Boing Boing

Donald Trump’s desperate PR attempt “speech” from this morning read kind of like the lyric sheet from some obscure Radiohead-wannabe art-rock band.So naturally, comedian Emily Heller took it to the next level by feeding it into OpenAI’s “Talk To Transformer” Neural Network.I fed the first part of Trump's I WANT NOTHING note into @OpenAI's Neural Network on https://t.co/SlTLJPJh3z and the computer did the rest pic.twitter.com/fS43ZLoEoY— Emily Heller (@MrEmilyHeller) November 20, 2019I assumed this was real, but I still wanted to try it out for myself. And wow, the results were not disappointing.First up: the opening scene to a noir novel. Not quite “shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not losing any supporters”-level, but it’s close.So I tried again. And this time, the Neural Network came out with a straight-up Ramones song.On my third try, the Artificial Intelligence showed a greater capacity for aspiring towards human emotions than Trump himself ever has.And this one basically just sounds like Trump talking in his sleep during a wet dream.As we can see from below, even the Neural Network knows that dozens of women have credibly accused the President of sexual assault.And finally, this one that … actually just sounds like the way Trump talks on a good day.You can try to fill-in-the-blanks on your own with OpenAI’s Talk To Transformer neural network. Whatever it is the machine spews out will still probably be more coherent and articulate than anything Trump himself has ever come up with. Read the rest

Time Magazine reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, freshly embarrassed in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, is planning to quit. Trump is making him look bad.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told three prominent Republicans in recent weeks that he plans to resign from the Trump Administration to run for the U.S. Senate from Kansas in next year’s elections. The problem: how to get out in one piece. Pompeo’s plan had been to remain at the State Department until early spring next year, the three Republicans tell TIME, but recent developments, including the House impeachment inquiry, are hurting him politically and straining his relationship with Trump.Earlier today, Ambassador Gordon Sondland's testified to the House that "everyone was in the loop" for Trump's "quid pro quo"—refusing to release aid to Ukraine unless it announced an investigation into Trump's political rivals. Read the rest

A light box is an excellent tool for illustrators. It allows you to place a sheet of paper with a sketch on it, then place another piece of paper on top of it, and trace the original drawing. A lot of artists do a pencil sketch on a sheet of paper, then use a nicer piece of paper to trace the sketch in ink.Andreas Ekberg, a wonderful illustrator who makes beautiful stenciled skateboards (like this Jackhammer Jill deck) and other things, told me about this USB light board. I already have a light board, and I've used it for over 30 years. It's a clunky metal box with fluorescent tubes and I used it draw illustrations for the early issues of the bOING bOING zine.I ended up buying a 5mm-thick USB powered light box for my daughter for Christmas a few years back. It works so much better than my old-school light box. The brightness level is adjustable, the LEDs will last much longer than the bulbs (mine currently has one burnt out bulb and I've been using it that way for years), and best of all, it is much more portable. Read the rest

As high winds, warm dry air, and extreme fire risk returns to areas of Northern and Central California today, Pacific Gas & Electric is again shutting off people's electricity to reduce fire risk.On Wednesday, some 375,000 accounts in Northern and central California lost power. PG&E is doing this to prevent live electricity lines from sparking wildfires, as they have in the past.From Associated Press:Some people in the wine country counties of Napa and Sonoma north of San Francisco lost power at about 7 a.m. Power was also cut farther north in portions of Mendocino, Lake and Yolo counties, said Katie Allen, a PG&E spokeswoman.Nearly 170,000 initially lost electricity, but the shut-offs that started Wednesday morning were expected to affect more people as the outages spread to 18 counties and last into Thursday.A virtually rainless fall has left brush bone-dry and forecasts called for low humidity and winds gusting at times to 55 mph (89 kph), which might fling tree branches or other debris into power lines, causing sparks that could set catastrophic fires in the region, PG&E officials said.Lights out in California again with high wildfire danger [AP] Read the rest

At least 145 coffins have been discovered underneath King High School in Tampa, Florida. Apparently a citizen researching area cemeteries advised the school district that in the first half of the 20th century, there was an African-American graveyard on the site. So far, ground-penetrating radar revealed 145 coffins just a few feet below the surface. From Bay News 9:The pattern of the findings matches historical records for a "potter's field," or pauper's field, called Ridgewood Cemetery, the district said."Hillsborough County Public Schools remains committed to respecting the individuals who are buried there, and their families," officials said.This is just the latest of several "forgotten" African-American cemeteries found in Tampa in the past year.The coffins are believed to be from Ridgewood Cemetery, which was designated by the city of Tampa as a pauper’s cemetery decades ago. The school district purchased the property in 1959, and built King High School soon after. pic.twitter.com/Jzhwyj693n— Emerald Morrow (@EmeraldMorrow) November 20, 2019 The discovery of Ridgewood Cemetery under King High School makes the second discovery of an erased black cemetery in Tampa this year. This is a pattern. It was intentional. pic.twitter.com/UTM8VQ2PFY— Emerald Morrow (@EmeraldMorrow) November 20, 2019 Read the rest

