Benjamin Bennett has a YouTube channel of 300 videos where he silently sits in a corner for four hours and smiles into the camera without taking a break. Yesterday he made an 8-hour video of sitting and smiling.He also has a newer video series called "Walking and Talking" where he rubber bands a camera to a stick and delivers stream of consciousness philosophical musings for four hours per episode.Image: YouTube Read the rest

As long ago as 1966, Batman knew how to correctly dispose of a explosive device without endangering the public or property. To think that all the shenanigans of the last two decades or so were completely unnecessary. Read the rest

OpenAI has released a more extensive version of its generative language model.We’re releasing the 774 million parameter GPT-2 language model after the release of our small 124M model in February ... 2. Humans can be convinced by synthetic text. Research from our research partners Sarah Kreps and Miles McCain at Cornell published in Foreign Affairs says people find GPT-2 synthetic text samples almost as convincing (72% in one cohort judged the articles to be credible) as real articles from the New York Times (83%). Additionally, research from AI2/UW has shown that news written by a system called “GROVER” can be more plausible than human-written propaganda. These research results make us generally more cautious about releasing language modelsBlockquoted below is something I just had it make (using Talk to Transformer, which has been updated with the new dataset.)I wrote the first (bolded) paragraph. GPT-2 wrote the rest.Former Democratic presidential candidate and United States Senator Hillary Clinton was arrested today and charged on four counts of conspiracy, one count of fraud, and one count of lying to Federal investigators. The details of the case are detailed below.A Brief Overview of the CaseOn June 2, 2014, Clinton (pictured) admitted to FBI agents that, on June 23, 2013, she, and others, had conspired with other political figures to take "official action" in response to a series of negative articles which she wrote in the Washington Times and other outlets.The following is a summary of Clinton's admission:Secretary Clinton used the Washington Post as her de facto personal email account and for the official State Department email account. Read the rest

And that is why we love him so.

Here's a little loving kindness to soften up your internet timeline. You probably need it right now.Such tiny adorableness. Such hammie tenderness.Shared by IMGURian @JuanmaGallego, whose hamster this is, I presume?hamster Read the rest

In May 1840 London was scandalized by the murder of Lord William Russell, who'd been found in his bed with his throat cut. The evidence seemed to point to an intruder, but suspicion soon fell on Russell's valet. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the investigation and trial, and the late revelation that decided the case.We'll also marvel at Ireland's greenery and puzzle over a foiled kidnapping.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The DIY, duct-taped motorcycle was described as the "most unusual vehicle" Sgt. Stephen Andrews had ever seen in 26 tears of pulling over motorists. But he found that it was roadworthy, had passed its Ministry of Transport inspection, and that the driver had paid his taxes. So on its way it went."This is certainly not a vehicle that is seen very often on our roads but after road side inspection we couldn't find anything that would prevent the rider to continue his journey."The vehicle was keeping up with other traffic and didn't cause any obstruction to other road users."The owner made sure that he fulfilled all the safety regulation as well as keeping the insurance, MOT and tax in date."I would not drive it on a bumper car rink let alone the highway, but godspeed to whoever created this excellent contraption and braves the M25 in it.The most unusual vehicle I've stopped on a motorway in my 26 years! All checked and in order, although still not convinced I know what it is. #400795 pic.twitter.com/oRNgPJEHHa— BCH Road Policing (@roadpoliceBCH) August 18, 2019Photo: BCH Road Policing Read the rest

Like many large US cities, Phoenix has a housing shortage and like many US cities, that crisis is worsened by the conversion of much of its housing stock into unlicensed hotel rooms through companies like Airbnb, VRBO, and Wanderjaunt, a new competitor in the unlicensed hotel room industry.Arizona's legislature has banned cities from putting limits on the process of converting homes to unlicensed hotel rooms, and that has created a local eviction epidemic. For example, tenants in Thomas McPherson's Historic Westminster Apartments (owned through his Fenix Private Capital Group) say they were all served with eviction notices that announced that McPherson had "elected to take the experience into a progressive new direction and turn the entire building into short term rentals."(McPherson told the Phoenix New Times that they were incorrect in asserting that he was evicting all of his tenants, but declined to elaborate; units in the building are already listed on Wanderjaunt for $75/night/guest)Wanderjaunt's founder, Michael Chen, has publicly explained that his company's growth strategy is to convince owners of rental properties to evict their tenants from their homes and turn a larger profit through short-term rentals; he called it "an arbitrage opportunity between long- and short-term rentals."For one tenant of Westminster, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation from her landlord, there's no question that McPherson is planning to turn her home into a hotel room. About a month or two ago, the tenant said she emailed her property manager asking if it would be possible to shorten her lease. Read the rest

