Boing Boing

In the December 9, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman profiles one of the most influential authors in recent decades, William Gibson.Gibson doesn’t have a name for his method; he knows only that it isn’t about prediction. It proceeds, instead, from a deep engagement with the present. When Gibson was starting to write, in the late nineteen-seventies, he watched kids playing games in video arcades and noticed how they ducked and twisted, as though they were on the other side of the screen. The Sony Walkman had just been introduced, so he bought one; he lived in Vancouver, and when he explored the city at night, listening to Joy Division, he felt as though the music were being transmitted directly into his brain, where it could merge with his perceptions of skyscrapers and slums. His wife, Deborah, was a graduate student in linguistics who taught E.S.L. He listened to her young Japanese students talk about Vancouver as though it were a backwater; Tokyo must really be something, he thought. He remembered a weeping ambulance driver in a bar, saying, “She flatlined.” On a legal pad, Gibson tried inventing words to describe the space behind the screen; he crossed out “infospace” and “dataspace” before coming up with “cyberspace.” He didn’t know what it might be, but it sounded cool, like something a person might explore even though it was dangerous.(Image: William Gibson by Frédéric Poirot , CC-BY) Read the rest

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele reveal the "deplorable conditions at Vincent Clortho Public School for Wizards." Read the rest

I'm not saying its aliens, and I figure it's for some mundane purpose such as trapping seafood, but I enjoyed watching this helicopter-shot video of mysterious beach circles near Isla Aguada in Mexico. Nothing similar is evident on Google Earth. I'm not saying it's aliens. Read the rest

Michael Epler, AKA Pilot Red Sun, (patreon) warps his digital smeartool paintings with glitchy audio and crude pseudo-3D datamoshed effects that highlight the claustrophobia and deepen the nightmare. The latest, embedded above, is titled "Not So Fast" and is about a traffic stop that ends badly for the well-luded driver.Below is "Ultimate Fuel". If you like this (or hate it in an interested way) check out the YouTube channel. Read the rest

Pigeons with hats have been spotted and filmed in Las Vegas, prompting a search for whoever is putting them there.Pigeons in Las Vegas have been spotted wearing tiny little cowboy hats. It's not clear how the pigeons got the hats on their heads. Some people found it funny, but other are wondering if this is a case of animal cruelty.As a commenter on YouTube puts it, "It's been cod in Vegas latel" [sic]. Read the rest

Princen Alice created a "password generator" that glues random Welsh-sounding words into a craggy landscape of letters. It's probably not very good, since it's three or four dictionary words and a number plus the fallacious ethnocentric belief that unpronouceability to English speakers reflects randomness, but what a delightful mess! Read the rest

Enjoy this compilation of 1990s-era sprite games extruded into lowpoly 2½D extravaganzas. These are works of static art, but I'm sure I've seen this done "live" in-game recently, in an automated, playable way. (Note that there are a number of 2½D Super Marios already--these replicas are hand-made, like this video). Read the rest

Writing at Metropole, Sarah Balakrishnan describes the development of cemeteries in a city in Ghana. As of the 1800's, the general practice in the seaside city of Accra was to bury the dead underneath the family's home. Around 1888, British colonists began forcing the populace to bury the dead in public cemeteries. The requirement served multiple purposes:Cemeteries were undoubtedly a part of British colonists’ bid to reorganize African societies according to Christian schematics of “civilization”—what has been called the “civilizing mission.” But they also had another, more insidious, ambition. Creating private property in Accra required cemeteries. Graveyards relocated ancestors to the public domain, making it possible for Gold Coasters to sell their property to interested buyers.British colonists had long understood that communities in Accra would never sell their land if it contained the remains of their elders. Public cemeteries thus transferred rituals of social reproduction—celebrating, mourning, and remembering the dead—into the domain of the state, so that private houses could be made fungible and sellable. Like elsewhere in the world, commemorations of death shaped the devolution of property. In colonial Accra, British colonists used cemeteries to enforce private property in land.Soon, large public cemeteries indeed grew, which led to various other problems. For one thing, once large public cemeteries came into existence, developers started scheming to use the land for a different purpose:While the state used cemeteries to enforce private property in land, this had come at a cost: the creation of massive “immovable properties.” Whereas chiefs and wealthy “big men” (abirempon) had built many cemeteries in the 20th century by buying expansive estates, the colonial government now wanted to build railroads and thoroughfares through these lands. Read the rest

