Boing Boing

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

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