"Nearly every Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to fully reauthorize the Patriot Act through March 2020, extending the right of federal agents to use all sorts of secret surveillance against Americans," reports Reason.As the EFF says, "The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands law enforcement's surveillance and investigative powers and represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties, privacy, and democratic traditions in US history. [It] gives sweeping search and surveillance to domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence agencies and eliminates checks and balances that previously gave courts the opportunity to ensure that those powers were not abused. PATRIOT and follow-up legislation now in development threaten the basic rights of millions of Americans."Kudos to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 9 other Democrats for voting against it! And boo to the 219 Democratic representatives who voted to deprive us of our civil liberties!Yeah that’s gonna be a no from me dog https://t.co/O6t8h6zkgs— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 18, 2019(Image: Fred Frederickson, CC-BY,unmodified) Read the rest

Well, old Donald sure has got himself into a mighty fine pickle.Gordon Sondland testified under oath today that yes there absolutely was a quid pro quo in the Rudy-Giuliani-led drug deal involving Javelins and the president of Ukraine, and Burisma and young Hunter Biden -- and that whatever he did, Sondland says he did it at the direction of the President of the United States.Here's what Trump tweeted.Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrumpImpeachment Witch Hunt is now OVER! Ambassador Sondland asks U.S. President (me): “What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas & theories. What do you want? It was a very abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood. He (the President) just said,”...Next Trump tweet:...”I WANT NOTHING! I WANT NOTHING! I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO! TELL PRESIDENT ZELENSKY TO DO THE RIGHT THING!” Later, Ambassador Sondland said that I told him, “Good, go tell the truth!” This Witch Hunt must end NOW. So bad for our Country!And then, the Fox News video clip with the same phrase that was on his weird notes.I WANT NOTHING! pic.twitter.com/KKUfwSIRAi— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2019It's like he knows what's coming.Giuliani is on a tear right now, too, livetweeting against the impeachment witnesses.Republican lawyer doesn’t do his own research and preparation, and is instead picking up Democrat lies, shame.Allow me to inform him: I have NO financial interests in Ukraine, NONE! I would appreciate his apology. Read the rest

For some children with severe epilepsy, the best treatment may be a very rare surgical procedure in which a large portion -- even half -- of the child's brain is removed or disconnected. Amazingly, many of these individuals can relearn motor, language, and cognitive skills. How? The brain reorganizes itself and builds new connections. To better understand this incredible process, and hopefully inform new interventions and rehabilitation, Caltech neuroscientists conducted brain scans on six adults "all of whom received the surgeries as children and now have relatively normal cognitive abilities." From Caltech:"Despite missing an entire brain hemisphere, we found all the same major brain networks that you find in healthy brains with two hemispheres," says Dorit Kliemann, lead author of the new report and a postdoctoral scholar who works in the laboratory of Ralph Adolphs (PhD '93), the Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology, and the director of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center.The brain scans also revealed an increased number of connections between the brain networks in the patients compared to healthy individuals. For example, the regions in the patients' brains that control the function of walking appeared to be communicating more with the regions that control talking than what is typically observed."It appears that the networks are collaborating more," says Kliemann. "The networks themselves do not look abnormal in these patients, but the level of connections between the networks is increased in all six patients...."Says Kliemann, "It's truly amazing what these patients can do. Read the rest

What is even going on anymore? I thought this was a viral photoshop, but it is not.President #DonaldTrump holds notes while speaking to the media before departing the White House for Texas 📷: Mark Wilson #QuidProQuo pic.twitter.com/9Ee3tqKL8Z— Getty Images News (@GettyImagesNews) November 20, 2019Here's what it says:I WANT NOTHINGI WANT NOTHINGI WANT NO QUID PRO QUOTELL ZELLINSKY TO DO THE RIGHT THINGTHIS IS THE FINAL WORD FROM THE PRES. OF THE UNITED STATESThis important photograph was captured by photographer Mark Wilson of Getty Images.Reuters has another image, slightly sharper.A sharper image, via @reuterspictures pic.twitter.com/Uc1iykPyho— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) November 20, 2019How did we get here.TRUMP'S WEIRD NOTES 📷: Mark Wilson @GettyImagesNewsI WANT NOTHINGI WANT NOTHINGI WANT NO QUID PRO QUOTELL ZELLINSKY TO DO THE RIGHT THINGTHIS IS THE FINAL WORD FROM THE PRES. OF THE UNITED STATEShttps://t.co/6ytuOJwxve pic.twitter.com/ToF8nwR5St— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) November 20, 2019Will it ever end.When your brain absolutely rocks pic.twitter.com/9BeByUyeJL— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) November 20, 2019 Read the rest

