When I was in Tokyo in 2017, I left my daypack in a taxi. I asked the person who was running a cooking class I was attending if there was anything I could do about it. He made a phone call and within an hour the backpack was returned. This article in Mental Floss explains why it's so easy to recover lost items in Japan. The reason is that large cities like Tokyo have lots of tiny police stations, called kōban (交番) in every neighborhood. People who find purses, wallets, etc., take them to the nearest kōban. Here's how it works, according to Mental Floss:In 2018, 4.1 million missing items were turned in to police, and the chances of reuniting them with their owners is pretty good. That same year, 130,000 of 156,000 lost phones (83 percent) were returned and 240,000 wallets (65 percent) went home.Missing items are typically held at the local koban for one month in case the owner retraces their steps and comes back. After that, they’re sent to a Lost and Found Center at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, where the item is cataloged, searched for information relating to its owner, and then put into an online database that the public can check. Belongings are held for three months. After that, they might be handed over to the person who found it. If not, they become the property of the local government, where they might eventually trickle down to secondhand thrift sales.Image by Suikotei - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 Read the rest

There’s often a logical disconnect between stories and the world they purport to represent in the tabloids, and this week’s offerings are no exception.

Mad maker, Peter Sripol, apparently got a zillion requests from his viewers to build an R/C model of an Ekranoplan, aka the Caspian sea monster, a Soviet-era ground-effects vehicle (GEV), a plane designed to skim over water. The results are amazing, the footage of it flying, of the ground-effect in action, is some of the coolest R/C footage I have ever seen. It's amazing what amateurs can do these days, cinematically, with affordable camera drones and Go Pros.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Philadelphia had many "gay houses" and "ladies of pleasure" in the 1840s, so it's not surprising that an enterprising publisher created a guidebook for travelers to the city "of brotherly love and sisterly affection," which was estimated to employ 10,000 sex workers at the time.Flashbak has some highlights from the "pocket companion."At this house you will hear no disgusting language to annoy your ear; everything connected with this establishment is calculated to make a man happy. The young ladies are beautiful and accomplished; they will at any time amuse you with a fine tune on the piano, or use their melodious voices to drive dull care away. Stranger, do not neglect to pay a visit to this house before you leave our quiet city of sisterly affection....This lady is the Queen of Trumps, tall and majestic, and noble in appearance. She is a lady in manners and conversation. She lives well and her house is comfortable and safe. One glance will satisfy a person of that fact....…be cautious when you visit this place, or you may rue it all your lifetime....Beware this house, stranger, as you would the sting of a viper....This is one of the worst conducted houses in the city. The girls, though few in number, are ugly, vulgar and drunken. We would not advise any body of common sense to stay there.Image: Flashbak Read the rest

“Russia has sent intelligence agents to Ireland to map the precise location of the fibre-optic, ocean-bed cables that connect Europe to America,” Ireland's security agency suspects, according to this report in The Times of London. “This has raised concerns that Russian agents are checking the cables for weak points, with a view to tapping or even damaging them in the future.”Irish security officials believe Russia may be targeting Ireland as a regional base for military intelligence operations because the country's counterintelligence abilities are limited, and Moscow presumably views Ireland as a vulnerable spot. Additionally, various tech giants that have placed their offices in Dublin to evade U.S. taxes might be juicy targets for Vladimir Putin's corporate espionage programs.Excerpt:Ireland is the landing point for undersea cables which carry internet traffic between America, Britain and Europe. The cables enable millions of people to communicate and allow financial transactions to take place seamlessly.Garda and military sources believe the agents were sent by the GRU, the military intelligence branch of the Russian armed forces which was blamed for the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer.Read more:Russian agents plunge to new ocean depths in Ireland to crack transatlantic cables[thetimes.co.uk] Read the rest

By living a rough day over and over again, a black motorist learns that the cops will find their reasons: "I'm stopping everyone with broad noses. See if you match the description."Writer/Director: Cynthia KaoCast (in order of appearance)t:Eric: Burl MoseleyOfficer 1: Ryan StangerFemale Officer: Celia FinkelsteinOfficer 2: Matt CordovaOfficer 3: Marshall Givens Read the rest

