In 1997, William Moldt, then 40, called his girlfriend from a Palm Beach County, Florida bar to tell her he was on his way home. He didn't show up and was never heard from again. Recently though, a former Wellington, Florida was looking at this Google Earth image of their former neighborhood and noticed something curious in a pond. From Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office:That previous resident contacted the current resident living on Moon Bay Circle and advised he noticed what appears to be a vehicle in a pond behind his home. The current resident activated his personal drone and confirmed what the previous resident saw and immediately contacted PBSO.Upon arrival deputies confirmed there was a vehicle in the pond. The vehicle’s exterior was heavily calcified and was obviously in the water for a significant amount of time. Upon removing the vehicle skeleton remains were found inside....The remains were positively identified as William Moldt.(CNN) Read the rest

Iowa state court officials contracted with Coalfire to conduct "penetration tests" on its security; as part of those tests, two Coalfire employees broke-and-entered the Adel, Iowa courthouse, and were caught by law-enforcement, whose bosses in Dallas County were not notified of the test.The state has apologized to the county, but the two Coalfire employees were still in jail as of this writing.As Sean Gallagher points out at Ars Technica, penetration testers often have broadly defined scopes of work for their engagements, and this highlights the risk of a brief that essentially goes, "Just do what it takes to figure out if criminals could compromise our security." State court administration (SCA) is aware of the arrests made at the Dallas County Courthouse early in the morning on September 11, 2019. The two men arrested work for a company hired by SCA to test the security of the court’s electronic records. The company was asked to attempt unauthorized access to court records through various means to learn of any potential vulnerabilities. SCA did not intend, or anticipate, those efforts to include the forced entry into a building. SCA apologizes to the Dallas County Board of Supervisors and law enforcement and will fully cooperate with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office and Dallas County Attorney as they pursue this investigation. Protecting the personal information contained in court documents is of paramount importance to SCA and the penetration test is one of many measures used to ensure electronic court documents are secure.Check the scope: Pen-testers nabbed, jailed in Iowa courthouse break-in attempt [Sean Gallagher/Ars Technica] Read the rest

My life is missing a quasi-sarcastic robot to follow me around and point out the shit I've carelessly missed. Read the rest

"Pantomime at church, in school, or on TV is another form of dramatic expression for anyone who wants to give deeper meaning to words and to thoughts."This is "The Art of Pantomime in Church" (Meriwether Contemporary Drama Service filmstrip FS-33, 1982).(r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Rest in peace, Mr. Money.People:Eighties hitmaker Eddie Money died on Friday following complications from stage 4 esophageal cancer. He was 70 years old.“The Money family regrets to announce that Eddie passed away peacefully early this morning,” his family said in a statement to PEOPLE. “It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our loving husband and father. We cannot imagine our world without him. We are grateful that he will live on forever through his music.”The “Two Tickets to Paradise” singer’s death came less than a month after he announced that he had been diagnosed with the disease. Read the rest

For more than three decades, New York Sanitation worker Nelson Molina has picked personal treasures from the garbage he collects in East Harlem. Now totaling more than 45,000 cataloged items, Molina has an astounding personal wunderkammer of treasures from the trash. Nicolas Heller profiles him in this wonderful short documentary. Read the rest

Trump wants to roll back regulations that promote low-power light bulbs, even though at this point the industry has moved on and isn't likely to do much in the way of modernizing incandescents. His interest is, as always, deeply personal: he thinks LED lights make him look orange.“The light bulb,” the president began. “People said what’s with the light bulb. I said here’s the story, and I looked at it. The bulb that we’re being forced to use. No. 1, to me, most importantly, the light’s no good. I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst.” I like this one because it is true that cheap LED lights tend to emit a poor spectrum of light, even if the bulb itself appears to have a desirable color temperature. It may well be true that some bulbs make him appear orangier than he already is. But if he wasn't so crudely tanned and made-up in the first place, it would never be a problem. Like hurricane-map spaghetti lines, the truth only makes the lie more obvious, and that's what makes the Trump magic happen. UPDATE: Video.President Trump: "The light bulb. People said what's with the light bulb. I said here's the story, and I looked at it. The bulb that we're being forced to use. Number one, to me, most importantly, the light's no good. I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst." pic.twitter.com/Hb4nu5xk5t— The Hill (@thehill) September 13, 2019 Read the rest

Enjoy this video collection of hot rivets being put in. I must say, from beginning to end, I was ... engrossed. Hot riveting is an efficient joining method in which two materials are permanently joined at specific points by a form-closing process. This process is also known as heat staking or hot forming. Read the rest

