Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Donald Trump gets a hot tip on corruption, tracks it down every path, no matter the consequences!

A Punk Rock Future is a brand new fiction anthology featuring 25 speculative sci-fi and fantasy writers smashing the State in whatever fantastical futuristic form that it might take. Editor Steve Zisson (not to be confused with Steve Zissou) was smart enough to realize that a good short story is already like a punk song—fast, effective, and brutally DIY, with a fistful of meaning that explodes in your face with pure undistilled emotion. It only made sense to slam the two together.The anthology features a setlist of writers with all the scene cred you need, including Nebula Award-winner Sarah Pinkser, who just released her debut novel about an illegal underground music scene; Margaret Killjoy, whose book The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award; and Marie Vibbert, who has published some forty-plus short stories and also attended the Clarion Writer's Workshop with me (where BoingBoing's own Cory Doctorow was our instructor).We might be trapped in the dystopian cyberpunk hellhole of a future we were promised is children, but another world is possible. So check out A Punk Rock Future, or there's no future for you. Read the rest

Raph Koster (previously) is a games design legend, the designer behind such classics as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, a consistently thoughtful and smart theorist of games, and the author of A Theory of Fun, the best book I've ever read about games and gaming.Koster sold his last games startup, Metaplace, to Disney many years ago, cashed out, and has been doing various side projects ever since. But today, he closed financing for "Playable Worlds," his next big game, which will offer something for everyone: "adventuring, PvP, socializing, combat, crafting, or enabling online communities to cross over with each other."Koster calls it the next stage in the evolution of "sandbox games," a category that has existed for so long that there are multiple generations of players who cut their teeth on various iterations from Runescape to Minecraft.Congrats, Raph! “When I look across games today, what I see is games about crafting, fashion play, timed reengagement, social play – basically a whole lot of things that are old tropes out of sandbox MMO play,” he said. “Multiple generations have grown up with sandbox play now – kids who played Runescape are in their 30s, kids who played Minecraft in their 20s, and Roblox is already a decade old. We are seeing demand for ‘sandbox-y’ play all over the place, so I think it is very much of the moment. Heck, when I look at something like GTA Online, what I see is players role-playing cops and bus drivers and whatnot in there. Read the rest

Back in 2015, the Marvin Gaye estate secured a bizarre copyright judgment against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke over their hit song "Blurred Lines," in which the Gaye estate argued (successfully) that even though "Blurred Lines" didn't copy Gaye's songs, it copied the feeling of Gaye's music -- that is, that Thicke and Williams made a song that reminded people of Gaye.This was a catastrophically bad ruling, since it required that musicians pretend that they had no musical influences, lest they face a similar lawsuit. People who pointed this out were called "alarmists" by copyright maximalists, who were sure that this decision would not spawn a generation of musical copyright trolls who'd go around shaking down musicians for big payouts from hit songs (every one of which, after all, is related in some way to the songs that came before it).Here we go.Last summer, Lil Nas X ("Old Town Road") and Cardi B ("I Like It") collaborated on a track called "Rodeo." This song did pretty well, and it's a pretty good song, and it managed to catch the attention of Don Lee and Glen Keith DeMeritt III, whose beat "gwenXdonelee4-142" was incorporated into Puretoreefa and Sakrite Duexe's not-very-successful track Broad Day.Lee and DeMeritt have now filed a lawsuit against Lil Nas X and Cardi B, in which they assert that X and B's "Rodeo" has "a substantially similar overall sound and feel" to "Broad Day," because both songs are 142 bpm, and Rodeo has "guitar and wind instruments to evoke a certain aesthetic that is set against hip-hop elements derived from digital drum and bass elements" and "guitar and wind instruments to evoke a certain aesthetic that is set against hip-hop elements derived from digital drum and bass elements" and "the rhythmic guitar part outlining chords is replaced with a single note line playing an ascending then descending scale moving with the chord change" and "Rodeo’s rhythmic guitar part is replaced with a single note line playing ascending and descending scales following the chord progression."That is, the songs are recognizably from the same genre. Read the rest

My favorite pre-roll cone for home filling of joints is the RAW '98 Special.'I've tried the 1 ¼, King Size and 98 Special sizes of cones. The 98 Special splits the difference between the very large joint of a King Size and the harder to fill, but great for .5 gram to .75 gram sized joints, 1 ¼. You can fill the 98 Special to the same volume as a 1 ¼, however, the length and opening of the 98 Special are much more cooperative.The 98 Special cones have a taper that gives them a larger opening hole and longer length, making it easier to get ground weed into versus the 1 ¼. The included cardboard shovel is helpful.The King Size cone is easy to fill but wants to be at least a .7 to 1.25 gram joint.I am eyeballing my measures based on prior experience and not actually weighing out each joint before filling.RAW Classic Natural Unrefined Pre Rolled Cones - 20 Cones Per Pack - 98 Special Size (1 Pack) via Amazon Read the rest

