Consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen's Amanda Werner, dressed as Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly game, sat behind former Equifax CEO Richard Smith this morning during his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee about the company's breach of 45,500,000 Americans' private data . From Public Citizen's statement:

In June, Chokwe Lumumba, Jr. was elected mayor of Jackson, Mississippi on a platform that promised to make it the "most radical city on the planet;" this week, Randall Woodfin creamed incumbent opponent William Bell in the mayoral race for Birmingham, Alabama, with a platform that promised free community college for Birmingham high-school grads, expanded pre-K, and more money for public transit and job training. (more…)

After several unsuccessful attempts to drive a car up a tow ramp, the driver decides to chill out and vape.

The 2,500-watt LaserSharp Denim HD Abrasion System adds precision wear-marks to fresh denim jeans to make them look sort-of worn-ish, making it the latest successor acid-washing in the long battle to figure out how to make jeans look cool and authentically patina-ed without having to wear them every day for six months without washing them. (via Interconnected)

Today, Google is expected to release a sequel to its beloved Pixel phone. To celebrate, we’ve got a handful of Android-inspired deals with an extra discount in the Boing Boing Store. You can get an extra 10% percent off any of the following items when you use coupon code PIXEL10.MicFlip Fully Reversible Micro USB CableIf your device isn’t new enough for USB-C and you’re not fan of Apple’s walled garden, this MicFlip cable gives your micro-USB phone a reversible connector. It’s great for charging phones in the dark or behind the wheel, and is available here for $13.99.ZeroLemon Battery Cases for Google Pixel and Pixel XLAnyone who bought the first Pixel when it first came out might be starting to feel some wear on the batteries. You can more than double its battery life with a ZeroLemon Battery Case. It protects your device from drops, and gives your speakers a boost, too. You can get it now for $36.99.The Complete Android Oreo with Kotlin BundleTo take your Android fandom to the next level, the Complete Android Oreo with Kotlin Bundle teaches you mobile development. Through these four comprehensive courses, you’ll learn how to make apps using the Android Studio IDE, and the Kotlin programming language. This bundle can be had for $34.FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth EarbudsThese wireless earbuds have embedded magnets that keep them from getting tangled, and automatically pair with your phone when you pull them apart. They’re lightweight, resist sweat and water, and get up to 6 hours of playback time. Get them here for $29.95.Ticwatch 2 Active SmartwatchThis versatile smartwatch syncs with almost any mobile device, but can still track your activity without one. The Ticwatch 2 sends texts and receives notifications with speech, and gets up to 2 days of battery life on a single charge. It's on sale now for $169.99.VPN UnlimitedProtect your mobile browsing activity against unwanted snoops with VPN Unlimited plans starting at $29.99. This acclaimed VPN service works on up to 5 simultaneous devices, and offers unlimited high-speed bandwidth in over 50 countries. To protect your digital life, it blocks trackers and malware with its DNS Firewall.More Deals from the Boing Boing Store:Social Media Rockstar Bundle: $29 (97% off)Clip & Snap Smartphone Camera Lenses: $17.99 (74% off)4-Piece Knife and Peeler Set: $26.99 (73% off)

A gas station didn't heed the attendant's request to put out his cigarette, so the attendant doused him and his car with a powder-based extinguisher.Sorry for the potato camera quality of the video. For a clearer look at the smoking customer, here's a portrait of him by Robert Crumb.

Before structured shoes became prevalent in the 16th century (and apparently in those places where they never have) people walked with a different gait, pushing onto the balls of our feet instead of rocking forward on our heels. It looks a little affected -- like a gymnast or ballet dancer -- but is apparently much healthier. I'm going to master it!

