We've been writing about Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping for nearly 20 years, tracing his remarkable spectacles of anti-consumerism around the world.New Yorkers can see Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir ("an ecstatic group of 35 activists who sing harmoniously while trespassing inside corporations") in a performance called "Earth Riot" at Joe's Pub that runs Nov 24-Dec 22. The 40 activists-who-sing, The Stop Shopping Choir, return from risking arrest to take the stage for their annual run at Joe's Pub. The "church" comes back each holiday season with songs created from improvisations in climate-killing banks, pipelines, immigration prisons, and churches hiding sanctuary families. "The Church of Stop Shopping takes on the trinity of consumerism, corporate greed and environmental destruction. Reverend Billy's antics remain difficult to categorize—part Brecht, part PT Barnum..." – Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker.Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping: Earth Riot [Joe's Pub](Thanks, Christian Nightmares!) Read the rest

Hyperbole runs amok in this week’s tabloids, taking implausibility to new levels.

Ask any creative professional, and chances are they'll tell you Adobe's Creative Cloud programs are essential to their livelihood.Still, they're only as good as the person using them. Luckily, there's now a training that covers all the best elements of this software suite, and it's the Complete 2020 Adobe CC Certification Bundle.As you might imagine, the courses lean heavily on the things you can do in graphic design with Adobe, and sure enough, there's a two-course boot camp that gives you a firm foundation in the fundamentals of design before you even get into the nuts and bolts. Later courses open up all the creative possibilities of Lightroom, After Effects and (of course) Photoshop.But there's plenty here for videographers too. Two lessons on Adobe Premiere Pro take you through the process of producing and editing great footage.In all, it's nine courses and more than 60 hours of resources that lead to resume-boosting certificates. The entire package is already 97% off, but you can take an additional 60% off that price by using the Black Friday online code BFSAVE60. Please note Adobe software is not included with the collection.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

Recently, I've found myself playing more games from small, independent game companies and those sold directly from the designers. Here are a few of these offerings currently on my radar, at my painting station, and on my tabletop. If you're looking for game-related gifts for the holidays, consider supporting these talented and hardworking indie creators.Relicblade: Adventure Battle GameMetal King Studios, $30 (basic hardbound rulebook), 2-4 players, Ages: 10+Sean Sutter, the mastermind behind Relicblade, was kind enough to send me some of his Relicblade merch earlier this year. Throughout the year, I watched my tabletop gaming friends enthusiastically flinging themselves down the Relicbalde rabbit hole, but I only recently got around to my own swan-dive into these realms. I love games that are largely the vision of a single designer/artist. Kingdom Death Monster always comes to mind. Like that uncompromising vision of a game as a creative platform for an artist's self-expression (Adam Poots in its case), Relicblade is a gaming universe populated by the imagination of artist and designer Sean Sutter. Sean designs the game, does all of the artwork and book design, digitally sculpts the figures--all of it. He also produces videos that chronicle his design and manufacturing process. Looking at his product line, you'd be hard pressed to distinguish Sean's output from any major game publisher. Our modern world of on-demand publishing, small scale manufacturing, digital design and sculpting, 3D printing, and crowdfunding has created the near-ideal conditions for creators like Sean to be able to compete with much larger commercial concerns. Read the rest

There's no way around it: Learning a new language takes practice. You can stare at new words all day, but until you start speaking - and getting feedback - those words won't actually stick.That feedback is where Rosetta Stone excels, especially in its latest version. And if you're looking to learn, there's already Black Friday pricing on the acclaimed software.It's tough to improve on Rosetta Stone's approach, which has earned it top honors from PC Magazine as Best Language Learning Software for 5 years in a row. But over the years, RS has incorporated speech recognition into its curriculum to great effect.Their TruAccent™ tech analyses your speech almost constantly, giving you feedback every time you speak a new word. It will even compare your speech to that of native speakers, so you can be sure you're conversation-ready.Rosetta Stone subscriptions are on sale today, and by entering the Black Friday code BFSAVE15, you can take an extra 15% off the final price.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

A Reddit user named cleroth developed a "hex-based real-time strategy exploration game" called Marvora, "with elements from Dwarf Fortress and Civilization." Four years ago he posted a preview of procedurally generated biomes, which you can see here.Today, cleroth discovered that an Amazon marketplace seller is using that image to sell Marvora Biomes umbrellas, Marvora Biomes antibacterial toilet seats, and Marvora Biomes bikinis. The Amazon Marketplace seller is no doubt using a bot to scrape image files, so it seems appropriate to use an image created procedurally, too. Read the rest

149 families' home movies are archived on Open Memory Box, a massive archive of 415 hours of footage from the former East German, shot from 1947-1990. The video is indexed and searchable by 2700 search-terms, and makes for fascinating browsing as well. (via Kottke) Read the rest

This holiday we are entertained!The master magician who spends his spare time communicating with the dead, Rob Zabrecky, has decided to host a Thanksgiving Marathon of his amazing seance series 'Other Side with Zabrecky.'A cavalcade of colorful characters join Zabrecky to contact spirits of their choice. Guests include Will Forte, Kate Flannery, Jack Black, Jeff Grossman, Neil Hamburger, Jason Sudeikis, and David Arquette. Also featured are two commercials, a mail bag episode, and lots of music by the band Monitor.I understand Zabrecky hides secret messages in every video. Read the rest

