A family in Gulfport, MS was pulled over by a swarm of police cars, handcuffed, held at gunpoint without explanation, and told to "Shut the fuck up." Turns out the cops thought the family had robbed their own house.On Sunday night, Kelvin Fairley, along with his wife, sons ages 16 and 12, 9-year-old daughter, and 12-year-old nephew were pulled over after a neighbor reported seeing burglars at their house. Rather than simply ask Fairley for his ID, which would have cleared up the issue in seconds, the entire family was pulled out of the car with guns drawn on them. According to the Sun Herald:

Her name was Lilias Adie, and she died in prison while waiting to be burned at the stake as a witch. Forensic artist Dr Christopher Rynn used the latest reconstructive methods to show us her face.

Trees Sucking on Things is my new favorite subreddit. It's dedicated to trees that have grown around unusual objects, thereby giving the impression of "sucking" on them. Pictured here is an example from getyerhandoffit.

A generative adversarial network (GAN) combines two neural networks engaged in a zero-sum competition. The result is a form of unsupervised machine learning that can produce imaginary celebrities like the ones shown in this one-hour video.

Honda has been manufacturing the Super Cub 50 and 110 since since 1958. Over 100 million have been produced. On November 10, they'll release a "classic" model that hearkens back to its original design introduced 60 years ago. Shown here, the 2018 Honda Super Cub in Pearl Shining Yellow color.From New Atlas:

George Papadopoulos is a fairly common Greek name in these United States. Seems the outraged folks on twitter riled a Michagonian George Papadopoulos.Via NPR:

Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte are 20 year old UC Berkeley students who turned a machine learning class assignment into a browser plugin that tries to guess whether a given Twitter profile is associated with a bot or a human, and assigns a probability score that takes into account the possibility that a bot has human pilots who can take over at key junctures. (more…)

A company in Japan is rewarding non-smokers with an extra week of paid vacation, or six days to be exact.Piala Inc, a marketing firm based in Tokyo, has implemented this new policy not for health reasons, but because non-smokers work longer hours than smokers. According to their calculations, smokers take at least 15 minutes per break, and they take a few breaks per day. Apparently, over a year, this adds up to six working days.The new policy was conceived after non-smokers at the company complained about the inequity, and CEO Takao Asuka decided this was the fairest thing to do.Via FortuneImage: 5408435/Pixabay

Joi Ito's Resisting Reduction manifesto rejects the idea of reducing the world to a series of computable relationships that will eventually be overtaken by our ability to manipulate them with computers ("the Singularity") and instead to view the world as full of irreducible complexities and "to design systems that participate as responsible, aware and robust elements of even more complex systems." (more…)

The Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program identifies possible duplicate voters by looking at registrations by people with the same name and birthdate; a joint study by researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Microsoft found that 99% of the people it identifies as duplicate voters are not duplicate voters -- that is, it has a 99% false positive rate. (more…)

Earlier this month Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos threw a twittertantrum over accusations that Facebook's algorithms promoted fake news in its users' feeds: "I am seeing a ton of coverage of our recent issues driven by stereotypes of our employees and attacks against fantasy, strawman tech cos," he wrote. "Nobody of substance at the big companies thinks of algorithms as neutral. Nobody is not aware of the risks."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDdim63M310For the past year, sculptor machinist Chris Bathgate has been designing a series of handheld, kinetic fidget toys, starting with a "slider" and then a top, a worry stone, a spinner, and a netsuke. (more…)

Things got pretty spooky over at the United Kingdom’s Met Office yesterday during weather reporter Alex Deakin's forecast. He lost his head, but fortunately managed to hold on to it, at least to the end of his report.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, recently indicted on federal criminal charges, allegedly laundered $18 million in money he earned illegally lobbying for Ukraine. CNN has a breakdown on how he spent it:

With so many communication channels available on the web, knowing how to leverage each platform’s strengths is key to developing businesses online. To help you hone your digital marketing skills, we’re featuring the new Digital Marketing 22-Course Masterclass.In this masterclass, you’ll get introduced to a variety of relevant concepts and techniques by acclaimed instructors Phil Ebiner and Diego Davila. You’ll discover the best ways to handle branding and copywriting for websites, email, and blogs. Over nearly 30 hours of content, you’ll learn how to harness the power of SEO and social media to grow brands. Right now, you can pick up this masterclass from the Boing Boing Store for $15.

