It's a 2d projection of a rhombic hexecontahedron, first generated by Mathematica's namesake programming language back in the 1980s, when it was as damned close to magic as anything in computer science.Spikey is one of my favorite logos. They went through many variations with many products, inspired by renaissance drawings and a vast selection of other influences, on their way to the one you see here, which was originally devised for Wolfram Alpha. Founder Stephen Wolfram:And that’s when I noticed an email from June 2009, from an artist in Brazil named Yolanda Cipriano. She said she’d seen an article about Wolfram|Alpha in a Brazilian news magazine—and had noticed the Spikey—and wanted to point me to her website. It was now more than nine years later, but I followed the link anyway, and was amazed to find this:Yolanda Cipriano's website—with rhombic hexecontahedra, there called "giramundos"I read more of her email: “Here in Brazil this object is called ‘Giramundo’ or ‘Flor Mandacarú’ (Mandacaru Flower) and it is an artistic ornament made with [tissue paper]”.What?! There was a Spikey tradition in Brazil, and all these years we’d never heard about it? I soon found other pictures on the web. Only a few of the Spikeys were made with paper; most were fabric—but there were lots of themThe Story of Spikey [blog.stephenwolfram.com] Read the rest

Oliver Brotherhood is a British vlogger with over 3 million subscribers who has produced a string of very popular Minecraft-related videos under the name Mumbo Jumbo; yesterday, in the space of two hours, a quarter of his videos were claimed by music publishing giant and notorious copyright fraudsters Warner Chappell, who will now get revenues from those videos, and can take them down at will.According to Brotherhood, the issue is that he paid to license music for his channel, not knowing that the music contained uncleared samples from Warner Chappell's catalog. The question of whether sampling is fair use has never been fully adjudicated, but thanks to Youtube's Content ID system (which will shortly be expanded to cover all online media from all services in the EU), the fact that these samples come from material claimed by Warner Chappell means that they get to hijack his revenues without ever convincing a judge that either he or the musician he contracted with had violated copyright law.Brotherhood says that many other vloggers have had their content taken by Warner Chappell this week.Brotherhood plans on disputing the claims, but doing so will take many hours, as each of Warner Chappell's claims have to individually disputed.Hey @TeamYouTube , @YouTube A company is systematically copyright claiming every video I have ever made, despite me owning the rights to all music used in them. Please tell me I don't have to manually dispute all 1800 claims.Please Retweet. YouTube, your system is broken. Read the rest

A warning for the good people of Wyoming! You never know when a trigger-happy Colorado cop might drop by to see the sights.Emily Mieure, from The Jackson Hole News & Guide:“Mr. Becerra, a diminutive 17-year-old Hispanic resident, was late one morning and running to catch his bus after leaving the apartment where he lived with his parents,” attorney Alex Freeburg stated in the complaint. “Without any more information, and without investigating any further, [Ms. Schultz, on vacation from Colorado] exited her vehicle, pulled out a pistol, and ordered Mr. Becerra to stop and get on the ground. ... While witnesses urged her to stop, and while Mr. Becerra pleaded with her, Ms. Schultz yelled ‘stay down’ and screamed ‘I have a gun and will shoot,’” the complaint states.Taxpayer-dinging lawsuits are the remedy here because prosecutors show little interest in taking action. Shultz did nothing illegal, according to Fremont County Attorney Patrick LeBrun, “because it is reasonable to assume a running teen has committed a crime. Read the rest

A new definition of kilogram went into effect today. No longer is the kilogram defined by Le Grand K, a 140-year-old weight under glass in a secret location near Paris. Now it's determined by the Planck constant, based on physicist Max Planck's theory that "electromagnetic energy at a given frequency could only be emitted in discrete amounts, or quanta, whose energy is proportional to h, now known as the Planck constant." Scientists at the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures also redefined the kelvin, the ampere, and the mole. UP next, the second! The good news is that the changes are so small that they won't matter to most of us. From Science News:Currently, the second is defined by atomic clocks made of cesium atoms. Those atoms absorb a certain frequency of light. The wiggling of the light’s electromagnetic waves functions like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, rhythmically keeping time. One second is defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the light.But a new generation of atomic clocks, known as optical atomic clocks, outdo the cesium clocks (SN: 11/11/17, p. 8). “Their performance is a lot better than what currently defines the second,” says physicist Andrew Ludlow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo. Because those optical atomic clocks operate at a higher frequency, their “ticks” are more closely spaced, making them about 100 times more precise than cesium clocks.Ideally, the length of a second should be defined using the most precise timepieces available. Read the rest