In Tennessee, a well-organized but not super smart burglary suspect was busted by the fuzz when he dropped his notebook with a list of homes he planned to burglarize.Robert Shull Goddard, 49, is charged with breaking into a Nashville area home on January 29. Cops say he smashed open a glass door, then stole “multiple items including a television and firearm,” according to court records filed in Davidson County court.He left his crime journal behind at another house that was also burglarized that same day, authorities say. He's got some 'splaining to do in court.From coverage in The Nashville Tennessean:Prosecutors say in court records Goddard dropped a notebook during the burglary that listed multiple addresses in it. One of those addresses was for another home a few miles away that had been burglarized that same day. The notebook also contained clues to the burglar's identity — notes from his daughter and her address.Goddard was also caught on video kicking in the back door of a third house the following day, court records state.Goddard was arrested last Tuesday and is currently held in Davidson County jail on at $15,000 bond for felony burglary and theRead more:Burglar dropped notebook that tied him to another break-in, police say[tennessean.com, Brett Kelman, Published 2:23 p.m. CT Feb. 8, 2020] Read the rest

Senator Warren doesn't need Mike Pence, she has a dog. Read the rest

For most of us, writing doesn’t come naturally. It often only comes after agonizing hours of scratching and clawing for just the right words to make our point. And when we finally do read over our final product, we cringe and start looking for a partner or friend or family member to take a look and maybe “punch it up” a little.Thankfully, Ludwig can get you and all your nearest and dearest off the hook for solving your worst writing crimes. The dedicated Ludwig sentence search engine is the smart writer’s tool for turning so-so prose into literary gold.Ludwig is a hit at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, like MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Oxford — and it isn’t hard to see why.Once you drop your sentence into Ludwig, this engine instantly judges it against over 200 million great English sentences, then offers you concrete, contextualized examples to make it better. Ludwig is no slouch either, comparing your work to premium pedigreed sources like scientific journal articles, official documents, and award-winning media. A seal of approval from Ludwig is a true sign your writing is actually ready to be seen by others.If you’re grasping to come up with just the right word to make your sentence sing, type an asterisk where the word should be. The brainy Ludwig will do the work for you, digging up the perfect word for your situation.Ludwig also score points with foreign-born writers, delivering sterling English text full of style and nuance rather than a choppy, clunky direct translation served by Google or other services. Read the rest

Watch as pro skier Josh Daiek of South Lake Tahoe backflips over a Highway 50 road gap!SF Chronicle:Daiek, known for his fearlessness in the mountains, launched himself from the edge of a 90-foot cliff above the roadway near Echo Summit, threw a backflip while clearing westbound semitrucks on the pavement below, then landed on his feet in the snowy embankment on the other side. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” Daiek said recently.He pulled off the jump a year ago, on Feb. 6, 2019, after eyeing that spot in the road for a decade and waiting for the snow conditions to align for a safe landing. “It was a harebrained idea I thought just might be possible, and I’m really stoked to have pulled it off.”Read the Chronicle's recent interview with Daiek to learn how he did this absolutely crazy stunt.screengrab via Salomon TV/YouTube Read the rest

TV actor Robert Conrad, best known for his portrayal of Jim West on the very quirky, proto-steampunky 60s sci-fi Western, The Wild Wild West, has died. He was 84.When I was a kid growing up in the late 60s, I loved The Wild Wild West, although frequently, I had no idea what was going on. I basically hung around for the goofy Batman-like super villains and the crazy steam-driven contraptions. Here's an example of the show at its wackiest.Read the Robert Conrad obit on Deadline.Image: Public Domain Read the rest

Many of the world's most famous buildings sport spires, masts and other bullshit designed to make them superficially taller without adding to the expense and difficulty of construction.Pictured below is the classic example: The Petronas Towers, which captured the title of "world's tallest building" from Chicago's Willis (then Sears) Tower in 1998 despite being obviously 60m shorter.This video shows the world's towers appropriately denuded of their dirty, lying spires. Read the rest

I assume I'm late to this party (I'd never heard of this show until a few days ago). Innuendo Bingo is a BBC Radio 1 show where celebrities listen to radio and TV clips that contain lines that can be misconstrued as sexual. They have glassfuls of water in their mouths that get spewed onto each other as they bust out laughing at the innuendo.I've had some real bust-out moments of my own (sans water or someone to gob on) watching these. I especially love it when they get so overly giddy that they spray their "opponent" even before they arrive at the innuendo. Image: YouTube Read the rest

