Boing Boing

In 1978, two luminaries of South Korean cinema were abducted by Kim Jong-Il and forced to make films in North Korea in an outlandish plan to improve his country's fortunes. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Choi Eun-Hee and Shin Sang-Ok and their dramatic efforts to escape their captors.We'll also examine Napoleon's wallpaper and puzzle over an abandoned construction.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Big things are happening in tech with AI and deep learning. That's not exactly a news flash when you look at how often companies use algorithms to manage everything from online advertising to the songs, videos, posts, and other digital content platforms recommend for their users.Getting into the field requires a pretty broad range of knowledge, and that's exactly what the Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Certification Bundle is designed for.What you've got here is eight courses, most of them crafted and taught by Minerva Singh - one of the top web instructors on AI. The package includes a course that introduces you to the terminology and concepts behind machine learning before taking a deep dive into one of the primary programming languages that drive it: Python.You'll learn to classify, sort, and visualize data with Python and R, then wrangle that information to form the data structures you'll need to initiate deep learning. Along the way, the bundle also covers essential software like Tensorflow and Keras - basically, everything you'll need to set up your own neural network, no matter how big the database.You can get access to all 8 courses now for just $29. Read the rest

Henderson, Kentucky is a town of about 30,000 people in the western part of the state. It's not far from Evansville, Indiana, and it's one of the top three corn and soybean producers in the state.It's also home to a City Commissioner named Patti Bugg who, according to the local 14 News, is totally panicking over the less-than-2-percent Latine population sharing their annual Day of the Dead festivities with the rest of the townsfolk. For the first time ever, the town's Central Park will transform into a full public celebration of ancestral memories—ya know, like ya do on Dia de los Muertos. Mexican and Latinx cultures are hardly alone in observing some sort of not-strictly-Christian communing with the spirit world as a mid-autumn tradition. But Bugg is concerned that the event might take a more…insidious turn (emphasis added):“I’d say 99 percent of the day of the dead is probably innocent. I think that’s fine," says Commissioner Bugg. "I think if you want to honor your loved ones. I think the only challenge is if they actually try to summons somebody else, you know, a loved one from the grave, then I think they’re asking for some serious stuff. As a Christian, I don’t think they can do that.”On one hand, she has a point. I mean, if we're being technical, anyone actually attempting to resurrect the dead through supernatural (or scientific!) means is indeed "asking for some serious stuff." On the other hand, Patti Bugg (what a name) is clearly a xenophobic moron if she thinks that even one percent of the town's growing Latine population (read: about 6 people) is planning to raise an army of zombies to gentrify those fine Kentucky suburbs—and even if they did, it shouldn't fucking matter. Read the rest

Polygon interviewed Watchmen costume designer Meghan Kasperlik, who described the movie magic used to bring Looking Glass to life:“We had five different masks,” the designer says, explaining that exactly what Nelson was wearing would change depending on the demands of the scene. Some of the masks were for motion tracking, featuring a special print that would aid with motion capture and tracking, keeping track of the orientation of Nelson’s face at all times. Others were purely green screen or spandex, while yet another — the only mask that wouldn’t require the reflectiveness to be added via CG later — was made of lamé, a type of fabric that has metallic fiber woven throughout it, meaning only one of the actual masks used during shooting was that distinctive silver.Den of Geek talked to Tim Blake Nelson about wearing the mask:“The mask is fine to wear. I really like it,” he says. “Actually it furnishes a wonderful challenge that is specific to itself. In drama school we did mask class and the reason they taught that was to take away the visage, which is an essential form of expression that we have, and force the actor to use only body and voice. I looked at this as a really fun exercise over an entire season of television in which I would get to explore that. And moreover going in the opposite direction with this character. Rather than amplifying body and voice to use the mask to pull back even more. Read the rest

Since 2013, Richard Littler has been publishing Scarfolk, a darkly comic series of brilliantly photoshopped artifacts from a dark and brutal English town trapped in a loop between 1969 and 1979; Littler published his first Scarfolk book in 2014, a pretty straight-ahead best-of anthology that was a sheer delight, and since then, he's taken a brilliant detour into animation, while still keeping up on Scarfolk, which has now spawned its second -- and even better -- book: The Scarfolk Annual.