As this camera moves along a Japanese conveyor belt sushi restaurant, it captures diners in the booths. Some people notice and wave, others are engrossed in conversation or studying the menu. The soundtrack, added after the video was shot, makes this a nice movie about the happiness of eating with your friends and family members.Here’s a video of a guy putting a camera on a sushi conveyer belt. It’s wonderful. Every table has a little story! pic.twitter.com/6mwKsTHJ0e— Drew Coffman (@DrewCoffman) May 17, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

Adam Bradley and Chris Blackburn noticed an unusual, mislabeled eBay listing for a rare beauty: an IBM System/360 in Nuremberg for peanuts. So they set out to do what any self-respecting IBM System/360 fan would do: buy it and fix it up. Thousands of Euros later, they've ... well, they've gotten it out of the building.... a once in a lifetime find. We decided we had to have it. Adam put in a bid of around 500 Euros and we waited. The advert finished the following day around midday. Luckily, Chris and Adam work together and as such the next morning in the office was rather tense! There was quite a flurry of bidding activity right at the end of the auction and with seconds to go and an exclamation of “Screw it!” Adam entered a bid of 4500 Euros. The hammer fell on 3710 Euros! We were now the proud owners of one IBM 360… or so we thought! Read the rest

No deep dive of this legendary comic exists online from a cartoonist's perspective, let alone 3 cartoonists! The boys, Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and Tom Scioli continue to unpack the Frank Miller 1986 Batman classic over the course of 4 jam-packed episodes, one chapter at a time!Part 1 here:For more videos and deep dives like this make sure to subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel You can support the channel by grabbing some stuff from our Spreadshop! Read the rest

Gilead makes a drug called Truvada -- AKA Prep -- that was developed at US taxpayer expense, whose patents are held by the US government; Truvada is on track to eliminating the spread of HIV forever (people who are HIV positive but take Truvada are seemingly not infectious), but taking Truvada in the USA (where the patents haven't expired) is incredibly expensive, running $1,780/month, whereas in Australia, it's available as a generic for $8/month.If the widespread use of Prep eliminates the spread of HIV, it will be both a humanitarian victory and a practical one, with the American taxpayers' investment in HIV prevention paying off handsomely in the form of billions in medical and social spending saved. But realizing those billions and billions for generations to come can only happen with Gilead doesn't continue to rack up a sordid little stream of payments to enrich its investors and execs (who did not pay to develop Prep, remember)..@AOC to Gilead CEO: The list price [for Truvada for PrEP] is almost $2,000 in the US. Why is it $8 in Australia? pic.twitter.com/kPnMQSZE0G— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) May 16, 2019We the people developed this drug. We paid for this drug. Despite the fact that the patent is owned by the public, we refuse to enforce it. There is no reason this should be $2,000 a month. People are dying for no reason.-@AOC on Gilead's price gouging of an HIV prevention drug pic.twitter.com/HSYPivMjGb— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) May 16, 2019In this clip, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demonstrates her usual admirable directness and factual footing to expose the hypocrisy and self-serving bullshit of the looters who are making themselves very rich by destroying the world: in this case, it's Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day, who smarmily demurs when asked why his company should be able to gouge -- and murder -- the Americans who paid to develop its products (earning the company $3/b year globally), while Australians get the same products for $8/month. Read the rest

A Washington, D.C. judge today ordered the U.S. Justice Department to post public transcripts of a Michael Flynn voicemail that reportedly captures Trump/Congress efforts "that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation.The newly unredacted filing about Flynn's voicemail is making the rounds, but that part is not new, and corresponds to a message Flynn received from a Trump lawyer that special counsel Robert Mueller mentioned in his report.But what *is* new is the implication by Mueller's team that someone “connected to” Congress attempted to discourage Michael Flynn's full cooperation with the Mueller probe.Here's the court order.JUST IN: MUELLER team unseals evidence that Flynn aided the obstruction invsetigation -- including providing testimony and a *voice mail* that "could have affected" his testimony. pic.twitter.com/MPar2bMGj5— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 16, 2019ALSO: FLYNN cooperated with prosecutors on WIKILEAKS investigation, sharing internal statements made by senior Trump campaign officials discussing the prospect of reaching out to Wikileaks. pic.twitter.com/CfNqZWOIjb— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 16, 2019NEWS: Mueller team indicates someone "connected to" Congress attempted to discourage Flynn's full cooperation with the Mueller probe.https://t.co/QiU2lKgjrg— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 16, 2019Now: DC judge orders USDOJ to post public transcript of Michael Flynn voicemail that purports to capture Trump/ Congress efforts "that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation. Court order: pic.twitter.com/CMx9aMZKXI— Mike Scarcella (@MikeScarcella) May 16, 2019Is the person who reached out to Flynn to encourage him not to flip (or, other, fill in the Gaetz blank):— emptywheel (@emptywheel) May 16, 2019House Democrats ought to hold a hearing with Michael Flynn. Read the rest

