Boing Boing

Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare offer hours of cinematic gameplay. They're so engaging you might not want to play anything else, which is great because with all the disk space they take up, you might not have room to download other titles on your console.That's why a good hard drive has become a necessity even for casual gamers these days, and Fantom Drives are among the best.It's simple enough to offer space for your save files and games, and Fantom's drives certainly have that. Their storage hubs for Xbox One and PS4 include a Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD that packs 2 TB of data space, accessible with a lightning-fast 5Gbps transfer rate.But there's plenty of flexibility beyond that. The Xbox One hub is also outfitted with three USB 3.0 ports, suitable for charging controllers or adding even more storage. The PS4 model also works with the PS4 Pro, PS4 Slim, and PlayStation 3, and it allows you to convert your original PS drive into a portable SSHD. In either case, they're easy to install, without external power cords.Right now, you can get the Fantom Drives Xbox One Storage Hub + 2TB Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD for only $119 (normally $140) and the Fantom Drives PS4 Hard Drive Upgrade Kit with 2 TB Ultra Speed Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD for just $99 (normally $140) today. Read the rest

Foie Gras, a fatty dish created by force-feeding ducks and geese through tubes, will soon no longer be served in the thousand-or-so NYC restaurants that have it on their menus. Chefs are saying "what next, veal?" fearing other ostentatiously cruel delicacies (as opposed to the mundanely cruel ones) will be next.CNN:Foie gras has long been a point of debate.In 2012, California's foie gras ban went into effect, only to have the ban overturned in 2015. Then, in 2017, the ban was upheld by a circuit court judge -- a decision that was backed by the Supreme Court in January of 2019. Chicago's history with the ban is almost equally as tumultuous. The Chicago City Council passed the ban in 2006, only to lift it two years later. What makes foie gras so contentious is the method of preparation. Foie gras is made of fattened duck or goose liver, and it has long been considered a French delicacy -- so much that the country has protected it as part of France's cultural heritage. But the product is made by force-feeding ducks, an practice that many people, like councilwoman Rivera, have found troubling Read the rest

Brett Tingley writes about 70 years' research into anti-gravity and similar fields of science fiction, an effort to harness nature's weakest force to military needs. It's gone nowhere, obviously—or has it?keep in mind that all of this information comes from unclassified sources, and there is definitely more of it than just what is represented here. We can only wonder how much work has been done in the classified realm on what was once openly considered the next massive revolution in aerospace technology. The Truth Is The Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 70 Years [The Drive] Read the rest

Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowship-winning philosopher Elizabeth Anderson recently spoke with Joe Humphreys at the Irish Times about America's toxic obsession with by-your-bootstraps individualism, and specifically how it relates to poverty.There are plenty of impactful quotes throughout the interview, but the parts that stuck out the most to me—as an agnostic born into an Irish Catholic family, whose mother worked for the church for a long time—were her observations about America's puritanical roots, and, later, the impacts of World War II. Anderson essentially proposes the idea that early America Puritans like the Pilgrims were determined to distance themselves from the institutional power of the Catholic church—which, for all its faults, has at least had a longstanding commitment to helping and empathizing with those suffering from poverty. In addition to Manifest Destiny, these Puritans believed that hard work was the only promise of salvation, which eventually evolved into the whole "rugged individualism" idea that consumes so many American conservatives and Evangelicals. While Anderson acknowledges that this ethic is rooted in a very pro-worker mindset, it's clearly been secularized over time into a highly partisan hatred of the poor, with a nod towards its religious roots:There is a profound suspicion of anyone who is poor, and a consequent raising to the highest priority imposing incredibly humiliating, harsh conditions on access to welfare benefits on the assumption you’re some kind of grifter, or you’re trying to cheat the system. There is no appreciation for the existence of structural poverty, poverty that is not the fault of your own but because the economy maybe is in recession or, in a notorious Irish case, the potato crop fails. Read the rest

"Do you want to fuck snowman? It doesn't have to be a snowman…"Apparently—if you're 20-year-old Cody Meadar of St. Petersburg, Florida—it could also be a stuffed toy unicorn.From the Tampa Bay Times:A St. Petersburg man was arrested Tuesday after police said he “dry humped" multiple stuffed animals at the Park Place Target, including Olaf, the snowman from the wildly successful Disney film Frozen.The other victim was a large stuffed unicorn.Police said Cody Meader, 20, of St. Petersburg, entered the store around 2 p.m. Tuesday. He walked up to a display of merchandise from Frozen, picked a large Olaf stuffed animal, placed it on the floor and proceeded to rub himself against it until he ejaculated.Then he put it back on the display.The fact that he put it back on display might be the most egregious detail here. At least show that stuffed animal a modicum of respect by bringing home after you non-consensually violate it.There could have been a totally-tasteless joke in here about cooling down in the warm climate of Florida. Unfortunately, it was a whopping 53 degrees Fahrenheit in St. Petersburg on the day in question. So while there's generally no excusing for ejaculating on a stuffed snowman in the middle of big box store, this guy definitely has no excuse—except for the fact that he lives in Florida.Image via Wikimedia Commons Read the rest