The Pentagon today announced it tested a conventional ground-based cruise missile that went more than 500 kilometers, which would have been banned under the now-defunct INF treaty. Between this and the mysterious Russian missile that made the nuclear monitoring sites go dark last week? Yeah, INF is now toast, not just on paper. It's official. The missile was fired off the coast of California on Sunday.Data from the missile test will be used to refine weapons development, the Pentagon says.JUST IN: Pentagon has announced that it has tested a ground based cruise missile that went over 500 KM - that is, a weapon that had been banned under the INF treaty. Data from test will be used to inform future weapon development. pic.twitter.com/18nIdSkJe5— Aaron Mehta (@AaronMehta) August 19, 2019WATCH: U.S. flight-tests ground launched Tomahawk variant off of California in a test that went "more than 500km", a first since the end of the INF treaty earlier this month. Notable that they chose the Tomahawk as the original ground-launched version of it was killed by INF pic.twitter.com/aIPKRFHdvC— Jeff Martin (@JeffMartinDC) August 19, 2019 Read the rest

Illegitimate, popular-vote-losing, manifestly unfit United States President Donald Trump tweeted some more crazy shit on Twitter today.“Wow, Report Just Out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought!@JudicialWatch”This is false.Judicial Watch is an ultra-conservative troll organization that files FOIA lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials who are weirdly always Democrats.That is all. Read the rest

UK media moderated its coverage of the country's post-Savile sex abuse scandal, perhaps to maintain cosy establishment relationships and certainly due to Britain's menacing libel laws. American media has few such interests or impediments, and US coverage has sometimes made the difference in exposing a British problem to British audiences. But the delicious and seemingly well-deserved ruin of Prince Andrew needs no foreign encouragement. The Daily Mail:EXCLUSIVE: Prince Andrew is pictured inside paedophile Jeffrey Epstein's £63million mansion of depravity nine years ago... so how did he miss signs of the billionaire's sexual deviance?• Duke was spotted peering around the door of the billionaire's Manhattan home on December 6, 2010• The footage of the Duke was taken less than an hour after Epstein left the house with a young blonde woman• Epstein's alleged 'sex slave' Virginia Roberts claims she had sex with the Prince at financier's New York home• Buckingham Palace has denied any wrongdoing on Duke's part and the Queen has showed him her supportThe video above is CBS News' coverage of the release. Read the rest

Last Mother's Day, grandmother Rhonda Mengert was subjected to a pat-down search at Tulsa airport, wherein a TSA agent felt a panty-liner in her underwear; she was then forced to strip down and show her panty-liner to a female TSA agent. Naturally, she filed suit against the TSA.Now, the TSA has filed a reply brief in which they assert that Mengert is overreacting because "the intrusion on her privacy was no more severe than what could be routinely experienced in a women’s locker room, where states of partial undress and feminine hygiene products are subject to observation by other members of the same gender."Mengert's lawyer is Jon Corbett, who first came to the public eye with a high profile demonstration that he could smuggle lethal metal weapons through the TSA's full-body scanners. He writes, "Is a rape victim’s trauma is no greater than they would have had during consensual sex? Can peeping toms now use this same defense? If not, then how can one possibly argue that having 2 uniformed federal employees force my client into a back room to show them her most intimate areas is in any way comparable to one voluntarily using a locker room?"The difference between “extreme and outrageous” and “just locker room embarrassment,” Ms. Zintgraff, is consent. And respectfully, while I don’t personally have a lot of experience with women’s locker room etiquette, I must assume that inspecting each other’s pads is generally not a part of the experience. At least DOJ attorneys have moved on from arguing that kids detained for weeks don’t need blankets or toothbrushes… it’s just unfortunate that they’ve now taken up selling out on women’s rights in order to avoid paying a woman who they violated. Read the rest

I think it's fair to say at this point that the earth is rising up in self defense and will soon devour every last one of us. If a longer than usual storm season, unprecedented global temperatures and melting glaciers aren't enough to convince you, how's about this: plague infected prairie dogs and fleas are now out to get us.From The Washington Post:Parts of a Colorado wildlife refuge remained closed Sunday after plague-infected prairie dogs were discovered there in late July. Wildlife and nature areas near Denver have also been shut down as officials continue efforts to stem the spread of the disease.Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, a 15,000-acre nature area northeast of Denver, was able to partially reopen Sunday. The refuge is home to many species, like bison and bald eagles, and is where the plague concerns developed.Plague-infected fleas were biting black-tailed prairie dogs, and officials began closing affected areas “as a precautionary measure to prioritize visitor health and safety, while also allowing staff to protect wildlife health,” according to a statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.If that's not enough nightmare fuel for you, try this: if you walked your pooch or kitty through an area where plague-infected fleas had a chance to catch a lift on them, the fleas will have a chance to make you sick once you get back home. Did I mention we can contract bubonic plague by coming into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected animal or by inhaling the "coughed droplets of plague bacteria"? Read the rest

