Boing Boing

With the launch of the Disney+ streaming service, all eyes were on The Mandalorian, the new sci-fi western set in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi. But the original Star Wars movies are also availabe in 4K, and someone noticed that they've yet again tinkered with the scene where Han Solo shoots Greedo to avoid being abducted by him. Director George Lucas famously edited the scene in the 1990s to depict Greedo shooting first, making Han's killing him an act of self-defense and sanding a rough edge off a classic cinema hero. The latest cut, which Disney reports was made by Lucas himself, has the two rogues firing simultaneously. Oh my god. This is not a joke. pic.twitter.com/RMkh7Blg7D— Star Wars Visual Comparisons (@StarWarsVisComp) November 12, 2019In the newly edited scene, Greedo says something to Han before shooting (Maclunkey!), although no subtitle appears at the bottom of the screen. Han proceeds to shoot once. This is followed by “a new explosion [that] covers a transition from them shooting to Greedo hitting the table, removing the Greedo dummy altogether.”The account also discovered while scrubbing through the footage that it appears “the timing has been adjusted farther and they now shoot on the same frame.” It’s possible that these changes were made to improve the pacing of the scene since it’s different from what was originally used.The Han-Greedo scene is the Oak Island Money Pit of movie scenes: it's been excavated and flooded so much that it's become more of an idea than anything else, its truths forever beyond our grasp. Read the rest

BigBread's No Destination is a "game" in the classic spirit of Desert Bus, and you don't even have to make the occasional steering adjustment. Just sit and enjoy the journey, looking out of a train coach at the procedurally-generated hills and woods of wherever it is you are. It's just the first entry I've checked out from from the 2019 ProcJam -- "Make something that makes something" -- and there are dozens more experiments, artworks and according-to-Hoyle games to enjoy.An endless train ride, a sitting simulator.Just a relaxing timeLeft mouse button to sit in a seatRight mouse button to hide the cursorwasd to move aroundspacebar to get upescape to quit / close the game Read the rest

I'm in a private Slack with some other media/journalist people, and someone brought up the idea of pay transparency. After all: if you don't know what your colleagues are being paid, it's hard to negotiate for a fair rate. We're all conditioned to believe that our financials should be private, but as far as salaries are concerned, that secrecy only ever tends to work in favor of your employer.So this particular someone made a Google Form and a corresponding spreadsheet where journalists and other media professionals could anonymously add their salary information. And in barely 24 hours, it's spread to CJR and Bloomberg and even inspired Mike Cernovich to go off on some completely unsubstantiated rant to set off his army of loyal trolls because apparently all journalists are scum and also trustfund babies even though there isn't any proof of that (and I can personally assure you that my personal information is on that list and that my public school teacher mom and print salesman dad are not rolling in the dough).As of this writing, more than 200 people have responded. On one hand, it is admittedly difficult to verify the claims contained within the data. On the other hand, there's still lots of eye-opening information to glean. Unsurprisingly, there are pay disparities across race and gender; but the same thing happens across geographic location, and work experience. Perhaps the most shocking revelation so far is just the absurd range of income of people working in news media. Read the rest

Last November, Jered "Threatin" Eames hired some musicians, booked venues on the strength of inauthentic social media profiles, then played to empty halls and angry proprietors who soon outed the hustle. His viral fame was short lived, but now he's back—for real, this time, at least for certain values of reality—playing to paying customers. Vice sent a critic to a UK gig: "It was as weird as you could imagine," writes Hannah Mylrea. Jered is clearly an accomplished guitarist (his vocals, less so) and his band for the evening are slick, but due to the complete lack of crowd interaction and Jered’s wannabe rockstar swagger, it makes for an uncomfortable watch, even without all the ridiculous pre-cursors. Clearly too uncomfortable for some, as the crowd noticeably thins out throughout.After 45-minutes Jered finishes the show by smashing up the stage – ripping down his banners and decapitating the mannequins – and then giving a mock bow before walking off stage. That’s the last the crowd and I see of him.Ladies and gentlemen, Threatin.Here’s some close ups of the doll pic.twitter.com/YdUVR4eESb— Hannah Mylrea (@HannahMylrea) November 1, 2019 Read the rest

In Tiny Islands, by David King, you're dealt cards that let you "draw" particular landscape features on a grid, with occasional breaks to draw coastlines around the forests, mountains, villages and churches you place. Once you've gotten through the deck, your archipelago is scored based according to rules of proximity and placement. It's simple, frustrating and very addictive, with games over in a few minutes and a better high-score always at hand. I've managed to get in the 60s (check out the hashtag for more)—what about you? Read the rest

