Boing Boing

There's not really any dispute that the UK Liberal Democrats party sold voter data for £100,000 to the Remain campaign in 2016, though the Information Commissioner's Office tried to suppress that revelation until after the coming election; the Libdems say they did nothing wrong, but when Opendemocracy's Jim Cusick approached the party for a statement ahead of an article, he got no reply.What happened next is...weird.After Cusick's article went live, an aggrieved Libdem "senior official" wrote to Opendemocracy, demanding to know why their statement hadn't been included in the article. Cusick said it was because he'd never received a statement, but if they'd furnish one, he'd include it. But instead of a statement, Cusick got a legal threat from an expensive firm of solicitors, Goodman Derrick, demanding that the article be censored, either by removing "all derogatory and disparaging statements" (having read the article, I couldn't find any statements that qualified), or removal of the article altogether.Given that the Libdems style themselves "the party of liberty," that is indeed weird.But what happened next is weirder.Opendemocracy asked the lawyers to provide a statement from the Libdems to include in their article, pointing out that they'd made three such requests without a response. In the absence of any statement from the Libdems (apart from the legal threat conveyed by their lawyers), Opendemocracy made a "surmise" about what the Libdems didn't like about their coverage and amended the article. Then they heard from the lawyers again, stating that the Libdems had provided an "on the record" response to Cusick's article, on Nov 12, and they attached that email as proof. Read the rest

Various official Baby Yoda toys will be available in a few months, but anyone with access to a 3D printer can print their own right now. Christopher Frieze has posted one version for free download. It looks great as a tree topper:@chris_frieze: https://t.co/vzhhbKggg2 pic.twitter.com/lcCjEm9Yfl— KeithSpace™ (@thisiskeithb) December 1, 2019Please bless my coffee, BABY YODA 🙏😍🙌 pic.twitter.com/MHkrE1azvs— Erika Heidi (@erikaheidi) December 3, 2019And Chris is currently working on a version of Baby Yoda and soup:And we are back. I feel the shape language is much better now and more FDM friendly, at least in the robe. But to pick up all the little details SLA is going to be best. Zoom in if you can. pic.twitter.com/Pg4hjBuLjN— Inspyre 3D (@chris_frieze) December 4, 2019Download a design and support Chris here.(Via TheRPF.) Read the rest

Malaysian low-cost airline AirAsia has opened a food court restaurant at a mall in Kuala Lumpur. Called Santan, the restaurant serves the same food as what's on the airline's in-flight menu. Over the next five years, AirAsia expect to open more than 100 other Santan locations around the world. From WHDH:Entrees cost around $3 USD and include local delicacies such as chicken rice and the airline’s signature Pak Nasser’s Nasi Lemak dish, a rice dish with chilli sauce. Locally sourced coffee, teas and desserts are also on the menu.“We have seen a significant appetite for our in-flight menu offerings beyond our flights across the region and this is our answer to that demand,” the brand’s general manager Catherine Goh said in a press release. Read the rest

"Snowbrawl" is a high-energy 90-second David versus Goliath snowball fight directed by David Leitch for Apple.The commercial is nice, but the real magic is in this mini-documentary, which shows some of the simple tools used to achieve such kinetic shots:Kudos to Apple, the two videos really do a good job of making it seem like anyone who can afford an iPhone can create a great-looking movie. Read the rest

View this post on Instagram Now you can send a PERSONALIZED message from my good pal PAUL REUBENS...!! Have him wish someone you know a "Happy Birthday!" or "Merry Christmas!" or "Get Well Soon (and stop missing so much work!)!" through @Cameo! Link in bio! cameo.com/paulreubensA post shared by Pee-wee Herman (@peeweeherman) on Dec 3, 2019 at 8:51pm PSTHow cool is THIS? Paul Reubens (you know... the guy who plays Pee-wee Herman) will send a message to someone you know through a paid service called Cameo. You just fill out a short form that spells out your message request and pay up. Then your recipient will get a personalized video from a real legend. And no, he won't be dressed in a grey plaid suit and red bow-tie. Cameo is a lot of fun. I bought one of these videos for my brother last year. He loved CHiPs as a kid, so I got Larry Wilcox ("Jon Baker") to wish him a happy birthday. We both laughed a lot over the whole thing and he said it was the best gift ever. No lie. Preview videos are available ahead of time so you can get a feel for it. (Pee-wee Herman) Read the rest

This lovely cover was heard in the seventh episode of the new Watchmen TV show, titled "An Almost Religious Awe." The track will appear on Reznor and Ross's album "Watchmen: Vol. 3 (Music from the HBO Series)" due out December 16. Read the rest

Johnny Depp is producing a musical about Michael Jackson's sequined glove. Well, it's actually about Jackson's life but told from the perspective of the glove. Surprise, the Jackson estate has not authorized this production. Titled "For the Love of a Glove: An Unauthorized Musical Fable About the Life of Michael Jackson, As Told By His Glove," the musical opens in Los Angeles on January 25. From Broadway.com:The musical is described as a "look into the strange forces that shaped Michael and the scandals that bedeviled his reputation." (Playwright Julien) Nitzberg first collaborated with Depp's production group, Infinitum Nihil, on a biopic about 1960s singer Tiny Tim.For the Love of a Glove will open in advance of Broadway's new Michael Jackson musical, MJ, which will feature a book by two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage (crafted with the blessing of Jackson's estate) and direction/choreography by Christopher Wheeldon (and starring Ephraim Sykes). Read the rest

Uh-oh, someone's in trouble.