State Snaps is a send-in-your-photos party wheeze aimed at fratboys. Spread amorphously over various social media platforms, it's too sleazy to go mainstream but too successful to stay in one place. But the wannabe operators failed to register a key domain name, doitforstate.com, that reflects the viral motto "Do it for State!" associated with The Brand. So a domain squatter got it. Usually, a call to a lawyer comes next. Not these guys.The gunman wore a baseball cap, had pantyhose pulled over his face, and sunglasses covered his eyes.Deyo briefly raised his arms in surrender — then bolted into his bedroom. He slammed the door behind him and braced for impact. Moments later, the intruder kicked through the doorway and grabbed Deyo by the neck.“Where’s your computer?” he demanded. According to Deyo’s courtroom testimony, he led the man across the hall and into his office with the gun now shoved into the small of his back. He sat down, the man opened up his MacBook Pro, and Deyo felt the gun move from his spine to the rear of his skull, the metal hard on his scalp.“Okay, motherfucker,” Deyo recalled him saying. “GoDaddy.com.”Why file a trademark and SLAPP your way to a domain name you want when you can just get a goon to force the squatter to turn it over at gunpoint? All time greatest domainer tip right here. Read the rest

There's much ado about coffee brewing methods these days, but most of us - at least on the busy weekdays - just want our morning joe to be consistent, easy, and most of all, fast.If that sounds like anyone on your Christmas list, they're going to get a lot of mileage out of the FrankOne Cold Brew & Coffee Maker.This maker is just the ticket for busy bees who need that jolt in the morning, and it's portable enough to be used at work. The operation is super easy: Just pour your grounds in the top, then water right after it. Press the button on top, and wait - but not that long. The system will filter cold brew into the carafe in four minutes, significantly faster than traditional cold brewing methods. If you pour hot water in, your regular hot coffee takes only seconds.The whole thing rinses clean, and it's fully rechargeable by USB cable.Take 15% off the FrankOne Cold Brew & Coffee Maker now by using our holiday discount code: MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Back in October, TV writer Liz Alper started posting on Twitter about her harrowing experience as a writer's assistant in LA, hoping to break into the industry. Alper had spent more than a decade being overworked and underpaid, and, well, rightly had enough. Over the course of several weeks, she got the #PayUpHollywood hashtag trending, inspiring other film and TV professionals to share the stories of the less-than-glamorous lives they led in order to maybe, finally "make it" (whatever that entails).Since then, Alper and her friend Deirdre Mangan, another TV writer, have surveyed more than 1500 support staff members from the LA entertainment industry about their incoming and working conditions. As they explain in a press release about the data they compiled:“Hollywood has created a paywall around the industry that keeps out anyone who doesn’t come from money or who won’t put up with absurd, unsafe and potentially illegal working conditions,” said #PayUpHollywood co-founder Liz Alper. “We need to move past the tired myth that ‘this is just how it’s always been’, because it’s not true. Hollywood did not always negligently add to the income inequality, housing and mental health crises our country is facing. We can and must do better.”Like the recent list of journalism salaries, the survey revealed a lot of people making $50,000 a year or less while struggling to survive in an expensive city where they're expected to live in order to do their jobs. And of course, there's racial and gender inequality a-plenty, and no clear path for upwards mobility for anyone, really. Read the rest

As the Civil War fractured Washington D.C., socialite Rose O'Neal Greenhow coordinated a vital spy ring to funnel information to her beloved Confederates. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Greenhow's courage and resourcefulness, which won praise from Jefferson Davis and notoriety in the North.We'll also fragment the queen's birthday and puzzle over a paid game of pinball.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Online shopping is going to be through the roof this month, and you'd better believe that hackers know it. If you're going to invest in a virtual private network, now is the time. Especially when Windscribe VPN is offering its own holiday discount.At their current price point, it's well worth jumping on the paid version of this highly-rated VPN. It gives you unlimited downloads and data, all protected by one of the most secure networks around.How secure? Windscribe has all the usual safeguards you'd expect from a typical VPN: A firewall protects you if your connection drops out, while solid encryption of your logins masks your location and allows you to access sites regardless of geographical restrictions. You can use it on a range of devices, and Windscribe's R.O.B.E.R.T. system provides extra defense against malware and unwanted ads.But what really sets it apart is the Canadian company's commitment to anonymity. Their no-logging policy keeps your data a mystery even to Windscribe itself. And you don't even need an email to sign in.The service has already had a price drop of more than 80% off the MSRP of their 3-year subscription plan, but you can take another 20% off that final price by using the discount code GREENMONDAY20. Read the rest