Tomorrow, Toronto's City Council will hold a key vote on Sidewalk Labs's plan to privatize much of the city's lakeshore in the name of creating a "smart city" owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.Today, the Globe and Mail published a summary of Sidewalk Labs's leaked "yellow book", a 2016 document that lays out Sidewalk Labs's vision for Toronto and future projects in Detroit, Denver, and Alameda.The plan lays out a corporate-owned city similar to Lake Buena Vista, the privately owned municipality established by the Walt Disney Company on a massive tract of central Florida land that contains the Walt Disney World resort.The plan calls for the creation of privately owned and regulated roads, charter schools in place of publicly administered schools, the power to levy and spend property taxes without democratic oversight, a corporate criminal justice system where the cops and judges work for Sidewalk Labs, and totalizing, top-to-bottom, continuous surveillance.Torontonians who decline to "share" information with Sidewalk Labs will not receive the same level of services as those who do.Sidewalk Labs says that the document does not reflect its current ambitions.Sidewalk Labs previously grossly understated the scope of its ambitions. When we revealed that the company had secretly secured the right to build across virtually the city's entire waterfront, they lied to us before finally admitting it.Those choosing to remain anonymous would not be able to access all of the area’s services: Automated taxi services would not be available to anonymous users, and some merchants might be unable to accept cash, the book warns. Read the rest

Brian Van Slyke writes, "STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion is a board game about building a city-wide rebellion to stop a mega-corporation's takeover. It was created in collaboration between The TESA Collective, a publisher of games about changing the world, and Jobs with Justice (JWJ), a leading labor rights organization. It has just launched on Kickstarter."In STRIKE!, players collaboratively lead a city-wide rebellion of workers against Happycorp’s attempt to takeover their city. Players grow their ranks, mobilize their workers, and organize strikes around their city. As the Strike Council scores victories for workers, they will gain the support of more allies, from the dockworkers to the teachers, and build new bases of support from the manufacturing district to the university. The idea for STRIKE! was born out of conversations between TESA and Jobs with Justice. For 8 months, TESA and JWJ worked on every step of the game together, from the conceptual ideas, to the world building, the game design, and playtesting. They designed it to be a game about, by, and for the labor movement. "STRIKE!’s crowdfunding campaign comes at a time when Kickstarter workers themselves are fighting to form a union. In response to calls from the Kickstarter workers, TESA and JWJ have added statements of solidarity to the game’s campaign page as well as ways that their supporters can support Kickstarter’s workers. Like all of TESA’s previous games, STRIKE! will also be printed and assembled in the United States on sustainable materials."STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion [The TESA Collective/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Richard Braine has only been leader of Britain's far-right UK Independence Party for three months, and he's already calling it quits. Mr Braine's resignation comes a week after he was suspended by UKIP over allegations of data theft, which he denies. In a letter, Mr Braine said he had been been "prevented from building a successful leadership team by blocked appointments"."I did not join UKIP in order to waste time on internal conflict, but I have found myself powerless to prevent a purge of good members from the party. Things went badly for him from the outset, after snubbing his own party's conference and failing to resolve internal splits and weak polling. Potential candidates to replace Braine include Penis Cerebellum and Beefspear Graymatter. Read the rest

Stupendous dedication and execution on this cosplay masterpiece.A wonderful Isaac Clarke cosplay build by IMGURian @buu342 for this year's Comic Con in Lisbon, Portugal.“The entire build took about three months of work, and a few extra weeks for planning and material gathering.”They shared an incredible step-by-step gallery of images showing the many steps and tools and techniques required to pull it off.Materials used:1cm thick EVA foam0.5cm thick EVA foam0.2cm thick EVA foam1.2cm diameter acrylic tube0.8cm diameter acrylic tubePlastic hose connection piecesSmall MagnetsPush button3 12v batteries3 blue LED's12V LED stripsFurniture CupsGoogly EyesElectrical Cable1cm wooden dowelSmall nailsSewing needles and lineartifical leatherlight gray fabricVelcro stripsFoggy plastic (used to bind books)Aluminum FoilPaper2cm thick styrofoamClothing used:Horseriding bootsSweatpantsBlack glovesLeather beltGrey wool jacketPaints used:Black Plasti Dip Spray paintCopper Spray paintSilver Spray paintBronze Spray paintGold Spray paintDark Orange Spray paintBlack acrylic paintRed acrylic paintTools used:x-acto knifelots of x-acto knife bladesHeat GunHot Glue GunWood GlueDremelHandsawVarious paint brushes, from small to largePoly MaxElectrical TapePainters TapeSoldering IronPensRulersSoftware used:BlenderPaint.NetPhotoshopMicrosoft WordIsaac Clarke Cosplay Build Read the rest

