Already removed from major browsers, Adobe Flash now suffers the second death of being forgotten. Google will soon deindex Flash from its search results.Goodbye, Flash, writes Google engineering manager Dong-Hwi Lee.I still remember my son playing endless number of Flash games until my wife yelled at him. It's time to go to bed, son. Hey Flash, it's your turn to go to bed.Google Search will stop supporting Flash later this year. In Web pages that contain Flash content, Google Search will ignore the Flash content. Google Search will stop indexing standalone SWF files. Most users and websites won't see any impact from this change. Read the rest

As Rob posted earlier, the infamous "can opener" bridge in Durham, NC is undergoing an upgrade to turn it from an 11-foot-8 bridge into a 12-foot-4 bridge. This means it will no longer rip the tops of trucks driven by people who didn't heed the warnings.The video above was posted yesterday on the 11foot8 YouTube channel. It shows an incident in September when a Ryder truck experienced the full wrath of the bellicose bridge. It's almost as if the bridge knows it is about to be defanged and wanted a last hurrah.Below, another video from September, when a rental truck unsuccessfully tries to "sneak up" on the bridge from a side street. Read the rest

Tiago Teixeira set Massive Attack's "Teardrop" against the award-winning short movie "Happy Valentine's Day", directed by the Neymarc Brothers. It matches so well in mood and tone; the originals follow below. Here's a "behind the scenes" on Happy Valentine's Day's entirely-digital setting: Read the rest

Bow down before the one you serve... breakfast to!There's never been a doubt that the folks at Archie McPhee have a weird sense of humor. In fact, we count on it. Case in point, their latest offering: the Pagan Breakfast God Mask ($17.95). Bacon, check. Eggs, check. Toast with butter, check. Weird as all get out, CHECK. Yours truly, this past summer when I was at the Archie McPhee HQ recording a podcast (and rocking the Pagan Breakfast God-dess Mask which I've had to keep hush-hush until now!). photos by Archie McPhee and David Wahl Read the rest

Need some last-minute advice to make a costume so good, no one will recognize you? Check out these 5 tips to remain incognito this #Halloween with the help of our spy dog, Calliope.https://t.co/JZNiqiU9kN#SpyKids pic.twitter.com/1F8Zc6ihzq— CIA (@CIA) October 28, 2019I don't think I ever related to the White Guy Blinking Meme as much as I did after this tweet crossed my timeline.I did in fact click through to their "CIA Kids Guide: 5 Ways To Stay Covert This Halloween" and I…I don't even know where to begin.I kind of love this as a piece of propaganda because the first tip and the last three are at least useful (if completely fucking obvious for anyone who's ever watched a spy movie). But then there's #2, "Think Simple," which … I know this is meant for the CIA's kids' outreach section, but come on. You're not even pretending that you're not indoctrinating kids to make it easier to surveil them!I guess it'd be too much to hope for that the CIA might offer helpful advice on VPNs and anti-surveillance attire—but even then, I probably wouldn't trust it.Image via Katerha/Flickr Read the rest

From Ross Wolinsky's "The Millennial Raven" in McSweeney's: Once upon a midnight dreary, Tinder swiping, buzzed and weary/I asked Siri about my sushi ordered one hour before/ While I chewed some pretzels, snacking, suddenly there came a tapping/As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my apartment door/“’Tis my roommate,” I muttered, “walking ‘cross the hardwood floor/Only this and nothing more.” (via Kottke) Read the rest

Google has a series of new "digital wellbeing" experiments designed to help people use their Android phones a little less, or at least a little more thoughtfully. Available experiments include:Paper PhoneA lot of people feel that they spend too much time on their phones and struggle to find a balance with technology.Paper Phone helps you have a little break away from your digital world by printing a personal booklet of the key information you’ll need that day.An app lets you choose what to include such as favourite contacts, maps and meetings and then prints them directly to a sheet of paper. Customisable “paper apps” like recipes, phrasebooks and notepads let you get things done or unwind in a more focussed way.Unlock Clock:Unlock Clock helps you consider your tech use, by counting and displaying the number of times you unlock your phone in a day. Simply download the wallpaper and get started.Desert Island:Desert Island helps you find focus, by challenging you to go a day with only your essential apps. Simply pick the apps that are most important to you, then give it a go for 24 hours.You can download the tools to create your own experiment here. Read the rest

Finally, someone's asking the important questions.As it’s Halloween, which baguette is the most scary? Give your reasoning pls pic.twitter.com/vQfuVx3HCW— Dave (@sheepfilms) October 24, 201961 percent of respondents picked the #3, the "baguette skeleton," with the Spider Bread (#4) coming in second at 29 percent.But clearly 90 percent of people are wrong, because nothing compares to the horror of my imagination as it speculates at what might lay beneath the ghostly sheet of Halloween Baguette #2. The possibilities in my mind are endless, and they are all fucking terrifying. Read the rest