Two corgis do battle in this epic video confrontation posted on YouTube by Defacto Sound, which I suspect is exploiting the Corg Wars to show off its audio design talents. Read the rest

In 1868, Scottish sailor Jack Renton found himself the captive of a native people in the Solomon Islands, but through luck and skill he rose to become a respected warrior among them. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Renton's life among the saltwater people and his return to the Western world.We'll also catch some more speeders and puzzle over a regrettable book.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

If you like sushi boat restaurants, you're probably going to love this new conveyor belt eating establishment — completely devoted to British cheese — that has opened in London's Seven Dials Market. Pick & Cheese is the brainchild of fromage-fanatic and entrepreneur Matthew Carver who hopes to make local UK cheeses cool again. Food & Wine:[It's] a magical place where guests are seated around a 40-meter conveyor belt that slowly presents an assortment of more than 25 different cheeses, all produced by traditional British cheesemakers. Each well-curated cheese is paired with a complementary condiment, which can be anything from sticky pear jam to honeyed garlic to a traditional northern Eccles cake.Cheese novices can choose a pre-selected cheese flight, while connoisseurs and more adventurous eaters can help themselves to a stoneware plate or two (or six, or 10) from the conveyor belt. Each plate is color-coded according to its price, which ranges from a £2.95 ($3.64) cream plate to a £6.10 ($7.54) yellow plate. (There's also an Off-Belt menu that includes the owner's signature Four Cheese Grilled Cheese Sandwich and pan-fried 'Angloumi,' their all-English take on Cypriot halloumi.) View this post on Instagram Wow what a first day! Thanks to everyone who came down yesterday and visited the conveyor belt of (Cheese) dreams. We’re back on it from midday today with more of those little dishes of joy. Sunday = Cheese, right? See ya at the belt! 🧀 #PICKANDCHEESEA post shared by The Cheese Bar (@thecheesebarldn) on Sep 8, 2019 at 3:35am PDT View this post on Instagram Thursday lunch? Read the rest

My colleague at Institute for the Future, Nick Monaco, wrote a piece about Twitter's announcement that the People’s Republic of China was caught using Twitter to spread disinformation about the Hong Kong protests.The announcement indicates China’s willingness to use these same underhanded tactics on Western platforms when matters of domestic or foreign policy reach a breaking point. China’s foray into online information operations also further validates a hypothesis advanced by US intelligence chiefs and former US Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland: that Russia’s disinformation campaign targeting the US in 2016 and before has inspired other countries to undertake similar efforts. As other experts have noted, this also raises the probability of China engaging in similar information operations targeting the US presidential race in 2020.Photo by Ling Tang on Unsplash Read the rest

Octavia Butler (previously), the brilliant Afrofuturist, McArthur Genius Grant-winning science fiction writer, died far, far too soon, leaving behind a corpus of incredible, voraciously readable novels, and a community of writers who were inspired by her example.Recent years have seen new editions of Butler's work, including a graphic novel of Kindred, her novel of slavery, time-travel, race and identity. Now, the Folio Society (previously) has announced their own edition of Kindred, which will be characteristic of the Folio Society's gorgeous books, slipcased, illustrated, with an introduction by Tananarive Due, who uses interviews with Butler to explore the themes of the novel.The book is $60, and ships this autumn.Update: Thanks to numbertwopencil for pointing out that there's a slipcased edition of Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents coming in October. Those books are like woke, postapocalyptic Heinlein juvies. So. So. SO. GOOOOOOD.While at college, Butler reportedly overhead another African–American student angrily criticising previous generations of black men and women for being subservient to the whites who claimed to own them. This became the seed of an idea that would lead to Kindred – an attempt to understand the unthinkable, to place supposed subservience in the context of desperate survival. Butler takes care to immerse the reader in the details of the past until pre-Civil War Maryland feels more vivid and real than the potentially more familiar Los Angeles of the late 1970s. But this is much more than an immersive historical novel. Read the rest

The man President Donald Trump once used as a 'my African American' stage prop now says the GOP is pursuing a "pro-white" agenda, uses black people as "political pawns." Gregory Cheadle does not have anything good to say about Trump, either.“When you look at his appointments for the bench: White, white, white, white white, white, white,” Cheadle says, “That to me is really damning to everybody else because no one else gets a chance because he’s thinking that the whites are superior, period.”Here's the archival clip that went viral:Cheadle became internet-famous and TV news-famous in June 2016 when then-candidate Trump pointed to him (The Lone Black Guy) at a rally in Redding, California where Cheadle lives. Trump pointed to him and said, “Look at my African American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest?”From PBS NewsHour, here's what the man in that clip is thinking now:Now, the 62-year-old real estate broker, who supported the Republican approach to the economy, said he sees the party as pursuing a “pro-white” agenda and using black people like him as “political pawns.” The final straw for Cheadle came when he watched many Republicans defend Trump’s tweets telling four congresswomen of color, who are all American citizens, to go back to their countries, as well as defend the president’s attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and his comments that Cummings’ hometown of Baltimore is “infested.”“President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme,” said Cheadle, of Redding, Calif., who switched from being an independent to a Republican in 2001. Read the rest