Aestetix writes, "Our 13th conference is taking place next summer in a brand new location as you've probably heard. We expect it to be bigger and better than ever with lots more activities and space - all without leaving New York City! Since this is #13, we figured we'd make an initial batch of tickets available on November 13th at precisely 13:13 Eastern Time (that's 1:13 pm for those who don't do 24 hour clocks)."It's been a rocky time for 2600 Magazine and its venerable Hackers on Planet Earth con -- so unbelievably awesome to see HOPE back in 2020! Initial Ticket Sales Wednesday! [HOPE/2600] Read the rest

Back in 2017, EFF, ACLU and ACLU of Massachusetts sued the US government on behalf of 11 travelers whose devices had been subjected to warrantless, suspicionless searches by Customs and Border Protection at the US border.Now, a federal court in Boston has found in favor of the travelers, affirming that CBP cannot conduct searches of border-crossers' devices without particularized suspicion of illegal contraband.The judgment has the potential to stem the rising floodtide of warrantless border searches of devices -- up 400% in just three years.International travelers returning to the United States have reported numerous cases of abusive searches in recent months. While searching through the phone of Zainab Merchant, a plaintiff in the Alasaad case, a border agent knowingly rifled through privileged attorney-client communications. An immigration officer at Boston Logan Airport reportedly searched an incoming Harvard freshman’s cell phone and laptop, reprimanded the student for friends’ social media postings expressing views critical of the U.S. government, and denied the student entry into the country following the search.Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional [EFF] Read the rest

The European Medicines Agency approved a vaccine for the deadly Ebola Virus Disease. The vaccine has already been administered to hundreds of thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, saving countless lives during an ongoing epidemic there. From Nature:The decision by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to allow US pharmaceutical company Merck to market its vaccine means that the product can now be stockpiled and, potentially, distributed more widely, in particular in Africa. In 2015, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — a global health partnership that funds vaccine supplies in low-income countries — told Ebola-vaccine manufacturers that it would commit to purchasing vaccines once they had been approved by a “stringent health authority” such as the EMA...“This is a vaccine with huge potential,” said Seth Berkley, chief executive of Gavi in Geneva, Switzerland, in a press release after the EMA decision. “It has already been used to protect more than 250,000 people in the DRC and could well make major Ebola outbreaks a thing of the past.” Image: "Ebola virus virion" by CDC/Cynthia Goldsmith (Public Domain) Read the rest

I really like these 'ergonomic' JoyCon replacements.The tiny JoyCons are a pain to hold. These replacements make holding the Switch while you play a lot easier for my carpal tunnel suffering hands.Everything works like the stock JoyCon, except there is something substantial to hold on to.Wireless Controller for Switch, BestOff Neon Red Neon Blue Controllers Compatible for Nintendo Switch Console via Amazon Read the rest

In Mumbai, India, the Western Railway deployed a police officer dressed as Yamarāja, a Hindu god of death, to educate commuters about railway safety and enforce the laws. From Zee News:Railway Ministry's handle warned the people in Hindi, "Do not cross the track in an unauthorised manner, it can be fatal.""If you cross the track in an unauthorized way, then Yamraj will be standing in front of you," Railway Ministry added.In 2018, as many as seven people on an average lost their lives on a daily basis due to carelessness in crossing railway tracks illegitimately. At least 1,476 people had lost their lives while crossing the railway tracks while over 650 people died after falling off the trains. Read the rest

This is one of the more WTF videos I've seen in a while. It starts with a jack-in-the-box getting tossed off a school(?) bus in New York(?) and ends with one of the greatest reveals since Nicolas Roeg's 1973 psychological thriller, Don't Look Now. It may very well be staged because it's just too good.OMG I don't even know what to do with this! pic.twitter.com/Yl7MDwHNs8— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 12, 2019Image: Twitter[Updated 11/12/19 4:03pm PT] Indeed, it's a skit by Daniel Jean: Read the rest

The Argentine sub San Juan vanished in 2017 and its wreckage was found only months later, but from the search mission's outset rescuers suspected what had happened. The sound of an implosion—"a singular, anomalous, violent, non-nuclear event"—was picked up hours after the vessel's last transmission. If you are horrified by the idea of a huge metal can being suddenly crushed by water pressure, this computer simulation of the San Juan's demise may well rationalize and deepen your conviction never to set foot on a sub. Read the rest

