Serhii Londar (Patreon) maintains a list of open-source applications available for MacOS. Unlike some similar guides, it's exhaustive rather than curated, and easy to reference in a single, well-organized HTML page.List of awesome open source applications for macOS. This list contains a lot of native, and cross-platform apps. The main goal of this repository is to find free open source apps and start contributing. Feel free to contribute to the list, any suggestions are welcome!I found out about Screentendo, which turns your screen into a Mario level. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail column, Why do people believe the Earth is flat?, which connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise in actual conspiracies, in which increasingly concentrated industries are able to come up with collective lobbying positions that result in everything from crashing 737s to toxic baby-bottle liners to the opioid epidemic. From climate denial to anti-vax to a resurgent eugenics movement, we are in a golden age of terrible conspiratorial thinking, with real consequences for our species’ continued survival on our (decidedly round) planet.Ideas spread because of some mix of ideology and material circumstances. Either ideas are convincingly argued and/or they are delivered to people whose circumstances make them susceptible to those ideas.Conspiracies aren’t on the rise because the arguments for them got better. The arguments for “alternative medicine” or against accepted climate science are no better than those that have lurked in the fringes for generations. Look up the 19th-century skeptics who decried the smallpox vaccine and you’ll find that anti-vax arguments have progressed very little in more than a century.MP3 Read the rest

A woman in Florida is in Big Trouble after cops say she climbed up into the ceiling of a Big Lots store to avoid a shoplifting arrest last Friday.The Sheriff’s Office in Charlotte County, FL says 37-year-old Kristina Perkins dashed into the Big Lots store restroom Friday and removed tiles so she could climb up into the ceiling.She was arrested.From AP:Deputies removed tiles from several spots in a five-hour effort to catch Perkins. The news release says she ignored commands to come down and instead moved to other sections of the ceiling. A deputy stayed behind when the search was called off and saw Perkins climbing down from the ceiling.Perkins faces criminal mischief, petit theft, resisting law enforcement without violence and other charges. Sheriff's deputies say 3 syringes and morphine residue were found in her purse.No lawyer was listed on jail records.[PHOTOS: At top, 37-year-old Kristina Perkins went into the store restroom and climbed up the ceiling by removing some tiles, police say. Image courtesy Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. BOTTOM: Shutterstock] Read the rest

Oh, deer.In Long Island, New York, a deer crashed through the window of a hair salon and shocked the humans inside.ABC7NY reports it all went down at 'Be.you.tiful Hair Salon' at 344 Portion Road in Lake Ronkonkoma around 12:30pm on Saturday.The deer struck a woman sitting on a couch in the front of the store. Police say she suffered leg and head pain. She was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.The deer was not at the scene when police arrived.Video courtesy of Be.you.tiful Hair Salon.[via AP] Read the rest

Enjoy this performance by violinist Gaelynn Lea. Her body is different than yours. So is her talent.Gaelynn Lea, "Amazing Grace," @ Eddie Owen Presents. Recorded live at the Red Clay Music Foundry, 2/2/17.About the artist:Gaelynn Lea won the NPR Music Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, and she’s been on the road ever since playing her unique mix of haunting original songs and traditional fiddle tunes. So far the singer-songwriter and violinist has appeared in 43 states and 7 countries – she’s graced the stage of renowned venues like Nashville’s Music City Roots, The Kennedy Center and House of Blues Chicago.“Gaelynn is currently working on a memoir about her touring adventures and disability advocacy that she plans to release in 2022,” her site says.[via, image courtesy violinscratches.com] Read the rest

This adorable 12-week-old kitten needed a snooze during their little 'coffee break.' View this post on Instagram Monday mornings be like... #ugh #mondays #☕️ #yodaA post shared by taro + zippo (@taroandzippo) on Sep 30, 2019 at 8:03am PDT Too much cuteness in this video.You can follow @taroandzippo on Instagram.[@TaraAndZippo via Reuters] Read the rest

Police in Germany say driving licenses have been suspended for hundreds of people who used electric scooters while drunk at the Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich.Some 414 people were arrested for driving e-scooters while betrunken. Of this total, 254 drunken e-scooting Oktoberfest maniacs received a suspended license penalty, the police said Monday. In 32 of these cases, police patrols intervened to prevent drunk driving, reports CNN:In Germany, e-scooters, which were only legalized in June, are categorized as motorized vehicles. This means that drink-driving laws apply to riders -- as some found out the hard way during the world's largest beer festival.Police identified e-scooters as a new challenge during the 16-day Oktoberfest -- an annual festival of traditional German food, dancing, beer and clothing that ran from September 19 to October 4 -- working to keep the festival grounds clear of the vehicles.Read more: Hundreds lose their driving licenses during Oktoberfest e-scooter mayhem [CNN, Jack Guy and Stephanie Halasz, 7th October 2019] Read the rest