The Kindle Unlimited program is $10 a month, and it gives you access to over a million books and comics on Amazon. Amazon is currently offering a deal: 3 months for 99 cents a month. I especially like that you can read tons of comic books and graphic novels this way. I'm currently reading Grant Morrison's The Invisibles on my iPhone. It works really well using the one-panel-at-a-time mode. I prefer reading comics this way over reading the print version. Read the rest

Google is reported to be under investigation by the United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB.gov) for allegations of discouraging union organizing among workers, and for firing the so-called “Thanksgiving Four.” NLRB began an official investigation into Google after the recent firing of four employees, just months after the company reached a labor settlement with the federal agency.The investigation is expected to take roughly three months, Jennifer Elias at CNBC reports:An agency spokesperson confirmed to CNBC Monday that the probe, which will include whether Google violated labor laws when it recently fired four employees, has officially commenced. It will also look at whether Google discouraged employees from engaging in union activity. The investigation is expected to take roughly three months and be conducted by its regional staff based in Oakland.A Google spokesperson provided the same statement it’s been using since the firings of the four employees:“We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work,” the statement says. “No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.”The latest investigation comes after four Google employees filed a federal complaint with the NLRB on Dec. 5, alleging unfair labor practices, which would violate a settlement made by Google. It also comes as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, just got a new leader in Sundar Pichai. Google now faces another federal investigation into its labor practice just months after a separate settlement with the NLRB. Read the rest

The 12 days of crustmas are upon us.

Cheap massage chairs are a common Christmas gift, but we're willing to bet they don't get a lot of actual use from the people who could really use a massage. We're talking about people with deep, chronic joint pain or anyone who does a serious workout on a regular basis.For that kind of soreness, there's nothing quite like a hand massager, and the ExoGun DreamPro Percussion Massage Device is one of the best.For one thing, it's the only unit of its kind that comes equipped with six speeds ranging from gentle pressure to deep tissue relief. There are attachments that allow it to really get in the contours of any muscle and deliver real therapy where your body needs it most - not just generalized comfort.And while the four-hour battery life is impressive, the exterior design is a real standout. The angle of the handle not only allows you to reach trouble spots, it lessens the vibrations from the motor so you can keep a firm grip.The ExoGun DreamPro is already on deep discount (almost 80% off retail), but you can take an additional 20% off that final price by using the holiday coupon code GREENMONDAY20. Read the rest

When you need tacos, you need tacos.

His name was not Santa Claus.

“Protip: If you’re gonna deliver 20 pounds of meth in an air fryer, make sure it gets to the dealer.”

Twin 4-year-old girls managed to survive a car crash that killed their father by unlocking themselves from their car seats and climbing an embankment to get help, say Washington state officials.The girls' dad Corey Simmons, 47, died at the scene after his car veered off a winding road on Friday evening and dropped off into a forest 200 feet away, reported KING-TV and CNN.The father sustained fatal head injuries. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt, USA TODAY confirmed.Police say the twins had non-life-threatening injuries, and were transported to a hospital after a woman who passed the crash in her car drove back to help and called 911. From king5.com:Family members told KING 5 the two 4-year-old girls in the backseat of the vehicle were Simmons’ twin daughters. The girls were able to free themselves from their car seats and climbed about 200 feet to the road for help after the crash.Trooper Axtman said a Good Samaritan passed the girls on the side of the road and turned around to help. The driver called 911 and the girls were transported to the hospital with minor injuries.Rebecah Crider is Esther Crider's daughter and Simmons' stepdaughter. She said her family searched for the Good Samaritan who helped her sisters after the crash.“We are so incredibly thankful, and we are desperately looking for who she is," Rebecah Crider said. "We would love to personally meet her and thank her.” On Sunday, Seattle authorities made contact with the Good Samaritan. Read the rest