Boston's got a bad reputation when it comes to race. And unfortunately, much of it's deserved. Of course, there are people who are trying to fight and make a positive difference despite the segregation that's left the predominantly black neighborhoods behind in schooling and socializing. Which is why the Boston Teacher's Union planned a week-long series of events in coordination with Black Lives Matter, to help educate students on inclusion and restorative justice. After all, February is Black History Month. So that all sounds good, right?The Boston Police Patrolmen's Association disagreed, and sent a letter to BTU President Jessica Tang condoning the events. In the letter, BPPA President Michael Leary refers to Black Lives Matter an "anti-police organization" who has endangered the lives of Boston police officers. This is demonstrably untrue. But BPPA refuses to let the facts get in the way of their feelings. The letter continues on about the "irrational hatred" of BLM, accusing them of "inaccurately demonizing police as racists who kill innocent people" before passive-aggressively warning about the potential dangers of not cooperating with Boston Police, like some kind of mob protection racket.The Boston Police patrolman association wants to shut down Black Lives Matter as School Week while citing racist propaganda as their reasoning. #notsurprised #blacklivesmatteratschool #bostonteachersunion pic.twitter.com/TsayDTCH72— BLM Boston (@BlmBoston) February 5, 2020BPPA is also upset about an education initiative to provide more funding for guidance counselors, instead of just shoving more police officers into schools to solve behavioral problems by threat of force. Read the rest

This video shows a method for "torturing" telemarketers that appears to be as effective as Lenny but much simpler. In fact, it's just one word. Can you guess which one it is? Read the rest

The world is now filled with an insane variety of things you can sleep on. I ended up with a Purple 3 mattress, but holy cow -- what a ride!A while ago I moved all my stuff into storage except my 10+-year-old mattress. One marriage, one Great Pyrenees and who knows how many people who briefly tried to 'relate' to me later, that mattress had run its useful service life. As I re-emerge from #vanlife it has become time to purchase a new mattress.I bought my first mattress in 1994. It was cheap. I gave it to my parents for a guest bed when I moved from Los Angeles in 1999. My parents still keep it in one of their guest bedrooms. I know this because I have slept on it an awful lot in the last few months, and my body hates me for it.I move around a lot when I sleep and there is conjecture that this is because I am uncomfortable. I try to sleep on my back as it is 'the best' for my lower back problems, and I got problems. I invariably move from my back to sleeping on my right side, where I have damaged my shoulder from my last bed being too firm. After a while, I involuntarily roll to my left side where I was damaging my shoulder but now am on a bed far too soft for that. As the Beach Boys sang, I get around.I was recently staying at a hotel in the Marriott chain while visiting New Orleans for around a week. Read the rest

First discovered in 1700 by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the microscopic spheres in this video are Volvox, a genus of chlorophyte green algae. If you enjoy this video, its creator Shigeru Gougi posts absolutely astounding microscopy images on his Flickr stream. Want to explore the Volvox realm yourself? From Microbehunter Microscopy:Microscopists who are interested in observing Volvox should try to investigate water samples from ponds and puddles. It is also possible to grow Volvox at home. Volvox likes to grow in nutrient-rich water. Dilute some plant fertilizer in water and add some pond water containing Volvox (or other green algae that you want to grow). Place the container on the window sill for several days but prevent direct sunlight as this may cause overheating, and drives out the CO2 for photosynthesis from the water. Alternatively, you can also use a plankton net to catch the colonies.Learn more at The Kid Should See This. Read the rest

The morning coffee routine is a wonderful thing—offering ambitious people a chance to rid themselves of sleepiness and fatigue so they can confront the day’s challenges head-on. But if you’re looking to add some style to what’s probably by now a drab and somewhat boring caffeine routine, check out this Alessi Pulcina 3-Cup Espresso Maker, which delivers a perfect brew in a supremely sleek package.Ideal for lovers of coffee and great architecture, this espresso maker will put some pep in your step and some modern style in your kitchen.Crafted by the renowned architect Michele De Lucchi, this high-performance coffee maker is designed to stop dispensing your morning brew just before the coffee begins to develop that bitter aftertaste—allowing you to enjoy every sip at your own pace.Its unique V-shape makes for a perfect addition to the home of any lover of great design, and you’ll be able to make and serve up to three cups at once.Add some style to your coffee routine every day with this Alessi Pulcina 3-Cup Espresso Maker for just $49.99—over 55% off MSRP today. Read the rest

Facebook has agreed to pay $550m to users in Illinois who sued it over its storing of biometric data without consent. This allowed the social network to automatically tag photographs—and to build a vast database of facial recognition data. It also contravenes the state's privacy laws, reports the BBC:The case has been ongoing since 2015, and the settlement was announced in its quarterly earnings. It comes as facial recognition use by the police, and in public spaces, comes under intense scrutiny. The lawsuit against Facebook was given the go-ahead in 2018 when a federal judge ruled it could be heard as a class action (group) case. The appeals court disagreed with Facebook's attempts to stop this, and in January the Supreme Court also declined to review its appeal. Facebook made the facial recognition feature opt-in a few months after the state Supreme Court left them on the hook. Mike Isaac at The New York Times reports a "major victory" for privacy campaigners.“The Illinois law has real teeth. It pretty much stopped Facebook in its tracks,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit group that filed a brief in the Facebook case. “Tech firms and other companies that collect biometric data must be very nervous right now.”Since the Illinois law was enacted in 2008, it has vexed companies that market voice assistants, doorbell cameras, photo labeling and other technology that may collect biometric details from people without their knowledge or consent. Read the rest

