Boing Boing

Prior to being acquired by Charter, the cable company Spectrum aggressively marketed home security systems to its customers, inducing them to spend hundreds of dollars on proprietary cameras and other equipment that integrated with their cable networks and offered them remote monitoring and other services.Now, with only a few months' notice, Charter has announced that it will no longer support the cameras, touchscreens and other equipment its customers purchase. They will largely cease to operate (though some vestigial functionality will remain). Customers are not being offered refunds or credits on the equipment they purchased from the company.Though Charter hasn't marketed the service since shortly after the 2016 merger, customers were never warned that the service would be discontinued and their equipment rendered useless.Charter typically operates as a monopoly provider of cable and internet service. It has received tremendous regulatory gifts, courtesy of the Trump administration, including a fraudulent repeal of Net Neutrality and massive tax cuts; it has responded by slashing billions from its infrastructure budget, raising prices, and nickle-and-diming customers who cancel their service. The company has also received record fines for defrauding New Yorkers.Charter told Gizmodo it plans to offer customers discounts on Ring and Nest surveillance equipment, should they wish to spend hundreds of dollars extra to replace the equipment that Charter has bricked.Charter/Spectrum is the monopoly provider of internet service in Burbank, where I live. The service is terrible, subject to frequent outages and slowdowns, and the customer service is even worse. Read the rest

Fifty one years ago today, the first incarnation of the prog rock band, King Crimson, gathered in a cramped basement space below the Fulham Palace Cafe in London. One of the instruments the band would use that would come to distinguish their early sound was that strange, iconic 60s instrument, the Mellotron. Keyboardist Ian McDonald was taken by the sound of this instrument as it was employed by the Moody Blues (and on The Beatles' Strawberry Fields) and thought it would work well with the type of lush and orchestral sound the band was looking to create. Later in the year, in the summer of 1969, the instrument would again appear on David Bowie's Space Oddity (played by future Yes man, Rick Wakeman).Of all of the strange instruments that've worked the edges of popular music (the Theremin also comes to mind), the Mellotron is probably the oddest. Basically an upright organ cabinet filled the tape heads and recorded tape strips that you trigger through the keyboard, the Mellotron is like some crazy one-off contraption that caught on and actually got manufactured. In this video, Allison Stout, of Bell Tone Synth Works, a synthesizer repair shop in Philadelphia, PA, takes us under the hood of a Mellotron MK1 and how it works. One can only imagine how finicky and prone to breakage touring versions of these things must have been.And here's one of King Crimson's Mellotrons in action during a performance in 1974 at the ORTFTV Studios in Paris. Read the rest

The International Olympic Committee -- long a swirling cesspool of corruption, censorship, and reputation-laundering for repressive regimes -- has attained a new low, issuing guidance to athletes competing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that no political protests will be tolerated, specifically banning kneeling or raising fists.Protests by Olympians -- particularly Black Americans -- have made political history, from John Carlos and Tommie Smith's raised fists at the 1968 Mexico City Games (with Peter Norman standing in solidarity) to Jesse Owens' thwarting of Hitler's propaganda dreams for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.Last year, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee censured and suspended Race Imboden and Gwen Berry for protesting racial injustice during the Pan Am games, warning that any athletes that followed in their footsteps in the future would face worse punishments.“So the IOC is doubling down on the disgraceful treatment of athletes in 1968?” askedSherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Ifill was referring to the iconic moment at the Mexico City Olympics when black Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos, as they were awarded their gold and bronze medals, respectively, wore black gloves, took off their shoes, and held their fists high to protest poverty and racism. The IOC responded by expelling Smith and Carlos.The IOC announced the guidelines for Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter Thursday. Among the specific actions (pdf) now banned are:* Displaying any political messaging, including signs or armbands* Gestures of a political nature, like a hand gesture or kneeling* Refusal to follow the Ceremonies protocol. ‘Cowardice’: Olympics Committee Slammed for New Guidelines Barring Athletes From Kneeling, Raising Fists [Jerri-Lynn Scofield/Naked Capitalism] Read the rest

The Uganda Revenue Authority recently nabbed a smuggler attempting to bring banned cosmetics into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The cosmetics were stuffed inside footie pajamas to resemble a child. The cosmetics are illegal because they apparently contain hydroquinone and mercury. Police caught the smuggler on a bus at the Mpondwe border crossing. (UPI)Smugglers will do anything. This is a concealment of contraband cosmetics containing hydroquinone & mercury from DRC. The dummy baby with a human mum aboard a bus with dangerous cosmetics intercepted at Mpondwe Kasese border. Prosecution of offender next#TeamNoSleep @URAuganda pic.twitter.com/9FMwWjtKSh— Ian Rumanyika (@irumanyika) January 8, 2020 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Read the rest

Tashonna Ward (25) was a day care teacher from Milwaukee. She went to the emergency room at Froedtert Hospital with chest pains and tightness of breath, reports USA Today. More than two hours later no one at the hospital had helped her so she left to seek help somewhere else. But she soon collapsed and died.From USA Today:Ward's family says she was kept in the waiting room and was not under any monitoring when she decided to leave.A spokesperson for Froedtert Hospital provided a statement: "The family is in our thoughts and has our deepest sympathy. We cannot comment further at this time." Officials did not answer questions from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the death or general emergency department procedures.Image: Fort Belvoir Community Hospital Emergency Room (U.S. Army photo by Reese Brown)[via Fark] Read the rest