I first met Bill Gibson in 1999 when I was profiling him for the Globe and Mail as part of a review of his book "All Tomorrow's Parties." Since then, we've become friends and colleagues, and I genuinely treasure every chance I get to sit down with him, because he's both fantastically clever and incredibly nice.Joshua Rothman's long, intimate insightful profile of Gibson was tied to the release of Agency, the forthcoming sequel to 2014's astounding The Peripheral -- a book that was repeatedly delayed when world events overtook its action (it was rewritten at least twice: once for Trump and once for Cambridge Analytica).Rothman digs deeper into Gibson's personal story than I've seen before -- getting him to talk about the deaths of his parents when he was young -- and into the racist Confederate revisionism that Gibson was spoon-fed as a child. He also connects deeply to Gibson's fascination with material culture -- fashion, technology, and ephemera, and devotes generous space to describing Gibson's library, basement and attic.All of this atmospheric and biographical material forms a spine for a fantastic bibliographic journey through Gibson's many modes -- young, poetic cyberpunk; contemporary war-on-terror chronicler; far-future dystopian. It's a fantastic build-up for Agency, which I offered some modest advice on during its drafting, and which is also Bill's best book since Neuromancer.Gibson has a bemused, gentle, curious vibe. He is not a dystopian writer; he aims to see change in a flat, even light. Read the rest

Shortly after Swati Runi Goyal (49) boarded an American Airlines flight from Florida to Nevada, a crew member told her she would either have to remove her shirt or get off the plane, reports Buzzfeed News.Goyal is a member of the non-theistic Satanic Temple, which is a recognized church.From Buzzfeed News:Goyal was shocked by the harsh response from the crew members, noting that she's worn the T-shirt many times in the past without incident, including on airplanes.Fortunately, her husband had two layers on, so he lent one to her. With the text of the shirt covered up, the crew allowed her to remain on the flight. Still, she said the crew avoided eye contact with her for the remainder of the flight, even ignoring her when the drink cart came around.American Airlines later apologized to Goyal and issued refunds to her and her husband.Image: Swati Runi Goyal Read the rest

Live. Eat. Shop. Reuse.“hey you’re bringing your briefcase today for your nationally televised impeachment hearing right?”“no no i’ll be fine with this.”pic.twitter.com/Uw27J337ra— j.d. durkin (@jiveDurkey) December 9, 2019 Read the rest

A team of researchers from Microsoft and Harvard's Berkman Center have published a taxonomy of "Failure Modes in Machine Learning," broken down into "Intentionally-Motivated Failures" and "Unintended Failures."Intentional failures are things like "Preturbation attacks" (previously), which make tiny changes to inputs that produce wildly inaccurate classifications; "Membership inference" (using a model to learn whether a given person's data was used to train it) and "Backdoor ML" (implanting a backdoor to the algorithm that attackers activate with specific triggers).Unintended failures include my personal favorite, "Reward hacking" (previously) (reinforcement learning systems discover a way to game the system and cheat their way to success); "Natural adversarial examples" ("Without attacker perturbations, the ML system fails owing to hard negative mining"); and that old favorite, "Incomplete testing" ("The ML system is not tested in the realistic conditions that it is meant to operate in").For engineers, we recommend browsing through the overview of possible failure modes and jumping into the threat modeling document. This way, engineers can identify threats, attacks, vulnerabilities and use the framework to plan for countermeasures where available. We then refer you to the bug bar that maps these new vulnerabilities in the taxonomy alongside traditional software vulnerabilities, and provides a rating for each ML vulnerability (such as critical, important). This bug bar is easily integrated into existing incident response processes/playbooks.For lawyers and policy makers, this document organizes ML failure modes and presents a framework to analyze key issues relevant for anyone exploring policy options, such as the work done here[5],[6]. Read the rest

Joseph "Smilin' Joe" Deluca (54) of Ohio will have to wait at three years before he gets another opportunity to throw hot McDonald's coffee in a person's face. That's because he's going to prison, where coffee doesn't come from McDonald's and it probably not very hot. Deluca was at a McDonald's drive-up window when a cashier asked to see his receipt because there was confusion as to whether he'd ordered one cup of coffee or two. Deluca got out of his car and tossed both cups of coffee at the employee, who suffered burns as a result.Newsweek reports that Deluca "has more than 20 prior convictions on charges including vandalism, intimidation, burglary, and grand theft... After his sentencing, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O'Malley said: 'Deluca appears to have an inability to control his temper. Hopefully he uses the next three years to learn to correct that problem.'" Read the rest