Former United States postal worker Jason Delacruz admitted he rented a public storage unit for $49 per month to store mail he couldn't deliver, reports CNN. He pleaded guilty to delay of mail by a postal employee and will be sentenced in February.From CNN:Agents from the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General found almost 5,000 pieces of mail in the storage unit in Virginia Beach.They discovered 97 pieces of first-class mail, which included letters from the Department of Motor Vehicles, the IRS, insurance companies, bank statements and other tax return documents.Magazines and other publications made up 115 pieces of mail. There was also one undelivered package found in the unit. The bulk of the mail was advertisements, more than 4,700 ads at that.Photo by sue hughes on Unsplash Read the rest

In 1896, Norwegian immigrant Helga Estby faced the foreclosure of her family's Washington farm. To pay the debt she accepted a wager to walk across the United States within seven months. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow her daring bid to win the prize, and its surprising consequence.We'll also toast Edgar Allan Poe and puzzle over a perplexing train.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

A 19-year-old gentleman in Monroe, Louisiana asked a couple of guys at his gym if he could borrow some guns he noticed in their truck so that he could rob someone. He needed cash to skip town, and thought stealing it at gunpoint was his best shot (pun intended). But it was a botched scheme after the two men “flagged down an officer,” according to AP, and warned them about the fellow's plans. He was then arrested for possession of meth.From AP:[Landon Wayne] Duke had approached the men, whom he reportedly knew, in a Planet Fitness parking lot and noticed they had guns in their truck, according to a police arrest report obtained by The Monroe News Star. The men told investigators Duke said he wanted to borrow the guns to rob someone of enough money to leave town. The men said no and entered the gym, according to the report.Duke allegedly followed and worked out with the men while continuing to talk about robbing someone, investigators wrote. Police later spotted Duke at nearby a gas station and found what they believed to be methamphetamine wrapped in a $100 bill in is pocket, the newspaper said.Duke was booked into Ouachita Correctional Center on Sunday on one count of possession of a schedule II controlled dangerous substance. He remained in custody Monday, the News Star said.Image: sfbaywalk / flickr Read the rest

Documents show that the antivirus company Avast has been selling its users' internet browsing data, through a subsidiary named Jumpshot, to clients that include Pepsi, Google, and Microsoft, reports Motherboard. The report is the result of a joint investigation between the VICE News site and PC Mag.“An Avast antivirus subsidiary sells 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site,'” and clients of that data broker firm, Jumpstart, have included Home Depot, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, and McKinsey,” Joseph Cox at Vice/Motherboard.“An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies,” the joint investigation with VICE Motherboard and PCMag found.Excerpt:The documents, from a subsidiary of the antivirus giant Avast called Jumpshot, shine new light on the secretive sale and supply chain of peoples' internet browsing histories. They show that the Avast antivirus program installed on a person's computer collects data, and that Jumpshot repackages it into various different products that are then sold to many of the largest companies in the world. Some past, present, and potential clients include Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Sephora, Home Depot, Condé Nast, Intuit, and many others. Some clients paid millions of dollars for products that include a so-called "All Clicks Feed," which can track user behavior, clicks, and movement across websites in highly precise detail.Avast claims to have more than 435 million active users per month, and Jumpshot says it has data from 100 million devices. Read the rest

My old pal Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs will release his first proper solo album, Random Desire, on February 21. Above is "Pantomima," the first single/video for the album, and it's a beaut. Directed by and starring Greg's longtime collaborator Philip Harder, this magnificent short film is a take on the "All That Jazz" tale of choreographer/dancer Bob Fosse.Greg tours Europe and the US starting in March. Black out the windows, it's party time.Dulli photo by Maciek Jasik Read the rest