About three years ago I was at Maker Faire with my family. We stopped at a booth run by Tile, a company that makes small Bluetooth trackers to attach to things you don't want to lose. The person in the booth let us spin a wheel of fortune to try to win a Tile. Carla spun it and won the best prize on the wheel - a Tile 4-pack with two Tile Mates and two Tile Slims. We ended up putting them in a drawer and forgetting about them. But about a month ago, Carla complained that she was frustrated with looking for her phone after misplacing it too many times around the house. I remembered the Tile devices and set one up so that she could press the button on the Tile and it would make her phone play a tone. It worked, which is surprising because the battery had been running for years. Now she keeps the Tile in a drawer and presses it when she can't find her phone.I decided to put one of the Tile slims in my wallet. It's as thick as two credit cards, so it didn't make the wallet bulge. On Friday Carla and I went to a movie theater to see Monos (thumbs up) and when we got into our car after the movie, I felt for my wallet in my pants pocket and discovered it wasn't there. I quickly walked back to the theater to look for it. I didn't care as much about the contents of the wallet as the wallet itself -- it was a red zipper wallet I bought in Japan and I love it. Read the rest

Trump signs US trade deal with Japan

Flag for Taiwan emoji is missing

The Hong Kong Free Press identifies the builders of this brick-throwing manganel fashioned from torn-down bamboo scaffolding as Hong Kong protesters, who deployed their siege engine in Mong Kok, Kowloon, home to narrow streets and night markets. The Free Press says it was "removed shortly after."As Jeff Wasserstrom notes, the protests have swiftly proceeded from cyberpunk to steampunk. Warning flag spotted at Chinese army barracks in Kowloon Tong as protests escalate across Hong Kong [Holmes Chan/Hong Kong Free Press]Protesters in Mong Kok appear to have made a catapult with bamboo scaffolding in order to launch bricks. Vid: Facebook. #hongkong #hongkongprotests #antiELAB #china pic.twitter.com/VlnG1Su3PE— Hong Kong Free Press (@HongKongFP) October 6, 2019 Read the rest

French company Le Creuset has announced a line of its signature enameled cast-iron cookwear themed after the Star Wars franchise; it's expensive even by Le Creuset standards, and a few of the pieces are uninspired messes, but the Han Solo in Carbonite roaster ($450), the R2-D2 Mini Cocotte ($30) and the Porg Pie Bird ($25) are positively brilliant. I'm also fond of the Tattoine Dutch oven, but that one isn't even priced and the company is offering an "opportunity to purchase." (via Geekologie) Read the rest

Self-described "creative coder" Neal Agarwal has come up with a method for hiding images in text that only appear when you highlight the words; I'm guessing he's using some kind of character-by-character "highlight" attribute in CSS/HTML5, but I'm not really certain. It's a super fun example of steganography, though, and would be really fun for some kinds of online puzzles, or spoiler reveals in posts, etc.Hiding images in highlighted text pic.twitter.com/Za0THkKBTn— Neal Agarwal (@nealagarwal) October 6, 2019(via Dan Hon) Read the rest

WBAI is a beloved New York City institution, owned by the Pacifica Foundation and run primarily by volunteers who produce longrunning, cultural-defining shows like Jim Freund's Hour of the Wolf (science fiction) and 2600's Off the Hook (information security and tech policy).This morning, WBAI volunteers received a short, abrupt note informing them that the station's operations were being "discontinued" effective today, due to "ongoing and continued projections of further financial losses" which "jeopardize the survival of the entire network."The letter holds out the promise of a relaunch "once we are able to create a sustainable financial structure." In the meantime, the station will air the feed from Pacifica Across America.This is sad and terrible news. I listen to WBAI whenever I'm in the city, and have appeared on Hour of the Wolf, Off the Hook, and other WBAI programs. My condolences to all the volunteers and listeners who've lost something wonderful and precious today.We are receiving word this morning that @WBAI has been shut down by @RadioPacifica, including "Off The Hook".We'll post updates as we get them here and at https://t.co/YQS2NQCVKj.— 2600 Magazine (@2600) October 7, 2019(Thanks, Stephen Pankowicz!)(Image: Rob Vincent, CC BY-SA) Read the rest