FBI and other federal agencies probe venture capital fund started by Peter Thiel

Google will not be required to admit it did anything wrong in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) settlement over complaints the tech giant restricted employees' speech —- but Google does have to inform employees of their protected free speech rights.The Wall Street Journal (paywalled link) reported the news first today, and says the NLRB agreement addresses complaints that Google reacted unfavorably to “workplace dissent.” Google confirmed the settlement details to The New York Times, and then to other news organizations. “We have agreed to post a notice to our employees reminding them of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act,” a Google spokesperson told reporters. “As a part of that notice, we will also remind employees of the changes we made to our workplace policies back in 2016 and 2017 that clarified those policies do not prevent employees from discussing workplace issues.”Adi Robertson for The Verge: The Journal writes that one of the complaints involves Kevin Cernekee, who alleged he was fired for his conservative political beliefs. (The Daily Caller later published posts where Cernekee suggested raising money for neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, something Cernekee claimed was unrelated to Spencer’s politics.) President Trump promoted Cernekee on Twitter after he appeared on Fox Business, raising Cernekee’s profile. A second complaint reportedly involved an employee who posted “unflattering opinions” about a Google executive on Facebook.The Journal initially reported that the settlement covered talking about “political and workplace” issues. In a statement, Google partially denied that description. Read the rest

Birds Aren't Real is an amusing parody of conspiracy grift merch, which is to say it is a site where you can buy t-shirts and other things emblazoned with a bespoke conspiracy theory that Birds Aren't Real (they are, of course, government surveillance drones).All across this wretched country there are leaders, those that have chosen to lead. To impart the knowledge of this travesty to every man, woman, and child. They will not rest, and can't (even if they wanted to) as there are drones on top of their house making loud noises. This bird nightmare makes the Illuminati and JFK conspiracies look like a toddler playing in the Burger King Play Place.The Audubon Society reports that the site was "hatched" by a 20-year-old student.Sounds extreme but also somewhat fitting, given the landscape of today's social discourse. By surfacing murky bits of history and the ubiquity of Aves, Birds Aren’t Real feeds into this era of post-truth politics. The campaign relies on internet-fueled guerilla marketing to spread its message, manifesting through real-world posters and Photoshopped propaganda tagged with the “Birds Aren’t Real” slogan.For much of its devoted fanbase, Birds Aren’t Real is a respite from America’s political divide—a joke so preposterous both conservatives and liberals can laugh at it. But for a few followers, this movement is no more unbelievable than QAnon, a right-wing conspiracy theory turned marketing ploy that holds that someone with high-level government clearance is planting coded tips in the news. Therein lies the genius of Birds Aren’t Real: It’s a digital breadcrumb trail that leads to a website that leads to a shop full of ready-to-buy merchandise. Read the rest

And we love them for it.“My cat is a dingus,” says IMGURian BasicPumpkinSpice.“Trying to lick and scratch at the same time.“His name is Rocky. “He is 14.”Aww! Rocky is amazing. What a cool old cat.My cat is a dingus Read the rest

laptop.css provides "laptop CSS for the modern world," which is to say, GIFs playing inside of monospace-typed drawings of laptops. There are three sizes: sm, classic, and lg.Use laptop.css to automatically wrap an html img with an ASCII art laptop.And they say there is no beauty in the world! Creator jjkaufman also has somewiggly divs for you.P.S. if you want some high-quality images of "blank" gadgets such as laptops, phones and smartwatches, Facebook of all places has a set for download. Read the rest