Wireless charging is increasingly the way to go for busy professionals. It's quick, portable, and won't clutter up your desk or countertop with a maze of cables. Still, there are kinks in the Qi technology that drives these chargers.And apparently, some companies are working out those kinks faster than others. Meet the iPM Wireless Charging Pad.The fact that you can't charge multiple Qi-enabled devices at the same time has been a persistent issue for wireless chargers, even the ones that are big enough to hold several phones. It looks like iPM has solved that issue with a 2-in-1 charger that can juice up an Apple Watch plus an iPhone or Qi-enabled Android phone at the same time.It also provides valuable safeguards like surge protection and temp control, delivering power 20% faster than comparable chargers. Best of all, the iPM 2-in-1 is a full 70% off the list price right now.There's also a 3-in-1 charger from iPM that's perfect for multitaskers or small families. The hub is powered by the same technology, but expands the slim profile to accommodate two smartphones plus an Apple Watch. And yes, it can charge all three simultaneously. At $48.99, the iPM 3-in-1 Fast Wireless Charging Pad is more than 60% off retail. Read the rest

History has been kind to Fred Rogers' legacy; the beloved children's entertainer does not have the intergenerational staying power of Sesame Street (thanks in large part to Rogers' relentless focus on making programming aimed exclusively at small children, without any pretense to entertaining their grownups), but touchstones like his Congressional testimony on public TV funding, his remarks after 9/11 and his look for the helpers speech continue to bring a smile and a tear to all who see them, whether for the first time or the five hundredth; Mr Rogers was exactly what he appeared to be, incredibly, and the riddle of how someone could be so sincere and loving has sent rumormongers off to the land of conspiracy looking for an answer. But the real Mr Rogers story -- as chronicled in Gavin Edwards' new book, Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever -- is both more mundane and more amazing than any outlandish story.

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my short story "Affordances," which was commissioned for Slate/ASU's Future Tense Fiction. it's a tale exploring my theory of "the shitty technology adoption curve," in which terrible technological ideas are first imposed on poor and powerless people, and then refined and normalized until they are spread over all the rest of us. The story makes the point by exploring all the people in a facial recognition ecosystem, from low-waged climate refugees who are paid to monitor facial recognition errors in an overseas boiler room, to cops whose facial recognition systems and risk-assessment scoring institutionalize algorithmic racism, to activists whose videos of human rights abuses on the US border are disappeared by copyright enforcement bots deployed by shadowy astroturf organizations, to the executives at the companies who make the facial recognition tools whose decisions are constrained by automated high-speed trading bots.It also explores methods of technological resistance, solidarity, and activism, and how the flip-side of automated systems' inaccuracy is their fragility.The story is accompanied by a response essay by Nettrice Gaskins (previously), "an artist-educator who collaborates with AI," who discusses it in the context of the "afrocentric counter-surveillance aesthetic," which is my new all-time favorite phrase. There were different kinds of anxiety: the anxiety she’d felt when she was recording the people massing for their rush, clammy under the thermal blanket with its layer of retroreflective paint that would confound drones and cameras; she walked among the people, their faces shining, their few things on their backs, their children in their arms, the smell of too many bodies and too much fear. Read the rest

The Become a Professional Creative Writer Bundle is an invaluable stack of online courses that will ingrain the rules of writing into your process so you can stop doubting and start writing.Whether you're sitting down in front of your first blank page or a seasoned pro branching out into a new format, there's something here for you. The five courses include a beginner's tutorial designed to preemptively eliminate cliches and encourage concrete language.Other included classes focus on the process of creating believable, fleshed-out characters and other elements to write a readable novel. There are even two full courses on the art and business of screenwriting that take you through the whole process from the first draft to the final pitch.You can get all five courses now for a full 97% off the MSRP - a total of $21. Read the rest

This is a spherical painting of a street intersection somewhere in Japan. I don't know who the artist is, but the effect is amazing.Panoramic painting on a sphere from r/Damnthatsinteresting Read the rest

This jar scraper is molded from one piece of silicone rubber. It has a stainless steel skeleton for rigidity. The overall length is 13.5 inches, which means you can scoop out the last bit of peanut butter, jam, or fudge topping from tall jars. I also use it to stir food while it cooks (the silicone is resistant to temperatures up to 600 F). Read the rest