I particularly like the Flaco Jiménez tee.This song has been in my rotation since MP3s made it easy for there to be such a thing. Read the rest

Dan Gillmor and the ASU News Co/Lab: "An honest admission of an error is transparency. It’s not just the right thing to do. It can enhance trust when done right. It can lead to more engagement — by which we mean deeper conversations — among journalists and people in communities."* Gather and analyze the available research on journalistic corrections. We need to be clear what we know, what we don’t know, and what we need to know. We’re encouraged by a * recent meta-analysis of research on correcting misinformation that found promising evidence that corrective messages that provide context alongside a retraction are effective. Look for our research roundup in the relatively near future. * Build a tool that helps streamline the process of sending corrections (and essential updates) down the media pathways the original stories traveled. The tool will include research-oriented features that encourage experimentation, such as A/B testing to see what language gets the best results. We’ll be open-sourcing this work along the way.* Consult with researchers and journalism partners. (If your news organization is interested in being part of this, let us know. We’re looking for collaborators that span various modes and styles of journalism. The key requirement is a belief in corrections, and willingness to experiment.)* Convene a meeting with key researchers, journalists, and technologists who are working in this arena. One goal here is to develop an agenda that, we hope, will help the journalism craft as a whole modernize its attitudes about corrections and updates. Read the rest

Financial disclosures from Wework in support of its IPO reveal that the company loses almost $5,200/customer, and that it hemorrhaged $1.3B in the first half of 2019.The company plans to lost $2.7b in 2019 overall. Its corporate mission is "to elevate the world's consciousness." They lose more money per customer than any other, even world-beating-loser Uber.But what is staggering about WeWork, and what could turn off investors as a major stumbling block to profitability, is how much it loses per customer. It's 24 times the amount that ride-sharing giant Uber, another recent IPO, is on track to lose per active rider this year, and nearly 129 times what struggling meal delivery service Blue Apron losses per subscriber, and nearly 753 times the $6.90 per year that popular pet e-tailer Chewy.com lose a year per regular customer. WeWork IPO filing shows it's losing nearly $5,200 per customer [(via /.) Read the rest

I am addicted to Thinkpads in large part because of the trackpoint (AKA "The Nipple") -- the little wiggly joystickbetween the G, H and B keys that allows me to control fine mouse-movements without bending my hand into the RSI-inducing trackpad position; between that and the amazing, best-in-class warranties, I am a committed Thinkpad user, to the point that I actually bought and returned three different systems this year because (between the new Intel chipset and the new Nvidia cards), I couldn't get any flavor of GNU/Linux to run on them (many thanks to Canonical for eventually getting me running on a Thinkpad extreme).Now there's an alternative to the trackpoint, confusingly named the Tracpoint, which is being kickstarted as we speak. It's a tiny wireless trackball/mouse designed to be used in very tight spaces like the backs of taxis and tiny airplane seats, and it also works as a wireless presentation clicker to advance your slides. They're three-button, only weigh 24g, project a built-in spotlight, and run for one hour on a 60-second charge. There's Mac/Win (but not GNU/Linux) software that lets you program custom gestures.The campaign comes from Swiftpoint, who've run multiple successful crowdfunders for hardware, making them a good bet for fulfilling orders. They're $89 for limited earlybird purchases, $99 full price, and $188 for two-packs. I ordered one.TRACPOINT - TRAVEL MOUSE and PRESENTER [Swiftpoint/Kickstarter](via Four Short Links) Read the rest

California security researcher Droogie came up with what seemed like a good way to avoid having to pay any parking tickets issued to his vehicle: He ordered a vanity license plate emblazoned with "NULL," expecting that (like in this xkcd comic) when the ticket was entered into the the DMV database, it would consider the "NULL" entry to be "the special marker used in Structured Query Language to indicate that a data value does not exist in the database." But that's not quite the way things went. From Ars Technica:First, Droogie got a parking ticket, incurred for an actual parking infraction—so much for being invisible. Then, once a particular database of outstanding tickets had associated the license plate NULL with his address, it sent him every other ticket that lacked a real plate. The total came to $12,049 worth of tickets. Droogie told the DEF CON audience that he received little sympathy from either the California DMV or the Los Angeles Police Department, both telling him to just change his plate to something else. That remains something he refuses to do.Although the initial $12,000-worth of fines were removed, the private company that administers the database didn't fix the issue and new NULL tickets are still showing up. Read the rest

Here's the first full trailer for the forthcoming Netflix The Dark Crystal series, which features oldschool puppetry and an amazing cast: Taron Egerton, Lena Headey, Mark Hamill, Sigourney Weaver, Simon Pegg, and several Game of Thrones alums.Light the fires of resistance! Join Deet, Rian and Brea on an epic quest to find hope in darkness, save Thra, and reveal their destiny. Nothing will ever be the same.A Netflix Original Series from the Jim Henson Company and visionary director Louis Leterrier, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistancepremieres August 30. Read the rest