Oh boy. Donald's not going to like this one at all.In this video from a Buckingham Palace VIP reception earlier today, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron of France, and Boris Johnson of the Republic of Brexit appear to be discussing Donald Trump's wacky impromptu word salad speeches. .@JustinTrudeau, @EmmanuelMacron, @BorisJohnson and other VIPs shared a few words at a Buckingham Palace reception Tuesday. No one mentions @realDonaldTrump by name, but they seem to be discussing his lengthy impromptu press conferences from earlier in the day. (Video: Host Pool) pic.twitter.com/dVgj48rpOP— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) December 3, 2019Trudeau, Macron, Johnson, and other VIPs are seen in the pool video sharing a few words among themselves at a Buckingham Palace event. No one in this clip mentions Donald Trump by name, but do they need to? This happens at every NATO summit with Trump. Every G7. Every G20. The US President is mocked by US allies behind his back. pic.twitter.com/FWncEM7jVs— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 4, 2019No sight of Prince Andrew, but Trump and Melania are said to have met with Prince Charles earlier in the day. And of course, Trump denies ever having known Prince Andrew. (Video: Host Pool) Read the rest

"So if you're poor, you're dead." That's what a woman in the U.K. said when she was told the price of health care services in the U.S.No doubt many people in the U.S. do die from the high price of health care, but the ones who survive but can't pay their bills are likely to be sued by the hospital.Ambulance call out? $2,500. Childbirth? $30,000. Our NHS is not for sale, @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/q9z4r6Ni6g— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) December 3, 2019 Read the rest

If you happen to have the 2009 or 2018 issues of The Best American Comics lying around like some of us do, flip to any excerpts in there by Ted Stearn. Hopefully the appeal is instant. But for those who are limited to search results and the attached images above and below, let's dive a little deeper. Reading "Fuzz and Pluck" is a bit like being stuck in a semi-lucid dream where you suspect something is a bit off but the world carries on as it was, indifferent to your suspicions. Flip to just about any page and you'll find speech bubbles caressing character's heads, panels cascading into each other and a cantankerous plucked chicken (Pluck) bullying his best friend (Fuzz) into doing mostly horrible favors for him. More often than not, these errands result in grievous, though by the next chapter, reversible cartoonish bodily harm to Fuzz.While Fuzz and Pluck is Stearn's best-known and most highly acclaimed work, the "The Forgotten Dream of a Melancholy Chef" from Zero Zero is also worth taking a long look at. All of Stearn's work is lovingly rendered in pen and ink and utilizes an impressive academic application of hatching, crosshatching, and masterful linework. The whimsical design of the characters provide a really funny, offbeat contrast to the absurd and sometimes disturbing storylines.Unfortunately, Stearn passed away earlier this year. He left behind a great body of work that was much loved by Matt Groening, Chris Ware, Gary Panter, and hopefully you, too. Read the rest

Obama brought McKinsey and Co, the giant management consulting firm, into ICE to effect an "organizational transformation," so they were already in place when Trump took office, and as Trump pivoted to concentration camps, McKinsey had some suggestions to save money: cut back on food, medicine and supervision.Propublica sued the US government and obtained 1,500 pages' worth of McKinsey/ICE memos thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. They document how McKinsey's sole focus was lowering costs and accellerating deportations, even if it meant inhumane conditions and gross miscarriages of justice, including some that certainly sent some asylum seekers to their deaths.One official Propublica spoke to said that ICE's senior management found the suggestions inhumane, and argued against them, only to be shouted down by the McKinsey people. McKinsey drafted its own federal consulting contract -- ghostwriting it for ICE -- and cut themselves in for an additional $2.2m (they made more than $20m off the contract).In 2018, Kevin Sneader -- McKinsey's global managing partner -- sent out a memo to all staff in which he lied about the work the firm had done with ICE, falsely claiming that the firm was not involved in developing immigration policies and that it would not "under any circumstances, engage in work, anywhere in the world, that advances or assists policies that are at odds with our values."The ICE gulags today still run on principles established by McKinsey, and the undertrained sadists who staff them were hired in McKinsey-designed "super one-stop hiring" centers. Read the rest

A 1967 acid trip during a hurricane at Ramrod Key, Florida, leads Abbie Hoffman, his wife Anita, and Paul Krassner to see the upcoming 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a hugely visible moment for political protest.When home from the vacation, the group has a celebratory smoke, leading to Paul's coining of the term Yippie, for politicized, radical, or activist hippies.From John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall.(See all Boing Boing installments) Read the rest

It’s no secret that web developers are in increasingly high-demand throughout multiple industries, but you don’t need to invest an exorbitant amount of time or money in a traditional tech education in order to get the skills you need to join this lucrative field.The Ultimate 2020 Web Designer & Developer Bundle will teach you everything you need to know in order to start building pro-level websites from scratch, and it’s currently available for $29.With six courses and over 90 hours of expert-led training, this bundle will introduce you to the most important and relied-upon programming languages and platforms in the world of web development.You’ll learn how to use Python in order to build dynamic UI experiences, how to work with MySQL and PHP in order to manage large data sets, how to implement languages like HTML and CSS in order to enhance the functionality of your sites, and more—all through instruction that uses easy-to-follow lessons and tutorials.Start building pro-level websites with the Ultimate 2020 Web Designer & Developer Bundle for just $29—over 95% off for a limited time.Prices are subject to change. Read the rest

Costing just on Amazon, this small sewing kit contains everything you need to make minor repairs to clothing. The only other thing you'll need is access to YouTube, so you can learn how to sew on a button, mend a tear, or repair a small hole. Read the rest

