I'm on record as being a big supporter of learning regular expressions (AKA "regexp") -- handy ways to search through text with very complex criteria. It's notoriously opaque to beginners, but it's such a massively effective automation tool and drudgery reliever! Regex Crosswords help you hone your regexp skills with fiendishly clever regular expressions that ascend a smooth complexity gradient from beginner to expert. (via Kottke) Read the rest

Joey Hess designed the first Fridge0 a year ago: it uses a standard chest freezer with added thermal mass, a simple controller, and a photovoltaic panel that effectively stores sunshine as coldness, obviating the need for expensive backup batteries. The Fridge0 is an advance on traditional off-grid 12v solar fridges that assume that solar panels are expensive and inefficient; by exploiting modern PV technology, Hess says "A kilowatt of solar panels provides enough power to run a conventional fridge on even most cloudy days, and costs less than a commercial offgrid fridge." (via Kottke) Read the rest

Australia has a pending, comprehensive "data sharing" law that regulates the dispersal of data collected by the Australian state; in a new government white-paper, the Australian state has proposed that the rules could gain "nuance" if the government were allowed to share data without obtaining consent from the people whose privacy is implicated in that sharing.The proposal would modify the legislation, removing the absolute requirement for consent before data was shared, and instead "[place] the responsibility on Data Custodians and Accredited Users to safely and respectfully share personal information where reasonably required for a legitimate objective."The paper admits that the original proposal received support in large part because it required consent prior to data-releases, but says that the popular will isn't as important as preventing biased outcomes from skewed data analysis, which will head off the "improved experience" the government is hoping to deliver.According to the government, requiring consent for all data sharing will lead to biased data that delivers the wrong outcomes."The Data Sharing and Release legislation is about improving government policy and research by helping government and researchers use a better evidence base. If we required consent, then data would only be shared where consent was given," the paper says."This will skew the data which is shared, leaving it unfit for many important purposes in the public benefit; it also runs the risk of leading to flawed policy and research which impacts negatively on society."Consent removed from Australia's proposed data-sharing legislation [Asha Barbaschow/Zdnet](via /. Read the rest

James Wallace Harris is a retired programmer who maintains an interesting blog called Auxiliary Memory. In his latest post, he wrote about how his spelling and grammar accuracy has declined over the past two years, as evidenced by the statistics of a grammar and spelling checker called Grammarly that he uses.I want to document my own decline. Like the researchers in Flowers for Algernon, they tell Charlie to keep a journal. I’m going to be my own researcher and subject. I think it’s useful to be aware of my diminishing abilities. Aging is natural, and I accept it. I’m willing to work to squeeze all I can from my dwindling resources. What’s vital is being aware of what’s happening. The real problem to fear is becoming unconscious to who we are. Like Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”The reason why Flowers for Algernon was such a magnificent story is that we’re all Charlie Gordon. We all start out dumb, get smart, and then get dumb again. Charlie just did it very fast, and that felt tragic. We do it slowly and try to ignore it’s happening. That’s also tragic.Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash Read the rest

Weed is so cheap in CA, I'm going to fill my own pre-rolls. Watching me roll a joint is like watching the Benny Hill show, but not any fun. A friend suggested this kit. I am going to try it out.The price of plain ol' weed in California has sunk a lot but pre-rolled joints are too expensive for the shake they are usually made of. This way I may purchase the cheap, good weed and make cheap, good joints.RAW Classic King Size Pre-Rolled Cones with Filter Tips - Bundle (50 Pack and Cone Loader) via Amazon Read the rest

Ashley Feinberg's "brief history of overreaction" hilariously chronicles the New York Times' current roster of columnists and their haters. Many readers of the New York Times were astonished by Bret Stephens’ Aug. 30 column, which warned that Nazi-style propaganda was on the march because he couldn’t handle being called a bedbug in a joke on Twitter. But Stephens was simply carrying on a now-familiar tradition in the opinion section: spending hundreds of words in the country’s most prominent newspaper to complain that someone was mean to the writer online. Facing the leveling effects of the internet—and especially Twitter—where anyone can make fun of anyone else, the credentialed columnists of the Times have consistently lost their sense of proportion, turning their attention away from a criminal presidency or impending ecological collapse to use their platforms to try to accomplish what normal people would do with a “lol” or the mute button. Here is a brief history of that practice under editorial page editor James Bennet, who took over the section in May 2016.My favorite word for the NYT's opinion section under Bennet is prosciutto: fancy, fragile, salty, undercooked ham. Read the rest

