One of the cases that the Supreme Court heard this season was NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc. which rolls up several cases where employers are hoping to establish that they can force prospective employees to sign a mandatory arbitration waiver as a condition of employment; if they prevail, the majority of workplaces in America will likely adopt the practice. (more…)

Jan Erik Klouman's jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj is a clever feat of minimalism: a web-based notepad so simple that the saved-to-desktop HTML file works as-is just like it did at the website. On Firefox, it even lets you paste images in! It's almost a joke--it's just a single HTML box with the "contentEditable" attribute--but it works, so who cares? [via Hacker News]

The South Wales Police deployed a facial recognition technology at the June 2017 Champions League soccer final in Cardiff, and 92% of the people identified by the system as matches for suspiciousness were false positives. (more…)

It turns out that ink is made largely by mixing pigments with liquids! Various emulsifiers and such also factor in. How about that! The bright sheets of colorful slime are very satisfying and relaxing, and the Printing Ink Company's trade videos seem, somehow, to understand the appeal of this. I want to eat the ink.

In Apple's early days, the swanky La Playa Carmel hotel was on the list of preferred venues for the company's offsite retreats. Carmel-By-The-Sea's quaint charm coupled with the property's privacy made it an ideal spot for their gatherings.In fact, it was where the company's Macintosh retreat was held in late January of 1983. That's where Steve Jobs first revealed the team's Macintosh computer prototype, right there in the hotel's ocean-view banquet room.I am just back from EG, a fantastic conference for/by/of creatives held in Carmel-By-The-Sea, and ate dinner in that room.This room...EG's director Michael Hawley pointed out this commemorative plaque, which resides on the room's back wall.It reads, "In this room Steve Jobs unveiled the MacIntosh computer prototype during a development team retreat, and ceremoniously christened it with a bottle of La Playa Carmel water."Hawley also shared the rest of the story. Apparently things got a little wild at this gathering, resulting in getting Apple banned from the hotel for 30 years. The team -- who were drunk -- stripped naked and jumped in the hotel's pool ("oblivious to the polite strangling sounds of the blue-haired ladies all around," according to author Frank Rose) and then headed to the beach to start a bonfire. The next morning the hotel politely asked them to not return.In 2013, the hotel changed ownership and Apple was invited back with the message, "All is forgiven."Read: Carmel hotel ends ban on Apple retreats 30 years after skinny-dipping incident (2013 article)photos by Rusty Blazenhoff

A company by the name of Stance makes really fun socks. Their licensed ones are particularly nice. I was recently gifted a pair of their Thriller socks ($18) and I absolutely adore them. They're thick, well-made, and detailed. Plus, they are packaged in a way that shows the top sock -- the before-transformation Michael Jackson -- which then reveals the werewolf sock underneath when its pulled back.I learned that they sell a $55 three-pack of the socks (shown above) which also includes a pair of Michael Jackson as the zombie.Thanks, M!

Welcome Ed Piskor back to Boing Boing (previously), where he'll be offering an annotated page-by-page look at the first part of X-Men: Grand Design, his epic retelling of how Marvel comics' pantheon of heroes came to be. Here's page 6; read the rest first — Eds.Director’s commentary…One of Chris Claremont’s greatest contributions to X-Men was fleshing out Magneto’s back-story to make him less of a mustache-twirling arch-villain and to imbue the character with some real motivation for his cause.I knew a sequence involving Magneto and a concentration camp needed to be in this comic pretty early, but I was dreading the moment. I thought Claremont and John Bolton did a fantastic job on the backup stories in Classic X-Men when they first told this story and they handled this harrowing subject matter with great sensitivity and grace. That gave me a much-needed blueprint worth following.As a creator, I opt to suspend my own disbelief in many ways for the fun of the story. This would be one of those cases. I know how old Magneto would be if he was a boy in the camps and there are very few older people who the X-Men would be worried about fighting. Readers, thankfully, enjoy going on the same ride and don’t trip too hard on such details. Alfred Hitchcock called the other kinds of audience members “The plausibles”. You’ll meet a few when visiting any given comments section on the internet regarding some pop culture subject matter. They’re usually not fun people to talk to at parties.Panel 5: I establish this pink color as essentially being associated with Magneto and his powers. I may use it elsewhere at times but only sparingly. Generally speaking, if you see this color in the comic, Magneto isn’t far behind.Panel 7: The image of the Nazi getting buck-shotted with nuts and bolts via Magneto was the first idea that came to mind for this page. Everything else was created around this image and the final panel. As I build every page I draw a fairly detailed rough to submit to Marvel so that they know everything I have planned. My rough for this page is very similar to this final printed strip and I remember wondering if this panel was pushing things editorially. I guess it’s not really gory but I certainly remember the days of yore when the comics code was in full effect.Last panel: Some people see the dead Nazis in the watchtowers on their first pass. Some people see them later. I wonder if you noticed them on first read? They’re harder to see when printed at standard Floppy-size.The first X-Men Grand Design collection is now available for purchase on Amazon! Stay tuned for another strip this time next week.You can pre-order X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis on Amazon today.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jamie Williams and Lena Gunn have drawn up an annotated five-point list of questions to ask yourself before using a machine-learning algorithm to make predictions and guide outcomes. (more…)