Sam Makovech of Ars Technica reviews the 8Bitdo Zero 2 ( on Amazon), an adorable gamepad controller you can use with a Switch, PC, or Mac. His overall impression of the meant-for-travel gamepad is favorable.From Ars Technica:To my pleasant surprise, 8BitDo starts this gamepad off with a crucial emphasis on its D-pad. At roughly the size of an American dime, this small D-pad is comparable to some of Nintendo's smallest takes, like you'd find on a GameCube controller or a Nintendo 3DS console. But unlike those offerings, 8BitDo allows its Zero 2's D-pad to protrude ever so slightly farther from its body. Pressing down on any edge of the D-pad offers a full 2mm of action, and this has a satisfying sense of travel when a thumb is in its depressed, rounded center—built for the sake of neatly rocking from left to right or up to down.The D-pad's quality was borne out by my own feverish Tetris testing, which worked whether I rapidly tap-tap-tapped in one direction or pivoted to a crucial "up to fast-drop" maneuver in newer Tetris games. When I imagine various times that I might rely on the Zero 2 as a controlling option, I think about how a good D-pad is the primary differentiator from other on-the-go options, whether that's a spare Joy-Con turned sideways, a weak laptop's keyboard, or a phone's on-screen buttons. I'd rather play Tetris or Super Mario Bros. with my thumb on this D-pad than relying on those other options. Read the rest

About five years ago, I was trying to get a bunch of Big Tech companies to take the right side of an urgent online civil rights fight, and I called an old friend who was very senior at one of the biggest tech companies in the world; they told me that it wasn't going to work, in part because the kinds of people who were coming to tech were there because they wanted to get as rich as possible, no matter what they had to do. My friend contrasted this with earlier eras -- even the dotcom bubble -- when the financial motive was blended with a genuine excitement for the transformative potential of tech to make a fairer, more equitable world. Now, my friend said, the kind of kid who would have gotten an MBA was instead getting an electrical engineering or computer science degree -- not out of any innate love for the subject, but because that was a path to untold riches.But things are changing. Not only are young people far more skeptical of capitalism and concerned that it will annihilate the human race, but the tech companies' masks have slipped, revealing their willingness to supply ICE and the Chinese government alike, to help the oil industry torch the planet, and to divert their fortunes to supporting white nationalist causes. Companies that tout their ethical center have harbored and even rewarded serial sexual predators and busted nascent union movements.The tech worker uprisings of recent years have caught the attention of the best and brightest grads of America's elite universities. Read the rest

There's a reason why most people do their jogging in the morning. Even though it might be muggy, foggy or warmer, there's a certain amount of safety that comes with daylight. I mean, it's not like you can just take a flashlight on your run.Or can you? With a simple but innovative design tweak, the H2 Belt Light might have just changed the game for night runners, hikers or anyone who needs to move around in the dark.After seeing it once, you kind of wonder why miners weren't wearing these instead of helmet lamps decades ago. Instead of a single, thin beam, the H2 casts a broad spectrum of light in front of you, right where you need it most: A 180-degree halo that lets you use your peripheral vision, even on the run.The belt and lamp are light, with an IPX7 waterproof rating that keeps it safe even in heavy rain. There's high and low-intensity brightness modes or even a flash mode for extra safety. Even on the highest setting, you'll get three hours of life from the rechargeable battery.Get your H2 Belt Light now from the Boing Boing shop for a full 25% off the retail price. Read the rest

Yesterday's column by John Naughton in the Observer revisited Nathan Myhrvold's 1997 prediction that when Moore's Law runs out -- that is, when processors stop doubling in speed every 18 months through an unbroken string of fundamental breakthroughs -- that programmers would have to return to the old disciplines of writing incredibly efficient code whose main consideration was the limits of the computer that runs on it.I'd encountered this idea several times over the years, whenever it seemed that Moore's Law was petering out, and it reminded me of a prediction I'd made 15 years ago: that as computers ceased to get faster, they would continue to get wider -- that is, that the price of existing processors would continue to drop, even if the speed gains petered out -- and that this would lead programmers towards an instinctual preference for solving the kinds of problems that could be solved in parallel (where the computing could be done on several processors at once, because each phase of the solution was independent of the others) and an instinctual aversion for problems that had to be solved in serial (where each phase of the solution too the output of the previous phase as its input, meaning all the steps had to be solved in order).That's because making existing processors more cheaply only requires minor, incremental improvements in manufacturing techniques, while designing new processors that are significantly faster requires major breakthroughs in material science, chip design, etc. These breakthroughs aren't just unpredictable in terms of when they'll arrive, they're also unpredictable in terms of how they will play out. Read the rest

Over the weekend my friend Bonnie Burton (a writer who was a recent guest on my Cool Tools podcast) asked on Twitter, "What is your favorite book that you're currently reading? I'm always curious what folks like to read!"What is your favorite book that you're currently reading? I'm always curious what folks like to read! pic.twitter.com/d7Z8GgIMen— Bonnie Burton (@bonniegrrl) January 12, 2020She got tons of responses, and I think Boing Boing readers would be interested.(My contribution to the thread is Let It Come Down, by Paul Bowles) Read the rest

Enjoy this footage of hurricane force winds blasting waterfalls skyward in the Faroe Islands. It was recorded Sept 14th, 2019, by Marko Korosec.A powerful North Atlantic windstorm that delivers violent hurricane-force winds and major waves, smashing the huge cliffs on the Faroe Islands. Winds are so intense, waterfall and going in the opposite direction - upwards!The vertical waterfalls are seen from 1:20 in. Read the rest