Toy artist Jesse Wroblewski of Chainsaw Estates challenged himself to sculpt a horror movie-themed PEZ candy dispenser for each day in October.Here's a look at some of his horribly-creative sculptures, from Pennywise to Pinhead: https://www.instagram.com/p/BaT_qWoADut/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BZv6K2hggxY/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaMDlveg76G/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BZ81ywRgt0i/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaSQHYWgreM/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaZD3fvgs7-/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaWk18GgcjK/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/Bag-RPigq0I/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaFNeU0gxbC/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BZtbACqgC-s/?taken-by=chainsawestateshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BaeaWmYgVNz/?taken-by=chainsawestatesSee the rest at his Instagram feed.

It's hard to describe this video, posted by Dan Cole, but I'll try.1. A man objects to having a camera put in his face by a videographer who is talking vicariously through a glove puppet.2. The man adopts a doomed strategy: trying to get the camera out of his face by fastidiously keeping his face in-shot while following the camera around.3. He argues as he does so, occasionally with the camera operator, but occasionally with the glove puppet.It gets so good at the end I'm almost certain it's staged – but not entirely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSUa6yWVCxYMari writes, "My daughter loves everything spooky--especially Disney's Haunted Mansion! She loves it so much she's memorized the song and likes to dress up as one of the cast members. Her fave ghost of the 999? The Bride, of course!"

Three researchers from Kyushu University have published a paper describing a means of reliably fooling AI-based image classifiers with a single well-placed pixel. (more…)

Obvious Plant wins the droplifting game this year with these fake costumes he left on a Halloween store's shelf somewhere.

Students from Pratt High School in Kansas didn't get their "first hand job experience" as reported, but they -- and a headline writer at The Pratt Tribune --did get a lesson in grammar. On Saturday, the local newspaper printed an inappropriate, though hilarious, headline for an otherwise benign article about Disability Mentoring Day. The hyphen-less headline was completely rewritten for the online version of the story.image via Tigerfan56Thanks, Tim!

Digital Vegetables is an installation by PARTY that was part of the 2017 Tokyo Midtown Design Touch event. (more…)

Talk about a tight maneuver. This trucker has to make a sharp right turn onto a single-lane bridge with an enormous load of logs. (more…)

Filco's Minila Air ($130, Amazon) should be my perfect keyboard: mechanical, high-end, sturdily made, with reliable Bluetooth and a cunning compact layout. It's even smaller than tenkeyless, but still comes with a proper set of arrow keys. It does everything I want—and fits in the same bag as an iPad.Thing is, though, I don't like it. My big problem is that it's incredibly thick. Even with the supports flattened, the number row tops out almost two inches from the desk surface! You can always add a rest, but that obviates the keyboard's small dimensions and mobility. My hands are like aching angry spiders, rearing up on the wristbones.Second, the unique layout has productivity in mind, not my plans to prettify it with fabulous keycaps. I just can't find a set that I like and which will fit. The supplied ones are perfectly decent, though.Finally, most subjectively, the bulky casing also has some asymmetric greebling at the back. It's subtle, and it has its retro geometric charm, but is not my cup of injection-molded tea. Were it not for the unexpected bulk of the case, I think I'd be satisfied with the Minila Air thanks to its obvious excellence in most other respects. Reliable wireless is especially rare among mechanical keyboards, for some reason, and models that have it tend to be either unnervingly cheap or annoyingly expensive. I'll be trying the Anne Pro ($90, Amazon) next, but I don't think I can live without my arrows.Most of the above also applies to the wired version of the Minila ($120, Amazon) as it takes the same form.