Meet Eris The Borzoi. Eris is totally, utterly, addogable.So long they had to do the fence higher. View this post on Instagram If you listen carefully you can hear Miss Mary saying hello to our nosy puppy while she’s trying to do yard work. Eris loves being in other people’s business. 😅 ——————————————————— #borzoi #russianwolfhound #wolfhound #dailyfluff #floof #weirddog #snoot #rva #sighthound #doggo #instadog #happydog #dogsofig #nosydog #happiness #dogstagram #cute #ilovemydog #sillydog #longdog ———————————————————A post shared by Eris The Borzoi (@eriszoi) on Sep 11, 2019 at 3:41am PDT As the name suggests, Eris is from the Borzoi dog breed, a sight hound that resembles long-haired greyhounds.She is about one year old and still growing. View this post on Instagram Happy Thursday!!! Today we’re doing a throwback to the very very first time we ever saw both of Eris’s ears go up. The proportions were so funny looking. 😂 ——————————————————— #borzoi #russianwolfhound #wolfhound #throwback #borzoisofinstagram #floof #dogsofinstagram #rva #sighthound #doggo #instadog #happydog #dogsofig #smilingdog #happiness #dogstagram #cute #ilovemydog #sillydog #longdog #snoot ———————————————————A post shared by Eris The Borzoi (@eriszoi) on Apr 18, 2019 at 3:17am PDT “They were originally breeding for show, but her overbite is a little fierce, and she is not a show dog,” Joey Kamburian, Eris’ owner, told the local NBC TV News affiliate.And what I love most about her is she's from my home town of Richmond, Virginia.The only cool celebrities on Instagram are dogs. [instagram.com: @eriszoi] View this post on Instagram Eris and I enjoyed the gorgeous weather as long as we could yesterday, and got to see both a gorgeous bright blue day and a surreal cotton candy sunset. Read the rest

Mindblowing footage from Liana Blackburn's BODY LANGUAGE dance class, 2017.Watch it from start to finish, and unmute for the love of QUEEN.Choreographed & Danced by: Liana BlackburnFilmed by: Ryan ParmaSong by: Queen - Body LanguageBODY LANGUAGE is a heels optional, 18+ dance classEvery Tues & Thurs 5:30-7pm at Evolution Dance Studios in North Hollywood[video link] Read the rest

I like the charcoal flavor of barbecued steak and chicken, but it's hard to cook vegetables on my Weber grill, because the vegetables tend to fall between the wires. Grilling mats prevent that from happening. You just set a mat on the grill and place the veggies on top. The mats are so thin that they look like they would incinerate in a second, but they are impervious to high heat. They are easy to clean, too. Nothing sticks to them. Amazon has a good deal on a set of these BBQ grilling mats. Read the rest

At the EFF's Deeplinks blog, the foundation posts a copyright takedown demand sent to it regarding an illustration used on an earlier posting. Given that the EFF is paramount among organizations fighting for more liberal copyright laws and employs numerous lawyers, activists and experts to this end, this already seems a tentative prospect. In this case, though, it turns out to be worse than that: the EFF's own artists created the illustration.For EFF this was more amusing than threatening. We knew instantly that we needn’t worry about the implied threat, and if things went badly, we probably have more IP litigators per capita than any entity that’s not a boutique IP litigation firm. So we wrote back explaining the situation, and expect that will be the end of this.But for many entities, it can be quite scary. Even if they are secure in their rights, the potential for a costly or time-consuming conflict may lead to a rational choice that a link is a low-cost solution. They might wonder if this misunderstanding will escalate into a DMCA takedown, potentially interfering with the availability of the page until the improper notice is resolved. Even if they disregard such a weak threat, dealing with it has the serious potential to take time away from running their operation. Read the rest

Neiman Marcus sells a hot dog couch for $7100 plus shipping.SelettiSofa "Hot Dog"$7,100.00Shipping: $295.00That is all.[via @TimAeppel, photos: Neiman Marcus] Read the rest

A pizzeria that specializes in square pies shared a photo of a 9/11 tribute pie on 9/11. People lost their damn minds.Poor Ledo's Pizza.I bet this is a day they'll #NeverForget.Here was the ill-fated tweet.Today we remember all those that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Freedom isn’t Free. 🇺🇸#MemorialDay pic.twitter.com/QVnY1BaAx4— Ledo Pizza (@LedoPizza) May 27, 2019Here is the apology.This morning, Ledo Pizza posted a photo of a pizza decorated as a flag of the United States of America on Twitter. As you may know, we regularly use this photo to show our Patriotism and Love for our country during holidays and remembrances.— Ledo Pizza (@LedoPizza) September 11, 2019“While most fans are used to seeing this photo and share our Patriotism, a few Twitter users took offense to this imagery and for this we are sincerely sorry. Our Twitter post was never intended to diminish the gravity of September 11th and has since been removed,” the thread continued. “Again, if you are familiar with Ledo Pizza, you know that we would never intentionally do anything to dishonor our flag and we hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive us for this misstep. #WeAreSincerelySorry”Hashtag #WeAreSincerelySorry.From DCist, we must #NEVERFORGET the many other times brands have done bad things to commemorate the 2001 terror attacks.“#NeverForget,” the local chain tweeted, alongside an American flag emoji and an image of its square pizza pie meant to resemble the flag, with olives standing in for stars and pepperoni as stripes. Read the rest