Matt Haughey moved into a new home with a lot of deadbolts. Rather than carry around a jangling morning star of keys, he decided to re-key everything. It took less than a day.I researched getting a locksmith to come out, but it would run hundreds of dollars in their time plus you can only re-key locks to a key made by the same manufacturer, and by my count we had at least three different brands of locks spread among all the doors. I could save money by bringing the locks to a locksmith’s store, replacing off brands with a single brand and re-installing myself, or I could teach myself how to rekey locks using a ~$100 set from amazon that takes a few hours of practice to master.He replaced three of the locks so all could use the Kwikset Smart Key [Amazon] system, the hero of the piece -- about $100 all in. Read the rest

Matthew Luckhurst, the San Antonio police officer fired after giving a homeless man a shit sandwich, has won his appeal. KSAT reports that he won the appeal because of a government rule that "prevents law enforcement from disciplining an officer for conduct that occurred more than 180 days before they are disciplined."The arbitrator's report (which you can read online) says the firing was reasonable whether Luckhurst's actions were "intentionally or grossly inappropriate" – Luckhurst claims he was was helping homeless people clean up their camp and handed the man the bread-and-shit to be disposed of, not eaten – but didn't come soon enough. Luckhurst was subsequently notified of his dismissal on Oct. 28, 2016 -- within the 180-day window if the incident occurred May 6, 2016, as initially thought.Arbitration documents state that later, Luckhurst reviewed his medical records and found that the incident could not have occurred on May 6, 2016, because he had injured himself during a martial arts class and was on light duty from April 6, 2016, to June 14, 2016, preventing him from riding a bike, as his peers had testified.The paperwork states that after interviewing witnesses and others who had heard about the incident -- all of whom gave varying dates -- it was determined that the incident may have occurred outside the 180-day window to discipline Luckhurst, effectively voiding his dismissal.Luckhurst isn't back on the beat, though, as he was also fired over another incident and an arbitration hearing on that is yet to be held. Read the rest

A housing development project hopes to put people underground in the cavernous depths of San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. SFGate reports:Developer Chris Elsey of Elsey Partners in Manhattan, Kansas, has plans to build two apartment buildings in San Francisco's Mission District that would each include two basement-level floors with 88 so-called "sleeping pods," measuring about 50 square feet each, just a little bigger than a king-size bed..."The contentious part is these below-grade sleeping pods," said Elsey... "When you’re building something, the plans have to be approved by the Planning Department and the Building Department. These below-grade sleeping pods meet the building codes, but there’s this perception from the Planning Department that it’s not something any human being should be exposed to or allowed to do."...With close living quarters, the underground spaces would likely have "house rules" that residents would need to obey."Obviously people don’t like it when people come home drunk and belligerent," he said. "And no pod sex. I think anyone who has been in college or a dormitory, you’ve had experiences where you prefer that people do those things in private."The project has not yet been approved by the city and it could take years for that to happen. But, if it gets the go-ahead, it's estimated that the individual, windowless sleeping pods would rent for $1,000 to $1,375 each. Head to SFGate for images of the proposed apartment building, including plans for the sleeping pods.screenshot via The Mole People/YouTube Read the rest

BFI, the British film organization, has posted a list of ten "acid westerns." The term ‘acid western’ is an elusive one. First coined by Pauline Kael in her New Yorker review of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970), it wasn’t until 2000 and the publication of his monograph on Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) for the BFI Modern Classics series that critic Jonathan Rosenbaum would expand upon the terminology more specifically.“What I partly mean by acid westerns,” wrote Rosenbaum, “are revisionist westerns in which American history is reinterpreted to make room for peyote visions and related hallucinogenic experiences, LSD trips in particular.” He distinguishes these from the “less radical… upheaval of generic norms” that colour “the influence of marijuana on the drifting, nonlinear aspects of the style of McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971),” setting the ‘acid western’ apart from what he calls the ‘pot western'.I guess it's really a "you know it when you see it" kind of deal. Read the rest

Burt Ward, who played Robin on the 1960s Batman TV series, claims that the ABC television network insisted he take pills to shrink his genitals so they wouldn't be so noticeable in his green underwear. However with Adam "Batman" West, he says, "they put Turkish towels in his undershorts." From a Page Six interview with Ward who last week scored a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame:The Caped Crusaders costumes were bright and tight-fitting to say the least, so snug that Ward incurred the wrath of the Catholic League of Decency...The problem grew so tumescent that the studio had Ward see a doctor who prescribed medication “to shrink me up.”Thankfully Ward quit taking the pills almost immediately.“I took them for three days and then I decided that they can probably keep me from having children,” he said. “I stopped doing that and I just used my cape to cover it.” Read the rest

This 350 pound Warsaw grouper was caught with a hook and line off the coast of southwest Florida a couple weeks back. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the fish was caught in about 600 feet of water. From CNN:"Biologists from (the FWC's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute) Age & Growth Lab estimated the age of this fish at 50 years old, making this the oldest sample collected for our ageing program," the FWC said. "Acquiring the otolith from this fish was extremely valuable as samples from larger and older fish are rare."Otoliths are the hard structures located behind the brain of bony fishes, according to the FWC. They help fish hear, maintain balance and orient themselves. Scientists use the growth structure of otoliths to estimate a fish's age.Warsaw groupers can grow to a length of 7.5 feet and weight of 580 pounds. The record for the largest one caught in Florida is nearly 440 pounds...The FWC said it "does not encourage the targeting of Warsaw grouper," as the species' population in the Gulf of Mexico isn't known. Read the rest