Yesterday I wrote about how having a Tile Bluetooth tracker helped me find my wallet when I lost it at the theater last week. I just found out that Tile has refreshed its product lineup and one of the new devices is called the Tile Sticker. It has an adhesive so you can stick it to items that you want to keep track of. A Tile Sticker 2-pack costs , but right now Amazon has a deal where you can get 4 Tile Stickers and an Echo Dot for . Read the rest

Twitter reports that email address and phone numbers added for security reasons such as two-factor authorization "may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes."When an advertiser uploaded their marketing list, we may have matched people on Twitter to their list based on the email or phone number the Twitter account holder provided for safety and security purposes. This was an error and we apologize.We cannot say with certainty how many people were impacted by this, but in an effort to be transparent, we wanted to make everyone aware. No personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties.User data that Twitter cannot sell ended up in an advertising product that lets Twitter monetize such data without revealing it directly to third parties. Inadvertantly. Read the rest

A reptile breeder in the SF Bay Area says he'd just finished giving a talk and was packing up in the parking lot when thieves stole one of his duffel bags containing four live snakes.The man says the thieves probably thought it was full of something valuable other than, say, four live snakes.Two of the four snakes have been retrieved so far, says Brian Gunday, who told KRON-4 News his beloved serpents were found inside a trash dumpster, probably after the bad guys figured out what was inside the stolen duffel bag:“I went and walked to my car, got in it, backed out. As I backed out I noticed there was some people at the other end of the parking lot where my gear was and I didn’t think anything of it,” he said. Gunday said as he got out of his car, he noticed his duffel bag was gone. Three ball pythons, a baby albino caramel Burmese python and a blue-tailed skink were inside the duffel bag. Gundy believes whoever stole his bag had quite the surprise once they opened it.“They picked it up. It was probably heavy, probably 30 pounds in someone’s mind probably camera equipment or computer gear,” he said.Since the snakes went missing on Saturday, two of them turned up in a dumpster. Gunday’s proudly wearing one of the recovered snakes.“This is shorty. Shorty is a caramel albino Burmese python,” Gunday said. “He’s about three-months-old or so and this snake will grow to 13 or 15 feet long.”The stolen snakes are worth thousands of dollars but gundy says it’s not about the money. Read the rest

Pennsylvania resident Chris Persic says his wife called to let him know their SUV smelled like it was burning. When she opened the hood, a surprise was waiting: walnuts and grass piled all over the Kia engine, stashed their by misbehaving squirrels.The couple estimate they found more than 200 walnuts crammed in there.That wasn’t all, the Franklin Park couple took the SUV to a shop and the shop reportedly found another half a trashcan worth of walnuts under the engine.Other than that they didn’t really do any extensive damage.Persic says he was actually at a dealership on McKnight Road because his new truck started to shake when accelerating and the check engine light was on.“Turns out my truck may have had a squirrel chew through or pull the fuel injector hose out,” Persic said.Oh Nuts! Squirrels Hide Hundreds Of Walnuts Under Hood Of Car [image: shutterstock] Read the rest

The getaway goat's name is 'Big Boy.' “He’s never done anything like that before,” his owner said when finally reunited with the goat. “I think he was drinking too much that night. I’m really sorry it happened but there wasn’t much I could do. I wasn’t there.”In an Ohio town, a teen got home from school last Friday to discover the family dog barking outside, and a sliding glass door shattered.The kid's mom called the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office after they figured out a goat had crashed into their family home. Keathley said she and the deputies called vets, animal control and the local Humane Society for advice. She said everyone laughed at them and they laughed too but they really needed help. Finally, the deputies decided to attempt corralling the goat out themselves. They tried tying a rope around its neck, enticing it with carrots, dog bones, grass.At one point, the goat turned around and ran back into the bathroom. Eventually, the two deputies each grabbed a horn and managed to lead the goat outside and into the German Shepard’s cage.On local Facebook pages, Keathley asked, “is anybody missing a ram? Please contact me ASAP.”She said she didn’t want to include what the male goat had done in the post or else the owner might not claim him.More:Goat breaks into Ashland County home, falls asleep in bathroom [times-gazette.com, video courtesy Jenn Keathley] Read the rest

