Boing Boing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aubry and Kale Walch run a vegan specialty food shop, called The Herbivorous Butcher in Northeast Minneapolis. In 2017 they applied to trademark the term "Vegan Butcher" with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Their application was denied, reports Business Journal. The USPTO told the Walches that the term was ineligible for a trademark because it was “merely descriptive.” But when Nestlé later applied to trademark the same term, the USPTO granted it to them.The Walches are challenging the decision. According to Business Journal, they "say they're trying to either get to keep using the phrase or to keep it in the public domain so that any business can use it. The case is entering the discovery phase and will go before an administrative panel next."Image: The Herbivorous Butcher website Read the rest

"It’s a custom-molded silicone-body bong with a glass bowl and downstem. The squeaker is the same type used in standard squeaky chickens." It squeaks "on every rip." It's from MSCHF. Read the rest

John Schnatter, the founder and ex-CEO of Papa John's pizza, resigned in 2017 when he admitted to using the N-word on a conference call. Now he's on TV complaining about the quality of the pizza that still bears his name. "I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days, and it's not the same pizza," he told WDRB News, a Fox affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky.From Business Insider:In the WDRB News interview, Schnatter described his ousting as a "farce." He slammed Papa John's new leaders, including Steve Ritchie, who replaced him as CEO, and the board members Olivia Kirtley and Mark Shapiro, both of whom Schnatter said "should be in jail.""They stole the company, and now they've destroyed the company," Schnatter said.Schnatter told WDRB News that he believes the truth about his ousting has yet to emerge."The day of reckoning will come," Schnatter said.pic.twitter.com/UbCAv0VoN5— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) November 26, 2019 Image: WDRB News video screengrab Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my May, 2018 Locus column, "The Engagement-Maximization Presidency," where I propose a theory to explain the political phenomenon of Donald Trump: we live in a world in which communications platforms amplify anything that gets “engagement” and provides feedback on just how much your message has been amplified so you can tune and re-tune for maximum amplification. Peter Watts’s 2002 novel Maelstrom illustrates a beautiful, terrifying example of this, in which a mindless, self-modifying computer virus turns itself into a chatbot that impersonates patient zero in a world-destroying pandemic; even though the virus doesn’t understand what it’s doing or how it’s doing it, it’s able to use feedback to refine its strategies, gaining control over more resources with which to try more strategies. It’s a powerful metaphor for the kind of cold reading we see Trump engaging in at his rallies, and for the presidency itself. I think it also explains why getting Trump of Twitter is impossible: it’s his primary feedback tool, and without it, he wouldn’t know what kinds of rhetoric to double down on and what to quietly sideline. Maelstrom is concerned with a pandemic that is started by its protago­nist, Lenie Clark, who returns from a deep ocean rift bearing an ancient, devastating pathogen that burns its way through the human race, felling people by the millions. As Clark walks across the world on a mission of her own, her presence in a message or news story becomes a signal of the utmost urgency. Read the rest

For more than a decade, Britons have relied on Mysociety's Theyworkforyou to find out who represents them in Parliament (as well as the regional assemblies), find out what those people are doing and saying, and to get in touch with their lawmakers and their fellow constituents to hold them to account.Theyworkforyou was revolutionary when it launched and remains revolutionary today -- it's literally the best civic/political engagement tool I've ever seen, and there has never been a time when Britons needed a tool like this more. Today, more than 300,000 people rely on Theyworkforyou every month. The project is a nonprofit and relies on small-money, individual donations to sustain it.Now, the Mysociety team is planning a heavy year to come for Theyworkforyou, including the heavy post-election work of setting up new MP profiles, making it easier to show when an MP changes parties (suddenly much more common!), more explanatory detail on votes, and a ton of behind-the-scenes maintenance. They're looking for £25,000, and as of this writing they've got about £5,000 with 23 days to go. I just chipped in.As an independent service, TheyWorkForYou can do things the official UK Parliament site can't or won't. For example:* MP voting records summaries are one of the most used features on TheyWorkForYou – these are unlikely to ever be provided by an official service, as it requires manual reviewing and categorising of votes.* Email alerts, so you don’t have to come to the site to see what your MP is saying or how they voted, or when a subject you’re interested is mentioned: it drops straight into your email inbox instead. Read the rest