The New South Wales Government is dropping thousands of pounds of carrots and sweet potato from helicopters to feed the endangered Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies that are starving as a result of the massive bushfires across Australia. From the NSW Government:(According to Environment Minister Matt Kean,) "Initial fire assessments indicate the habitat of several important Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby populations was burnt in the recent bushfires. The wallabies typically survive the fire itself, but are then left stranded with limited natural food as the fire takes out the vegetation around their rocky habitat."The wallabies were already under stress from the ongoing drought, making survival challenging for the wallabies without assistance."In the last week almost 1000 kilograms of sweet potato and carrot have been sent to 6 different colonies in the Capertee and Wolgan valleys; 1000 kilograms across 5 sites in Yengo National Park; almost 100 kilograms of food and water in the Kangaroo Valley, with similar drops having also taken place in Jenolan, Oxley Wild Rivers and Curracubundi national parks.Mr Kean said this is the most widespread food drop we have ever done for Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies and will help maintain these colonies and allow them to recover."At this stage, we expect to continue providing supplementary food to rock-wallaby populations until sufficient natural food resources and water become available again in the landscape, during post-fire recovery."image: "Brush-tailed rock-wallabies (Petrogale penicillata)"/NPWS/DPIE Read the rest

"I got all these doll heads from a scrap market in Cairo," says artist Dinaa Amin, "collected by sellers who collect them from garbage bins." She took out the eyes to make a stop motion movie.[via Make:] Read the rest

A doctor in Britain leveled a complaint against food company Müller over its latest product, yoghurt flavored to taste like gin cocktails and containing a small amount of alcohol.The yoghurts, which were launched last year, contain 0.5% gin.A spokesperson for the yoghurt maker said the product was fat-free, high in protein and contained no added sugar.Dr Wells, who practises in North Yorkshire, said: "Given the problems we have with alcohol as a society - which is very visible in our GP practices and A&E departments - the creation of alcohol inspired yoghurts seems unnecessary and counterproductive to public health.Brexit Gin Yogurt is my new punk band name. Read the rest

I removed the last of the ancient wooden boards attached randomly to joists and walls in our basement and piled it all in the yard ready for disposal. A heap of split, splintered rusty-nailed junk caked in decades of paint and grime. So it stayed almost for a week, before Heather noticed some writing on one beneath the filth.Naturally, it had to be saved: pulled from the pile, denailed, two lengthwise cracks woodglued, cut down to the interesting part, cleaned with detergent and oxalic acid, sealed and lacquered. Very proud of myself! I bet I could get $5 for it on Etsy.The Delco Light company was well-known for electrifying farms back in the day and ended up a GM subsidiary, living on to this day as two syllables of an auto parts brand. Our find was probably the side of a wooden box that the house's original 1920s-era electrics were delivered in. Read the rest

Via Bruce Sterling, the Chinese characters for "specific ethnic genetic attacks," "combat brain," "winning without fighting" and more.“biological dominance” (制生权)biological interdisciplinary (生物交叉)brain control (脑控)“brain-machine fusion” (脑机融合)Cognitive Science Basic Research Team (认知科学基础研究团队)“combat brain” (作战大脑)domain of consciousness (意识域)frontier/cutting-edge interdisciplinary (前沿交叉)“hybrid intelligence” (混合智能)human-machine coordination (人机协同)“human performance enhancement technologies” (人效能增强技术)“informatization” (信息化).information operations (信息作战)“intelligence dominance” (制智权).intelligent autonomy (智能自主)“intelligentized” (智能化)“keep pace with the times” (与时俱进)key points of struggle (制权争夺点)“mental/cognitive dominance” (制脑权)military cognitive capabilities (军事认知能力)multi-domain integration (多域一体)National Innovation Institute for Defense Technology (国防科技创新研究院)“specific ethnic genetic attacks” (特定种族基因攻击)“strategic commanding heights” (制高点)War for Biological Dominance (制生权战争)“winning without fighting” (不战而屈人之兵)(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY, modified) Read the rest

There's no shortage of turn-based strategy games on the market. But few of them have the scope of Sid Meier's Civilization, whose title says it all. Your goal is nothing less than the shepherding of an entire nation from its first village to global dominance — and beyond.The Civ series is now on its sixth iteration, and the latest is a literal world-beater. It's also one of the most expandable, and all those expansions have finally been collected in Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Platinum Edition.If you're looking for a late Christmas gift for a sim fan, this one is hard to beat. The pack includes the core game Sid Meier's Civilization VI, with new tweaks that include a branching cultural improvement path and enhanced AI for computer opponents — a definite improvement over previous editions.It also comes with six DLC packs that introduce new scenarios and allows you to play as entirely new civilizations. As the cherry on top, you get the major expansions "Rise and Fall" and "Gathering Storm" which introduce game-changing Global Eras and devastating natural disasters.The entire set is now available for 58% off the original retail price. Read the rest

Agency is the sequel to William Gibson's tour-de-force 2014 novel "The Peripheral"; as previously discussed, Gibson had to scrap large sections of the novel and rewrite it after Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election. Agency is out later this month (I have a review pending for publication date) and Gibson has conducted a long interview with Sam Leith about the process by which the book came to be -- and almost wasn't.Gibson's had quite a year, being named a grandmaster by the Science Fiction Writers of America and winning EFF's Pioneer Award. The upcoming, long delayed publication of Agency has also prompted some outstanding, intimate profiles of his life and work (it's been more than 20 years since I profiled him for The Globe and Mail).The Leith interview is a great warm-up for Agency, which is a remarkable book.The lazy shorthand with which he’s sometimes described is as a prophet. How does he feel about that? An albatross around the neck, an encouraging compliment – or just part of the job? “It’s actually ... It seems to be a thing. But I’ve been discounting it actively throughout my entire career. I don’t think you could find a single interview with me in which I don’t make the point that I’ve got it wrong easily as often as I’ve got it sort of right.”He certainly gets it right in one respect in Agency: the flashpoint crisis in the book’s contemporary timeline concerns a Turkish invasion of northern Syria, complicated by Russian interference, after the US pulls out. Read the rest