A spokesperson for the Facebook-owned WhatsApp says the company has fixed a security vulnerability that let hackers take control of the messaging app by way of a malicious GIF."We have no reason to believe this affected any users, though of course we are always working to provide the latest security features to our users," a WhatsApp spokesperson told CNN Business.Jordan Valinsky at CNN Business reports:The hack could be triggered when a user opened a malicious GIF in their gallery. After the GIF was opened, the app's contents could have been exploited, revealing previous chat history.Devices running Android 8.1 and 9 could have been susceptible to the hack. A researcher called Awakened discovered the vulnerability and wrote about it in a blog post last week.WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook (FB), released a patch last month, though it said it's unlikely anyone was actually hacked using the technique Awakened revealed.WhatsApp had a bug that let hackers take over phones with a GIF Read the rest

Not ashamed to admit I'm obsessed with this crime story.For those following along, rapper and former gang member turned informant Tekashi69 will be sentenced on December 18.[via @PPVSRB, PHOTOS: shutterstock] Read the rest

In the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers presented evidence that Russia conducted information warfare against the U.S. in 2016 and demanded urgent action from Congress, the trump White House, and Silicon Valley to prevent the same thing from happening in 2020.The group of Democratic and Republican senators delivered a sobering assessment of weaknesses that Russian operatives exploited in the 2016 campaign -- all of which remain active vulnerabilities today, one year before our next presidential election. “The Committee found that Russia’s targeting of the 2016 U.S. presidential election was part of a broader, sophisticated and ongoing information warfare campaign,” the new Senate Intelligence Committee report reads. Russia's campaign was “a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than was initially understood... an increasingly brazen interference by the Kremlin on the citizens and democratic institutions of the United States."Huh. Wonder why Russia's favored candidate isn't helping.From the Washington Post's Craig Timberg and Tony Romm: The Senate Intelligence Committee, a Republican-led panel that has been investigating foreign electoral interference for more than two and a half years, said in blunt language that Russians worked to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton while bolstering Republican Donald Trump — and made clear that fresh rounds of interference are likely ahead of the 2020 vote.“Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn’t start and didn’t end with the 2016 election," said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the committee’s chairman. “Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government. Read the rest

The reborn VCS looked like a thoroughbred among a field of retro nags, wedding Atari's classic pedigree to powerful modern hardware. But its designer has quit the project, according to The Register, claiming he hasn't been paid and that the project is a mess.It is unclear whether Atari will be able to complete its beleaguered project without Wyatt. It only received a prototype motherboard last month, and Wyatt and his team were in the middle of debugging it before deciding to draw stumps and quit. The task of finalizing the hardware will likely fall to SurfaceInk, another company that Atari has contracted to complete the console. SurfaceInk has not responded to multiple requests for comment.Apparently Atari was also working with a crowdfunding entrepreneur named Feargal Mac Conuladh, but ghosted him when its VCS campaign soared to a $3m haul, and ended up paying a substantial settlement. "Atari" is the remains of Infogrames, a French software house that bought what was already a zombie brand in 2009 and at this point appears to comprise of three lawyers and a licensing agreement taped to a photocopier. Read the rest

The job listing for a vacancy in Burning Man's HR department is pretty anodyne, until you get to this: "Some of the work will be in outside weather conditions and will be exposed to fumes or airborne particles as well as possible extremes in temperature." "Possible" is really underselling it, to be honest. Read the rest

For many years, we've brought you the delightful arts and crafts of Anthony "Tonky" Clune: beautiful felt housewares, giant wall-stickers, a short film about thrifting, cool reflective cycling safety badges and more.Now, Tonky is kickstarting a pair of books collecting decades' worth of his street photography, which feature some beautiful work. He needs a mere $3370 for prepress work, and $5 gets you a set of PDFs, $20 gets you one volume, and $35 gets you both.He hopes to deliver for Christmas but warns it might be January. Given that he's delivered other print projects before, this feels like a low-risk crowdfunder, though as with all such, be advised that you might got get anything for your money.Anthony Clune Photo Books: 1999-2019 [Anthony Clune/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Sara from MIT Sloan Management Review writes, "The entire site is free today through Thursday. To help you make progress on the problems you’re facing right now, they’ve unlocked their site for 72 hours. Every article, research report, and webinar is free to access." Read the rest

Last year, I posted about the spooky painted lightbulb Halloween ornaments of David "gnarledbranch" Irvine; since then, Irvine has created a new, more ambitious batch. He writes: "Some bulbs I salvage are oversized/too heavy to hang, so I had custom designed wooden stands made and they turn into an 'art object'...some even with a wraparound scene!"The Gnarled Branch [David Irvine/Etsy] Read the rest