Trump spoke at the Economic Club of New York today and surprised attendees with the good news that his daughter Ivanka has created "created 14 million jobs" in the United States. That's almost 10% of the US workforce. Thanks, Ivanka!From The Intelligencer:At a speech to the Economic Club of New York today, President Trump declared that his daughter, Ivanka, has personally created 14 million new jobs. The president announced this figure — so astonishingly ludicrous it would embarrass a Stalin-era pronouncement — and then repeated it twice more as the crowd applauded politely.The entire U.S. economy has created fewer than 6 million new jobs since Trump took office. So Trump is crediting his daughter with having personally created more than 200 percent of all new jobs in the United States. This is like supply-side economics but for authoritarian nepotism.Image: Mark Frauenfelder. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

This is perhaps not the best week for sycophants. Nikki Haley picked the wrong month to release a book. She's getting roasted by *everyone*. I wonder if she thought this was going to be a softball interview. Because it was *not*. #tuesdaymorning #todayshowpic.twitter.com/s596nOU5CQ— Holly Figueroa O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) November 12, 2019 Read the rest

The Google Translation of this Instagram post: "And you wake up in the morning to discover that Firulais entertains himself by biting your $250,000.00 Porsche in this house." View this post on Instagram Y te levantas en la mañana a descubrir que Firulais se entretiene mordiendo tu Porsche de $250,000.00 en esta casa hoy se come perro caliente 🌭 #malinois #facebook #chrispuls Que harían ustedes con Firulais luego de semejante muestra de afecto?A post shared by DON OMAR (@donomar) on Nov 7, 2019 at 3:31am PST [via Core77] Read the rest

On Tuesday, advocates for human rights for China's Uighur minority said they have documented 500 camps and prisons in China run by the government to detain people identified as belonging to that targeted ethnic group. The activists say that when you add up the number of detention facilities they've identified, it means China must be holding a total number of Uighur people that far exceeds the commonly cited figure of one million people.From AFP via Yahoo News:The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a Washington-based group that seeks independence for the mostly Muslim region known to China as Xinjiang, said it assessed images from Google Earth and found 182 suspected "concentration camps" which it listed by coordinates.The group, which said it matched its findings with on-the-ground information, said it also spotted 209 suspected prisons and 74 suspected labor camps which it would share later."In large part these have not been previously identified, so we could be talking about far greater numbers" of people detained, said Kyle Olbert, the director of operations for the movement."If anything, we are concerned that there may be more facilities that we have not been able to identify," he told a news conference in suburban Washington.Anders Corr, an analyst who formerly worked in US intelligence and who advised the group, said that around 40 percent of the sites had not been previously reported.China uses torture and sexual abuse to “forcibly integrate Uighurs into the Han majority, including pressuring Muslims to give up tenets of their faith such as praying and abstaining from pork and alcohol,” the report continues. Read the rest

One for the ages. Almost looks like one of those garage sale black velvet paintings with the dogs playing poker.THIS is an absolutely incredible new photo of former Donald Trump's personal lawyer and current investigation target Rudy Giuliani, along with his distinguished Russian gentlemen friends Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and a third 'unnamed associate.'Wow. Here's the full image.Read the ProPublica report, which is even more insane than the photo (and true): Giuliani Was Close to a Podcast Deal With the News Outlet That Spread His Ukraine ConspiraciesTo begin with, I'm not ruling out that the handbag is actually a European Men's Accessory— Tom Gara (@tomgara) November 12, 2019 Read the rest

We're number one. In the racist, eugenicist, genocidal theft of infants, toddlers, and tender-age children from undocumented and mostly indigenous migrants who are fleeing violence in Guatemala and other Central American failed states.An Associated Press investigation found that America held a record number of kids in 2019. An estimated 69,550 migrant children were held in U.S. government custody over the past year, which is enough infants, toddlers, kids and teens to overflow the typical NFL stadium. From the AP report:This month, new government data shows the little girl is one of an unprecedented 69,550 migrant children held in U.S. government custody over the past year, enough infants, toddlers, kids and teens to overflow the typical NFL stadium. That’s more children detained away from their parents than any other country, according to United Nations researchers. And it’s happening even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that being held in detention can be traumatic for children, putting them at risk of long-term physical and emotional damage.Some of these migrant children who were in government custody this year have already been deported. Some have reunited with family in the U.S., where they’re trying to go to school and piece their lives back together. About 4,000 are still in government custody, some in large, impersonal shelters. And more arrive every week.The video in this post is the trailer for KIDS CAUGHT IN THE CRACKDOWN, a new documentary series coming from this AP investigative reporting team and PBS FRONTLINE:This story is part of an ongoing joint investigation between The Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE on the treatment of migrant children, which includes the film “Kids Caught in the Crackdown” premiering on PBS and online Nov. Read the rest

Rising tides and rain in Venice are flooding the city, and hotels are giving guests knee-high rubber boots so they can slosh their way from one tourist attraction to another.From Yahoo News:The high water, known locally as “acqua alta”, was amusing for tourists and a nuisance for residents going about their business, but levels were far lower than the 1.94 meters (6ft 4in) in the devastating November 1966 flood.But even lower levels of the salty high water over the years take their toll on the city, eroding foundations of homes, businesses and city buildings.Bad weather is continuing to dog Italy, with no real let-up forecast for several days.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Facebook says, oops, it's 'likely' a bug.