Machine learning systems are notorious for cheating, and there's a whole menagerie of ways that these systems achieve their notional goals while subverting their own purpose, with names like "model stealing, rewarding hacking and poisoning attacks."AI researcher Stuart Armstrong (author of 2014's Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence) takes a stab at defining a specific kind of ML cheating, "wireheading" -- a term borrowed from Larry Niven's novels, where it refers to junkies who get "tasps" -- wires inserted directly into their brains' "pleasure centers" that drip feed them electrified ecstasy until they starve to death (these also appear in Spider Robinson's Hugo-winning book Mindkiller).A rather dry definition of wireheading is this one: "a divergence between a true utility and a substitute utility (calculated with respect to a model of reality)." More accessibly, it's that "there is some property of the world that we want to optimise, and that there is some measuring system that estimates that property. If the AI doesn't optimise the property, but instead takes control of the measuring system, that's wireheading (bonus points if the measurements the AI manipulates go down an actual wire).Suppose we have a weather-controlling AI whose task is to increase air pressure; it gets a reward for so doing.What if the AI directly rewrites its internal reward counter? Clearly wireheading.What if the AI modifies the input wire for that reward counter? Clearly wireheading.What if the AI threatens the humans that decide on what to put on that wire? Read the rest

Maryland's Larry Hogan -- a Republican who governs a blue state -- is the most popular governor in America, with a 73% approval among state Democrats. He is also a flagrant crook.Hogan has booked $2.4m in personal income during his three years in office, most of it thanks to his cancellation of a desperately needed public transit expansion in Baltimore, the funds from which were diverted to building roads in the middle of nowhere that just happened to serve the suburban property developments his company owned. That company was nominally put in his brother's hands when Hogan took office, but as the Washington Monthly's Eric Cortellessa reports, that was a fiction, and Hogan has continued to oversee his company even as he made public policy that made his governorship the most profitable in Maryland history.None of this is a secret: Hogan has bragged about it and his office has issued maps boasting about where his new roads were going in. Hogan claims to be "the Republican who believes in climate change," even as he's overseen a radical expansion in automobile use that was paid for by destroying an ambitious public transit scheme, which will benefit the state's suburban whites at the expense of the large Black population of Baltimore, who have been shat upon by their state for generations.It's all probably legal, too, because Maryland has some of the weakest anti-corruption rules in America.In the New Republic, Alex Pareene describes Hogan as the kind of "normal" Republican that centrist Democrats yearn to work with -- ordinarily corrupt and rapacious, with plausibly deniable policies of white supremacy, uncomplicated by explicit white nationalist rhetoric. Read the rest

This 10" contour gauge makes measuring for detailed or difficult cuts easier.Having seen ads for these all over Instagram and other websites I was intrigued. For less than $15 I had to give a contour gauge a try. They are as handy, and easy to use, as the videos suggest.This Avide gauge is cheap and it works. The pins are held into the frame with enough pressure that a very moderate amount of force will shape the gauge, but the pins will not slide or move once you draw it away and go to work.I am also interested in the 5" version as there are some tight spaces around a few pipes this one may not fit. We shall see.10 Inch Contour Gauge Irregular Profile Gauge Duplicator Tiling Laminate Tiles Edge Shaping Wood Measure Ruler Plastic Woodworking Tools Profile Jig Guide via Amazon Read the rest

Thousands of businesses use Cisco as the platform for their network, and there's a good reason for that. As data and security needs evolve, Cisco evolves to keep up with them — but that means the administrators and IT professionals that implement it have to evolve, too.That's not just a figure of speech. As of 2020, those with a Cisco Certified Network Associate title are going to have to update that certification. Luckily, there's a Complete 2020 Cisco CCNA Certification Prep Course to walk you through everything you need to know.The whole course packs in more than 30 hours of lectures and exercises, all geared to allow you to set up and manage Cisco networks. It covers the latest changes in wireless connectivity, Software Defined Networking, automation and a host of other topics from the perspective of the experienced CCNA worker who needs to get up to speed.By the end of it, you'll be able to breeze through the CCNA 200-301 exam, get your updated certification, then move on to any number of specialized fields.Lifetime access to the course is now more than 85% off the list price. Read the rest

For better or for worse, humans have been training dolphins as soldiers of war since at least the 1960s; even to this day, the Russian government in particular has been known to enlist them in subterfuge.But twenty years ago, the cash-strapped and crumbling Soviet Union sold a group of highly-trained aquatic assets to the Iranian government. Military.com (a subsidiary of Monster, apparently) has a good breakdown of the history, pulling largely from a BBC article published in 2000:In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the dolphin unit was sent to the Crimean Peninsula from a base in the Russian Pacific area. There, the dolphins were trained to kill enemy frogmen using harpoons mounted on their backs. They would also swim at enemy ships in suicide attacks while carrying explosive sea mines, as they were able to distinguish between Russian and American submarines by the sounds their propulsion systems make underwater.The highly trained killer dolphins were moved from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf after Iran purchased them -- for reasons unknown. According to the Russian newspaper, Zhurid's work, which supposedly continued in Iran after the 2000 sale, was solely of a military nature.It's a weird little factoid of military history. But here's the catch: dolphins can live for around 50 years. Which means that some of these dolphins could still be alive today. Which means it's not not impossible that a pod of these haggard soldiers is hanging around the coastal US, waiting for their retaliatory strike — though whether that would be against the country's foreign policy, or its oversights in regards to noise pollution from seismic testing, that's still up in the air. Read the rest