Clive James, the Australian writer, broadcaster, comedian and poet, is dead at 80.James was renowned for his pithy turns of phrase. He once likened Arnold Schwarzenegger to "a brown condom full of walnuts" and said motor racing commentator Murray Walker sounded "like a man whose trousers are on fire". ... "Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds," was another of his famous quotes.He also had advice for his future obituarists, telling them "shorter is better, and that a single line is best"."Any encounter with James, either in print or in person, left you desperate to go and open a book, watch a film or a TV show, or hunt down a recording," said Don Paterson, poetry editor at James's publisher Picador.James was funny and silly enough to be enjoyed by children, but smart and deep enough to grow into--an Umberto Eco of things normal people see and read. Among other things, he was first to introduce the sadistic marvels of Japanese game shows to British television. He was diagnosed as terminally-ill almost a decade ago, and his dry wit became positively arid as he continued to outpace death in his last years. But also light and, when the occasion called for it, joyous. Read the rest

In a decision released late Tuesday night, a federal judge ruled that up to 29 million Facebook users whose personal info was stolen in a September 2018 data breach are not entitled to sue Facebook as a group for damages -- but the users may be entitled to demand better personal data security at Facebook.The case is Adkins v Facebook Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 18-05982. When this Facebook breach happened in 2018, Boing Boing wrote about it here, and here.In San Francisco on Thursday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said neither credit monitoring costs nor the reduced value of stolen personal information was a “cognizable injury” that supported a class action for damages. Reuters' Jonathan Stempel reports:Alsup also said damages for time users spent to mitigate harm required individualized determinations rather than a single classwide assessment. Users were allowed to sue as a group to require Facebook to employ automated security monitoring, improve employee training, and educate people better about hacking threats.Alsup rejected Facebook’s claim that these were unnecessary because it had fixed the bug that caused the breach.“Facebook’s repetitive losses of users’ privacy supplies a long-term need for supervision,” at least at this stage of the litigation, Alsup wrote.Allowing a damages class action could have exposed Facebook to a higher total payout.Facebook must face data breach class action on security, but not damages: judge [reuters.com] Read the rest

For the last year, the Detroit Free Press has been reporting on the strange saga of the University of Farmington, a fake educational institution outside of Detroit. Homeland Security Investigations actually spent taxpayer dollars on an epic sting operation, renting out a building to create the appearance of a legitimate college campus staffed with actual ICE agents in order to apprehend…people who want to go to college.As of November 2019, they've arrested about 250 people on immigration violations. From the latest Detroit Free Press update:Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, "nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States," the Detroit office of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday.Out of the remaining 20%, about half of them have received a final order of removal; some of them were ordered removed by an immigration judge, and others "were given an expedited removal by U.S. Customs and Border Protection," said HSI Detroit.The remaining 10% "have either filed for some sort of relief or are contesting their removals with Executive Office for Immigration Review," said HSI Detroit.To be clear: this is not a new Trumpian phenomenon. It's been going on since January 2016 (although the majority of the arrests have taken place more recently, including 90 since this past March).And if that's not maddening enough, consider that there were several hundred other students at the university who weren't arrested for immigration violations. The total enrollment was around 600 students, and the school was charging about $12,000 per year for tuition and fees. Read the rest

China-based technology company ByteDance is on a charm offensive, reports Reuters, ramping up efforts to distance its popular social app TikTok from the rest of its Chinese operations.The PR moves coincide with a U.S. national security panel inquiry into the risks of a China-based company managing personal data of Americans, reports Reuters.Excerpt:The Chinese technology company is seeking to provide assurances to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that personal data held by TikTok, which is widely popular with U.S. teenagers, is stored securely in the United States and will not be compromised by Chinese authorities, the sources said.CFIUS, which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks, is looking into ByteDance’s $1 billion acquisition of social media app Musical.ly in 2017, which laid the foundations for TikTok’s rapid growth, Reuters reported earlier this month.ByteDance’s response represents a key test of corporate China’s ability to operate businesses in the United States that handle personal data, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China fans suspicion between the world’s two largest economies.Exclusive: China's ByteDance moves to ringfence its TikTok app amid U.S. probe - sources [REUTERS] Read the rest

Carla didn't like the glass citrus juicer we've had for years. She said it hurt her wrist when she twisted a lemon half on the cone. I agreed with her. It's an unnatural way to move your wrist. She also didn't like having to lift out the seeds with a spoon before using the juice. Again, I couldn't argue. I told her I wanted to do some research for a good squeeze handle juicer, but I took too long so she ordered a cast aluminum juicer like this one ( on Amazon).It does a good job of getting almost all the juice out of a lemon, and is pretty easy to squeeze. It keeps the seeds inside the cup, too. My main concern is with the pin in the hinge. When will it break, and what kind of pin replacement will I be able use? It may not be an issue, though, because I didn't see a review where someone said the hinge pin broke. Read the rest