Want an online presence that matters? As the graveyard of fallen start-ups can attest to, having a fancy website and a sleek logo isn't worth much unless people actually start engaging with them.Even on the fast changing web, there are ironclad strategies for marketing that can adapt to any platform. The best way to get them ingrained into your business plan is to pick up the Complete 2020 Google SEO & Growth Hacking Bundle.This 7-course online package is a blueprint for building your brand. There is, of course, a comprehensive lesson on Search Engine Optimization that takes into account all the ways Google finds and ranks their results. But it goes far beyond just what keywords to use, teaching you innovative ways to get picked up by established news outlets..There are also courses on social media marketing, with a special emphasis on Facebook. With the strategies they outline, you'll be able to make your copywriting more effective and create viral content that amplifes your message.In all, it's 44 hours of lectures and exercises, all on sale for 98% off the price of the individual courses. Read the rest

This is a simple but wonderful little original video that shows each incarnation of the Nvidia GPU, from 1995 to 2019.The company's GPUs, or graphics processing units, are iconic for gamers because they enabled new kinds of visually rich video games.Nvidia GPU evolution (OC)[IMGUR, created by IMGURian @PETTYOFFICER117, photo: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GT (EVGA 256-P2-N636-AR 256MB), via commons.wikimedia.org] Read the rest

This is such an extraordinarily fun creative project.A working professional artist takes a 5 year old kid's imaginative scribble of a sea monster, and repaints it with an adult's skill, faithful to the kid's vision.IMGURian roydenlepp says:“I’m a professional artist and I finally got to do that thing where you paint over your kids drawings. Behold! My 5 year old son’s sea monster.”I love it!5 year old’s sea monster[via] Read the rest

Long grilled cheese.

The photo is priceless.The video, I can't even.“Lunar Module (Charlie) and Astronaut (Ellie) Costume 2019.”From their proud parent:With the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Charlie and I had been reading about the Apollo 11 mission and Neil Armstrong -- and I cannot recommend the book "I am Neil Armstrong" highly enough. Charlie (age 5) is the lunar module itself, and her little sister Ellie (age 2) is an astronaut.Charlie enters the costume by crawling underneath and there is a pair of shoulder straps that she uses to lift the entire costume. The costume looks heavier than it is -- it's almost entirely made of foam and foamboard. The front hatch magnetically closes and magnetically stays open, and doubles as a candy sample input port. The ascent stage (top part) separates from the descent stage (bottom part with landing pads) as you'll see below.Check out the embedded IMGUR gallery at the bottom of this blog post for the whole step-by-step, and lots more cute images of the kids.Past costumes: • 2017 Squid.• 2018 Horseshoe Crab.• 2018 (Ellie) Traffic Cone.[SOURCE: IMGUR]Lunar Module (Charlie) and Astronaut (Ellie) Costume 2019 Read the rest

William Gibson's 2014 novel, The Peripheral, is on sale today as a Kindle edition for just .Book description:Flynne Fisher lives down a country road, in a rural America where jobs are scarce, unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she’s trying to avoid. Her brother Burton lives on money from the Veterans Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines’ elite Haptic Recon unit. Flynne earns what she can by assembling product at the local 3D printshop. She made more as a combat scout in an online game, playing for a rich man, but she’s had to let the shooter games go.Wilf Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the haves, and there aren’t many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a society where reaching into the past is just another hobby. Burton’s been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder. He’s got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game’s not a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.Flynne and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf’s, for all its decadence and power, will learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass. Read the rest

View this post on Instagram "Xenomorph Extraction Video Tutorial" Here's an updated version of this animation because it's always good to remember how to extract a xenomorph. • • • • • #scifi #darkartist #alienmovie #darkart #jamescameron #ridleyscott #handdrawn #dark #prometheus #traditionalart #xenomorph #darkartwork #blackwork #animation #instagood #alien #blackandwhite #alienart #animated A post shared by Jf Lemay (@lemay.jf) on Oct 13, 2019 at 11:14am PDT It takes a very steady hand. See more of Jf Lemay's work on Instagram and purchase his t-shirts and pins here.(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

Mark Anderson is the proprietor of Aethervision, which has a simple premise: "Each week, I release a weekly news recap which covers 5 news items using nothing but footage from pre-1924 footage." These are spectacular and mesmerizing. Read the rest

