In 2017, California passed a state law mandating disclosure of wholesale drug prices, something the Big Pharma companies fought tooth and nail. Now, the first of those disclosures has taken place, and it reveals spectacular levels of price-gouging from the pharmaceutical industry's greediest monopolists: an overall rise of 25.8% in the median drug price since 2017.But the median obscures the incredible increases in the prices at the top end: generic liquid Prozac went up by 667%, generic ADHD meds went up more than 200%, and so on. The companies behind these increases cite nebulous and improbable causes like "market conditions" and (hilariously) "manufacturing costs" for the hikes.PHRMA, the lobbying body for Big Pharma, says there's nothing to see here, because these prices "do not reflect discounts and rebates for insurers and pharmacy benefit managers." PHRMA is suing to overturn the law.California’s new drug law requires companies to report drug price increases quarterly. Only companies that met certain standards — they raised the price of a drug within the first quarter and the price had risen by at least 16% since January 2017 — had to submit data. The companies that met the standards were required to provide pricing data for the previous five years. In its initial report, the state focused its analysis on drug-pricing trends for about 1,000 products from January 2017 through March 2019.California’s transparency law also requires drugmakers to state why they are raising prices. Over time, that information, in addition to cost disclosures, could create “one of the more comprehensive and official drug databases on prices that we have nationwide,” Wright said. Read the rest

The city of San Antonio agreed to pay a woman $205,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that a police detective pulled down her shorts in public and conducted a drug search in her vagina in front of other male officers. The detective accused of conducting the illegal vaginal cavity search, Mara Wilson, was never reprimanded by the police department. She has since retired.From San Antonio Current:According to the allegations in the suit, Wilson, a 32-year force veteran, slid down [the woman's] shorts and examined her vagina in view of the street while male officers were present. The officer also pulled a tampon from Simms’ vagina and held it up, inspecting it in front of the other cops.The suit references video footage taken from a squad car camera that appears to show Simms raising objections when it appeared Wilson was ready to probe her anus to continue the search.Image: Tomás Del Coro/Flickr. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) Read the rest

After a day of making people look at a black hole, Epic Games has released the next iteration in the amazingly popular battle royale shooter Fortnite.A new map, boats and bandage bazookas are just some of the 'new' things. Players can now carry an injured buddy to safety, or go fishing -- maybe both at the same time!Hope we don't run into one another! Read the rest

If you've been enjoying those videos where Bill Hader's face morphs uncannily into whoever he's impersonating, this one from Jim Meskimen is the overwhelming overdose. It's a perfect intentional demonstration of the special effect, generated by adversarial networks, an enchanted warning.Actor/impressionist Jim Meskimen (Parks & Recreation, Whose Line?, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) recites "Pity the Poor Impressionist" poem in 20 celebrity voices, with the help of SHAM00K. Read the rest

Hey, we love Netflix and Hulu, but let's face it: The whole setup doesn't exactly encourage active viewing. For all the binge-watching we've done, it's tough to expand our horizons or learn anything new - except for how many episodes of "The Office" it takes to make us fall asleep.It was only a matter of time before a streaming service would come along that actually welcomes and challenges curious minds. With a library of over 2,000 documentaries, CuriousityStream lets you binge to your heart's content - and it's more than just empty calories.The service includes a ton of established, award-winning films, plus a mix of originals that boast some high-profile talent. You'll find documentaries on nearly every subject imaginable, from the possibilities of space travel to the secrets of lost civilizations, narrated and presented by names like David Attenborough, Stephen Hawking, and Mike Rowe. The more you watch, the more you learn with algorithms that tailor that next documentary to your personal taste.Sign up, and you can access any of the films from a range of devices. A 3-year subscription to CuriosityStream is now 25% of the list price. Read the rest

From 2009 to 2011, Radboud University in the Netherlands featured a "purification grave" as a place of meditation:Good news, the purification grave is once again available, as announced in this cheerfully macabre video:Per Google Translate:Students and staff are welcome to spend time in the grave during office hours and to reflect on their lives, their choices, their questions and doubts. Register here if you want to participate. We will then give you a mat and pillow and you will receive some explanation. Your belongings are stored in a locker. Afterwards a conversation is possible if you need it.(Via @SpyKids2.) Read the rest

Costumes in the early 80's were little more than decorated plastic bags. And before Disney's IP came to dominate Halloween shops, costume makers had to come up with creative ways to let kids embody concepts like an Asteroid or Rubik's Cube. The resulting costumes may have lacked padded muscles, but made up for it with surprisingly disturbing masks:Someone made the call that it was worth spending resources to make a costume based on the cyclops from Krull:You can find more costumes from the 70's and 80's here and here.(Via Attract Mode.) Read the rest

Reuters reports, without offering any context, the fact that a man dressed as a giant broccoli was arrested yesterday in London. While being detained, he yells "give peas a chance."London police arrest protester dressed as broccoli pic.twitter.com/3VSLb1jz2f— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 14, 2019 Read the rest