A woman was taken into protective custody for pretending she was experiencing a breathing problem in order to get a bigger seat on an American Airlines flight from Pensacola to Miami, reports NBC News.The pilot decided to turn the plan around and landed in Pensacola. When the plane landed, the woman refused to get off and admitted she'd lied. Everyone else on the plane deboarded, and the woman remained as the sole passenger. Authorities eventually talked her into leaving. Once she exited, she was taken into protective custody.From NBC News:"American Eagle 3508 returned to Pensacola due to a passenger who requested medical assistance," American Airlines said in a statement to NBC News on Friday. "The flight took off at 5:43 a.m. and landed back at Pensacola at 6:26 a.m. and taxied to the gate. All [passengers] deplaned normally at the gate through the main boarding door and onto the jet bridge. The passenger was subsequently removed by law enforcement and medical personnel, and the flight took off again at 7:41 a.m."Photo by Patrick Cardinal - originally posted to Flickr as American Airlines Boeing 737-800, CC BY 2.0, Link Read the rest

Last March, game devs Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott gave a presentation at the Game Developers Conference called "1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality in which they described how their own dissatisfaction with falling revenues from mobile app stores led them to muse about bulk-creating crappy apps and seeing if they could get paid.They hit on the idea of churning out thousands of near-identical slot-machine apps, using a basic template they bought for $15; they then proceeded to automate the mass-production of more than 1,500 different slot machine games with every conceivable theme, from "tasteful sideboob" (removed from Google's app store) to "dolphins" and "canteloupe." Mining Google Trends for new themes, they began to target trends.The whole thing made an improbable amount of money and generated investment offers. Eventually they got ditched by their ad provider and decided to walk away, but leave the automated system running. They document how it took years to fail.The guys are very funny and clearly bemused and shocked by how well their crackpot idea worked. I love that they used nothing but terrible stock art for their slides. Quality is overrated. Disheartened by all of the noise in the mobile ecosystem, speakers Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott set out to determine the lowest bar for success on App Stores. They flooded the market with over 1,500 auto-generated slot machine games, got 1.6 million installs, made money (!!), received some very strange emails, made it big in Iran, and garnered a stupefying number of good reviews on Google Play. Read the rest

3D printing is a dumpster fire of stupid, obvious patents, but thankfully many of these are expiring; this year, the stupid patent on putting sides on a 3D printer (extrusion printers are very sensitive to errant breezes and just a puff of wind can ruin a print that took hours, just minutes before it completes).Now that the stupid patent has expired, the 3D printing world is tinkering with many possible designs for cases for 3D printers. Among them is Jay Doscher, a 3D printing enthusiast who's trying to figure out how to do 3DP at scale. Doscher writes, "I was really inspired last year with Doctorow's book, Walkaway and it has had me thinking differently about making ever since. Part of that progression is this project- learning how to do small scale fabrication. I used waterjet parts, but many parts are 3D printed, and all of the designs are licensed under Creative Commons. I hope you like it!"Learning to Scale - Rapid Manufacturing with Enclosures [Jay Doscher/Back7](Thanks, Jay!) Read the rest

For years, rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously) has been scanning and posting proprietary elements of the law, such as standard annotations or building and safety codes developed by outside parties and then incorporated into legislation, on the theory that if you are expected to follow the law, you must be able to read, write and share that law.Along the way, Malamud has attracted numerous lawsuits from standards development organizations, publishers, national governments and state governments. Notably, the State of Georgia sued Malamud over his free publication of "The Official Code of Georgia Annotated," which is, as the name implies, the state's official version of its own laws. Malamud won on appeal and when the case headed to the Supreme Court, legal scholars, lawyers and law students lined up to sign an amicus brief on his behalf.Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Malamud's case. Gorsuch was skeptical of Georgia's claim that paywalling the law was necessary or proportionate, and the justices overall were not overly generous to Georgia's arguments that Lexisnexis's unpaywalled, unannotated version of the law (which is not the official version and also warns readers that it might be out of date) can substitute for the state's official laws.The annotations in the annotated code summarize relevant judgments that are necessary to interpret the laws. Georgia does not publish an official, un-annotated version of its laws. However, it's not a slam dunk. Breyer, Sottomayor and Kavanaugh were all tough on Malamud's lawyer.The court is expected to rule by late June. Read the rest

New flash: Trump has been caught lying. Currently in the U.K., Trump (a pal of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein) was asked about Prince Andrew (another pal of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein), and he replied: “I don’t know Prince Andrew, but it’s a tough story, it’s a very tough story.”NY Magazine has three photos of Trump with Andrew dating back to 2000.The Washington Post reports that Trump and Prince Andrew had a breakfast meeting in June:Trump says he doesn’t know Britain’s Prince Andrew.They had a breakfast meeting in June. https://t.co/iuEsrHbUKx pic.twitter.com/Gxr2NdTB1x— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 3, 2019The Daily Beast also has numerous photos of Trump and the Prince:Trump denies knowing Prince Andrew, despite numerous photos of them together including with Jeffrey Epstein https://t.co/M2G02kJv7Q— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 3, 2019Trump just said "I don't know Prince Andrew, but that's a tough story, it's a very tough story, I don't know"Here he is not knowing him at Westminster Abbey, taking a nice stroll on a separate occasion he didn't know him and finally not knowing him whilst partying with Epstein. pic.twitter.com/wpVoVdfwBn— James Felton (@JimMFelton) December 3, 2019Image of Prince Andrew: By Northern Ireland Office - https://www.flickr.com/photos/niogovuk/14649728080/, CC BY 2.0, Link. Image of Trump: By Shealah Craighead - White House, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