English is a glorious syncretic mass of a language, what you get when you blend together a bunch of mispronounced German, French and Latin words and then salt with the vernacular of a hundred other languages, without having to heed stern pronouncements from an official language academy.The grammar "rules" or "laws" you were taught in school are descriptive ("this is how people talk") not proscriptive ("this is how people should talk") but plenty of teachers and pedantic grammarians like to pretend that there is such a thing as correct English and take enormous pleasure in going around shouting at people whose speech or writing contain such sins as double negatives, split infinitives and singular "they"s, despite the long pedigree and wide use of these constructions.The pedant's best friend is the Associated Press Stylebook, which has always billed itself as guidelines and advice, not rules or laws, but which has been turned into a holy scripture by people who think their beliefs about grammar make them an oppressed religious minority.And just as Pope Francis's progressive pronouncements on migration and climate have enraged self-declared "Catholics" like Steve Bannon, the AP's most humane and modern recommendations are often met with outraged denunciations from grammarians who consider themselves such true partisans of the AP Stylebook that they are prepared to defend it from the editors of the AP Stylebook.One recent such fight was the AP's recommendation to eliminate hyphens in compound modifiers "if the modifier is commonly recognized as one phrase, and if the meaning is clear and unambiguous without the hyphen" such as "first quarter touchdown."After sustained outrage, the AP backtracked and reversed its advice: "We agree that, for instance, first-half run should be hyphenated. Read the rest

Mattel has brought inclusivity to one of its most popular card games, UNO. The UNO Braille Edition (available at Target for $9.99) was developed in partnership with the National Federation of the Blind and allows both the visually impaired and sighted people to play UNO together. The special deck's announcement comes shortly after the game behemoth launched a line of gender-neutral dolls (which is much better than their Flushin' Frenzy poop game from the spring). Mattel:UNO® has always prided itself on being a card game for everyone, but often blind and low-vision people found it difficult to participate. Now, with easily readable Braille dots on every card, blind and low-vision players can participate in the fun. All players call out the cards they play during the game, and blind players may touch the discard pile to verify the card in play or call for a “Card Check” to determine how many cards are in each player’s hands. It all adds up to an inclusive experience for everyone! (Cool Mom Picks)images via Mattel Read the rest

On Oct 1, a coalition of public interest groups and states' attorneys general lost their appeal in a legal bid to block the FCC's dismantling of federal Net Neutrality protections, accomplished through a mixture of lies and fraud. It was a crushing defeat for Americans and American competitiveness and access to digital life.But it's not all bad news. In the wake of the FCC's destruction of Net Neutrality, 34 states crafted bills protecting Net Neutrality at the state level and many of these have already passed into state law.This prompted Republican FCC commissioners and Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to do a fast reversal: under Obama's FCC, they had argued that the FCC could not dictate telcoms policy to the states (Obama's FCC prohibited states from passing laws that limited cities' ability to create publicly owned municipal networks). The spectacle of states taking measures to regulate the carriers and cable operators who had bought and paid for the GOP Commissioners prompted those "states' rights" advocates to have a change of heart and insist that the federal government alone could dictate telcoms policies.But in its Oct 1 ruling, the Federal Circuit appeals court told the FCC that it was wrong: where the FCC refused to regulate, states could step in to fill the void.Now, ISPs have a choice: they can either try to geolocate their discriminatory practices so precisely that they don't inadvertently violate laws in states that have Net Neutrality statutes, or they can simply treat the whole country as though federal Net Neutrality rules were still in effect. Read the rest

During the 1950s, surrealist and ethologist Desmond Morris mentored Congo, a chimpanzee, in the great ape's artistic pursuits. Congo painted more than 400 works that were purchased by the likes of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. And now Morris is selling his collection of 55 of Congo's paintings at London's Mayor Gallery. He's keeping just one of them. The paintings -- which will be priced around £1,500 – £6,000 -- will first be on exhibit from December 3-19. From It's Nice That:Morris worked with a number of apes in his research but explains that none matched Congo’s apparent artistic instinct. “No other apes were controlling the mark making and varying the patterns as he was,” Morris says. “I originally picked Congo out as one of the more boisterous at the zoo and felt that his strong personality would respond well to to focused periods of working together..."Morris commented on his decision to sell all but one of his favourite paintings from the time, saying “I am holding onto the serious, scientific research notes that I made during my years working with Congo, but, at 91 years old, I now would rather that the paintings and drawings be made available to other collectors, to whom I hope they will bring as much pleasure as they have to me.” Read the rest

Two studies point to diminished brain plasticity — the ability to adapt thinking and memory to new information — as the cause behind dyslexia. People with dyslexia appear to have less brain plasticity than average, according to the studies, which were conducted at Hebrew University of Israel and MIT. People with dyslexia are more likely to forget recent events than non-dyslexics, and their brains do not adapt as well to "repeated stimuli, including spoken words, musical notes, and faces," according to Mental Floss:In the Hebrew University study, led by Merav Ahissar, researchers gave subjects a musical task: The researchers played two different notes and asked which was higher. Previous research has found that people do better on this task when one of the notes is a repeat of a note they’ve heard recently. But Ahissar found that people with dyslexia did not benefit as much from the repetition. When a tone was repeated only three seconds after the "anchor" tone, they got some benefit, but not after nine seconds had elapsed. And when Ahissar’s team measured dyslexic people’s brain responses with EEG, their brain responses didn’t decrease. Their brains didn’t get any more efficient—they were less adaptable.The MIT study, led by John Gabrieli, found similar results through a different experiment. Gabrieli used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure people’s brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow in their brains. Instead of asking people to discriminate between musical notes, Gabrieli's team simply presented people with repeated things, including spoken words, written words, faces, and common objects like tables or chairs. Read the rest