Facebook announced today that is has banned an Israeli firm that ran a foreign psyops campaign to disrupt election results in various countries. Facebook claims to have canceled dozens of accounts engaged in spreading disinformation, they said Thursday.Some of the newly banned accounts are said to be linked to the Archimedes Group, a Tel Aviv-based consulting firm that claims to be able to “change reality.”The Archimedes website shows that its CEO is the former director of the European Friends of Israel lobbying group, a former political adviser in Israel’s parliament, and an ex-intelligence agent for the Israeli air force.Archimedes advertises itself online as a consulting firm for presidential election campaigns.From the Associated Press:Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters that the tech giant had purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accounts. Many were linked to the Archimedes Group, a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and lobbying firm that boasts of its social media skills and ability to “change reality.”Gleicher said Facebook could not speculate about Archimedes’ motives, which “may be commercial or political.”But he said Facebook discovered “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” with accounts posing as certain political candidates, smearing opponents and presenting as local news organizations peddling supposedly leaked information.The activity appeared focused on Sub-Saharan African countries but was also scattered in parts of Southeast Asia and Latin America. The pages have racked up 2.8 million followers and hundreds of thousands of views.Gleicher said Archimedes had spent some $800,000 on fake ads and that its deceptive activity dated back to 2012. Read the rest

Conrad Black is a former publishing mogul and convicted felon who recently penned an adoring biography of Donald Trump [Amazon], described therein as a personal friend. Trump pardoned him today, within hours of the anniversary of its publication. From the book, here's Black on why Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of contempt of court after refusing to quit racially profiling suspects:Also pardoned was noted conservative racketeer (and, after his conviction, prison reformer) Patrick Nolan.God bless America. Read the rest

Here's how to help women who need and/or want an abortion in Alabama.

African-American women suffer a much higher level of maternal mortality than the national average, and Elizabeth Warren has proposed a bold -- but high-risk -- plan to incentivize hospitals to root out the institutional, systemic racism that produces these terrible outcomes.Under Warren's proposal, hospitals that continue to produce higher-than-average levels of maternal mortality for African-American patients will lose funding; while hospitals that improve will get bonuses. As Warren tweeted: "Don't just observe and debate racism in health care. Make providers pay until this crisis is fixed."I am 100% in favor of fixing institutional racism in health-care, and maternal care is a great place to start, but I'm really worried about this kind of plan. Structurally, Warren's plan mirrors GW Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program, in which "underperforming" teachers and schools lost money, and teachers and schools that had improved test scores got bonuses. This produced terrible outcomes: teachers whose students scored poorly due to factors beyond their control (teaching in neighborhoods with high levels of unemployment, homelessness and discriminatory policing practices that locked up their students' parents) got less money to help the students who needed it the most, while teachers and schools that had structural advantages got money they needed less than their underperforming counterparts in worse-situated schools. And then there's the incredible incentive to cheat that these carrot-and-stick measures produce.Even without cheating, there are lots of ways that hospitals can juke their stats: when Tony Blair started punishing hospitals whose ambulances took too long to arrive, the ambulance services responded with a raft of bizarre, terrible tactics. Read the rest

Juice Media's Honest Government Adverts are some of the best, most biting political satire being produced today -- they're so good at afflicting the comfortable that Australia basically banned their style of humour -- and now, on the eve of (yet another) critical Australian election, they've produced a "season finale" that recaps the parade of horrors that a succession of bumbling, oligarchic, racist, climate-denying, torturing, confiscatory, planet-destroying Australian governments have bequeathed to the nation and the world. I laughed, I cried, I laughed again. Now I'm crying. Read the rest

You know when your phone rings once, then stops? Don't call back, unless you are willing to risk a very costly international call to Mauritania, even though the called ID shows it as a local call.From Lifehacker:If you get a call from a familiar area code, you might feel tempted to return it, but the Federal Communications Commission is now warning consumers not to call any unknown numbers back. If you do, you risk paying huge fees in toll number charges.According to a recent statement by the FCC, this “Wangiri” (Japanese for “one ring”) robocall scheme is targeting numbers in short bursts, often during the middle of the night, using a “222" country code (located in Mauritania in West Africa). But scammers can mask their area code by “spoofing” or changing their caller ID information to reflect a local area code, according to Alex Quilici, founder of YouMail, a robocall-blocking voicemail app.Image: g-stockstudio/Shutterstock Read the rest

