. That's up to you..."You can walk totally normal in them and it gives you an extra layer of protection and then also height," Wittich says.I wonder if they were inspired by these vintage Space Boots from the late sixties:Or maybe by these Moon Shoes:Either way, the shoe-sandals will be available in August for $355 and I don't think the sneakers are included in that price.image 1 via Hypebeast, image 2 via Ebay, image 3 via Amazon

News of Trump White House speech writer David Sorensen's resignation hit late Friday as the WaPo prepared a story on his ex-wife's allegations of violent domestic abuse. The White House said they learned of the accusations from her on Thursday. (more…)

In 1969, Irv Teibel(1938-2010) released a record that would have a profound impact on ambient and New Age music that's continues to this day. "Environments 1: Psychologically Ultimate Seashore" was the first in a catalog of albums that melded pop psychology with environmental sound recording to sooth the mind. Over the years, Treibel's company Syntonic Ressearch Inc. produced 11 albums with 22 soundscapes ranging from "Optimum Aviary" to "Wood-Masted Sailboat" to "Ultimate Heartbeat." "The music of the future isn't music," Teibel said.Now, audio archaeologist Douglas Mcgowan, curator of the sublime I Am The Center New Age compilation that I raved about here, Syntonic Research Inc, and the fine folks at Numero Group have brought the Environments catalog to iOS. Environments is now a fantastic $2.99 app with all 22 remastered long-form soundscapes in easily swipeable form. It's intuitive, beautifully minimalist, and a perfect evolution of the original work. Turn on, tune in, chill out.Environments for iOS (iTunes)For the whole Environments story, read: Natural Selection (Pitchfork)https://youtu.be/V10Df3GKvfs

This modern cobbler shows us how to make a smart pair of sneakers using a Prusa i3 MK2 3D printer, some fabric, and a few other household tools and materials. Definitely worth a try!

Following reports this week that Mick Mulvaney, Trump's new chief of the Consumer Finance Protection Board had stopped all activity related to probing the Equifax breach in which the sensitive financial data of virtually every adult American was stolen, 32 Democratic senators have written to Mulvaney demanding that he account for himself. (more…)

Linda at Eponases creates all kinds of cool cross-stich projects, but this massive piece of Pokemon characters is out of this world. (more…)

If squeezing pimples until they pop and ooze pus sounds appealing to you, then you'll want to check out the Pop It Pal. It's a fleshy, blemish-blowing novelty toy that lets you obsessively squeeze out "pus" without tearing apart your own skin. The married couple behind it, Billy and Summer Pierce, came up with the idea one day while driving. Billy explains:You see, one day, my wife and I were driving down the road.She said: "How awesome would it be if we could make a pimple that felt real and the pop was huge, just like those videos we watch?"I thought: "You might be on to something Dear."Maybe, just maybe, this means she would STOP picking on me all the time. Ladies and Gentlemen, I KNOW you know what I'm talking about.So, I spent the next year figuring out how to make it happen. It's now available in their online shop for $19.99. "Pus" refills are available for $5.99.

If you've never seen an octopus hatch, now is your chance. These cute baby Caribbean reef octopuses, the size of a pinky nail, were hatched at the Virginia Aquarium. The way they immediately darken to purple is a fun surprise.According to The Verge:The video, posted by the Virginia Aquarium, shows a baby Caribbean reef octopus (Octopus briareus) no bigger than a pinky nail hatching from a bundle of eggs. As for the color change, these octopuses are known to be masters of disguise. “It was going into an instant camouflage as soon as it came out of the egg,” says Julie Levans, senior curator at the aquarium. These octopuses use specialized muscles to open and close little sacs of pigment in their skin called chromatophores — and this little guy was probably responding to the black tabletop beneath its tank.The baby octopus’s mom arrived at the aquarium about six months ago, and four months later, she laid between 100 and 200 eggs. Since this softball-sized species is solitary and also sometimes cannibalistic, this octopus lives alone at the aquarium. The eggs themselves weren’t surprising — female octopuses typically lay eggs. “What did catch us by surprise was the fact that they were fertilized,” Levans says.ICYMI: Your daily squee has arrived. #octobabies pic.twitter.com/D9e5T5bkun— Virginia Aquarium (@VAAquarium) February 7, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcDPOvFdUcEIsaac Protiva wanted to know who was behind the "Stop City-Funded Internet" campaign that was pouring a fortune into scuttling the plan to build a fast, efficient, low-cost city network in his hometown of West Plains, Missouri; after a lot of digging, he discovered that (naturally), the "collection of fiscally conservative Missourians" who were nominally behind the site was actually the local cable-monopoly, Fidelity Communications, who came clean (but never apologized). (more…)