Firstsecond (publishers of In Real Life, the bestselling middle-grades graphic novel Jen Wang and I made) have just revealed the cover for Poesy the Monster Slayer, my first-ever picture book, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller and scheduled for publication in July 2020.Poesy is a book about a little girl who is obsessed with monsters, who uses her deep knowledge of monsters' weaknesses to repurpose her toys -- a princess tiara, bubblegum-scented perfume, a doll-house's roof, and more -- as field-expedient monster-slaying weapons, to do nightly battle with the monsters who come into her room, to the great consternation of her parents, who only want to get a good night's sleep.This book has been in the works for a long time, and I'm so glad to see it finally heading to the finish line! Matt's illustrations are perfect -- a kid-friendly, 21st century update on my favorite monster drawings, from Universal's classic monsters to Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion spook designs. Once her parents are off to bed, Poesy excitedly awaits the monsters that creep into her room. With the knowledge she’s gained from her trusty Monster Book and a few of her favorite toys, Poesy easily fends off a werewolf, a vampire, and much more.But not even Poesy's bubblegum perfume can defeat her sleep-deprived parents!Poesy can fend off werewolves, vampires, and everything else that goes bump in the night. But there's a foe much scarier: her sleep-deprived parents! Gaze upon the cover of Cory @doctorow & @mcrockefeller's adorable creepfest, #PoesyTheMonsterSlayer #FirstSecondHasYouCovered pic.twitter.com/MStrWPf5ye— First Second @ NYCC #2136 (@01FirstSecond) October 7, 2019 Read the rest

The parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are taking a calculated risk; they're weighting whatever doubts they have about the efficacy of vacItcines against their doubts about vaccine safety and their doubts about the seriousness of infectious diseases, basically betting that either vaccines don't work and/or vaccines aren't safe and/or the diseases just aren't that big a deal.A key part of this calculus is a kind of folk understanding of "herd immunity," the process by which immunity among a critical mass of members of a population bestows a kind of immunity on the whole group because the population-scale immunity levels make it much harder for the disease to spread.In an outstanding video, the physicist Robert Rohde models the incredible power of herd immunity, as well as its dreadful fragility.It's a short, sharp lesson in the game-theoretical limits of counting on other peoples' kids to keep your kid safe -- and on the risk that your choice about your kid's vaccination imposes on everyone else.(via JWZ) Read the rest

Deepfake videos and audios are being used to make porn and humorous videos, but they can also be used to fabricate evidence and create propaganda. In this Wired video, researcher Sam Gregory at the human rights nonprofit Witness, discusses the future of deepfakes and how we might be able to deal with them.<em>Image: Wired/YouTube</em> Read the rest

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019 I am unsure which Marvel Universe we are living in. Read the rest

In Hong Kong, a boycott has begun of skateboard lifestyle brand Vans after the company pulled the above design from their annual Vans Custom Culture competition. In the contest, the public is invited to submit their designs in competition for a cash prize and having their shoe design manufactured. This particular design is themed around the current anti-government protests in Hong Kong and it was apparently doing quite well in the competition. From CNN:The design, attributed to a Canada-based user named Naomiso, features a red bauhinia, the flower on Hong Kong's flag, and one of the yellow umbrellas synonymous with the city's 2014 pro-democracy protests. Illustrations on the sneaker's side depict a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks, goggles and hard hats.On Saturday, with over a week of voting still to go, the submission was removed from the competition website. In a statement posted on Facebook in Chinese and English, the brand said that "a small number of artistic submissions have been removed ... to uphold the purpose of Custom Culture.""As a brand that is open to everyone, we have never taken a political position and therefore review designs to ensure they are in line with our company's long-held values of respect and tolerance, as well as with our clearly communicated guidelines for this competition," the statement said, without referring specifically to the protest-themed design.The statement drew condemnation on social media from Hong Kong protest supporters, where a number of posts were accompanied by the hashtag #boycottVans. Read the rest

Iranian cosmetic surgery enthusiast Sahar Tabar, 22, has reportedly been arrested for blasphemy. Tabar is known for her creepy selfies in which she augments her surgically-edited face with makeup and digital effects. From BBC News:Judicial authorities arrested Tabar after members of the public reportedly made complaints about her, Tasnim reported.She is accused of blasphemy, instigating violence, illegally acquiring property, insulting the country's dress code and encouraging young people to commit corruption. Read the rest