When Jerel Heywood opened the screendoor at his friend Rodney Copeland's house in Lawton, Oklahoma, a snake darted down from its roost on the porch light and bit Heywood's head! A neighbor then rushed off over and dispatched the five-and-a-half-foot snake with a hammer. Fortunately, the snake wasn't poisonous. Heywood went to the hospital where he received stitches and a round of antibiotics. According to CNN, Copeland "hopes to keep away any (other) potential lurkers by spraying the yard with sulfuric acid.""I hear they don't like that," he said. Read the rest

"Year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer" — NYT

In December last year, Jean-Jacques Savin, 71, floated away from the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa in an orange capsule he'd built. Last week, he landed at the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. The capsule has no motor and was steered by the ocean current. Inside the 10 feet by 7 feet capsule is a bed and kitchen for Savin to cook fish he caught during the nearly 3,000 mile journey. From CNN:The trip was not Savin's first major adventure. He previously worked as a military paratrooper and a private pilot, and climbed Mont Blanc in 2015, according to his project's website.Savin had hoped to reach the Caribbean by late March, but missed the mark by just over a month. He still intends to make it to French-owned Guadeloupe by boat, before heading home with his barrel. Read the rest

It’s hard to say much about My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing, without spoiling the twists. The story is told by the husband (we never learn his name). He and his wife (Millicent) do bad things to spice up their marriage, but they also appear normal to the people who know them. They've been married for 15 years, have two children and respectable jobs (he’s a tennis pro at a country club, she’s a real estate agent). They have friends and go to parties and dinners. Even though they know that they are bad people, they also have deceived themselves into believing they are good parents, good employees, good friends, and good spouses. And they are OK with that. But as we learn more about the husband and Millicent, we find out that not only are they lying to themselves, they are lying to each other about a number of things. Even though they are dislikable, I was interested in finding out if one of the spouses would end up destroying the other.I’m not a fast reader, but I plowed through all 370 pages in a few evenings. It’s one of those books that takes very little effort to read (compared to another book I just finished — Neil Postman’s Technopoly, which was dense enough that I had to read quite a few of the sentences two or three times before I understood them). In other words, My Lovely Wife is tasty snack reading — an enjoyable, low-nutrition treat. Read the rest

The UK's governing Conservative Party lost 1330 council seats in local elections, but the opposition Labour party failed to make the expected gains, losing 84 of its own. The big winners were the Liberal Democrats, picking up 704 seats, the Greens, picking up 194, and 605 new independent candidates. The far-right UKIP lost 145 seats and now holds only 35.The Conservative Party's rough night is mostly about failing to deliver Brexit, say analysts, but the explosion of support for the Liberal Democrats and Greens (and the near-annihilation of UKIP) does rather suggest that the taste of Brexit itself is increasingly bitter. Read the rest

Watch this short video to understand why train wheels are conical instead of cylindrical and why they have rigid axels. Read the rest

Ring is a "smart" doorbell that Amazon bought for $1B in 2018, and proceeded to turn into an insecure, networked surveillance device, (possibly wired into Amazon's facial recognition system) and connected to law enforcement so that the company could advertise that owning a Ring made you a good citizen of your neighborhood, part of a mesh of relentless eyes-on-the-street that identified suspicious strangers and sicced the law on them, frontended by an app named with pitch-perfect creepiness: "Neighbors."There's only one problem with using a fear of malign strangers to sell internet of shit doorbellcams: crime is way down, and continues to fall.So Amazon is fixing the problem! They're advertising for crime reporters to staff up a new news vertical that will publish cherry-picked, context-free scary crime stories that will contribute to a media-fueled false impression of the dangers presented by your fellow citizens, taking a leaf from the "American carnage" speech that Steve Bannon and Steve Miller wrote for Trump's inauguration and the TV show COPS, which has spent decades brainwashing Americans into thinking that their cities are full of crazed, brown-skinned dope fiends.Only 15% of Americans are able to correctly answer survey questions about whether crime is rising or falling, with Conservatives faring the worst. So think about this managing-editor job. Ring wants to be “covering local crime” everywhere, down to the house and neighborhood level. So one managing editor, plus however many other people are on this team, is supposed to be creating a thoughtful, nonexploitative editorial product that is sending journalistically sound “breaking news crime alerts,” in real time, all across the country. Read the rest