After six seasons House of Cards is history.From a Netflix statement issued this afternoon:

Whitefish Energy's had quite a week: last week the two-person company from Whitefish, Montana (hometown of Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke) was awarded a $300M contract to help rebuild the power-grid in Puerto Rico, with some very favorable terms including $462/hour for subcontracted supervisors, no penalties for nonperformance, and a guarantee that the government wouldn't audit its expenditures. (more…)

Facebook is reported to soon reveal it exposed an estimated 126 million Americans, many of whom voted, to what was effectively Russian state propaganda (served from Russian webservers in Russia) during the runup to the U.S. 2016 presidential election. All of that content favored Trump, who is now President of the United States.(more…)

Here's a cool domino spiral of candy corn that seems impossible to pull off. How can these lightweight triangular pieces of candy perfectly knock each other down without leaving one kernel standing? Explained by YouTuber FlippyCat: "After trying a few techniques, I ended up free standing the candy corn on top of mini black dominoes, which blend into the black floor. The entire 221 pieces of candy corn fell without stopping!" Aha! So it's a trick, and a pretty sweet one at that.

Unicorns' conservation status puts them beyond the reach of most hunters, but you too can display the dismembered head of Satan's second-most beloved creation thanks to the Toscano Alicorn Unicorn Trophy Wall Sculpture ($25, Amazon). Offered in "antique stone," which is to say resin-bound plaster dust, it's about a foot square yet weighs only three pounds."Majestic," reports verified purchaser Danielle Summer. "For some reason when I was reading the product description I thought it said five inches. It is definitely larger than five inches.""Far too pointy," writes Hunkulees in a review that 15 people found helpful. "Weirdest rectal thermometer I ever bought. Would buy again."Douglas M. Taylor, however, deducted a star because a rainbow was not included: "Would have given it 5 stars if it came with a rainbow."

Dr. Phil is to psychology as Judge Judy is to jurisprudence: a maliciously entertaining jobsworth who's spent so long stripmining their professional credibility it's hard to see where sincerity ends and irony begins. He's much better when he isn't talking, though, a fact exposed by this marvelous cut by Bill Smith.Previously: Dune without words.Update! He did the same thing for Judge Judy!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK3EyUt8lKY&feature=youtu.be

Washington Examiner’s Jen Kerns probably wished she hadn't gone onto Joy Reid's “AM Joy” show on MSNBC.(more…)

A federal judge in Washington D.C. blocked parts of Trump's ban on transgender military service today. This means that "openly trans troops may be able to join the military starting in 2018," according to Vox.

Back in the 1970s, cinemas saw cable TV as a threat to their business model. So they attempted to sway public opinion with PSAs like this. (r/ObscureMedia)

An 18-year-old high school student in Osaka Japan is suing her high school because it forced her to dye her hair black.From Quartz:

On November 18, 1992, the Seinfeld episode "The Contest" aired for the first time. That was the one about who could control their masturbatory urges to become "master of their domain," yada yada. New York/The Vulture have an oral history of this classic bit of television history:

Whitefish Energy is the 2-person Montana company from Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown of Whitefish, Montana that was awarded a $300M contract to help remediate Puerto Rico's shattered electrical grid, billing its subcontractors at $462/hour for supervisors and $319.04/hour for linesmen in a sweetheart deal that banned Puerto Rico from auditing the company's expense reports, or penalizing it for nonperformance. (more…)

A London man found a USB stick on a pavement in west London and (unwisely) plugged it into a computer, only to discover that it contained 76 folders with at least 174 documents full of sensitive information on the security arrangements at Heathrow airport, including "the types of ID needed to access restricted areas, a timetable of security patrols and maps pinpointing CCTV cameras" as well as the measures used to protect the Queen when she flies through LHR. (more…)

When New Yorker columnist/blowhard Andre Walker "Nobody goes to libraries anymore. Close the public ones and put the books in schools", librarians all over the net gave him what for, and one of the best responses came from self-described "Angriest Librarian" Alex Halpern, a student librarian in Portland, OR, whose tweetstorm went viral. (more…)

Jeb Bush accused Democrats of winning black votes by promising "free stuff," and then Hillary Clinton accused Bernie Sanders of "promising free this and free that and free everything." But universal health care is free as in "freedom." (more…)

The spreadsheet contains 36 names: 2 Cabinet ministers identified as engaging in inappropriate behaviour towards women; 18 ministers who are said to have engaged in sexual misconduct; 12 MPs accused of sexually harassing female researchers and 4 MPs accused of harassing male researchers. (more…)

Actor Anthony Rapp described how, when he was aged 14, Kevin Spacey climbed on top of him at a party and made sexual advances. Spacey admits it and apologizes, but cast the incident as a consequence of being a closeted gay man.You wonder how all the other closeted gay men manage to get through life without trying to fuck children, but then you remember where you stand. This effort to engender sympathy, at the cost of casting gay men as confused predators on the margins on pedophilia, is the old-school at its worst.