In North Carolina, a lovestruck convenience store clerk and her fiancé now have matching criminal charges. According to police, the man who performed the robbery was carrying “some sort of ornamental sword,” which you can sort of make out in the convenience store surveillance video above, courtesy of local police.Police say the couple plotted and carried out an armed robbery Monday night, and the couple reportedly got engaged at a Walmart a few hours later.Callie Elizabeth Carswell, who was working as a clerk at at Big Daddy’s convenience store when a robbery took place, was charged by police with conspiracy for robbery with a dangerous weapon, false report to police and misuse of a 911 system, reports The News Herald of North Carolina.The woman's Walmart fiancé, Mr. Clarence Moore III, is charged with conspiracy for robbery with a dangerous weapon and robbery with a dangerous weapon.That'd be the “ornamental sword.”This is good stuff, folks.Excerpt:Investigators said the robbery took place after 10 p.m. Monday night when a man with a hat, bandanna and some sort of ornamental sword walked into the store and demanded money from the clerk. He walked out of the store with $2,960, according to a release from MDPS.Carswell allowed officers to search her cellphone, resulting in them finding videos of her and Moore getting engaged at Walmart early Tuesday morning after the robbery, the release said. Receipts seized during the execution of a search warrant showed the engagement rings were purchased at Walmart. Read the rest

How would you like to take on a dangerous and difficult task in front of an audience who hopes you fail? That's what happened to this poor chap in Staroshcherbinovskaya, Russia who was on the roof of a slope-roofed building with a bundle of uncooperative roofing sheets. Read the rest

“The final resting spot of the once glorious glazed donuts.”The police department in Brookhaven, Georgia openly shared their grief in this social media post, honoring a load of tragically fallen donuts. A surprising act of carb kindness followed.The Facebook post screengrabbed above details a scene of “total carnage” on Tuesday morning, when dozens of donuts fell off a Krispy Kreme delivery truck in the Georgia town. Don't scroll any farther here if you are sensitive. Graphic images follow.Oh God, it's hard to even type about this tragedy.All those donuts, crashing into delicious sugary cakey crumbs onto the unforgiving curb, and into a gutter, like so many dunked crullers.Smashed up into bits.Uneaten.But not forgotten.From the Associated Press:Police say their response time to the call was stellar, but they missed the five-second rule. The post asked for thoughts and prayers as the total loss of the doughnuts deeply affected all the department’s officers.Police later added a comment with an update to the so-called tragedy. It says officers in Gainesville sent a batch of sympathy doughnuts to Brookhaven police in their time of mourning.[source] Read the rest

The NSO Group (previously) is an Israeli spyware company that sells tools to autocratic states that are used to spy on democratic opposition movements, journalists, and so on (the company's tools were used by the Saudi government to spy on Jamal Khashoggi in the runup to his kidnap and grisly murder).The NSO Group used malware to attack more than 1,400 Whatsapp users, which lead to Facebook (Whatsapp's parent company) suing The NSO Group for violating anti-hacking laws.Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, NSO Group employees were kicked off of Facebook's platforms, receiving notes informing them that their involvement in attacks on Facebook products violated Facebook's terms of service and thus their accounts were being permanently terminated.Now, the NSO Group is suing Facebook, arguing that that this is a form of collective punishment (it is), and that Facebook violated NSO Group employees' privacy by searching its own databases to identify their users' employers so it could target them for punishment (they did).The NSO Group raises a pretty good point here: we don't want Facebook deciding that everyone who works for a company or organization should lose access to their data, networks and services based on their employer, nor do we want Facebook trawling through its own databases to decide who might fit an employer-based profile.But that said: the NSO Group's entire business-model is based on systematically invading peoples' privacy -- and not to kick them off of Facebook, but rather to help brutal secret police forces target them for arrest, torture, and even murder. Read the rest

There's a popular saying in the Gaeilgeoir, or Irish Speaker, community: "Is fearr linn Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla cliste," which basically means "Broken Irish is better than clever English."I'm American, but I heard this refrain many times when I had the privilege of curating an Irish language Twitter account one week. I was nervous, as I've been learning the language as a casual hobby over the last few years. But the native speakers were remarkably encouraging—they were just happy to use the language at all, and to share its musicality with others. (I think the language is having a bit of a renaissance right now, as people in their 20s-40s feel a longing for a cultural connection that their Boomer parents neglected in their eagerness to assimilate).This is all to say that: I can assure you that these Irish translations of common animal names are absolutely real. And while they're not broken Irish, they're still far more clever than anything our bastard mutt English tongue could ever come up with: View this post on Instagram Posted @withrepost • Thank you @gaeilge_vibes Is aoibhinn liom Gaeilge 💚🤣 #gaeilge #irish #vocabulary #languages #lol #irishblog #tgif #ireland #éireA post shared by Emha na Réaltaí (@emasolasnarealtaiimochroi) on Nov 11, 2019 at 7:29am PSTThis isn't like in English, where we giggle about "titmice" and "cocks" because of the unintended double entendre. "Cíoch" is actually breast. "Bod" is in fact a penis. These are pretty literal translations; no hidden suggestive meanings about it. Read the rest

Why you stop. No stop skritchy.