Rad.(h/t David Razowsky) Read the rest

Clearview AI (previously) is a grifty facial recognition company that sells untested, secretive tools to police departments, claiming that they can identify people from security camera footage by matching the pictures those scraped from big social media sites.It turns out -- unsurprisingly -- that Clearview's marketing copy is not a reliable source of impartial evidence about the quality of its products, and neither are the testimonials of the cops who urged their bosses to buy Clearview products.Nevertheless, Clearview is a creepy, grifty, privacy-invading toolsmith serving authoritarians, getting rich by covertly supplying its overhyped tools, and, unsurprisingly, lots of people (including me) want structural changes to make Clearview cut it out and prevent future Clearviews from emerging. However, the remedy that's favored by the Big Tech monopolists that Clearview used for raw materials is to ban scraping, something that Big Tech has been aggressively seeking to criminalize. The problems with this is that scraping bans represent the best hope monopolists have for maintaining their monopolies: if it's against the law to extract your own data from a Facebook walled garden, then Facebook doesn't need to fear that a competitor will create a tool that will let you stay in touch with your Facebook friends without using Facebook (by logging into Facebook as you, scraping your waiting messages, and letting you reply without touching Facebook yourself).The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- a federal hacking statute from 1986! -- is the preferred tool for blocking scraping (it's the law that was used to threaten Aaron Swartz with a long prison sentence after he wrote a tool that mass-downloaded scientific articles he was entitled to read from MIT's network). Read the rest

The idea of paid protesters is a favorite of the right, though as always, the thing you accuse your opponents of inevitably turns out to be the thing you're doing yourself (Trump paid actors to cheer his presidential campaign announcement and big industry groups pay actors to protest regulations that undermine their profits).The Trump administration has been seeking to extradite Huawei heiress/exec Meng Wanzhou since they had her arrested by Canadian authorities in late 2018.This week saw a crucial juncture in that legal wrangle, when Meng Wanzhou faced a judge over her objections to her extradition. Cameras were barred from the courtroom, but outside of it there was a lively demonstration of pro-Huawei/pro-China protesters, with a very different makeup to the usual protesters who have taken up Ms Weng's cause, who are primarily mainland Chinese students who are studying in Canada. By contrast, these protesters were primarily not of Chinese origin, and they all sported red, homemade protest signs decrying the Trump administration, calling for "equal justice," and seeking the return of "Michael" (two Canadians, both named Michael, have been detained by Chinese authorities in retaliation for Meng's arrest). Bob Mackin of The Breaker attended the protest and talked to these protesters and found them both curiously reticent to speak about their cause, and also singularly ignorant about the cause they were supporting. Mackin asked several of the protesters if they'd been paid to attend the event, but none admitted it at the time.Subsequently, some of the protesters have contacted Mackin to say that they were paid to be there, and moreover, that they believed they were performing as extras in a music video. Read the rest

Do not insult the dog, even if the insult is technically correct. (Insult is NSFW) Read the rest

It's been some time since I visited AbeBooks.com's wonderful "Weird Book Room," a special curated section within the glorious online marketplace for used books. Sure, some of the books may not be so odd on their own but all together they make for quite a bizarre bibliography. Seen here are just a small sampling of the confounding covers and strange juxtapositions. Read the rest

I was a anti-nuclear arms proliferation activist from a very young age, 10 or 11, and took it seriously, nearly getting kicked out of school and organizing classmates to attend large demonstrations. I felt like I was tackling an existential risk to the human race and most of the living things on the planet Earth (30+ years later, I think I was right), and that the grownups around me were not taking this seriously, and that this was probably the most urgent thing for me to focus on as a result.Watching Greta Thunberg, I find myself recalling all the young activists I knew back then, and the extraordinary young people I've met since through my YA novels. She's an extraordinary speaker, of course, and has a crackling personal presence that carries over through the camera as well, but I think that what makes her especially effective is that she is able to combine sweeping philosophical statements with really concrete, well-phrased, crisply defined demands that are audacious, but phrased in such a way as to be undeniable.Her most recent Davos speech is a great example of this. First, she tells the press and world leaders that they're not taking the climate crisis seriously and makes a very nebulous, but grand, demand of them: "I don't think I have seen one media outlet or person in power communicating this or what it means. I know you don't want to report on this. I know you don't want to talk about this. Read the rest

From OneDrive to Slack, there are numerous ways to store files online. Because many platforms offer a certain amount of free storage, it makes sense to mix and match. However, spreading your files across multiple apps can make things very confusing.Rethink Files offers a simple solution. By connecting to all your other cloud storage accounts, this platform offers access to every file in one slick interface. Better still, every user gets 2TB of secure cloud storage.Even if you know where to look for any given file, skipping between different apps is a colossal waste of time. Working through a central hub makes for a much smoother workflow. Rethink Files works with a huge list of apps, including Google Drive, Dropbox OnDrive, Amazon S3, Slack, Box, Zoho, and many more.The interface is reminiscent of Google Drive, with a clean design and colorful icons. The built-in search bar lets you find files quickly, and you can view rich previews of over 100 file types. For anyone with data stored in the cloud, Rethink Files is an invaluable productivity tool. A 10-year subscription is worth $3,117.60, but you can order now for $49 with the 2TB of storage included. Read the rest

