Old-school pagers are still in use today -- even though they're wildly insecure. The messages aren't encrypted, so each pager receives every message in its region, and simply discards all the ones that aren't meant for it. The artist Brannon Dorsey leveraged this insecurity to create "Holypager", an art installation that receives all the messages being sent in Chicago, anonymizes them, then displays them on three pagers in an art gallery -- while also printing them on a huge scroll of receipt paper.While creating this artwork, Dorsey has discovered that a substantial percentage of pager messages today are medical, with doctors and hospitals trading info about patients. This, as Dorsey notes, makes it all the more bonkers that such sensitive material is being transmitted in the open:Given the severity of the HIPPA Privacy Act, one would assume that appropriate measures would be taken to prevent this information from being publicly accessible to the general public. This project serves as a reminder that as the complexity and proliferation of digital systems increase the cultural and technological literacy needed to understand the safe and appropriate use of these systems often do not.A video about the project shows what it looks like in action:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KjYzzQ-iUUImage used with permission of Brannon Dorsey(Via Hackaday)

Foster Kamer has advice for people who want a better web in 2018: ditch Facebook and find cool stuff by checking bookmarks, visiting your favorite sites by typing their URLs in your browser bar, or searching for them on your favorite search-engine. (more…)

Katsuobushi (aka bonito) is dried, fermented and smoked tuna and it's incredibly hard. It's so hard that it's possible to fashion a shiv out of it. To do so, you'll need a mandoline, an adjustable wrench, a metal file, a vise to hold it in, an oven, a whetstone and some patience. YouTuber kiwami japan shows the way. You'll not only get a dangerous weapon out of the deal but also a big bag of bonito flakes (which are great for making your food look like it's moving).(SoraNews24)

The game designer and artist Yifat Shaik has just released "The Workplace Saga", a video game based on Conway's "Game of Life" ruleset that runs in Excel as a set of macros. It's an ingenious and lovely way of blending the metaphoric payload of Conway's game (from very simple rules comes complex, gorgeous behavior) with the metaphoric payload of the corporate spreadsheet, which is somewhat the reverse: An attempt to impose order and sanity on the complex mess of everyday reality. I've often thought that digital spreadsheets are some of the most consequential pieces of software ever created. When I suggested this recently on Twitter, Steven Levy pointed me to a fantastic essay he wrote 30 years ago called "A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge". As he pointed out in that 1984 piece, spreadsheets were allowing everyday worker bees to create models and conduct "what if" experiments with a sophistication previously impossible. The models were often commercially useful (what would happen if we made 35% more widgets at 15% lower cost compared to 80% more widgets at 32% lower cost?) ... but Levy's interviewees also talked about the rich pleasures of model-making itself, quite apart from their subject matter:Spreadsheet models have become a form of expression, and the very act of creating them seem to yield a pleasure unrelated to their utility. Unusual models are duplicated and passed around; these templates are sometimes used by other modelers and sometimes only admired for their elegance.This is what struck me about Shaik's game: "Workplace Saga" taps neatly into the weird joys, and joyful weirdness, hidden inside this otherwise mundane everyday business tool.(Courtesy Debbie Chachra)

On Christmas Eve, Swedish street artist Carolina Falkholt announced her big ball-less Broome Street dick on Instagram ("NO TIME 4 BALL$$," she wrote).Three days later, after much controversy, that building's landlord had begun painting over her four-story tall lifelike phallus.Falkholt shared this statement with Hyperallergic:We live in cultures where sexual violence and sexual abuse are constantly happening. And there are a lot of raped and abused children who have lost their voices due to the shame that comes with having their own bodies violated at a young age. No more bodyshaming. Talking about these subjects in public space is a must for a healthy, nonviolent community/world. And the dialogue created around feminist public art pieces raises awareness. Art is one of the only places left where we can truly be free and discuss whatever difficult topics there are, since art has the ability to translate and transform language in any direction possible.Enormous penis pops up in NYC and Local Residents Complain About Penis Mural on Broome StreetThanks, Dixie!photo via Carolina Falkholt