On Sunday, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly using a remote control car to smuggle meth from Mexico. According to the US Border Patrol, the RC car likely made several trips back and forth to haul more than 50 pounds of meth near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in the San Diego-Tijuana region. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:Border Patrol agents believe someone on the south side of the U.S.-Mexico border was able to slip the drug-laden car through a gap in the bollard-style fencing and then drive it to the teen waiting on the north side of the fence, said Border Patrol spokesman Theron Francisco.An agent spotted the boy hiding in thick brush near the border, about a mile north of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, around 12:30 a.m. Sunday. The teen had two large duffel bags and a remote-controlled car with him, and agents found 50 packages of methamphetamine weighing more than 55 pounds in his bags. Read the rest

This is Cecil H. Dill, a farmer from Traverse Coty, Michigan, who discovered his unique, er, talent for making music with his hands. In the year of 1914. In the month of February. Read the rest

Hint: Don't dig around in there with a cotton swab. Read the rest

If you think the Electoral College should be scrapped because it sometimes results in getting a candidate elected that most of its citizens didn't vote for, then you might not have to wait forever for a Constitutional amendment to abolish it.In his latest video, CPG Grey outlines a plan to subvert Electoral College using the Electoral College, called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The idea is to get States to "agree to cast their Electoral College votes for the candidate who gets the most votes from citizens nationwide."Here's a map showing which states have already enacted the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact into law. As you might expect, states that usually vote for the Democratic candidate like this bill more than states the vote Republican. Read the rest

Robert J. Lang, an origami artist, shows how to fold a cicada 11 different ways, from easy to complex. The final one is basically sculpting the paper with many folds into something that looks very much like a real cicada. Read the rest

KHQ6 reports that John Rabago, a Hawaii cop accused of forcing a homeless man to lick a public urinal, plans to plead guilty on a civil rights charge. Another officer, Reginald Ramones, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge: "Ramones says Rabago convinced him not to report it."More from the AP:The homeless man feared he would be arrested and reluctantly obeyed Rabago’s orders, according to Ramones’ plea agreement. Rabago had previously threatened another man he was questioning by saying he wouldn’t be arrested if he stuck his head in a toilet, the document said. Alt headline: Blue water blues for the boys in blue Read the rest

The Maine Democratic Party has teamed up with the progressive sticker-and-more company Bumperactive (previously) to produce a line of Stephen King-themed, anti-Susan Collins merch, with proceeds going to unseat the Republican Senator whose repeated acts of cowardice (especially during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings) demonstrated that she had no commitment to either her stated principles or the people of Maine. There are four graphics in all: "Trump as Pennywise the Clown, Susan Collins in 'Debt Sematary', Susan as Jack Nicholson from The Shining, and of course, Stand By ME," available as tees ($30), posters ($25 or $45 for four) and vinyl stickers ($4 for 2 or all four for $15).Steven King Inspired Collection [Maine Democrats] Read the rest

Through the 1940s and 1950s, the DoJ went to war on the "studio system" -- a system whereby studios locked up actors in exclusive contracts and then bought or strong-armed all the movie theaters in America so that they'd screen whatever the studios made, freezing out independent productions from movie companies that might offer their talent a better, less restrictive deal.The result was the "Paramount decrees," a set of rules that, for 70 years, have acted as a check on monopolistic conduct from the increasingly monopolistic film industry, which is now down to four major studios, thanks to the US government's consent to a merger between Disney and Fox.Now, in response to "changing market conditions," the DoJ is set to ask the Southern District of New York to end the rule, just as new streaming services are set to end creators' access to residual payments for the ongoing use of their compositions, scripts, performances, and other creative endeavors.The new regime could see mergers with America's already vastly over-concentrated movie theater industry, which has been sewn up by the Chinese owned AMC and a handful of also-ran competitors. It could also see a return to "block booking" and other practices that let the major studios tie up movie screens, depriving smaller and independent producers of access to audiences.The DoJ is also set to get rid of up to 1,000 consent decrees, including the ones governing music licensing, giving far more power to ASCAP and BMI.“The sunset period will allow the defendants and movie theaters a period of transition to adjust to any licensing proposals that seek to change the theater-by-theater and film-by-film licensing structure currently mandated by the decrees,” Delrahim said in a speech to the American Bar Association’s fall antitrust gathering. Read the rest

The "pay-for game" is that gotcha game that Conservatives like to play, wherein the ridiculous boondoggles favored by the right (billions for Trump's wall, more than a trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy, massive increases in Pentagon and intelligence agency spending, even a $16 million bomb used for no military reason) can be financed with infinite amounts of deficit spending, while any program that benefits the majority of America needs has to be "fully funded," generally by making cuts in other programs that benefit the majority of America -- something that the idiotic Democratic establishment has bought into.When Republicans are asked how they'll pay for their corporate welfare, authoritarian up-armoring, mass surveillance and military adventures, they are silent, or, if they are Donald Trump, the insist that "Mexico will pay for it."America has spent $10b on Trump's wall so far (Trump picked a design that can be carved through in minutes with a $100 reciprocating saw and a $15 blade), a downpayment on the $21b+ that Trump has pledged to spend. On the campaign trail, Trump promised the "Mexico would pay for the wall" more than 200 times.Trump has added $4t to the national debt in less than 3 years in office. Republican' "pay-for game" is an unfunny joke: they are the party of fiscal irresponsibility and unfunded liabilities, while Democrats are the party of paying for programs with a proven ROI: public health, public education, sustainable energy, green resiliency, public infrastructure, and other programs that deliver more dollars out than the government puts in to them. Read the rest