In May 2018, Google faced a series of public resignations and scandals over a secret internal project to supply AI tools to the Pentagon's drone warfare project; then, in August 2018, scandal hit again with the news that Google was secretly developing a censoring, surveilling Chinese search-tool; then came the news that the company had secretly paid Android founder Andy Rubin $90m to quietly leave the company after credible accusations of sexual abuse and assault.We've covered the story as it unfolded, and others have attempted to trace its trajectory, but now, Wired's Nitasha Tiku has written a massive, deeply reported recap of the entire affair, up to and including the departures of key organizers like Meredith Whittaker and Celie O’Neil-Hart, who say they were targeted for retaliation by the company for their activism.Tiku shows how Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto was a key advantage when it came to recruiting top engineering talent in one of history's tightest labor-markets. She also describes how far-right "provocateurs" like Kevin Cernekee and James Damore were able to use "the paradox of tolerance" to play the system, while teaming up with Trumpist media outlets to stoke outrage at the idea that banning the circulation of memos detailing eugenic theories about the natural role of women is "anti-conservative bias."Finally, she shows how gender discrimination was the hardest issue for Google to cope with: racist remarks and conduct were met with swift reprisal, but discrimination against women, sexual harassment and sexual assault were swept under the rug. Read the rest

You can buy microcontrollers for as little as 3 cents, if you order a lot of them, a staggeringly cheap number even if you're so young you don't know a Zilog Z80 was $10 in 1978 money. But are these cheapo parts any good? Hackaday says they're terrible, but Tim finds a role.[it] surely is a question of perspective. They address a specific category of low-cost, high volume, non-serviceable products with limited functionality. You need to wait for the push of a button and then let an LED flash exactly five times? You need to control a battery-operated night light? The sub $0.10 MCU is your friend to reduce BOM and shorten development time.For everything else, spare a buck. Read the rest

Fredo Corleone is the childish, easily-led brother from The Godfather whose weakness and insecurity lead him to betray his family. Chris Cuomo is the childish, easily-led CNN anchor whose weakness and insecurity lead him to getting into public fights with people who call him Fredo."Punk-ass bitches from the right call me Fredo!" Cuomo says in this video clip, which presumably starts after he was thusly named by someone. "My name is Chris Cuomo! I'm an anchor on CNN. Fredo is from The Godfather. He's the weak brother. They use it as an Italian aspersion. Any of you Italian? It's a fuckin insult to your people. It's an insult to your fuckin people. It's like the N-word for us. Is that a cool fuckin thing?""You're a much more reasonable guy in person than you seem on television," says the man who called him Fredo."You wanna play, we'll fuckin play. If you've got something to say about what I do on television then say it." "Hey man, listen, I don't have a problem""Well you're gonna have a big fuckin problem. Don't fucking insult me. You call me Fredo, I'll call you punk bitch, you like that? You want that to be your nickname?""I didn't call you that.""You called me Fredo! You know my name's not fuckin Fredo! You did not think my name's Fredo, don't be a fuckin liar. Stand up like a man. Own it, own what you said. You're gonnna have a fuckin problem. Read the rest

Robert Ballard is the oceanic detective who turned up the Titanic in 1985, the lost Nazi ship Bismarck, and many other shipwrecks. Now he's off to to find Amelia Earhart's plane that hasn't been seen since she and her navigator disappeared over the Pacific ocean on July 2, 1937 during their flight around the world. And based on a photo taken just a few months after Earhart disappeared, Ballard is pretty sure he knows where the plane crashed. From the New York Times:Kurt M. Campbell, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, invited Dr. Ballard to a meeting. The two had known each other since their days in Naval intelligence.Mr. Campbell ushered him into his office, Dr. Ballard recalled in a recent interview: “He closed the door, and he said, ‘I want to show you a picture.’”First, he offered Dr. Ballard a grainy black-and-white photo. “He said, ‘What do you see?’ I said, ‘I see an island with a ship on a reef?’ And he said, ‘No, look over to the left.’”As Dr. Ballard squinted at the blur, Mr. Campbell handed him a second, digitally enhanced image. Mr. Campbell said the smudge was landing gear from a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. And the reef in the picture was part of tiny Nikumaroro Island, in the mostly uninhabited Phoenix Islands.There it was, a precise place to look for Earhart’s plane.“I went, ‘I’ll be damned,’” he said. Read the rest

Oh, that face, as the pupper looks up at his poppa. The eyes.Daddy's Boy[IMGUR, from @WXYZwxyz/@gffkennel] Read the rest