John Hodgman's last book, Vacationland, was a kind of absurdist memoir of a weird kid who'd grown up to the kind of self-aware grownup who really wanted to dig into how he got to where he was, with bone-dry wit and real heart (I compared it to Steve Martin's Cruel Shoes, but for adults who'd outgrown it); in his new book, Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms, Hodgman offers something much more uncomfortable (if no less funny), a series of vignettes that explore the hollowness of privilege, the toxicity of comparison, and the melancholy of accomplishment.Medallion Status tells the story of Hodgman's post-TV life. After lucking into a role in a series of Apple TV ads, Hodgman went on to semi-regular stints on The Daily Show under Jon Stewart and a series of medium-sized parts on well-regarded sitcoms, but these have dwindled, and while Hodgman has many other claims to accomplishment and fame, they're not TV fame (and arguably, as Hodgman points out, even TV fame isn't TV fame anymore in our fractured world of streaming services). TV fame is a weird kind of fame, a stopped-in-the-street kind of fame, a fly from New York to LA every week and stay at the Chateau Marmont kind of fame. It's the kind of fame that gets you invited into the swag room at awards-shows where you can be measured for complementary custom-made leather shoes or take home a really amazing pair of jeans.For Hodgman, as riven with insecurity as the next person (especially if the next person is a white, straight dude from a middle-class background who has a keen appreciation that he's living life on the lowest difficulty setting and is likely being serviced and fawned over by people who work harder and are more talented than he is), the gradual withdrawal of the trappings of privilege are a constant, nagging confirmation that every jolt of impostor syndrome you've ever felt was fully deserved. Read the rest

I currently live three hours away from a movie theater. A six-hour toot in our jeep just to watch Joker? Not going to happen. Happily, David Harbour and the cast of Saturday Night Live goofing on Joaquin Phoenix's turn in Joker feels like more than enough to give me the gist of the flick until it pops up on streaming services. Read the rest

Santa Paws is coming to town.Trader Joe's is making the countdown to Christmas more fun this year by offering an advent calendar for fur babies. An episode of the Inside Trader Joe's podcast made the reveal last month."Last year we came out with the dog advent calendar, which seemed pretty odd until we got out in the stores and there was quite a following for it, reports Colin Fields, vice president of merchandising for the grocery chain, "And we heard from our feline, loving customers that we should have something for their cats. So we found it, we developed it and it's pretty cool." What's inside of the calendars? Fields shares that it's filled with "magical treats made of salmon and seaweed." Because, he says, "cats actually love seaweed."No word on when exactly these kitty calendars will hit stores. (Bustle)photo by Lisa Zins via Flickr Read the rest

“This man murdered someone,” the victim's brother, Adarius Carr, said at a news conference. “He should be arrested.”Aaron Dean, the former Fort Worth Texas police officer who fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson this weekend while she was playing a video game with her nephew, resigned hours before he was going to be fired.Dean was charged with murder on Monday and booked into jail without bond, per Tarrant County jail records.Aaron Y. Dean, the officer, had resigned earlier on Monday, hours before the police chief had planned to fire him amid the community’s growing anger and frustration after the death of the woman, Atatiana Jefferson.The interim Fort Worth police chief, Ed Kraus, had said in an afternoon news conference that the department was conducting a criminal investigation into the officer’s actions. He said he had reached out to the F.B.I. about the possibility of starting a civil rights investigation.“I get it,” Chief Kraus said of the widespread public outrage that followed the release of body camera video showing that Ms. Jefferson had been given no warning that it was a police officer who had crept into her backyard, shined a light into her bedroom window and shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” immediately before firing a single fatal shot.Fort Worth Police Shooting: Officer Is Charged With Murder for Killing Woman in Her Home [nytimes.com]From our Rob Beschizza's earlier post on Atatiana Jefferson's death by police officer:A black woman was shot dead by a white police officer early Saturday in her own home. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Green European Journal short story about the terrible European Copyright Directive which passed last March, False Flag. Published in December 2018, the story highlights the ways in which this badly considered law creates unlimited opportunities for abuse, especially censorship by corporations who've been embarassed by whistleblowers and activists. The crew couldn’t even supply their videos to friendly journalists to rebut the claims from the big corporate papers. Just *linking* to a major newspaper required a paid license, and while the newspapers licensed to one another so they could reference articles in rival publications, the kinds of dissident, independent news outlets that had once provided commentary and analysis of what went into the news and what didn’t had all disappeared once the news corporations had refused to license the right to link to them.Agata spoke with a lawyer she knew, obliquely, in guarded hypotheticals, and the lawyer confirmed what she’d already intuited.“Your imaginary friend has no hope. They’d have to out themselves in order to file a counterclaim, tell everyone their true identity and reveal that they were behind the video. Even so, it would take six months to get the platforms to hear their case, and by then the whole story would have faded from the public eye. And if they *did* miraculously get people to pay attention again? Well, the fakers would just get the video taken offline again. It takes an instant for a bot to file a fake copyright claim. Read the rest

Still using elbow grease to clean the sinks, tubs and other grimy surfaces around your house? Save your elbows, and some time. If you've got a power drill, the RevoClean® 4-in-1 Drill Brush Cleaning Kit will instantly turn it into a professional scrubber that can tackle any stain on any surface.Attach the 4" nylon round brush to the drill bit on any standard drill and you can clean tile, showers and even caked-on grill stains in a fraction of the time it would take by hand. The 3.5" nylon ball brush is great for general purpose jobs like porcelain and those pesky shower corners. Finally, there are two non-scratch attachments: A medium scrubber for stainless steel, granite or cookware and a sponge for glass, wood furniture or other sensitive but stubborn areas.There's hardly a stain that can stand up to it and no area in any house where this won't save tons of time. Again, you'll need your own drill to take advantage of the RevoClean® 4-in-1 Drill Brush Cleaning Kit, now available in a 2-pack for 37% off the retail price. Read the rest