When Yale research psyhcologist Irving Janis coined the term "groupthink" in 1972, he identified eight symptoms of the pathology: the "illusion of invulnerability"; a "belief in the inherent morality of the group"; "collective rationalization"; "out-group stereotypes"; "self-censorship"; the "illusion of unanimity"; "direct pressure on dissenters" and "self-appointed mindguards."The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is one of the most studied disasters in history; University of Washington psych prof Jacob Leonesio uses it as a way to illustrate groupthink for his intro to psych course in a neat little explanation that shows how groupthink led the Challenger team to launch a spacecraft that many of them knew was not safe to launch.6. Illusion of Unanimity. NASA managers perpetuated the fiction that everyone was fully in accord on the launch recommendation. They admitted to the presidential commission that they didn’t report Thiokol’s on-again/off-again hesitancy with their superiors. As often happens in such cases, the flight readiness review team interpreted silence as agreement.7. Direct Pressure on Dissenters. Thiokol engineers felt pressure from two directions to reverse their ‘‘no-go" recommendation. NASA managers had already postponed the launch three times and were fearful the American public would regard the agency as inept. Undoubtedly that strain triggered Hardy’s retort that he was ‘‘appalled" at Thiokol’s recommendation. Similarly, the company’s management was fearful of losing future NASA contracts. When they went off-line for their caucus, Thiokol’s senior vice president urged Roger Lund, vice president of engineering, to ‘‘take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat."8. Read the rest

Retired journalist John Richard's founded the Apostrophe Protection Society in 2001, its mission to convince people that apostrophe's denote missing letter's and possession, but never plurals. Now Richard's is 96 and he's shutting down the society, saying that "fewer organisation's and individual's are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English Language...the ignorance and lazines's present in modern times have won."For clarity: all the extraneous apostrophes in this post are my own, not Richards's'."Instead, within a month of my plaint appearing in a national newspaper, I received over 500 letters of support, not only from all corners of the United Kingdom, but also from America, Australia, France, Sweden, Hong Kong and Canada." Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won' [Tim Baker/Evening Standard](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: William Murphy, CC BY-SA, cropped) Read the rest

In 1951 the United States government passed a law requiring all men between the ages of 18 to 26 to register for the draft. During the Korean War (1950-1953) 80,000 men attempted to dodge the draft. During the Vietnam War (1955 - 1975) over 570,000 men dodged the draft, 210,000 of them were formally accused, and 3,250 were imprisoned. (Side note, 58,000 US soldiers died in the Vietnam War, over 1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters died, and an estimated 2 million civilians died.)This video looks at some of the ways men avoided the draft. They include moving to Canada, failing physical exams on purpose, becoming missionaries, or, as claimed in a 1977 interview with alt-right demigod Ted Nugent, taking drugs, acting insane, and urinating and defecating on himself before appearing for his examination (Nugent later said lied in the interview).Image by: Lance Cpl. Danielle Prentice. Public Domain Read the rest

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) (previously) is an alternative to neoclassical economics that holds that sovereign states that issue their own currency can't default on debts denominated in that currency (if you are the sole source of Canadian dollars and all your debts are in Canadian dollars, you can always pay those debts), and that deficit spending is normal (every dollar in circulation was "deficit spent," since the money to pay taxes enters the economy when the government spends it into existence), and that inflation isn't a mere function of government spending -- but rather, inflation occurs when governments and the private sector are bidding against each other for the same goods and services.A more nuanced take on MMT spending is that some government spending improves the ratio of debt to GDP -- because the spending increases overall economic growth -- and some of it worsens that ratio. Governments can also change that ratio through taxation -- raising and lowering taxes changes the purchasing power of the private sector (at the top brackets, taxation can reduce the power of the super-rich to buy lobbyists and make campaign contributions that would allow them to distort national policy to serve their narrow interests).Writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Michael Pettis describes the outcome of his informal Peking University debt seminar on MMT, which evaluated the effects of policies that give to the rich, policies that give to the poor, and policies that increase infrastructure investment. Pettis and his students classify the outcomes of different starting conditions as "MMT Hell" (runaway inflation) or "MMT Heaven" ("conditions under which there are no intrinsic constraints on government spending"). Read the rest

Breaking news; she's reportedly just told her staff on a campaign call-in: "Kamala Harris is dropping out of the presidential race, she told staff on a call Tuesday. She will release a video momentarily announcing her plans," reports Politico's Christopher Cadelago. Read the rest

Boing BoingHere's a guide to the charities the Boingers support in our own annual giving. Please add the causes and charities you give to in the forums!Friends of the Merril CollectionI'm on the board of the charity that fundraises for Toronto's Merril Collection, a part of the Toronto Public Library system that is also the world's largest public collection of science fiction, fantasy and related works (they archive my papers). Since its founding by Judith Merril, the Merril Collection has been a hub for creators, fans, and scholars. I wouldn't be a writer today if not for the guidance of its Writer in Residence when I was a kid. —CDThe Tor ProjectThe Tor anonymity and privacy tools are vital to resistance struggles around the world, a cooperative network that provides a high degree of security from scrutiny for people who have reasons to fear the powers that be. From our early hominid ancestors until about ten years ago, humans didn't leave behind an exhaust-trail of personally identifying information as they navigated the world -- Tor restores that balance. —CDPlanned ParenthoodBecause we deserve health care, including reproductive, gender, and sexual health care. Because access to birth control and safe abortion is a human right. Because Trump's regime wants to destroy all of this. —XJSoftware Freedom Conservancy Software Freedom Conservancy does the important, boring, esoteric work of keeping the internet from tearing itself to pieces, playing host organization to free software projects like Git, Selenium and Samba (to name just three). Read the rest