In early November, the New York Times published an article called "I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score. Now You Can Get Yours, Too." Naturally, this struck my curiosity, and I decide to try and navigate the various labyrinthine processes to try and find out what kind of information the conglomerates have on me, and how I can potentially get rid of it.One of the main databrokers featured in the article is a company named Sift. They're reportedly easy enough to get your information from, and they're said to have a lot of it, too. I sent in my initial request, and they wrote back, saying they just needed to confirm my identity. Makes sense, I guess. I clicked the link, and they asked me to upload a photo of my Driver's License and scan the barcode on the back. Okay, fine; so I did it.The next step required me to confirm my identity with a selfie. I assume that I am giving them more data to feed their facial recognition algorithms, which in turn will be sold to other companies to use for who-knows-it. But again, I went along with it. I took my hat off, smoothed out my greasy bedhead, and took a selfie:Notice that little red alert at the bottom of the screen: "Make sure you are looking joyful or happy and try again."I think I look pretty "joyful" here, all things considered. Besides, I'm not smiling in my driver's license photo; in fact, I was specifically told not to smile. Read the rest

The Pursuit of Capyness [Amazon] is a coloring book featuring capybaras, the large and eminently peaceable rodents often observed just chilling, occasionally in hot tubs. The book is by psychiatrist John Terry, who knows what you need right now. Which is capybaras. To color in. There are more than 50 within, with lots of capybara facts, and a range of complexity to make it fun for kids and adults alike. Here's an inteview with Terry:Capybaras, in general, but especially on the internet, are associated with being very tolerant. There are all those photos of other animals hanging out and sitting on them. Their reputation is that they get along with everyone, making the emissaries of this really nice message.There was a day that was a particularly rough day in the world of news, and a lot of negativity online. In response to it all, I was compelled to post this photo of a capybara stretching, and the response to the photo was just unbelievable. I didn’t really expect anyone to notice, but I suppose it was the distraction a lot of people needed because it gained so many likes and shares. Moreover, it's for a good cause:What are some examples of how funds from this book will be used?• Toward a free medical clinic that provides care to 200+ people every Saturday. The clinic was recently featured on national news• Book donations to mental health clinics and shelters; we are currently discussing donating 300+ books to children at a women and children’s shelter• Free services for the uninsured, underinsured, students, and impaired professionals• Consultation to nonprofits serving mental health and primary care causes• Education for health sciences students, pre-meds, and more, with the goal to improve access and investment in our communities in the long-term• During furloughs and disasters, we have seen federal employees and displaced people for free• International disaster relief (such as recent volunteering with the World Central Kitchen after hurricane Durian) Read the rest

Two men were arrested in connection to reports of a "latex-clad gimp" prowling a Somerset village and have been released without charge, say local police. No further shenanigans have since been reported. Somerset Live reports:Terrified locals in Claverham spent the summer in fear after reports that a man clad in a black bodysuit and head mask was approaching people late at night. Residents of the village, near Bristol Airport, spoke of being scared to walk home alone with the latex clad pest on the loose - and various stories emerged about freakish encounters. Some then speculated the area had been plagued by the gimp for years - with police revealing they had already received numerous reports about the odd behaviour.Reminds me of those cosy 1990s-era U.K. comedy-drama mystery shows set in bucolic English villages where everything turns out to be fine, but weird. Quality Lovejoy Christmas Special material here.Previously. Read the rest

The Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Cup was held November 17 in Moscow. Competitors squared off in four events:3x3 Speed Cubing- solving the Rubik’s Cube as fast as possible;Fastest Hand- a challenge that solves the Rubik’s Cube with only one hand;Re-Scramble- pits competitors trying to replicate a computer generated pattern from another cube as fast as possible and;3x3 Female- a track exclusively for female competitors.What an action-packed evening at the Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Cup Finals from the Yota Arena in Moscow 🏆Congrats to our new World Champions Max Park, Philipp Weyer, Ricky Meiler and Juliette Sebastien https://t.co/OqnkbiKBNd#redbullrubikscube@Rubiks_Official pic.twitter.com/sRT2dBrJmz— Red Bull Mind Gamers (@redbullmindgame) November 17, 2019Here are highlights from the event, which was attended by Erno Rubik himself:When your brother beats you by 0.001 sec 🌬⏱Epic battle at our Rubiks Cube World Finals!#redbullrubikscube pic.twitter.com/0i07SBueKG— Red Bull Mind Gamers (@redbullmindgame) November 18, 2019Speed is the ability to take a decision in a few seconds ☝️Some highlights from our Red Bull Rubik's Cube World Cup last weekend!#redbullrubikscube@Rubiks_Official pic.twitter.com/sVyLtljBnl— Red Bull Mind Gamers (@redbullmindgame) November 20, 2019Red Bull has also posted a series of instructional videos on solving Rubik's Cubes: Read the rest

The Sound Archive posted a 1930s-era recording of a conversation in a British pharmacy. The received-pronunciation chatter isn't quite reality--it was recorded to teach English as a foreign language--but it's a stark and amusing insight into English as she was spoke. Madam. Would you like a hard brush, or a medium one?The recording also offers a glimpse of contemporary pharmaceutical products and terminology. Court plaster – as opposed, simply, to plaster or sticking plaster – is particularly intriguing and J.R. Firth’s endorsement of the brand New-skin ('you see what it is from what it says on the label') bears an uncanny resemblance to the famous 1990s TV slogan for Ronseal wood preserver (‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’). Finally, Lilias Armstrong’s use of good morning as a farewell might seem particularly unusual to modern ears.Photo: National Library of Ireland Read the rest

"Craft" is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot these days, but what does it actually mean? Sadly, it's all too easy to fake craftsmanship when looks are all you have to go by.On the other hand, you know from the first cut whether you're handling a good chef's knife or not. And this Damasukasu Japanese 3-Piece Master Chef Hanshu Knife Set is sharp in more ways than one.There's a subtle alternating pattern to the carbon-rich steel that makes these knives worthy of display, but they are definitely made to be used. The steel is nitrogen-cooled to a Rockwell hardness rating of over 62, and the 12-degree edge means smooth cuts every time on a variety of meats and veggies.Each knife is full tang and balanced to exacting standards. And, they're corrosion and rust-resistant to ensure that they'll be your go-to knife set for many meals.The price has dropped on the three-piece set by more than $100 off the previous sale price, but you can take an additional 15% off that final cost by using the online code BFSAVE15.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

In this video, a dad deep-frying a turkey for the first time spots a young family member wandering into the cooking zone, then successfully guides them away from danger. Have a happy and a safe Thanksgiving! Read the rest

Wireless speakers have been out on the market for a while now, and while they're popular, most people get them for convenience. Sure, it's better than listening to music on your phone, but they don't really carry the weight of an audiophile's expectations.The VIZIO SP30-E0 SmartCast™ Crave Go™ Wireless Speaker is definitely out to raise that bar.First and foremost, it delivers on sound. The custom drivers are equipped with DTS Studio Sound™ and TruVolume™, which means (among other things) that they can be cranked up to 88 dB while the bass stays crisp and low.As for the convenience, the SP30-E0 has things covered on multiple fronts. Its battery lets it put out up to 6 hours of continuous music. You can connect to any device with Bluetooth and control it with Google Home or the SmartCast app. Want to create a real home audio system? Set up multiple Crave Go™ speakers in your house and select one or all to play the music you choose.The SP30-E0 is already on sale for more than 65% off retail, but you can take an extra 15% off for Black Friday with the online code BFSAVE15.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