A new proprietary online payment system for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook launches today, exactly two weeks after all the payment companies dropped out of Libra.The evil bastards at Facebook, to whom we're now supposed to refer as FACEBOOK, today unveiled Facebook Pay, which is not all caps, and which will work on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to let users shop, donate to causes, and pay friends.Here's the official announcement at newsroom.fb.com.“The service will be separate from Facebook’s new Calibra wallet and the Libra network, and it’s 'built on existing financial infrastructure and partnerships,'” reports Tom Warren [@tomwarren] at The Verge:Facebook is planning to start rolling out Facebook Pay on Messenger and Facebook in the US this week. It will initially be available for fundraisers, person-to-person payments, event tickets, in-game purchases, and some purchases from pages and businesses that operate on Facebook’s Marketplace. “Over time, we plan to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places, including for use across Instagram and WhatsApp,” explains Deborah Liu, Facebook’s vice president of marketplace and commerce.Facebook Pay will be available in the settings section of the Facebook or Messenger apps, and it will support most debit and credit cards and PayPal. Facebook is using Stripe, PayPal, and others to process these payments.Facebook isn’t revealing exactly when this payment system will be available across all of its apps, nor when it will launch internationally. Facebook Pay comes just weeks after a large number of payment companies dropped out of Facebook’s Libra project. Read the rest

The Southern Poverty Law Center's HATEWATCH shares a number of leaked emails written by Trump Administration lackey Stephen Miller. Unsurprisingly, Miller expresses many racist ideas.Sadly, many have become administration policy.SPLC:In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said is causing “intense trauma” in children.Stephen Miller’s Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails via SPLC Read the rest

This is a silver-backed chevrotain, aka "mouse-deer," from Vietnam. Until this and other camera trap photographs were taken in the last two years, no scientific evidence of the rabbit-sized animal had been collected in three decades. From Nature:The animal was first described in 1910 from four specimens, but since then only one verifiable record exists, from the early 1990s. The Red List of Threatened Species maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the silver-backed chevrotain (Tragulus versicolor) as ‘data deficient’.Indigenous people living in the Nha Trang forest suggested where the scientists should place their camera traps to get the animals on film.“To these local people our camera-trap evidence that the silver-backed chevrotain survives in Vietnam is not new,” says (Global Wildlife Conservation scientist Andrew) Tilker. “But to the wider scientific community, we are comfortable saying that our findings constitute a rediscovery.” Read the rest

During the early 20th century, Kutol Products was the world's biggest manufacturer of wallpaper cleaning products. But once coal heating in homes was replaced with oil, gas, and electricity, dirty wallpaper became less of a problem and Kutol was in trouble. So in 1956, they pivoted. From Smithsonian:Joseph McVicker was trying to turn around the struggling company when his sister-in-law read an article about how wallpaper cleaner could be used for modeling projects. Sister-in-law Kay Zufall, a nursery school teacher, tested the nontoxic material with children, who loved molding it into all kinds of shapes. She told McVicker of her discovery and even suggested a new name: Play-Doh...Originally available in white only in 1956, Play-Doh soon expanded to include basic colors red, blue and yellow. It is now sold in a panoply of hues, including Rose Red, Purple Paradise, Garden Green and Blue Lagoon. The Putty line includes metallic and glittery tints. The recipe has gone through minor modifications over time. At one point, the amount of salt was reduced so the product would not dry out so quickly. But, for the most part, the mixture has remained the same. Read the rest

Indlovu Gin is a new spirit infused with elephant dung. Gives new meaning to the term "shit-faced." It sells for about $32 per bottle. Creators Les and Paula Ansley of Mossel Bay, South Africa, came up with the concept on safari after learning that elephants have a varied diet of plants, fruits, and vegetables but less than half of it is actually digested. “As a consequence, in the elephant dung, you get the most amazing variety of these botanicals,” Les Ansley told the Associated Press. “(I recall my wife saying) Why don’t we let the elephants do the hard work of collecting all these botanicals and we will make gin from it?"From the AP:After about five sizeable bags of dung are collected for a batch of 3,000 to 4,000 bottles of the gin, the droppings are dried and crumbled, then washed to remove dirt and sand. Eventually only the remains of the fruits, flowers, leaves and bark eaten by the elephants are left behind.Those botanicals are then sterilized and dried again and placed in an airing cupboard. Think of it like a “spice cupboard,” Ansley said. Eventually, the remains are infused in the gin.(via Fark) Read the rest