• Trump lawyer’s bank records examined• Witnesses questioned on work for Ukraine mayor• Feds probing efforts to oust U.S. ambassadorDonald Trump's longtime personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is the subject of a federal criminal investigation.Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutors are reported by the Wall Street Journal to now be examining Rudy Giuliani's business dealings in Ukraine.Investigators have examined Giuliani's bank records.The areas of Giuliani's operations now under investigation include his personal finances, travel, meetings, and work for a city mayor in Ukraine, the WSJ reports citing people familiar with the probe.Read more at the WSJ:Federal Prosecutors Scrutinize Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine Business Dealings, FinancesNEWS: Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are examining Rudy Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine, including his finances, meetings and work for a city mayor there. Investigators have also examined Giuliani’s bank records. w/@aviswanatha @rebeccadobrien https://t.co/01qKdTMsWW— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) October 14, 2019[WSJ, reporting by Aruna Viswanatha, Rebecca Davis O’Brien, and Rebecca Ballhaus, Oct. 14, 2019 6:32 pm ET, via] Read the rest

The Donald Trump impeachment inquiry is picking up speed.A senior adviser to Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who just resigned will be questioned under oath on Wednesday on Capitol Hill in the accelerating House impeachment inquiry. Tweeted CNN's Manu Raju, among the first to break the news today:“Michael McKinley, a senior adviser to Pompeo who just resigned, is scheduled for a transcribed interview with the committees leading the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday at 10a, according to multiple congressional sources.”It's going to be be a full week. “Tomorrow: George Kent; Wednesday: McKinley; Thursday: Sondland; Friday: Laura Cooper (new addition), who is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia,” quips Raju.We are now looking at a full week. Tomorrow: George Kent; Wednesday: McKinley; Thursday: Sondland; Friday: Laura Cooper (new addition), who is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 14, 2019 NEWS: Michael McKinley -- the former senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who resigned his post earlier this month -- is expected to appear Wednesday in a closed session before the committees leading the impeachment inquiry— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) October 14, 2019NEWS: Former Pompeo adviser Michael McKinley, who resigned last week, will testify in closed session on Wednesday before House impeachment investigators, according to an official working on the inquiry.— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) October 14, 2019DEPOSITIONS THIS WEEK:Deputy Asst Secy George Kent expected TuesdayFmr Senior Advisor to Secy of State Ambassador P. Read the rest

Get those sea creatures!Odin the German Shepherd is an adorable plush coat puppy. In this video from 2017, his human says Odin had zero interest in bath time. View this post on Instagram Get those sea creatures! 🐳🐠🦑Anyone have any tips on how I can get him to not freak out when we give him a bath? he's warming up to the kiddie pool but still dreaddddsss a bath, getting rinsed off with a hose, getting water poured on him with a cup to rinse off. Basically anything to try to get him clean! Help!! #dreadedbathtime #gsdstagram #gsdlife #gsdpage #gsdlove #gsdofig #gsdofinstagram #gsdpuppy #gsdpuppies #germanshepherd #germanshepherddog #germanshepherdofig #germanshepherdworld #germanshepherdsofinstagram #gsdlovers #gsdstagram #gsdoftheworld #puppiesofinstagram #puppydog #puppygram #mansbestfriend #petsofinstagram #germanshepherdpuppy #gsdpuppy #odinthegreatgsdnj #odinzms #k9 #odinA post shared by 🐾•ODIN•🐾 (@odin.thegreat.gsd) on Jul 8, 2017 at 1:27pm PDT The kiddie pool was a way to get the little puppy to become more comfortable with getting a bath.He's warming up to the kiddie pool but still dreaddddsss a bath, getting rinsed off with a hose, getting water poured on him with a cup to rinse off.This is a newly-viral-again doggie video that actually dates back a couple years. At odin.thegreat.gsd, you can follow how Odin has been growing up, and what became of his initial wariness about water time.[Instagram, 2017] Read the rest

Aww, look at him having the best time!“My old chunky pupper enjoying the snow,” shares IMGURian @quoththeravennever.“Roland is 12 years old and usually quite the couch potato, but he loves the snow! Also, he knows he’s very handsome in his new sweater. All the old ladies tell him so.”My old chunky pupper enjoying the snow Read the rest

All hail the queen of Halloween. You gotta watch the video, the chainsaw arm makes a scary sound and everything. Seriously impressive Ash Williams and 'The Evil Dead' cosplay going on here. “Made myself a chainsaw arm for my halloween costume. It makes chainsaw noises and everything.”IMGURian @shepardcommander07.Real chainsaw hand action!Ash Williams costume, part 2Groovy[IMGUR Gallery one, two, and three.] Read the rest

I bought this USB rechargeable lighter in May and will never go back to using matches or a butane lighter. I've used it to light many charcoal barbecues, candles, and stove burners and have not had to recharge it yet (the manufacturer says it works 1,000 times before it needs recharging). It usually costs on Amazon but if you use promo code BFM3MDJY you can get it for about half that price. Read the rest