America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world's plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donations have soared, blood now accounts for 2% of the country's exports -- more than corn or soya. There's more growth ahead for blood products, expected to "grow radiantly" according to an analyst who was cheering 13% growth between 2016-17. One study found that the typical blood-seller derives a third of their income from selling blood. Princeton's Kathryn Edin called the commercial blood industry "the lifeblood of the $2 a day poor."Mintpress's interviews with blood-sellers reveal "a mix of disabled, working poor, homeless, single parents, and college students," who describe a system of arbitrary and predatory payments, which fluxuate wildly from day to day. Chronic bloodletting produces lethargy and cognitive impairment.Respondents all agreed that they were indeed being exploited, but in more ways than one. Desperate Americans are allowed to donate twice per week (104 times per year). But losing that much plasma could have serious health consequences, most of which have not been studied Professor Schaefer warns, stressing that more research is necessary. Around 70 percent of donors experience health complications. Donors have a lower protein count in their blood, putting them at greater risk of infections and liver and kidney disorders. Many regulars suffer from near-permanent fatigue and are borderline anemic. All this for an average of $30 per visit. Rachel described the terrible Catch-22 many of the working poor find themselves in: I got turned away twice – once for being too dehydrated and once for being anemic. Read the rest

Officials at Logan County Detention Center inspected a pair of Nike shoes and found three tiny cell phones hidden the sole of each shoe, reports Fox News.If you covet such a phone, AliExpress is awash in them. Do you think they might have malware on them?Images: Logan County Sheriff's Office Read the rest

"Fight the Traitors Together" (motto: "Hong Kong is part of China and this can't be meddled with by outside power") is a web-game that has attained new popularity in mainland China; it invites players to locate with caricatures of real Hong Kong protest leaders and slap them or pelt them with rotten eggs.In the game, amid a crowd of black-clad rioters wearing yellow hats and face masks, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, another leading opposition figure, carries a bag with a US flag, clutches a stack of US dollars and holds a loudspeaker to incite violence in the streets. The game also features Western faces, including characters that appear to be Julie Eadeh, a political unit chief of the US consulate general in Hong Kong.Game targeting Hong Kong ‘traitors’ popular on mainland social media [Hu Yuwei/Global Times](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

You? Me? Them? Everybody! Read the rest

Who's driving @ElonMusk or the Auto-Pilot?$TSLA pic.twitter.com/xvmyHPG8Ol— GuruLeaks (@Guruleaks1) December 8, 2019 If at first you do not succeed just tell people you have.The truck reminds me of a Gobot, you know the toy that made everyone want a Transformer. Read the rest

Santa Claus holds a monopoly on Christmas spirit that prevents fair competition in the free market. The time has come to break up his oligarchical empire and free the reindeer from the shackles of slavery. Universal Elfcare now! View this post on InstagramA post shared by jeremybgg (@jeremybgg) on Dec 6, 2019 at 9:25pm PSTImage via Danny Howard / Flickr Read the rest

That's some dada right there. Read the rest

Bustin' makes me feel good. Here it is with Finnish subtitles, courtesy of Sony Pictures Finland's YouTube channel. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I continue my serial reading of my novella Party Discipline, which I wrote while on a 35-city, 45-day tour for my novel Walkaway in 2017; Party Discipline is a story set in the world of Walkaway, about two high-school seniors who conspire to throw a "Communist Party" at a sheet metal factory whose owners are shutting down and stealing their workers' final paychecks. These parties are both literally parties -- music, dancing, intoxicants -- and "Communist" in that the partygoers take over the means of production and start them up, giving away the products they create to the attendees. Walkaway opens with a Communist Party and I wanted to dig into what might go into pulling one of those off.The cop pulled the vice principal’s chair out from behind the desk and sat down on it in front of us. He didn’t say anything. He was young, I saw, not much older than us, and still had some acne on one cheek. White dude. Not my type, but good looking, except that he was a cop and he was playing mind games with us.“Are we being detained?” Somewhere in my bag was a Black Lives Matter bust-card and while I’d forgotten almost everything written on it, I remembered that this was the first question I should ask.“You are here at the request of your school administration.” Oh. Even when there wasn’t a fresh lockdown, the administration had plenty of powers to search us, ask us all kinds of nosy questions. Read the rest

