Did you hear about the International Hole of Pancakes, the massive drainage structure collapse that swallowed a at least a dozen cars in an IHOP parking lot in Meridian, MS just a few days after the restaurant opened? Here is Jason Hartwig's drone footage of the site.

If you have your plane fixed in the USA, the FAA requires that your maintenance crew be proficient in English (the language of aviation manuals), and that you admit FAA spot-inspectors at any time. But shift your maintenance to brand new facilities that were hastily spun up El Salvador, China and Mexico, FAA inspectors can only visit after applying for a visa and giving you lots of advance notice. (more…)

Wonderland is a wonderful idea for a game. It's an old-timey audio drama that lets you solve a puzzle at the and of each chapter—and if you can't, you can walk with your phone to get clues. (more…)

Tensorflow, a sophisticated machine learning program that underpins Google Translate, speech recognition, image recognition and many other critical Google services, is now available under an Apache license, one of the least restrictive free/open licenses. (more…)

Under the UK's new Snoopers Charter (AKA the Investigatory Powers Bill), the Secretary of State will be able to order companies to introduce security vulnerabilities into their software ("backdoors") and then bind those companies over to perpetual secrecy on the matter, with punishments of up to a year in prison for speaking out, even in court. (more…)

How long would you survive in a zombie apocalypse? Residents of the United Kingdom can find out using this location-based survival calculator. (more…)

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! (more…)

Jeb Bush, a Republican candidate for the nation's highest office, confirmed Monday that if given the opportunity, he would kill Adolf Hitler as a baby.

Koster's just released his first poetry collection, Sunday Poems, which is illustrated with his lovely line drawings. He's picked out four poems for your delectation, and written us a few words on the collection's genesis.Despite going into games as soon as I left grad school, my academic training was actually as a writer, and I even have an MFA in poetry. It's not a very useful sheepskin, as these things go. In 2005, I decided that it was an important part of my life, and that it still mattered to me. So I began to post poems on my blog every Sunday. Most of the readers of the blog were either videogame players or there for game industry commentary.At first I posted older work, but given either the lack of a reaction or the bemused comments, I soon started writing new poetry to and for them. Poems that answered their questions, poems that were based on challenges readers gave me, poems about the pop culture we were discussing or even about the stuff I was doing at work. Soon there were verses about writing networking code and verses about my kids' science homework. I played with old-school rhyming forms and with the rhythms and cadences of everyday language, always hoping that the poem that week would resonate with an audience that basically didn't care about poetry.Back in grad school, I had been told that my poetry was artsy and hermetic and self-referential. Now it was light, and sing-songy. It was often humorous. Was it better? I don't know. I do know that some of the poems ended up finding readership in the thousands, and these days, that's a rare thing for a poem. The project petered out, over time, and now I post poems only sporadically, when the muse strikes. But it's been ten years, so it was a good time to gather them up and in the covers bind them, so to speak. The book collects eighty of the poems, along with pen and ink illustrations based on photographs from my various travels around the world.

Mike Boyd is familiar with Gladwell's 10,000, that being the approximate number of hours of practice supposedly required to master something. He wondered how long it would take him to learn to kickflip on a skateboard. It took him about 5 hours and 47 minutes, but some of that was him just fooling around, seething in pain, etc. [via Reddit]

The hottest hair style for gentlemen is now yours without the risk of traction alopecia. Groupon's clip-on manbun is only $9.99, and comes in blonde and brunette.

Make sure your personal data and Internet activity are never exposed with the extremely reliable VPN trusted by over a million users. Whether you’re looking to beat geo-restrictions to binge-watch your favorite show anywhere in the world, or you need to send personal banking information over a safe connection, lifetime access to PureVPN’s self-managed VPN network will make sure that happens. Not to mention it has a wider reach (550+ servers nodes in 141 countries) and allows more simultaneous device connections (five) than pretty much any other VPN out there.“Bottom line: Solid performer giving nice mix of advanced and newbie features. Just enough features to stand out from the rest of the VPN service crowd.” PC Mag

“Wolf puppies hunting for mice. Polar Park 2014.” (more…)

Bran Muir's wonderful, chilling animated GIF work is highlighted in a post over at VICE's The Creators Project.