[The selloff of the .ORG domain name registry to a private equity fund is fractally terrible, but it's in danger, thanks to public outcry. My EFF colleague Mitch Stoltz lays out the grotesque contours of the deal and its many deficiencies in this comprehensive overview. -Cory]Over 21,000 people, 660 organizations, and now six Members of Congress have asked ICANN, the organization that regulates the Internet’s domain name system, to halt the $1.135 billion deal that would hand control over PIR, the .ORG domain registry, to private equity. There are crucial reasons this sale is facing significant backlash from the nonprofit and NGO communities who make the .ORG domain their online home, and perhaps none of them are more concerning than the speed of the deal and the dangerous lack of transparency that’s accompanied it. Less than three months have passed from the announcement of the sale—which took the nonprofit community by surprise—to the final weeks in which ICANN is expected to make its decision, giving those affected almost no chance to have a voice, much less stop it. The process so far, including information that the buyer, Ethos Capital, provided to ICANN in late December, raises more questions than it answers. U.S. lawmakers are correct that “the Ethos Capital takeover of the .ORG domain fails the public interest test in numerous ways.”Before any change in who operates the .ORG registry can take place, ICANN, which oversees the domain name system, needs to answer important questions about the deal from those who use .ORG Read the rest

I'm all for anything that makes shopping more entertaining. Read the rest

The rack-mounted version of the expensive and handsome new Mac Pro is now available, starting at $6499. You can configure yourself a model up to $54,547.98, rack not included. Read the rest

Celebrate the new decade with a $22 Lil Dumpster Fire figurine so that you can gaze upon your immortal petrochemical chum and recall fondly the days when the dumpster fire was merely figurative. (via Super Punch) Read the rest

Jim Spanfeller (previously) is the private equity monster whose mismanagement of various former Gizmodo sites (notably Gawker, Splinter and Deadspin) has generated endless bad press from his own employees, who have doggedly reported on every single demand that they shut up and suck it up, has now been publicly condemned in the pages of yet another of his publications -- this time, it's the gaming site Kotaku.Joshua Rivera and Gita Jackson have both resigned from Kotaku. In a farewell post, the journalists interview one another about their careers at the site, with special disapprobation for Spanfeller, Great Hill Partners and G/O Media. Gita: His outward and obvious hostility towards the writers here, his treatment of the Deadspin writers, his firing of Barry, the way that he talks about Deadspin and the way that he won’t take responsibility for its closure even though it comes from his really awful management decisions, have just made my faith in the ability of him being able to keep this company solvent, just completely obliterated. And it’s all him. It’s all his choices.Josh: There’s no way I feel supported as a writer. I know Stephen Totilo, bless up, will go to the ends of the earth for us.Gita: Hell yeah. He would fight an army. He cares so much about his writers.Josh: It’s a shame that we don’t have owners that care for a fraction as much. You know, they don’t, they don’t shout out our work. Read the rest

NEW Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows 20% of likely Democratic caucusgoers name Sanders as their first choice for president.U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading the Iowa Poll for the first time, and just 3 weeks remain before the Iowa caucuses.Sanders took the lead in the Democratic field and narrowly overtook his closest competitors, Sanders, Biden, and Buttigieg, all in a tight scrum just behind Sanders.Here are the top line numbers:IOWA WH’2020 poll(DMR/CNN/Selzer, with trend from November):Sanders 20 (+5)Warren 17 (+1)Buttigieg 16 (-9)Biden 15 (+0)Klobuchar 6 (+0)Yang 5 (+2)Booker 3 (+0)Gabbard 2 (-1)Steyer 2 (-1)Excerpt from the Des Moines Register:After a surge of enthusiasm that pushed Pete Buttigieg to the top of the field in November, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor has faded, falling 9 percentage points to land behind both Sanders and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Warren is at 17%; Buttigieg, 16%; and former Vice President Joe Biden, 15%.“There’s no denying that this is a good poll for Bernie Sanders. He leads, but it’s not an uncontested lead,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. “He’s got a firmer grip on his supporters than the rest of his compatriots.”IOWA WH’2020 poll (DMR/CNN/Selzer, with trend from November):Sanders 20 (+5)Warren 17 (+1)Buttigieg 16 (-9)Biden 15 (+0)Klobuchar 6 (+0)Yang 5 (+2)Booker 3 (+0)Gabbard 2 (-1)Steyer 2 (-1)https://t.co/hcharuzx6M— Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) January 10, 2020First choice + second choice combined:Warren 33 (17+16)Sanders 32 (20+12)Buttigieg 31 (16+15)Biden 27 (15+12)Klobuchar 14 (6+8)Yang 11 (5+6)...no Read the rest