Josh O'Neill writes, "We're doing a box set edition of Dracula in which we reconstitute the novel into the primary source documents from which it's drawn: Mina's diary, Lucy's letters, Dailygraph newspaper clippings, even an actual phonograph record from Dr. Seward. It comes in a suitcase. Or a wooden casket or stone crypt, depending on the edition."Josh is from Beehive Books, who've produced some of the loveliest limited editions we've featured over the past three years, and they've got an excellent track record when it comes to delivering on these crowdfunded editions.Dracula itself is a remarkable text, a combination of epistolary novel and assemblage of clippings and other fragments, still modern-seeming after all these years (which is fitting, given the extent to which it is at root a parable about the power of modernity -- lights, telegraphs, science -- to defeat superstition).$25 gets you a PDF, $100 gets you the record with its jacket and accompanying textual material as well as a map, $350 gets you a suitcase with all the materials, $800 gets you a limited version with bonus materials, $2000 gets you the "Entombed Edition" with a letter from Dacre Stoker (Bram's grand-nephew), handmade items, and a special case ("a stone vault").It's all scheduled to ship in Oct 2021.Beehive ends its pitch by supporting the unionization drive by Kickstarter workers, noting that the workers have not called for a boycott while they seek recognition for their union. We will produce twenty-six premium editions, each lettered A-Z and signed and personally inscribed to you or an individual of your choosing by Dacre Stoker. Read the rest

The legendary Mavis Staples. Read the rest

Descript's Lyrebird is a premium service that "allows you to replace recorded words and phrases with synthesized speech that's tonally blended with the surrounding audio." The interactive samples on the website are amazing -- I can't tell the difference between the original voices and the synthetic voices. This could be useful for podcast editing, but also for deepfakes. Read the rest

Earlier this month, we learned that one of the most enduring frustrations of Trump's presidency is that no one will take his suggestion of building a moat filled with man-eating alligators and poisonous snakes along the US border (something he's been talking up for at least 35 years!). The editorial staff of Defenseone, presumably still stinging from being accused of being anti-Trump propagandists by a belligerent CBP officer at Dulles Airport, have decided to give Trump a little help by costing out the total budget for such a project.They have to make some assumptions, of course -- such as a minimum of 10 gators and 1,000 snakes per moat-mile -- and they also count on making some cost savings by sourcing cheap gators from police auctions. Here's the bottom line, though: 19,450 border gators will run $40.4m, including shipping. 1,954,000 snakes, meanwhile, will cost $683.9m, a cost that must be reupped every seven years, due to the regrettably short lifespans of coral snakes and water moccasins.Then there's the feed issue: if the snakes and gators work, there will be a shortage of human border-crossers for them to eat, so that's $291m/year for frozen rats and gator pellets. The accompanying zoologists will cost $135.7m/year.Then there are the medical costs for border crossers who are injured but not killed by the moat-dwellers, ballparked at $1.3b/year (much of that is price-gouging by monopolistic pharma companies who have giant markups on their antivenom).The total bill? $2.5b to set up and $1.8b/year to operate. Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren overtook Joe Biden in one nationwide poll and the billionaires are already taking his pulse. Michael Bloomberg (~$50bn net worth) today makes clear his intentions if Biden slips away and the left-leaning Warren seems likely to prevail: Bloomberg keeps talking to allies about running for president.Mike Bloomberg has indicated to associates in recent weeks that Joe Biden’s recent struggles are making him rethink his decision to stay out of the 2020 Democratic primary, according to people familiar with the discussions“Bloomberg is in if Biden is out,” says one source. Biden has not indicated any desire to drop out any time soon.Bloomberg could be in for a showdown with Elizabeth Warren, whether he runs or not, as he has been one of her biggest critics on the Democratic side.Pete Buttigieg has done better than expected in recent polls and is, if anything, even more Billionaire-friendly than Biden. And there's that old sawhorse about liberals favoring the farthest-right over even the nearest-left. But Bloomberg doesn't have political affiliations, only vehicles. He served three terms as New York's mayor as a Republican and finally as an Independent. His interest in the Democratic primary is simple: he thinks it'd be a cheap ticket to the White House if Biden were gone. Read the rest

Honest Guide is a YouTube channel for people interested in visiting Prague. It's got tips and cautions that are great to know about in advance of going there. I wish there were similar YouTube channels for other places. In its latest episode, Honest Guide describes five common scams that tourists should watch out for. The most interesting one is not so much a scam, but a sucker bet. Some guy has built a structure with a horizontal bar, sort of like a pull-up bar. He sets it up in the middle of Wenceslas Square and has a sign that tells people that if they can hang from it for two minutes, they make 5 times the money they paid for. But no one can do it because the bar spins, making it impossible to hang from. The host also recorded a recent encounter with a scammer who drove up to him in a Mercerdes while he was sitting on a sidewalk bench. The scammer explained that he had lost his wallet and needed to buy gas. He gave the host his "valuable" ring as collateral, but the host started recording the scammer. The scammer threatened to call the cops, and when the host encouraged him to do so, the scammer quickly drove away.(One of the many reasons I like Japan is that in the 8 times I've been there, no one has ever tried to cheat me.) Read the rest