Although we hoped it wouldn't happen, we knew that being pick-pocketed on our Trip Around the World was a very real possibility. We tried to always be careful, especially in crowded places, but we just weren't careful enough in Ho Chi Minh City.If you've ever visited Vietnam or even seen videos on YouTube, you know the streets are filled with an endless flow of motorbike traffic. There are plenty of cars on the road, too, but, as it was explained to us, Vietnam has an import tax of 200% on automobiles while motorbikes are bought and sold from flyers on the walls of cafes and restaurants for $200. And that means there are a lot more motorbikes than cars traversing the streets of Vietnam.We'd been in Vietnam for more than a week, so we'd gotten used to the intensity of Vietnamese street traffic. We even got really good at crossing the street with (almost) no fear. Despite this familiarity, we were still a little surprised when we left The Secret Garden (a well-regarded, somewhat hidden rooftop restaurant located up four flights of stairs in an alley off Pasteur Street) to walk to Fanny's, an ice cream parlor where we had a reservation to enjoy a fancy 14-scoop ice cream fondue platter.It was New Year's Eve, and a massive number of people and motorbikes were clogging the city's streets like nothing we'd seen before. HCMC has a population of almost eight million people, and it felt like every one of them was either driving through the heart of District 1 on a motorbike or walking toward Công viên 23 Tháng 9 (Park September 23) to get a good view of the upcoming New Year's concert and fireworks show. Crowds have never really been my thing, so the idea of wading through all that was a little daunting, but that ice cream fondue platter was waiting for us, so we stepped into the fray.After about fifteen minutes of negotiating crowds and dodging motorbikes, we got to Ben Thanh Market, right across the street from the park where the concert was about to take place. The streets around the market were filled (and I do mean filled) with motorbikes parked side-by-side across the width of the roads. People were just lying on top of their bikes — which is a sight to see — waiting for the show and the fireworks to begin.We had to cross the street to get where we were going, but with so many bikes parked in the street, there was no clear path we could take. I held my youngest daughter's hand as we maneuvered our way around and through and over the maze of motorbikes. My daughter wasn't happy. She couldn't see over the bikes and didn't like pushing her way through the crowd. She was also bothered by the many Vietnamese citizens who would stroke her hair and kiss the top of her head as she walked by. It wasn't done in a threatening way — someone told us people did it for good luck — but it still made her feel mighty uncomfortable. (She now wears her hair short, and I suspect this experience has a lot to do with that decision.)We'd been warned repeatedly by people and by signs about pickpockets, so I was being very aware of my wallet. I could feel it in my pocket as I stepped over the tires of a pair of bikes that were parked almost on top of each other. But this spot wasn't an easy place for my daughter to get through. She had to wriggle her way between the bikes. After we were through, she looked distraught, so we stopped for a moment. I asked her if she was okay. She nodded, but I could tell she was not happy. I squeezed her hand then started walking again, and as soon as I took my next step, I realized my pocket was a little light. I felt for my wallet, but it was gone. Just like that.I stood there, looking around. The thief was surely still in the area (there was no way anyone could run through that crowd) and was most likely one of the people lounging on top of their parked motorbikes. It could have easily been any of at least a dozen people. Even more likely, it was the work of a team and my wallet had been handed off down the line and was nowhere near me.It was the first time in my life I'd been pick-pocketed, and, as annoyed as I was, I couldn't help but admire the artistry behind it.There wasn't anything to do but try to minimize the damage, so we went back to the hotel. Instead of enjoying the fireworks over Ho Cho Minh City, I was on the phone, cancelling credit cards and trying to get replacements sent to me in Vietnam.In the end, I lost a million dong, which sounds like a lot but it's only about $50 U.S., a credit card (that was replaced in four days), and debit card (that took three months to get replaced, which made traveling through the next few countries somewhat difficult). I also lost my driver's license. I still don't know why I was carrying that — I hadn't driven a car in three months.The greatest loss was the wallet itself, a cuben fiber number that is the best wallet I've ever owned. Fortunately, I'd picked up another one when I met my friend Jason in Hong Kong (he makes these wallets and other cool gear at his Picharpak Workshop), so I started 2015 with a new (but empty) wallet.All in all, it was an embarrassing and inconvenient experience, but it could have been a lot worse. So far, there have been no serious repercussions (although I'm still watching my credit closely), and I haven't had my life stolen like Jasmina Tesanovic, who had her handbag swiped in Turin, an act that "crippled her life for the next two months." That sort of damage would have definitely put a strain on the rest of our trip.I read somewhere that crime rises in the time leading up to Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, when people need cash to buy gifts for their families and friends. I don't know how true that is, but as it so happens, Tết was only a month away. So I hope that someone had a nice Tết with my million dong. I want to say that I was able to overcome the experience and enjoy the rest of our stay in Vietnam, but I couldn't, not fully anyway. I really liked the time we spent in Hanoi, but Saigon left me with bitter memories.Except for that ice cream fondue platter, that is.