In 2016, Google banned ads for payday lenders; now it has followed up with a ban on another predatory industry: for-profit bail bondsmen, who rip off black people and poor people with deceptive financing terms that are designed to create a usurious cycle of permanent debt. (Image: Sarah Nichols/CC-BY-SA)

Back when the anti-Net-Neutrality was pretending to have anything like an argument (apart from, "NETWORK NEUTRALITY INTERFERES WITH MY ABILITY TO BECOME LIMITLESSLY RICH, GO FUCK YOURSELF), one of the stupid pieces of spaghetti they threw at the wall was, "The FCC shouldn't regulate telcos, that's the FTC's job." (more…)

The looming deadline for the EU General Data Protection Plan means that companies have a duty to be extremely clear about what data they're collecting on you and what they're doing with it, and give you a chance to refuse -- they've already had a duty to do this for a very long time under both EU law and California law, but the difference this time around is that the GDPR has large, terrifying teeth: companies that fail to comply can be fined 5% of their annual global turnover. (more…)

If, like me, you have a love-hate relationship with pixels, you might find use for the DPI/PPI Calculator next time you're looking for a new monitor. It calculates the pixel density of any display from its dimensions and resolution without the fuss of doing any mental math. (It informed me that those giant 42" 4k monitors will actually have rather chunky pixels--108 ppi--and are not what I'm looking for.)

Our hero, YouTube parodist and future Tony award-winner Randy Rainbow, has a new video that tears on former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump (the "Beast")... in song! Brilliant.

A very skilled pilot takes a Saab Gripen fighter jet through its paces, and his audio from the recording indicates just how physically and mentally taxing this kind of flying is. (more…)

The National Rifle Association announced that its new president will be Oliver North, Fox News correspondent and central player in the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s under president Ronald Reagan during which North and his cronies illegally sold arms to Iran and diverted the funds to the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua."Oliver North is, hands down, the absolute best choice to lead our NRA Board, to fully engage with our members, and to unflinchingly stand and fight for the great freedoms he has defended his entire life," NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre said.(CNN)

In case you somehow missed it, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano started erupting last Thursday, leaving molten paths of destruction on the Big Island near the community of Leilani Estates. The eruption was followed by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday. CNN reports that 35 structures, including 26 homes, have already been destroyed.An online media company called WXChasing has been able to get a few up-close videos of what's happening there, including this timelapse dash cam footage of hot lava crossing a road and completely enveloping a parked white Ford Mustang.If you have the means, please consider donating money to the Red Cross to help victims of the disaster.

I bought this stand for my Fender Telecaster, which has previously taken up space on a couch. The ChromaCast CC-MINIGS Universal Folding Guitar Stand with Secure Lock has a 4.5-star rating on Amazon with over 1,400 reviews. It's very sturdy and the parts that touch the guitar are nice and soft so you won't scratch your beloved instrument.

Claudia Cavaliere had only been working as a massage therapist in Montreal, Canada for a few months when, as she began to work the knots out of a middle-aged client's leg, he started grinding against her massage table, juuuuuust before flipping over to bring himself off. The whole time that he masturbated, he didn't say a damn word, other than asking Cavaliere for a tissue to clean himself up with. Horrified, she backed out of the room that she had been alone with her client in and asked a co-worker for assistance. Her co-worker got Cavaliere to safety and demanded that her piece of shit client leave. The incident shook Cavaliere, deeply. After she collected herself, she was brave enough to report the incident to the police.When she told the duty officer at the Kirkland detachment of the Montreal Police Service her story, he didn't respond in the way that you'd like to hope that those we charge with protecting us, would. Instead of offering a modicum of sympathy, he attempted to dissuade her from filing a complaint, saying, according to Cavaliere "Well, you know, you have to get ready to appear in court. Do you really want to do that?"At this point, Cavaliere decided it might be a good idea to record the rest of their chat.As the conversation between Cavaliere and the cop progressed, it was discovered that her client had provided her with a fake name and phone number. The duty officer that she spoke to told her that it was unlikely that a case could be pursued, given these circumstances, and even if it did, it would not be classified as a sexual assault. Any conviction, he explained, would not result in a harsh punishment. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it totally does.From The CBC:

Planet Labs did an interesting spin on the standard straight down satellite shots: they angled the camera from 280 miles up, turning cities like Houston, shown above, into charming miniatures. (more…)

Famous authors don't always make good tutors. At least not in the case of Ian McEwan, who tried to tutor his son, Greg, who was writing his high school A-level essay about a novel he had read. After talking to his son about about the story and things he should think about, the son ended up with a measly C+. The irony is that the essay was about one of McEwan's own novels – Enduring Love (1997)."I didn't read his essay but it turned out his teacher disagreed fundamentally with what he said," McEwan said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "I think he ended up with a C+."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their wives enjoyed a private dinner in Israel. By all accounts, they had a lovely evening, which was marred only by the dessert, which was served in shoes.From Business Insider:

My latest Locus column is The Engagement-Maximization Presidency, and it proposes a theory to explain the political phenomenon of Donald Trump: we live in a world in which communications platforms amplify anything that gets "engagement" and provides feedback on just how much your message has been amplified so you can tune and re-tune for maximum amplification. (more…)

Emily Nield (27) of Ontario, Canada, attends college in the United States. She was driving from Georgia to Tennessee when a cop pulled her over for speeding. The officer asked for her license and things quickly went downhill from there.From CBC:

Don't mess with this fierce pigeon or she'll take your finger off. She's protecting her kitten, and snaps every time a human hand reaches towards her.

Several years ago, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said they were "90% sure" that new scans of King Tutankhamun's tomb revealed a hidden chamber. Following that, University of Arizona archaeologist Nicholas Reeves published a headline-making research paper suggesting that the secret room may be the burial chamber of Queen Nefertiti. Well, turns out that there's no there there. From the BBC News:

The British Film Institute discovered bits of very rare Technicolor film fragments from 1920s Hollywood. The fragments, attached to the beginning and end of other film reels, include Louise Brooks doing what may be a costume test for her first credited movie, The American Venus (1926), thought to lost. From Film News:

Vernacular photography historian Robert E. Jackson curated a curious collection of photos depicting adults enjoying time with their favorite plushies.See more at Flashbak: "16 Vintage Snapshots of Adults Messing About With Teddy Bears And Stuffed Toys"

Since the birth of audio recording in the 19th century, people have used the technology to capture the ambient sounds of our world for later playback. With the invention of high-quality, portable tape recorders in the 1960s, field recording evolved into its own art form. Now, all of us carry high-quality digital recorders in our pockets and myriad sound artists continue to push the form forward. Good field recordings have the power to transport us and, sometimes, attune our own senses so that we too listen more actively to our own experiences in the world. In this short documentary "Sound Fields," director Sam Campbell introduces us to contemporary field recordists who are masters at active listening and share what they hear with all of us.(Vinyl Factory)

Manatees love warm water, evidently, and igotcharts.com posted this lovely manatee map to help you find them. What's with manatees heading up to cold-water parts of the US? Do they love us?

I's been eight years since we last checked in, and Famicase is going strong, both as an exhibition and a social media hashtag. The photo above was posted by @boheme. Here are just a few of my favorites:(more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt9prI2it5g&feature=youtu.beI'm not sure of the technical specifications going on here, but this calmed me down after seeing the latest from the Malabar Front this morning.Here it is YouTube-doubled with "Biggie Smalls the Tank Engine". You're welcome.

Virtual reality is now available at prosumer-level price points, and the race is on in the same way 2D filming reached the masses twenty years ago. Matt at Cinematography Database takes a quick spin through Oculus Medium. (more…)

Last Thursday, a trucker driving a semi carrying $965,000 worth of Octagam -- an immunotherapy drug taken by cancer patients -- pulled into Pilot Truck Stop at 9211 Lewisburg Highway, Tennessee, tailed by a red Volvo semi. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwaT4R5_WAThere's an astounding level of detail and thoroughness in Mixtela's report on hacking a Polaroid camera to print on thermal paper. It reads almost like a pulp novel.