For decades, it was a commonplace in western business that no one could afford to ignore China: whatever problems a CEO might have with China's human rights record could never outweigh the profits to be had by targeting the growing Chinese middle-class.Businesses tied themselves in knots trying to reconcile this. Exactly 15 years ago, I challenged the Chairman of Google's Board at the Web 2.0 Conference over his company's decision to censor its search-results to help the Chinese state suppress political dissidence (his excuse: censoring search results delivered a "superior user experience" because including sites blocked by the Great Firewall in search results would just frustrate Chinese users who tried to click on them). The real reason? Yahoo was in China, and in 2004, if you wanted to get Google to do something stupid, all you needed to do was get Yahoo to do it first.Two years later, we learned that Yahoo had secured their commercial future in China by helping the Chinese state target dissidents' Yahoo Mail inboxes, so that Yahoo's users could be kidnapped and tortured for their political activities.Five years after that, Google disclosed that Chinese spies had hacked Gmail in order to continue their surveillance of pro-democracy activists, and revealed that this was the reason the company had pulled out of China altogether. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a Soviet refugee, could not stomach being a party to repressive state surveillance.But since then, Google has embarked upon a secret project to re-introduce a censored/surveilling search tool to the Chinese market. Read the rest

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted "secretive talks" and off-the-record dinners with conservative figures in recent months, reports Politico's Daniel Lippman. Among the delights were discussions of "free speech and partnerships" with nationalist Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally.As part of the series, Zuckerberg met earlier this year with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who insinuated that Facebook had become a monopoly during a congressional hearing last year; Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has fingered Zuckerberg as contributing to “the death of free speech in America”; and conservative radio talk host Hugh Hewitt, who has cautioned against a DOJ enforcement action but has called for a “new regulatory regime” to minimize “big tech bias” against conservatives. It puts into context his (and now Facebook's) recent attacks on Democratic presidential front-runner Elizabeth Warren. Conservative threats to Facebook are part of an effort to co-opt its influence over users and other media. But progressives will follow through on regulation or breaking up its monopoly. Zuckerberg's supplication to conservative politicians and media will, therefore, evolve into urgent support as the next election approaches. Read the rest

If you don't live in England, it might be hard to tell the difference between a northern and southern English accent. If you don't live in the United States you might not know how to distinguish between a northern and southern English accent? In this Wired video, language coach Erik Singer explains how to recognize accents that sound similar to untrained ears.<em>Image: YouTube</em> Read the rest

Viktor Orban and his far-right, xenophobic, conspiratorial Fidesz party have led Hungary through a string of catastrophes, from its handling of Middle Eastern migrants to its ouster of the internationally famous Central European University to the passage of a slave labor bill that allowed employers to require hundreds of hours of mandatory overtime that needn't be paid for for years to the creation of a parallel system of partisan "administrative courts" to investigate government corruption and electoral fraud. Despite widespread opposition to Orban and Fidesz's program, they continued to win supermajorities in national elections, allowing them to ram their agenda (proudly described as "illiberal" by the party itself) through (it didn't help that opposition politicians who spoke against Fidesz's legislation were dragged out of TV stations and administered savage beatings by goon-squads).Finally, the dam is breaking: a "unity" coalition of both right- and left-wing parties backed a slate of candidates in Hungarian municipal elections, winning not just in Budapest, but in 10 of the 23 largest cities in Hungary. The electoral victory was enabled in part by a sex-scandal in Fidesz, but it also overcame promises by Orban to use his office to punish any precincts that voted against Fidesz.There are real parallels between the urban-led repudiation of Orban and the recent, repeated humiliations for Turkey's fascist Recep Tayyip Erdogan suffered in Turkey's municipal elections. It maps to a global pattern (alive and well in the USA, of course) of dense urban centers swinging for progressive candidates, but being swamped by the dwindling cohort of rural, low-density voters whose votes count for much more than those of urbanites (see also: Toronto). Read the rest

Shay Bradley from Ireland died October 8, but at his funeral he came back to life. "Hello? Hello?" he said as his coffin was being lowered. "Let me out, it's fucking dark in here!" He goes on, knocking from within the coffin, and then serenading his friends and family. Apparently, Bradley had always loved pranks, and pulled this last one on the day of his funeral.According to Mashable:Bradley's daughter, Andrea Bradley, posted the video to Facebook...Kiernan said that Bradley was concerned about scaring the younger ones, so his grandchildren and his wife were in on the joke. "Everyone else was shocked when [they] first heard it," said Kiernan."Everyone else thought it was real and you could hear 'is that Shay is that Shay' but gradually as things went on people [realized] he had prerecorded and everyone (apart from the priest and woman beside him) were in hysterics," Kiernan told Mashable. "It was beautiful to hear his voice and it just made me happy as that was him, so funny and always making others laugh, he’s such a bright character, he would be loving this right now"How Bradley died and the details in planning the prank weren't disclosed. Read the rest

MSCHF told CBS that it customized a pair of Nike Air Max 97 sneakers by attaching a crucifix as a shoelace charm, and adding to the soles "holy water from the River Jordan, which was blessed by a priest in Brooklyn." The resulting "Jesus Shoes" are available for purchase at shoe speculating site StockX for $4000: Read the rest

Not long ago, United demanded a black passenger remove her official Marvel "Black Panther" hat because it made someone uncomfortable. This weekend, United refused to even challenge a white passenger wearing a "Rope. Tree. Journalist" shirt, no matter who it made uncomfortable. Jessica Sidman on Twitter:My brother is on a @united flight from LA to Boston and saw this guy boarding with a shirt that reads “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.”He told the flight attendant and she asked what he wanted her to do.He told her he didn’t want one passenger threatening to kill other passengers.He told her @United should do the right thing. She went to talk to the captain.Then security pulled my brother off the plane. He talked to a security official.The security guy said they couldn’t do anything just because it was offensive.My brother said it wasn’t offensive, it was THREATENING.They offered to put my brother on another flight. They didnt say anything to the guy with the shirt.Then, in a statement to Forbes, Sidman’s brother said he chose to bring the matter to United’s attention because, “I did not think one passenger should be allowed to threaten other passengers (be it on a shirt, on a sign or verbally) and that United should do the right thing.“I didn’t want this to be about United appeasing me, a single customer,” he wrote.” I wanted the airline I flew not to sanction the threatening of murder of any group.”One arguable defense is that the shirt is rhetorical hyperbole, airlines shouldn't apply security theater to attire, and that neither man should be removed from their flights. Read the rest