Want to focus more at work? Some of us put on a little music, whether it's to tune out the chatter at the office or get us comfortable in front of the computer at home. And that's great - we all have our favorite songs. But if they're not helping you actually work, what's the point?Here's a solution: Save the summer jams for your downtime. When it's time to actually work, you might want to try Focus@Will, a music service that's dedicated to increasing your productivity.Like any music streaming service, Focus@Will lets you choose a channel to suit your mood. There's more than 50, with playlists dedicated to ambient, acoustic, classical piano, "electro bach" to name a few. The difference is, each of them has songs scientifically designed to increase your focus and mute distractionsIt's already used by high-level employees at Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and other top companies, and you can get your own service for 75% off the MSRP: A premium one-year subscription to Focus@Will is now $24.95. Read the rest

Rubik's cube for two as a race. That's Rubik's Race.I've never seen anyone play as fast as these two players.It's hard to believe the human mind can work that fast at puzzle solving.Unmute for delicious fast-paced clickety-clack sounds. Rubik’s Race[via] Read the rest

I have not watched an episode this season. I will likely listen to the Boars, Gore and Swords podcast during a brief road trip this weekend and see if I need to watch. Read the rest

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Canada and returned home with an attractive beaver-shaped door knocker. In this short video you can see him installing it on his front door, followed by a clip of his wife testing it out.Shinzo Abe has installed the beaver door-knocker he brought back from Canada pic.twitter.com/y7kZE3Bgik— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) May 2, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

Amazon has a good deal on the classic Duncan Imperial Yo Yo. I splurged and bought one for everyone in the family! Comes in assorted colors but it looks like they get to pick which color you get. Read the rest

The cruelty is the point.

Volker Rieck transformed vintage old chess boards into fantastically nerdy coat racks to sell on his Etsy shop CreativeHolz. Chess club bonus points for the intentional arrangement of chess pieces into the Caro–Kann Defence and an Italian Game opening.(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

Disney CEO Bob Iger made $65.6M last year, 1,424 times that of the median Disney employee (a situation that Walt Disney's grand niece called "insane") -- and last weekend, Disney's movie Avengers: Endgame broke all opening records, bringing in $1.2B.Bernie Sanders -- who helped Disneyland employees win a $15 minimum wage last year -- has a proposal for Disney's windfall: share it with Disney's lowest-waged workers and guarantee everyone who works for the company (which made $9B in profits last year) a middle-class wage.What would be truly heroic is if Disney used its profits from Avengers to pay all of its workers a middle class wage, instead of paying its CEO Bob Iger $65.6 million – over 1,400 times as much as the average worker at Disney makes. https://t.co/NrcFSk4LZc— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 29, 2019(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Said Dorsey to staff: “Some of you will be very supportive of our meeting [with] the president, and some of you might feel we shouldn’t take this meeting at all."Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey today met with noted Twitter user President Donald Trump.The meeting was scheduled to last 30 minutes, according to an email Dorsey sent around today to Twitter staff, and the two were to discuss "the health of the public conversation on Twitter." Trump met with Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey today at the White House, @justinsink confirms.— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) April 23, 2019White House confirms to @JDiamond1 that @jack met with Trump earlier.— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 23, 2019An internal Twitter email announcing that the meeting would take place was obtained and published earlier today by Motherboard. From their report:Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, along with other Twitter executives, is having a closed-door meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, according to an internal Twitter email obtained by Motherboard from two independent sources. The meeting comes after an invitation from the White House, the email adds.The email does not detail what the meeting will specifically be about, but says the company anticipates it to be about “the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” according to the email written by Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety.Dorsey himself chimed in on the thread, according to a second email obtained by Motherboard from two sources.“As you know, I believe that conversation, not silence, bridges gaps and drives towards solutions,” Dorsey wrote. Read the rest

I have this tire pressure gage and use it once every few months to check the car air pressure. The illuminated readout and valve come in handy in low light. It's made by Tacklife -- I have a lot of Tacklife tools and they all work really well. Read the rest

In a piece for The Cut, Senator Elizabeth Warren (presidential candidate and HBO fan) shares her love for Game of Thrones. It's loaded with spoilers and political metaphors, so proceed with caution if you're not caught up or allergic to allegory. Dany believes fiercely in her right to rule, but she despises what ruling means in the world she’s grown up in. She doesn’t want to be a slave owner or a dictator — and she definitely doesn’t want to become her murderous father. She tells Ser Jorah: “Slavery is real. I can end it. I will end it. And I will end those behind it.” Before sailing across the sea to Westeros, she frees the enslaved people of Meereen and creates an army that fights because they want to, not because they have to. (Also, she has dragons.)Senator Warren isn't the only 2020 candidate making Thrones noise. The current occupier of the White House tweeted a GoT meme after the release of the redacted Mueller Report. HBO was less than thrilled. Read the rest