Last week, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9, freaking out a lot of people in Southern California who thought they were seeing a UFO streak across the sky. Jesse Watson of Yuma, Arizona captured this incredible time-lapse of the awesome moment. He shot 2452 still images that he edited down to 1315 for this stunning video. From his Vimeo post:I scouted four locations that had foregrounds to add depth to the imagery and was uniquely inspiring to my hometown. Location choices were between a favorite local hiking mountain, the Imperial Sand Dunes, or a small hill that resides in the historic downtown area overlooking the city. I ended up choosing the location that overlooked the city, partially because it was the easiest to access with all of my time-lapse gear. I used The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Google Maps to help scouting and initial line up...I have never shot a rocket launch before, so I did not know exactly what to expect as far as exposure or precise location of the rocket in the horizon. I wanted to be prepared to capture comprehensive coverage of the spectacle.

At the University of Chicago in the early 1920s, psychology grad student William Blatz built a remote-controlled trick chair that would collapse when he pressed a switch. (It was padded to avoid injury.) Then he had subjects sit in the chair while wearing electrodes to measure heart rate and other vital signs. Blatz's goal was to "study the physiology of fear under controlled, repeatable conditions." I think he also probably just wanted to build a remote-controlled trick chair. From Weird Universe:Blatz offered this description of their reactions:"The observations of the subjects after the fall, of course, varied, but they were sufficiently in agreement to indicate the arousal of genuine fear in naive subjects. Some examples of these remarks were, 'startled,' 'surprised,' 'frightened,' scared,' etc. In most cases the subjects cried out, and some called the experimenter by name. They all made some effort to escape, thinking an accident had happened. In all cases they acknowledged that they had not anticipated 'anything like it at all.' From these statements, it was concluded that the stimulus was wholly unexpected, and unsuspected."The electrodes registered the effect of the fright. The hearts of the subjects began hammering, and their breathing rapidly increased. Blatz also observed "striking changes in the electrical conditions of the body in the nature of an increased development of the electromotive force.""Dr. Blatz’s Trick Chair of Terror" (Weird Universe)

Five years ago, it looked like big oil and big coal were finally acknowledging the reality of climate change, shifting from the early posture of outright denial and the intermediate strategy of sowing confusion, and moving into an endgame of "clean coal" and monopolizing renewables, but the think tanks they had funneled hundreds of millions in dark money to were not having any of it -- and it's they, not the hydrocarbon barons, who've got the ear of the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief, Donald Trump. (more…)

Michael Joseph Oleksik, of Cocoa, Fla., was charged Friday with criminal mischief after reportedly attacking an ATM machine that gave him too much money. USA Today reports that he caused at least $5000 worth of damage to the device.Authorities said Oleksik can be seen on surveillance video standing at the ATM, pummeling the electronic teller’s touch screen on Nov. 29. A short time later, an apologetic Oleksik called the bank and told a manager that he punched the ATM because he was ‘angry the ATM was giving him too much money and he did not know what to do,’

I could be wrong, but I believe Jack in the Box's "Munchie Meals" have always been geared to the late-night cravings of cannabis users. It sounds like this new "Merry Munchie Meal" is being launched to unequivocally tie the soon-to-be legalization of recreational pot in California to the brand.SFGate reports:As California prepares for legal recreational pot on Jan. 1, the fast-food chain is partnering with a digital media company backed by rapper Snoop Dogg on a new "munchie" meal aimed at cannabis enthusiasts. While marijuana's connection to fast food is well-established, Jack in the Box will become the first national chain to explicitly embrace the drug.The "Merry Munchie Meal," which will be available at three California locations for a week in January for $4.20, features two tacos, french fries, onion rings, five mini churros, three chicken strips and a small drink. The price isn't random: The number 420 is used as a code by potheads.image via Merry JaneThanks, Chris!