Google's news results are about to change. Today, Google VP of News Richard Gingras published a post titled “Elevating original reporting in Search.” You're going to want to read the whole thing.One of the weird metrics they're reportedly going to use, though? “HOW MANY JOURNALISM AWARDS A PUBLICATION HAS WON.”Oh.Original journalism requires time and investment, but it can have a big impact on our communities and conversations. Read more about the steps Google's taking to highlight original reporting in Search → https://t.co/pBcs06ci8T— Google News Initiative (@GoogleNewsInit) September 12, 2019Here's an excerpt from what Google News VP Gingras wrote for Google's 'The Keyword' corporate blog:We use algorithms to sort through everything we find on the web and organize this content in a way that is helpful. Those algorithms are composed of hundreds of different signals that are constantly updated and improved. To tune and validate our algorithms and help our systems understand the authoritativeness of individual pages, we have more than 10,000 raters around the world evaluating our work - their feedback doesn't change the ranking of the specific results they're reviewing; instead it is used to evaluate and improve algorithms in a way that applies to all results. The principles that guide how they operate are mapped out in our search rater guidelines, a public document that allows raters to better understand and assess the unique characteristics of content that appears in Search results. In short: these guidelines are the clear description of what we value in content when ranking. Read the rest

When I saw this photo, I thought "so?" It took about 30 seconds to figure it out.My professor's doorImage: Imgur Read the rest

EFF has just posted a job listing for a development director, seeking someone to "take charge of EFF's eleven-person Development Team in their efforts to raise over $13 million each year," starting late 2019 or early 2020.We’re looking for someone with these qualities:Experience and confidence managing a team of dedicated development professionalsExperience working with major donors, planned giving and foundations, including making direct solicitationsDemonstrated ability to inspire a team to reach ambitious fundraising goals while maintaining work/life balanceExceptional skill synthesizing complex concepts and ease communicating the profound importance of online rights for a lay audience, both in writing and in personExperience working in a collaborative setting, especially team writing projectsExcellent judgement and strategic thinkingA strong leader that colleagues can depend uponComfort and interest learning unusual technical toolsJoy building rapport with people across all manners of backgrounds, interests, and experiencesDevelopment Director [EFF] Read the rest

Tim Gonzales has loving edited together a trailer for an Ahsoka Tano feature film. Using footage from Clone Wars and Rebels, the story is focused on Ahsoka, one of the few worthwhile Jedi as she proctors the galaxies remaing Jedi and faces off against her old Master.This arc in Rebels did tries to lend Obi-Wan's lie credentials. The whole 'Vader killed Annikon Skywalker,' i.e. that Anni wasn't a massive asshole the entire time story.He was and sematic bullshit seems to be a form 3 lightsaber move. Read the rest

When social media was young, it was obvious that it had some pathologies -- perverse incentives that drove people toward antisocial behaviour. Back in those days, a company named Flickr did some radical things that made it (briefly) the best social network on the internet (until Yahoo bought it and all but destroyed it): among other things, Flickr did not publicly display follower or favorite counts, and it would allow you to export all of your data to any rival service, provided that the rival service would implement an export function that let you change your mind and switch back to Flickr, creating a kind of mutual network of anti-lock-in services.(Flickr also implemented by favorite feature of all time: the ability to reply to email notifications of in-network private messages by replying in email, rather than visiting the website and typing your reply there. Yahoo killed this almost immediately following the acquisition).The result was a service in which people participated in a gift economy of following and liking, not because of social signals that told them what was popular among their peers, but because of genuine affinity. You still got to know about it when people followed and liked your work, but unless you took the (unseemly) step of publishing those facts, no one else would. It was a beautiful, fragile thing.Since then, social media has been overtaken by metrics, which are driven in large part by the vicious cycle of advertisers wanting to know which influencers are worth paying; and by toxic fan battles to make your favorite social media accounts gain followers and likes, and to downrank your favorites' rivals. Read the rest