Exactly the marketing canned Sloppy Joe sauce merits. Read the rest

Joshua Browder created Donotpay as a teenager at Stanford: originally it was a chatbot that helped you beat traffic tickets, but it has since expanded (thanks to an infusion of venture capital) into a Swiss Army Knife of automated consumer advocacy that can do everything from sue Equifax on your behalf to help you access homeless services to getting you a rebate when your plane ticket's price goes down after you've purchased it.In an interview with the Will I Save? blog -- which documents experiences with Donotpay -- Browder articulates his vision for the service: a "consumers union" (no relation) that fights corrupt corporations and oppressive state action. Browder -- a multigenerational activist whose father was a principal advocate for the Magnitsky Act -- says he looks for problems that are experienced by at least 50,000,000 Americans at a time, and then prioritizes automating solutions to them."I think that the average person doesn't really have an advocate to fight for them. The short-term vision is just to build really useful products that help people fight back. The long-term vision is almost a consumer union where we can actually go to these companies and say, 'We have 5 million DoNotPay users and 5 million of your customers. If you don't start treating them better, we'll switch them to your competitor overnight.' With numbers there's lots of power and I think that could really help people fight and get leverage."Why is Browder so bent on helping people fight the establishment? Read the rest

As part of the renaissance in interest in the glorious science fiction novels of afrofuturist pioneer Octavia Butler (previously), Seven Stories press has just released a two-volume, slipcased set of Butler's fantastic post-apocalyptic adventure novels The Parable of the Sower (with an introduction by Gloria Steinem) and The Parable of the Talents (with an introduction by Toshi Reagon).The set is $35 (a remarkably low sum of money, considering the quality of the editions).The Parables novels were my introduction to Butler's work. I had associated her with "serious" political literature, and while her work is unashamedly, gloriously political, her gift is melding fast-paced adventure with her serious themes, making her a kind of woke Heinlein. The Parables box-set is just for starters: there's also a Folio Society edition of "Kindred" (also available in a recent, outstanding graphic novel edition) and a paperback edition of Parable of the Sower with an introduction by NK Jemisin.All of Butler's canon is brilliant, but the Parables novels are a particularly great way to fall in love with her work, and while they deal with very intense adult themes, they star an adolescent protagonist and make for great YA reading by even young teens.The perfect gift for fans of Octavia Butler, this boxed set pairs the bestselling Nebula-prize nominee, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which together tell the near-future odyssey of Lauren Olamina, a "hyper-empathic" young woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. Read the rest

Teen Vogue has emerged as one of the most progressive mass-media forums in an age of Trumpism and its official misogyny and racism -- it's a Conde Naste magazine aimed at teen girls with a labor reporter who regularly dissects capitalism's failings and writes explainers on the need for a general strike.Teen Vogue executive editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay explains her approach to Jacobin's David Palumbo-Liu in a fabulous interview in which she embraces her right-wing critics who call her magazine "The most insidious form of teen communist propaganda" and worries that Tucker Carlson is waaaaaay too interested in teen girls.I think one of the things I’m really proud of that we did last month was we did an entire package on fat bodies. I actually wrote a personal essay for that, about being a public person who’s fat, and my evolution of growing up in public — being this public person where people will comment on your body all the time. For a fashion magazine with Vogue in the title to explicitly do something that really criticizes the industry and elevates this unique point of view — we shot a size twenty-four model for one of the main features.I was very excited about everything we did for Covering Climate Now. We were part of that initiative. We put Greta on the cover, which I thought was fantastic. And we did that cover in literally fifteen minutes. She’s a very, very busy young woman. We got a very small amount of time with her. Read the rest

A 13th century painting that had been hanging on a kitchen wall in French woman's home sold for $26.8 in auction this weekend. The painting, titled “Christ Mocked,” is by Florentine artist Cimabue (Giotto's teacher), and was made around 1280.From Smithsonian Mag:[Auctioneer Philomène] Wolf spotted the painting, titled “Christ Mocked,” on display between the woman’s open-plan kitchen and living room. While she immediately suspected it was a work of Italian primitivism, she “didn’t imagine it was a Cimabue.”Wolf turned to Eric Turquin, a Paris-based art historian who had previously identified a painting unearthed in a French attic as a long-lost Caravaggio. According to Benjamin Dodman of France 24, Turquin and his colleagues concluded with “certitude” that the new find was a genuine Cimabue. Read the rest

Matteo writes, "Kai Lan Egg is an anonymous artist from Hong Kong. He started drawing illustrations of the Hong Kong protest primarily using a Japanese anime style to encourage the people around him to stand against the progressive erosion of the Hong Kong independence."July 1 was a turning point.The demonstrators attacked the Legislative Council. They destroyed many objects that symbolize the Hong Kong government.However, they did not steal and destroy cultural relics, libraries, etc., and read the texts in the conference hall, which was recognized by most citizens. Besides, there have been few floating bodies in Hong Kong waters.However, since the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, there have been many floating bodies in the sea.The police all think that the cause of death is not suspicious.We are very skeptical that these things are done by the police.Hong Kong Protests Art: Interview with Kai Lan Egg [China Underground] Read the rest

One Page Dungeon is a website that procedurally generates a new role-playing dungeon every time you press Enter (or refresh the page).[via Clive Thompson] Read the rest