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David Daley's hugely important 2016 book Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy uses original documents to trace the Republican master gerrymandering plan -- which gave them disproportionate control in several states, allowing them to redraw federal districts to repeat the feat at the national level -- to meetings in 2009; but a pair of leaked Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) powerpoints show that GOP strategists were scheming and fundraising to ensure that their candidates would wield power regardless of popular support at least a year and a half earlier. (more…)

I traveled to Japan to buy a notebook.As a tech journalist and hardware reviewer, my primary function is to tell you whether or not the products you may be thinking of buying are, in a word, shit. It’s not typically a job that requires I leave my home. Hardware companies or my employers have products shipped out to me. I play with them for a few weeks, or less. Then, most of the time, I ship the stuff back to make room for more stuff. Occasionally, I’m offered the opportunity to travel for work: a cellphone company might be showing off a new version of something they released last year. Sometimes, a well known company wants to give me a peek behind the curtain to see how they build the things that I'll wind up calling shit somewhere down the road. Such an instance happened this past August. I was asked by a well-known peddler of audio equipment if I’d be willing to travel to Japan to take a look at something new they’d been cooking up. I agreed, but warned that if they didn’t show me anything compelling while I visited their manufacturing facility, I wouldn’t be writing a story. They agreed to the terms.A few weeks and a long flight in coach later, I was in Japan. I’d been sent an itinerary a week before I was due to fly. It detailed a stacked week of factory tours, site seeing and cultural events. In the middle of all of the goings on, was a single day where I could do whatever I damn well pleased while I was in Tokyo. If you haven’t been, it's sprawling metropolis that no one stands a chance in hell of fully experiencing in a single trip. So I didn’t even try.My hotel overlooked Shibuya Crossing, so I crossed out seeing it by wandering the area on the evening before my day off. The next morning, I wandered the Imperial Palace grounds with friends and then headed down the block to visit the National Museum of Modern Art. All of it was a feint to get me to a nearby subway line. My mission was to ride 30 minutes, to Meguro. I was venturing out in search of the Midori Traveler's Factory.The Midori Traveler’s Notebook, you see, is my favorite writing tool out of everything I’ve ever used. For the uninitiated, the Travelers notebook comes in two different sizes: one about the size of a passport, and the other, well, it’s larger. They’re not much to look at. When bought new, a Traveler’s notebook comes with a pliable leather cover and a single blank notebook inside. The book is held in place with a string. An elastic keeps the notebook sealed when not in use. What makes them so special to me is that they’re designed to be modified and added to in a gazillion different ways. With the right inserts, notebooks and other add-ons, a Traveler's Notebook becomes an invaluable tool. They’re hard to buy in North America—most of the time aficionados of the brand are forced to order components to use with their notebook, online, at highly inflated prices. I wanted to go to the source and build my own. It’d be a memory of my time in Japan that I would be able to use and enjoy every day.Provided I could find the factory outlet.Getting off the subway in Meguro, I was certain that I was in the wrong place. There were stores, but nothing that suggested warehousing or a factory where the notebooks, or at least some of their components could be made. Walking in the direction suggested by Google Maps, I became more certain that I must be in the wrong place: the small shops and restaurants had given way to tight, winding residential backstreets, wide enough for a single car to pass through. Children played in the lane. I stopped to pet a dog. I came to the point where the factory store was meant to be, according to the directions on my phone. More houses. Frustrated, I walked on another block and there it was:It was smaller than I would have imagined, but real enough that I felt like my day off in the city had been well spent. Walking into the store, I found wall-to-wall stationary, and a few shoppers that seemed surprised to see me.I wandered the store’s aisle, collecting bits and pieces, building the notebook that I had always wanted. I happened upon a special edition green leather cover, that was only made in 2017, making the book all the more special to me. By the time I was done, I dropped $200 in the shop—enough to ensure that I’d not be running out of refills to write on for at least a year. I tried to explain to my friends later that evening why I was so excited to have found the place, when there was so much to see and do in the city. It was hopeless.Passions, especially for small things, can be difficult to share. I never did find a story to write, but I'll always have my notebook.Image credits: Seamus Bellamy