The BBC has published a long and welcome feature on Afrofuturism, the term coined by former Boing Boing guestblogger Mark Dery to describe (in the words of Steve Barnes) "science fiction, fantasy and horror created by or featuring the children of the African diaspora (people of African origin living outside of the continent)." (more…)

If you like your PCs to look like a coffee maker from a 1970s yacht, you'll love this case mod. It's pretty neat in terms of heat sinks, but it has a rather large footprint. (more…)

Gina Haspel is a 33-year veteran of the CIA, notorious for overseeing a torture camp in Thailand where rendered suspects were subjected to simulated executions; Haspel is also notorious for participating in a mass coverup of CIA torture, helping to destroy over 100 videotapes of abuses that took place under her direction. (more…)

"I Agree" is an art installation that prints the terms of service for common apps on scrolls of colored paper, creating a bar chart of the fine print that neither you, nor anyone else in the history of the world, has ever read. (more…)

Some mysteries don't need to be solved. They need to be laid to rest.In spring of 2017, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game employee was going about his 'do you have a license to hunt that thing' duties, in the wilds outside the city of Mountain Home, Idaho. As he kicked through the grass and dust of the high desert plains, he came upon partially buried human skeletal remains. The Fish and Game employee called in the cops, who in turn, cordoned off the area around the find as a crime scene. The condition of the bones was such that they could have been the remains of a double homicide that'd taken place in recent decades, or old enough to belong to settlers who would have been passing through the area as far back as the 19th century, as part of their trek down the Oregon Trail.Five days after the bones were discovered, the police returned to where the bones had been discovered. They brought archaeologists with them to assist in the delicate task of extracting the remains from the earth and, since they were there, help look for any other remains that might be hanging around the area.They found more.There was no way to identify the bones as belonging to one society or another--not a single cultural artifact was found in the area. With no clues as to who the bones may have belonged to, the cops had the bones shipped off to a lab for carbon dating. A couple of decades old or maybe dating back to the 19th century? Man were they off the mark. By carbon dating the remains, it was discovered that the bones they'd uncovered belonged to two people--a young adult and a child--who lived at some point between the 1400s and 1600s. Bullshit, cried the investigators! Run the test again! At a different lab!So they did.Similar results were returned. With the data that had been procured, they were able to narrow down the dates that the pair had been alive even further: between 1436 and 1522. During that time, the only people who would have been in that part of Idaho, that anyone knows of, would have been the natives of the region. With this being the case the remains were handed over to the U.S Bureau of Land Management, who in turn, are supposed to provide the remains to a Native American tribe in the area where the find was made as per the Native American Graves Protection Act.According to the Associated Press, anthropologists were kind of pissed off at the situation:

An off-duty Buena Park, California Police officer decided that a $1 pack of candy was worth risking human life. Mistakenly believing Jose Arreola was shoplifting a package of Mentos he had just purchased, the cop went into thug mode. After repeatedly being told Arreola had paid for the candies, by both the victim and the store's cashier, the officer offers an apology.What are the guidelines for when an officer is supposed to draw a firearm? Was anyone in any danger here? Did he need a gun to stop a suspected candy thief? I would hope officer education programs explain that considering consequences like "One of us dies, or that candy gets stole" might be part of the rubric?Buena Park PD Chief of Police Corey S. Sianez offered this statement via Facebook: "I want you to know that after I watched the video I found it to be disturbing, as I’m sure it was to you. However, because there is an ongoing personnel investigation and potential litigation pending against the city, I am unable to discuss the details of our investigation."Video via the Orange County Register

Since the crash of 2008, both home ownership and renting have been getting steadily more expensive, with median house prices rising to levels surpassing pre-crisis levels, while the ballooning private equity megalandlords pushed prices for renters to never-seen levels, using an eviction mill that saw more Americans thrown out of their homes than at any time in history to keep renters paying. (more…)

Machine learning is all around us. From Google's search engines to Tesla's self-driving cars, this field powers many of today's AI innovations, and, as more of these products find their way into the mainstream, understanding how they work is going to be a valuable skill. Regardless of your experience level, the Pay What You Want: The 2018 Machine Learning Bundle can walk you through this field and the tools that power it, all for a price you choose.Here's how the deal works: Simply pay what you want, and you'll instantly unlock one of the collection's 10 resources. Beat the average price paid, and you'll get the remaining nine at no extra charge. Plus, if you beat the leader price, you'll be entered into a major giveaway and earn a spot on the leaderboard.This comprehensive collection features six e-Books and 10 hours of course content on machine learning and the tools that drive it forward, like Python, TensorFlow, and Apache Spark. From building machine learning algorithms to creating neural networks using Python libraries, this collection is loaded with content to broaden your technical skills and help you pursue a career in this booming field. Check it out in the Boing Boing Store.