After Boing Boing and other sites wrote about the Squidmar Miniatures video where Emil challenged painters on Fivver to paint a mini for him, the video went viral. Others painters approached him about doing another video that they could participate in and even Fivver itself wanted in on the action. So, Emil decided to issue another challenge. With $600 provided by Fivver, he sent one mini from the Zarbag's Gitz warband for Warhammer Underworlds to eight painters (I guess paying them $75 each?). This time, he didn't give them any directive beyond using their creativity. For some additional inspiration, he also provided them with a little animated story describing Zarbag's Gitz. Read the rest

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that the country's air defenses mistakenly shot down a Ukranian passenger jet Wednesday, killing all 176 aboard. It was thought to be a cruise missile, he said, describing the crash as an "unforgivable mistake." The downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 on Wednesday came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq.The strikes were a response to the killing of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.Armed Forces’ internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people.Investigations continue to identify & prosecute this great tragedy & unforgivable mistake. #PS752— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) January 11, 2020BBC analyst Lyse Doucet says such an admission of culpability is "highly unusual".Iran has decided it has to own this disaster to avoid it triggering another war of words with the West or exacerbating further anger and anguish among its own people, who are reeling from one calamity after another. Make no mistake, this admission was an act of de-escalation. The repercussions at home may soon be clear. Iran's foreign minister has already sought to shift blame by saying it was "a crisis caused by US adventurism". But the big question now is: who took the decision to allow a civilian airliner to take off when Iran's airspace was shot through with such tension? Read the rest

Oh my gosh, this poor gal is never going to live this down. Eve, a contestant on Family Feud Canada**, screwed up her family's chance to play for $10,000 by incorrectly answering the world's easiest sudden-death question: "What's Popeye's favorite food?" Oof! Let's hope she's at least offered an endorsement deal from a certain fast food chain.Even crazier, watch these unaired outtakes:There's more to the #FamilyFeudCanada chicken story - What happens when contestants guess wrong on a sudden death round? Take a look at these behind-the-scenes bloopers and see what you'd never get to see on TV. #bloopers #chicken pic.twitter.com/K7x6V0hpSv— Family Feud Canada (@FamilyFeudCa) January 10, 2020**Am I the only one who didn't know there was a Canadian version of Family Feud?(Twitter) Read the rest

In my experience, most people haven't heard of the Rentals — and most of those who have heard of them only really know them as "that other band that Weezer's old bass player was in." Or the band who wrote "Elon Musk Is Making Me Sad."That is all technically accurate. The group was started by Matt Sharp while he was still Weezer's secret weapon. And Elon Musk does make him sad. Since leaving that other band, Sharp has continued to release orchestral synth-y power-pop with a rotating cast of musicians under the Rentals moniker over the last 20 years. The group has included performers like Maya Rudolph, the Haden Sisters, Joey Santiago from the Pixies, Patrick Carney from the Black Keys, and many others.The spaced-out track above is an instrumental mix of a tune from the band's upcoming sci-fi-themed album, Q36. The band has been releasing a new track every 2 weeks, along with a corresponding limited-edition t-shirt and hitRECORD project. And while I liked the regular version of "Invasion Night," I absolutely love this ambient version of it. Sharp cut out all the the vocals, drums, and bass in order to focus on his synthesizer sounds and the guitar work of Nick Zinner (most famously of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and the result almost makes me feel like I'm in the head of Major Tom as he floats to his death.The video that goes along with it was actually part of the Rentals' 2009 album Songs About Time, which included 365 photographs, 52 short films, and 3 EPs, all created in real-time over the course of a year. Read the rest

On Amazon, the box was described as “Used: like new.”In New Jersey, a mom and dad were unpleasantly surprised to discover that a box of diapers delivered by Amazon for changing their 19-month-old daughter.... was full of poopy diapers.Mom Nassly Sales noticed when she picked up the box that it seemed “heavier than usual,” and when she and her husband, Sid Mukherjee, opened it up -- the stinky truth revealed itself.From NJ.com:“I picked up the pack to kind of take a closer look (and) that’s when the stench hit me,” Mukherjee said, noting the pack of diapers smelled like urine before they realized they had been used. “Oh! This is not right ... one actually has poop in it.”Mukherjee, 50, said he found himself incredulously laughing at the situation, adding that they order diapers for their daughter off Amazon at least every two months.“I turned on the lights and that’s when I noticed that it was soiled,” Sales said. “I’m still in disbelief, to be honest.”Of the two boxes of diapers that were purchased, one box’s condition was described as “new” and the second was described as “Used: like new.” The description said the packaging was original, but that it was damaged.Amazon didn't respond to a reporter's request for comment. Read the full story:Online order of diapers arrives at Jersey City home -- but they were already soiled [nj.com] Read the rest