Police arrested Joshua Allen Renfroe, 29, for shoplifting hundreds of dollars of merchandise from a Walmart in Lufkin, Texas. From KTRE:After Renfroe was arrested, he kept telling LPD officers that the “voodoo” made him try to steal the items from Walmart, the media report stated. He also told them that the “voodoo” told him not to brush his teeth that morning.I'm not sure which is the greater crime.image: Mekabre Loa Voodoo Doll - Complete Kit (Amazon) Read the rest

Gil Gerard, star of the fantastic 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century' has joined '2491' as an actor and producer. '2491' was inspired by the fantastic Buck Rogers series.Hollywood Reporter:Former Buck Rogers in the 25th Century star Gil Gerard has come aboard a sci-fi project that wants to recapture the spirit of the late 1970s-early 1980s NBC series.The actor will be an executive producer and series regular on 2491, a drama from creator Salvatore Verini (FYI's Country Daze). Verini grew up as a fan of the Gerard-led show and says the new project was influenced by it — down to the title, which refers to the year 20th-century astronaut Buck Rogers returned to a future Earth on the series.Like Buck Rogers, 2491 "will follow an astronaut as he is catapulted into the future and returns to an Earth far different than the one he left behind," Verini said Monday in a statement. “But the protagonist will follow a direction more the way [Gerard] was originally pushing for Buck to go back in the '80s." The Buck Rogers title is tied up in a copyright battle involving a question of whether the original source material, a series of stories by Philip Francis Nowlan that began in 1928, is in the public domain. I love the Philip Francis Nowlan stories, but the TV series was very different. Read the rest

Amazon and its contractors are notorious for their wage-theft from warehouse workers, who are required to endure lengthy, unpaid delays while they wait to have their bags and bodies searched for stolen goods; a group of workers sued Amazon and one of its contractors, Integrity Staffing, under a Nevada state law.Amazon and Integrity Staffing -- who call the workers' claims "grossly inaccurate" -- tried to have the case thrown out, going all the way to the Supreme Court. But this week, the Supremes denied cert to Amazon and Integrity, refusing to hear their objections, meaning the workers' claims can proceed.In its 2014 ruling in the case, the Supreme Court decided that under a 1947 law that amended the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, companies do not have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security checks.The workers subsequently pressed their allegations under state law and added Amazon as a defendant. The case was consolidated with similar ones in federal court in Kentucky. U.S. Supreme Court rejects Amazon warehouse worker wage appeal [Andrew Chung/Reuters](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Scott Lewis, CC BY) Read the rest

On Reddit, u/xplodingboy07 said he got a nasty knee infection and had to spend a month in the hospital. He posted a photo of the bill, which was for $618,967.78.That's $20,000 a day. And here I was thinking that the $106,911.93 bill my elderly relative got for spending 8 days in the hospital after his partial denture got stuck in his throat was excessive. Turns out it was a bargain at just $13,000 a day. Over 500,000 U.S. families go bankrupt from medical bills every year.Image: Reddit Read the rest

Bernie Sanders remains one of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential elections, but you'd hardly know it from the media narrative, which consistently downplays, ignores or misstates Sanders' campaign platform and his achievements in favor of establishment candidates and even other trustbusters like Elizabeth Warren.The Bernie Blindness subreddit collects compelling examples of this bias in action, from brigading trolls who are plastering Reddit with nearly identical messages insisting that Bernie is too frail to lead to CNN's misleading coverage of poll results that have Sanders poised to trounce Trump.I am a donor to both Bernie Sanders' and Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaigns.Bernie Blindness [Reddit](via Slate Star Codex) Read the rest

A determined driver in France fit their car in a spot with just a few inches of clearance. This is one of 10 videos about heroic parkers featured in Car and Driver. Read the rest