Last summer, MD/journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal's husband had a bike accident and was seriously injured and taken by ambulance to an emergency room.Rosenthal's description of what happened next is a compact and infuriating statement of how grifty and crooked America's health-care system is, based on a set of lobbyist-legalized billing practices (ushered in under cover of 9/11) that would be considered fraud in any other industry.Rosenthal isn't talking about being billed thousand-percent markups on slings or over-the-counter medicines, either. That's just price-gouging. She's talking about massive bills for services that were never delivered, in a way that is, again, totally legal (thanks to intensive lobbying by the emergency medicine industry).For example: her husband was given a neck-brace (billed at $319) but after it was determined that he didn't need it, the EMTs removed it and kept it. Nevertheless, he was billed for the full price, as though he had walked away with it (perhaps thrifty cyclists could keep these neck-braces in their panniers so that EMTs could use that, saving them money, if they get into an accident). The final bill for a one-hour loan of a piece of hard plastic was $215, with $24 passed on to the Rosenthals as a "patient responsibility."Then there's the "cover charge" -- the farcical fees levied for just setting foot in the ER -- $3,400 for the ER and another $1,030 for the trauma surgeon.Though Rosenthal's husband had a single CT scan, they were billed for five scans ($1,400-$3,300) because the radiologist looked at five different places on that scan after it was complete. Read the rest

The 35th anniversary of Pee-wee's Big Adventure is nigh. So, soon, you'll not only be able to see the 1985 hit film on the big screen, but you'll also get to hear never-before-shared stories about the movie from Pee-wee's creator, Paul Reubens. Yes, please, and thank you! Pee-wee's Big Adventure 35th Anniversary Tour with Paul Reubens is headed to 20 U.S. cities in early 2020.Pee-wee Herman himself hipped me to this, dude.Previously: Now you can send shout-outs from Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman, to people you know Read the rest

According to Chipotle Mexican Grill CEO Brian Niccol, when their restaurant workers call in sick, they might have to talk to a nurse to make sure they're not fibbing."We have nurses on call, so that if you say, 'Hey, I've been sick,' you get the call into the nurse," CEO Brian Niccol said last week. "The nurse validates that it's not a hangover — you're really sick — and then we pay for the day off to get healthy again."Later, a Chipotle spokesperson told the New York Post that Niccol's statement wasn't entirely accurate: “You don’t have to call a nurse if you’re taking a sick day... All employees who call off sick for any reason receive paid time off.”After all, it isn't too tough to feign an illness over the phone.From CBS News:The CEO detailed steps taken to recover the trust of customers after a slew of high-profile safety scares that battered Chipotle's brand and led Niccol's predecessor, Steve Ells, to step down in late 2017...Chipotle handles things differently these days in its 2,500 restaurants, acccording to Niccol. "We have a very different food-safety culture than we did two years ago," he said. "Nobody gets to the back of the restaurant without going through a wellness check."Image: "The first Chipotle, near the campus of the University of Denver" by CW221 (CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

Oh tidings of madness and woe. Gather 'round the Necronomicon, little cultists, and let's all sing these beloved holiday odes to Elder Gods. All the classics are here: "I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth," "Freddy the Red-Brained Mi-Go," "All I Want for Solstice is my Sanity," and "Awake Ye Scary Old Ones." And who can ever forget that rubber-room holiday favorite "Away in a Madhouse?"These songs were all created by members of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. You can hear more via this YouTube link. [H/t Geeks Are Sexy] Read the rest

Yes, this is real. Someone actually made a first-person shooter for the New Testament. From the game's Steam page:"I am Jesus Christ" is a realistic simulator game inspired by stories from the New Testament of the Bible. Get into old times and follow the same path of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. Game is covering the period from Baptizing of Jesus Christ and to Resurrection. Have you ever wondered to be like Him - one of the most privileged and powerful people in the world?Check if you can perform all famous miracles from the Bible like Jesus Christ. It is a simulation game and you can try to save the world as He did. Are you ready to fight with Satan in the desert, exorcising demons and curing sick people? Or calm the storm in the sea?I have a lot of questions. Like, why is it possible to beat the game without dying? Can you change the outcome of Bible stories, or do you just have to recreate it step by step? Does that mean you get to kick the crap out of a bunch of greedy bankers in the game? Do you actually get to fight Satan, too? Like physically? Does that mean Jesus has attack skills? Are there power-ups to boost the abilities with which you've already been divinely bestowed? Why is Jesus taking Polaroid pictures of everyone he helps? Why isn't Jesus shaking his Polaroid pictures to help them develop before placing them in the Bible? Read the rest