The ships came within 60 yards of a collision

"Surfing the web," is one of those casual terms that actually says a lot about the way we use the internet. "Surfing," after all, sounds fun, almost passive. Just let the wave of information carry you, it seems to say.But what if we actually need to stay put for a while? Sadly, the layout of the modern internet page isn't designed for sustained, focused reading. Luckily, there's a fairly cheap hack for Chrome users in their Reader Mode Pro extension.The primary use of Reader Mode is going to be a boon to just about anyone, whether they're serious readers or not: It removes ads. It also removes unnecessary photos or icons, letting you focus on the text.Students can highlight that text, annotate it or even change the font to suit their needs. There's a handful of specific fonts that are designed to help dyslexic readers focus, as well as a "Dyslexia Ruler" that guides the eye at a customizable pace.Built-in text-to-speech and Google Translate capabilities are just a couple of the other bells and whistles that make this a game-changer for just about anyone who reads for information and not a distraction.You can get the Reader Mode Pro: Chrome Reading Extension for 60% off the retail price now. Read the rest

Privacy activst Murray Hunter's picture book Boris the Babybot tells the story of Boris, a robot whose job it is track all the babies and send their likenesses and preferences back to the factory so that its owners can make money by deciding who's a good baby and who's a bad baby.By and large, this is an easy task: Boris scans the babies' smiles and noses and eyes, but records whether they like peas or puppies. But some babies can't be scanned: they're in the bath, hidden by bubbles; or they're covered in so much food their faces can't be captured, or they're just having too much fun wearing a box on their heads, meaning Boris can't get a look at their faces.When Boris is fired from his factory job, he is initially distraught, but then he formulates a better plan: rather than scanning those babies, he joins them -- getting bubbles all over himself, smearing himself with food, and putting a box on his head.The book -- whose crowdfunder we supported last summer -- is a delight. A set of accompanying online resources help parents contextualize the story with their kids with fun games and discussion-starters.Alas, the book is hard to get outside of South Africa and the UK, but you can email murray.hunter@pm.me to buy it direct from the author.Boris the Babybot [Murray Hunter] Read the rest

In 2006, Erik Helwig created the Rickroll. Maybe. Over at MEL Magazine, Brian VanHooker's "An Oral History of Rickrolling" takes us back to a time when the worst of the weaponized Internet memes were those created by advertising agencies, not corrupt politicians and warmongers. And if you're curious what I mean by that, watch the rather shocking video above. From MEL:Erik Helwig, founder of Rickrolling (maybe): This was small-town, rural Michigan and there was this radio program called the Postgame Show that covered local sports. People would call in and say stuff like, “My son Christopher played on the team tonight, and he did a real great job!” Stuff like that, so my friends and I started pranking it and the calls started getting weirder and weirder. We’d call in and talk about our favorite Nicolas Cage movies and other weird stuff like that. Then one day I called them and just played “Never Gonna Give You Up” on the air. I didn’t say anything, I just played the song. The host had absolutely no reaction to it, he didn’t say, “I’m being Rickrolled” or anything like that because it was before all that.I don’t know if I want to call myself the “founder” of Rickrolling. That’s difficult for me because it was something that I did on a whim and later realized that I did this six months before anyone else, which I thought was cool, but that’s about it. I only picked that song because I really like the song — it’s a great 1980s song that’s fun to laugh at in the best way. Read the rest

The 10,000+ athletes at the Tokyo Olympics will sleep on bed frames made of strong cardboard. According to the Athletes Village manager Takashi Kitajima, the frames can hold up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds). "They are stronger than wooden beds," Kitajima said... "Of course, wood and cardboard would each break if you jumped on them."From the Associated Press:The single bed frames will be recycled into paper products after the games. The mattress components—the mattresses are not made of cardboard—will be recycled into plastic products.The mattress is broken up into three distinct sections, and the firmness of each can be adjusted. Read the rest

Amazon has a good deal on the Rotring 500 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil. It's .Here's a video review of the 500: Read the rest

In June 1995, physicians Angus Wallace and Tom Wong were waiting for their flight to depart Hong Kong to London when they were asked to examine a woman complaining of arm pain caused by a "fall." After takeoff, the doctors returned to the woman to put a splint on her arm but they quickly realized that her injuries were much more serious than she had first reported. Not only did the woman have arm and rib fractures, her lung was punctured and air leaking between her lung and chest wall had caused a pneumothorax. The condition is life threatening if not treated and Wallace believed the change in air pressure upon landing would kill her. So Wallace and Wong had to improvise. From Wikipedia:The medical kit had lidocaine – a local anaesthetic – but the catheter in the kit was designed only for urinary catheterisation and was too soft for use as a chest tube. The doctors fashioned a trocar from a metal clothes hanger to stiffen the catheter, and a check valve from a bottle of water with holes poked in the cap. They sterilised their equipment in Courvoisier cognac, and began surgery by making an incision in the patient's chest, but with no surgical clamps available, Wong had to hold the incision open with a knife and fork while Wallace inserted the catheter. The whole surgery lasted about ten minutes; the doctors successfully released the trapped air from the patient's chest, and she passed the rest of the flight uneventfully, eating and watching in-flight movies. Read the rest

The Good Liars -- the comedy duo of Davram Stiefler and Jason Selvig -- redecorated a Brooklyn armed forces recruiting center with posters featuring Donald Trump Jr and the slogan, "I'm not enlisting but you should" with the strapline, "There's weak, and then there's Trump weak."You can download a high-rez version of the poster to print and display here.The duo told HuffPost on Friday that “in the wake of Trump’s latest reckless foreign policy actions that could very easily result in more and more troops being sent to the Middle East, we thought the public deserved a reminder of who the Trumps are.”MoPranksters Unleash Spoof Army Recruitment Signs To Remind People ‘Who The Trumps Are’ [Lee Moran/Huffpost](via Christian Nightmares) Read the rest