While I've been struggling to make a gingerbread house from a simple Trader Joe's kit, the instagrammers that call themselves the Star Wars Bakery have been busy creating this massive gingerbread Class-II Imperial Star Destroyer.Their sweet, meticulously-iced warship was displayed at Stockholm, Sweden headquarters of EA DICE, the video game developer behind the Star Wars: Battlefront games series. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc4_B6DFBNI/?taken-by=starwars_bakeryhttps://www.instagram.com/p/Bc6n8G_FJTA/?taken-by=starwars_bakeryhttps://www.instagram.com/p/Bc-i8s0FnYo/?taken-by=starwars_bakery(reddit, Neatorama)

A dear friend slipped me these as an Xmas gift; the provenance is unknown, but there's vector art for all your t-shirt, wallpaper and billboard needs. (more…)

Steve Mnuchin is the gilded age cartoon villain that Trump put in charge of the Treasury where he served as one of the architects of the catastrophic Republican tax plan, so naturally someone sent him a giftwrapped box of horse manure with a tag reading "from the American people." (more…)

Comcast, Fox and Frontier have all announced across-the-board price hikes that affect modems, streaming services, and internet service itself. (more…)

Oh, Charter: Chad Pierce and his family bought a house in Newaygo, Michigan, but first they called their local cable monopoly, Charter/Spectrum, and confirmed verbally, online and in writing that the new house could get internet access. (more…)

Washington state is in the midst of suing Comcast over misselling of its "Service Protection Plan," a nearly useless insurance plan that was sold as a way to avoid having to pay fees for faults in your Comcast cable infrastructure. (more…)

The Reckoning [vox.com] examines 105 of the powerful people (all but two of them men) who have been accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. Abusers in media and journalism are relatively widely-exposed, whereas those in other fields seem relatively few in number, at least as Vox counts it. In particular, badly-behaved politicians get headlines, but the list is surprisingly short. More and more people have come forward publicly in recent months with stories like these, of high-ranking men who abuse their power to sexually harass and intimidate others. This kind of abuse is far from new, but in 2017, more and more of these men actually started facing consequences.

[This story is from one of my favorite newsletters, Now I Know. It has over 100,000 subscribers. Sign up for it here. -- Mark] If you're a four-year-old in the United Kingdom, you probably know who Peppa Pig, above, is. The anthropomorphic, snorting pig and her family are a mainstay of children's television there -- and, increasingly, elsewhere -- with unrivaled popularity throughout Great Britain. Each episode features Peppa's family and her friends (and often the friends of her brother, George) exploring the everyday adventures that come with being a preschooler. Take, for example, Wikipedia's description of the first episode of the show's third season, titled "Work and Play:" "When Peppa and Suzy [that's Suzy Sheep, Peppa's best friend] learn that grown-ups must work all day, they decide to play at working in a store. But they quickly get tired of it." It's not very hard-hitting stuff, but little kids tend to like it.As of this writing, there are four seasons of the show totaling 208 episodes, each of which is five minutes. (There's also a ten minute Christmas special.) One of them can be seen below…… but if you’re in Australia, your major broadcaster doesn’t want your preschooler to watch it.https://youtu.be/6lsqsNqqu2QThat episode is called "Spider Web." Wikipedia's description is short but to the point: "There's a spider in the house, so Mummy Pig tells Daddy Pig to get rid of it." The Pig family spend much of the five minutes discussing whether the spider should be able to live with them or not -- Mummy Pig wants it gone, but Daddy Pig notes that spiders eat flies and are therefore good to have around. In the end, the family concludes that spiders are good to have around (although better outside the house than inside). Daddy Pig even makes a new rule: no one is to break a spider’s web, as the spider worked long and hard to build it, and that just wouldn’t be nice."Spider Web" originally aired in the UK on December 21, 2011 and soon was available for broadcast in other areas. Australia was one of those secondary regions -- but it never made it to TV there. Peppa Pig typically airs on ABC 4 Kids in Australia and the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Company), which operates that channel, declined to air the episode.The problem: spiders in Australia are really dangerous. Really. As Wikipedia notes, “Australia has some highly venomous spiders, including the notorious Sydney funnel-web, its relatives in the Atrax genus, and redback spiders, whose bites can be deadly.” Even though the most common spiders in Australia are generally not very toxic, there are some best avoided. Learning to play nice with spiders is a bad idea if you're an Australian four-year-old.The ABC's decision probably wouldn't have come to light except for a slight error on their part. In August of 2012, a viewer complained that the Spider Web" episode appeared on an ABC-run website. The ABC apologized for their error, and the episode is no longer available there.