Last month, a developer called Axi0mx released an Iphone crack called Checkm8, which attacks a defect in the Ios bootrom, a low-level piece of code that has not been successfully attacked since 2010. The bootrom is read-only, making its defects effectively unpatchable, short of removing the chip and swapping it for one with more robust code (the attack also works on version 1, 2 and 3 Apple Watches). The crack targets 11 generations of Iphones (though not the most recent ones), and it has important limitations: it has to be run every time the device reboots, and requires physical access at boot-time in order to execute. Despite this, as Dan Goodin notes at Ars Technica, "Checkm8 is going to benefit researchers, hobbyists, and hackers by providing a way not seen in almost a decade to access the lowest levels of iDevices."Axiomx and Goodin discussed the crack, and Axiomx points out that some affected devices can be seriously compromised by Checkm8: Iphones without the "secure enclave" trusted module can be attacked with Checkm8 to bypass the unlock PIN. The secure enclave is present in Iphones from the model 6 and above, but Iphone 5s and earlier models are seriously compromised by this attack.In the meantime, Axiomx holds out hope for security researchers who want to explore other Ios vulnerabilities without subjecting themselves to the strictures of Apple's security program, and for people who want to install apps from alternative app stores.axi0mX: If you have a few minutes, I have more things that you may find interesting:Apple has been making jailbreaks very difficult. Read the rest

Blizzard Entertainment, best known for publishing World of Warcraft, suspended a pro Hearthstone player and pulled his prize money because he said, “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!” during a livestream.Blizzard, which has a huge and lucrative market in China, determined that Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai's utterance was in violation of a competition rule:2019 HEARTHSTONE GRANDMASTERS OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES v1.4 p.12, Section 6.1 (o)Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.According to Kotaku: "Blitzchung’s punishment is an immediate removal from Grandmasters, a withholding of prize money for his participation and a ban from taking part in Hearthstone esports 'for 12 months beginning from Oct. 5th, 2019 and extending to Oct. 5th, 2020.'"[BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player @blitzchungHS calls for liberation of his country in post-game interview:https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj @Matthieist #Hearthstone pic.twitter.com/DnaMSEaM4g— 🎃 Inven Global 🎃 (@InvenGlobal) October 6, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

Yesterday, volunteers and staff at New York's beloved Pacifica Radio affiliate, WBAI, got an abrupt notice informing them that Pacifica had shut down the station, in order to prevent its "financial losses" from "jeopardiz[ing] the survival of the entire network." Today, 2600 Magazine tweeted "We're happy to announce that @WBAI has gotten an injunction to stay the takeover of the station by @RadioPacifica. All programming will resume and the next court date is October 18th." (2600 is behind "Off the Hook," one of the longest-running WBAI programs).We're happy to announce that @WBAI has gotten an injunction to stay the takeover of the station by @RadioPacifica. All programming will resume and the next court date is October 18th.Should be a good show this Wednesday!@HackerRadioShow pic.twitter.com/6LLot3temR— 2600 Magazine (@2600) October 8, 2019(Image: Rob Vincent, CC BY-SA)(Thanks, Stephen Pankowicz!) Read the rest

Through a collaboration with NASA and the SETI Institute, Girl Scouts can now earn badges in space science, from astronomy to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “Part of science literacy is understanding our place in the big world, in the solar system, in the universe," Pamela Harman, the director of education at the SETI Institute, told Air & Space Magazine. "Once we realize that, I think it’s easier to think about protecting our planet.”From Air & Space:Girl Scout cadettes (grades 6-8) can earn the space science researcher badge by investigating properties of light and observing the night sky; seniors (grades 9-10) can obtain the space science expert badge by classifying stars and studying their life cycles; and ambassadors (grades 11-12) seeking the space science master badge will explore exoplanets through activities such as designing a habitat for an alien world. Read the rest

Propublica's latest longread is ostensibly a profile of two kids who attended Orange County's Sage Hill School, where tuition runs $40,000/year and where an estimated 25% of students get into elite colleges thanks to their parents shelling out for "independent counsellors" who run the gamut from people who help with admissions essays and strategic donations to the schools of their choice all the way up to William "Rick" Singer, who pleaded guilty to collecting millions to grease the path for mediocre rich kids to attend elite colleges by bribing coaches.One of the kids profiled is Grant Janavs, a middling tennis player who is also the scion of the ultra rich Merage/Janavs family, inheritors of a fortune from Hot Pockets and other products from Chef America, Inc. The other is Adam Langevin, a superb and dedicated tennis player who "suicided" tennis (in the words of his high school coach), devoting his life to it while simultaneously succeeding academically. Langevin played on the school team despite the fact that it took away from his ability to play in the tournaments that would have helped him get into a college athletics program, because he felt a sense of duty to the school -- even playing through serious injuries.But it wasn't Adam who got into a top athletics program, it was Grant, who was admitted to Georgetown. Grant's mother hired Rick Singer to "consult" on that admissions, and once the admission was secured, a foundation controlled by Grant's grandfather "donated" $400,000 to a "charity" run by Singer. Read the rest

This job candidate has watched too many (or perhaps too few) English-dubbed martial arts films from the 1970s."You need to be more formal and at least practice before you take the interview." Read the rest