In 1969, Herbie Hancock found the funk for a collection of music he composed for "Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert," a TV special that eventually led to the long-running cartoon "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids." Hancock collected those tracks on Fat Albert Rotunda, the band leader's first LP after bailing on the Blue Note label. It's a deeply soulful affair that presaged Hancock's 1973 jazz-funk classic Head Hunters. Now, Fat Albert Rotunda is readily available again as a high-quality vinyl reissue from my friends at the Antarctica Starts Here label. Dig it.Herbie Hancock - Fat Albert Rotunda LP (Antarctica Starts Here/Superior Viaduct) Read the rest

Who said LEGO® had to be ground bound? With The Force Flyers DIY Building Block Fly 'n Drive Drone, you can turn LEGO® and other building-block creations into fully-functional flying machines. It's available now in the Boing Boing Store for $39.99.This kit comes with everything you need for remote-controlled long distance flight, including a 6-axis gyroscope, a 2.4 GHz wireless transmitter, and extra rotors for when you inevitably crash. Its plastic frame is covered in studs that are compatible with most brick-building toys, so you can get creative with your quadcopter’s design. Once assembled, you can precisely pilot your flyer through all kinds of tight spaces with the bundled digital proportional controller.Children of all ages will have fun learning about the physics of flight with this hands-on project. Pick up the Force Flyers DIY Building Block Fly 'n Drive Drone here for $39.99. Read the rest

From FlowingData, this is the redacted Mueller report in a "thumbnailed view for a sense of the redactions."There's still plenty to read between the (black) lines.(Thanks, Ted Weinstein!) Read the rest

At The New Yorker, Mike Spies writes that the NRA is not quite the vigorous pressure group under regulatory siege that it portrays itself as. It is a fundraising scheme being looted by its own leadership.Even as the association has reduced spending on its avowed core mission—gun education, safety, and training—to less than ten per cent of its total budget, it has substantially increased its spending on messaging. The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a life style built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away. ... Marc Owens, who served for ten years as the head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, recently reviewed these records. “The litany of red flags is just extraordinary,” he said. “The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen. There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain venders and people in control.” Owens added, “Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the N.R.A.’s tax-exempt status”—without which the organization could likely not survive.As privacy is to Facebook, gun rights are the NRA: never not for sale.It's the most systematic of the grifts being run on conservatives and that context defines everything it does. For example, its been rumored that Dana Loesch and Oliver North are actually working for a PR consultancy with long ties to the NRA; Spies has the receipts. Read the rest

A southern Australia livestock sales agent saved a magical unicorn sheep from the slaughterhouse by trading its owner two cases of beer in exchange for the fantastic creature. (The unicorn, named Joey, apparently does have a stunted second horn but whatever.)“We’ll break him in, take him to shows and pageants, and who knows where we can go, maybe Hollywood,” (Joey's new human companion Michael) Foster told 7News Adelaide.“I’m sure the kids will get a big kick out of patting a real-life unicorn, we might even do unicorn rides.” Read the rest

Trump AG Barr says they'll release a redacted version of Mueller’s report Thursday.

Luke O'Neil put a call out for his readers' stories of their loved ones' capture by Fox News, being overtake by its paranoid, racist conspiracy mindset: he got back a heartbreaking collection of tales of "funny, compassionate" older relatives turning into someone who was "increasingly angry, bigoted, and paranoid" -- some people even found their older relatives dead in front of a TV playing Fox.The stories mostly involve people who saw themselves as "conservative" but who kept any kind of racial animus or other socially unacceptable views to themselves, but whose conservative worldviews were deepened and weaponized, in part by sprawling and aggressive direct-mail ad campaigns for quack remedies, prepper supplies, gold bullion, and so on.Many of the people transformed by Fox seemed to begin their transformation in 2008, with the election of America's first Black president, and at the dawn of the financial crisis, when the slow upward redistribution of America's wealth to the 1% took a precipitous leap.The cause-and-effect here is difficult to nail down. There's racism, there's precarity, there's propaganda, all in the mix together. My view is that people are mixed bags with different proclivities, biases, and vices, but that trauma and anxiety create vulnerability, and that vulnerability can be weaponized by propagandists. Dozens who responded to my piece talked about the sad lonely twilight of their parents’ or grandparents’ lives, having been spurned by, or having disowned much of their families over political disagreements. Older people, recent studies have shown, are much more likely to share misleading information online, but the anecdotes I was hearing seemed to indicate this behavior wasn’t limited to the internet. Read the rest