The Action Lab Man compared the heat transfer speed of a heat pipe with a similar looking copper rod. The heat pipe transfered heat two orders of magnitude faster than the pure copper. What's inside the heat pipe? The Action Lab Man cut it open and discovered that the heat pipe was a hollow copper pipe with a spongy copper inner wall. The pipe has a bit of water in it, which wicks into the spongy copper surface. The interior of the pipe is under very low pressure. When the pipe is heated on one end, the water very quickly vaporizes (water boils at room temperature in a vacuum) and moves rapidly to the other side, where the pressure is lower.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Our friend Maureen Herman, former bassist for Babes in Toyland, and a frequent contributor to Boing Boing, is the guest on the latest episode of the Hey Human podcast.From the episode's description:Maureen Herman, former bassist for Babes in Toyland, is a writer and musician who is no stranger to showing you her scars. She's candid about where she's been, where she's heading and how hard she tries to stay in the moment. Funny and engaging, Maureen has managed to channel her creativity into a force that, I'd venture to say, has acted like some kind of centripetal pull to keep her on the planet. She endured a lot, probably more than most of us would have been able to handle. Somewhere in her mad-genius is a gentle sweetness that draws you in, but don't underestimate her. I'm pretty sure she sleeps with one eye open. Her new book drops July 2020, and the title says it all; It's A Memoir, Motherfucker.Image: Bene Riobó [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons Read the rest

French economist Thomas Piketty changed the world in 2014 with his magisterial Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a book that reported out an incredibly ambitious project to map out three centuries' worth of capital flows, and from that, to derive an empirical answer about whether markets are a machine for finding smart people and allocating capital to them so that they can invent things that make us all better off ("meritocracy"), or whether they simply make the people who happened to get rich (possibly by inventing something, more often by inheriting wealth or by being a sociopathic looter) even richer (spoiler: rg, which means that markets' long-run function is to increase inequality by allocating ever-larger pools of capital to rich people who don't do much that's socially beneficial with it).Here's an example of how markets -- even ones with lots of growth -- are much better at enriching the rich than making us all richer, from the 2014 edition:All large fortunes, whether inherited or entrepreneurial in origin, grow at extremely high rates, regardless of whether the owner of the fortune works or not. To be sure, one should be careful not to overestimate the precision of the conclusions one can draw from these data, which are based on a small number of observations and collected in a somewhat careless and piecemeal fashion. The fact is nevertheless interesting.Take a particularly clear example at the very top of the global wealth hierarchy. Between 1990 and 2010, the fortune of Bill Gates -- the founder of Microsoft, the world leader in operating systems, and the very incarnation of entrepreneurial wealth and number one in the Forbes rankings for more than ten years -- increased from $4 billion to $50 billion. Read the rest

In 1964, a German experiment asked people to randomly tap their fingers -- whenever they wanted -- while having their brain's electrical activity monitored. The scientists discovered something nifty: The Bereitschaftspotential, a little burst of electrical activity the subjects' brains gave off in the milliseconds just before the finger-tap. Neuroscientists were fascinated: We now had a glimpse of the brain's crucial planning activities.In the 80s, things got super weird. The American physiologist Benjamin Libet repeated the experiment and observed the Bereitschaftspotential occurring about 350 milliseconds before the subject decided to move their fingers. In other words, your brain and body were deciding to move your finger before you yourself were aware of your intent to do so. Free will was an illusion.Armchair philosophers went to town on this, as you can imagine: Consciousness is an illusion! We're well and truly just self-deluding bags of meat! etc etc.Then in 2012, Aaron Schurger -- a scientist at Paris' National Institute of Health and Medical Research -- proposed a different explanation for the Bereitschaftspotential. As he knew from his research, the brain is constantly a hive of activity and electrophysiological noise, and like any natural phenomenon with tons of little jittering components, it produces wave-like crests of activity. So maybe the Bereitschaftspotential was just that. Maybe it was just the product of a noisy brain. A couple of top neuroscientists wondered if the original 1964 finger-tap experiment had been misinterpreted, and its correlations misunderstood. Since the decision to tap your finger randomly isn't terribly consequential, maybe the subjects were unconsciously timing their fingertaps with the Bereitschaftspotential. Read the rest

Buzzfeed's Vanessa Wong declares that Tim Cook Will Have To Pry My iPhone SE From My Cold, Tiny Hands.I admit it makes no sense. My behavior is so incomprehensible that I worry I’ll be boiled down to a caricature of myself: a frugal old lady with a frugal old phone. I have a terrific coworker who accidentally asks repeatedly if I still use the small iPhone 5 (which came out in 2012), and yes, I did before I owned the SE (again, small hands), but I am worried it betrays a perception that I keep my phone in a dusty purse that maybe smells like mothballs and hard candy.The thing is, I really shouldn’t be so self-conscious (and it’s probably fine if my phone did smell like mothballs anyhow, who cares). I’m not alone. The iPhone 7 is still the most-used phone in the US. As of mid-2019, it had a 5.2% share of the market, according to survey data provided to BuzzFeed News by Kantar. The SEVEN, people. The one that also came out in 2016. The one that is basically just as old as my beloved SE. And now I know — we holders-on have more power than we realize.I too am still on the iPhone SE. I don't want a big phone; I want a small one. Truth told, though, it is getting long in the tooth, lacking important and useful features and often feeling just plain slow. I'd pay through the nose for a new iPhone SE with the capabilities of the latest entry-level iPhone 11. Read the rest