Alex DeLarge was a brutal sociopath, but you can't fault the droog leader for his exquisite fashion sensibility. Cricket codpieces, suspenders, and bowler hats never go out of style. But slapping a still image from A Clockwork Orange on a jacket, like the ones recently unveiled by clothes designer Svmoscow, would have been tired even back in 1971.Imagine the ultra-violence Alex would mete out to any rich kid of Instagram or coked-up progeny of the Russian oligarchy should one of them enter the Korova Milk Bar wearing one of these execrable garments.[via Dangerous Minds] Read the rest

The NRA used advertising agency Ackerman McQueen to transform itself from a pro-gun group into a right-wing media toilet, then fired the firm when it woke up to the consequences of spokespeople issuing shameless calls for violence against political enemies and the media in its name. Now a lawsuit is exposing all the dirty laundry: the NRA claims its executives found Dana Loesch's NRA TV antics "distasteful and racist", that they were lied to by Ackerman McQueen about traffic, and eventually realized they were being looted for "tens of millions of dollars."... NRA officials believed the short-lived TV outlet—which featured shows from right-wing stars like Dana Loesch and Dan Bongino—“strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist.” As an example of a “damaging” segment, the NRA filing alludes to an instance on Loesch’s show Relentless, in which an on-air graph featured a picture of kid’s cartoon character Thomas the Tank Engine wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. “Attempts by the NRA to ‘rein in’ AMc and its messaging were met with responses from AMc that ranged from evasive to hostile,” the gun lobby further alleges. Read the rest

A bus in Pittsburgh fell backwards into a sinkhole that suddenly opened up on a street in Pittsburgh on Monday morning. Fortunately the bus was bearing just one passenger at the time and neither the passenger nor the driver was injured.Image: CNN Read the rest

Jim Baker served as the FBI's general counsel from 2014 until 2017, and he presided over the the FBI's attempt to force Apple to undermine its cryptography under the rubric of investigating the San Bernadino shooters; he has long been a prominent advocate for mass surveillance, but he has had a change of heart: in a long, detailed essay on Lawfare, Baker explains why he believes that governments should not seek to introduce defects into cryptographic systems.Baker's argument is primarily instrumental: he rejects the idea that you can create cryptography that works perfectly when it's being used to protect good guys, but fails completely when bad guys try to use it. He acknowledges that any effort to ban working cryptography would simply send American criminals to offshore software repositories to get access to working crypto, and that in so doing, it would be much harder for American law enforcement to spy on its adversaries, because the metadata from their encrypted communications would be out of US law enforcement's reach.Baker is primarily responding to Attorney General William Barr's idiotic call to ban working crypto as a matter of public safety, and he builds on the usual instrumental arguments about the limited utility of crypto bans for law enforcement with a less-often-heard argument about national security and public safety.Baker discusses how Huawei (and other companies with deep ties to nations that the US considers to be its rivals) will inevitably have some of its gear within the US's communications infrastructure. Read the rest

The queen of polka dots, the a-mazing Yayoi Kusama, is making her mark on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a three-story-tall balloon float. "Love Flies Up to the Sky" will be included as part of the Blue Sky Gallery, the parade's contemporary art series started in 2005. Previous artists have included Tim Burton, KAWS, and others. Kusama is the first woman to participate in the series.ARTnet News:“Her work lends itself to that playful whimsy that we like to see in the sky,” Susan Tercero, the parade’s executive producer... "What’s fantastic about her art, and why I think she’s so world-renowned, is that it is so accessible. Everyone can look at her art and appreciate it, understand it, and feel something from it, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”As wide as six taxi cabs, Kusama's balloon will require 40 handlers to march it through Manhattan on the morning of Thursday, November 28.The ninety-year-old Japanese artist also has a new NYC gallery show. Every Day I Pray For Love includes one of her popular Infinity Rooms and will be exhibited at David Zwirner in Chelsea from November 9 to December 14, 2019. (ARTnews)images via ARTnet News and Macy's Read the rest

The upcoming Dracula miniseries is written by Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat and sounds like it'll have us rooting for the sexy villain:They’ve made him the hero of the show, the protagonist – though still just as nasty. He has no moral dilemmas, he just wants to eat people. A creature who has seen empires rise and fall, who has seen it all before and who likes humanity – they are his food source after all. And by now he’s become quite a connoisseur of humanity.Here's the first trailer:Dracula will premiere on BBC One in the UK and on Netflix outside of the UK and Ireland. "Episodes will be directed by Jonny Campbell, Damon Thomas and Paul McGuigan, whose impressive list of credits include Westworld, Killing Eve and Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, respectively." Read the rest

Gallery 1988's latest show features multiple artists, including Dano Brown's custom action figures. Even Funko and Super 7 haven't gotten around to movie icons of yesteryear like Nurse Ratched, Billy Sole, and D-Fens:Brown's contributions to the show include other style toys:You can buy these and more at Gallery 1988. Read the rest