When the IRS proposed providing free, pre-completed tax-returns to US taxpayers, the big tax-prep companies like Intuit/Turbotax and HR Block lobbied like crazy to kill the plan, and instead proposed "Free File," through which they would provide free online tax-prep services for people with incomes of $69k or lower.However, the tax-prep companies immediately set about creating a web of deceptive lookalike services with similar names that would trick people into thinking they were using the free services, then hit them with a surprise bill before they could submit their returns. At the same time, their lobbyists managed to ban the IRS from advertising the real Free File services.Propublica has produced a guide to filing your taxes for free in 2020, with direct links.As ProPublica reported last year, TurboTax purposefully hid its Free File product and directed taxpayers to a version where many had to pay, which is called the TurboTax Free Edition. If you clicked on this “FREE Guaranteed” option, you could input a lot of your information, only to be told toward the end of the process that you need to pay. You can access TurboTax’s Free File version here. This version is offered through the Free File agreement.TurboTax’s misleading advertising and website design directed users to more expensive versions of the software, even if they qualified to file for free. After our stories published, some people demanded and got refunds. Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, faces several investigations and lawsuits because of this. Read the rest

James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist at JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), made this excellent clip comparing the rotations, tilts, and sidereal day lengths of the eight planets and two of the dwarf planets in our solar system. There are many more dwarf planet candidates, but they aren't mapped so aren't included," O'Donoghue writes. "More space missions would be a good idea."Agree!Below, another one of O'Donoghue's fantastic videos:Light Speed – fast, but slow #scicomm pic.twitter.com/LfoZ3g38DK— Dr James O'Donoghue (@physicsJ) September 30, 2019 (via Cliff Pickover) Read the rest

The awesome LEGO Star Wars Boost Droid Commander set lets you build and program Star Wars droids.A big hit over the holiday season was this LEGO droid building kit. Having started with LEGO Mindstorms decades ago, I am thrilled with how LEGO's learn to code using our toys program has come along.This kit comes with 3 build-able droids and whole lot of coding challenges to help you and your children learn to manage R2D2.LEGO Star Wars Boost Droid Commander Read the rest

Commercials for grills, jeeps and hiking boots make the great outdoors seem like a magical place, and it is — until you have to clean all that grimy gear afterward.There's no getting around it, but there is a better way than that hand towel or worn-out brush you've been using. The Brush Hero is a gadget that attaches to your garden hose and adds strong scrubbing power to the water pressure.There's a lot of thought put into this deceptively simple cleaner. Clip it on to the end of your standard garden hose, and the force of the water is amplified into a surprising amount of torque. The spinning brush is tough enough to clean even caked-on outdoor grills, but gentle enough to use on your car and other painted surfaces.The head is small enough to get in between tight crevices, and the deluxe Brush Hero set includes a Navigator attachment that lets you reach storm drains or other problem spots.Get the Brush Hero®: Deluxe Set with two replacement brushes for more than 90% off the MSRP. Read the rest

Chevron said Monday it has evacuated all expatriate oil workers from Iraq, following last week's Trump airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Chevron, which is the number 2 U.S. oil company, said in a statement that as a "precautionary measure" all non-Iraqi employees and contractors have departed the company's one and only site in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq "for the time being." "The safety of our people and facilities is Chevron's top priority globally," a Chevron spokeswoman told CNN Business, which has more on the development.As this 2017 article notes, Russian state-sponsored Rosneft has also been quite active in the Kurdistan Region in the last 4 or so years, and its investment in natural gas pipelines in the region continues.When US companies leave, will Rosneft take over?More about Chevron's history of operations in Iraq on the Chevron website. Read the rest

In this photo posted to Facebook, two police officers from Mobile, Alabama pose with a "quilt" made from cardboard signs confiscated from homeless people in the area over the Christmas break. “Wanna wish everybody in the 4th precinct a Merry Christmas, especially our captain," says the caption to the posting. “Hope you enjoy our homeless quilt. Sincerely Panhandler patrol.”Al.com names the two grinning officers as Preston McGraw and Alexandre Olivier, and points out that the photo was taken in a police department office. It was first posted to Officer McGraw's page, but has been shared widely since.Mobile Police Department has not responded to a request for comment. AL.com also emailed every city council member for comment. No one has yet responded.Since being posted online the image has been shared more than 10,000 times and has over 3,000 comments. Many comments claim the image to be in poor taste, especially during the holiday season.God Bless. God Bless.God Bless. God Bless.God Bless. God Bless.God Bless. God Bless. Read the rest