The UK is having an election in less than a month, and last night, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn debated Tory archclown Boris Johnson for a televised debate in which Johnson had to defend his record as a lying, racist, philandering, cowardly failure of a human being, and of a leader to his party and the nation.During the debates, the @CCHQPress Twitter account -- which has a Twitter "blue check" indicating that its identity has been verified by the company -- changed its screen name to "FactCheckUK," a name very similar to the existing UK impartial fact-checking service "FactCheck." Having done so, the account emitted a stream of calumnies and falsehoods about the Labour Party, all appearing under the "verified" FactCheckUK by-line.Twitter has publicly characterised the move as "[an attempt] to mislead people by editing verified profile information" and has sworn that any repeat of this stunt or similar moves by the Tory party will lead to "decisive corrective action."Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly insists that there was nothing wrong with his party's actions."It is inappropriate and misleading for the Conservative press office to rename their twitter account 'factcheckUK' during this debate," said Full Fact, an independent British fact-checking charity in a post. "Please do not mistake it for an independent fact checking service."Twitter has a policy against impersonation that states: "Twitter accounts that pose as another person, brand, or organization in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended under Twitter's impersonation policy."Britain's Labour Party joined the wave of criticism saying, "Conservatives' laughable attempt to dupe those watching the #ITVDebate by renaming their twitter account shows you can't trust a word they say," the party tweeted from its official account. Read the rest

Here's a Facebook video explaining how to make "thick and glossy slime", for any and all slime-related needs you may have.The key ingredient is Elmer's Glue-All [Amazon]; the basic slime recipe is to add baking soda and contact lens solution to "activate" the glue, but that won't be thick and glossy enough. For that you need school glue, baby oil and generic lotion, added in the precise quantities shows in the video. Read the rest

There are so many retro-themed merch options out there, but I'm tickled blue by Rhayader Computers's mouse mat designs showing BASIC interpreters from classic 8-bit computers. It seems only the C64 and Amstrad CPC are thusly honored, but there's lots of other well-chosen designs to pick from. Read the rest

Bakersfield, California. That's where you'll find the last Woolworth's Luncheonette in America — and it's still serving food!Eater Los Angeles:Step into the Five & Dime Antique Mall in Bakersfield, California, and that rarity becomes reality. There, in the back corner at the ground-floor level of the four-story building, is a fully functioning former Woolworth luncheonette counter, complete with 22 counter seats, Formica tables ringing the room, and an open kitchen for griddling burgers and making milkshakes. But this well-protected bit of ephemera isn’t cordoned off with Do Not Touch signs — it’s still a real, thriving luncheonette counter called the Woolworth Diner, serving police officers, antiquers, and locals daily.Head over to Eater Los Angeles to see lots of photos of this fifties time capsule.screenshot via NorCalCorsello Read the rest

Mariners rely on GPS to avoid collisions, but increasingly they're finding GPS cannot be relied on near the Port of Shanghai:In fact, something far more dangerous was happening, and the Manukai’s captain was unaware of it. Although the American ship’s GPS signals initially seemed to have just been jammed, both it and its neighbor had also been spoofed—their true position and speed replaced by false coordinates broadcast from the ground....Analysts noticed that the attacks had actually started the previous summer, increasing as the months rolled on. The most intense interference was recorded on the very day in July that the Manukai’s captain reported difficulties, when a total of nearly 300 vessels had their locations spoofed.The spoofing could be China testing a new electronic weapon. Or it could be sand pirates trying to sneak through the area:Chinese builders call it “soft gold.” Sand dredged from Yangtze River, which has the ideal consistency and composition for cement, helped fuel Shanghai’s construction boom in the 1980s and 1990s. By the turn of the millennium, reckless sand extraction had undermined bridges, trashed ecosystems, and caused long stretches of the riverbank to collapse. In 2000, Chinese authorities banned sand mining on the Yangtze completely.The trade continued illicitly, however, expanding to include the illegal dredging of sand and gravel from the Yangtze estuary and the open seas near Shanghai. By day, such ships look innocuous. By night, they lower pipes to the riverbed to suck up thousands of tons of sand in a single session. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH spunky little boy president Donald and his imaginary publicist John create an imaginary foxy world where Donald is a selfless hero!