In 2003, Philosophical Quarterly published a paper by philosopher Nick Bostrom titled "Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?" In the introduction, Bostrom argues that one (or more) of the following propositions must be true:(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof)(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor‐simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.The TED-Ed video above looks at how we might be able to run experiments to learn whether or not we are currently living in a simulation. Read the rest

Today, Lego announced Replay, an initiative to collect, clean, and redistribute old bricks through organizations like Teach For America and the Boys and Girls Club of Boston. Basically, you toss your old Legos in a box and ship them off with a prepaid label provided by logistics company Give Back Box. From Wired:The biggest challenge in the process, says Give Back Box founder Monika Wiela, will be sorting and cleaning all the pieces. Her company will collect the bricks at its facility in Alabama, where workers will then separate out the broken bricks and machine wash the rest. The goal is to make the donated toys seem like new, as opposed to grimy hand-me-downs. Read the rest

Film editor Andrew Saladino of the Royal Ocean Film Society analyzes the exquisitely engineered airships in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki's father owned an airplane factory during World War II and thus it's no surprise that Miyazaki would pay close attention to the design and cinematic use of airships in his movies. Read the rest

The Trump administration continues to act like a kid caught with its head in the cookie jar.CBS News:Sondland's lawyer, Robert Luskin said in the statement that Sondland "is profoundly disappointed that he will not be able to testify today" and went on to say that the ambassador had traveled from Brussels for the testimony and made arrangements with the Joint Committee staff to appear. Sondland "believes strongly that he acted at all times in the best interests of the United States" and remains ready to testify "on short notice," Luskin said.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told reporters on Tuesday that Sondland was in possession of documents on his "personal device" related to Ukraine which the State Department is withholding from the committee."The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents, we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress," Schiff said. Read the rest

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Peter Graves and Frank Ashmore.You might remember Mr. Ashmore from V. Read the rest

PlayStation 5 is coming for winterval 2020, and will have ... drum roll ... USB-C. Also some other features.ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware ... solid-state drive ... 4K Bluray ... an unlabeled matte-black doohickey that looks an awful lot like the PS4's DualShock 4 ... an improved speaker on the controller, the haptics ... me really excitedWe don't know what it'll look like; the image going around (above) is an (accurate) mockup of the NDA-covered dev kit, as commissioned by LetsGoDigital. Read the rest

Last night I made honey whole wheat sourdough pizza crust. It was quite good.As a kid, there was a pizza place in my hometown that made a deep-dish pizza with a whole wheat crust. It was great, I tried and I couldn't replicate it. Then I substituted honey instead of sugar.This simple crust is good.Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Pizza Dough1 cup bread flour1 cup whole wheat flour½ cup sourdough starter1 ½ tsp salt3 tbs honey1 ½ tbs olive oil½ cup waterFirst: Mix ½ cup water, ½ cup starter, oil and the honey. Let sit while you measure out the dry goods and combine them all. Depending on your flour, and your starter, you may need to add a little flour to the mix to get a good consistency. Stop when it feels like the dough that you want to roll out.Second: Leave it alone, probably covered, for 45-60 minutes. Refrigerate to store or use right away.Bake at 475F or higher for 20 min, deep-dish. Probably the same for thin crust.I have been using this dough for the crust of my deep-dish pizza, but you can easily roll it out for super-thin, Neapolitan stuff too.Unless you do roll it super thin, I doubt this crust is going to get super cracker crisp, as it is sourdough and will retain more chew the longer you let it rise. Read the rest

I love a good flea market. Even though I don't really collect anymore (I make exceptions for extraordinary items), I love seeing what weird, old stuff is out there. Here where I live in Alameda, California, on the first Sunday of every month, there is a massive vintage and antiques sale with over 800 dealers. The most recent Alameda Point Antiques Faire was this past Sunday and many vendors brought out their vintage Halloween wares. Here's a look at some of the old-fashioned paper trick-or-treat bags, plastic kiddie costumes, ephemera, blow molds, and other fun seasonal items I spotted out there. This E.T. Halloween costumes deserves a special shout-out -- it's 100% handmade with love!Sexy Darth Vader!If you go: The best time to arrive to the Alameda Point Antiques Faire, in my opinion, is at 7:30 a.m. when the price drops from $15 to $10. Yes, at 9 a.m., it drops to $5 but then it starts getting crowded and/or hot. Children under 15 are free with an adult. There is tons of parking and a free shuttle if you end up at the back of the enormous lot.Pro-tips:Wear a sun hat, sunglasses, and comfortable shoes (my Fitbit tells me I clock in around 15,000 steps!). Also pack a water bottle and a snack, though you can also purchase food and beverages. Bring small bills and negotiate for what you want. The faire closes at 3:00 p.m., so that's when big deals start happening (the vendors have been there since around 4:00 a.m. Read the rest