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH President Trump, for whom all crime is legal, takes his lawless Purge rampage to Chagrin Falls, USA.

Like a lot of people, I belong to a number of neighborhood-centric Facebook groups. While the general Jamaica Plain group is broadly fine, there's also a private, invite-only group for complaining about the general day-to-day absurdity of living in newly desirable neighborhood of any increasingly-expensive city.And that's where I discovered this glorious work of art (which, as far as I can tell after a Tin Eye search, originated from the fittingly-named Humans of Late Capitalism Facebook page):According to these standards, my beloved home in JP is actually in pretty good shape. Though we are the home of the original Sam Adams Brewery, we only have one other brewpub (so far). We're also (so far) safe from the axe-throwing bar trend, and at least Boston Logan is a pretty good airport. In lieu of cows, we have an albino squirrel and those god damn Brookline turkeys. But otherwise…well, shit. I'm pretty sure I am "Guy with stories about band/artist who made it."Image via Matt Brown/Flickr Read the rest

The Cybersecurity Visuals Challenge was conceived as a way to produce "imagery that better represents the cybersecurity space in an accessible and compelling manner." Something more meaningful than "pictures of locks, white men in hoodies, or green 1s and 0s."25 submissions were shortlisted, including this one by Bronney Hui, intended to highlight the absurdity of over-sharing of personal data:Those shortlisted selections were further refined, until the five winners were announced. Winners include "So Long And Thanks For All The Phishing" by Abraham Pena:In style, I was inspired by the drawing style of the New Yorker covers, as this is a major publication aimed at a public looking for information and quality reports. Given the wide demographic range, they should be friendly to an audience of both sexes, of a wide age range and not necessarily illustrated in deep concepts of technology or engineering. Therefore the use of bright colors, warm, in a more casual tone and even slightly irreverent.Ivana Troselj based her submission on The Cuckoo's Egg:I don’t think we yet understand how to best recognise this threat; it has crept into the most trustworthy aspects of our everyday business. The bird is mistakenly rearing a grenade in a nest of its own eggs. This represents the act of misplaced trust. Information Warfare elements (my PhD topic of research) are often masked as trustworthy elements of our online information space, which we willingly incorporate into our networks, or accept in good faith as part of our decision making processes. Read the rest

The world has spiraled out of control. Read the rest

Pastor Rick Wiles has a warning for Democrats: if Trump is removed from office, "veterans, cowboys, mountain men, guys that know how to fight" will "hunt down" those responsible. Pastor Wiles chokes up and gets a faraway look in his eye when he says "veterans, cowboys, mountain men," almost as if these macho characters were members of a Village People tribute band and he was the president of its fan club.Wikipedia has a grab bag of fun facts about Pastor Wiles:Wiles has...asserted that the effects of Hurricane Harvey upon the city of Houston, Texas resulted from Houston's "LGBT devotion"described Judaism and Islam as "the Antichrist"called Central American immigrants a "brown invasion" being used by God to punish American whites because of abortionclaimed that the Las Vegas massacre was conducted by government death squadsasserted that Antonin Scalia was murderedpredicted an imminent coup that would result in the nationally televised decapitation of the Trump family on the White House lawn. Read the rest

Paralympian skier, comedian, and motivational speaker Josh Sundquist and his collaborators create fantastic costumes based around the fact that Sundquist has just one leg. This year, he's Pixar mascot Luxo Jr. who first appeared in the 1986 short film of the same name. A few years ago, Sundquist was a foosball player!(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

Seven Stories press just released this gorgeous boxed set of Octavia E. Butler's Parable novels. It's available today and would make a great gift for any reader.This boxed set pairs the bestselling Nebula-prize nominee, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which together tell the near-future odyssey of Lauren Olamina, a "hyper-empathic" young woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. In Sower, set in California in 2024, small walled communities protect from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of "Paints," people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. It is into this landscape that Lauren begins her journey, traveling on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown. The book has an introduction by feminist, journalist, activist, and author Gloria Steinem.Parable of the Talents celebrates the classic Butlerian themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, slavery and freedom, separation and community, to astonishing effect, in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032. It is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina's daughter –– from whom she has been separated for most of the girl's life –– with selections from Lauren's journal. Against a background of a war-torn continent, and with a far-right religious crusader in the office of the U.S. presidency, this is a book about a society whose very fabric has been torn asunder, and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet. Read the rest