The New York Times reports that girls as young as 12 have been stripped searched at music festival by Australian police eager to make drug arrests. Australia's zero-tolerance drug policy is “the only form of legislation that allows an adult to tell a young child to take off all their clothes,” Samantha Lee, the head of the Police Accountability Practice at the Redfern Legal Center, told the TimesFrom the article:“It’s highly likely the vast majority of strip searches are being conducted unlawfully,” said Vicki Sentas, a senior law lecturer at the University of New South Wales who has researched strip-searching statistics.In an inquiry conducted last month by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, a 16-year-old girl who attended a festival said she was asked to squat and cough in front of a police officer. She had no drugs.“I could not stop crying. I was completely humiliated,” she said, according to her complaint. An officer who worked at the festival admitted that some of the searches he conducted may have been unlawful.Mark Speakman, the state’s attorney general, said that strip searches in general were an “important investigative tool” but that the police needed to “get the balance right.”Image: Pixnio Read the rest

In a story that will surely captivate Fox News pundits for at least the next week, the student newspaper at Northwestern released a statement about their own reporting, following a visit to campus by Jeff Sessions.It's…not great.“We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced at the Sessions event, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night — along with how we plan to move forward.”https://t.co/RAjHSA349f— The Daily Northwestern (@thedailynu) November 12, 2019Essentially, the newspaper is apologizing for the way it covered the protest resulting from Sessions' presence. According to their statement, some students were upset that they were photographed, or contacted via the school directory, or texted for comments on the protest, mostly out of fear of retaliation by either the school administration, or the media at large, or really wrathful authority figures of any kind.This, of course, comes on the heels of the recent debacle at Harvard, where reporters at the Harvard Crimson reached out to ICE for a comment after another protest, which is also a…fairly standard journalistic practice. While the concerns of these individual students might be valid, the entire field of news reporting should not be expected to compromise itself and over-cautiously cater to needs of every possible individual. This doesn't mean that journalists—student, or professional—should not try to approach situations with empathy and sensitivity, particularly when dealing with subjects who might be placed at risk by their reporting. In the case of the Daily Northwestern, the paper's backpedaling response may be a prime example of over-correcting for such sensitivities. Read the rest

Do you love Christmas? Do you love dogs? How about dongs? Well then I have just the shirt for you!Uhhhhh pretty sure that's not a dog? https://t.co/r6S2Kjp2R3 pic.twitter.com/nb6UP9vjsP— Turkey Doom (@thomdunn) November 8, 2019I mean I guess I can see how that's supposed to be a dog with the — wait, nope, that's definitely a dick.It's also available in a holly pattern, if you're so interested. Read the rest

The Los Angeles Times has a harrowing new story about Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Japanese forces invaded the small Pacific nation and its residents during World War I, and the United States did the same during World War II under that classic guise of "liberation." But the US was hardly acting altruistically, at the time nor since then. The islands' location made it a prime strategic military base in the Pacific. It was also isolated enough to make it a convenient nuclear testing site—if you disregarded the 72,000 people who lived there, of course.Between 1946 and 1962, US military experiments produced 108 megatons of nuclear yield in the Marshall Islands— about 80% of the country's total radioactive waste output from nuclear testing. That's the equivalent 1.6 atomic bombs dropped every day for 12 years. And after the US decided to gradually cede control of the land back to the Marshallese people, we just kind of … left it all behind. We were kind enough to pour a bunch of concrete on top of the 22 million gallons of nuclear waste left behind on one specific island, creating the Runit Dome.But that dome is still there. And the concrete is starting to crack. And sea levels are rising rapidly, particularly in the Pacific, further accelerating that erosion process. Now the Dome—affectionately and appropriately called "The Tomb" by the locals—is threatening to leach all of that nuclear waste into the land and the ocean.I realize that an island-sized nuclear waste dump called "The Tomb" in the middle of the Pacific Ocean sounds like some straight-up Godzilla sci-fi shit. Read the rest

In 1822, Irish thief Alexander Pearce joined seven convicts fleeing a penal colony in western Tasmania. As they struggled eastward through some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, starvation pressed the party into a series of grim sacrifices. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the prisoners on their nightmarish bid for freedom.We'll also unearth another giant and puzzle over an eagle's itinerary.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The official Youtube video of Tom Holland's performance of Umbrella on Lip Sync Battle has over 28 million views:Alice Zhang has created several studies:You know how Degas did studies of ballerinas? Well I do studies of Tom Holland performing Rihanna’s Umbrella ayyyyy 😂 pic.twitter.com/t2uvLqnIoo— Alice X. Zhang (@alicexz) November 6, 2019Her webstore is currently featuring Blade Runner prints, but has no Tom Holland prints, yet. Read the rest