The Atlantic reviews the state of Tumblr, where adult material was banned by new corporate owners, traffic collapsed, and the remains were sold for a pittance to Automattic, the company behind WordPress. It is down but far from out, Kaitlin Tiffany reports, with vibrant communities still thriving. On one hand...The biggest thing that’s changed [this year] is an overall lack of content with diverse and mature themes,” Cat Frazier, creator of the popular Tumblr Animated Text, writes to me in an email. “I never followed porn accounts, but many of the people I followed were either deleted or left the platform out of frustration last year. That's left a noticeable gap. In fact a month ago I was scrolling through my followed accounts and about 100 of them hadn't uploaded since the ban.”... however ....In late January, the “Shaggy’s Power” meme boomed. A transplant from Reddit, it featured screenshots of Matthew Lillard, the actor who played Shaggy in the 2002 live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo, and captions portraying him as a god-like figure with a range of mysterious powers, swinging wildly between indiscriminate violence and pure benevolence. “You are reading this now because I compel you to,” the edited subtitle text on one still of Lillard reads. “You are never free.” (“I have no idea what the heart of it is,” Brennan says. “I think it’s just absurdist.”) It eventually expanded to include other actors from the movie, also praising Shaggy’s powers, and then to include Tumblr itself, in a discussion of the meta horror of a divine meme springing forth from seemingly nowhere. Read the rest

The New York Post reports Indiana police are on the lookout for Donald Murray, 38, after he allegedly fled officers in his car when they tried to pull him over for driving without turning on the car's exterior lights at night. Read the rest

Hubert Horan (previously) is a transport industry analyst who has written more than 20 essays for Naked Capitalism as well as two peer-reviewed scholarly articles explaining why Uber is a "bezzle" -- that is, a scam that can't possibly ever make money, no matter how much it preys on drivers, ignores passenger safety, and destroys safe, regulated taxi businesses. Harry "Mr Burns" Shearer interviewed Horan (MP3) on the latest episode of his radio show, Le Show. It's a fantastic interview that quickly gets to the meat of Horan's critique of Uber, and then digs into both the ridiculous defenses that Uber and its defenders mount of its possible sustainability, and the social circumstances that allowed Uber to bezzle $21b from its investors in just a few years, while still attracting more investors. (Image: Tarcil, CC BY-SA, modified) (via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Chrome's incognito mode is useful if you don't want your browsing history saved to your account, don't want websites to access your cookies, or if you want to troubleshoot your browser. But it doesn't do much to protect your privacy. Your ISP can see what websites you visit, and services like Twitter can figure out who you are even without cookies.From Tech Talks:The easiest way for web applications to track users is to use cookies. But it is not the only way they can track you. Other bits of information can point to your device. For instance, I’ve seen some users use the Incognito window to browse Twitter, thinking that it will preserve their privacy and hide their identity. The premise is, since Incognito doesn’t carry over their browser cookies, Twitter won’t be able to associate their activity to their account.But Twitter also keeps track of IP address, device type, device ID and browser type and version. Technically, it will be able to use all those factors to link your activity to your account. Facebook goes further and even tracks your activity across other websites when you’re not logged in to your account. Read the rest

Last week, just before everything shut down for Thanksgiving, the Republican-appointed Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina handed $2.5m to the white nationalist Sons of Confederate Veterans, claiming it would settle a lawsuit over the removal of a Confederate "Silent Sam" statue from campus -- but as local litigator T Greg Doucette sleuthed out, the lawsuit was filed after the governors voted the settlement, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans appeared to have no standing to sue, as it wasn't their statue, and even if it was, the university would not face legal liability for its students removing it.After the holiday weekend, Doucette went to the courthouse and scanned all the documents about the giveaway, including a "victory letter" sent by SOCV "commander" Kevin Stone to his followers, which Stone then had Dropbox remove from the internet by falsely claiming copyright infringement.Now, Doucette has published the letter to Twitter, and it's easy to see why Stone didn't want it in the public eye. In addition to being peevish, longwinded, petty and sectarian, the letter makes it clear that the Sons of Confederate Veterans and UNC's Board of Governors knew that they wouldn't have standing to sue the university over the Silent Sam statue. It also makes it clear that attempts to push legislation to allow SOCV to sue the university were dead on arrival, that the objective of the litigation was to hurt UNC to punish it for failing to defend white nationalism, and that UNC President Bill Roper and UNC General Counsel Tom Shanahan engineered the payout, greasing it through the Board of Governors. Read the rest

In The Surprising Breadth of Harbingers of Failure (Sci-Hub mirror), a trio of economists and business-school profs build on a 2015 Journal of Marketing Research paper that claimed that some households' purchasing preferences are a reliable indicator of which products will fail -- that is, if households in a certain ZIP code like a product, it will probably not succeed. The original paper calls these "harbinger households."In the new paper, the researchers consider very large data-sets on consumer goods and fashion purchasing, house-buying, and political donations, to examine whether being a "harbinger household" correlates to other predictors of failure, and find that these households are also likely to buy real-estate that makes lower profits (or generates larger losses) than nearby properties; they are likely to buy fashion and consumer goods that get discontinued due to lackluster sales; and they are more likely to donate to losing politicians' campaigns than winners.The researchers also claim that harbinger households voluntarily cluster: that when a harbinger household moves, it is likely that it will move to another habringer ZIP code (and nonhabringers move to nonhabringer households). Moreover, harbingers don't appear to learn their preferences from one another -- a nonhabringer household that locates in a harbinger ZIP code doesn't alter its purchasing and political contributions to "loser" products and candidates. Harbinger households tend to be white, suburban and headed by older, less-educated single parents. They tend to make above-average use of coupons, and the coupons they use have above-average values. The researchers don't claim a causal relationship between these different factors -- donating to losing political candidates doesn't make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, for example -- but rather speculate that there is an "unobserved intervening variable" that explains both factors. Read the rest