If you go to Japan, one thing you'll notice is a lack of garbage cans. This was frustrating for me the first few times I went, but now when I'm there I carry a plastic bag and keep it in my backpack. The village of Kamikatsu in Japan, which I've never visited, is the most extreme anti-trash place in the country. The town of 1500 recycles its trash into 45 different categories.From Great Big Story:While the rest of the country has a recycling rate of around 20 percent, Kamikatsu surpasses its neighbors with a staggering 80 percent. After becoming aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide associated with burning garbage, the town instated the Zero Waste Declaration with the goal of being completely waste-free by 2020.

A 36-year-old gentleman from New York has had a deep fear of the Tasmanian Devil cartoon his entire life. So after his father-in-law, Yunes Doleh, teased him by waving a Taz-like toupee and snarling at him at a funeral, the frightened fellow had Doleh arrested. According to the AP:The Staten Island man [Mazen Dayem] says he’s had a fear of the Tasmanian Devil his entire life. Dayem claims his father-in-law has taken advantage of his phobia since 2013. Dayem filed a restraining order in September following an altercation with Doleh at a restaurant.An attorney for Doleh labeled the case a “family dispute.”Doleh faces charges of criminal contempt and aggravated harassment. Sounds like a bad case of kyrofelonoshophobia – phobia of cartoon characters – to me. https://youtu.be/FOTlNOZB4Zo

Daranide is a drug that was approved for treating glaucoma in 1958; the public domain drug's manufacture has shifted around for decades, sending its price soaring and plummeting from $0.50/dose to $1365, down to free, and now to $109,500, courtesy of Strongbridge Biopharma, new owners of Taro Pharmaceutical Industries, who started making the drug after Merck discontinued its production. (more…)

In the 1870s, French gas fitter Albert Dadas started making strange, compulsive trips to distant towns, with no planning or awareness of what he was doing. His bizarre affliction set off a 20-year epidemic of "mad travelers" in Europe, which evaporated as mysteriously as it had begun. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll consider the parable of pathological tourism and its meaning for psychiatry.We'll also contemplate the importance of sick chickens and puzzle over a farmyard contraption.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Mathematician Henry Sagerman and colleagues developed a cool way to observe non-euclidian geometry from a new vantage point: inside the geometry itself via virtual reality. (more…)

If you've ever observed "wine legs," the rivulets that form when you swirl wine in a glass, you've seen the Marangoni effect. Watch how scientists are using this effect to create tiny motors that emit no pollutants. (more…)

Britain's justice secretary wants to ban miniature cellphones in a hapless effort to be seen to be doing something about prison smuggling. The "Beat the Boss" handsets (Amazon) are barely the size of lipstick or a stick of gum. They're unlocked, dirt cheap, popular with kids, and easily concealed. They are marketed as being virtually metal-free and therefore able to beat the detectors anyone entering a prison must pass through."It's pretty clear that these miniature phones are being advertised and sold with the purpose of being smuggled," Mr Lidington will say in a speech on Monday."I am calling on online retailers and trading websites to take down products that are advertised to evade detection measures in prisons." Looking at the specs, these are 2G GSM handsets and will only work in the U.S. on T-Mobile and (maaaaybe) AT&T."IT REALLY WORKS BUT DIFFICULT TO USE BECAUSE IT IS SO SMALL ❗️❗️❗️," writes verified purchaser Bill Hubner, who I stress is merely an Amazon customer and absolutely not suspected of any clever jailhouse shenanigans.There are several sellers offering this gadget, all obviously identical.eBay UK promised to stop sales of these months ago, according to the BBC, but the site remains well-stocked at press time. Beat the Boss Phone [Amazon]