Blain Hefner's new show at Gallery 1988 is "Pop Toppers," and features over a dozen Christmas tree toppers. Because nothing says Christmas quite like Max Shreck polluting the city or Mola Ram ripping out someone's heart: You can see all the Pop Toppers here. If you're thinking Die Hard would have been a perfect film to feature, you're right. Blain already made a John McClane: Read the rest

Need a boost on that resume? Get a valuable tech education on your own time with these eBook bundles. They contain guides from Packt Publishing that cover everything from game development to machine learning.The Complete Mobile App Developer eBook BundleIt's a veritable gold rush in the App Store these days. Get in on it and develop your own killer app using Xamarin, JQuery and other platforms. This 10-book master class covers the entire development process from scripting to marketing.MSRP: $223.90Sale Price: $19.99 (91% off)The Machine Learning Mastery eBook BundleThis bundle simplifies the complex algorithms you need to kick off the process of machine learning, the technology powering voice recognition, self-driving cars, and more cutting-edge innovations. The eBooks here include broad overviews of the core concepts plus dedicated courses on Python and other essential tools.MSRP: $223.90Sale Price: $19.99 (91% off)The A to Z Artificial Intelligence eBook BundleMaster the growing field of AI, and you can work smarter by teaching your computers to work harder. There are applications for artificial intelligence in the worlds of robotics, big business, and gaming, all of which are covered in this series.MSRP: $311.90Sale Price: $19.99 (93% off)The Complete Game Developer eBook BundleThese guides will get you mastery of all the tools you need to make your game idea a reality. You'll get complete walkthroughs of not only platforms like Unity and Javascript, but the process of how to test your creation for bugs. Read the rest

Ten years, 100 songs, three minutes. Sheer. Fucking. Genius. Watch it before a Youtube copyright enforcement bot deletes it and DJ Earworm's channel with it. (via Metafilter) Read the rest

Part Two of "LEVITATION OF THE PENTAGON" — Concluded Next WeekRead Part One: Applying for a Permit to Exorcise the Pentagon of Evil Spirits, Levitating It Ten Feet Off the GroundFrom John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall.(See all Boing Boing installments) Read the rest

Crazed Indiana officer Daryl Jones was fired after bullying two black men for "acting suspicious" after they bought a bunch of goods from Nordstrom Rack.The unhinged officer came up to the men, who were sitting in their car in front of the department store, and asked for their ID. When the Nordstrom customers repeatedly asked why, the officer's only response was that they were acting suspicious. When they asked for the officer's name, he wouldn't give it to them. When they questioned his behavior, he said, "I got my rights to do anything I want to do, I’m a police officer."Finally the now ex-officer called for backup, who realized what a jerk the officer was and let the guys go. Good thing the guys videotaped the incident (things get going at 1:15). Two hours after the chief constable watched it, Jones was fired. A refreshing ending to a common horror story. According to NBC:In the video posted to YouTube on Nov. 13, the description says the two men first noticed the officer watching them while they were at a Nordstrom Rack store in the Castleton neighborhood of Indianapolis...According to the description of the 17-minute video posted a day after the incident, which has been viewed more than 300,000 times as of Tuesday morning, the men started filming when they began to exit the parking lot and the officer screamed he was going to run their plates."He watched us buy everything, and then followed us to the car," the YouTube video description says...The men repeatedly ask the officer, identified as Lawrence Township Deputy Constable Daryl Jones by NBC affiliate WTHR in Indianapolis, why he approached them in the parking lot and why he wanted to see their driver's licenses. Read the rest

From Hussy Horse Designs, this delightful Wile E. Coyote decal.It's the perfect band-aid until you get over to ACME Auto Body for a real repair.(via Gareth's Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales) Read the rest

Trump Junior retweeted an article from the Federalist this morning called “Let’s Stop Pretending Every Impeachment Witness Is A Selfless Hero" about National Security Council Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who received a purple heart medal in 2004. Yep, from the boy (and son of Bone Spurs) who fled from his own book signing at UCLA on Sunday because he was afraid that his own fans were mad at him. Of course it didn't take long for the Twitterverse to set things straight...This coming from a person who had to run out of a book signing because people were being mean.— Steve Timmons (@SteveTimmons15) November 19, 2019 The boy whose family NEVER wore the uniform is attacking a guy with a Purple Heart.— CHIDI®️ (@ChidiNwatu) November 19, 2019 How long did you serve in the armed forces?— WarMonitor (@TheWarMonitor) November 19, 2019 From the family that thinks war criminals are heroes..— Merrill⭐️ (@MerrillLynched) November 19, 2019 Vindeman only has a purple heart. If he were a real patriot, he'd have bone spurs. Right?— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) November 19, 2019 Daddy will never truly love you— Æch253 (@Aech253) November 19, 2019 Via HuffPost and Raw StoryImage: by DonkeyHotey - Donald Trump Jr. - Caricature, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Did you see this trailer for Under the Silver Lake about a year ago and think nothing of it? Lots of people did and dismissed it as a generic hipster-centric snoozefest. But a few interested people stuck around and read the checklist as a piece of comedy. Vinyl? Yes. Ridiculously nice apartments with one sole occupant? Yes. Struggling actors trying to make it in Hollywood? Yes. Pretentious bars? Yes. Violent Femmes? Sure, yes.As much as these elements might seem like they'd make for a bland 30-something-centric film involving thousand yard stares and brunch, director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) lampoons mumblecore, Los Angeles and "the male gaze."The story in Silver Lake starts off innocently enough, wherein our protagonist Sam (Andrew Garfield) is caught staring at his sunbathing neighbor through binoculars and later notices signs of a neighborhood dog murderer. Perpetually unemployed (and unperturbed), Sam tracks down clues surrounding a disappearance and gets rapidly sucked into the lavish, oddball world of the Hollywood adjacent. Though the plot reads a bit like a noir, it's difficult to describe this world as an "underbelly," seeing as the parties and high teas Sam goes to on his mock-chivalric quest are neither clouded in cigar smoke nor shot through shuttered blinds. The real hook of this film comes in the barrage of red herrings, corner-of-your-eye subplots and ridiculous clues that sometimes pan out, sometimes don't, and sometimes turn out to be redundant at best. In addition to all that, the film's (for lack of a better word) meta narrative allows you to go on a hunt for clues that parallel Sam's adventure. Read the rest