An underground drain failed in Meridian, Mississippi, causing an IHOP parking lot to collapse. Patrons were given extra blueberry syrup as a consolation. (Not really.)

Asma Jama was enjoying a meal at an Applebee's restaurant in Coon Rapids, Minnesota when a diner sitting at another table became incensed that Jama was speaking Swahili. To punish Jama for not speaking English in her presence, Jodie Burchard-Risch (43) allegedly smashed Jama in her face with a beer mug, leaving a deep cut on her lip that required 17 stitches. From Minnesota Public Radio:

You're supposed to be a bird in Trills, a two-player jousting game by Crudepixel, but for some reason when you collide with another bird, it sounds like two swords clashing. Maybe birds can also be swords, in this beautiful, minimalist world of light gravity and elegant collisions? I'm not an expert in imaginary ornithology.You and a friend take on the role of either a turquoise or black sword-bird, and have to soar and dive your way to victory, which can take a couple of forms: knocking each other out of the arena, gaining the most territory, or scoring goals with a ball. The controls are relatively simple; it's all about spinning around to angle your bird for the perfect, elegant divebomb when you close your wings like a fan.It's a lovely little thing to play around with, especially for the afforable cost of pay-what-you-will. Download it now on Itch.io, for Windows only.https://youtu.be/-QB8eSClRA8

After years of public outrage, the disturbing exposé Black Fish and fading business fortunes, SeaWorld is to end its use of killer whales in shows in San Diego.But new California regulations also played a big part in the decision, and it appears the circus will go on at locations in Texas and Florida.The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Changing technology made it a legend, then gentrification killed it. But Chinatown Fair, Manhattan's legendary video arcade, is open to players again in a new location. The Lost Arcade is a forthcoming documentary about a place best summed up in the line: "of course the best players went there. It was the only place still open."

United States District Judge Richard Leon has affirmed his 2013 ruling and has ordered the NSA to stop collecting phone records belonging to J.J. Little and his firm J.J. Little & Associates, P.C., and to segregate all the records collected to date so that they aren't searched. (more…)

Bob Coons writes, "Jim Balsillie, one of the founders of RIM, has made the headlines in Canada by stating that signing the TPP could be "the worst public policy decision in the country's history." (more…)