You've only got one set of teeth, and every hygienist will tell you the same thing: A good, solid toothbrush and a strict cleaning regimen will do a lot more in the long term than any session in the dentist's chair.It'll be a lot cheaper too, even if you purchase one of the high-end electronic toothbrushes that are out there. Especially if that brush is the AquaSonic Black Series.This one packs more than just a powerful motor, though it certainly has that. Its 40,000 vibrations per minute is one of the fastest in the industry. But it can be gentle too: The AquaSonic can toggle between four cleaning modes, including a soft setting for sensitive teeth. Switch on whitening mode for inverted frequencies that will erode tough stains or massage mode for a burst of low frequencies that will increase blood flow to the gums.The Black Series also comes with a hardshell travel case, so you can take the wireless charger and extra brush heads with you anywhere. You'll get eight of them in the set, all ideally bristled for deep cleaning.The brush, travel case and eight Dupont brush heads are all on sale now for more than 70% off the list price. Read the rest

The 11'8" bridge in Durham, N.C., which has brought so much misery to unobservant truck drivers and so much joy to the internet, will be raised to 12'4" this week. Is nothing sacred in the age of Trump?On October 26, I spent the afternoon at the 11foot8 bridge as the crew was working on preparing the structure for raising it next week. They cut off the rusty steel supports of the old walkway on the southern side of the trestle, and they removed the battered, bent crash beam that was the canopener's "teeth" for taking bites out of many a hapless, overheight truck on Gregson St. I hope you all enjoy the video.It's only a few inches, but it's the difference between life and death for the standard 12ft high rental trucks that comprise the bridge's normal diet.Here's a compilation featuring many of the Can Opener's victims: Read the rest

Stop, collaborate, and listen: Amazon's complicit in ICE's extraditions (plus other abuses of human rights enabled by that agency's authoritarian agenda)That's why hundreds of musicians—nearly 500, at the time of this writing, though it was just over 100 when news broke Thursday morning—have signed onto an open letter pledging to boycott Amazon festivals, events, and other exclusive deals until the tech giant stops enabling the systematic abuses of Immigration Customs Enforcement. The list of signatories includes Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, as well as Ted Leo, Immortal Technique, Downtown Boys, Thursday, WHY?, Jeff Rosenstock, the Mowglis, War on Women, Diet Cig, Tim Kasher (of Cursive/The Good Life), and many more.These are the demands for Amazon, directly from that open letter:Terminate existing contracts with military, law enforcement, and government agencies (ICE, CBP, ORR) that commit human rights abusesStop providing Cloud services & tools to organizations (such as Palantir) that power the US government's deportation machineEnd projects that encourage racial profiling and discrimination, such as Amazon's facial recognition productReject future engagements w/ aforementioned bad actors.I signed my own band onto the list earlier this week, after catching wind of the movement on Twitter. (I tried to pull our songs from all Amazon-affiliated services, but our distro service makes that difficult to do.) My friends in the Kominas mentioned something about it, and then I noticed Deerhoof interacting with Sadie Dupois of Speedy Ortiz and Sad13, following up on the recent op-ed by Tom Morello and Evan Greer of Fight For The Future (both musicians and activists in their own rights). Read the rest

Carrion is a forthcoming "reverse horror" game from Devolver Digital where you get to play an amorphous monster, slopping around a remote facility eating the screaming, terrified scientists and guards. A free demo came out this weekend and it's great fun. At heart it's a traditional, lavishly pixelated 2D platformer, but normality ends at the outset. Instead of running about, solving puzzles and shooting enemies, you're a slimy lump of pixels with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Holding down one button sends out meaty feelers to grab surfaces, flop and slide your way toward the pointer, whereas another sends out the eating tentacles and drags in anything they latch onto. There's about 20 minutes of action in the demo, I've played it through twice for good measure, and will most certainly be buying it when it comes out. Thlupllplplplplpl! *muffled screams* *crunching noises* thluplplplplp! Read the rest

The first meeting of editors from around the country, merged together as The Underground Press Syndicate — and the early gestation for what will become the protests at the Pentagon building. From John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall. (See all Boing Boing installments) Read the rest

Rep Rashida Tlaib [D-MI] has joined Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar in endorsing Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.Three of the four members of "The Squad" -- four freshman Democratic Congresswomen who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America -- have endorsed Sanders; the remaining member, Ayanna Pressley [D-MA], is a representative from Elizabeth Warren's state and has not made any endorsements.I am a donor to both the Sanders and Warren campaigns."I am endorsing Amo Bernie Sanders because he's not gonna sell us out. He understands that it's not just about policies and about words, but it's going to be also about completely transforming the structures in place." -@RashidaTlaib pic.twitter.com/3SaGZeOUT7— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 27, 2019"I am endorsing Amo Bernie Sanders because he's not gonna sell us out," Tlaib says in the pre-recorded clip, noting her nickname for the senator. "He understands that it's not just about policies and about words, but it's going to be also about completely transforming the structures in place."When Sanders took the stage, he was quick to compliment his newest endorser."Congresswoman Tlaib has been a leader," Sanders told the crowd in Detroit. "Rashida has been a leader in the fight for decent jobs, a leader in the fight for affordable housing, a leader in the fight for a clean border and she has shown that she is prepared to take on corporate greed and corruption and stand with the working class of this country.""I will look to her for her leadership in Congress under a Sanders' administration," Sanders added. Read the rest