Here is a collection of horrifying games to keep you entertained this Fall.Call of Cthulhu Starter SetChaosium, Inc., $21.40When I got the latest Call of Cthulhu Starter Set from Chaosium, I got all verklempt. After D&D, Call of Cthulhu was the next RPG I moved on to via the original Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. I loved that product, so I had great rushes of nostalgia unboxing this updated version. Mike Mason and Chaosium have done an excellent job creating a gateway, a hell-portal if you will, into the world of Cthulhu-based RPGing at a super affordable price. For under 22 bones, you get three saddle-stitched books, one that's an intro to the world of Cthulhu and includes a solo adventure to teach you the game, a basic rulebook, and a book with three starter adventures. You also get 5 ready-to-play investigators, blank character sheets, player hand-outs, and 6 RPG dice. It feels a little less substantial than the original (which included a thick, 100-page rulebook), but overall, it offers a satisfying and immersive introduction to Cthulhu gaming on the cheap.HorrifiedRavensburger, $35, 1-5 players, Ages 10+As much as I enjoy the Lovecraft mythos and some of the zombie genre, I have to admit to being both bored and overwhelmed with how dominant these themes have become in the gaming hobby. So, I was thrilled to see Horrified, a cooperative horror strategy game featuring the Universal Studios monsters: Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Frankenstein monster, bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Invisible Man. Read the rest

Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, the music collective known for vintage send-ups of popular songs, has done this wonderful cover of the Pinky and the Brain theme song. It had already won me over before the surprise guests showed up.Image: YouTube Read the rest

I almost always wear Native Jefferson shoes, which don't require socks. On those rare occasions when socks are called for, I wear these no-show socks. They sit well below the top of most shoes, and they have some little silicone rubber stripes above the heel that keep them from slipping. Read the rest

This fascinating video from the American Chemical Society answers that question but unfortunately provides no answers about why so many clouds look like bunnies. Read the rest

If you leave a senior US government position, Elizabeth Warren wants you to wait at least four years before taking a job at a "market dominant" company -- any company with a $150b (or larger) market cap, or that controls "the product or labor supply in their industry."Violating companies will be fined 1% of net worldwide annual profits for a first offense, 2% for a second offense, at at least 5% for subsequent violations.The ban also extends to any DOD contractor taking in $5m/year or more from the Pentagon. I am a donor to both Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' campaigns.It’s not just Facebook. Today, it is standard practice in Republican and Democratic administrations for giant mega businesses like Pfizer, Google, BP, Citibank, AT&T, Boeing, and Comcast to vacuum up anyone and everyone who leaves one of their government regulators in an obvious effort to leverage their new hire’s political connections and use the allure of potential future job offers to extract favorable treatment. Take just a few recent examples of the nation’s largest companies giving cushy jobs to the very people who went easy on them while serving in government or helped them escape harsh penalties. All of this hiring is perfectly legal right now — but it shouldn’t be.In 2018, Wells Fargo scooped up HUD’s Acting General Counsel Beth Zorc to be its Head of Public Policy, as the bank scrambled to recover from a parade of scandals. By the end of the year, it had negotiated a fine that represents 2% of its annual profits to resolve dozens of investigations into its employees opening bank accounts in customers’ names without their permission. Read the rest

In this video an angry driver cuts off another car. He gets out of his car with a whip in hand. (Who keeps a whip in their car?) He walks over to the driver side of the other car, which is not in the camera's field of vision, so we are unable to see what happens. But a few seconds later the whip-bearing gentleman sheepishly walks back to his car with his face covered in an orange substance.Applying Occam's Razor to the incident, it's clear that the other driver offered the road rager a bag of Cheetos, which he devoured on the spot. The snack pacified him, and he returned to his vehicle calmed and sated. [via r/dashcamgifs] Read the rest