Ring is Amazon's surveillance doorbell division, and a big part of their sales strategy involves terrifying people about the possibility of crime, partnering with police to assist in terrorizing Ring owners, and to provide police with warrantless, permanent, shareable access to surveillance doorbell footage (something the company has repeatedly lied about). Hundred of police departments have now partnered with Ring and they act as buzz-marketing teams for the company in exchange for freebies and access.From the earliest days, it's been rumored that Ring's strategy included facial recognition (Amazon has a giant facial recognition division called "Rekognition"). Amazon denied this even as they advertised for and hired a head of facial recognition research for Ring.Now, a leak reported by The Intercept reveals that Amazon once had a secret plan to use Ring cameras and facial recognition to automatically compile a "watch list" of neighborhood undesirables whose presence trigger alerts to Ring owners. The blacklists would be distributed through Amazon/Ring's "Neighbors" app, which is currently a dumpster fire of racist white people sharing alarmed messages about brown people their surveillance doorbells recorded in their neighborhoods.It's not entirely clear how the "watch lists" would be compiled, but the leaked documents describe using AI to identify "suspicious activity," which is not something that machine learning systems can actually do, but which many vendors claim they can.According to the Ring documents reviewed by The Intercept, which have not been previously reported, the company planned a string of potentially invasive new surveillance features for its product line, of which the facial recognition-based watch-list system is one part. Read the rest

Design website Core77 has an article about different ways to use a wooden pencil to the very end. First, though, take a look at this parsimonious person's pencil, which represents the cheapest and arguably easiest way to extend the life of a pencil: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Elizabeth Ingram (@lonestarclassroom) on Sep 5, 2019 at 4:55pm PDTIf you can't deal with a pencil this small, the article has other suggestions: pencil extenders (I can vouch for them), gluing a sub onto a new pencil, and using a remarkable Japanese pencil-joining tool call the Tsunago: Read the rest

WIPO is a fantastically captured, corrupt UN specialized agency that serves giant corporate rightsholders by drafting and enforcing global treaties; its outgoing head, Frances Gurry, presided over a long tenure that was terrible even by WIPO's standards. During his 12 years in office, Gurry was caught funnelling cash to North Korea and Iran, stealing his employees' DNA to catch a whistleblower who revealed his corruption; using criminal threats to suppress reports of his corruption, and so on. Gurry was also a copyright extremist even by WIPO standards, who said the web would have been better if it had been patented so that each user had to pay to access it; he said he wanted to abolish fair use, and he appointed a Vivendi copyright lobbyist to run copyright for WIPO.WIPO is an objectively terrible agency. For example, WIPO administers the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Procedure, an international tribunal that allows trademark holders to seize domains that infringe their trademarks. Obviously, this has enormous potential for abuse, but WIPO measures the success of UDRP cases by counting how many domains are taken away under it -- WIPO's criteria mean that the system will be working perfectly when every case ends in a domain seizure, regardless of the merits of the complaint.Now, Gurry is stepping down and leaving a leadership void, and the world's powers are jockeying to see who will get to fill it. Which has given China's delegation an opportunity to nominate its own candidate, which has, in turn, raised hackles among other countries' delegations who (for good reason) think of China as a place where western companies' trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks are routinely misappropriated to the benefit of Chinese companies and with the approval and assistance of the Chinese state. Read the rest

Rogan Brown creates intricate paper sculptures inspired by microorganisms:When looking at, for example, microbes and trying to imagine the vast colony of bacteria that lives in and on our bodies the range of factual visual representation available is relatively limited so I have to use my imagination to scale everything up and create an “artist's representation” of what it might look like. Scientific accuracy is not the goal, artistic and poetic truth are. View this post on Instagram If you're in Amsterdam over the next few days why not drop by the Kunstrai Art Fair and check out my sculpture "ControlX2-17" (courtesy of #galerienummer40) #paperart #papersculpture #scienceart #kunstrai2017A post shared by Rogan Brown (@rogan_brown_) on Jun 1, 2017 at 1:49am PDTHis sculptures are typically all white:White maximizes light and shadow and evokes marble, dead coral and fossils. I think of my work as creating fossils, time fossils, imaginary fossils. I see myself as an archaeologist of the interface between nature and the imagination—nature IS imagination, according to William Blake. The fossil allusion also contains a warning about what we are in the process of doing to nature. In addition, white carries associations of purity and innocence, which is a counterpoint to the explicit sexuality. But above all, the calming effect of white allows me to be as frenetic and excessive as I like in terms of form without overwhelming the viewer. I have tried using color (or rather tonalities of the same color). View this post on Instagram “Cytokinesis Glial Variation” (hand and laser cut layered paper, 119x117cms/47x46”) This work depicts the mitosis of a glial cell. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Putin's Gang gets in big trouble, but Vlad shows them the power of IMAGINATION solves all problems!