I have been waiting to find the LEGO Ideas NASA Apollo Saturn V 21309 Building Kit for list price. Amazon is selling it now.This fantastic 1969 piece set looks wonderful. I can not wait to build it with my daughter.Watch out for scalpers.LEGO Ideas Nasa Apollo Saturn V 21309 Building Kit via Amazon

In Partial Information Attacks on Real-world AI, a group of MIT computer science researchers report on their continuing work fooling Google's image-classifier, this time without any knowledge of how the classifier works. (more…)

Designers use metrics and a/b splitting experiments to maximize engagement with their products, seeking out the phrases that trigger emotional responses in users -- like a smart scale that congratulates you on losing weight -- but these systems are context-blind, so they are unable to distinguish between people who might be traumatized by their messages (say, a woman who's just miscarried late in her pregnancy, being congratulated on her "weight loss"). (more…)

Humans have been sporting belts since the Bronze Age and not much has changed concerning their functionality. Sure, there have been minor improvements, like reversible designs or buckles that double as bottle openers, but no major breakthroughs have been made in terms of fit. That is, until now. Boasting a unique, hole-free construction, Men's Trakline Belts by Kore Essentials are paving the way for more durable, comfortable waistbands, and they're available in the Boing Boing Store for $40.https://www.youtube.com/embed/fo8CcBYsNBgThese fashion forward belts feature an indestructible track with over 40 sizing points in 1/4" increments, giving you extremely specific adjustability for waists between 24" and 44". To release or adjust the belt, you simply pinch the small tab under the buckle. Each belt is made with superior top-grain leather for added durability.Plus, you can remove just the buckle itself to easily slip through metal detectors or use it to pop open bottle tops.You can pick up a Men's Trakline Belt for $40 in the Boing Boing Store.

Because "ironic sweaters are so last week," the crew at Good Mythical Morning upped their ugly holiday game with their hilarious "Christmas Booty Song." Bravo, a new tradition is born!But wait, there's more...https://youtu.be/oFqsBveOwaoPreviously: Giant green butt plug looks suspiciously like a christmas tree

Five-year-old TyLon Pittman of Byram, Mississippi wasn't going to take any chances when he thought the Grinch was going to steal his Christmas. After watching Grinch movies on YouTube on Saturday, he did what any concerned citizen would do and quietly called 911 to report him. He hung up a few times before a 911 operator called back and took TyLon's report.Here's the call:https://soundcloud.com/user-477882474/911-call-5-year-old-calls-police-to-report-the-grinch-trying-to-steal-christmasAnd here's a video his older brother TeDera Dwayne Graves II took when officer Lauren Develle arrived for a fun house call:https://www.facebook.com/isthatgraves/videos/pcb.10155743040035115/10155743037455115/?type=3&theaterOn Monday, the story had started making the rounds and TyLon was invited by Officer Develle to apprehend the Grinch. The Clarion Ledger reports:The Grinch could be charged with crimes including attempted theft of Christmas, Develle said. It wasn't as much about charging him for his wrongdoing as keeping a promise to her new friend.Hanging his head, still wearing his Santa outfit, the Grinch put up no fight as he was shut in the holding cell inside the police department."Come here Ty," the Grinch said. Taking the boy's hand in a handshake, he said, "You have saved Christmas for the people of Byram. Your bravery is unmatched. You have saved the day.""Why are you stealing Christmas?" TyLon asked him with an unwavering gaze. After a moment of thought, the Grinch just shrugged his shoulders. https://www.facebook.com/clarionledger/videos/10156049385896385/?lst=759225603%3A680670114%3A1513713796This little guy already knows he wants to be when he grows up: a police officer, of course.To save Christmas, boy calls 911 on the Grinch and Grinch arrested after 5-year-old's heroic 911 call to save ChristmasThanks, Paul!