[Last spring, I ran into Nikola Richter at the Republica Festival in Berlin; she told me about Sina Kamala Kaufmann, a celebrated German climate activist and sf writer whose debut short story collection, Bright Matter, had been published by Richter's independent publisher Mikrotext to great critical and public success. I offered to run one of Kaufmann's stories here in English as a way of exposing her work to a new audience. -Cory]They laughed and it really pissed me off."Every cell, please, every microbium." The female voice murmured softly from the tree house.The three of us lay in the soft mud. The mud pressed heavily against my body. Could my skin still breathe like this? The fine earth around me was tender and firm. I lay on my back for a long while and submerged my head in the mud. It contracted around my body, covered me densely, it gurgled somewhat hollowly; and for a short while it hushed the cackling of the two women, who were bathing about four, five metres away from me in this artificially created mud lake in the deep Polish jungle. It was unlikely that they had come here voluntarily. I emerged from the mud again and felt it on my face, heavy between my eyelashes.Both the intestinal rehabilitation and the microbial communication training took place in the same location within the dense forest. Some people could not leave here for a long time. The mud was thick, the sun squinted through the dark green leaves, the lake lay surrounded by the trees, some of them several hundred years old, reaching far into the sky above us. Read the rest

Already removed from major browsers, Adobe Flash now suffers the second death of being forgotten. Google will soon deindex Flash from its search results.Goodbye, Flash, writes Google engineering manager Dong-Hwi Lee.I still remember my son playing endless number of Flash games until my wife yelled at him. It's time to go to bed, son. Hey Flash, it's your turn to go to bed.Google Search will stop supporting Flash later this year. In Web pages that contain Flash content, Google Search will ignore the Flash content. Google Search will stop indexing standalone SWF files. Most users and websites won't see any impact from this change. Read the rest

As Rob posted earlier, the infamous "can opener" bridge in Durham, NC is undergoing an upgrade to turn it from an 11-foot-8 bridge into a 12-foot-4 bridge. This means it will no longer rip the tops of trucks driven by people who didn't heed the warnings.The video above was posted yesterday on the 11foot8 YouTube channel. It shows an incident in September when a Ryder truck experienced the full wrath of the bellicose bridge. It's almost as if the bridge knows it is about to be defanged and wanted a last hurrah.Below, another video from September, when a rental truck unsuccessfully tries to "sneak up" on the bridge from a side street. Read the rest

Tiago Teixeira set Massive Attack's "Teardrop" against the award-winning short movie "Happy Valentine's Day", directed by the Neymarc Brothers. It matches so well in mood and tone; the originals follow below. Here's a "behind the scenes" on Happy Valentine's Day's entirely-digital setting: Read the rest

Bow down before the one you serve... breakfast to!There's never been a doubt that the folks at Archie McPhee have a weird sense of humor. In fact, we count on it. Case in point, their latest offering: the Pagan Breakfast God Mask ($17.95). Bacon, check. Eggs, check. Toast with butter, check. Weird as all get out, CHECK. Yours truly, this past summer when I was at the Archie McPhee HQ recording a podcast (and rocking the Pagan Breakfast God-dess Mask which I've had to keep hush-hush until now!). photos by Archie McPhee and David Wahl Read the rest

Need some last-minute advice to make a costume so good, no one will recognize you? Check out these 5 tips to remain incognito this #Halloween with the help of our spy dog, Calliope.https://t.co/JZNiqiU9kN#SpyKids pic.twitter.com/1F8Zc6ihzq— CIA (@CIA) October 28, 2019I don't think I ever related to the White Guy Blinking Meme as much as I did after this tweet crossed my timeline.I did in fact click through to their "CIA Kids Guide: 5 Ways To Stay Covert This Halloween" and I…I don't even know where to begin.I kind of love this as a piece of propaganda because the first tip and the last three are at least useful (if completely fucking obvious for anyone who's ever watched a spy movie). But then there's #2, "Think Simple," which … I know this is meant for the CIA's kids' outreach section, but come on. You're not even pretending that you're not indoctrinating kids to make it easier to surveil them!I guess it'd be too much to hope for that the CIA might offer helpful advice on VPNs and anti-surveillance attire—but even then, I probably wouldn't trust it.Image via Katerha/Flickr Read the rest

From Ross Wolinsky's "The Millennial Raven" in McSweeney's: Once upon a midnight dreary, Tinder swiping, buzzed and weary/I asked Siri about my sushi ordered one hour before/ While I chewed some pretzels, snacking, suddenly there came a tapping/As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my apartment door/“’Tis my roommate,” I muttered, “walking ‘cross the hardwood floor/Only this and nothing more.” (via Kottke) Read the rest