Seed's latest eraser is the Clear Radar, and the result of five years of work.【今、読まれています】消しゴムは透明の時代　老舗が５年かけ開発　文字が見えて消せる「クリアレーダー」https://t.co/uU3jhnBV6c#神戸新聞 #兵庫県 #消しゴム #クリアレーダー pic.twitter.com/tcI287Evt2— 神戸新聞 (@kobeshinbun) November 25, 2019(Via Mulboyne.) Read the rest

Why do diets work for some people and not others? Why do some have to work harder in the gym than others? The simple answer is: Everybody's different.And while that may be obvious, it's not as though you can't do anything about it. With the Vitagene DNA Ancestry Premium Test Kit, you can not only find out about your past but use that health information to shape your future.It starts with a simple cheek swab, which is sent into Vitagene's labs. What you get back is a report that maps out your unique genetic profile and how it relates to your physiology.You'll also get a complete diet plan that incorporates that info, letting you what nutrients you need and foods to avoid if any. Vitagene will also suggest supplements to help you along and layout a full exercise plan with the type and frequency of workouts that will get you the best results.The premium plan also comes with a risk assessment for an array of skin conditions like eczema, photoaging and more.The full premium kit and a health plan voucher are now available for more than 40% off retail, but you can take an extra 20% off that final price by using the Black Friday code BFSAVE20.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

Perfect topic, perfect name:ASSET magazine is a professional quality, full-color publication which compliments, promotes, and presents the Miniature Donkey in a favorable light and gives them credibility as an alternative livestock.The National Miniature Donkey Association is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989. The Association's goals are to protect and promote the Miniature Donkey breed, and to provide an educational forum for owners and breeders on donkey care and management.Super excited to have received my first magazine from https://t.co/qHtzp37c0YThe “in-house, members-only publication of the National Miniature Donkey Association (NMDA).” pic.twitter.com/pS7Yc3mQl9— Moxie Marlinspike (@moxie) November 22, 2019The National Miniature Donkey Association also maintains a guide to breeding miniature donkeys, where I learned that "The Miniature Donkey is a compact, well-proportioned animal with a sweet, sociable disposition." Read the rest

Dormant Twitter accounts not confirmed before an 11 December deadline will be closed, reports the BBC. Twitter's updating its user agreement, and if you can't agree to it, you're gone.A spokeswoman also said it would improve credibility by removing dormant accounts from people's follower counts, something which may give a user an undue sense of importance. The first batch of deleted accounts will involve those registered outside of the US.The firm bases inactivity on whether or not a person has logged in at least once in the past six months. Twitter said the effort is not, as had been suggested by some users on the network, an attempt to free up usernames. Read the rest

I know a guy who works at Boston Dynamics. He spends all day fussing over how to get a robot leg to bend the right way. It's kind of boring, but he likes tinkering with things. And hey, it's a job. When he sees people freaking out about whatever new robot they've unleashed unto the world, he just laughs, because he knows how much time he's spent futzing with those stupid joints.For the most part, he's got a point; we like to freak out about our Terminator future, but mostly it's pretty lame, like that dumb-looking Knightscope mall security guard. The surveillance components are creepy; but the thing itself is hardly threatening.Except now, Boston Dynamic's trusty robot dog Spot is now actually being used by law enforcement to…well, that part's not clear. From WBUR:The state’s bomb squad had Spot on loan from the Waltham-based Boston Dynamics for three months starting in August until November, according to records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and reviewed by WBUR.The documents do not reveal a lot of details on the robot dog’s exact use, but a state police spokesman said Spot, like the department’s other robots, was used as a “mobile remote observation device” to provide troopers with images of suspicious devices or potentially hazardous locations, like where an armed suspect might be hiding.On one hand, this makes sense; cops have been using robots to take point in potentially dangerous scenarios for years. On the other hand, it's still kind of creepy, and not just because I personally skeptical of Staties in my home Commonwealth. Read the rest

I got a new 2-cubic-foot microwave yesterday, large enough to accomodate a whole turkey, and just realized that it plays a loud beepy tune when finishing even the shortest runs. The tune is too jaunty. The tune goes on too long. I already have a Samsung washer and dryer that do likewise, and was staring directly at the manufacturer's logo on the new appliance—Lucky Goldstar—as it erupted into Alla Turca or whatever. "OK Korea" I whispered into the early morning darkness.This man has a better solution: counterpoint!Behold the genre of appliance tune accompaniment: Read the rest

It's hard to find good help. It's been especially difficult for San Francisco-based inventor/entrepreneur Danielle Baskin (previously) to find a programmer to work on her company's app. She reports that she had been sending potential contractors direct messages through Github and Twitter, hoping they'd want to work with her company. But that it felt "very spammy." So, she went to her local Safeway and bought actual cans of Spam. Then, in what has to be one of the most out-of-the-box hiring practice ever, she relabeled and put the cans back on store shelves as a way to find candidates to interview. The new label points to recruiterspam.net where there's a form for interested parties to fill out. You'll also find a 10-pack of "Recruiter Spam" for sale ($89).Stay weird, SF! images via Danielle Baskin Read the rest