I enjoyed watching this video by a fellow, who goes by the name of Big Clive, which explains what basic electronic components (resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors) do and how they do it.Image: YouTube Read the rest

On November 13, noted vampire capitalist Peter Thiel gave a speech to donors at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research conservative think-tank on "The End of the Computer Age." Over the course of 40 minutes, he covered a lot of topics—some of which were at least provocative, some of them which sounded like they were ripped straight out of a Gavin Belson speech on Silicon Valley.There was a, um, interesting reflection on the shortcomings of Margaret Thatcher's regime:I sort of think of Margaret Thatcher's biggest mistake was she thought that in the late '70s that embracing the EU would be a way to crush the unions in the UK.An interesting (accidental?) critique of the Electoral College system:In a democracy if you have sort of majority vote, that's good. If you have a supermajority, that's even better. So if you got 51%, you're probably right. If you get 70%, you're even more right. On the other hand, if you get 99.99% of the voters, you're sort of in North Korea. [laughter]The "greatest lie" Obama ever told (which is, he notes, not about Iraq or healthcare):"Just because it's not some name-brand, famous, fancy school, doesn't mean that you're not going to get a great education there." So let's parse that two lies. First off, if it isn't a name-brand, famous, fancy school, you're not going to get a great education. You're just going to get a diploma that's a dunce hat in disguise. If it is a name-brand, famous, fancy school, you probably also won't get an education. Read the rest

The Literary Review in the UK has given out a Bad Sex in Fiction Award since 1993. It's a coveted literary recognition indeed; even Morrissey took the prize home in 2015. While there are some valid critiques about the very existence of the thing— TD Storm at LitHub has argued that the award tends to conflate the author with the narrator, making it "entirely deaf to intent and tone and a passage’s relation to the larger narrative—I find it to be a delightful thing to read aloud with friends and family, particularly after a night of drinking.(For some reason, my family disagrees, but whatever.)Twitter user Yves Peirsman had the brilliant idea to take this a step further. He ran this year's nominated passages through the Write with Transformer AI Neural Network, just to see what kind of steamy computer action it would come up with:@Lit_Review has published this year’s shortlist for its #BadSex in Fiction award. I used @huggingface's "write with transformer" app to find out if #artificialintelligence would do better. The results are sometimes delightful, sometimes disturbing, always original. #deeplearning pic.twitter.com/yBSZyFZTLt— Yves Peirsman (@yvespeirsman) November 29, 2019I'm genuinely impressed that the computer was able to parse the innuendo and come up with something like "His cock was so hard that it was touching her lips," even when there were no genitals explicitly mentioned in the source passage.This year's nominees were announced on Wednesday, November 27, with the final award given out on Monday, December 2—but when it comes to bad sex writing, we're all winners in the end. Read the rest

Stoner icon Snoop Dogg has teamed up with Rockabye Baby! to bring the world baby-friendly instrumental interpretations of his most popular hits, including "Gin and Juice" and "Drop It Like It's Hot." "Lullaby Renditions of Snoop Dogg" drops December 6 but you can listen to it now online.(Soap Plant WACKO) Read the rest

In Control clothing offeres these computer glitch overalls, perfect for a vaporwave Christmas. [h/t Jeff] Read the rest

Wired takes a long look at the rapid progress in oral health in the 20th century from this:In 1899, the British Army was recruiting troops to fight in the Boer War and recruiters were appalled at the health of the men who were turning up. They were stunted, malnourished and had appalling teeth. “It became a national scandal,” Bairsto says. “No one was cleaning their teeth. Many couldn’t chew their food.”to Philips selling a $270 electronic toothbrush (pictured above). Are electronic toothbrushes any better than a mundane brush? Put away your skepticism, Wired says:All that said, the Cochrane reviews are pretty clear. They looked at plaque buildup and gingivitis (gum disease), finding that electric toothbrushes were, on average, more effective than manual ones. The effects were real. An average 11 per cent reduction in the degree of plaque buildup, in the short term, and a 21 per cent over three months term; a six per cent or 11 per cent reduction in gingivitis, depending on how you measure it. Refreshing news! But there's still cause to be skeptical:The question is where to go next. Apps that track behaviour and sensors that check you’ve brushed every tooth are already in place; how much more high-tech can toothbrushes get? How much more advantage can be squeezed from them?One possibility is raising the stakes. There have been hints that periodontal disease is linked to wider health problems – sufferers are more susceptible to stroke, to heart attacks, to blocked arteries, to high blood pressure, and to cancer. Read the rest

I enjoyed Melania Trump's disquieting 2019 Christmas video, featuring her pacing alone around the symmetrical expanses of the executive mansion, inspecting its coldly festive ornaments. But it needed a certain je ne sais quoi; which is to say Jocelyn Pook's soundtrack to Eyes Wide Shut. Read the rest