See more photos at Wink Fun.Animal Upon Animal is a dice-rolling and stacking game where you take 7 animals and roll a die that determines how you take your turn and how you need to stack those pieces upon the animals that have come before.It’s not quite as simple as just stacking. The die faces range from widening the base that starts with the big green alligator, to handing off pieces to other people who then have to stack them. Another face has players telling you which piece you’ll have to place on the remarkably unstable pile of animals growing in the middle of your table. The other faces are numbers of pieces that you can place. If you topple the tower, you have to take at most 2 of the pieces. First player to exhaust their set of animals wins.While it’s marketed as a children’s game, and I’ve played it as such (my 3-year-old daughter destroyed me), I’ve also played it with adults, and it was just as fun. There’s a great equalizer in stacking games that tiny fingers turn out to be more dexterous than you’d think. The pieces are of the great quality that you would expect from HABA games but with enough curved edges to make them difficult to stack. – James OrrAnimal Upon Animal – A super cute, fun kid's game that adults can also enjoyAnimal Upon Animal

When the kaleidoscope was invented in 1816, it triggered a mania in England. People who couldn't afford their own would pay an enterprising street hustler a penny for a glimpse into the phantasmagorical mirror world. In the illustration above, a gentleman in the street is paying attention to his kaleidoscope instead of the street traffic and collides with a hobby horse rider. One writer of the time called the kaleidoscope one of the "most important inventions and discoveries of our time."Atlas Obscura has an article about the Victorian kaleidoscope craze, which includes this paragraph about a man who felt betrayed by the device:

Pastor Kevin Swanson has some unusual tips for parents who attended his "National Religious Liberties Conference." After he interviewed fellow Tea Party darlings Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, he went on to describe how he would celebrate one of his children getting married to a person of the same gender:

Neurosurgeon Phil Kennedy, a pioneer in brain-machine interfaces that enable "locked-in" patients to control computers with their minds, is trying to build a system that will translate imagined speech into computer speech so that severely paralyzed people could "talk" just by thinking. He couldn't find the right research subject to work with and even if he did, the FDA, concerned about prior experiments, wouldn't approve his company, Neural Signals, to do more implants. So last year, Kennedy flew to Belize City where a surgeon implanted electrodes in the scientist's own brain. After two very risky surgeries, he was able to start his experiments on his own brain's data. From Technology Review:

UK Home Secretary Theresa May has announced legislation that will force ISPs to preserve the records of all of your online interactions and give them up to practically anyone in government, with little to no judicial oversight. (more…)

This week, our partnership with Critical Distance brings us a preview of consensual tentacle sex game Consentacle and a new documentary series on women in games. (more…)

For decades, engineer Nelson Tyler has kept the jetpack dream alive, most recently with the company Jetpack Aviation. Above, video of the company's CEO David Mayman flying the latest model, the JB-9 JetPack, over Manhattan.

Michael from Muckrock writes, "When MuckRock stumbled on I Write Like - a service that lets you see which famous author a given piece of writing resembles - they immediately knew what it was destined for: Helping shed light on on the literary influences of the mysterious FOIA offices they deal with on a daily basis. Fittingly, some offices echo HP Lovecraft's dark horror, while others are more Dan Brown. But you'll never guess which agency seems to take a cue from Cory Doctorow ..." (more…)

Lisa Rein writes, "Chelsea Manning prepared a statement for this year's "Aaron Swartz Day Celebration of Hackers and Whistleblowers That Make The World A Better Place" that took place at the Internet Archive, in San Francisco, on November 7th. It's pretty amazing. (more…)

UK photographer Peter Stewart's collection Stacked is a series of photos of Hong Kong's fabulous high-rises, shot from ground level, looking straight up into the sky. (more…)

Gunnar Hansen who Leatherface in Tobe Hooper's iconic splatterpunk film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) has died at age 68. Inspired by serial killer Ed Gein, Leatherface work a mask of human skin. From CNN:

In another high-profile failure of a successfully-crowdfunded gadget, it turns out that TechJect's robot dragonflies won't be flying their way to pledgers' pockets any time soon. (more…)

Guillotines and numbing satire figure strongly in an archive of images from the French Revolution, made available by Stanford University and the Bibliothèque nationale de FranceAbout 14,000 high-resolution images are in the set, which is divided into Parliamentary Archives and Images of the French Revolution and neatly organized by event and category. [via Hyperallergic]

The eight-member band is named Lovelyz and formed in 2014, according to Wikipedia.