Dealing with family drama at the Thanksgiving dinner table isn't fun. So I was amused to see that a friend of mine, mixologist Jared Hirsch, was asking folks to help him name his new mixed drink — one he crafted for "when you can’t take another word out of your politically-opposed relative this Thanksgiving." I've written about Jared before, he's the co-purveyor of a line of craft cocktail syrups. His original request:I need help naming a cocktail. I'm designing a Hot Toddy that uses Nickel Dime Cocktail Syrups' Caged Heat and Crimson Smoke. I want to evoke escaping to the kitchen to make yourself a drink when you can't deal with your bigoted uncle. Go.The original name he came up with: Racist Relative Remedy (which I love). Others quickly chimed in. In total, there were 275 comments in the thread. The suggested names were fun. Here's a few:Family staycationRelative ReinforcementToddy, Take Me Away...Me TimeEar Smokin' MadArchie Bunker MentalityHot DisembodyThe Amway UncleThe Oh BrotherThe Factual ReplyThe Quick Kitchen GetawayNo Smoke Without Fire 🔥Crimson Tide, or WaveLet me get your coatRed Hot AmbivalenceRed Hot Honey BadgerA Sticky SituationFire EscapeHold that ThoughtThe mute buttonRelative reliefCry UncleCan't RelateOnly Jokingand, so many more!Hivemind FTW!The winning name...?The Turkey Time OutRecipe by Jared Hirsch, Name by Camper EnglishIngredients:Any aged spirit. Be it bourbon, rye, anejo tequila, dark rum, or Calvados. Read the rest

It should be obvious to anyone who has ever opened up a web page that the route to a career in Silicon Valley does not necessarily travel through a traditional university. Even so, budding coders need guidance and the right expertise.That's where the Treehouse Project comes in. It's built for self-starters and contains a treasure trove of knowledge for far less than the cost of a week's tuition at a university.Simply put, the service is a well-curated repository for lessons in all aspects of the tech economy. Cybersecurity, web development, UX design, data analysis - you can learn it all here. Browse the individual lessons at will or start yourself off methodically by hopping on a "track" designed to teach you all aspects of a job.All courses are taught by experts in the field, and if you get stuck you've got access to more than 50,000 fellow students eager to steer you right again.A one-year subscription to the Treehouse Project is down 33% off the retail cost, only $199 today.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

What does it take to be an effective project manager? These days, it's more than just amorphous "people skills." Methodologies like Agile, Scrum and Six Sigma lay out a proven roadmap for completing big jobs not just in software but in any industry.If you've got the will to master them, the Premium 2020 Project & Quality Management Certification Bundle covers everything you need to start a secure career.Even if you've never worked with Scrum before, the early courses in this bundle will get you off and running with the tools and techniques project managers use to get projects from A to B. After you cover the fundamentals, later classes will delve into best practices for Agile and how to integrate various kinds of software into your workflow. There's a dedicated course on risk management, plus a whole Bootcamp on Six Sigma and how it can help you use big data to make informed decisions.In all, it's 120 hours of lectures and exercises packed into 11 courses. The entire bundle is on sale for 98% off the cost of the individual segments, but you can take an additional 15% off the final cost by entering the Black Friday code BFSAVE15.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

The climactic moment when The Pentagon levitated into the air, ending war.This historic moment begs the question: "Was Daniel Ellsberg's moral evolution due, in part, to him being inside the building when surrounded by thousands of chanting peacemakers?"This concludes the three part Levitation of The Pentagon (Read Part One and Parts Two)From John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall.(See all Boing Boing installments) Read the rest

One of my favorite new gaming miniature painting channels is Emil Nyström's Age of Squidmar. In just six months of making videos, Emil has already established himself as a content creator to watch. Not only is he a talented miniature painter and painting teacher, he also chooses fun themes for his channel that go beyond things like painting weapons with non-metallic paint, using a wet palette, and model basing (all of which he's covered).In the above video, Emil ventures onto the online marketplace Fiverr, finds some miniature painters there, and requests that they paint a single Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine. To make the challenge more interesting, he kept his identity secret and sent them a reference model from Golden Demon painter, Antonio Peña, and asked them to paint a Primaris Intercessor in Imperial Fists colors, one of the most difficult Space Marine color schemes in the 40K universe.He got quotes in response that ranged from $10 ($25 with shipping) to $110. After several painters bailed, he went beyond the confines of Fiverr and commissioned two pro painters, asking for a $40 paint job from one and a $100 job from the other. He ended up commissioning six painters.The results across the board were pretty decent. Even the $10 jobs were very respectable tabletop quality. The most impressive for the money ($40) was the model seen above. They even painted a display on the Auspex (Space Marine handheld scanner). This painter also did a two-part video of him painting the model. Read the rest

I needed new shoes for cycling. These Shimano SH-RP1 cycling shoes are great.Fairly lightweight, and certainly durable enough for spinning class, I'll be using these Shimano shoes 3-4x a week. They are stiff enough and the velcro straps cinch them down tight.There are some interesting vent holes cut in the sole that my old pair did not have. I do not really notice much airflow, but maybe when on my roadbike.I needed to buy a set of SPD clips to make them truly useful. I could have taken the old ones off my last pair, but they are not currently with me.SHIMANO SH-RP1 Cycling Shoe via Amazon Read the rest