The Distributed Denial of Secrets Twitter account has published links to terabytes of data identified as raw data from the Cayman National Bank and Trust; Phineas Fisher (previously), the public-interest hacker(s) behind the Hacking Team breach, is credited with the leak.On Friday, Fisher claimed to have hacked the bank in 2016 and proposed a "Hacktivist Bug Hunting Program" that would offer bounties of up to $100,000 to those who hacked and dumped documents "in the public interest" from companies such as "South America, Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group, and oil company Halliburton." The document (which is full of references to Cult of the Dead Cow text files) also outlines a series of techniques for compromising bank security and exfiltrating money. Cayman National Bank and Trust has confirmed that it suffered a breach.The Distributed Denial of Secrets tweet links to a slow and overloaded server said to have the files from the breach; an associated torrent file promises access to the same data. In a Spanish-language "Hack Back" document released with the data, mirrored here in English translation, a person using the pen-name "Subcowmandante Marcos" (presumed to be Fisher) describes their motives: "As long as there is injustice, exploitation, alienation, violence and the ecological destruction, there will come many more like me: an endless series of people who will reject as illegitimate the bad system responsible for this suffering."Distributed Denial of Secrets founder Emma Best dedicated the leak Anonymous activist to Jeremy Hammond (previously), who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in hacking and dumping the private intelligence contractor Stratfor. Read the rest

Gallium is a metal that melts at 86 degrees F. It's more fun than playing with mercury, and probably safer, too (it *will* temporarily stain your skin gray though, because it's "wet" when liquid and will adhere to the crevices of your skin). My daughter's friend brought some over a couple of years ago, and it was such a hit at our house that we had to get some of our own. This 20 gram sample is just on Amazon.Image: DaveHax/YouTube Read the rest

20 years ago, Illinois was rocked by a scandal after the widespread practice of locking schoolchildren, especially those with disabilities or special needs, in small, confining boxes was revealed. The teachers who imprisoned these children argued that they did so out of the interests of safety -- that of the imprisoned students, of the other students, and of school staff.In the wake of that scandal, Illinois codified rules for "quiet rooms" -- small cells, sometimes padded, where children are locked up as part of a school safety program. Ironically, by promulgating rules intended to curb abuse, the state legitimized the practice, making Illinois the national leader in the use of this inhumane, abusive practice. Propublica and the Chicago Tribune used extensive Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain records on the use of "quiet rooms" in Illinois schools and uncovered a disturbing pattern of what amounts to widespread torture of children, especially children with disabilities or special needs, in both private and public schools.The investigation also revealed that the "quiet rooms" are only incidentally used in the interests of safety -- rather, they are a disciplinary tool, used to punish children who are disruptive, disobedient, or who get on their teachers' bad side.The Illinois rules require that an adult be stationed outside of the "quiet room" when children are locked inside of it, and that they make minute-by-minute notes of everything the locked-up kid says or does, and weirdly, this seems like the sole legal requirement that schools comply with to any great degree, which means that Propublica was able to obtain thousands of pages' worth of terrifying logs that record children begging to be released, sobbing uncontrollably, and even self-harming while locked away, as an educator sits outside of the box, calmly noting down each of these cries and injuries, without acting on them. Read the rest

Mysterious rolls of cash keep showing up on sidewalks in the small English village of Blackhall Colliery, on the North Sea coast of County Durham. In the last 5 years, around US$30,000 has been found in twelve rolls. Well, twelve rolls that the finders turned in to police anyway. From 9News:"These bundles are always left in plain sight such as on pavements and discovered by random members of the public who have handed them in," Detective Constable John Forster said."I have looked into it and I am not thinking crime, drug dealing or money laundering. Drug dealers are not known for being reckless with their money." Read the rest