At the end of September, California enacted a new law that will allow college athletes to make money from endorsement deals starting in 2023:the law creates an unrestricted market for others who want to use the athlete's name, image or likeness. Money could come in the form of major brands like Nike or McDonald's using the athletes in commercials. It could also come from small businesses like car dealerships putting an athlete on a local billboard or memorabilia shops paying an athlete to show up for an autograph session for fans. Athletes could also make money themselves by monetizing social media feeds, selling T-shirts online or advertising to give lessons in their sport to younger kids. The new law allows athletes to hire an agent to help manage the process.Among the voices speaking out was Ohio State University's athletic director who cautioned the move would lead to California schools being excluded from the NCAA:if Newsom signs the bill, schools in California are "going to have a model where they can almost pay for play – not quite – but I think they’re going to be challenged to maintain their membership in the association because, as an association, we have the authority as a group to make our own rules and regulations, and they will be outside those rules and regulations. So, I’m not quite sure how they will stay in the association."As reported by USA Today, the athletic director specifically expressed concern California schools would have an unfair advantage:And how those schools will compete against those schools in California who have an unfair advantage because they’ll be able to offer student-athletes benefits that the other schools will not be able to offer. Read the rest

Teaser images of Sonic the Hedgehog offered an ominous glimpse, but the forthcoming movie's first trailer horrified viewers with is unnervingly human computer-graphics Sonic. So furious was the lashing that the filmmakers promised to go back to the drawing board. And here you are, watching the results, embedded above.It's fine!Still has an edge of that special Sonic-fandom unwholesomeness......but this is definitely what Gen X wanted out of 2020, and they're going to get it.Yaaay! Now all you have to worry about in the upcoming Sonic movie is *literally everything else*— Dan Marshall (@danthat) November 12, 2019 Read the rest

It's hard to believe, but the latest installment of McMansion Hell's (previously) tour through the architectural monstrosities of America's tastleless elites is even better than the previous ones -- possibly that's because in this edition, editor/critic Kate Wagner is visiting Virginia's Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, these being affluent DC suburbs where beltway bandits and other swamp-dwellers make their dens.If you combine all of the insipid elements of the other houses: mismatched windows; massive, chaotic rooflines; weird asphalt donut landscaping; pompous entrances, and tacked on masses; you’d get this house. The more one looks at this house the more upsetting it becomes. The turrets don’t match. The roofline is truly mountainous. The windows are either too small or too big for the walls they are housed in. The carhole is especially car hole-y. What sends this one over the top is its surroundings: lush trees and clear skies that have been desecrated in order to build absolute garbage. At least it doesn’t have shutters. 50 States of McMansion Hell: Fairfax and Loudoun County, Virginia [Kate Wagner/McMansion Hell] Read the rest

It's a preview of just how badly things could go in 2020: the Kentucky gubernatorial race was narrowly decided for the Democratic candidate Andy Beshear, but the monumentally unpopular Trumpist incumbent Matt Bevin will not concede, and instead, he is repeating the Trumpist lie that "voter fraud" caused him to lose his office.Supercharging this lie are obvious fake Twitter accounts, like the now-suspended @Overlordkraken1 account, which posted hours after the polls closed with "just shredded a box of Republican mail-in ballots" and "Bye-Bye Bevin." Though the account only had 19 followers and though it was swiftly shuttered, a screenshot of the tweet was retweeted by a botnet army, and then far-right commentators started to cite it as evidence of electoral fraud.The disinformation campaign has also featured bot armies retweeting claims of "rigged elections" and "voter intimidation" (blamed on George Soros, of course!). Mainstream Republican commentators have hinted that the voting machines in Kentucky were hacked (the Republican Senate majority, led by Mitch McConnell, has consistently blocked funding to secure electronic voting machines). The online campaign has been joined by a robocall campaign that urges people to "report suspected electoral fraud." Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said, "Beyond the routine calls that we field, up to and on Election Day, there are no irregularities that would substantiate a 5,000-vote difference margin that now separates unofficially Governor-elect Beshear with Governor Bevin."Data compiled by VineSight, a start-up that detects disinformation on social media, showed that many of the accounts that tweeted the screenshot of @Overlordkraken1’s ballot-shredding claim appeared to be bots. Read the rest

Here's an ad from Hikvision, the worlds' largest security camera company, boasting of its products' utility in detecting people's ethnicity. James Vincent writes that it "speaks volumes about the brutal simplicity of the techno-surveillance state." [via @CharlesRollet1, who points to an archived webpage that details the "Uyghur detection" feature] Read the rest