It's not the The New Adventures of Wonder Woman that I grew up with but it does have that Stranger Things/mallwave appeal, and a New Order song. It also has Steve Trevor who most certainly died in the first film but no matter. Read the rest

Legendary puppeteer Carroll Spinney, who brought Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to life on Sesame Street, died today. He was 85. Here's the New York Times obituary. And from the Sesame Workshop:Caroll was an artistic genius whose kind and loving view of the world helped shape and define Sesame Street from its earliest days in 1969 through five decades, and his legacy here at Sesame Workshop and in the cultural firmament will be unending. His enormous talent and outsized heart were perfectly suited to playing the larger-than-life yellow bird who brought joy to generations of children and countless fans of all ages around the world, and his lovably cantankerous grouch gave us all permission to be cranky once in a while.In 2018, Spinney retired from Sesame Street. Below is Sesame Workshop's video tribute to him and the following is from a New York Times profile from the time:Although they had previously crossed paths in the 1960s, Spinney pinpointed a fateful encounter at a Salt Lake City puppeteers’ festival in 1969, when (Muppets creator Jim) Henson watched him try to perform a multimedia show that went gradually awry.As Spinney recalled, Henson came to him afterward to say, “I liked what you were trying to do.”Soon after, Henson invited Spinney to play two Muppet characters that were being developed for “Sesame Street,” which made its debut on public television later that year. One was Oscar, who was envisioned as a cranky, trash-loving purple character. (He was orange in his earliest appearances, before taking on his familiar green hue.)The other was Big Bird, who was performed in a full body costume and who, Spinney said, he was originally asked to play as “a funny, dumb country yokel.”After a few episodes, Spinney made a suggestion to the show’s producers. Read the rest

Looks like "Grace from Boston" has fallen on some hard times. It's not clear if she's pounding back that smooth Aviation gin during her year-long exercise binge, or after she realizes that her husband's seeming-generosity is actually some terrifying voyeurism. But at least she has some friends looking out for her, right?(Also, props to this actress and to Aviation gin for getting this out so fast) Read the rest

We only have a few days left until Verizon kills off Yahoo Groups, and the volunteer archivists who've been battling with the company to preserve its legacy have just been dealt a crushing blow.From the Yahoo Groups Crusade Headquarters: "The Archive Team (who is working with to save content to upload to the Internet Archive) was again blocked by Yahoo. The block is wiping out the past month of work done by hundreds of volunteers. This info was reported on their IRC channel."Yahoo banned all the email addresses that the Archive Team volunteers had been using to join Yahoo Groups in order to download data. Verizon has also made it impossible for the Archive Team to continue using semi-automated scripts to join Yahoo Groups – which means each group must be re-joined one by one, an impossible task (redo the work of the past 4 weeks over the next 10 days)On top of that, something Yahoo did has killed the last third party tool that users and owners have been using to access their messages, photos and files. (PGOlffine).. Note: not everyone who paid for the PGOffline license is being impacted by the problem. but the developer does not have a workaround. Here is their post about it.Yahoo’s own data tools do not provide Group Photos and, as in my case, for two IDs I keep getting the data from another Yahoo account.VERIZON / YAHOO! BAD FORM! [featheredleader/Yahoo Groups Crusade Headquarters](Thanks, Kelly Lewis) Read the rest

Jesus and his fam were refugees, so it's only fitting that the folks at Claremont United Methodist Church decided to put its nativity figures in cages behind razorwire.As Rev Karen Clark Ristine said, Jesus, Mary and Joseph were "the most well-known refugee family in the world. What if this family sought refuge in our country today? Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center."A separate nativity inside the church reunites the family. Nearly 70,000 children were imprisoned by the US government for seeking asylum in 2019.The nativity scene at Claremont United Methodist church. HT Rev. Karen Clark Ristine. pic.twitter.com/YRIl8me63y— Matt Rindge (@mattrindge) December 8, 2019(Thanks, Kathy Padilla!) Read the rest