Prospective voters in Redford, part of the East London district of Ilford, found a flyer from the local Conservative Party in their mailboxes, in which the boilerplate text, which opens with "what we're doing/have done for ward/area name" had not been replaced with local talking points. (more…)

The Pogues were my entry point into punk. They caused a massive shift in my understanding of music: they made my growing up to play the mandolin, tenor banjo and bodhran feel cool. The music I played needn't be something from the past. As much as I loved and continue to adore traditional Irish tunes, The Pogues showed 15-year-old me that there was new life in the tunes I knew; new themes to explore. Discovering A Pair of Brown Eyes, Thousands are Sailing and The Broad Majestic Shannon kicked open other musical doors for me. It wasn't too long until my Discman was pushing The Waterboys, The Levellers, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span into my skull.I've got fond memories of The Pogues Live at the Town and Country. When I was 18, I skipped my high school prom in favor of shipping off to Halifax. I'd fallen in love with a girl there, the summer previous. She was waiting for me. The relationship smouldered itself out, as flames that burn too hot, too fast, often do. Before we parted ways, she bought Live at the Town and Country on VHS for me as a birthday gift.I watch it and listened to it until there was nothing left of that tape.

No matter what else happens today, I've got enough joy to to see me through the weekend: According to Buzzfeed, professional fascist mouthpiece Richard Spencer has had his racist ass shown the door by GoDaddy. Were you to browse your way to his alt-right website right now, you'd find nothing there waiting for you but a 404 message. I just tried. It's glorious. Apparently, GoDaddy gave Spencer 48 hours to find a new host for his bigoted bullshit before they wiped it from his servers. At the time that this post was written, it seemed that no one else wants to give his site a home. I checked on it, multiple times, to see if the site would load. Nope.Concerning Spencer's ejection from their servers and the topic of where their business sits on the topic of freedom of speech a GoDaddy representative told Buzzfeed the following:

I'm going to Japan for a month this summer. I know two things for certain: it will be mushi atsui (muggy hot) and I will get bitten by ka (mosquitoes). My favorite way to relive the itch of a mosquito bite is with this little device, which delivers a tiny spark of static electricity when you press the trigger. About 10 presses of the trigger will stop the itching for hours. Everyone in my family uses it. Thay cost about $10 on Amazon. It doesn't need batteries. It has a piezoelectric crystal in it. I've had one for years and it still works.

Adams County Coroner James Keller is western Illinois has a great way to self-fund his department: if a poor person dies and their family can't afford the $1,000 for cremation, Keller just dumps the ashes in an unmarked mass grave; and then if the family needs a death certificate to access their dead loved one's estate, Keller makes them sign over the first $1,000 out of the estate to his office before he'll hand over the paperwork. (more…)

Three former CBS employees are suing television journalist and talk show host Charlie Rose for sexual harassment and threatening their jobs when they were in their 20s. The lawsuit, which was filed in the New York Supreme Court today, "alleges that Rose habitually made sexually suggestive comments and engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with the three employees," reports Variety. The lawsuit also complains that CBS executives knew that Rose routinely harassed women but did not warn new employees.From the lawsuit:

Miami Police officer Mario Figueroa looks like he enjoyed kicking a defenseless, handcuffed man in the head. Unfortunately for Officer Figueroa, his violent assault was caught on camera. A non-officer would have been immediately arrested for attacking someone this way, but since Figueroa is a police officer, he gets a paid vacation pending the results of an internal investigation.From Miami New Times:

Guns N' Roses is reissuing their iconic Appetite for Destruction (1987) in various editions ranging from double LP and CD sets (all with unreleased music) to the fully-blown "Locked N' Loaded" massive box set. For $999, you get "four CDs, one Blu-ray (containing hi-def 5.1 surround audio of Appetite, bonus tracks and music videos), seven 12-inch LPs, seven seven-inch singles, a hardbound book and a variety of collectibles. The selection of ephemera includes five skull face rings, a replica of the band's stage banner from their early club days, several posters, replicas of old fliers and ticket stubs and even two temporary tattoo sheets featuring life-size recreations of the band members' actual ink. The entire collection will be housed in a solid wood box wrapped in faux-leather and stamped with a 3D cross on its front doors," according to Rolling Stone.