Are you super organized? You're going to love the Genius Pack G4 and its seemingly limitless, well-placed compartments. Not that organized? You're still going to love this piece of luggage because it's so well thought out that it practically does the packing for you.We've all tried to stuff a piece of carry-on so full that it practically becomes a black hole. That practice becomes almost effortless with the Genius Pack, which not only boasts a separate compartment for dirty clothes but an air valve to vacuum-seal the contents. And that's only for starters: This thing has labeled, tidy spaces for chargers, socks, toiletries - even an umbrella. If you still need more room, an accordion-like zipper space expands it by 25%, and you can tote your jacket or personal bag outside with a handy strap. Made of high-strength nylon, it's sturdy enough to handle whatever you stuff into it, and the 360-degree spinning wheels are a nice touch.Right now, you can pick up the Genius Pack G4 Carry-On Spinner Case for $179 - a full 39% off the MSRP. Plus, as a special offer to Boing Boing readers, you can save an additional 15% off this suitcase when you use promo code SPRING15. Read the rest

Countless research studies have proven what is incredibly obvious to anyone who has a favorite song: Music can have a profound effect on our mood. So why not put that science to work for more than just de-stressing your commute? That's the idea behind the Humm.ly Music Therapy App, a new tool that aims to make you more productive, creative and mindful.Curated by actual music therapists and music producers, Humm.ly is more than just a killer playlist. Choose a situation in your daily life and the app pulls up a soundtrack scientifically engineered to fire up just the neurons you need, whether it's brainstorming, winding down after work or falling asleep. It even gamifies the process so you can stay on track with your journey toward mindfulness. It's about time an app took music seriously enough to harness its full potential, and Humm.ly is engineered to do just that.Right now, you can get a lifetime subscription to the Humm.ly Music Therapy App for $39.99, more than 85% off the original price. Read the rest

Gene Wolfe, author of more than 30 books including classics like The Book of The New Sun, has died at the age of 87.Wolfe was kind enough to give me a blurb for my third novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and to make references to it in his later work, something that thrills me even to this day when I think of it. I met him on a few occasions and shared a meal or two with him and found him to be the proverbial jolly old elf, full of wit and charm and mischief, the kind of person who looked and acted exactly as you'd expect he would, based on his marvellous body of work (this is a rarity as most of us writers are mundane introverts who put all of our wildness on the page).I'm so sad to hear that he's gone. Although he lived a long and wonderful and varied life (he invented the Pringles machine!) and left behind a staggering and brilliant literary corpus, the world was a better place with him in it. I'll miss him.Wolfe’s fans include Michael Swanwick, Neil Gaiman, Patrick O’Leary, Ursula K. Le Guin, and many, many more, and he was praised for his exciting prose and depth of character. Asked by editor Damon Knight to name his biggest influences, he replied: “G. K. Chesterton and Marks’ [Standard] Handbook for [Mechanical] Engineers.” In 2015 The New Yorker published this profile of Wolfe by Peter Bebergal, in which the two discussed his decades-long career—it’s well worth a read. Read the rest

Chobani's new custom typeface heralded a headlong return to swirly 1970s type.It's not just nostalgia. Blame high DPI displays, too!Today’s movement toward fonts reminiscent of the ’70s is partly a matter of advancing technology, Jen says: As phone and TV screens have improved, designers don’t have to worry as much about pixelation when working with curves. But nostalgia is a powerful factor, too. Elizabeth Goodspeed, a graphic designer who works at the branding agency RoAndCo, believes that for many consumers, ’70s-esque fonts represent a safe retreat into the past — a safer retreat, importantly, than the one currently offered by midcentury Swiss Style, which inspired all of those minimalist startup logos with its grid layouts and sans serif fonts.The recent use of 70s type in corporate branding is showy in a way that suggests a fad rather than a sustained trend, but such a trend does exist toward more utilitarian typefaces from the era. You might be seeing a lot of Windsor, Souvenir and chunky Caslons in the next few years. However ugly and cheesy you might consider all this, it's a merciful antidote to 2010s tech culture anglegrinding every logo into the same sort of bland, soulless sans-serif font.Off you go to the groovy section of dafonts for your new side-hustle logo! Read the rest