Google has a series of new "digital wellbeing" experiments designed to help people use their Android phones a little less, or at least a little more thoughtfully. Available experiments include:Paper PhoneA lot of people feel that they spend too much time on their phones and struggle to find a balance with technology.Paper Phone helps you have a little break away from your digital world by printing a personal booklet of the key information you’ll need that day.An app lets you choose what to include such as favourite contacts, maps and meetings and then prints them directly to a sheet of paper. Customisable “paper apps” like recipes, phrasebooks and notepads let you get things done or unwind in a more focussed way.Unlock Clock:Unlock Clock helps you consider your tech use, by counting and displaying the number of times you unlock your phone in a day. Simply download the wallpaper and get started.Desert Island:Desert Island helps you find focus, by challenging you to go a day with only your essential apps. Simply pick the apps that are most important to you, then give it a go for 24 hours.You can download the tools to create your own experiment here. Read the rest

Finally, someone's asking the important questions.As it’s Halloween, which baguette is the most scary? Give your reasoning pls pic.twitter.com/vQfuVx3HCW— Dave (@sheepfilms) October 24, 201961 percent of respondents picked the #3, the "baguette skeleton," with the Spider Bread (#4) coming in second at 29 percent.But clearly 90 percent of people are wrong, because nothing compares to the horror of my imagination as it speculates at what might lay beneath the ghostly sheet of Halloween Baguette #2. The possibilities in my mind are endless, and they are all fucking terrifying. Read the rest

Wireless charging is increasingly the way to go for busy professionals. It's quick, portable, and won't clutter up your desk or countertop with a maze of cables. Still, there are kinks in the Qi technology that drives these chargers.And apparently, some companies are working out those kinks faster than others. Meet the iPM Wireless Charging Pad.The fact that you can't charge multiple Qi-enabled devices at the same time has been a persistent issue for wireless chargers, even the ones that are big enough to hold several phones. It looks like iPM has solved that issue with a 2-in-1 charger that can juice up an Apple Watch plus an iPhone or Qi-enabled Android phone at the same time.It also provides valuable safeguards like surge protection and temp control, delivering power 20% faster than comparable chargers. Best of all, the iPM 2-in-1 is a full 70% off the list price right now.There's also a 3-in-1 charger from iPM that's perfect for multitaskers or small families. The hub is powered by the same technology, but expands the slim profile to accommodate two smartphones plus an Apple Watch. And yes, it can charge all three simultaneously. At $48.99, the iPM 3-in-1 Fast Wireless Charging Pad is more than 60% off retail. Read the rest

History has been kind to Fred Rogers' legacy; the beloved children's entertainer does not have the intergenerational staying power of Sesame Street (thanks in large part to Rogers' relentless focus on making programming aimed exclusively at small children, without any pretense to entertaining their grownups), but touchstones like his Congressional testimony on public TV funding, his remarks after 9/11 and his look for the helpers speech continue to bring a smile and a tear to all who see them, whether for the first time or the five hundredth; Mr Rogers was exactly what he appeared to be, incredibly, and the riddle of how someone could be so sincere and loving has sent rumormongers off to the land of conspiracy looking for an answer. But the real Mr Rogers story -- as chronicled in Gavin Edwards' new book, Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever -- is both more mundane and more amazing than any outlandish story.

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my short story "Affordances," which was commissioned for Slate/ASU's Future Tense Fiction. it's a tale exploring my theory of "the shitty technology adoption curve," in which terrible technological ideas are first imposed on poor and powerless people, and then refined and normalized until they are spread over all the rest of us. The story makes the point by exploring all the people in a facial recognition ecosystem, from low-waged climate refugees who are paid to monitor facial recognition errors in an overseas boiler room, to cops whose facial recognition systems and risk-assessment scoring institutionalize algorithmic racism, to activists whose videos of human rights abuses on the US border are disappeared by copyright enforcement bots deployed by shadowy astroturf organizations, to the executives at the companies who make the facial recognition tools whose decisions are constrained by automated high-speed trading bots.It also explores methods of technological resistance, solidarity, and activism, and how the flip-side of automated systems' inaccuracy is their fragility.The story is accompanied by a response essay by Nettrice Gaskins (previously), "an artist-educator who collaborates with AI," who discusses it in the context of the "afrocentric counter-surveillance aesthetic," which is my new all-time favorite phrase. There were different kinds of anxiety: the anxiety she’d felt when she was recording the people massing for their rush, clammy under the thermal blanket with its layer of retroreflective paint that would confound drones and cameras; she walked among the people, their faces shining, their few things on their backs, their children in their arms, the smell of too many bodies and too much fear. Read the rest