Rex Tillerson wanted to quit as Secretary of State and openly called Trump a moron at a high-level meeting where the president was not in attendance. He was talked into staying on, according to reports, by other cabinet members including Vice President Mike Pence.NBC News:

Cuphead is a strange and stunning video game (see the trailer below) that perfectly resembles a pre-war Grim Natwick cartoon. But seeing it in black and white on an old cathode ray tube (above) takes it to another level entirely.https://youtu.be/4TjUPXAn2Rg?t=25sRunning a new console to an old monochrome TV requires a serious chain of dongles. First the composite > HDMI adapter you know you need, but then an coax > composite RF modulator because these things are so old they don't even have composite inputs, then maybe a twin-lead flat antenna plugs > coax transformer as well, because these things are so old they don't even have coax.P.S. black and white and technicolor filters are both available as in-game options, but you've got to beat it, and it's a very difficult game:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Tm8BQpaeY&user=Maka91Productions

In this 2016 interview with Billboard, Tom Petty shares the story behind his hit "Free Fallin'":

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Just over a year ago, Yahoo admitted that it had been hacked in 2013, and estimated that 500 million accounts had been compromised (the company blamed state-sponsored actors, and federal prosecutors have indicted two Russian spies for ordering the operation). Now the company has admitted that all three billion of its accounts were affected. (more…)

Since April, Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been running a snitchline called "Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE)" whose mission is to "provide proactive, timely, adequate, and professional services to victims of crimes committed by removable aliens." (more…)

Matthew Bogart's new comic Incredible Doom launches today, online and in print, "about a group of teenagers in the 90s getting into life and death situations over the early internet." (more…)

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is the go-to protocol for low-powered networking in personal devices, so "smart" sex-toy manufacturers have adopted it -- despite the protocol's many vulnerabilities. That means that hackers can now wander city streets, detecting and compromising sex toys from the sidewalk, in a practice that Pentest Partners' Alex Lomas has dubbed "Screwdriving" (analogous to "Wardriving"). (more…)

Jared Leto will star as Hugh Hefner in a new biopic about the Playboy publisher. The film will be directed by Brett Ratner who produced The Revenant, directed X-Men: The Last Stand, and has helmed many other big movies. More interesting to me though is that, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Ratner "also plans to reboot the Hefner-hosted, late-1960s talk show Playboy After Dark." Check out a few classic musical performances from that excellent program below including a clip of the visit from the Grateful Dead during which they famously dosed the on-set coffee pot.https://vimeo.com/10535211https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7kjOPCxLC0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9qTDD-BTHo

The Freefall Camera (FFC) is a robot that can be tossed out of a plane to autonomously track and capture video of skydivers doing tricks. At a predetermined altitude, the robot pops its steerable parachute and lands near specified GPS coordinates. The University of Nottingham researchers who developed the Freefall Camera presented their work at last week's International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. From IEEE Spectrum:

This Han Solo keychain reminds me of such travesties as the "disappointing SpongeBob popsicle" and the equally odd "Bugs Bunny Popsicle."(posted by JJ0710 on r/StarWars)

r/The_Donald, before: "Fuck the travel ban, forced deportation. 1 week or 10 years in jail. GTFO." After: "Antifa? This smells like a false flag. Research this." (more…)

If Southern California was any indicator, 1980's car dealerships had creative marketing departments.The Pete Ellis song is frequently stuck in my head. You are welcome.https://youtu.be/0HJALwCNbcoThe immortal Cal Worthington and his dogs "Spot."https://youtu.be/ozx5lInoEOYWhenever I see a really beat up car that I know someone is struggling to keep moving I start singing the Toyota of Orange "You won't get a lemon" song. California's lemon laws always made this one ironic.https://youtu.be/2qs5KqchC-4They didn't sell cars, they sold bling for cars! Super Stores radio commercials were far more fun than the TV variety but the end of this one is representative.