Fifteen percent of all human consciousness that has ever existed is present and happening today. As we speed up and grow ever more connected via the Internet, what are the implications for this massive digital shift? In this episode recorded last year, renowned Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig discusses the state of the digital landscape and its impact on notions of freedom and democracy. For good or for bad, how will this new era play out in the years to come? In "The Beginning," the last episode of Season One, we look resolutely into the near future.The Life Cycle is a production of Klang Games, creator of Seed, the planet colonization MMO -- watch the new trailer here. Subscribe to The Life Cycle on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow The Life Cycle on Twitter and Instagram. Read the rest

On Friday, googlers staged a workplace rally demanding the reinstatement of two suspended co-workers who'd been involved in workplace organizing against collaboration with ICE and tolerance for homophobia; on Monday, four of the organizers of the rally were fired.Google management circulated a memo to all employees that accused the fired employees of "clear and repeated violations" of the company's data-handling practices.Googler organizers say that this is a pretense and that the data-handling violations were routine within the company and nothing more than looking at documents outside of your immediate job-scope -- something the company only made a firing offense after googlers discovered that the company was secretly planning to launch a censored Chinese search-engine.The organizers say the firings were retaliatory, and targeted their dismissed colleagues because they were involved in union organizing.The New York Times reported last Wednesday that amid the rising tensions, Google has for several months been working with IRI Consultants, a firm that specializes in union-busting efforts. The company also started using a tool in October that flags meetings with more than 100 participants; critics accused Google of launching the tool as a way to prevent unionization efforts.MoGoogle fires four employees at center of worker organization efforts [Kate Cox/Ars Technica] Read the rest

Anthony Gulino writes, "Los Anarchists Junior Derby is a nonprofit that takes a DIY approach to teaching roller derby to kids. It runs programs for all levels from the youngest, newest skaters to the highest level of competitive junior derby at its dedicated facility, Anarchy Hall, in Sun Valley, CA. Los Anarchists' travel team is the current Junior Roller Derby Association World Champions in the Female division and have been invited to The Big O in Oregon, as well as tournaments in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Tampa this season." Read the rest

The 1941 Disney animator's strike was bitterly fought, as Walt Disney refused to grant the concessions that all the other animation studios had agreed to, and instead grew paranoid and accusatory, convinced the "Communist infiltrators" had turned his animators against him.One poorly remembered -- but vivid! -- moment from the strike was when Chuck Jones led Warner animators came to join the picket line in solidarity, bringing with them a working guillotine with a mannequin styled to look like Gunther Lessing, the Disney attorney.Archivist John Basmajian has preserved and digitized a film of the guillotine, along with many other Disney rarities. As Gizmodo's Mat Novak notes, we tend to gloss over the more radical elements in union history in our contemporary retellings of famous strikes, but these were not polite, timid affairs. Unions attained their goals through radical, relentless action that put them at risk and brooked no compromise. Other labor organizations showed solidarity to the striking workers and made it hard for Disney to do business. Technicolor refused to process Disney’s footage, printers refused to print the Mickey Mouse comic strip, and the American Federation of Labor (now part of the AFL-CIO) called for a boycott of all Disney products.The federal government sent a judge to mediate the dispute, but Walt Disney wasn’t having it. He was an angry man and wasn’t about to let his workers win anything. It was only after Disney left for South America to conduct research for films that would hopefully coax those countries not to side with the Axis powers in World War II, that anything got done. Read the rest

This thing can really shred.This is “A guitar that I helped build from recycled skateboards,” says @Basil123.Would love to see some of the behind-the-scenes shots of how this thing was made!A guitar that I helped build from recycled skateboards. Read the rest

It's kind of fun to say: Jew coup, Jew coup, Jew coup. That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda. This ‘impeach Trump’ effort is a Jew coup and the American people better wake up to it really fast because this thing is moving now toward a vote in the House and then a trial in the Senate. We could have a trial before Christmas. This country could be in civil war at Christmastime. Members of the U.S. military are going to have to take a stand just like they did in the 1860s with the Civil War. They are going to have to decide: are you fighting for the North or the South? People are going to be forced, possibly by this Christmas, to take a stand because of this Jew coup in the United States. This is a coup led by Jews to overthrow the constitutionally elected president of the United States and it’s beyond removing Donald Trump, it’s removing you and me. That’s what’s at the heart of it. You have been taken over by a Jewish cabal. The church of Jesus Christ, you’re next. Get it through your head! They’re coming for you. There will be a purge. That’s the next thing that happens when Jews take over a country, they kill millions of Christians.Christian TV Host Warns Followers Trump Impeachment Is ‘Jew Coup’ [Michael Stone/Patheos](Thanks, Robbo! Read the rest