The Become a Professional Creative Writer Bundle is an invaluable stack of online courses that will ingrain the rules of writing into your process so you can stop doubting and start writing.Whether you're sitting down in front of your first blank page or a seasoned pro branching out into a new format, there's something here for you. The five courses include a beginner's tutorial designed to preemptively eliminate cliches and encourage concrete language.Other included classes focus on the process of creating believable, fleshed-out characters and other elements to write a readable novel. There are even two full courses on the art and business of screenwriting that take you through the whole process from the first draft to the final pitch.You can get all five courses now for a full 97% off the MSRP - a total of $21. Read the rest

This is a spherical painting of a street intersection somewhere in Japan. I don't know who the artist is, but the effect is amazing.Panoramic painting on a sphere from r/Damnthatsinteresting Read the rest

This jar scraper is molded from one piece of silicone rubber. It has a stainless steel skeleton for rigidity. The overall length is 13.5 inches, which means you can scoop out the last bit of peanut butter, jam, or fudge topping from tall jars. I also use it to stir food while it cooks (the silicone is resistant to temperatures up to 600 F). Read the rest

Exactly the marketing canned Sloppy Joe sauce merits. Read the rest

Joshua Browder created Donotpay as a teenager at Stanford: originally it was a chatbot that helped you beat traffic tickets, but it has since expanded (thanks to an infusion of venture capital) into a Swiss Army Knife of automated consumer advocacy that can do everything from sue Equifax on your behalf to help you access homeless services to getting you a rebate when your plane ticket's price goes down after you've purchased it.In an interview with the Will I Save? blog -- which documents experiences with Donotpay -- Browder articulates his vision for the service: a "consumers union" (no relation) that fights corrupt corporations and oppressive state action. Browder -- a multigenerational activist whose father was a principal advocate for the Magnitsky Act -- says he looks for problems that are experienced by at least 50,000,000 Americans at a time, and then prioritizes automating solutions to them."I think that the average person doesn't really have an advocate to fight for them. The short-term vision is just to build really useful products that help people fight back. The long-term vision is almost a consumer union where we can actually go to these companies and say, 'We have 5 million DoNotPay users and 5 million of your customers. If you don't start treating them better, we'll switch them to your competitor overnight.' With numbers there's lots of power and I think that could really help people fight and get leverage."Why is Browder so bent on helping people fight the establishment? Read the rest

As part of the renaissance in interest in the glorious science fiction novels of afrofuturist pioneer Octavia Butler (previously), Seven Stories press has just released a two-volume, slipcased set of Butler's fantastic post-apocalyptic adventure novels The Parable of the Sower (with an introduction by Gloria Steinem) and The Parable of the Talents (with an introduction by Toshi Reagon).The set is $35 (a remarkably low sum of money, considering the quality of the editions).The Parables novels were my introduction to Butler's work. I had associated her with "serious" political literature, and while her work is unashamedly, gloriously political, her gift is melding fast-paced adventure with her serious themes, making her a kind of woke Heinlein. The Parables box-set is just for starters: there's also a Folio Society edition of "Kindred" (also available in a recent, outstanding graphic novel edition) and a paperback edition of Parable of the Sower with an introduction by NK Jemisin.All of Butler's canon is brilliant, but the Parables novels are a particularly great way to fall in love with her work, and while they deal with very intense adult themes, they star an adolescent protagonist and make for great YA reading by even young teens.The perfect gift for fans of Octavia Butler, this boxed set pairs the bestselling Nebula-prize nominee, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which together tell the near-future odyssey of Lauren Olamina, a "hyper-empathic" young woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. Read the rest