As former MEP Marietje Schaake (previously) writes, "Can we please stop calling Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc ‘The online public square’? They’re ad companies. It is like calling a billboard ad a ’vertical public message’.... Pay for play, social media & search engines have created an online marketplace of ideas. Money talks." (via JWZ)Can we please stop calling Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc ‘The online public square’? They’re ad companies. It is like calling a billboard ad a ’vertical public message’.... Pay for play, social media & search engines have created an online marketplace of ideas. Money talks ↘️ pic.twitter.com/YR5Pu7sPP1— Marietje Schaake (@MarietjeSchaake) October 4, 2019 Read the rest

There have been some tweets going around about a "wearable face projector" being employed at the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.Wearable face projector#AntiMaskLaw #EmergencyLaw pic.twitter.com/Px3ATu6Lp1— Happy Day (@HappySharingDay) October 4, 2019It's essentially the same as the scramble suits from Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly—instead of disguising yourself as someone else, it disguises you as everyone else, projecting a constantly shifting visage that drives the facial recognition AI crazy. It certainly makes sense that someone would try to use something like this in Hong Kong, where the mere act of protecting one's identity in public is now punishable by a USD3,200 fine.Except… it's not from the Hong Kong protests. It's actually an art project by Jing-Cai Liu, an industrial design student at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Liu had come up with the concept of a wearable face projector as an undergrad at the University of the Arts in Utrecht. "In the future, the advertisement could call your name when you walk along the streets," she writes on her website:Mega databanks and high-resolution cameras in the streets stock hundreds of exabytes a year. But who has access to this data? It is possible that it could have commercial use, hence not only retail companies but also the advertisement industry could be very interested in this data in the coming future. They would hope to gain these personal data and information as much as they can.[…]The companies would know your personal interests and may set different retail strategies for you. Read the rest

Motherfoclóir is a delightful podcast about language and linguistics as they relate to Ireland ("foclóir" being the Irish word for "dictionary," and thus completely unrelated to that homophonic English-language word you're surely thinking of, c'mon). While that might seem like a niche topic outside of the Emerald Isle herself, a recent episode tackled something that's surely on everyone's mind: those fantastical pointy-eared aristocrats known only as elves.Specifically, it's a conversation with Irish writer Orla Ní Dhúill, whose blog about elves, Irishness, and colonialism gained a lot of traction among fantasy fans across the globe.Growing up as a nerdy Irish-American kid, I always understood there to be something vaguely Gael-ish about elves. Even though I didn't know why. Even though I knew it didn't make sense. Even though I knew that Tolkien himself was not particularly fond of the Irish (the language, at least, if not the people). Was it because they used an cló gaelach, the insular font so often associated with Irish Gaelic? Even in my later adolescence, as I wasted my measly weekend job wages on Warhammer 40K, I couldn't help but notice the inherent Irishness in the names and terms of the mystical Eldar alien race who are basically space elves anyway (spoiler: it turns out the Eldar language is, in fact, mostly just bastardized lines from Irish Gaelic proverbs).The podcast episode is full of insightful exchanges on language and colonialism between Ní Dhúill and host Peader Kavanagh. You can listen below, or on your preferred podcasting platform. Read the rest

I can't speak to the scientific value of the paper--actual quote:We focus on a more exciting possibility: if the OGLE events are due to a population of PBHs then it is possible that the orbital anomalies of TNOs are also due to one of these PBHs that was captured by the Solar System.But the writers of "What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole?" get an A for showmanship. Page 5 includes an "exact scale image" of the black hole discussed:Science papers are always full of figures, but very rarely are they to scale, but in this astrophysics paper, which I’ve never heard of an astrophysics paper having a figure to scale, the authors included a 1:1 scale of a 5 Earth-mass back hole. Sick as hell. pic.twitter.com/HYhv005gTW— Hairea 51 (@jaredhead) September 28, 2019 Read the rest

Bloomberg News reports on the porcine powerhouses bred in the People's Republic. The 500 kilogram, or 1,102 pound, animal is part of a herd that’s being bred to become giant swine. At slaughter, some of the pigs can sell for more than 10,000 yuan ($1,399), over three times higher than the average monthly disposable income in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province where Pang Cong, the farm’s owner, lives. ... The large swine are being bred during a desperate time for China. With African swine fever decimating the nation’s hog herd -- in half, by some estimates -- prices of pork have soared to record levels Read the rest