All the participants at the 3-day Volusia, Florida orgy were naked and used aliases, and for obvious reasons, DNA-based identification "is not going to be an option, which means we'll probably never find out who stole the Glock from the bedside table. (Image: Eyes Wide Shut/Warners; Askild Antonsen, CC BY-SA, modified) (Thanks, Gnat!) Read the rest

Nick Shirrell of Film Grain and Octane makes automotive videos using a 1968 Canon 1218 Super8 movie camera. His latest film documents this summer's 2019 IndyCar Grand Prix at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. It's amazing how Shirrell's use of this vintage media so powerfully conveys the feeling of the past even though the images are of the present day. Read the rest

A million years ago, I bought a Crystal and the Wolves CD on impulse from a rack on the counter at Amoeba Records; I ripped it and tossed it into my shuffle. Now, about once a month, I am treated to "Old Oak Tree," the standout track on the disc, which makes me happy as a happy thing. It just happened. Thought you might wanna hear it, too. Read the rest

This video perfectly encapsulates everything I remember when first meeting Zeke the Sheik so many, many years ago. Tim Dundon, Altadena's composting vigilante, has passed away at age 77.Decades ago I was planting my first home vegetable garden. A large portion of the soil needed to be replaced and my friend David took me to meet Zeke the Sheik. Zeke maintained THE PILE.The pile appeared to be a double lot completely covered by a 15' to 40' high mound of compost. Zeke had planted a huge and dense hedge of vegetation around the property to try and act as a firebreak, as the gas the pile would off-put occasionally burst into flame.I got soil from Zeke all those years ago. He spoke in rhyme and really entertained. Whenever you were way the heck out near Altadena you could stop by and say hi. I knew he had legal troubles with his neighbors and the place sure seemed odd-ball, but Zeke was dedicated to the pile and worked hard to make it safe and healthy.The other day my friend David told me that Tim Dundon had passed away. I apologised and said I did not know who that was. It never occurred to me that he was anyone but Zeke the Sheik. Tim certainly led a colorful life and composted a lot.LA Times:Dundon, a rhyming whiz known widely by his alter ego “Zeke the Sheik” and whose legendary, mountainous compost pile delighted some and troubled others — and who famously defended himself in court in rhyme — died Monday in West Hills, said his friend Ilham Akraa. Read the rest

10-year mortgage interest rates in Denmark have hit -0.5% -- that is, the bank will pay to you borrow money. 20 year loans? Zero interest. 30 year loans now at 0.5% are headed negative. Translation: some people with a LOT of money think that we're heading for a depression so ferocious that they'll loan you money for 30 years at only 0.5%, just to lock in some kind of return during the decades-long bloodbath they foretell. (Image: Jimmy Baikovicius, CC BY-SA,modified) (Thanks, Kathy Padilla!) Read the rest

IBM's ridiculously named X-Force Red have documented a new attack vector they've dubbed "Warshipping": they mailed a sub-$100 custom, wifi-enabled low-power PC with a cellular radio to their target's offices.The device scans for visible wifi networks; once it senses a network associated with its target (indicating that it has arrived on the target company's premises), it alerts its controllers over the cellular radio, and then scans the local wifi for instance in which users' devices are initiating new connections to the network. It captures the handshake data from these connections, transmits them over the cellular network to its controllers, and they can then crack the password offline, send login credentials to the warshipping device, login to the target network, and attack the network from within.“Warshipping has all the characteristics to become a stealthy, effective insider threat — it’s cheap, disposable, and slides right under a targets’ nose — all while the attacker can be orchestrating their attack from the other side of the country,” said Henderson. “With the volume of packages that flow through a mailroom daily — whether it be supplies, gifts or employees’ personal purchases — and in certain seasons those numbers soar dramatically, no one ever thinks to second guess what a package is doing here.”The team isn’t releasing proof-of-concept code as to not help attackers, but uses the technique as part of its customer penetration testing services — which help companies discover weak spots in their security posture.With warshipping, hackers ship their exploits directly to their target’s mail room [Zack Whittaker/Tech Crunch](via Super Punch) Read the rest

This waterproof, clear toiletry zipper bag is TSA approved, and more durable than a ziploc bag. The squared-off shape and thicker plastic makes it easier to fill with liquid containers. Amazon sells them for . I bought two. Read the rest

“I’ll be more careful from now on when I open my door. I’ll open my door with my Taser because I have one.”