After killing a man in a road accident, Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat, was interviewed by police and promised not to leave the country while the incident was investigated. She quickly fled to the U.S., and now Britain is asking its ally to waive diplomatic immunity and send her back. Anne Sacoolas is wanted by police over the death of motorcyclist Harry Dunn, 19, in Northamptonshire on 27 August.The US State Department said diplomatic immunity was "rarely waived".Boris Johnson said the UK would speak to the US ambassador and "if we can't resolve it then... I will be raising it myself with the White House".A nice amuse-bouche for Boris Johnson's forthcoming feast of humiliations at the hands of Donald Trump, should he last long enough in office to eat the main course.Danny Glover was not available for comment as of press time. Read the rest

This soft, inchworm robot changes shape in response to tiny electrical or temperature changes. The power-efficient robot is made from a specialized "programmable" polymer technology that, according to the University of Toronto researchers, could someday lead to lightweight and safer robots but also enable other kinds of smart materials. From EurekAlert!:"In situations where humans could be in danger -- a gas leak or a fire -- we could outfit a crawling robot with a sensor to measure the harmful environment," explains Naguib. "In aerospace, we could see smart materials being the key to next-generation aircrafts with wings that morph."Though he points out it will be some time before the world sees morphed-wing aircrafts, the most immediate impact will be seen in wearable technology."We're working to apply this material to garments. These garments would compress or release based on body temperature, which could be therapeutic to athletes," says Naguib. The team is also studying whether smart garments could be beneficial for spinal cord injuries."In this case, we've trained it to move like a worm," he says. "But our innovative approach means we could train robots to mimic many movements -- like the wings of a butterfly." Read the rest

Positive stories about Latin American immigrants and the United States are difficult to come by right now. But at least Pedro X. Molina and his family have found a happy ending.Molina is an award-winning political cartoonist, whose scathing satire has been syndicated all across the world. Originally from Nicaragua, Molina was on staff at the Confidencial when their offices were raided and ransacked by police in December 2018. Like most dictatorial leaders, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was none-too-pleased with the Confidencial for doing such terrible things as, well, reporting the truth about his brutal and inhumane actions—you know, like ordering a violent police raid on journalists who dared to criticize him.The Confidencial staff immediately scattered and went into hiding, continuing to publish news remotely despite the risk. Molina and his family were able to make it all the way to the United States with the help of Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA), a non-profit group that advocates for freedom of expression as part of the International City of Refuge Network (full disclosure: I'm on the board of ICOA). "Thanks to them, I’m safe, my family is safe, and despite everything that we have gone through, I haven’t missed a single day of posting my daily cartoon denouncing what is happening in my country," Molina said tearfully at a community welcoming event in Ithaca, NY this past weekend.Although the Molinas landed in New York state on tourist visas the day after Christmas, it still took a while to settle their official immigration statuses. Read the rest

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen analyzed 3.5 million English language books published between 1900 to 2008 to identify the adjectives most frequently applied to men and women. Unsurprisingly, women were described by their bodies and appearance and men were described by their thoughts and behavior. The World Economic Forum points out that computer algorithms that make important decisions about people's lives were trained using much of the same data.“We are clearly able to see that the words used for women refer much more to their appearances than the words used to describe men. Thus, we have been able to confirm a widespread perception, only now at a statistical level,” says computer scientist and assistant professor Isabelle Augenstein of the University of Copenhagen’s computer science department.The researchers extracted adjectives and verbs associated with gender-specific nouns (e.g. “daughter” and “stewardess”). For example, in combinations such as “sexy stewardess” or “girls gossiping.” They then analyzed whether the words had a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment, and then categorized the words into semantic categories such as “behavior,” “body,” “feeling,” and “mind.”The dataset is based on the Google Ngram Corpus.Their analysis demonstrates that negative verbs associated with body and appearance appear five times as often for female figures as male ones. The analysis also demonstrates that positive and neutral adjectives relating to the body and appearance occur approximately twice as often in descriptions of female figures, while male ones are most frequently described using adjectives that refer to their behavior and personal qualities. Read the rest

Nathan Davis writes, "When you shuffle a deck, it rearranges the order of the cards and I got wondering what that looked like. I took a deck of physical cards, wrote 1 through 52 on each one, shuffled them, then wrote down that sequence. I wrote up a visualization program to show how it changes and made a short video showing off the patterns." Read the rest

Immediately after a Federal judge dismissed President Trump's attempt to block a Grand Jury from reviewing his taxes, his lawyers appealed.CNN:A federal judge on Monday dismissed President Donald Trump's effort to prevent his tax returns from being turned over to a New York grand jury.The ruling raises the likelihood that Trump's tax returns will be provided in response to the subpoena, although any material obtained through a grand jury subpoena is covered by grand jury secrecy rules, meaning it would likely become public only if it were used as evidence at a trial.Dismissing Trump's "extraordinary" claim that any occupant of the White House enjoys "absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind," US District Court Judge Victor Marrero said in a 75-page opinion that such a position "would constitute an overreach of executive power."An attorney for Trump filed an emergency notice of appeal to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals minutes after the district court judge filed his decision, and the appeals court immediately ordered a temporary stay of the subpoena. Read the rest