Let there be light! Known for its dark atmosphere, Disneyland's Blue Bayou restaurant (the one you see from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride) has finally added tiny lights to their menus. So, next time you dine there, you can keep your cell phone where it belongs and order food without its assistance. To turn on the lights, lift up the menu's main cover and on the right-hand side there will be a small, hard flap with a button. Press that button and voila! Now, I don't know how long they've been part of the menu. My last visit was in early 2018 and I didn't see the lights then. A little internet research shows that the lights have been there at least since October 2018 and that in 2016 the park experimented with menus that lit up from behind.Also, getting Blue Bayou reservations can be tough unless you plan way ahead of time. But I was able to get in at the last-minute with the Disneyland app. I was also able to snag a late-night reservation to Oga's Cantina in Galaxy's Edge through the app. photo by Rusty Blazenhoff Read the rest

In 1929, detective novelist Arthur Upfield wanted to devise the perfect murder, so he started a discussion among his friends in Western Australia. He was pleased with their solution -- until local workers began disappearing, as if the book were coming true. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Murchison murders, a disturbing case of life imitating art.We'll also incite a revolution and puzzle over a perplexing purchase.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Good designers know that a picture can be worth more than 1,000 words. It can also be worth a fair paycheck if you find the right image. That's why you might want to take advantage of these premium stock photo services, both offering access to thousands of original pics and both on deep discount this month.Scopio Authentic Stock Photography boasts a stunning lineup of artistic photography, and it's not limited to one worldview. This creative collective features content creators from around the globe, all constantly stocking an easy-to-navigate library of images. There are new photos added to the pile every day, and you'll be able to choose from them all royalty-free.Right now, you can get lifetime access to Scopio for a full 98% off the original price.For a full-featured plan that provides graphics professionals with plenty of versatility on storage, there's the picjumbo Designer Plan. Rightly billed as the "Netflix for stock photos," picjumbo has more than 100 collections stocked with over 6,000 high-res images. There's more than 50 added each month, and you'll get three premium fonts as a bonus just for signing up. Download them as zip files or send them to Dropbox for easy retrieval.Pick up a lifetime subscription to picjumbo for a 93% discount this month. Read the rest

Saturn "has overtaken" Jupiter as the planet with the most satellites, at least in our own system: 82 to the larger world's 79. A team "discovered a haul of 20 new moons" around the ringed gas giant, as the BBC puts it, putting it in the lead. The moons were discovered using the Subaru telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii.Each of the newly discovered objects in orbit around Saturn is about 5km (three miles) in diameter; 17 of them orbit the planet "backwards".This is known as a retrograde direction. The other three moons orbit in a prograde direction - the same direction as Saturn rotates.I suspect they were there all along. Read the rest

Hunter Scott decided to design a bot to enter Twitter giveaways that asked for follow/like/retweets. He wrote a Python script that searched for and retweeted giveaways, and manually followed accounts when needed. Soon, the problem was not getting banned by Twitter:They have rate limits which prevent you from tweeting too often, retweeting too aggressively, and creating “following churn”, by rapidly following and unfollowing people. Twitter doesn’t publish these numbers, so I had to figure them out by trial and error. Twitter also limits the total number of people you can follow given a certain number of followers. If you have below a few hundred followers, you cannot follow more than 2000 people. Since a lot of contests required following the original poster, I used a FIFO to make sure I was only following the 2000 most recent contest entries. That gave me long enough to make sure the person I unfollowed had already ended their contest and it kept the follow/unfollow churn rate below the rate limit.Over the course of nine months, he entered 165,000 contests, winning around 1000. The most valuable prize was a trip to New York Fashion Week, which he did not accept. And his favorite prize was suitably random:My favorite thing that I won was a cowboy hat autographed by the stars of a Mexican soap opera that I had never heard of. I love it because it really embodies the totally random outcome of these contests.Eventually, he transformed his bot into one that sought out and retweeted accounts raising money for charity. Read the rest

Nick "Ulillillia" Smith is a game developer, writer and YouTuber who achieved recognition in the early 2010s due to his eccentricity, the shameless intensity of his outsider-art creations, and his adherence to a diet incompatible with human life. The subject of an unreleased 2012 documentary, whose promising trailer alone threatened to extend his fame far beyond forum culture, he faded from prominence (along with the rest of the Old Web) as social media took over and the age of online discovery ended. Atrocity Guide created this 20-minute recap of his story so far. Read the rest