Growing up near Dayton, Ohio, I was always intrigued by rumors that extraterrestrials were stored on ice at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Turns out, the closest thing may be these surreal murals painted by German prisoners-of-war held in the base's dining hall during World War II. What inspired them? From Dayton Daily News:

If you have fond memories of crafting MP3 playlists in the pre-streaming world, or just hate gumming up your $800 smartphone during workouts, Mighty is a clever reinvention of the dedicated audio player. First brought to life with over $300K in crowdfunding from Kickstarter, you can now pick up one of these music machines from the Boing Boing Store. You can even take advantage of an additional 10% in savings with code MIGHTY10.Instead of syncing files through a clumsy desktop interface (*cough*, iTunes), you use your iPhone or Android to wirelessly push Spotify playlists to Mighty. It downloads everything for offline playback, so you have nothing to worry about when you’re out of LTE range. It’s built with activity in mind — the integrated clip keeps it firmly attached to your clothes, it’s water- and drop-resistant, and there’s no display to break when it inevitably goes flying.Mighty holds about 1,000 songs at a time, and supports multiple playlists. To help you navigate through your collection, it speaks playlist names out loud when you cycle through them. The Mighty On-The-Go Spotify Music Player is available here for $84.99.More Deals from the Boing Boing Store:Social Media Rockstar Bundle: $29 (97% off)Clip & Snap Smartphone Camera Lenses: $17.99 (74% off)4-Piece Knife and Peeler Set: $26.99 (73% off)

Splinter News compiled the long list of congress members who took money from the NRA and then tweeted thoughts and prayers to the victims and families of the horrific Las Vegas mass shooting.A small sample:

The British Half Pint Beer Glass [Amazon] is the perfect all-purpose drinking glass, and a set of 12 should immediately replace all other small- to medium-sized glasses in your cupboards.It's like a traditional nonik pint glass, complete with elegant bulge for gripping and safe stacking, but miniaturized to contain only half a pint. It's adorable and is the perfect measure for just about any drink other than weak beer: wine, mixed drinks and decent ale are only the beginning, as they're an excellent vessel for nonalcoholic beverages and even hot drinks. (The wide, accessible character makes them good for experimenting with cocktails, too.)Since I got a set, they've become my daily driver for my favorite sawbuck reds, both expanding their influence on my palate even as they moderate my consumption. Yes, Orwell would be displeased, but such is life, and life is not much for the opinions of the dead.There are a few cheaper sets you can find, but most are trash, either merch for Britishy franchises or cheap, thin glass that's liable to chip or crack quickly. Get the high-quality tempered-glass set here. You won't regret it.British Half Pint Beer Glass [Amazon]

The court battle between Waymo and Uber took a revealing turn this week, after unsealed court documents exposed "damning evidence" of efforts to hide what is now obvious.

Right-wing clones of mainstream social media are ten-a-penny. But now the left's getting in on the action, too. Behold Raddle, a "leftist alternative to Reddit" founded after some intra-left drama spiralled out of control (plus ca change) and ended with site-wide bans. [via Metafilter]

The A. V. Club visited Stern Pinball, one of the the soldiers standing in a very old battle.

Lisa Wade is the author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus. Shankar Vedantam interviewed her on a recent episode of the Hidden Brain, and her assessment of the state of American feminism is, for me, a game changer:So part of the reason we see hookup culture on college campuses can be traced back to the sexual revolution and the women's movement.The women's movement wanted two things for women, both sexually and otherwise. They wanted women to have the opportunity to do the things that men do and to embody masculine traits and interests. And they wanted everyone to sit up and notice that the things women had been doing all along and the traits and interests that they were believed to have were also valuable.And we really only got half of that.Feminists succeeded in convincing America, for the most part, that women should be allowed to do what men do and even have masculine traits. But we never really got around to valuing the things that we define as feminine. So a young woman who's growing up in America today is going to - she's going to be told by most - not all parents are like this. But most parents are going to encourage their daughters to mix in masculine traits and interests into her personality.And they're even going to encourage her to do so and perhaps reward her more so when she does that than when she incorporates feminine personality traits. So we're excited when she likes to play with engineering toys when she's a kid. And we're excited when she chooses sports over cheerleading. And we're excited that she decides to major in physics instead of education. And so women have been getting this message. If they're paying any attention at all it's very clear that, as they say, well-behaved women rarely make history.We reward you, we think it's great when you act like we think a stereotypical man does. So then when they get to campus, that's what they try to do. And it should surprise none of us that many women on campus decide to approach sexuality the same way they've been rewarded for approaching everything else in their lives, with this idea of the thing to do, the way to be liberated is to act in the way I think a stereotypical man might.