A little over a year ago, Bloomberg stunned the world with a report that claimed that Chinese intelligence services had figured out how to put undetectable, rice-grain-sized hardware implants into servers headed for the biggest US cloud and enterprise IT firms, and that when some of the victims discovered this fact, they quietly ripped out whole data-centers and replaced all their servers. The story was all the more infamous because it prompted rare, detailed denials from the companies involved, like Apple, who have historically dealt with bad news and leaks with parsimonious, closed-lipped denials. Then came the hardware experts and security experts who delved deep into the implausibility of Bloomberg's story, though some highly reputable experts did admit that supply chain attacks were a grossly underrated risk with potentially catastrophic outcomes.A year later, we still don't know what happened: how did all those nameless senior officials and ex-officials from big IT/tech companies end up telling Bloomberg the same story, especially if that story turns out to be false? The idea that a bunch of rival tech execs would cook up a conspiracy to defraud Bloomberg is, if anything, even weirder and more implausible than the idea that Chinese spooks were poisoning Supermicro's servers and raiding data from Big Tech's supposedly impregnable data-vaults.That kind of Kremlinology is hard to investigate: all the facts are held by secretive giants (and maybe Chinese spies). Barring leaks, we're just left proffering unfalsifiable theories about which conspiracy took place.On the other hand, the plausibility of a hardware implant is much easier to investigate. Read the rest

A black woman was shot dead by a white police officer early Saturday in her own home. The officer, responding to a call from a neighbor concerned about an open door, opened fire only four seconds after seeing Atatiana Jefferson, 28 through a window. He approached the house, spotted her in the dwelling she shared with an 8-year-old nephew, shrieked instructions at her, then shot and killed her. The clip shows police searching the perimeter of the residential property, before noticing a figure at the window. After demanding the person put their hands up, an officer then fired a shot through the glass.The Fort Worth Police Department said in a statement that the officer, who is a white man, had "perceived a threat" when he drew his weapon.He has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, officials added.The undeniable fact that this is a problem of training will mask another undeniable fact: that this is another blatantly lawless execution of an innocent person in their own home by cops. Fort Worth police are already circulating crudely-edited screengrabs that appear to show there was a gun in the house--an unwielded gun posed as a rationale for killing an unarmed woman on the spot after the officer's bizarre and bungled attempt to stealthily enter her house exploded into hysterically-screamed instructions and gunfire.To call the cops on a dark-skinned person (or anyone else they can claim to be scared by as an prelude to eager and murderous escalation, such as mentally ill people) is a death sentence. Read the rest

Rock Paper Shotgun lists the fifty best role-playing games you can play on PC right now. I recommend approaching it with an attitude of "curious about fun-packed easily-missed classics", lest you end in the zillion-post comment thread, arguing. Read the rest

A huge trove of ancient MS-DOS games are now available at the Internet Archive, with in-browser DOSbox emulation and metadata. Jason Scott: "this will be our biggest update yet, ranging from tiny recent independent productions to long-forgotten big-name releases from decades ago."The hot areas for me are the immediate post-Amiga era (Alone in the Dark, Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Discworld, Princess Maker 2, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream) and all the weird homebrew ... and, of course, Microsoft Adventure. Read the rest

Adobe Flash, the clunky and unsearchable interactive plugin tech, was always bad. Its presence on a website guaranteed a user interface disaster, an unblockable ad, or general bloated shonkiness. But it was also liberating, making animation and programming accessible in a way unseen since the days of 8-bit computers with BASIC built-in. Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era, writes Ernie Smith.The web has actually gotten less creative over time, not more. This interpretation of events is a key underpinning of Web Design: The Evolution of the Digital World 1990-Today (Taschen, $50), a new visual-heavy book from author Rob Ford and editor Julius Wiedemann that does something that hasn’t been done on the broader internet in quite a long time: It praises the use of Flash as a creative tool, rather than a bloated malware vessel, and laments the ways that visual convention, technical shifts, and walled gardens have started to rein in much of this unvarnished creativity.This is a realm where small agencies supporting big brands, creative experimenters with nothing to lose, and teenage hobbyists could stand out simply by being willing to try something risky. It was a canvas with a built-in distribution model. What wasn’t to like ... besides a whole host of malware?Actionscript 2 was the heart of this, a marvel of approachability to amateurs, beginners and people who were just not gonna put up with a bigger headache. After years of trying to learn to program, AS2 got me going. Read the rest