Using electronic key cards, homeless men and women in New York City will soon be able to get three free items a day from one of these orange vending machines. Basic but necessary items like socks, tampons, toothbrushes, and water will be made available to them. There will also be food, like fresh fruit, chips, sandwiches, and chocolate (all donations from local supermarkets, charities, and shops). One of the most popular items? Books. The man behind the project is Huzaifah Khaled. He's the founder of Action Hunger, a British charity that is "committed to alleviating poverty and hardship amongst the homeless." Khaled was recently interviewed on WBUR, and talked about the first machine already being used in Nottingham, England since January:"The early data and feedback has been very, very promising. In fact, it's far surpassed even our own expectations. It's offering them a little more dignity. It's giving them a little more agency over their own lives. It's really heartwarming to see our service being used exactly as designed."Thanks, Robin!images via Action Hunger

With art fashioned after kids pussycat Valentines of yore, Casey Weldon's new 5-card vintage-inspired set is definitely geared to grownups. The Seattle-based artist's messages will put some much-needed sass into this Hallmark holiday. They are, as follows: -- I want to fuck you like an animal-- And Heaven knows I'm miserable now-- Life's an illusion, Love is a dream-- This is getting old and so are you-- Do you want to find Hell with me?-- I don't even care, We don't have to breed Sets of these cards (and stickers) go on sale Thursday morning at 10 AM through the Spoke Art gallery website (the original art for these were recently exhibited there).image 1 via Spoke Art, image 2 via Casey Weldon

Techpowerup has published a redacted presentation from an unnamed AI company to an unnamed big-budget multiplayer video-game publisher, setting out a suite of surveillance capitalism tools combined with machine-learning to manipulate players to make them as addicted as possible and drain them of as much money as possible. (more…)

Back in 2015, U2, Sinead O'Conner and Hozier were all up for Choice Music Prize for Best Irish Album of the Year. Big names, but none of them walked away with the award. Instead, the accolades went to The Gloaming. There's a very good chance that you haven't heard of them. You may not like them. But man, you gotta give them a chance.Comprised of Irishmen Iarla O Lionaird, Martin Hayes and Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh on vocals and fiddle, respectively, as well as Americans Thomas Bartlett on piano with Dennis Cahill on guitar, they're a musical force like none other. Each musician in The Gloaming came to the band with successful careers of their own. Not a one of them has a damn thing to prove. You won't find any ego on stage at one of their concerts – just some of the best music you'll ever have the privilege of hearing. It's moody stuff, and at times joyous, with many of their compositions moving from slow dirges into barn burning reels in a matter of minutes. This video of their tune, Opening Set, runs SIXTEEN MINUTES LONG. They don't stop for a break, there are no solos. Just a wall of beautiful noise. The Gloaming don't fuck around.Seriously give this song a chance, from start to finish, before you form an opinion. Then, stop by the comments and tell me what you think. Oh, and if you're into them, you can hear both of their records on Apple Music, and Spotify.