The Longest Shortest Time is an excellent storytelling podcast about parents and kids. They’ve recently made two episodes aimed at helping white parents figure out how talk to kids about race, and thereby avoid “(accidentally) raising a racist.”We know that avoiding the topic (“colorblind” parenting) leaves a void in which kids are left to absorb the biases of culture at large. So what do we say? That’s the territory Longest Shortest Time explores in these episodes.My favorite of the two is #135, White Guilt and other Crazy Sh*t, with Eula Biss.According to the episode blurb, “Eula Biss is a writer and professor who has made a career out of embracing her own discomfort when talking about race.”Biss impressed me with the subtlety and clarity of her thinking. She talks about the conversations she has with her own kid and ways she’s changed her behaviour, as well as common pitfalls of white guilt. She wrote a popular New York Times article called White Debt that's also worth reading.Image via Peakpx

Legendary musician Tom Petty has died of cardiac arrest. He was 66 years old. Damn.

I bought this wall outlet with 2 USB chargers for $17. It's now on sale for $15.29 on Amazon. This one also includes wallplates, which mine didn't come with.

It's Black Friday mixes us a DIY Black Frappucino, which is a blend of bottled sugary "latte," ice, black gel food dye and activated charcoal (warning, don't use this if you're on any kind of important meds, eg birth control, mood stabilizers, chemo drugs, etc). It looks pretty great, even if it's a giant calorie whose key ingredients are terrible "coffee" and a food additive that can lead to accidental pregnancies. (via The Everyday Goth)

In Madagascar, botanist Anton Sieder recently discovered an orchid with huge flowers that smell of champagne. Royal Botanic Gardens researcher Johaan Hermans confirmed that the plant, now named Cynorkis christae, is new to science. From The English Garden:

Long after Equifax was breached by hackers, but before they told anyone else about it, some of its top execs sold off millions of dollars in stock, getting out before the stock tanked which would be blatantly illegal if the execs in question knew that the company had been breached. (more…)

The brutal repression that Spain's government meted out to Catalonians in yesterday's independence referendum has cemented the determination of many in the region to be shut of the government, which is perceived as authoritarian and in thrall to the banks (especially the bondholders who worked with the EU to impose punishing austerity on Spain). (more…)

The EU's data-protection framework is not without its flaws, but it does allow the public to force companies like Facebook to hand over all the data they hold on you, and that means that Americans can use the law to force Facebook to reveal how the Trump campaign's targeted ads worked. (more…)

The Federal Reserve's just-published 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances reveals that income inequality is rising in the USA, with the top decile now controlling 77.1% of the nation's wealth; wealth that is increasingly retained through intergenerational bonds, meaning that wealth is apportioned by accident of birth rather than merit; and (unsurprisingly, given the foregoing), the browner you are, the less you have. (more…)

Tarpons are fish who have broad mouths with prominent lower jaws that jut out farther than the rest of the face. For anyone who has never seen the humongously wide-open mouth of a tarpon before (like me), you must take a look!

On September 6, 1949, Howard Unruh murdered 13 people in downtown Philadelphia. It's considered the first mass shooting in US history. Tragically, it wasn't the last. From a 2015 article about Unruh in Smithsonian:

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza on Washington's predictable response to Stephen Craig Paddock’s murder of more than 58 people in Las Vegas last night:

Kasey Golden wondered how small she could draw one of her characters. She started with a 5 x 7 inch piece of paper, penciled the character, inked it, then colored it. She then repeated the process on successively tinier pieces of paper until her pen was too big. The 1/4 X 1/4 inch looked good!