As long as there are light switches in the house (or voice-activated prompts, or whatever the future brings), people are going to need an electrician. Ask any electrician the next time they come around for repairs, and they'll tell you how much they're in demand, no matter what size the community (or hey, just look at their invoice.)Maybe you're considering saving money by doing those repairs yourself, or maybe you're wondering how to rake in that paycheck yourself. Either way, the Ultimate Electrical Engineering Master Class Bundle is a great resource.You'll learn how to complete any home project safely and cheaply with the insights in the electric circuits course. But that class is just the tip of the iceberg.Later courses take you inside the humming veins of an electrical substation, teaching you not only how to maintain but design one. The design engineering course will let you use Autocad to blueprint the power grid for an entire factory floor, while a focus on machinery lets you see the principles behind high-functioning transformers and generators. There's even a course on solar energy for those wanting to build and implement a PV cell grid.All in all, it's more than 40 hours of hands-on education. The entire bundle is now on sale for 97% off the MSRP. Read the rest

Mark Taaffe is a Toronto institution, whose Fort York Auctions were the best junk auctions I've ever seen (they inspired my short story Craphound, which was the first story I ever sold to a professional market); Mark has moved online and is now selling his finds through a social media account. Though these listings lack his charming patter and colourful auctioneering, his eye is as good as ever and his prices are still amazeballs. (Thanks, Paul Mercer!) Read the rest

Nancy Mumby-Welke lives in rural Saginaw County, MI; yesterday morning she was about to let her horses out when she discovered the crashed, humming remains of a Samsung satellite on her property.The satellite may have been launched for Samsung's "Spaceselfie" marketing gimmick, and the company has agreed to remove it from Mumby-Welke's property.The details of the story are thin and confusing. The satellite was in remarkably good shape for something that fell from space -- satellites are typically flimsy in construction, because mass is prohibitively expensive to lift into space, and because there are few hazards in orbit, except for orbiting space debris, which is so fast-moving that it's effectively impossible to stop. But I'm loathe to attribute this to some kind of marketing hoax: it's hard to see how "our satellites might crash in your yard!" would be beneficial to Samsung's image in any way.Nancy Mumby-Welke shared the video on Facebook, walking up to a satellite lying on its side. "You never know what's going to happen," Welke says in the video."This baby fell out of the sky and landed in our yard," she went on to say. ,pAccording to the Gratiot County Herald, Welke heard the crash around 8:45 a.m. just before they were going to let their horses out. "Thank God none of the horses were out and it didn't land on the house," Welke explained in the video. 'You never know what's going to happen' | Michigan family surprised when satellite crashes onto their property [13 On Your Side](Thanks, Lou Cabron! Read the rest

The gilets jaunes/yellow vests protest movement mobilized in France over a slate of grievances, led by President Macron's plan to meet emissions targets by punishing poor and a rural people, while dealing out massive favors to the country's wealthy elites. As the movement spread around the world, it took on different characters: sometimes lefty, sometimes right-wing, sometimes explicitly racist.A new French movement, les gilet noirs (the black vests), makes racial justice the center of its protests, arguing for the rights of migrants, especially African migrants, who have long struggled with discrimination in France. Many of these migrants are from countries that were looted by French colonialists and are descended from colonial subjects who were pressed in French military service, only to be rejected by French society and the French state.The gilets noirs number 1,500 so far, and are mostly black (one of their slogans is that they are "black with anger" at the treatment of African migrants). They were incubated by the activist collective La Chapelle Debout, in the foyers: communal residences for migrant workers. They have staged several occupations, most notably an occupation of the Panthéon in July, where the police lied and told protesters that if they dispersed peacefully they would not face identity checks or arrests, only to stage a series of violent rushes with batons when the protesters agreed to disperse, while shouting racial epithets. 50 protesters were hospitalized by the police, and 21 were arrested. Like the yellow vests, the gilets noirs are concerned with rising inequality and official favoritism for wealthy elites; unlike the yellow vests, the gilets noirs refuse to allow racialized people to be scapegoated for inequality, pushing back against Macron's racist rhetoric, which attempts to neutralize "soft on immigration" claims from the white nationalist parties in France. Read the rest