It's gratifying to see the correct takes pouring in that Peloton's new bicycle advertisement is deeply disturbing. I think it looks like an ARG advertisement for HBO's Westworld series, where everyone in the house is a host.Vice:tell me this shit isn’t wildly sinister. Her grim motivation that pushes her to drag herself out of bed combined with exclaiming at the camera how blatantly, inexplicably nervous the Peloton makes her paint a bleak portrait of a woman in the thrall of a machine designed to erode her spirit as it sculpts her quads.AVClub:He smiles and she looks at him with the sort an expression that manages to convey duty and fear, mixed with a dash of Stockholm Syndrome, all at once.Decider:Here’s what I do know. This commercial is not the Peloton’s fault. Oh no, you may think this ad is about how a Peloton coaxed a woman into madness. I’m here to tell you this is a false read. As someone who jokes that she loved Midsommar so much she joined the cult of cycling clubs this year, I can tell you that cycling doesn’t make you crazy. Much like Captain America’s supersoldier serum, it just amplifies whatever crazy you already have. For me, that’s making jokes about Midsommar whenever possible. For this woman, that’s talking to no one on her iPhone, her eyes full of constant dread, and obsessively filming her every workout just so she and her husband can watch it together. Read the rest

As a way to promote a movies and other projects, Vanity Fair sometimes puts celebrities through a jokey lie detector test (see: Jennifer Lawrence). The polygraph itself is real but the questions are humorous. This time Big Bird is in the hot seat and he gets grilled on on all sort of things by the interviewer and a few of his Muppet pals. In short, we learn the 8-foot-tall Sesame Street icon cannot lie.Which Bird is better at basketball? Big Bird or Larry Bird? Does he ever Google himself? Is Oscar the Grouch a good neighbor? Who is Big Bird's best friend? Does Big Bird have it in him to tell a lie?Sesame Street is celebrating its 50th anniversary of helping kids everywhere grow up smarter, stronger and kinder. Sesame Street’s 50th season is currently running on HBO and will premiere on PBS in the summer of 2020.(The Awesomer)screengrab via Vanity Fair Read the rest

In 1961, Goya's famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington went missing from London's National Gallery. The case went unsolved for four years before someone unexpectedly came forward to confess to the heist. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe one of the greatest art thefts in British history and the surprising twists that followed.We'll also discover Seward's real folly and puzzle over a man's motherhood.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

T. Greg Doucette is the North Carolina litigator who sleuthed out the incredible, bizarre details of the decision of the University of North Carolina's Republican-appointed governors to hand a group of white nationalists $2.5m to build a Confederacy museum.Doucette visited the Orange County Courthouse and scanned 123 pages' worth of documents related to the "lawsuit" that resulted in the UNC payout, including a "victory statement" by Kevin Stone, who styles himself "commander" of the white nationalist group Sons of Confederate Veterans, who received the $2.5m windfall from the university.But that victory statement is not available now, because Stone and the Sons of Confederate Veterans sent a DMCA notice to Dropbox, demanding that the document be removed on the grounds that it was a copyright violation, despite the document being part of a public court record.Doucette sounds like he's ready to fight.(I am a visiting professor of practice at UNC's School of Information and Library Science)Looks like the Grand Wizard of the Sons of Confederate Veterans *really* did not like me sharing his victory statementThey filed a DMCA complaint against me w/ Dropbox 🤣Any copyright attorneys willing to share with me how I can resolve this? Maybe a lawsuit against the SCV? pic.twitter.com/dENqCmPZMW— T. Greg "#SilentSham" Doucette (@greg_doucette) December 2, 2019 Read the rest

Many people turn to CBD as an all-natural remedy for aches, pains, anxiety, insomnia, and more. You can take the extract in many forms, but the products can be expensive. Now is a good time to stock up, with prices falling on a wide variety of CBD-infused products.. This Cyber Monday, you can save an extra 20% on everything below when you use the discount code CMSAVE20.Holiday CBD Premium GummiesEach containing 10mg of high-quality CBD from organic hemp, these gummies are delicious and powerful. Tested by a third-party lab, they contain no THC — so you won’t feel any psychoactive effects.MSRP: $39.99 Sale Price: $32Price with CMSAVE20 code: $25.60CBD Gummies 500mgAnother tasty option, these colorful gummies are made with CBD hemp isolate that is 99.99% grown in the USA. The pack contains sour strawberry, sour apple, sour tutti-frutti, and sour blue raspberry flavors, with 25mg of CBD per rainbow belt.MSRP: $40Sale Price: $29.99Price with CMSAVE20 code: $23.99FOCUS 750mg Broad Spectrum CBD Tincture + PeppermintThis tincture is made with hemp that is farmed, extracted, formulated and packaged in Colorado. Along with CBD, it delivers a refreshing hit of peppermint to provide an additional punch. MSRP: $90Sale Price: $71.99Price with CMSAVE20 code: $57.59FOMO Bones CBD Dog TreatsIf you experience good things with CBD, it's only natural to want the same for your pet. These tasty treats deliver a safe dose, along with passion flower, L-Tryptophan, valerian, and chamomile to keep your pupper calm and happy. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I've started a 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.I don’t remember how we decided exactly to throw a Communist party. It had been a running joke all through senior year, whenever the obvious divisions between the semi-zottas and the rest of us came too close to the surface at Burbank High: “Have fun at Stanford, come drink with us at the Communist parties when you’re back on break.”The semi-zottas were mostly white, with some Asians—not the brown kind—for spice. The non-zottas were brown and black, and we were on our way out. Out of Burbank High, out of Burbank, too. Our parents had lucked into lottery tickets, buying houses in Burbank back when they were only ridiculously expensive. Now they were crazy. We’d be the last generation of brown kids to go to Burbank High because the instant we graduated, our parents were going to sell and use the money to go somewhere cheaper, and the leftovers would let us all take a couple of mid-range MOOCs from a Big Ten university to round out our community college distance-ed degrees. Read the rest