Two trees in a fancy neighbourhood in Bristol, UK have had strips of anti-bird spikes nailed to their branches, rendering them "literally uninhabitable" by local wildlife, according to local Green Party councillor Paula O'Rourke. (more…)

The National Institutes of Health has lifted a moratorium on scientists mucking around with dangerous infectious disease. Government run review panels will protect us. What could go wrong?The New York Times article shares a number of not exactly concern-reducing quotes from scientists interviewed about this "small step forward." Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, reassures us with statements like: "If someone finds a way to make the Ebola virus more dangerous, I don’t believe that should be available to anybody off the street who could use it for nefarious purposes," and "Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified." Great.The value of this research to people who don't want to kill millions is made to seem negligible, in the article, as well.

When a boy 9-year-old boy comes home from school down in the dumps because the classroom frog died, his sister has the perfect antidote: surprise tickets for the same night from the "North Pole" to see Lady Gaga. Having dinner at a restaurant, she reveals the surprise. The boy – and his reaction – are just too cute!Reveal pic.twitter.com/ElbgNeG1H7— BB•❄️🐝 (@runs_w_woIves) December 15, 2017Via Mashable

Only a few minutes remain on this deal - a $9 hand-cranked conical burr grinder. Good for travel. I bought one for an upcoming five-week stay in Japan.

I started the video where the action heats up. We see a man loading bread into an "automated machine. (I wonder if he ever is tempted to press the jolly, candy like button on the control panel?)The bread is separated into individual slices and melted butter is deposited on each slice, followed by mayo. Then it's on to the cheese depositing phase, which is a manual operation. We get to see workers load "logs of ham" onto a slicer. (Get a load of the spring constant on that ham log!)And so on. By the end, you'd be forgiven if you never want to eat a sandwich ever again.

A woman has accused Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller of sexually assaulting, choking and punching her while they were both in college. She'd actually accused him after it happened and had brought it to a student court at George Washington University, but now she is accusing him publicly, giving the full story to The Daily Beast. She wishes to remain anonymous to avoid retribution, so The Daily Beast simply refers to her as "Sarah."The story isn't new to everyone – some female comedians have refused to work with Miller throughout the years because they had heard about his alleged misconduct.Sarah and Miller met in the same comedy troupe at George Washington, and started dating. One night, a couple of months into their relationship, they had "had a lot to drink," so Sarah's memory of that night is a bit spotty.According to The Daily Beast:However, Sarah said she has a distinct memory that as they were “fooling around” at her place, Miller began “shaking me violently” and punched her in the mouth during sex.Sarah said that she woke up the following morning with a fractured tooth and a bloodied lip. When she asked Miller about it that morning, he claimed, according to Sarah, that she had simply fallen down drunkenly the past evening.Although she was "unsettled," she continued to see Miller.They soon met at a college party, and left in a cab to head back to the apartment she had been renting with her roommates. When they arrived back at her home, they began to engage in consensual sex—but then Miller became violent again, Sarah said. She emphasized that she had not had more than two drinks that evening, and that her memory of the following “five-hour” ordeal was and is “crystal-clear.”“We started to fool around, and very early in that, he put his hands around my throat and closed them, and I couldn’t breathe,” she recalled. “I was genuinely terrified and completely surprised. I understand now that this is for some people a kink, and I continue to believe it is [something] that should be entered into by consenting parties. But, as someone who had only begun having sexual encounters, like, about three months earlier, I had no awareness this was a kink, and I had certainly not entered into any agreement that I would be choked.Sarah says she was choking loud enough for her neighbors to come rushing over to check on her. When they asked her if she was okay she said she didn't know, and that she'd talk to them in the morning.“He pulled me back to bed and more things happened,” Sarah said. “He anally penetrated me without my consent, which I actually believe at that point I cried out, like, ‘No,’ and he didn’t continue to do that—but he also had a [beer] bottle with him the entire time. He used the bottle at one point to penetrate me without my consent.”The Daily Beast has talked to one of the concerned neighbors from that night, who confirms the story. They've corroborated the details of the story with five "GW contemporaries" and other associates of both Sarah and Miller. But Miller denies the accusations, and has told The Daily Beast that he is the victim of the story.Read the full details at The Daily Beast.Image: Gage Skidmore