National signing day is when high school athletes sign letters of intent to play for specific university. It's a big enough deal for college football fans that ESPN was updating it class rankings every hour. (Apparently Clemson did well, and USC did poorly.)Each school wants to get as much attention as possible. This year, Baylor announced each player with two tweets, one a traditional highlight reel, and another featuring puppets:Shut-down corner ❌@DAETHEREAPER#20Below pic.twitter.com/VD0ZE8Kogk— Baylor Football (@BUFootball) December 18, 2019Nimble and athletically gifted. @Gavinb_89#20Below pic.twitter.com/pRu8uBreYh— Baylor Football (@BUFootball) December 18, 2019All-purpose back 🐻@TayeMcwilliams#20Below pic.twitter.com/TgicexOsyQ— Baylor Football (@BUFootball) December 18, 2019 Read the rest

College student Rino Dubokovic has opened a Museum of Hangovers in Zagreb, Croatia. From CNN:Exhibits include displays of objects people found inexplicably the morning after a boozy night, a room where visitors can test their reflexes after putting on "beer goggles," and an interactive section where they can share their own best and worst hangover experiences.The gift shop is also tongue-in-cheek, selling a "drunkopoly" board game and bar activities, like darts.Dubokovic, who is from the island of Hvar and studying computer science, tells CNN Travel that the point of the museum isn't to glorify overindulgence. Rather, it's a physical representation of the kinds of chats he had with his friends, where everyone is sharing stories and bonding about things they did in the past.The city is also home to the Museum of Broken Relationships. Read the rest

Weighted blankets are a thing. And if you don't know why you've either never tried one or you're one of the lucky few who can sleep in a cave with no pillow.For the rest of us, comfort like the Corala Premium Weighted Blanket makes us wonder how we ever got to bed without one.Like most weighted blankets, the Corala uses tiny glass beads to provide just the right amount of extra pressure, but this model distributes them into smaller than usual pockets sewn into sections of the diamond pattern.The result is a kind of swaddling effect. It's called Deep Touch Pressure, and it can help to not only relieve stress and increase drowsiness but also boost your serotonin levels. That can help you get to sleep faster and stay that way throughout the night.The set comes with a 100% cotton Corala blanket in Living Coral, plus two gray duvet covers. The entire thing is already 37% off the MSRP, but you can take an extra 15% off that final price by using the coupon code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

One fantastic and wonderful origin theory of Santa Claus involves psychedelic mushrooms and shamanic rituals of the indigenous Sámi people who live in northern Finland. Paul Devereux wrote about this incredible hidden history in his fascinating 2008 book The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia. Then, Brooklyn filmmaker Matthew Salton blew mainstream minds with this fantastic New York Times "Op-Doc" short video on the topic.For more on psychedelic Santa, check out the following pieces by Greg Taylor at the Daily Grail:• "Santa is a Psychedelic Mushroom: Were Modern Christmas Traditions Influenced by Shamanic Folklore?"• Santa's Long Trip Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the plucky little boy president Donald checks in on his many, many imaginary friends.

Go full screen for this 4K video of an Airbus A380 landing at night at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. The YouTube channel, High Pressure Aviation Films, offers dozens of POV flight videos, from landings in Tahiti and Tokyo to the clip below of the Northern Lights seen from inside a Boeing 777 on its way from Los Angeles to Paris. Read the rest

Let me give it to you straight: Photoshop for iPad isn't great. Over the past year, creatives who rely on their iPadOS tablet to take care of photographic business have been promised the moon by Adobe. Instead, we got handfuls of green cheese. It was supposed to have the all of the power and capabilities of the desktop version of the app at launch. Nope: I, along with what I am sure are many others, was disappointed to find that the company that pretty much wrote the book on computer-aided image editing had released an app that was easily outclassed by apps like Affinity Photo and Pixelmator, the latter of which has been around since 2014. Happily, Adobe took a baby step towards climbing to the top of the mobile photo editing dog pile by adding a feature to Photoshop for iPad that should have been there since day one: the Subject Select tool.From The Verge:This addition marks the first real improvement to Photoshop for iPad since it was released last month to disappointing reviews. The tool should go a long way toward quelling one of the biggest criticisms of the v1 version of the app, which was the lack of a Magic Wand tool.Aside from Select Subject, Photoshop for iPad is also getting some UI improvements and speed improvements for its Cloud documents. Cloud PSDs, which were introduced with the app and allow users to access their Photoshop files from any device, will now upload and download up to 90 percent faster. Read the rest