Colin Miller spent four years photographing the apartments of New York's bohemian Mecca the Chelsea Hotel. The fruits of his labor have been collected in a new book, Hotel Chelsea: Living in the Last Bohemian Haven, from The Monacelli Press. Miller and writer Ray Mock document the amazing apartments and lives of some two dozen current residents.In this book, photographer Colin Miller and writer Ray Mock intimately portray the enduring bohemian spirit of the Chelsea Hotel through interviews with nearly two dozen current residents and richly detailed photographs of their unique spaces. As documented in Miller's abundant photographs, these apartments project the quirky decorating sensibilities of urban aesthetes who largely work in film, theater, and the visual arts, resulting in deliriously ornamental spaces with a kitschy edge. Weathering the overall homogenization of New York and the rapid transformation of the hotel itself—amid recent ownership changeovers and tenant lawsuits—residents remain in about seventy apartments while the rest of the units are converted to rentals (and revert to a hotel-stay basis, which had ceased in 2011). The opening image is of photographer Tony Notarberardino’s Hotel Chelsea bedroom.More images and details can be found in this New York Times gallery article.[Photo credit: All photos © Colin Miller/Courtesy of The Monacelli Press. Used with permission.] Read the rest

I recently started using Grandpa Witmer's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer to mix peanut butter quickly and without a mess.The kind of peanut butter I buy from Trader Joe's separates into two layers. The oil is on top, and the solid stuff is on the bottom. It's hard to mix with a knife or spoon. The oil is likely to spill on the counter or splash on my clothes. This hand-powered stirrer does a great job. I bought the model with a lid that fits my brand of peanut butter. The stirring rod slips through a rubber hole in the lid, and when I remove it, the rubber hole squeegees the peanut butter off so there's no mess. For me it was $12 well spent. Read the rest

Kevin Kelly and I host a weekly podcast called Cool Tools. For more than 5 years now we have invited notable and creative people to talk about their favorite tools. This year our Cools Tools colleague Claudia Dawson took the transcripts from the best 150 episodes and pulled text, added images, and laid it all out in a 300-page book titled Four Favorite Tools. It is now available on Amazon in both color and B&W ($12.99) versions. Inside the book are hundreds and hundreds of recommendations for apps, gadgets, and tools. Read the rest

We know that boutique baristas have introduced a lot of mad science when it comes to brewing, but believe us when we say there's nothing like a good pour-over coffee. As brewing methods go, it's not that complex but still not the kind of thing you can do (let's say) at the office before work.Until now. These ingenious Copper Cow Vietnamese Pour Over Coffee Sets come with their own filter and condensed milk, allowing you to get a cup of the good stuff virtually anywhere.What you get is a selection of six kits, each one with a different flavored creamer. Each of five packs in the kit contains a packet of coffee or tea with a filter that unfolds and fits right over your cup. Pour a little hot water, add the creamer and bingo. You've got a delicious Vietnamese-style cup of pour-over coffee.The creamers are a highlight, made with condensed milk and sugar. They run the gamut of Copper Cows most popular flavors: Chai, Churro, Mint, Lavender, Rose or regular Cream.The sets are already priced at 14% off the retail price, but you can take an extra 15% off for our early Black Friday sale by using the discount code BFSAVE15.Don't wait for Black Friday—you can get these top-sellers at deep discounts today! Read the rest