Yutaka Hirose is a Japanese composer who was a key figure in that country's ambient/environmental music scene of the 1980s that in recent years has been rediscovered by crate-diggers around the world. Hirose's "NOVA" (1986) is a classic of the genre, a soundscape that Misawa Home Corporation commissioned as a "soundtrack" for the prefabricated houses. While original LPs have sold for hundreds of dollars, WRWTFWW Records have recently reissued the record as an expanded double LP and double CD. (For a further exploration of Japanese environmental music of the 1980s, Light in the Attic Records' "Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990" is a perfect portal.)To celebrate the NOVA reissue, The Vinyl Factory asked Hirose to create a mix of music he was listening to and inspired by in the 1980s Listen above. It's a beautiful, sometimes-jarring, and totally compelling journey through avant-garde sounds of the time. Here's the tracklist: 1. Jan Steele – All Day2. David Toop – Do The Bathosphere3. Gavin Bryars – 1, 2, 1-2-3-44. Joan La Barbara – Poems 43, 44, 455. Meredith Monk – Waltz6. Karlheinz Stockhausen – Stimmung7. John Cage – Seven Haiku8. Throbbing Gristle – Almost A Kiss9. Robert Ashley – Yellow Man With Heart With Wings10. The Flying Lizards – The Window11. Henry Cow Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road12. Faust – Faust13. CAN – Future Days14. Tangerine Dream：Rubycon15. Michael Nyman – Decay Music16. Read the rest

Ship's captains and outside monitoring firms have reported waves of GPS jamming around Shanghai's ports, on a scale and of a severity never seen before: the jamming causes ships' locations to be incorrectly displayed and to jump around; the observations were confirmed via an anonymized (sic) data-set from a short-hire bike firm, whose bikes are also mysteriously appearing and disappearing at locations all through the region. The spoofing has created a massive local shipping hazard and has led to spectacular shipwrecks.The most likely culprit in the mystery is sand smugglers, who are part of a global network of sand-thieves who have literally cratered whole cities and islands in their drive to obtain sand for concrete.Sand for Shanghai's building boom was largely dredged from the Yangtze river, so prolifically that bridges, buildings, riverbanks and ecosystems on the river collapsed. The Chinese state has banned dredging from the Yangtze, but the practice continues, and it's theorized that "soft gold" smugglers are using GPS jammers to prevent Chinese law-enforcement from detecting and interdicting their vessels.The Shanghai “crop circles,” which somehow spoof each vessel to a different false location, are something new. “I’m still puzzled by this,” says Humphreys. “I can’t get it to work out in the math. It’s an interesting mystery.” It’s also a mystery that raises the possibility of potentially deadly accidents.“Captains and pilots have become very dependent on GPS, because it has been historically very reliable,” says Humphreys. “If it claims to be working, they rely on it and don’t double-check it all that much.”On June 5 this year, the Run 5678, a river cargo ship, tried to overtake a smaller craft on the Huangpu, about five miles south of the Bund. Read the rest

This kind man assisted a beaver with a heavy burden. Read the rest

I use these screen protectors on my Nintendo Switch.The Nintendo Switch gets handed from child to child. The Switch gets banged, bumped, dropped and treated like something a 5-year-old is struggling wrest from a 10-year-old. Screen protectors come and go, but thus far the Switch has been undamaged.Three packs are nice.[3 Pack] Screen Protector Tempered Glass for Nintendo Switch, iVoler Transparent HD Clear Anti-Scratch Screen Protector Compatible Nintendo Switch via Amazon Read the rest

CNN reports that Donald Trump can be forced to be deposed in a defamation case against him, ruled a New York state Supreme Court Justice.Summer Zervos, a a former Apprentice contestant accused Trump of sexually assaulting her. She filed a lawsuit against Trump, who responded by calling her a liar. Zervos then filed a defamation suit against Trump.From CNN:After the suit was filed, Trump's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case. They have argued the President has immunity from such lawsuits in state courts and that the case would conflict with Trump's official duties. They also said that Trump's frequent denials of accusations made by Zervos and others were protected political speech as statements of opinion.Schecter dismissed those arguments in March 2018, writing that "no one is above the law."In her ruling, she cited the 1997 Clinton vs. Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, in which the US Supreme Court held that a sitting president is not immune from being sued in federal court for unofficial acts.Image: CNN video screenshot Read the rest

Last month in Deggendorf, Germany, Alexander Oswald, 19, and his friends encountered a beaver on the road in the middle of the night. Afraid that a a driver might hit the animal, they stopped their car but the beaver had already disappeared. Moments later, it emerged again carrying a huge branch but was visibly struggling to drag it across the road. So Oswald lent a hand. What a nice boy.(PNP.de) Read the rest