The ultimate holiday decoration: the inflatable Fortnite Battle Bus!Turn any party into a solo, duos or squads lobby. Lucky Landing and Happy Hamlet are my favorite drops. This 17.5' tall and 18' long replica of the Battle Bus will make any Fortnite player feel right at home!Thank the bus driver, you animals!Fortnite Battle Bus Inflatable via Amazon Read the rest

Seems a pro-poker player, Mike Postle, has achieved impossible-seeming results. Other players have put hours upon hours upon hours into analyzing his baffling play. It is like watching someone play with perfect information, they claim!While nothing definitive has been found, Stones Gambling Hall, a live poker site where the questionable Postle has spent a lot of time live streaming, has stopped using RFID chipped playing cards and hired an investigator.Spying isn't just for governments!CNBC:It’s not just that Postle is winning, it’s how he’s winning, that is drawing suspicion. Ingram, Berkey and others have spent hours reviewing hands Postle played and found several times where Postle made a fold or a call that wouldn’t seem “right” but happened to work out in his favor.Berkey said Postle made plays no pro would ever make, and he did them often, and they worked. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Berkey said Postle played “as if he had perfect information.”Stones Gambling Hall said it has hired an independent investigator to look into the accusations.In a statement Stones Gambling Hall said: “We temporarily halted all broadcasts from Stones. We have also, as a result, halted the use of RFID playing cards.” Read the rest

All Medina Hall wanted was to be told if the brownie had nuts in it. But staff at a Burger King in Folkestone, England, refused to read the ingredients list to her off the menu — she is blind — claiming that there were rules that forbade them from doing so. Burger King apologized to Hall.A Burger King spokesman said: "We would firstly like to apologise to Medina, her experience this week is not reflective of the high standards we would expect within any of our restaurants."Everyone should have an enjoyable experience when they visit us and we are looking into this matter further."He added: "I can also confirm that there is no such policy to refrain from reading allergen information to visually-impaired customers." Read the rest

As The Hood Internet, Chicago producers Aaron Brink (ABX) and Steve Reidell (STV SLV) have been cranking out compelling mash-ups since 2007. The clip above cuts up and recombines 50 songs from 1979. They intend to release several more single year mash-ups this month. This one features:ABBA, AC/DC, Anita Ward, Billy Joel, Blondie, Boomtown Rats, The Buggles, The Cars, Charlie Daniels Band, Cheap Trick, Chic, The Clash, The Cure, Donna Summer, Doobie Brothers, Earth Wind & Fire, Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac, The Flying Lizards, Gang of Four, The Gap Band, Gary Numan, Joy Division, Kiss, The Knack, Kool & The Gang, Lipps Inc, M, Michael Jackson, Pat Benatar, Pink Floyd, The Police, The Pretenders, Prince, Queen, Rainbow, Rupert Holmes, Sister Sledge, The Specials, Squeeze, The Sugarhill Gang, Supertramp, Talking Heads, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Van Halen, The Whispers, Wire Read the rest

I'm 100% in favor of pro-competitive regulation of Big Tech, and that is because I'm 100% in favor of pro-competitive regulation of all our hyper-concentrated, monopolistic industries.I say this even though some of the campaign to subject Big Tech to anti-monopolistic regulation is being driven by America's rotten, spying, lying, hyper-competitive phone and cable companies, and I want to break those scumbags up, too.And though I'm no fan of Big Tech's bigness, not everything every Big Tech company does is in service to monopoly. Sometimes, it's in their interests -- or in their executives' or employees' moral sensibilities -- to stand by their users and do the right thing: Apple standing up to the FBI, say; or Facebook adding more end-to-end encryption to its products. When those companies stand up for their users, we need to stand up for them.The latest company to do the right thing is Google, who have backed a plan to move the web to DNS-over-HTTPS, which is to say, the unregarded, absolutely essential, creaking Domain Name Service infrastructure will get a much needed, long overdue cryptographic makeover that will make it much harder for companies and governments and hackers to spy on you, to inject traffic into your browser, and to otherwise shenaniganize your networks connections.Enter America's ISPs.Ever since Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai lifted the ban on your ISPs spying on your network activity, America's cable and phone companies have been busily creating new internal products based on selling your most private, technologically mediated activities to all comers. Read the rest