An American teenager's clever TikTok video managed to sneak in banned commentary on the topic of China's concentration camps and torture programs for Uighur Muslims. The teen's video was bookended with beauty tips, and went viral with 1.4M+ views and ~500,000 likes. Many copycats. China didn't like it.Feroza Aziz asked her fans to join her in raising awareness of "another Holocaust" happening now in China's Uighur camps.GUYS NO JOKE THIS TUTORIAL HELPED ME SO MUCH PLEASE WATCH IT pic.twitter.com/BuITSebOu6— saltys backup (@soIardan) November 24, 2019Aziz later said on Twitter that TikTok blocked her from posting new content, as a result of her posting this video about a banned topic by the company with China government ties.TikTok told BBC News they banned her for posting “terrorism” related content.I haven't (yet) seen the terrorism video so can't verify. Either way, the timing (that TikTok took action on someone who posted a video China wouldn't like) has raised Qs. "TikTok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities," spokeswoman says.— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) November 26, 2019Related reporting at BBC: • Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison campsPreviously at Boing Boing:• China has 500+ Uighur camps and prisons and is holding far more than one million, activists say• Massive leak of Chinese government documents reveal the "no mercy" plan for Muslims in Xinjiang Read the rest

Vernon Unsworth is one of the rescue divers who helped free the children who'd been stuck in a cave in Thailand; Unsworth made some pointed remarks about the disutility of Elon Musk's proposal to bring the children out in a miniature sub, to which Musk replied by publicly calling Unsworth "pedo guy" and "child rapist" and then daring Unworth to sue him.Unsworth has sued him.Now, Musk's lawyer has announced the Musk will take the stand in the case.Based on statements by Musk's lawyer, Alexander Spiro, Musk appears to be set to defend himself on the basis that calling someone "pedo guy" and "child rapist" is not the same thing as accusing them of being a pedophile or child rapist. Musk argues that "pedo guy" is a common insult in his native South Africa and should not be considered to be a statement of fact.Musk had argued that Unsworth became a public figure because of his help with the high-profile rescue and needed to prove "actual malice."Musk has apologized for the "pedo guy" comment, saying it was a common insult in South Africa where he was raised, and that he did not intend to accuse Unsworth of pedophilia.Unsworth has denied the allegations and has said he had shared a house in the Thailand countryside with a 40-year-old woman who owned a nail salon.Musk to Testify in Own Defense in Defamation Trial, His Lawyer Says [Rachel Parsons, Bill Tarrant and Peter Cooney/Reuters](Thanks, Kathy Padilla! Read the rest

Sure, the Demopublican Centrist Michael Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on his presidential bid, but the former mayor has a lot more money: $52 billion.Bloomberg is running in part because he opposes the progressive candidates "extreme wealth taxes" which would see him paying $3.7b under a Sanders presidency, $3b under a Warren presidency or $512m under a Steyer presidency -- per year.That $32m that Bloomberg has dumped into his ad-buy? It's 1.1% of the tax bill he'd owe under Warren in the first year.Lavish political spending is a rational calculus when it comes to the ultra-rich: the Kochs -- who have been pouring money into oligarch-friendly organizations and campaigns for a generation -- have seen a massive return on their investments. Amazon was making a similar calculus when it dumped unprecedented sums into the local Seattle elections -- though Amazon's investment failed in large part because the impropriety was so blatant that it motivated voters to cast ballots against it.As Alexis Goldstein points out in the New Republic, Bloomberg doesn't have to win the election for his investment to pay off -- all he has to do is discredit the politicians arguing for a wealth tax. And that's before you calculate the benefits to Bloomberg of snuffing out the movement to reform Wall Street, whose subscription fees to "Bloomberg terminals" put that $52b in his pocket in the first place.It is hard to say what the perfect billionaire hedge against a Warren or Sanders administration would look like. Read the rest

Bradley Slums describes himself as an "inter-dimensional freeriding BASE jumper." After watching this video, you'll understand why. View this post on Instagram Freeride MotoBASE Fun @hyrmotorsports @shiftmx @squirrel.ws #freeride #moto #slum #funordie #xgamesclips #dirtbikesandparachutes 📹 @colbyrahaA post shared by Bradley O'Neal 👽 (@bradley_slums) on Nov 18, 2019 at 9:30pm PSTImage: bradley_slums/Instagram Read the rest

The American right -- always prone to conspiratorial thinking -- has tumbled off the cliff in this century, supercharged by the Trump years, with a series of outlandish conspiracies about Ukrainian election-meddling and climate change that make birtherism and trutherism look positively hinged by comparison.Know Your Stuffing (subtitle: "What your Republican loved ones will try to feed you this Thanksgiving/What you can bring to the table"), an illustrated guide from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, takes you through a series of common wingnut talking points and clear, factual rebuttals. They're intended as a guide for helping settle Thanksgiving dinner debates.Whether or not these work as intended (remember that the "backfire effect" is one of the many casualties of the replication crisis), they are a handy guide to some of the weird things right wingers believe and may at least help you decode the boomerish mutterings over cranberry sauce.Surviving Uncle Mitch’s Do-Nothing Stuffing:1. The House Democratic Majority has passed over 250 bills working for the American people! 2. They’re fighting the climate crisis, working to prevent gun violence, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, expanding voting rights, and holding this president accountable.3. Every bill they pass gets held up by “Grim Reaper” Mitch McConnell and his Republican Senate.Know Your Stuffing 2019 [DCCC] Read the rest