Propublica has obtained a tranche of leaked internal communications between the Sackler family's Purdue Pharma, makers of the lethal opioid Oxycontin, and Dezenhall Resources, known as "The Pitbull of Public Relations," whose previous client roster includes Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, Exxon and other "beleaguered corporations," who masterminded a "blame the victim" strategy that apportioned responsibility for Oxycontin's mounting death toll on the people who became addicted to it -- not the Sacklers and Purdue, who falsified science, bribed doctors, and made billions from an epidemic that has now claimed more American lives than the Vietnam War.The leaks reveal how Dezenhall took credit for the work of psychiatrist Sally Satel, a "resident scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, the DC thinktank notorious for its advocacy for the tobacco industry, against Net Neutrality, against Dodd-Frank, against a national minimum wage, and in favor of climate denial and the Iraq invasion.Satel penned a series of editorials and gave numerous media appearances that furthered the "blame the victim" narrative for the opioid epidemic, drawing on research funded by the Sacklers and Purdue, which ran under headlines like "Oxy Morons" (WSJ) and "OxyContin doesn’t cause addiction. Its abusers are already addicts" (Forbes).Purdue were $50,000/year funders of AEI, something that Satel says she didn't know about (she also says that she didn't know that the research she cited in her articles was funded by Purdue). Behind the scenes, the leaks show that Purdue and Dezenhall were intimately involved with Satel's work, with Dezenhall taking credit for briefing her, getting her articles published, and suppressing negative responses (Dezenhall also masterminded a campaign to get prominent retractions for critical articles about Purdue and Oxycontin, then followed up with a PR campaign that leveraged the retractions to generate press that expressed doubt about the risks of opioids). Read the rest

The US government detained more than 69,000 migrant children last year in the course of its brutal family separation policy. There's no guarantee these kids will ever be reunited with their parents; in fact, some of them have already been put up for "adoption" (read: legalized kidnapping) after their parents were deported. Many of these adoption agencies are of course Christian organizations, who genuinely believe themselves to be acting from a compassionate, altruistic pro-life perspective.This is not breaking news; nor is it necessarily unique to the Trump administration. But I was reminded of it as I scrolled through Twitter over the weekend:ICYMI: Some asylum seekers who have given birth in custody were forced to hand over their newborns to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. We were unable to verify what happens to the children of women who lack access to legal help. https://t.co/3BcZF7HmmL— Rewire.News (@Rewire_News) November 15, 2019And for whatever reason, this reminder flagged another connection in the mind: the second season of the "Missing and Murdered" podcast, produced by CBC, the Canadian public broadcasting service.Also known as "Finding Cleo," the 10-episode second season follows host Connie Walker as she tries to track down the truth about a deceased Cree girl named Cleo. According to Cleo's sister, Christine, all of the siblings in their family were forcefully taken from their First Nations home by Canadian child protective services. Somehow, Cleo ended up being adopted by a white Christian family in the United States until she was allegedly raped and murdered. Read the rest

Pixy Handmade creates adorable and delicious-looking keycaps for mechanical keyboards. They accept custom orders through Amazon. Read the rest

Over at Wirecutter, I have some handy advice for how to live safely with a space heater. Which is to say, don't do what I did:It was the winter of 2019, and I was down in my unfinished basement putting the finishing touches on my band’s next album. I had to get through only a few more guitar overdubs, but my fingers were too cold to play the parts quite right. So I grabbed a space heater I was long-term testing for Wirecutter. I placed it down on top of the wooden workbench where my digital audio workstation was set up and plugged it into the nearest power strip, which just so happened to be the same one through which I ran my half-stack Marshall amplifier.I turned the heater on. Five seconds later, the power strip blew up.This might not have been the single dumbest thing I’d ever done in my life. But as I watched the sparks fade from the smoldering lump of freshly burnt plastic before me, I knew it was up there on the list.There was one commenter who very much did not enjoy this self-deprecating anecdote. But there is more to the article than that, including some (hopefully) useful and relatable tips for keeping warm in the winter without risking your life and/or destroying everything you own. This is especially helpful if you, like me, live in the Northeast of the United States, which has been suffering through a nasty cold front lately. Read the rest

"Sir, you crashed into my car. You're in your car, your car is running, the engine's running, you still have the car in reverse, and you're touching my car. Sir." Read the rest

Nate Crowley wrote for Rock Paper Shotgun about the broken (as of this writing) economy in Planet Zoo. The game allows players to raise animals and then sell them for money or the rare currency called conservation credits. But the economy is broken, and desirable animals are unobtainable to all but the early adopters:In any case, the fact nobody is selling for cash has put CC at a massive premium: those who had got in early on endangered, prestige or hard-to-breed animals are now hoarding them, only selling them for wild sums. Prices have soared, making gorillas, tigers and the rest completely inaccessible to new players, while Pandas have become virtually mythical: beasts that might as well be made from pure diamond.New players are forced to breed and sell just a few types of animals, like warthogs, to try to grind their way to a better future. As a result the market is flooded with low quality animals:to make matters even more splendid, the animals people are selling on are the ones with genetic mutations that make them undesirable for further breeding – they might be highly susceptible to disease, tiny, incredibly short-lived, or even completely infertile. These sell for the lowest prices as well, naturally. Starting off as a new player, then, with your tiny pool of CC, you’re going to be spending a lot of time scrolling through pages and pages of dying mutants, desperately seeking something that won’t horrify your guests, and might have a chance of breeding. Read the rest

Bodycam footage involving cops and dogs is rarely pleasant viewing, but this one--featuring an officer rescuing a dog snarled in a wire fence--has a great twist ending. I shalln't ruin it for you. Read the rest