Reason #256 for why I never leave the house without my Garmin InReach Mini: things always go wrong at the most inconvenient times. You know, like when you're mid-air in a small aircraft that decides it's finished flying for the day.When Matt Lehtinen’s single-engine Cirrus crashed into the asshole end of Quebec's vast wilderness, he was packed and ready for the worst, with a satellite communications device, first aid kit and a few essential survival sundries. Having made it out of the hard landing that left his aircraft a write-off, he immediate fired off an SOS and started a fire. As if starting a survival fire and keeping an eye out for search and rescue personnel weren't enough to do, while he waited to be retrieved, Lehtinen also took the time to make a vlog of his ordeal. It's a great idea: if you get out in one piece, you've got a testament to the fact that staying calm and being properly equipped for an emergency situation can save your life. Alternatively, if he was eaten by a bear while waiting for a SAR flight to pop by, at least folks would know what happened to him. Read the rest

Alicia Rodis is HBO's "lead intimacy coordinator." This means that she choreographs and coaches actors in sex scenes. In The Atlantic, Kate Julian profiles Rodis and shares the, er, intimate details of the work. Here's a description from the set of The Deuce:Ahead of the shoot, the episode’s director, Steph Green, explained her vision of the scene to Rodis, who called the actors to run through a proposed plan. Afterward, Rodis made sure that each actor’s contract had a rider stipulating that (Ryan) Farrell would touch (Emily) Meade’s clothed breasts, and Meade would grab Farrell’s crotch through his pants, under which he’d be wearing a prosthetic penis. The day of filming, Green, Rodis, and both actors met in private to prepare. (Green has long run trust- and chemistry-building exercises before intimacy scenes.) Before rehearsing the scene, she and Rodis asked the actors to hold each other’s gaze for a long interval. The actors also took turns inviting each other to touch agreed-upon body parts: hand, knee, thigh, and so on.When it was time to shoot, the aforementioned prosthetic was produced. “It was an actual fake penis that they use in some of the scenes,” Farrell said. “I was like, ‘That’s pretty extreme!’ ” He put it in his pants. “Emily got to actually feel it when it was on top of me,” he said, “and when things like that start happening, it’s an icebreaker, and everybody loosens up a bit.”Farrell and Meade got in the back of the limo, together with a cameraperson, while Rodis and Green watched the scene via monitor. Read the rest

I keep extra tools in this small tool roll that conveniently fits under my motorcycle's seat.My BMW famously came with an under-seat toolkit that can mostly fix any problems from minor to pretty large. It is greatly aided by a few extra bits and pieces that will not fit in the OG tool roll. So I got this one.It is cheap. It stores tools. It fits. What else could I want?I will spare you a picture of my motorcycle's under-seat storage. It is truly the least interesting part of my bike.FASITE 10 Pockets Roll Up Tool Pouch Wrench Pouch Organizer via Amazon Read the rest

The captain of this ship seems like the kind of guy who would enjoy driving his car through rain puddles to soak people. He is being investigated for piloting his ship alongside a beach in the Netherlands -- creating a wake that engulfed several people, including small children, who had to be taken to a hospital -- before going on its merry way.Image: YouTube[via] Read the rest

If you are annoyed by YouTube clickbaity thumbnails this Chrome extension, called Clickbait Remover for YouTube, is for you.This extension replaces thumbnails with a frame from the video, effectively removing any clickbait while still showing a high quality thumbnail so you can still get a good idea of what the video is about.It can also modify titles to stop partial or all caps titles.It works everywhere on Youtube including the homepage, trending page, subscription page and channel pages.All functionality of the extension is customizable by clicking on the icon on the top right, you can see the effect of different options have right away if you have a youtube tab open, no need to reload the page.This extension might help people who have a Youtube addiction or anyone who just doesn't want to be distracted by flashy thumbnails and all caps titles while trying to find some quality content.[via Lifehacker] Read the rest

Sony's FE 135mm f/1.8 GM (Amazon) is a serious lens for its full-frame cameras, costing about $2000 and winning over critics. PetaPixel compares it to $12k glass after finding it much sharper than similarly-priced competition from Sigma and Zeiss. At that price, though, it's not a tinker toy--and there isn't even a service manual yet, let alone parts availability. So when one came back to lensrentals.com with a report of focus trouble, it decided to do a teardown rather than return it, to bring light upon the void.First, let me be clear, this is an isolated incident; we haven’t seen this problem with any other copies of the Sony 135mm GM (and we have a lot of them). ... Now let’s get to the fun part, the teardown. This is a very well made lens. It IS built like a tank with robust magnesium alloy barrels, lots of long thick screws holding things together and nothing flimsy to be seen. The electromagnetic focusing motors, which were a weakness a few years ago, are now built like you could pull trucks out of ditches with them. Read the rest