Teen Vogue has emerged as one of the most progressive mass-media forums in an age of Trumpism and its official misogyny and racism -- it's a Conde Naste magazine aimed at teen girls with a labor reporter who regularly dissects capitalism's failings and writes explainers on the need for a general strike.Teen Vogue executive editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay explains her approach to Jacobin's David Palumbo-Liu in a fabulous interview in which she embraces her right-wing critics who call her magazine "The most insidious form of teen communist propaganda" and worries that Tucker Carlson is waaaaaay too interested in teen girls.I think one of the things I’m really proud of that we did last month was we did an entire package on fat bodies. I actually wrote a personal essay for that, about being a public person who’s fat, and my evolution of growing up in public — being this public person where people will comment on your body all the time. For a fashion magazine with Vogue in the title to explicitly do something that really criticizes the industry and elevates this unique point of view — we shot a size twenty-four model for one of the main features.I was very excited about everything we did for Covering Climate Now. We were part of that initiative. We put Greta on the cover, which I thought was fantastic. And we did that cover in literally fifteen minutes. She’s a very, very busy young woman. We got a very small amount of time with her. Read the rest

A 13th century painting that had been hanging on a kitchen wall in French woman's home sold for $26.8 in auction this weekend. The painting, titled “Christ Mocked,” is by Florentine artist Cimabue (Giotto's teacher), and was made around 1280.From Smithsonian Mag:[Auctioneer Philomène] Wolf spotted the painting, titled “Christ Mocked,” on display between the woman’s open-plan kitchen and living room. While she immediately suspected it was a work of Italian primitivism, she “didn’t imagine it was a Cimabue.”Wolf turned to Eric Turquin, a Paris-based art historian who had previously identified a painting unearthed in a French attic as a long-lost Caravaggio. According to Benjamin Dodman of France 24, Turquin and his colleagues concluded with “certitude” that the new find was a genuine Cimabue. Read the rest

Matteo writes, "Kai Lan Egg is an anonymous artist from Hong Kong. He started drawing illustrations of the Hong Kong protest primarily using a Japanese anime style to encourage the people around him to stand against the progressive erosion of the Hong Kong independence."July 1 was a turning point.The demonstrators attacked the Legislative Council. They destroyed many objects that symbolize the Hong Kong government.However, they did not steal and destroy cultural relics, libraries, etc., and read the texts in the conference hall, which was recognized by most citizens. Besides, there have been few floating bodies in Hong Kong waters.However, since the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, there have been many floating bodies in the sea.The police all think that the cause of death is not suspicious.We are very skeptical that these things are done by the police.Hong Kong Protests Art: Interview with Kai Lan Egg [China Underground] Read the rest

One Page Dungeon is a website that procedurally generates a new role-playing dungeon every time you press Enter (or refresh the page).[via Clive Thompson] Read the rest

Alex DeLarge was a brutal sociopath, but you can't fault the droog leader for his exquisite fashion sensibility. Cricket codpieces, suspenders, and bowler hats never go out of style. But slapping a still image from A Clockwork Orange on a jacket, like the ones recently unveiled by clothes designer Svmoscow, would have been tired even back in 1971.Imagine the ultra-violence Alex would mete out to any rich kid of Instagram or coked-up progeny of the Russian oligarchy should one of them enter the Korova Milk Bar wearing one of these execrable garments.[via Dangerous Minds] Read the rest

The NRA used advertising agency Ackerman McQueen to transform itself from a pro-gun group into a right-wing media toilet, then fired the firm when it woke up to the consequences of spokespeople issuing shameless calls for violence against political enemies and the media in its name. Now a lawsuit is exposing all the dirty laundry: the NRA claims its executives found Dana Loesch's NRA TV antics "distasteful and racist", that they were lied to by Ackerman McQueen about traffic, and eventually realized they were being looted for "tens of millions of dollars."... NRA officials believed the short-lived TV outlet—which featured shows from right-wing stars like Dana Loesch and Dan Bongino—“strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist.” As an example of a “damaging” segment, the NRA filing alludes to an instance on Loesch’s show Relentless, in which an on-air graph featured a picture of kid’s cartoon character Thomas the Tank Engine wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. “Attempts by the NRA to ‘rein in’ AMc and its messaging were met with responses from AMc that ranged from evasive to hostile,” the gun lobby further alleges. Read the rest

A bus in Pittsburgh fell backwards into a sinkhole that suddenly opened up on a street in Pittsburgh on Monday morning. Fortunately the bus was bearing just one passenger at the time and neither the passenger nor the driver was injured.Image: CNN Read the rest