James Scott's 1998 classic Seeing Like a State describes how governments shoehorn the governed into countable, manageable ways of living and working so that they can be counted and steered by state bureaucracies. Political scientist Henry Farrell (previously) discusses how networked authoritarianism is touted by its advocates as a way of resolving the problems of state-like seeing, because if a state spies on people enough and allows machine-learning systems to incorporate their behavior and respond to it, it is possible to create "a more efficient competitor that can beat democracy at its home game" -- providing for everyone's needs better than a democracy could.China is a good example of this: both its proponents and its detractors say that with machine learning and ubiquitous surveillance, China is creating a sustainable autocracy, capable of solving the "basic authoritarian dilemma": "gathering and collating information and being sufficiently responsive to its citizens’ needs to remain stable."But Farrell speculates that this isn't actually what's happening -- China is actually incredibly unstable (wildcat strikes, seemingly unstoppable pro-democracy movements, concentration camps, debt bubbles, manufacturing collapse, routine kidnappings, massive corruption, etc). If machine learning and surveillance are helping to stabilize China, it's not (merely, or primarily) by allowing for efficient allocations that diffuse anti-authoritarian sentiment -- it's by spying on people so that they can be arrested and sent to prison and have their organs harvested.Pro-democracy theorists point out that political liberty is a stabilizing force because the "openness to contrary opinions and divergent perspectives" creates "countervailing tendencies to self-reinforcing biases" -- a means for the state to correct itself. Read the rest

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was shock doctrined through a massive, neoliberal transformation, the centerpiece of which was a replacement of the public school system with a system entirely made up of charter schools.While these schools showed some initial promise, the overall performance of these schools has been in free fall for some time, and this year's state assessment of the district assigned a "failing grade" (D or F) to 35 of its 72 schools.Charter advocates blame changes to the assessment system and point out that the public system that New Orleans had before also performed poorly. They also say their schools are improving, pointing to a new metric -- year on year test score improvements -- as evidence that the schools are getting better.In the absence of extraordinary board action, prolonged failing grades for charter schools trigger automatic shutdown or absorbtion into better-performing schools.State Education Superintendent John White agreed.“New Orleans schools have made remarkable gains over the last decade, with stagnation in recent years," White said. "To reignite the pace of improvement, New Orleans schools will need to develop a strong pipeline of future school leaders, retain educators for longer periods of time, and support teachers in using the most challenging curricula, even with struggling students.”Although it's difficult to extrapolate citywide trends, there are some patterns in the data.Schools in both big and little charter organizations got D's and F's. Some organizations saw major changes. FirstLine Schools, which got D grades for four of its six schools, and Success Preparatory, which also earned a D, got new leaders. Read the rest

A wealthy Lebanese businessman based in Switzerland bought Nazi memorabilia, including Adolf Hitler's top hat, at an auction and donated them to a Jewish organization, reports The Independent. Abdallah Chatila wanted to keep the items out of the hands of neo-Nazis. At first he intended to destroy the items, but then decided to give them to the Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal group. From the article.“I did not want these objects to fall into the wrong hands and be used by people with dishonest intentions.”Mr Chatila will not see the items he purchased as they will be sent directly to the group.Keren Haseyod's European director said no final decision has been made on what they will do with the items, and they will likely be sent to the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel where a selection of Nazi artefacts reside.The head of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, said he was “bowled over” by the businessman’s gesture, adding that it was a “noble act of kindness, generosity and solidarity.”Image: YouTube/i24 News Read the rest

Back in 2007, I wrote a science fiction novella called "The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrrow," about an immortal, transhuman survivor of an apocalypse whose father is obsessed with preserving artifacts from the fallen civilization, especially the Carousel of Progress, an exhibition that GE commissioned from Disney for the 1964 World's Fair in New York, which is still operating in Walt Disney World.The novella was collected into my 2011 Outspoken Authors book from PM Press.Bleeding Cool News's Jason Henderson is a fellow Carousel of Progress obsessive, and he asked me if I'd come on his Castle of Horror podcast to discuss the story, the Carousel, Margaret Thatcher, and optimistic corporate futurism's increasing absurdity in 2019's world.The conversation went great (MP3) and ranges over nuclear armageddon, environmental collapse, Epcot Center, cults of personality, Walt Disney's work-avoidance schemes, Alvin Toffler and the Singularity.The Carousel of Progress is a strange success story. It began its life as an exhibit developed by Walt Disney for General Electric at the 1964 World’s Fair. There the basic structure fell into place: a revolving theater moves around a stationary stage showing four scenes as the audience comes to rest in front of each one. Act One is the turn of the 20th Century, Act 2 is the 1920s, Act 3 is the 1940s, and Act 4 is roughly the present. In each scene, the father of a small family reflects on American life and culture and mentions the latest technological advancements—airplanes, electric fans, cars, “the rat race.” The attraction moved from the World’s Fair to Disneyland and then settled in 1975 at Tomorrowland in Walt Disney World, where it has remained ever since. Read the rest