You may remember I recently blogged about Danny Elfman's new "music for film" MasterClass (which launched on Halloween, naturally). A day or so after it posted I got an email from someone on his team asking if I wanted to interview him. My response, "Uh, who could say no to that...?!" I soon found myself Skyping with the founder of Oingo Boingo, the father of the Simpsons' theme, and one of the most prolific film composers of all time — Happy Mutant extraordinaire, Mr. Danny Elfman.Here's what we chatted about:Rusty: Hi there, Danny. I'm thrilled to speak with you today.Danny: Hello, thank you.Rusty: I wanted to share a couple of things we have in common real quick before we get into it. One... we're both redheads.Danny: I was just going to say that. That's got to be the first thing.Rusty: Right? Well, it's obvious. Two... we both collect strange and unusual objects.Danny: Ooh...Rusty: Just saw an article about your strange and unusual collection and they shared a picture of you with your creepy ventriloquist dummy.Danny: Buddy!Rusty: Yeah, Buddy! Well, I wanted to tell you, you must know Archie McPhee...Danny: Yeah.Rusty: So, a couple of years ago, they made my likeness into a product. I'm a creepy ventriloquist dummy toy, a finger puppet.Danny: Really...?!Rusty: Yes.Danny: Wow... Oh my god, that's so cool. What an honor. You should be honored.Rusty: Oh I am.Danny: Wow. Well, you have to go look at my nine episodes of "Danny and Buddy."Rusty: Oh my gosh, yes, ok. Read the rest

From 2013, but new to me, Max Gladstone makes some close observations regarding the odd world of Episodes 1-6. The title card tells us that the story takes place long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. So the characters aren't actually human or even necessarily from a human-like society, they're just played by human actors. What can we learn about the creatures true nature from studying the first six movies?I think a few important context clues present a very different picture of the dominant race of the Original Trilogy.Gender is the most important clue. The Original Trilogy has a shortage of women when considered by the standards of a two-sexed mammalian species. Leia is the most prominent female, and the only one to feature in all three movies. Aunt Beru and Mon Mothma also have named speaking roles. Aside from these three, I can’t think of another definitely-female-definitely-‘human’ in the series. In RotJ Leia describes her mother, who is obviously a queen. These females all possess at least local political and social authority.Family is a second important clue—or, rather, the absence of family. With one notable exception, people in the series don’t talk much about parentage. No non-Force sensitive male ever describes his family, if I recall correctly. Han, Lando, Wedge, Biggs, Tarkin, Dodonna, and so forth, all might as well have sprung from the brows of their ships. In six+hours of film about war, I would expect to see someone to drop at least a single reference to parents of some sort. Read the rest

Way back in 1984, Christian rock band Prodigal hid a Commodore 64 program on their "Electric Eye" album. The 35-year-old Easter egg, which I won't spoil for you, was recently unlocked by YouTuber 8-Bit Show And Tell.The son of band's lead singer, Dan Boldman, left this fun comment, "Loyd Boldman, the lead singer of Prodigal, was my dad & I thank you so much for doing this! This is the first time I’ve ever actually seen somebody use this program! I’ve been hearing about it since I was a kid!"(Coudal Partners)screenshot via 8-Bit Show and Tell Read the rest

Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play is meant to be provocative—certainly moreso than most other Broadway productions that transfer from Off Broadway theatres. The play itself is about a group of interracial couples who go to a kind of psychosexual couples' therapy that involves BDSM, reflecting Antebellum master-slave dynamics. During previews, the show even hosted a "Black Out," or a dedicated performance for black audiences, so they can enjoy and discuss the play without worrying about the reactions of white people around them.As such, it's not surprising that it might make some white people (and others) uncomfortable; that is, after all, the purpose of provocative art. But it reached a head after the Friday night performance on November 29 during a post-show talkback hosted by the playwright:Just saw the amazing @SlavePlayBway by @jeremyoharris after which a white audience member jumped up and accused him of being “racist against white people.” The confrontation proceeded from there. Clips in this thread. #slaveplay pic.twitter.com/KiXbo0rdcC— Adam B. Kushner (@AdamBKushner) November 30, 2019Imma tell my kids this was The Blind Side pic.twitter.com/lAbc9D8KuP— Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris) November 30, 2019Apparently, the unnamed woman missed the whole part of the play about white people taking up space and centering things around themselves. She yelled at Harris for—in her words—"being told as a single woman I'm not good enough to fucking raise [my own children]," and asked, "How the fuck am I not a fucking marginalized member of this goddamn society?"Yikes. Read the rest

A Star Wars fan in hospice is not expected to live long enough to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker when it is released in theaters on December. But a representative from Disney went to Rowans Hospice in England with a laptop containing the movie and showed it to the patient.The hospice staff also held a Star Wars themed party for the man and his family. "We were joined by Stormtroopers, wookies and droids and a brilliant time was had by all," tweeted a staffer.On Wednesday we threw a Star Wars themed party for the patient and his family. We were joined by Stormtroopers, wookies and droids and a brilliant time was had by all pic.twitter.com/SDAoUDIsXq— Rowans Hospice (@RowansHospice) November 29, 2019Image: Rowan's Hospice[via Neatorama] Read the rest