53-year-old Juana Escudero heard that she had died seven years ago. Only she was still alive – obviously it was a different Juana Escuadero. Both lived in Spain and both shared the same birthday. She thought it was funny at first, until she soon realized that the government treated her as a dead person, meaning ordinary things were nearly impossible to do, like seeing a doctor, renewing her driver's license, receiving widow benefits, and anything else that goes through the government.Escudero is so desperate to reclaim her life that she wants to take a DNA test and dig up her own grave to prove that she is not dead, but it's not going to be easy.According to Oddity Central:

Since late 2016, the Transport for London has been running a pilot scheme, providing wifi to passengers while logging and retaining all the wifi traffic coming in and out of its access points, compiling a massive dossier on every tube-rider who had wifi turned on for their devices, whether or not they ever accessed the wifi service. (more…)

This is a good example of how people can mislead by presenting just part of a story. In this video, we see a driver holding out his parking ticket to a tollbooth attendant. The attendant has her hand out, but she isn't reaching far enough to take the ticket. She isn't looking at the driver, either. My first reaction was that both the driver and the tollbooth attendant were jerks, but then I read what really happened, via The Morning News:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=17&v=1KPel8WecjwThis is a TV commercial from Japanese milk company Rakunoh Mother’s. What's the deal with this Uddered Flying Object (UFO)? For the cattle mutilation-inspired backstory, see the equally unusual TV spot below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9HoqvOWpgA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tLbzm3oAMZelda: Breath of the Wild, the hit launch title for Nintendo's new Switch console, is already emulated on the PC, where it's been hacked to house random pop culture stuff. In this video, see Biggie Smalls vs. Thomas the Tank Engine, Minecraft Steve, Spongebob, and Shrek do battle.There's something so awesomely dumb about this, fascinating and boring all at once. It embodies a trend that looks like it might be punk, or at least a new frontier in YouTube Poop. But this is mostly our novelty receptors getting plugged by a tornado of memes that never change. A flash of accelerant in the embers of web culture, cackling at the hope new things must emerge when the old is mixed.

Dozens are dead after 64-year-old gunman Stephen Paddock began shooting into a concert crowd on the Las Vegas strip. Taking aim from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, he was killed by officers after injuring hundreds.

Pissjar Sans is a free typeface evoking the unique letterforms of urine on cotton fabric. What's remarkable about it is the fastidious attention to detail and workmanship evinced by type designers in pursuit of what could easily have been something dashed off and doomed to dafont.com obscurity. They really put their backs into it.

I remember watching Let's Make a Deal on our family black-and-white TV set when I was six years old. To me, Monty Hall was in a tie with Danny Kaye as being the coolest, nicest, smartest person in TV land. He had the best job in the world -- giving money and prizes to people dressed up as clowns, scarecrows, and robots. The great thing about Let's Make a Deal was that anything could happen, and it often did. There seemed to be no script. The show teetered on the precipice of anarchy, with Monty's energetic patter keeping the show moving ahead. Every episode had surprises. My favorite part of every episode was the last few minutes when Monty would make lighting deals with the proto-cosplayer contestants. I remember one time he told a contestant he'd trade her a dollar for every nickel in her purse. She pulled out a mason jar filled with them.This weekend, Carla and I are thinking of our dear friends Sharon Hall and her husband Todd on the passing of this creative, generous man who touched millions of people through his entertaining TV shows and good works.From The New York Times:

The Catalonian referendum on independence from Spain went ahead today, using the backup ballot boxes the opposition had secretly procured in anticipation of the brutal crackdown on the independence movement by the central government in Madrid, which included snatching elected officials and seizing ballot boxes. (more…)