Was the designer of the 2018 World Chess Championship logo inspired by Betty and Veronica?From Digg:Yes. It is what you think it is. No. It was not a mistake. Announced earlier this week in a press release, the folks over at FIDE are very proud of their logo. "Key visual for the 2018 World Chess Championship is controversial and trendy, just like the host city," they say in the release. London, so controversial (Brexit, I guess?). So trendy (Can a city that's been the center of Western Civilization for nearly a millennial be considered "trendy?").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n3uane1UT8It's eschatology in motion: 62 tests carried out between 1945 and 1962, of detonations filmed from up to 50 angles. A total of 210 tests were carried out and this tranche is a good slice of them. (more…)

According to Politiscales, a political Myers-Briggs type questionnaire and sorting hat, I'm some kind of happy hippy anarchist with no time for terfs. I often found the questions vague or open to interpretation, so would moderate answers that might be more assertively stated down the pub. It coughed up this nice purple flag, too. I've never seen it before and Google Images doesn't know what it represents, but it's rather suggestive of the sexier regions of the left.

Twitter began enforcing new rules against violent and hateful groups and content yesterday; early results suggest that the institutional accounts of extremist parties, groups and media are being closed en-masse, but enforcement aganst individuals and mouthpieces is patchy, especially when it comes to American white nationalists and conspiracy theorists.Twitter announced in October that it planned to take a tougher stance against hate symbols as well as those who posted messages that glorified or condoned violence.It has now said that those who express an affiliation with groups that use or celebrate violence to achieve their aims will be permanently suspended.Hateful imagery - such as the Nazi swastika - can still be posted, but will initially be hidden behind a "sensitive media" warning, that visitors must disable to proceed. However, such content will no longer be allowed on a person's profile page.Those that featured examples will be asked to remove them. Repeat violators will be banned.The share price is up 10% in the hours since, but it's been soaring anyway and Twitter also announced investor-pleasing features this week. Best not fall into the trap of anointing the market as a validator of good ethics.

Debbie Urbanski's story "An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried" for Motherboard takes the improbable form of a list of failed strategies for coping with the incipient, climate-driven uninhabitability of the Earth, and it works beautifully. (more…)

Perhaps 2017 wasn't your most productive year, but that's okay because the Tim Ferriss Tribe of Mentors Dream Setup Giveaway gives you a chance to make 2018 a year of successful resolutions backed by a trove of productivity-boosting tools. 100 percent free to enter, this giveaway grants you the chance to take home a host of helpful hardware, like a MacBook Pro, iPhone X, and more.Celebrating the release of #1 New York Times best-selling author Tim Ferriss's new book, this giveaway packages together several gear and gadget bundles for three lucky winners. Ferriss is one of the world's leading productivity experts, and he's garnered the secrets of some of the world's most productive and successful people. Enter to win, and you could take home a massive collection of Apple hardware, or one of two productivity-focused bundles of equipment chosen by members of Tim's Tribe of Mentors.Simply sign up to enter for free, and you'll secure your spot in the Tim Ferriss Tribe of Mentors Dream Setup Giveaway.