If you’re hankering for an unusual outing in Los Angeles, look no further than the Velaslavasay Panorama. Home to the only panorama west of the Mississippi and the only one painted since the nineteenth century, the Velaslavasay is the art form’s newest entry in its long and illustrious history. Panorama paintings were antiquity’s preferred immersive medium, predating film, VR and a much cheaper sightseeing trip than hopping aboard a train.From the Velaslavasay Panorama website:The Velaslavasay Panorama panoramic exhibition encircles the spectator within a fully enveloping atmosphere; a vast painting of a continuous surrounding landscape, accompanied by sound stimulation and three-dimensional elements, affords the viewer an opportunity to experience a complete sensory phenomenon. Historically, the panorama was an immersive 360-degree painted environment, often including a three-dimensional faux terrain in the foreground of the painting to enhance the illusion of depth and simulated reality. An early ancestor of the motion picture, the captivated public would visit these paintings-in-the-round as an entertainment or novelty, much along the same lines as the cinema is seen today.Panoramas were widely accessible, extremely popular (and were lambasted for being so by art critics) and immensely entertaining. The decline in the proliferation of panoramas came about following the spread of cinema and became largely forgotten about, at least in the United States. Enter the Velaslavasay Panorama, first founded by Sara Velas in Hollywood and now located in West Adams. The Velaslavasay has both preserved and updated the medium, incorporating light and sound for a completely immersive panoramic experience. Read the rest

The Sakura Pigma Manga Basic Set comes with 5 pens: 4 Pigma Microns (sizes 005, 01, 05, 08) a black brush pen, and a white ink gel pen (for highlights and to correct mistakes). Amazon has a good prices for the set: Read the rest

Inspired by the way plants grow, MIT researchers designed a flexible robot appendage that can work in tight spaces but is rigid enough to support heavy parts or twist tight screws. From MIT News:The appendage design is inspired by the way plants grow, which involves the transport of nutrients, in a fluidized form, up to the plant’s tip. There, they are converted into solid material to produce, bit by bit, a supportive stem.Likewise, the robot consists of a “growing point,” or gearbox, that pulls a loose chain of interlocking blocks into the box. Gears in the box then lock the chain units together and feed the chain out, unit by unit, as a rigid appendage...“The realization of the robot is totally different from a real plant, but it exhibits the same kind of functionality, at a certain abstract level,” (mechanical engineer Harry) Asada says. Read the rest

The annual 'Thriller' performance at Abbington Senior Living is glorious pic.twitter.com/aEbru9qWA5— Giles Paley-Phillips (@eliistender10) November 10, 2019 Enjoy the funk of, er, 65+ years in this video of the annual Thriller dance at the Abbington Senior Living Mapleton center in Utah. For me, this clip has a similar charm as David Greenberger's eternally amazing Duplex Planet interviews with elderly people. Read the rest

Cop in California legit tried to arrest a black man bc he was “illegally eating.”😳My mind can’t even begin to comprehend the arrogance needed to justify this nonsense pic.twitter.com/cwlobWkRo2— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) November 10, 2019"You're eating. It's against the law." That's what this white police officer told a black man who was eating a sandwich while waiting for a train in Contra Costa, California. The man purchased the sandwich in the station, and was eating it outside in the platform while waiting for a BART train. According to the person who shot the video, there are no signs stating that it is forbidden to eat food on train platforms.The officer grabbed the man's backpack and asked him for his identification. The man eating the sandwich calmly told the officer that he was doing nothing wrong and refused to show the cop his ID. The cop called for backup and four other officers arrived to handcuff the man and take him away.“Four cops for eating a sandwich?,” says the man.BART said it is investigating the incident, says The San Francisco Examiner. Read the rest

Myanmar is being sued the by 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation at the UN's International Court of Justice for allegedly conducting genocide against the Rohingya minority, reports ABC News. The lawsuit, filed by Gambia, alleges that:Starting in October 2016 and then again in August 2017, Myanmar’s security forces engaged in so-called “clearance operations” against the Rohingya, a distinct Muslim ethnic minority, in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The operations, in particular those that started in August 2017, were characterized by brutal violence and serious human rights violations on a mass scale. Survivors report indiscriminate killings, rape and sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture, beatings, and forced displacement. Reports have also shown that security forces were systematically planning for such an operation against the Rohingya even before the purported reason for the violence — retaliation for small scale attacks committed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) — occurred. As a result, an estimated 745,000 people — mostly ethnic Rohingya — were forced to flee to Bangladesh.Photo by Yang Jing on Unsplash Read the rest