When Salem, NJ's Fred C. Arena applied for a job at Philadelphia's Navy Yard, he underwent an FBI background check in which he falsely claimed that he was not a member of the Vanguard America, a white nationalist group that was part of the lethal far-right "Unite the Right" 2017 gathering in Charlottesville; whose members posed with the murderer James Alex Fields Jr for a photo hours before he killed Heather Heyer. The activist group Unicorn Riot (previously) published leaked chat logs linking Arena to several online identities: McCormick H. Foley, John S. Mosby and Fritz Coon Heydrich. Under these pseudonyms, Arena boasted of plans to bring 15 "paramilitary" friends to Unite the Right, and vowed to fight with antifa activists and federal law-enforcement officers "til one of us are not moving." He had shared far-right/white supremacist memes, photos of himself with a cache of semiautomatic weapons, and claimed membership in the white nationalist Three Percenters militia group.Membership in these groups and publication of violent memes are protected under the First Amendment, which safeguards the right to free expression and free association. However, lying to the FBI is a serious crime, especially in order to falsely obtain a security clearance.The FBI arrested Arena last week and he had a brief hearing before a magistrate judge before he was jailed pending trial.Jason Kessler, the man behind the 2017 rally, was hoping to rebrand the follow-up as a nonviolent demonstration for “white civil rights” after the first protest provoked a national conversation about the rise of hate groups in the United States. Read the rest

Sidewalk Labs (previously) is a "smart city" company that was spun out of Google, though it remains owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company; Sidewalk Labs's first major outing is a planned "experimental city" on Toronto's lakeshore, and it's been a disaster, from the bullying it used to get the project's initial approval to being outed for sneaking a massive expansion into the agreement and then lying about it, to mass resignations by its privacy advisors, who denounced the project as a corporate surveillance city whose "privacy protections" were mere figleafs for unfettered, nonconsensual collection and exploitation of residents' data.Now, as the plan struggles with court challenges, it is spinning for its life, and one of the oft-repeated claims it makes to justify its existence is that the company conducted deep consultation with indigenous leaders as part of Canada's ongoing (and totally inadequate) truth and reconciliation with the country's First Nations.But Duke Redbird and Calvin Brook, two of the indigenous leaders who took part in that consultation, have published an open letter to Waterfront Toronto's board of directors, accusing Sidewalk Labs of discarding all their input to the new city's plans, while touting the consultation as evidence of the company's goodwill and sincerity.Redbird and Brook describe the consultation with phrases like "hollow and tokenistic," and remind us that the indigenous consultation came up with 14 recommendations for Sidewalk Labs, and that the company has taken up exactly zero of these in its 1500 page, four-volume master plan for the city. Read the rest

Remedy Entertainment's Control is a masterpiece of weird architecture and bold design, but a tiring shooter.

Every artist, budding or established, has a sketchbook. They're great for practice and portable, so you can follow your muse anywhere. But if you're just starting off, let's face it: Those blank pages don't offer much guidance. The How to Draw series of sketchbooks are a well-designed alternative to rote linework or idle doodling, incorporating art lessons that let you fill up that white space more productively.Think of these as art textbooks that you can actually draw inside of. Each one fills the front and back with a series of basic tips and reference materials, such as a list of art schools and the best types of art equipment for a particular style. The meat of the book, though, is a series of lessons that are crafted in an ingenious way. Initial lessons will have shading that you can rely on to trace a drawing. As the book progresses, those guidelines will begin to fade, letting you take the reins and draw more confidently.The How to Draw series has books in a variety of art styles, and they're all 20% off the retail price.How to Draw Sketchbook: Super Heroes focuses on the four-color style, with guidance by industry pro Andy Smith. The How to Draw Sketchbook: Drawing Basics covers abstracts, shading and other essential techniques with Mark Kokavec.The How to Draw Sketchbook: Athletic Shoes is another book taught by Mark Kokavec that's crucial for graphic or advertising artists. How to Draw Sketchbook: Figures makes figure drawing easy with guidance by Joshua Fraser. Read the rest

The world is shrinking, That's just one of the reasons to get on that bit of self-improvement that many people resolve to do but too few actually accomplish: learning a new language.And why aren't more of us multilingual? It's actually easier than you might think. Almost all tongues have commonalities, and if a bit of practice doesn't at least get you conversational, well - that might be the fault of the teacher, not the student. There's a lot of language apps that miss the mark when it comes to methodology, but let's focus on one that works - and why it works.The Babbel app is a language-learning system that's drawn raves for a personal approach that tailors lessons to the language of the user. That means an English speaker learning German might begin by learning a different set of phrases than a German speaker would when they're learning English. That's because while their parts of speech and sentence structure might be similar, the two languages have distinctly different idioms and common terms. It seems like a no-brainer, but it's an approach that Babbel really gets like no other.That approach results in a quicker route to the words and phrases that you can actually form a conversation with, and less chaff like "How ripe is this cantaloupe?" And to ensure you'll follow through, the curriculum is broken up into bite-sized lessons you can finish in 10-15 minutes. Just right for a commute or lunch break.Sound doable? Right now, Babbel is offering 25% off select subscriptions. Read the rest