This risky rescue could have gone wrong in a number of ways, but the first responders were able to save a horse that had walked onto thin ice without injuring the horse or themselves. (more…)

The Beyond the Brick channel headed to Billund, Denmark for a superfan's tour of the LEGO House. What's great about this tour is that the host knows the names of many of the builders, and has met a lot of them personally, giving the tour a real insider's feel. (more…)

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of discovering the tomb of King Tut, many of the Boy King's artifacts and other ancient Egyptian items will be touring the United States in the new year.Lonely Planet writes:The largest ever international exhibition of ancient Egyptian artefacts from the tomb of its most famous pharaoh will open early next year in Los Angeles. King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh will visit ten different cities as it tours the world starting off on the West Coast of America on 24 March.More than 150 items from Tutankhamun’s tomb will be on display at the California Science Center. The exhibition will be an absolute treat for Egyptologists – both amateur and professional – as never before have so many ancient items associated with King Tut been on display together outside Egypt. Many of the items would have been used by the Boy King himself including golden jewellery, elaborate carvings, sculptures, and ritual antiquities.Forty per cent of the objects will be leaving home for both the first and last time before returning for permanent display in the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is currently under construction.You can first see the exhibit in Los Angeles before it heads to Europe and then to its new permanent home at The Grand Egyptian Museum (which is located near the Pyramids of Giza). Be sure to pre-register for the L.A. exhibit now.https://youtu.be/YTP3pZyzb_UOf course you can't talk about a King Tut without being reminded of Steve Martin's bit on Saturday Night Live in 1978. The now-39-year-old sketch was satire on the Tutankhamun exhibit's popularity when it traveled the US from 1976 to 1979. It has recently come under fire for being racist ("That’s like somebody … making a song just littered with the n-word everywhere") by some Reed College students:https://youtu.be/FYbavuReVF4Biggest ever King Tut exhibition coming to America next yearThanks, Karen!

Matt Damon is missing the point, but I am glad it appears Matt Damon does not hurt other people. Honestly, what a terrible way for Matt Damon to promote Matt Damon's new movie.Via Business Insider:Matt Damon thinks the men in Hollywood who aren't sexual predators should be talked about more.The flood of sexual-misconduct allegations since The New York Times and The New Yorker published bombshell reports in October detailing those against the producer Harvey Weinstein have included some of the biggest names in entertainment, media, and politics.But Damon says not all the men in Hollywood are despicable."We're in this watershed moment, and it's great, but I think one thing that's not being talked about is there are a whole s---load of guys — the preponderance of men I've worked with — who don't do this kind of thing and whose lives aren't going to be affected," Damon told Business Insider while promoting his new movie, "Downsizing," opening in theaters Friday."If I have to sign a sexual-harassment thing, I don't care, I'll sign it," he said. "I would have signed it before. I don't do that, and most of the people I know don't do that."

After a series of scandals and rumors, the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World has reopened with its Donald Trump robot, which "features the latest advances in technology that enable smoother and more lifelike movements" and "personally recorded remarks exclusively for The Hall of Presidents." (more…)

JCPenney, whose name I did not realize no longer contains a space in it, removed a racist display from their Sioux City, Iowa location. Mannequins wore various "Tribe" themed clothing.The decorative use of arrows really ends the need for apologists to try. The additional WINE and BEER shirts make me pretty angry.Via Indian Country Today:The JCPenney at Southern Hills Mall, a shopping mall in Sioux City, Iowa is under fire on social media after Facebook posts including a video and a photo were created by Iowa resident Michelle Free-LaMere. The video posted by Free-LaMere has gone viral having received 51k views within two days of being posted. The video currently stands at 101k views.The posts contain four mannequins wearing different ‘Tribe-themed’ t-shirts that say ‘Tribe Leader,’ ‘Love My Tribe’ and ‘New to the Tribe’ which are standing between additional t-shirts with the phrases ‘Wine Wine Wine’ and ‘Beer Beer Beer.’Comments on social media have been largely negative toward JCPenney.“Just sad and disrespectful,” said Katrina RedOwl from Pasadena, California. Mikki Naranjo from Ignacio, Colorado said she will no longer shop at the store. “That is just disgusting of Management of JCPenney put that display up. I will no longer shop there!”