American actor and singer René Auberjonois, who played early roles in in M*A*S*H and 1979's King Kong and later starred as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's irascible and gelatinous security chief Odo, is dead at 79.Before his entry into Hollywood, Auberjonois worked in theater, earning a Tony for best lead actor in a musical for his role opposite Katharine Hepburn in “Coco.” He received further Tony nominations for 1973’s “The Good Doctor,” 1984’s “Big River,” and 1989’s “City of Angels.”Auberjonois was also known for his voice roles, particularly in 1989’s Disney Renaissance hit “The Little Mermaid,” in which he voices Chef Louis and sang the memorable “Les Poissons.” Fans of “The Princess Diaries” would recognize him as the voice of Mia Thermopolis’ father, Prince Philippe Renaldi, in an uncredited role. Read the rest

Matt Levine's consistently excellent newsletter for Bloomberg is called Money Stuff, and is typically focused on white collar crime and crime-adjacent behavior. Monday's edition looks at the New York Times' article on on the possible existence of Epstein-related incriminating videos, and attempts to explain why the story doesn't actually allege criminal behavior by the lawyers involved:It’s “a long way from extortion” in the technical sense that they were lawyers and knew the proper incantations to utter to make it not extortion. It’s not a long way from extortion in the sense that they were planning to go to rich men and say “we have compromising videos of you and we will publish them unless you pay us money.” But the incantations make all the difference!Monday's newsletter includes a summary of various ways bankers can be induced to aid financial crimes, and why Credit Suisse Group AG’s Mozambique scandal doesn't seem to fit the mold: the Mozambique case is even weirder than I thought, because the bribes weren’t just to motivate the bankers to get the deals approved, they were to motivate the bankers to cut the fees....It is honestly a bit mysterious to me how this could work. If you’re a banker and you come to your bosses with a hairy deal with a higher-than-usual fee, they will be repulsed by the hair but intrigued by the fee. If you come to your bosses with a hairy deal and a below-average fee, because you are pocketing a bribe-in-lieu-of-fees yourself, what’s in it for them? Read the rest

George Maschke from Antipolygraph.org (previously) writes, "Thousands of individuals are annually compelled to undergo a pseudoscientific polygraph screening ritual called the 'Test for Espionage and Sabotage.' The administration guide for this procedure, which is marked 'For Official Use Only' is now publicly available."Appendix F (“TES Outline”) will be of special interest, as it provides the basic script for conduct of the Test for Espionage and Sabotage. It is essentially a synopsis of the entire monkey drill.It should be noted that in a secret experiment conducted at the National Center for Credibility Assessment (then called the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute), 80 percent of subjects succeeded in beating the Test for Espionage and Sabotage after an hour-long training session.There is no documented instance of the Test for Espionage and Sabotage ever catching a spy or saboteur.The polygraph community is quite concerned about polygraphy’s vulnerability to simple, effective countermeasures that they cannot detect, and the TES therefore includes a “Countermeasures statement,” which the guide explains thus: 10.2. Countermeasures statement: It is important to provide some form of countermeasures statement to make the examinee aware that non-cooperation or deliberate efforts to influence testing will adversely affect the examination process. There are a number of approaches to this issue. The following is one such approach: 10.2.1. “It is not uncommon for people who have to take a polygraph examination to research information on the topic. Often, they come across sites or read articles that suggest they have to perform some activity to help them through their polygraph examination. Read the rest

Today, 800,000 Hong Kongers marched through the city in a demonstration commemorating their six months of protests. Thanks to landslide victories for pro-Democracy candidates in last month's election, today's march had an official police permit -- the first such permit issued since August.The protest was organized by the nonviolent umbrella group The Civil Human Rights Front (slogan: "You Can't Kill Us All"), and in online forums, protesters were promising direct action tomorrow if the Beijing-loyal administrator Carrie Lam does not respond to it."No matter how we express our views, through peacefully marching, through civilised elections, the government won't listen," said a 50-year-old protester, who gave his surname Wong. "It only follows orders from the Chinese Communist Party.""I don't know how long the fight will be," added another protester, who gave his first name as Kelvin. "So far I can't see the end but we won't back down."Cantonese popstar Denise Ho, whose music is blacklisted on the Chinese mainland, tweeted a video of the huge crowds with the caption: "Here's your majority Carrie Lam".Hong Kongers mark half a year of protest with mammoth rally [Jerome Taylor, Yan Zhao/Yahoo News](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Civil Human Rights Front) Read the rest