The Triton malware was first identified 16 months ago by researchers from Fireeye: it targets Triconex control systems from Schneider Electric, and was linked by Fireeye to the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics in Moscow.Now, Fireeye has published a report on a second instance of Triton being used in the field, this time to attack the safety instrumented systems (SIS) that use software and hardware to prevent power plants, refineries, and other large installations from exploding, venting toxic material, catching fire, etc.The second example reveals that Triton attacks have been in the works since at least 2014, and surfaced an extensive toolsuite that gives more insight into how Triton's operators function.The really frightening this about this is SIS targeting: that's the kind of thing that doesn't just shut down plants -- it renders them permanently inoperable, and possibly kills some or all of the people in them and near them.The SIS attacks are a logical progression on Stuxnet and the Russian "sandworm attacks" that got out of control and did $10B damage in 2018. We now know the first incident wasn’t isolated. There are others. That is especially disconcerting given the danger associated with this threat, which we still know very little about. Though we’ve traced this back to the Russian institute we’re at a loss for explaining the motive here or whether even this is tied to some other country who might be contracting out with the institute. We are releasing the tools and other information on this actor in the hopes that others will find them and we will all get a better handle on this emerging and disconcerting threat actor. Read the rest

A man with a "long, long history" of wanking on horses was arrested, released, and then arrested again within hours after claiming his second alleged victim in a day. The man, 61,said he had been planning to see his doctor for libido suppressing drugs but instead went to a field after being freed from prison. ... During a police interview he told detectives: ‘I was sat on a bench. I was feeling sexy so I started to…’ His lawyer Stephen Robinson said: ‘The defendant is very disappointed to be back before the courts again for precisely the same sort of behaviour he’s been convicted of in the past. ‘The defendant was of the view he’d been doing quite well.’ Read the rest

By now, you've probably heard the buzz on CBD, or cannabidiol. It's a non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis plants that's rapidly gaining popularity not as a recreational drug, but for its therapeutic properties. Testimonials abound regarding its uses as a stress-reliever and sleep aid, not to mention its well-researched possibilities for pain management among cancer patients.If you've never tried it, there's a suitably painless way to jump in: CBD Gummies.What you get is a jar of 50-55 gummies, infused with 99.99% hemp isolate powder, delivering 500 mg of CBD in each container. Like most gummy treats, they're fat and gluten-free and are available as sour bears, apple rings or rainbow-colored strands. Take no more than 2 every 6 hours and see how they can combat your stress level or pain. The treats contain less than .3% THC, and purchasers must be 18 or older. It's also a good idea - as with any medication - to consult with your doctor before consuming and check your state laws regarding CBD before you buy.500 mg of CBD Gummies are now available for $29.99 - 25% off the original MSRP. Read the rest

ChinAI Jeff Ding's weekly newsletter reporting on the Chinese AI scene; on the occasion of the newsletter's first anniversary, Ding has posted a roundup of things about the Chinese AI scene that the rest of the world doesn't know about, or harbors incorrect beliefs about.It's an excellent list, but three points leapt out at me:1. Most Chinese AI researchers read English and are very up to date on the progress AI researchers are making around the world; few westerners read Chinese and thus practitioners rely on fragmentary evidence from the odd article that appears in translation.2. Chinese AI's reputation has been overinflated: part of the problem with fragmentary reporting outside of the Chinese language press is that it gives an unduly rosy picture of the state of Chinese AI. In particular, the story of Chinese AI being supercharged by the massive quantities of data that the Chinese state and Chinese companies have amassed is exaggerated, because these companies are riven by internal divisions that prevent data-sharing among different programs, as different executives seek to maximize their own division's performance.3. China has a massive, ongoing AI ethics and human rights debate: this debate includes regulators, whistleblowers, academics, and philosophers.There are other interesting points (such as the central role that Microsoft has played in incubating the Chinese AI scene, and the active complicity of China's biggest AI vendors in human rights abuses), but those three points alone were worth the price of admission.5. Chinese people — including regular netizens, data protection officers, philosophy professors — care about AI-related ethics issues, including privacy. Read the rest

Patrick Henry Grzelak was pulled over by police while driving his car in Surrey, British Columbia in 2018. He was wearing earbuds. The police gave him a ticket for using a cellphone while driving. Grzelak fought the ticket, arguing that he was not using the phone. It was dead and in the glove compartment. Court documents agreed: "The cellphone battery was dead. The screen was not illuminated, no music, no conversation or anything else was coming through the earbuds." The judge found Grzelak guilty.From The Guardian:In a decision which reads more like a philosophical treatise than a traffic court judgment, Justice Brent Adair examined what it means to “use” a phone under the law.“The cellphone itself … was not in the defendant’s hands, or in his lap,” wrote Adair. “But that is not the end of the matter.”Adair reasoned that by “plugging the earbud wire into the iPhone, the defendant had enlarged the device” meaning that the iPhone wasn’t just the handheld device, but also – by extension – the attached headphones.Likening the action of plugging headphones into a phone to connecting a keyboard to a computer, Adair determined the keyboard “would then be part of the electronic device”.Image: Anneka/Shutterstock Read the rest