Jim Baker served as the FBI's general counsel from 2014 until 2017, and he presided over the the FBI's attempt to force Apple to undermine its cryptography under the rubric of investigating the San Bernadino shooters; he has long been a prominent advocate for mass surveillance, but he has had a change of heart: in a long, detailed essay on Lawfare, Baker explains why he believes that governments should not seek to introduce defects into cryptographic systems.Baker's argument is primarily instrumental: he rejects the idea that you can create cryptography that works perfectly when it's being used to protect good guys, but fails completely when bad guys try to use it. He acknowledges that any effort to ban working cryptography would simply send American criminals to offshore software repositories to get access to working crypto, and that in so doing, it would be much harder for American law enforcement to spy on its adversaries, because the metadata from their encrypted communications would be out of US law enforcement's reach.Baker is primarily responding to Attorney General William Barr's idiotic call to ban working crypto as a matter of public safety, and he builds on the usual instrumental arguments about the limited utility of crypto bans for law enforcement with a less-often-heard argument about national security and public safety.Baker discusses how Huawei (and other companies with deep ties to nations that the US considers to be its rivals) will inevitably have some of its gear within the US's communications infrastructure. Read the rest

The queen of polka dots, the a-mazing Yayoi Kusama, is making her mark on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a three-story-tall balloon float. "Love Flies Up to the Sky" will be included as part of the Blue Sky Gallery, the parade's contemporary art series started in 2005. Previous artists have included Tim Burton, KAWS, and others. Kusama is the first woman to participate in the series.ARTnet News:“Her work lends itself to that playful whimsy that we like to see in the sky,” Susan Tercero, the parade’s executive producer... "What’s fantastic about her art, and why I think she’s so world-renowned, is that it is so accessible. Everyone can look at her art and appreciate it, understand it, and feel something from it, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”As wide as six taxi cabs, Kusama's balloon will require 40 handlers to march it through Manhattan on the morning of Thursday, November 28.The ninety-year-old Japanese artist also has a new NYC gallery show. Every Day I Pray For Love includes one of her popular Infinity Rooms and will be exhibited at David Zwirner in Chelsea from November 9 to December 14, 2019. (ARTnews)images via ARTnet News and Macy's Read the rest

The upcoming Dracula miniseries is written by Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat and sounds like it'll have us rooting for the sexy villain:They’ve made him the hero of the show, the protagonist – though still just as nasty. He has no moral dilemmas, he just wants to eat people. A creature who has seen empires rise and fall, who has seen it all before and who likes humanity – they are his food source after all. And by now he’s become quite a connoisseur of humanity.Here's the first trailer:Dracula will premiere on BBC One in the UK and on Netflix outside of the UK and Ireland. "Episodes will be directed by Jonny Campbell, Damon Thomas and Paul McGuigan, whose impressive list of credits include Westworld, Killing Eve and Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, respectively." Read the rest

Gallery 1988's latest show features multiple artists, including Dano Brown's custom action figures. Even Funko and Super 7 haven't gotten around to movie icons of yesteryear like Nurse Ratched, Billy Sole, and D-Fens:Brown's contributions to the show include other style toys:You can buy these and more at Gallery 1988. Read the rest

You've only got one set of teeth, and every hygienist will tell you the same thing: A good, solid toothbrush and a strict cleaning regimen will do a lot more in the long term than any session in the dentist's chair.It'll be a lot cheaper too, even if you purchase one of the high-end electronic toothbrushes that are out there. Especially if that brush is the AquaSonic Black Series.This one packs more than just a powerful motor, though it certainly has that. Its 40,000 vibrations per minute is one of the fastest in the industry. But it can be gentle too: The AquaSonic can toggle between four cleaning modes, including a soft setting for sensitive teeth. Switch on whitening mode for inverted frequencies that will erode tough stains or massage mode for a burst of low frequencies that will increase blood flow to the gums.The Black Series also comes with a hardshell travel case, so you can take the wireless charger and extra brush heads with you anywhere. You'll get eight of them in the set, all ideally bristled for deep cleaning.The brush, travel case and eight Dupont brush heads are all on sale now for more than 70% off the list price. Read the rest