In this video, bodycam footage shows a young man in jeans and a vaguely authoritarian shirt leaning into a driver's window. The bodycam wearer quietly approaches on foot, as if acting as backup on a stop in progress. But it soon becomes clear the two "officers" don't know each other and, well, perhaps you can guess the rest.There's a fine comic moment not far in:"What's your name?""Brenden Wysynski.""How do you spell that?""B. R. E. N. D. E. N."Fire and Police Videos obtained lapel footage of an Albuquerque Police Department investigation and arrest of 18-year-old Brenden Wysynski for posing as a Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office deputy.Wysynski unlawfully pulled over a citizen for speeding and a passing Albuquerque Police Officer noticed something was off about the traffic stop.He had pulled over a citizen of Albuquerque in his personal vehicle that was outfitted with lights, sirens, and radio bought off the internet. APD and BCSO Officers determined he did not work for any police department and was placed under arrest.Wysynski is being charged with impersonating a peace officer. His trial is later this month.If you are not sure the person pulling you over is a law enforcement officer, call 911 or pull into a very public parking area and ask to speak to a supervisor.Some people who pretend to be cops in this manner are rapists or robbers, but there's a pattern of narcissistic people doing it for kicks. One man took it to Philip K. Read the rest

Meet Maria Elena Gimeno, facing felony charges after vandalizing a parked Tesla. Teslas have cameras on the wing mirrors (two of nine!) and Gimeno was filmed by them. She turned herself in after the footage went viral.The crime took place in the parking lot of Legacy High School on Saturday morning while Alan Tweedie was watching his daughter’s nearby soccer game. When Tweedie found his Tesla was damaged, he told CBS4 he’d try out a new feature on the vehicle. He looked back through the video captured by the car’s nine motion-activated cameras and eventually spotted a woman using a key to scratch the side of his car.No word on why she did it. The obvious and fun assumption is "inchoate hatred for electronic vehicles", but it was at a school ball game, so acts of inane violence and retribution are to be expected. Read the rest

Trumpetcake spotted a remarkable item on Amazon being sold as "The Goonies Sloth Mask", perfect for Halloween. The sole customer review awards it 5 stars, but people on Twitter seem unimpressed with its versimilitude. P.S. You can buy Babe Ruth bars on Amazon by the crate. Read the rest

In a late-night press release, the White House announced that Turkey "will soon be moving forward" with an invasion of northern Syria—areas currently occupied by Kurds.Mr. Trump’s decision goes against the recommendations of top officials in the Pentagon and the State Department who have sought to keep a small troop presence in northeast Syria to continue operations against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and to act as a critical counterweight to Iran and Russia. Administration officials said that Mr. Trump spoke directly with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on the issue on Sunday. And the officials indicated that the 100 to 150 United States military personnel deployed to that area would be pulled back in advance of any Turkish operation but that they would not be completely withdrawn from Syria.The Kurds were key allies in the war on ISIS, and Trump is fully aware that withdrawing U.S. support for them could mean ethnic cleansing by the Turks, because he's boasted of stopping it in the past by not withdrawing.On Monday a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - who occupy former IS territory in north-eastern Syria - strongly condemned the US move."There were assurances from the United States of America that it would not allow any Turkish military operations against the region," Kino Gabriel told Arabic TV station al-Hadath.He added: "The (US) statement was a surprise and we can say that it is a stab in the back for the SDF."Erdogan told Trump to do it, so he did it. Read the rest

At a zoo in Paris, ecologist Meredith Root-Bernstein noticed a Visayan warty pig pick up a piece of bark in its mouth and then use it to move soil. Over the following years, she and colleagues observed the adults pigs and offspring in the enclosure using bark to build their "nests":Although the behavior occurred in captivity, there is at least some evidence pigs have used tools in the wild:It’s very possible that wild Visayans use tools, too, she adds. Fernando “Dino” Gutierrez, president of the Philippine conservation nonprofit Talarak Foundation, Inc., which works to protect warty pigs, agrees.A few years ago, Gutierrez witnessed a group of wild Visayans pushing rocks toward an electric fence to test it. “As soon as they push and the rocks make contact, they would wait for the clicking sound or absence thereof,” he said by email. Read the rest

A lot of companies struggle with bias in the workplace, but for many big tech companies, the problem is a bit more extreme. Why, because it's not just the human beings that are racist, a lot of their algorithms are biased too. This is the problem that Google reportedly was trying to solve when they got themselves into their latest privacy scandal, tricking black and brown “volunteers” to submit to 3D face scans.According to the New York Daily News, Google contractors told these biometric test subjects that they were just going to play a “selfie game”, and they'd even get paid for it. Paid all of five bucks so that Google could use their identity to build more accurate facial recognition, holding onto their facial model forever. And it gets even worse, not only were contractors reportedly lying, but they also targeted the homeless and others in dire financial straits, hoping they were less likely to complain publicly.The whole reason Google did this to begin with is because facial recognition is more than a little bit biased. We think of software as objective, but the truth is that artificial intelligence tools like facial recognition depend on thousands of subjective choices made by human beings who build them. Those human choices can automate discrimination, as we see facial recognition products on the market that are dozens or even hundreds of times less accurate for women, trans, people of color, children, and other groups. In short, these tools often only work well for middle-aged white guys. Read the rest