Apparently mountain chickadees have crazily awesome memories: Despite weighing less than half an ounce, mountain chickadees are able to survive harsh winters complete with subzero temperatures, howling winds and heavy snowfall. How do they do it? By spending the fall hiding as many as 80,000 individual seeds, which they then retrieve — by memory — during the winter. Their astounding ability to keep track of that many locations puts their memory among the most impressive in the animal kingdom.When I read that, I was like: Okay, you have my attention. The rest of that piece in Knowable Magazine is an intriguing Q&A with a researcher who's been doing experiments trying to probe the dimensions of chickadee memory, and how it confers survivability.(CC-2.0-licensed photo of a chickadee courtesy the Flickr stream of Geoffrey Gilmour-Taylor. BTW, it's not a mountain chickadee, it's a black-capped chickadee. But it's ... mountain-chickadee-adjacent, I guess? Anyway.) Read the rest

In Slate, David Polansky argues that the quality of audio in hearing aids is plummeting for the same reason the quality of recorded music plummeted in the age of the MP3: It went digital.Up until the early 00s, hearing aids were often built using analog tech. In the 2000s, though, the six major firms that comprise most of the hearing-aid market all shifted over to digital tech -- and the result, Polansky writes, has been terrible. Much as MP3s truncated the acoustic range of sound to scrunch it into a small signal, users of today's digital hearing-aids have found the sound of the world abruptly reduced:I am well aware of the limitations of the old analog hearing aid technology: It was prone to feedback, and it did not always adjust well to different aural situations, such as crowded restaurants or large auditoriums with poor acoustics. In compensation, the user lived in a world that was saturated with sound, rich and crisp in detail. No amount of added Bluetooth connectivity or Fitbit trackers can change the underlying fact that the digital processor samples incoming sound at a rate far lower than that of an old CD player, effectively turning the entire world into a giant MP3 file. Children’s voices, fallen leaves, birdsong, the Beatles: All of these have been rendered and reshaped so that the listener perceives a wholly synthetic world.For those who are unable to adjust, it is alienating on a neurological level. In fact, it is estimated that almost a quarter of all hearing aid users are not satisfied—often profoundly so—with the sound produced by their hearing aids. Read the rest

Some of the biggest names in business, including the CEOs of Twitter, Uber, Reddit, Conde Nast, Bad Robot and a host of others sent a letter to Congress this morning urging immediate action on gun violence. The letter follows similar pleas from Walmart after shootings at the country's largest retailer left nearly 30 people dead in less than a month. A copy of the letter was shared with the New York Times: Many of the requested actions in the letter have already passed the House, but have been brought to a crawl in the Senate by NRA-pawn "Massacre Mitch" McConnell. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed frustration with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who asked about her decision to not bring the House back in August to keep the pressure up on McConnell and the Senate. No reaction to the letter as of yet from Senate Republicans. Shocking, I know.Business Leaders Call on Congress to Act on Gun Violence (NYT) Photo: Michael Spocko/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0) Read the rest

Daniel Beckwitt, a channer with a trust fund, began digging a bunker under his house after his mother died. Driven by survivalist paranoia and reinforced in adjacent ideologies by like-minded internet users, he hired another young man, Askia Khafra, to dig in the growing tunnel system while he blew the days on Reddit and 4chan. Everything was dangerous—the house and basement full of hoarded junk, the bunker a structural deathtrap—and when something terrible happened, it was Askia who could not get out. In The Washington, William Brennan tries to unravel what on Earth happened down there.As neighbors watched the house from their lawns and windows, a county fire investigator made a startling discovery. Squeezing past the furnace amid a tower of junk in the basement, he was headed to shut off the gas meter when something caught his eye: A few feet ahead, there was a hole in the concrete floor. Below it, investigators soon learned, stretched an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers—long, twisting hallways of bare rock that would end up revealing the bizarrest of internet-era fables, and one with a ghastly ending.It's hard to believe it's real. It's like groverhaus, but with a hole leading straight to hell and a murder conviction to take with you. Read the rest

You go away to Burning Ban for a couple of weeks of desert heat, wind, dust and EDM-fueled contemplation, and return to find the tabloids in dire need of a personal transformative experience of their own, still spouting the same fever dream imaginings as before.