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the Web Foundation have launched a "Contract for the Web" for individuals, companies and individuals to sign onto, through which signatories promise to take concrete steps to make the web a force for good.Governments that sign on are asked to promise to "ensure everyone can connect to the internet," to "keep all the internet available all the time," and to "respect and protect people’s fundamental online privacy and data rights."Corporate signatories promise that they will "make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone," "respect and protect people’s privacy and personal data to build online trust," and "develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst."Individuals are asked to "be creators and collaborators on the Web," "build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity," and "fight for the Web."Each of these points is unpacked in detail, with examples and references to international documents. Signatories include EFF, the Open Data Institute, Reddit, the W3C, Google, Github, Reporters Without Borders, Telefonica, Twitter, Github, Accessnow, Facebook, Duck Duck Go, Microsoft, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Indian Public Library Movement, and many others.I signed on.“The forces taking the web in the wrong direction have always been very strong,” Berners-Lee said. “Whether you’re a company or a government, controlling the web is a way to make huge profits, or a way of ensuring you remain in power. The people are arguably the most important part of this, because it’s only the people who will be motivated to hold the other two to account.”Emily Sharpe, the director of policy at the Web Foundation, said: “The web’s power to be a force for good is under threat and people are crying out for change. Read the rest

In TrojDRL: Trojan Attacks on Deep Reinforcement Learning Agents, a group of Boston University researchers demonstrate an attack on machine learning systems trained with "reinforcement learning" in which ML systems derive solutions to complex problems by iteratively trying multiple solutions. The attack is related to adversarial examples, a class of attacks that involve probing a machine-learning model to find "blind spots" -- very small changes (usually imperceptible to humans) that cause machine learning classifiers' accuracy to shelve off rapidly (for example, a small change to a model of a gun can make an otherwise reliable classifier think it's looking at a helicopter). It's not clear whether it's possible to create a machine learning model that's immune to adversarial examples (the expert I trust most on this told me off the record that they think it's not), but what the researchers behind Trojdrl propose is a method for deliberately introducing adversarial examples by slipping difficult-to-spot changes into training data, which will produce defects in the eventual model that can serve as a "backdoor" that future adversaries can exploit.Training data sets are often ad-hoc in nature; they're so large that it's hard to create version-by-version snapshots, and they're also so prone to mislabeling that researchers are always making changes to them in order to improve their accuracy. All of this suggests that poisoning training data might be easier than it sounds. What's more, many models in production use build on "pretrained" models that are already circulating, so any backdoors inserted into these popular models could propagate to other models derived from them. Read the rest

While I was familiar with the internet art of catfishing, I was not aware of the practice of catching catfish by hand, which is apparently called "noodling." Then I saw this video. And now I question what I've been doing with my life (moreso than usual).I don’t know what anything means anymore pic.twitter.com/y4f0UtmcSo— Zaku? (@ZinZaku) November 13, 2019I don't know what this is, or why it works. But I'm honestly surprised I never did this when I was in middle school. And somewhat disappointed with myself.Image via Michael Coghlan/Flickr Read the rest