This morning, we were out on our lawn, putting up our Halloween decorations, when this fellow jogged past and said something to me. I had my headphones in and so I just waved and smiled, but then he doubled back and so I took my headphones out and said, "Hi," whereupon he began to swear and shout: "How fucking dare you have a Warren sign on your lawn?"He continued in this vein for some time, with threats, shouts that "socialism" isn't welcome in Burbank, etc. I got this picture of him in which he may or may not be making a cute little white-power symbol (the jury's out on that one). To be honest, it's a little disturbing to be puttering around in your own front yard on a Sunday and have an unhinged neighbor stop by to scream obscenities and threats at you. I've got it documented and I've talked to the police and it's not going to be hard for a process server to find him if I need to get a restraining order, should he return or escalate things.However, the more I think about this, the better I feel about it. Though I actually lean more towards Bernie Sanders (I'm a donor to both campaigns), I'd be perfectly happy to fly to DC to cheer President Warren's inauguration.And in the meantime, this woman has incoherent, unhinged, mediocre men like this guy so pants-wettingly scared that just seeing a Warren sign on someone's lawn is enough to send them into incoherent, uncontrollable, shaking rages. Read the rest

This set of useful silicone kitchen tools includes my new favorite for mixing, spreading and stirring.I needed something that could stir sourdough starter inside a milk bottle. I wanted to be able to scrape the sides of said bottle clean as I did it. The 'scoop and spread' in this great set of Tovolo kitchen tools does the trick amazingly well.The 'scoop and spread' is the strange double-headed device pictured second from the left. Much like Darth Maul's lightsaber, this thing kicks ass.Strong enough to cut through sticky clumps of dough as I make batches of pretzels or a loaf of bread, the 'scoop and spread' also replaces my danish dough whisk. The tool is also wonderful at getting peanut butter out of a jar, or mixing up separated peanut butter in a jiffy.I also like the rest of the set, but holy cow! The 'scoop and spread' is my new hero. Read the rest

He calls his cat Number One.I also dig Riker's 'Stringfellow Hawk' dock on the lake. Read the rest

It gets harder and harder to tell parody from real life. Read the rest

Mini Cocottes of BB-8, C-3PO, and R2-D2 ($30 each)Just when you thought they had made all the Star Wars items we'd ever need in a lifetime, comes the Star Wars x Le Creuset Collection. Yep, the high-end cast-iron brand will soon release a line of Star Wars cookware, from a Han Solo frozen-in-carbonite roaster ($450)... To an extremely limited-edition, hand-painted Tatooine Round Dutch Oven ($900 and sold separately from the rest of the line)...Then there are these Death Star and Millennium Falcon trivets for $20 each...And this $395 Darth Vader dutch oven...But, perhaps the most adorable of the collection is a pie bird fashioned after The Last Jedi's Porg ($25). The pieces (except that Tatooine dutch oven) will be available November 1 online, at Le Creuset boutique and outlet stores, and at William-Sonoma stores. images via Le Creuset(Pee-wee Herman) Read the rest

In 2017, Brazil's "anti-corruption task force" secured a conviction against the incredibly popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had enacted a series of reforms that addressed the country's longstanding issues of corruption, racial discrimination and inequality.The task force, and its "Operation Car Wash," convicted many prominent Brazilians, including some of the nation's untouchable oligarchs, as well as Lula's anointed protege Dilma Rouseff and her pro-austerity, pro-billionaire successor, Michael Temer.But two years later -- after the election of the far-right, murderous, ecocidal, racist, homophobic, misogynist, ultraviolent authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro -- the prosecutors behind Operation Car Wash were revealed by The Intercept to have secretly conspired with Sergio Moro, the world-famous judge who presided over the Lula case, to secure the conviction. Moro was subsequently elevated to a newly created position in Bolsonaro's regime, with oversight of both the police and the judiciary, but the revelations led to a collapse in public confidence in Moro from all quarters, including the more honorable elements in the country's pro-business lobby, who looked into their hearts and found that the rule of law was more important to them than sweetheart tax deals and the erosion of labor and environmental protections.Since then, the judiciary, the Brazilian establishment, and Brazilians themselves have made life increasingly difficult for Bolsonaro, Moro, and those who want to see Lula -- and his climate-friendly, racially inclusive, anti-oligarchic policies -- kept out of Brazilian politics.Two weeks ago, Brazil's Supreme Court nullified one of Moro's most celebrated "anti-corruption" convictions, citing the kind of corrupt conduct revealed in The Intercept's reporting. Read the rest