"Affordances" is my new science fiction story for Slate/ASU's Future Tense project; it's a tale exploring my theory of "the shitty technology adoption curve," in which terrible technological ideas are first imposed on poor and powerless people, and then refined and normalized until they are spread over all the rest of us.The story makes the point by exploring all the people in a facial recognition ecosystem, from low-waged climate refugees who are paid to monitor facial recognition errors in an overseas boiler room, to cops whose facial recognition systems and risk-assessment scoring institutionalize algorithmic racism, to activists whose videos of human rights abuses on the US border are disappeared by copyright enforcement bots deployed by shadowy astroturf organizations, to the executives at the companies who make the facial recognition tools whose decisions are constrained by automated high-speed trading bots.It also explores methods of technological resistance, solidarity, and activism, and how the flip-side of automated systems' inaccuracy is their fragility.The story is accompanied by a response essay by Nettrice Gaskins (previously), "an artist-educator who collaborates with AI," who discusses it in the context of the "afrocentric counter-surveillance aesthetic," which is my new all-time favorite phrase. There were different kinds of anxiety: the anxiety she’d felt when she was recording the people massing for their rush, clammy under the thermal blanket with its layer of retroreflective paint that would confound drones and cameras; she walked among the people, their faces shining, their few things on their backs, their children in their arms, the smell of too many bodies and too much fear. Read the rest

Pants//Off is a mobile escape room based on the concept that you're a secret agent who tried on cutting edge pants only to discover they've been sabotaged and rigged to explode. Can you get them off within 10 minutes?After getting locked into the pants, the player has to solve all sorts of puzzles using the odd array of tools stuffed in their pockets.Imagine a mobile escape room experience, but not on a phone 🤔 #SpookyGameJam2019 pic.twitter.com/d8x0qXrthD— Justin Sales (@Junstix) October 19, 2019Here's a glimpse of the action:We made a Pants Escape Room this weekend! Here's a peak of the experience! 👖🗝️🔒Developed by: @john_scovic, @donherweg, @Junstix, @Daniel__Song pic.twitter.com/rnQQzYHlEu— Josh Delson (@JoshDelson) October 21, 2019(Via Max Temkin.) Read the rest

Halloween, like many modern American holidays, is a kind of mashup of different cultural traditional traditions rooted in the autumnal harvest, and some kind of celebration or connection with the spirit world. You see it in Mexico with Dia de los Muertos; and in pre-Christian Ireland, it was Oíche Shamhna ("Shamna" being the genitive form of "Samhain," which is pronounced kind of like "SOW-un," and actually just means "November").An episode of The Irish Passport podcast takes a close look at the roots of those Gaelic traditions, and the kind of generation loss that happened when it was exported to the United States, and then re-imported back to Ireland. The result is kind of fun-house-mirror reflection of itself—modern Irish imitating a mutated American imitation of older Irish traditions. You'll also get to learn a bit about how the faeryfolk in Ireland, the Aos Sídhe, still play an active role in modern real estate development in the Republic (yes really).Just below the surface of modern Ireland, a parallel world exists with its roots in pre-Christian belief. Irish fairies aren’t like Tinkerbell—they’re more like a supernatural mafia. So be careful what you say, because as the story goes, they’re probably listening. Tim talks to one of Ireland’s last seanchaí or story-teller historians, who once managed to get a highway diverted to prevent the felling of a fairy bush. We also hear about modern traditions from the streets of Galway as the Celtic New Year Samhain festival is underway.You can download the mp3, or find the episode on iTunes/Stitcher/Google Play/Spotify/etc. Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren fumbled at the latest Democratic leadership debate when she was pressed on the question of whether Medicare for All would raise taxes, and she refused to answer, creating a soundbite that made her look like a sneaky, evasive politician, to the delight of right wingers who've struggled with her image as a straight-shooting, super-competent, quick-witted daughter of the soil.But the question actually has a simple answer: under Medicare for All, most Americans will pay much lower taxes -- but the tax that will be lowered is the invisible payroll tax exacted by employers and remitted to giant, super-profitable health insurers. Writing in the Guardian, Gabriel Zucman (previously) and Emmanuel Saez (co-authors of the new book The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay) demolish the argument that health insurance isn't a "tax" because you can choose a cheaper option: "There are cheap meals, there are cheap clothes, but there is no cheap way to treat your heart attack, to cure your cancer, or to give birth."I am a donor to both Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' campaigns.The health insurance poll tax hammers the working class and the middle class. At the bottom of the distribution, it’s not as onerous as sales and payroll taxes. But that’s because many low-income Americans rely on a family member to cover them, enroll into Medicaid, or go uninsured. For the middle-class, the burden is enormous. Take a secretary earning $50,000 a year, who has employer-sponsored health insurance at a total cost of $15,000. Read the rest