The New York Times reported today that a video mashup depicting Trump slaughtering a church packed with his "fake news" enemies, from Barack Obama to the BBC, was shown last week to supporters at one of his Miami resorts. This 1000-view video is surely it. It's found by fixing the perspective on the oblique screengrab shown by the Times and then reverse image searching it. The Times didn't include the video in its reportage, as far as I could tell, but it did mention that it was significantly derived from something posted on YouTube.The video, which includes the logo for Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, comprises a series of internet memes. The most violent clip shows Mr. Trump’s head superimposed on the body of a man opening fire inside the “Church of Fake News” on parishioners who have the faces of his critics or the logos of media organizations superimposed on their bodies. ... The disclosure that the video was played shows how Mr. Trump’s anti-media language has influenced his supporters and bled into their own propaganda. Mr. Trump has made attacks on the news media a mainstay of his presidency, and he tweeted a similar — but far less violent video — in 2017. In recent weeks as he has confronted impeachment proceedings, he has ramped up his attacks on the news media, repeatedly calling it the “enemy of the people.”It's evidently a scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service with Trump's head (among others) crudely superimposed on characters from the film. Read the rest

If the Webbys have any legitimacy, than a content of the year award should go to Willie McNabb for his famous tweet. It generated endless brilliant mockery online. But Reply All interviewed Willie and learned two things: (1) he's a terrific sport; and (2) he had a point.The first part of episode #149 features an interview with Willie, in which he acknowledges how goofily he phrased his tweet and thus invited mockery. He then describes the genuinely frightening time feral hogs swarmed his children as they were playing outside. The second part of the episode explores the widespread and seemingly hopeless nature of the feral hog problem.You can listen here. Read the rest

There are a lot of different language apps out there because nobody learns anything the same exact way - especially not something as complex as a new language. For some people, the best way is to dive in and start talking, but that's easier said than done if you're not around those natives you aspire to speak with.HelloTalk VIP offers a simple but innovative solution: Just bring speakers from two different languages into a chat app and let them learn from each other.It's a simple and elegant solution, which is why it's been getting rave reviews so far. (4.4 stars on the Google Play Store, and that's from more than 102,000 users and counting.) But HelloTalk does more than just connect you. The app has built-in translation, pronunciation and transliteration guides to make sure you're both getting the most out of your session. Join group chats, post Moments for entire communities to see, and communicate in your choice of ways: text, voice, video calls and more.With 15 million members to chat with versed in over 150 languages, it's the most versatile learning system out there. Get yourself a lifetime subscription to the service for just $29 today. Read the rest

In California, we're looking at power outages in the North and South as the only way to avoid massive wildfires. Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, there's a new power plant "embodying the notion of hedonistic sustainability."Known both as Amager Bakke and Copenhill, the site is a waste to energy plant designed to convert enough tons of waste to provide clean energy for 150,000 homes. The giant chimney was intended to blow giant smoke rings, but that plan was abandoned.The interior looks ready to star in a Bond movie:And the exterior features enough facilities to host the X-Games, including a ski slope, freestyle park, climbing wall, and running trail.The project is the work of Bjarke Ingels Group. Ingels promoted the project, and several other clever designs, way back in this 2011 Ted Talk: Read the rest

Latina author Jennine Capó Crucet recently spoke to students at Georgia Southern University about her novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, about an Hispanic girl who feels out of place at a predominantly white college. According to the student newspaper The George-anne, the conversation was quickly derailed by angry college students who think it's racist to point out when things are racist:"I noticed that you made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged," one respondent said into the microphone. "What makes you believe that it’s okay to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we’re taught. I don’t understand what the purpose of this was."For the record, Georgia Southern University has about a 6 percent Hispanic population.After the event, several students called the author out even more explicitly on Twitter (although those tweets have been deleted, The George-Anne still has the screenshots). Then they gathered together outside of a dormitory and did what awful mobs throughout history have always done: they burned books.so after our FYE book’s author came to my school to talk about it... these people decide to burn her book because “it’s bad and that race is bad to talk about”. white people need to realize that they are the problem and that their privilege is toxic. author is a woman of color. pic.twitter.com/HiX4lGT7Ci— elaina⭐️ (@elainaaan) October 10, 2019College kids do dumb stuff sometimes. Read the rest

Naama Issachar is a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She was taking a connecting flight in Moscow when a drug-sniffing dog discovered she was carrying less than one-third of an ounce of pot (9 grams). That was enough to earn her 7.5 years in a Russian prison.In Russia, possessing under 6 grams of pot is punishable by 15 days in prison. Possessing over 6 grams with intent to sell has a maximum penalty of 3 years in prison. So why is Issachar getting 7.5 years? It sounds like she is being used as a human bargaining chip.From Reason:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "requested a commuting of the sentence and an easing of the terms of Naama's detention," according to a statement from his office. "To our regret, the Russian prosecution has not yet accepted to these requests." The office added that Issachar's sentence "is disproportionate and does not fit the nature of the offense being attributed" to her.The Times of Israel reports that "a senior Israeli official told Hebrew media that Russia offered several times in recent months to free Issachar if Israel agrees to release Aleksey Burkov, a Russian IT specialist who was arrested in Israel in 2016 at the request of Interpol." Burkov "is wanted on embezzlement charges in the United States for a massive credit card scheme that saw him allegedly steal millions of dollars from American consumers."Image: Naama Issachar (Instagram) Read the rest