Things are getting weird in the world of ice cream. First, French's created mustard-flavored ice cream for National Mustard Day. Then, in response to that, Oscar Mayer created the "Ice Dog Sandwich".Fast Company: Oscar Mayer, which is waging a Twitter war with French’s as we speak, teamed up with New York City-based Il Laboratorio Del Gelato to corrupt some perfectly good gelato with real bits of candied Oscar Mayer hot dogs, swirled with spicy Dijon Gelato, and “hot dog sweet cream,” a phrase that cannot be typed without gagging.That unholy combination will be smooshed into hot dog shape, served on a cookie bun, and dubbed the Ice Dog Sandwich to mark the definitely not-made-up holiday of National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, aka August 2. That faux holiday is no excuse for this behavior, Oscar Mayer. The hot dog-flavored ice cream sandwiches will be bestowed upon the unlucky people of New York the week of August 12...Who eats just mustard @Frenchs? Condiments were made for Oscar Mayer hot dogs. Say hello to the Oscar Mayer Ice Dog Sandwich - 🌭 flavored ice cream, made with our better hot dogs, sandwiched with spicy mustard 🍦. Do you want to try this? Coming in August🔥 #OscarMayerIceCream— Oscar Mayer (@oscarmayer) August 1, 2019screenshot via Oscar Mayer Read the rest

Adversarial interoperability is what happens when someone makes a new product or service that works with a dominant product or service, against the wishes of the dominant business.Though there are examples of adversarial interoperability going back to early phonograms and even before, the computer industry has always especially relied on adversarial interoperability to keep markets competitive and innovative. This used to be especially true for personal computers.From 1969 to 1982, IBM was locked in battle with the US Department of Justice over whether it had a monopoly over mainframe computers; but even before the DOJ dropped the suit in 1982, the computing market had moved on, with mainframes dwindling in importance and personal computers rising to take their place.The PC revolution owes much to Intel's 8080 chip, a cheap processor that originally found a market in embedded controllers but eventually became the basis for early personal computers, often built by hobbyists. As Intel progressed to 16-bit chips like the 8086 and 8088, multiple manufacturers entered the market, creating a whole ecosystem of Intel-based personal computers.In theory, all of these computers could run MS-DOS, the Microsoft operating system adapted from 86-DOS, which it acquired from Seattle Computer Products, but, in practice, getting MS-DOS to run on a given computer required quite a bit of tweaking, thanks to differences in controllers and other components.When a computer company created a new system and wanted to make sure it could run MS-DOS, Microsoft would refer the manufacturer to Phoenix Software (now Phoenix Technologies), Microsoft's preferred integration partner, where a young software-hardware wizard named Tom Jennings (creator of the pioneering networked BBS software FidoNet) would work with Microsoft's MS-DOS source code to create a custom build of MS-DOS that would run on the new system. Read the rest

Franky Zapata is the first person to cross the English Channel on a flyboard. The Frenchman, who invented the hovering device, made the 22-mile trip in 22 minutes, wearing a backpack full of kerosene to get from Dover to Calais without getting wet. Read the rest

Sci-Hub (previously) is a scrappy, nonprofit site founded in memory of Aaron Swartz, dedicated to providing global access to the world's scholarship -- journal articles that generally report on publicly-funded research, which rapacious, giant corporations acquire for free, and then charge the very same institutions that paid for the research millions of dollars a year to access.In a field of giant, corrupt monopolists, Elsevier is still notable for its rapacious conduct, so it's not surprising to learn that the company has sent a copyright threat to a to Citationsy, a service that helps scholars and others create citations to scientific and scholarly literature, alleging that merely linking to Sci-Hub is a copyright infringement.Citationsy points out that Elsevier owns one of its competitors, the "very mediocre" Mendeley.1/12 So something not-fantastic happened yesterday. I received an email from a lawyer at @twobirds, @moniquewadsted, on behalf of @ElsevierConnect regarding my blog post about where to download research papers and scientific articles for free. https://t.co/Bf3H19RZ14— Citationsy (@citationsy) July 31, 2019(Thanks, Cenk!) Read the rest

A new report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) estimates the cost of subsidizing a full transition to clean energy, and comes out with a figure that is only 10-30% of the subsidy presently given to the planet-destroying fossil fuel industries.That is to say, a full green energy transition is a steal.The coal/oil/gas sector currently rake in $370bn in global, annual subsidies.“Almost everywhere, renewables are so close to being competitive that [a 10-30% subsidy swap] tips the balance, and turns them from a technology that is slowly growing to one that is instantly the most viable and can replace really large amounts of generation,” said Richard Bridle of the IISD. “It goes from being marginal to an absolute no-brainer.”The transition from polluting fossil fuels to clean energy is already under way. Annual investment in renewables has been greater than that in fossil fuel electricity generation since 2008 and new renewable capacity has exceeded fossil fuel power each year since 2014.But progress is slow compared with the urgency required, said Bridle. “There is no question that renewables can power the energy system,” he said. “The question now is can we transition quickly enough away from fuels like coal, and subsidy reform is a very obvious step towards that.” Very few ways of cutting emissions actually save governments money, he said. Reforming Subsidies Could Pay for a Clean Energy Revolution: Report [International Institute for Sustainable Development]Just 10% of fossil fuel subsidy cash 'could pay for green transition' [Damian Carrington/Guardian] Read the rest