Dell's "business class" Chromebook is almost perfect, writes Wired's Scott Gilbertson. The release of this 13-inch model marks a shift from the low-end zone most ChromeOS laptops occupy, to the middle ground of "real" computers. It's $400-$900 and has all the trimmings, yet is more practical than flashy flagship models like Google's Pixel.

After architectural peculiarities were noted in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, an infra-red scan suggests that a hidden chamber indeed lies behind a decorated wall.Discovery reports that Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering and the Paris-based organization Heritage, Innovation and Preservation used infrared thermography to peek through the stone.

Welcome to the International Hole of Pancakes: a sinkhole that swallowed 15 vehicles at a diner in Meridian, Miss., leaving them submerged in mud and sending otherwise unhurt locals scrambling.Emergency services were called about 7:15 p.m. central time on Saturday after the ground opened up at the new IHOP on i20 near Bonita Reservoir."Upon arrival, we found multiple vehicles in the ditch. At this time, we are trying to stabilize this and keep everyone away,"Meridian Fire Department Chief Battalion Wayne Cook told local reporters at WTOK.The restaurant only opened a few days ago, and it isn't clear how much damage has been caused to the building or nearby infrastructure. About 40,000 people live in Meridian, which received 3 inches of rain over the weekend and nearly 10 in the last two weeks, according to USA Today.

The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police has upped the ante in the ongoing feud with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who recently said some deaths in police custody were murders."Tarantino has made a good living out of violence and surprise," Jim Pasco told The Hollywood Reporter. "Our offices make a living trying to stop violence, but surprise is not out of the question."

Apple store workers' class-action lawsuit, complaining of "demeaning" security searches conducted off the clock, was defeated this weekend by the company. (more…)

The University of California at Santa Barbara library has undertaken an heroic digitization effort for its world-class archive of 19th and early 20th century wax cylinder recordings, and has placed over 10,000 songs online for anyone to download, stream and re-use. (more…)

Pagefair is an ad-blocking circumvention tool that publishers can use to track readers who've taken technological countermeasures to protect their privacy. The company has sold its service to many publishers -- including the Economist -- by deploying moral arguments about the evils of ad-blocking. (more…)

The lede and various details in The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up: How Your Area Compares, an article at the New York Times, are rewritten automatically based upon the reader's location.It's not overly clever. Simple, compelling details are used to frame and contextualize a dry, fact-driven story, and it works very well.News reports generated by computers from raw data are not new, but they tend to be obvious and a bit daft, like the ersatz commentary in sports video games. This Times piece is a high-quality example of code with an appropriate editorial voice. It needs careful planning and restraint and can't just be glued together from journalistic clichés and data.(Redditors, however, have managed to trick it into writing some rather daft phrases.)Previously: North Korea Press Release Generator

Digital commissioner Günther Oettinger (CDU – EPP) is joining with European Parliament president Martin Schulz (SPD – S&D) in pressing the European Commission to create a copyright interest in links, meaning that making a link to a Web-page that contains infringing material would expose you to liability for copyright infringement yourself. (more…)

Between 1913 and 1920, many Americans sent their children around the country by mail. Provided your child weighed less than 50 lbs, you could simply affix stamps to their clothing and send them off with the postmaster. They'd be whisked across the country in the railway system's mail compartments and delivered to relatives safe and sound. (more…)

What with social media being a thing now, it's probably time to start give California a heads up when you're going to fire a giant rocket over it.

Gus writes, "November 2-6 was Media Literacy Week, that great traditional festival of questioning everything we read and talking back to the TV. OK, so it's only ten years old... and this is the first year it's been formally observed in the United States, which has long lagged behind other English-speaking countries in media literacy initiatives (even South Africa before the fall of apartheid!) [pdf]. But why shouldn't it become a tradition? It makes a great lead-in to Buy Nothing Day at the end of November." (more…)