This Sunday, the outstanding SF in SF reading series hosts two outstanding authors: Hannu Rajaniemi (Summerland) and Christopher Brown (Rule of Capture). American Bookbinders Museum, 366 Clementina Alley. Doors at 6PM: $10 ($8 students with ID). Read the rest

“Can’t I stay with you?”No?An incredible moment captured by the good people behind New Zealand's Kaikoura Wildlife Rescue. View this post on Instagram Here we repost one of our videos that has been shared widely online 🐧 This blue penguin adult was found by a member of the public and was then transferred to us by the Department of Conservation. The penguin had a significant head wound and suffered from severe exhaustion due to plastic netting entanglement. After treatment and recovery, this patient was successfully released. We observed this penguin for an hour post-release, watching as it swam strongly out to sea, once past the initial breaking waves. Penguins generally appear wobbly on land, but are in their element under water. Ocean conditions are often rough along New Zealand's coast, with this blue penguin being used to such conditions. Blue penguins are the smallest penguin species in the world, hence the tiny size. The reason this individual was not released near a group of penguins, is that blue penguins are largely solitary at sea, as well as being nocturnal on land. Releases are the positive outcome wildlife rehabilitators hope for 💚 Video: Ben Foster #penguin #bluepenguin #penguins #seabirds #wildliferehabilitation #wildliferescue #wildliferehabilitator #helpingwildlife #makingadifferenceA post shared by Kaikoura Wildlife Rescue (@kaikourawildliferescue) on Sep 10, 2018 at 2:20am PDT Read the rest

The Cheney School in Oxford, England, apologized this week after asking students to write suicide notes as part of their English homework. The assignment generated complaints.GCSE English students at Cheney School in Headington, Oxford, were set the task as part of studying J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls. One mother branded the exercise - which invited teenagers to adopt the persona of a young woman in 1912 - a "massive fail".In a statement, the school said it was "very sorry for any distress caused".LINK: Resources for people in crisis Read the rest

The Silent Hall of Fame uploaded a very nice print of Charlie Chaplin's "A Day’s Pleasure" (1919) to Archive.org. Compare it to the version on YouTube.Here's the YouTube upload:And Archive.org's copy is at the top of this post. Read the rest

Here, you need some sweetness.Look at these amazing affectionate birds.Enjoy.Affectionate Blue ParrotsDon't know the source, unfortunately!Affectionate Blue Parrots Read the rest

I stepped outside to take this photo of the catnip plants I'm growing. We have three cats and I enjoy giving them a few fresh leaves and watching their stoned antics.A couple of weeks ago I was at the wonderful Kinokuniya Los Angeles bookstore in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, and came across a photography book called Cats on Catnip by Andrew Marttila. You can see some of the photos from the book on his Instagram account: View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Mar 19, 2019 at 12:01pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Mar 22, 2019 at 12:13pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Aug 2, 2019 at 8:20pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Apr 20, 2019 at 3:21pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Sep 7, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Aug 17, 2018 at 3:16pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Aug 9, 2018 at 8:52am PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andrew Marttila (@iamthecatphotographer) on Jul 16, 2018 at 11:00am PDT Read the rest

Most airports have filtered water dispensers past the security checkpoint. I take advantage of the free water by traveling with this Vapur Element BPA Free Durable Foldable Flexible Water Bottle. It folds flat or can be rolled up. It has a carabiner for clipping to a pack. Read the rest

I mean he did win a MAJOR AWARD. Read the rest

After Portland's NBC reporter Maggie Vespa wore high-waisted pants last week, a viewer didn't approve of her wardrobe, saying via Facebook that she looked ridiculous in pants.According to USA Today:She replied to him and said she would not change her attire, prompting the viewer to write back while she was on the air live on Friday. In that message, he wrote, "OMG you really looked uncomfortably (sic) tonight. Try dressing like a normal woman. Doesn't KGW pay you enough for a wardrobe makeover?"Her male co-workers were shocked, she said, but this kind of incident is not new for women who work on TV.Vespa said she shared the comments with her mother, who also worked as a news anchor in Peoria, Illinois."She talked about getting horrible, toxic comments from people and unbelievably sexist things that make this look pale in comparison," Vespa said. "So I just thought, 'Let's say something.'"Her response in the segment above is wonderful. Read the rest

A gentleman in Ontario stepped into the street, causing a driver to stop short. The jaywalker was so intent on giving the driver the stink eye that he did not notice a pole that had the temerity to be in his path.Image: YouTube Read the rest