A batch of internal emails and other communications by Boeing employees were released to Congress on Thursday as part of a 100-plus page document, according to CNN, and what these employees said about Boeing’s 737 Max back in 2017 and 2018 is terrifying. (It wasn’t even a year after these communications that two new 737 Max planes crashed within five months of each other, killing 346 people total.)For example, in April 2017, one employee said the Max was “designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” and referred to the plane as having a “piss poor design.”And in February 2018, from one employee to another: "Honesty is the only way in this job — integrity when lives are on the line on the aircraft and training programs shouldn't be taken with a pinch of salt. Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't." To which the other employee said, “No.”Three months later, an employee wrote about some other mishap Boeing was dealing with: "I really would struggle to defend the [simulator] in front of the FAA next week,” while another employee wrote: “I still haven't been forgiven by god for the covering up I did last year." From CNN:The new jet was intended to be similar enough to require only the tablet-based training to bring pilots up to speed on the differences between the old model and the new one. One email included in Thursday's collection of documents from Boeing's chief technical pilot made it clear how crucial it was to the company that the simulator not be required. Read the rest

Researchers in Illinois who receive federal funding are required to file paperwork disclosing potential conflicts of interest, but these handwritten forms just moulder in the NIH's filing cabinets...until now.Dollars for Profs is a new project from Propublica and their news apps editor Sis Wei collects that data -- laboriously hand-typed by freelancers -- and makes it searchable.Propublica's first spelunk through the data found two profs who received more than $600,000 (how much more isn't known -- they're in the $600k-and-up category) in money that creates a potential conflict with their work. They also found numerous academics at the other end of the scale, unable to support themselves on their university wages and eking out an existence doing part-time work on the side.Some of the people in the database seem to have entirely separate careers -- a campus police chief who also owns dozens of apartments, or a registrar who also owned a company that built assisted living facilities. Now, Propublica is hoping that the public will search the database and do their own work to see what conflicts emerge.The app is useful for Illinois residents in particular, even those not interested in academic ethics. That’s because state law here requires all public employees with supervisory responsibilities, including faculty and administrators, to disclose any significant outside income or assets to the secretary of state. People who work at private universities are exempt from the rule. From 2016 through 2018, public university employees in Illinois filed disclosures detailing more than 12,000 outside financial relationships, giving people here more information than in any other state in our database. Read the rest

Do not be afraid to take a chance on peace, to teach peace, to live peace…Peace will be the last word of history. --Pope John Paul IIThis may be the ONLY reason I've heard to consider buying Star Wars Battlefront II.The excellent mod by xD0IT turns Kylo Ren into a buffed out Pope John Paul II who is one with the Force... or Jesus, I'm not really sure how that stuff expresses in a religion not my own.During his time as pontiff, JPII was clearly a man of peace and love. As a Jedi decked out with a cruciform lightsaber? Try he will not.Alternatively, Star Wars: Fallen Order is a great game. Read the rest

One of the treats of being sick as a kid was staying home from school and being able to watch The Dick Cavett Show. He was a talk show host unlike any other, with a gentle, intelligent demeanor free of snark, smugness, or sarcasm. Josh Jones of Open Culture wrote a nice piece about Cavett, and include links to selected episodes of his show.Born in Nebraska in 1937, “the only persona [Cavett] bothered to, or needed to, develop for working on camera was of a boy from Nebraska dazzled by the bright lights of New York,” as Clive James writes in an appreciation of the TV host. As he interviewed the biggest stars of late sixties, seventies, and eighties on the long-running Dick Cavett Show, Cavett’s easygoing Midwestern demeanor disarmed both his guests and audiences. He kept them engaged with his erudition, quick wit, and breadth of cultural knowledge.Watch Cavett handle a cagey, combative Marlon Brando in 1973, making him open up a bit: Read the rest

From our friends at Futility Closet:Fit two identical 90-degrees cones base to base, slice the resulting shape in half vertically, and give one of the halves a quarter turn. The result is a sphericon, a solid that rolls with a bemusing meander: Where the original double cone rolls only in circles, the sphericon puts first one conical sector and then the other in contact with a flat surface beneath it, giving it a smooth but undulating trajectory sustained by a fixed center of mass.And that’s just the start. “Two sphericons placed next to each other can roll on each other’s surfaces,” writes David Darling in The Universal Book of Mathematics. “Four sphericons arranged in a square block can all roll around one another simultaneously. And eight sphericons can fit on the surface of one sphericon so that any one of the outer solids can roll on the surface of the central one.” Read the rest

Each celebrity has a tabloid quintessence as distinctive as a fingerprint: a pithy descriptor that distills their intrinsic scandal-value for those whose idea of journalism begins and ends at the supermarket check-out.

I found "Dimensions of Dialogue" (1983) on my favorite subreddit r/ObscureMedia. It's an 11-minute stop-motion orgy of garbage, flesh, mastication, digestion, eructation, and decay by Czech filmmaker Jan Å vankmajer. Read the rest

How often have you seen news stories and videos poking fun at people who have trouble locating where a certain country is on a world map? The latest iteration of this kind of lazy journalism comes from Morning Consult: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can. "The polling experiment sheds light on voters’ geographical unfamiliarity with foreign countries, even those with which the United States has been engaged in sustained conflict," says the article.If Morning Consult wanted to shed some useful light, it could focus less on the geographic location of Iran and more on why the US and Iran have been at odds ever since the CIA and Britain's MI6 overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 and installed a murderous and corrupt tyrant who was happy to let western petroleum concerns exploit Iran's natural resources in exchange for a dictatorship. This segment from a 2018 episode of The Daily Show has a good recap: Read the rest