For years, the Internet Archive has been acquiring books (their goal is every book ever published) and warehousing them and scanning them. Now, these books are being "woven into Wikipedia" with a new tool that automatically links every Wikipedia citation to a print source to the exact page and passage from the book itself, which can be read on the Internet Archive.Citations to print materials are both a huge potential strength and weakness for Wikipedia: a strength because there's so much high-quality, authoritative information in print; and a weakness because people can make up (or discount) print citations and bamboozle other Wikipedians who can't see the books in question to debate their content, context, or whether they should be included at all.Archive founder Brewster Kahle kicked off the initiative after a discussion with Wikimedia's executive director Katherine Maher, who was "worried that truth mightfracture."Wikipedia is a key battleground in the war against disinformation, and the Internet Archive's measures -- which were presented to Congressional staffers yesterday -- are a huge advance on the state of the art.“I want this,” said Brewster Kahle’s neighbor Carmen Steele, age 15, “at school I am allowed to start with Wikipedia, but I need to quote the original books. This allows me to do this even in the middle of the night.”For example, the Wikipedia article on Martin Luther King, Jr cites the book To Redeem the Soul of America, by Adam Fairclough. That citation now links directly to page 299 inside the digital version of the book provided by the Internet Archive. Read the rest

Well, whatcha gonna do? According to Classical Gas Emissions, "The band is called Mental Note, and they appeared on a show called "Johnny Sizzle's Entertainment Watch" which aired on the Winnipeg Public Access channel in 1992."(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Police shut down part of a train station in Westchester County, New York to investigate a suspicious package. Turned out that the suspicious package was a new emergency calling device for passengers to report suspicious packages and behavior.(NBC4NY) Read the rest

Enjoy this cover version of Bob Dylan's 1965 song, "Mr. Tambourine Man," performed by The Starbugs from New Zealand. It's from their 2011 album Kids Sing Bob Dylan.[via Nag on the Lake]Image: YouTube Read the rest

The passage of AB1482, which limits annual California rent-increases to 8%, is an important step to solving California's urgent housing crisis, but thanks to lobbyists for the massive private-equity landlord industry, the bill contains a huge loophole: if landlords evict their tenants before January 1, they can effectively escape the bill's strictures.In most California cities, this loophole is relatively minor, because landlords can't simply evict good tenants who pay their rent on time and treat their homes with respect. But some cities -- like Burbank, where I live -- allow for "no fault" evictions, in which landlords can simply evict tenants on 60 days' notice, even if they have never missed a day's rent.The combination of the deliberately introduced loophole in AB1482 and Burbank's deficient tenant protection law has put the city's renters -- about half of our residents! -- at dire risk of eviction. Whole buildings' worth of people -- retirees, families with young kids enrolled in local schools -- have been evicted, with a deadline to vacate during Christmas week.Last night, I spoke at a City Council meeting calling for an emergency measure to stop the evictions. Despite my remarks and those of dozens of other Burbankers, the council voted 3-2 against the measure. The Burbank Tenants Rights Committee is now collecting signatures for a line-item initiative for our 2020 ballot that introduces comprehensive tenants' protection for Burbankers. The Committee is soliciting donations to pay for the initiative, including paying wages for people to collect 6,200 signatures to get the issue on the ballot. Read the rest

Forgot to take out the trash, the Halloween costume."Too embarrassed" to wear glitzy, showy Halloween costumes, a group of folks in Japan decided to start wearing "mundane" ones starting in 2014. These hilarious "jimi Halloween" costumes feature people in ordinary, everyday types of situations.Like, here's a lady who is playing a "camera assistant for children's photo studio": こども専用写真スタジオのカメラアシスタント #地味ハロウィン #DPZ pic.twitter.com/AI1WoPOYiq— デイリーポータルZ (@dailyportalz) October 27, 2019And this guy is about to win at Old Maid:ババ抜きで勝ちが確定した人の仮装#地味ハロウィン pic.twitter.com/54pwx1IU4s— 野田せいぞ (@nodanosei) October 27, 2019This lady is a YouTuber testing lipstick colors:｢めっちゃ可愛くないですか!!??｣を甲高い声で繰り返し言うと美容系YouTuberになれます会場で｢本当にYouTubeやってるんですか！？｣って色んな方に言われました腕の細工も見て〜💄#地味ハロウィン #DPZ pic.twitter.com/jsUT1hbCb5— れちゅ🥬ぴなふぉあ (@laitue_pina) October 27, 2019Mundane? Sure. Boring? Never. Clever? Yes, my god, yes! Search the hashtag #DPZ or head to Spoon & Tomago to see more.(Kottke)screenshot via @oni_red Read the rest

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