In January 2016, I spent $3,000 to buy 7.4 bitcoins. At the time, it seemed an entirely worthwhile thing to do. I had recently started working as a research director at the Institute for the Future’s Blockchain Futures Lab, and I wanted firsthand experience with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that uses a blockchain to record transactions on its network. I had no way of knowing that this transaction would lead to a white-knuckle scramble to avoid losing a small fortune.Read the rest of my story at Wired.com

Republican Representative Steve King, of "We can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies" racist fame, went hunting peasants with Donald Trump Jr.

In 2016, Teaforia raised $12,000,000 in venture capital to manufacture a $1,000 tea infuser that combined proprietary, DRM-encumbered tea pods with a "patent-pending microinfusion technology" and a timer to make cups of tea. (more…)

Comptroller general of the French Army René Carmille "purposely delayed the process by mishandling the punch cards," changing the programming so that the religion field wouldn't be read from them; Adolfo Kaminsky used his dry-cleaning chemical expertise to remove the red "J" (for Jew) stamps from French passports, and could forge 30 identity documents per hour; the Kasharyiot (female couriers) could pass for Aryans and smuggled "secret documents, weapons, underground newspapers, money, medical supplies, news of German activities, forged identity cards, ammunition — and other Jews — in and out of the ghettos of Poland, Lithuania and parts of Russia"; Walter Süskind and his friends used their positions running the nursery where Dutch Jewish children awaited deportation to camps to smuggle 600 children to safety. (more…)

Holy moly, this kerosene-fueled full GFK* body RC speeder has a turbine engine that generates 40.50lbs of thrust at 125,000 rpm, letting it reach speeds over 450 miles per hour.Perhaps even more impressive is that the pilot is able to maintain control at those speeds. Mindboggling!* Fun fact: GFK stands for Glasfaserverstärkter Kunststoff, the German name for this type of glass-fiber reinforced component. I had to look it up!Here's a POV shot of this type of RC jethttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H74rXkQBeR4• FASTEST RC TURBINE MODEL JET IN ACTION 727KMH 451MPH FLIGHT TRAINING WORLD RECORD TRAINING PART 2 (YouTube / RC MEDIA WORLD)

I almost like getting a clogged drain now, because I know the Flexisnake will take care of the problem.I keep Flexisnakes in all of our bathrooms, and use them frequently to pull out gross blobs of matted hair clogging the sink drains. It's kind of like a long pipe cleaner with a crank. You insert it in the drain and twist the handle. The hair wraps around it. It's $6 on Amazon.

It's generally recognized that The Simpsons drifted from sharp comedy to cosy light entertainment as the years went by, and that a threshold was passed somewhere between seasons eight and eleven. Using data culled from IMDB and a contiguous cluster analysis, Nathan Cunn pinpoints the exact end of The Simpsons' golden age to the half-hour: episode 11 of season 10. This particular way of seeing things condemns no particular episode's sins, merely putting a statistical dividing point between Wild Barts Can't Be Broken and Sunday Cruddy Sunday. Compare to The Principal and the Pauper, the season 9 episode traditionally identified as the shark-jumper, which in this chart is a controversial blip on the road to all the disengaged meta to come.

You like wave dynamics, right? And things simulated in web browsers, right? Well, here's an online simulation of a ripple tank, which I've been playing with for twenty minutes and which I fully expect will keep me busy until lunch. [via]

John Lemon AKA Ben conducted a statistical analysis of self-mentions by popular rappers to determine who among them was most interested in themselves. Mr. West doesn't even make the top 5; the winner was Ms. Minaj.