AT&T business customers, including those who've been promised a locked-in rate inclusive of all taxes and fees, are finding "property tax" surcharges on their bills of up to 7%. These charges represent an attempt by AT&T to pass on the property taxes it pays on its own offices and other facilities to its customers.Moreover, these "property tax" charges are subject to sudden, ballooning changes -- one customer reported at 335% increase in the "property tax" charge over the space of a single billing cycle.Most companies would consider property taxes one of the costs of doing business, and they'd simply factor the taxes into their advertised prices instead of deceiving customers by listing one price in an order and then charging a higher one. At the risk of giving AT&T's billing department more ideas, why stop at property taxes? Why not charge customers separate fees for AT&T's water and electricity bills, too?"I pay my own property tax, don't want to pay theirs!" one customer wrote in an AT&T support forum in July 2017. "Can a doctor add a property tax to their bill for services, or a bank? Why not just raise the rates if it is part of their business?"AT&T raises prices 7% by making its customers pay AT&T’s property taxes [Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica](via /.) Read the rest

Google and the other big tech companies are some of the most lavish funders of climate denial "think tanks" and lobbying groups, something they've been at continuously for more than six years, without interruption.Google doesn't fund these lobbyists because they're climate deniers, nor because they're indifferent to climate change and its human costs.Google funds these lobbyists and astroturf operations because they also lobby for lax tax enforcement, lax labor laws, lax privacy laws, and so on. The fact that these groups also lobby for the right of corporations to render our planet uninhabitable (as well as against the rights of LGBTQ people, against reproductive freedom for women, etc) is merely an acceptable cost of greasing the skids to allow Big Tech to seek profits at the expense of their workers, suppliers, customers and society. The latest round of revelations about Google's contribution to climate deniers comes from Google's list of "politically-engaged trade associations, independent third-party organizations and other tax-exempt groups that receive the most substantial contributions from Google’sU.S. Government Affairs and Public Policy team."It includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who claimed responsibility for getting Trump to pull out of the Paris Accord (CEI is also pro-monopoly, anti-Net Neutrality, pro-binding arbitration, anti-Obamacare, anti-Consumer Financial Protection Board, and fronts for the monopolists who dominate oil, tobacco, and alcohol).Other recipients of "substantial contributions" from Google include the State Policy Network, who front for The Heartland Institute, a radical climate-science denial thinktank with major Koch funding. SPN's actively solicits signatures for a "climate pledge" that holds that "our natural environment is getting better...there is no climate crisis."Google "substantially contributes" to the American Conservative Union (led by a Koch operative who takes credit for the climate gridlock in DC), the American Enterprise Institute (another prominent, lavish climate denial spender) and the Americans for Tax Reform whose radical anti-taxation agenda also includes condemnation of climate action as "corporate welfare." Google funds the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, and Heritage Action, all of whom have led on climate denial. Read the rest

Kevin Kelly and I were the hosts and the guests on the latest episode of the Cool Tools podcast. We shared some of the tools we've been using and liking lately.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes:Kevin's pick: DJI Spark Mini Drone ($399)I've been a very, very slow adopter of some of the newest photography technology in the form of drones. I have not owned a drone, and I've been kind of slow to get one, in part because there's a learning curve and part because my photography generally doesn't kind of lend that style. But I have a particular need for somewhere that I'm going to where I wanted to get high up, I wanted to have some elevated views, and I decided to get a drone. So, as usual, I kind of started low. I wanted basically an entry-level, lowest cost, easiest to learn mode, and so I got a DJI, which is the Chinese manufacturer of most drones. I got their Spark version, which I would say is the size of kind of like a cordless phone. The blades fold up, but the arms actually don't fold up. It's a little bit bigger than the palm, but it's not that much bigger. It will shoot very high res still images, which is what I'm using it for. And the other thing about it is that it doesn't have a controller. Read the rest

The White House Counsel's "crazy, ranty" legal nastygram to House Leader Nancy Pelosi over impeachment was, Noah Shachtman writes, crafted by Trump himself.Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein, at the Daily Beast:Trump had also privately consulted on the letter with Rudy Giuliani, his notably pugnacious personal lawyer who is at the center of the Ukraine and Biden-related scandal engulfing the administration. Trump talked to Giuliani about how he and the White House should proceed in fighting back and challenging the legitimacy of the impeachment probe, one of the sources noted. Reached for comment on Thursday evening, the former New York mayor and Trump confidant repeatedly declined to confirm or deny this. Read the rest

Jorge Luis Escandón Hernández was elected mayor of Las Margaritas, Chiapas after he promised to repair city's rural roads, in a chaotic campaign that included accusations of a "brawl" with his opponent's supporters.Local police have arrested 11 locals, identified by the BBC as farmers angry that he had not made good on his roadworks promises, for kidnapping Escandón from his office, tying him to the back of a pickup truck, and publicly dragging him through the streets of the Santa Rita district. Escandón did not sustain serious injuries, but has indicated his intention to seek criminal charges for abduction and attempted murder.The public spectacle was ended when "dozens" of police officers managed to stop the truck and arrest the accused, after "scuffles" that resulted in multiple injuries.The dragging marks the escalation of hostilities by farmers angry about the failed road maintenance promise -- four months ago, Escandón's office was vandalized over the issue.Mayors and local politicians in Mexico are often targeted by drug gangs when they refuse to cooperate with their criminal schemes but it is less common for them to be attacked over their campaign promises. Mexico mayor tied to car and dragged along by angry locals [BBC](via Naked Capitalism)UNA SU ARRASTRADA. Alcalde de #LasMargaritas, Jorge Luis Escandón Hernández, es sujetado a una camioneta que lo arrastra en pleno parque central, luego de haber sido secuestrado de la propia alcaldía #Chiapas #VideoViral pic.twitter.com/ptdP7g2w92— Tinta Fresca Chiapas (@tinta_fresca) October 8, 2019 Read the rest