Adventurer! Will you attack with easy nobleness, taking reputation points from you everytime you hit back, ten times? Or will you tell the priest to finish what's been going on with your family, thrice combined this time with Gramm Corps' arcane branding? THE CHOICE IS YOURS in Nick Walton's AI Dungeon!AI Dungeon is an AI generated text adventure that uses deep learning to create each adventure. It uses OpenAI's new GPT-2 model, which has 117 million parameters, to generate each story block and possible action.The first couple sentences of AIDungeon and the action verbs are handcrafted, but everything else is not. For each choice that is made, the initial prompt, the last story block, and the last action are fed into the neural network. The resulting story and action options are then output by the model. Read the rest

Many non-human animals, from apes to rats to crows, appear to be able to keep track of the order of items in a list. The question was whether they succeeded because they associated the correct order with a liquid reward. Now, scientists have shown that monkeys don't need rewards to make logical conclusions about the order of items. Columbia University psychologist Greg Jensen and colleagues designed an experiment in which four rhesus macaque monkeys had to discern the order of seven images. Rewards for correct answers apparently sped up their ability to learn the list. (Same. - ed) From Science News:The animals drew basic logical conclusions about pairs of listed items, akin to assuming that if A comes before B and B comes before C, then A comes before C, the scientists conclude July 30 in Science Advances....Jensen’s study adds to evidence suggesting that, like humans, monkeys can mentally link together pairs of items into lists that guide later choices, says psychologist Regina Paxton Gazes of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.That’s probably a valuable ability in the wild, she says, because many animals need to monitor where group mates stand in the social pecking order. “An ability to construct, retain, manipulate and reference ordered information may be an evolutionarily ancient, efficient [mental] mechanism for keeping track of relationships between individuals,” she says.image: "Rhesus macaque" by JM Garg (CC BY-SA 4.0) Read the rest

I was incredibly gratified and excited to read Paul Di Filippo's Locus review of my latest book, Radicalized; Di Filippo is a superb writer, one of the original, Mirrorshades cyberpunks, and he is a superb and insightful literary critic, so when I read his superlative-laden review of my book today, it was an absolute thrill (I haven't been this excited about a review since Bruce Sterling reviewed Walkaway).There's so much to be delighted by in this review, not least a comparison to Rod Serling (!). Below, a couple paras of especial note.His latest, a collection of four novellas, subtitled “Four Tales of Our Present Moment”, fits the template perfectly, and extends his vision further into a realm where impassioned advocacy, Upton-Sinclairish muckraking, and Dickensian-Hugonian ashcan realism drives a kind of partisan or Cassandran science fiction seen before mostly during the post-WWII atomic bomb panic (think On the Beach) and 1960s New Wave-Age of Aquarius agitation (think Bug Jack Barron). Those earlier troubled eras resonate with our current quandary, but the “present moment” under Doctorow’s microscope – or is that a sniper’s crosshairs? – has its own unique features that he seeks to elucidate. These stories walk a razor’s edge between literature and propaganda, aesthetics and bludgeoning, subtlety and stridency, rant and revelation. The only guaranteed outcome after reading is that no one can be indifferent to them......The Radicalized collection strikes me in some sense as an episode of a primo TV anthology series – Night Gallery in the classical mode, or maybe in a more modern version, Philip K. Read the rest

Amazon has a good sale going for this 20-pack of small succulent plants: . That's currently cheaper than the 15-pack. Read the rest

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi (previously) is one of my favorite political writers, with the style chops of Hunter S Thompson, but without Thompson's often juvenile politics (Taibbi having outgrown that phase, something Thompson never managed to do).Taibbi's latest, a massive on-the-ground report from the Iowa campaigns of the Democratic would-be presidential nominees, is like having a bucket of ice-water dashed over your head by someone who's telling genuinely funny jokes about how terrible it all is, that ha-ha-only-serious mode that is becoming the motif for our era, in the long tradition of gallows humor in dire political circumstances.Like Thompson, Taibbi's on-the-ground reporting from Iowa is marked out not so much by his insights into the candidates, but rather, his expert and nuanced reading of the animal sentiments they arouse in the crowds they address, and in Taibbi's long memory for other political moments in which similar candidates said similar things to exactly the same people (this being Iowa, which, thanks to a quirk of history, is the hot ticket of American politics).Taibbi's read on the Democratic leadership race is that it is doubling down on the GOP's "clown car" blunder, which let Trump take nomination from a crowded field of political same-sames who were unable to confront Trump's "Throw the Bums Out" movement because they were the bums that the body politic wanted thrown out. He sees this as an indictment of the Democratic Party, which might be breathing its last gasp, along with America's commitment to democracy itself: "Lose to Donald Trump once, shame on the voters. Read the rest

World War III is coming - hold the eighth page!