Self-made entrepreneur and noted thought-leader Donald Trump Jr. disappointed fans at his UCLA book-signing event when he refused to answer questions from the audience. The event, organized by a conservative student organization called Turning Point USA, was meant to last two hours, but the young philanthropic genius left the stage after 20 minutes when it became clear that his girlfriend's angry scolding of the audience wasn't going to pacify them.Image: YouTube Read the rest

One of my family's favorite things to do is wander the neighborhoods of Tokyo. The narrow streets, filled with colorful visual, olfactory, and aural details, never fail to fill me with a sense of wonder. Yesterday one of my daughters showed me a YouTube Channel called Nippon Wandering TV. The person who runs the channel uses a high resolution GoPro (strapped to his chest or head, I guess) and walks through different Tokyo neighborhoods at different times of the day. He doesn't narrate the videos, and I'm glad he doesn't, because it's nice to hear the sounds of the streets -- talking, cars, music, etc. Each video is about 30 minutes long.Image: YouTube Read the rest

My kids and I like to draw. We sometimes go to the weekly figure drawings sessions at the Art Directors Guild in LA, or we just sit at the dining room table and draw. As an amateur sketcher, I'm in awe of illustrator Mark Crilley's skill with a pencil, and with his instructional books and videos. His videos are enjoyable and useful -- he explains what he is doing with a calm, soothing voice, and the tips he offers are often just what I need to gain new understanding about drawing. In his latest video, Mark shows how to add shading to faces.Image: YouTube Read the rest

The most recent episode of Last Week Tonight is John Oliver's celebratory victory lap over the end of coal giant Bob Murray's lawsuit against the show. Murray was suing for a 2017 episode calling Murray a "geriatric Dr. Evil" and for running a scene of a man in a squirrel costume holding a large bank check that said "Eat Shit Bob."Oliver said the lawsuit was a "bullshit effort to silence us" -- in other words, a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), which is a way for rich creeps to abuse the legal system to silence anyone who says anything negative about them. (In 2010 Boing Boing was hit with a SLAPP and the plaintiff ended up having to pay us more than $50,000 in legal costs.) Read the rest

Bebop Stop-Motion made this terrific stop-motion cooking clip of a gooey, bubbling pizza from 3,300 photos and countless Lego bricks. And here's a bonus stop-motion cooking classic, "Western Spaghetti" by PES: Read the rest

In 1994, Apple's Mac OS 7 licensing program briefly enabled other companies to make and sell Macintosh computers. In response, Apple employees "Dave Garr & The Licensees" created this delightful parody of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now."(via r/Apple) Read the rest

In 1996, Benjamin Schreiber, 66, was sentenced to life in prison for killing a man with an axe handle. A few years later in the Iowa State Penitentiary, Schreiber suffered from septic poisoning, briefly died, and was resuscitated. So he argued to an Iowa appeals court that he has served his sentence and should be set free. The court ruled with what might be called the "Schrödinger's convict" respsonse. From the New York Times: “Schreiber is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot,” Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote for the court....Judge Potterfield wrote in the ruling this week that because “life” is not defined by the state’s code, the judges had given the term “its plain meaning,” which they took to prescribe that Mr. Schreiber must spend the rest of his natural life incarcerated, regardless of whether he had been revived.“We do not find his argument persuasive,” Judge Potterfield wrote, adding that the judges found it unlikely the Legislature would have wanted “to set criminal defendants free whenever medical procedures during their incarceration lead to their resuscitation by medical professionals.”Image: TheCatalyst31 (CC0 1.0) Read the rest

Former Pittsburgh radio personality T.J. Lubinsky is selling his home, about a half-hour outside the city in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania.I'll be honest, I've never heard of this guy. But apparently he has quite a resume. Which I guess is how he and his wife Wenday were able to build this absurdly palatial estate with 14 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a "waterfall poolside oasis" with a custom Lilliput playhouse for the kids, and—oh yeah, a two-story replica of the Heinz Chapel as well as a replica of the private study from the 1966 "Batman" show, complete with sliding bookcases, a red phone, and Batpoles.It also contains replica rooms based on "the Queen’s residence next to the Ritz London" and "the Hotel Del Coronado in California." Did I mention that the whole design is based on Newport's Seaview Terrace/Carey Mansion, which was used as the exterior shots for Collinwood Manor in the classic vampire soap opera "Dark Shadows?"While I personally couldn't afford the $3.5 million it would cost to buy this place, but all things considered, I think that's actually a pretty reasonable price for it.724 Bristlecone Drive, Gibsonia, Pennsylvania 15044, via Berkshire Hathaway Real EstateImage via Batman '66, duh Read the rest