Get ready to smile. Set List:"Now That I Found You""Want You In My Room""The Sound"For more Carly Rae Jepsen, check out Boy Problems, A Carly Rae Jepsen-themed heist tabletop RPG one shot:It is many years into the future. A wealthy and powerful person (or persons) has claimed a rare and much sought after prize: the “vault” of 200 unreleased (this is real!) songs from renowned Canadian pop artist, Carly Rae Jepsen.Hired by an anonymous sponsor, your team of highly trained individuals will raid a well-defended location to retrieve said item. From planning to set-up to execution, you will see this heist through to its completion, whether that be a success or failure. There will many twists and turns along the way, and don’t always trust the specialists by your side.By Colin Cummings, with art by Marcin Jastrzebski. Read the rest

Researchers at Sussex University have developed a 3D model with a single "pixel" -- a tiny white plastic bead that's quickly moved around the space inside a black box by an array of ultrasound speakers. A colored light source projects light onto the fast moving bead. The end result is that the bead draws "shapes in the air."[via Core77]Image: YouTube Read the rest

The Supreme Court will not hear a new trial for Adnan Syed, featured in the 2014 season of the podcast Serial. Syed is serving a life sentence for murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, while they were both in high school.From Vox:The Supreme Court did not explain why it denied Syed’s petition asking it to review the case, and the Court’s denial of that petition does not mean that the justices believe that Syed’s lawyer behaved adequately — the Court takes only several dozen cases every year, and it rarely takes a case solely because it believes that a lower court erred.As a practical matter, however, the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear this case means that Syed is likely to serve his life sentence — though he could still seek relief from a lower federal court in a federal habeas proceeding.Image: Serial Podcast Read the rest

Burgess Meredith stars in this 1943 film produced by the United States Office of War Information to teach U.S. soldiers how to conform to the customs of British pubs. The film has an "Ugly American" type soldier doing all the wrong things while a uniformed Meredith shakes his head in shame.[via Nag on the Lake] Read the rest

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has published five leaked Chinese intelligence memos -- a lengthy "telegram" and four shorter "bulletins" -- from 2017, which detail the plans to enact a program of mass incarceration for members of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities (especially Uyghurs) in China's Xinjiang province.The documents present guidelines for the creation and operation of the region's concentration camps (which now number more than 500 and house more than a million detainees) under the guise of "vocational training centers." In addition to setting out a number of logistical and planning guidelines -- such as sanitation and public health measures -- the documents detail a system of points-based "behavior modification" tools to punish and reward prisoners who modify their conduct to the specifications of the Chinese state. This points-based system runs in parallel to the "predictive policing" tools that the Chinese state uses to identify and target people for rendering to its camps.The documents represent an second leak of internal, high-level Chinese intelligence memos, and they also reveal the gap between the directions handed down from Beijing and the actual conduct of officials overseeing the camps: many of the memos' directives (including those on sanitation and public health -- but also on the minimum incarceration period of one year) have been ignored within the camps, according to eyewitness reports.Last week, the New York Times reported on another set of high-level Chinese leaks about Xinjiang that revealed President Xi's role in enacting a program of "no mercy" for ethnic minorities in the region, and the cruel governorship of Chen Quanguo, who was transferred from Tibet to Xinjiang to oversee the concentration camps. Read the rest

An 8-year-old girl was denied a school photo because her principal singled her out for hairstyle policy enforcement. The unjust treatment, with its racial edge—a middle-aged white man policing a young black girl's hair—could have led nowhere happy. But Chicago-area photographer Jermaine Horton got in touch with her parents, then arranged a photo shoot that put made sure Marion Scott stayed the star of her own story. [h/t Quori]"This is an 8-year-old girl who was singled out by her school," Horton said to CNN. "I'm a father and I'm tired of seeing injustices like this happen. I wanted to go out there and help build this girl's confidence."Earlier this month, Horton drove 4 1/2 hours to Michigan just to make it happen. His one request? Marian should wear her red, braided extensions for the shoot."I wanted her to be herself and to let her know that it's OK to be herself," said Horton.And Marian did just that. Read the rest