Famous Fortnite streamer Turner “Tfue” Tenney violated Twitch's rules against using racial slurs last night when he could be heard saying, "You guys fucking killed all the villagers, man. Y’all motherfuckers killed them niggas. You can suck my pee pee, man." This appears to be Tfue's third strike, which according to Twitch's guidelines automatically results in "indefinite suspension." But so far Twitch hasn't banned Tfue or issued a statement. After all, he's got 7 million followers there, making him the second most popular streamer on the platform. Kicking him off would put a big dent in Twitch's bank account.From The Verge:Lol tfue just said the n word pic.twitter.com/BYBQZ6PFJH— Obie (@vxobie) September 3, 2019Image: By Leon Lush - Leon Lushhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SzKHhOd9asYoutube, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Read the rest

A ridiculous show of LEGO mastery.However... Read the rest

Usually cops use ladders to save stranded kitties from trees (at least that's the myth), but last week they used one in Lake Tahoe, California, to save a baby bear. After one cub stands on its mother's back, trying to open the top of a dumpster to free another cub who is trapped inside (who knew bears were that clever!), a couple of deputies come to the rescue with said ladder. If only all cop stories were this wonderful. Via Mashable Read the rest

One can't help but think of Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias" while watching this animation of various web browsers as they rise to dominance and then collapse to obscurity.Image: r/dataisbeautiful Read the rest

This study recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association says no to drinking soft drinks. I am sure many folks will read this as "do not drink soft drinks in those 10 European countries." Association Between Soft Drink Consumption and Mortality in 10 European Countries:Findings: In this population-based cohort study of 451 743 individuals from 10 countries in Europe, greater consumption of total, sugar-sweetened, and artificially sweetened soft drinks was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality. Consumption of artificially sweetened soft drinks was positively associated with deaths from circulatory diseases, and sugar-sweetened soft drinks were associated with deaths from digestive diseases.Meaning: Results of this study appear to support ongoing public health measures to reduce the consumption of soft drinks. Read the rest

After two solid days of failure and crisis, including three lost votes and a disastrous performance at Prime Minister's Question Time, the government of Boris Johnson is already floundering badly. Now his own brother, Jo Johnson, is quitting not only his government, but his seat and the ruling Conservative party too.The business minister and Tory MP for Orpington, south-east London, cited an "unresolvable tension" in his role. Mr Johnson voted Remain in the 2016 EU membership referendum, while his brother co-led the Leave campaign.BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was "unbelievable timing".Mr Johnson's resignation follows the removal of the Tory whip from 21 MPs this week for supporting moves to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Our political editor tweeted that Mr Johnson was "understood to be upset about the purge of colleagues" and that the brothers were "in very different places" on Brexit.Today I learned that Boris Johnson's younger brother looks exactly like him, but hasn't been infected by the Bene Gesserit with a genetically-targeted STD that turns you into a pustulent floating poisoned bag of a man. Read the rest

The Mysterious Dance Company showed us how it could be done! Read the rest

Diplo? More like Dipsh*t.DJ Diplo, a.k.a. Thomas Wesley, was en route to Burning Man when this photo of him shilling fast-food fried chicken was shot: View this post on Instagram Popeye’s heard I wanted to try their sandwich so they sent me some in a jet.... Wendy’s your move.A post shared by Thomas Wesley (@diplo) on Aug 31, 2019 at 4:12pm PDTFor the stunt, Broke-Ass Stuart has awarded him "2019 Burning Man Douchebag of the Year":Burning Man is a great place for art, community, music, gifting, hedonism, self-expression, self-discovery, and self-reliance. Founded by a community who wanted an environment “unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising”, which is why we are awarding the Burning Man Douche Bag of the Year to DJ Diplo, for using the festival for corporate advertising! Diplo & Popeyes’ chicken teamed up this year to use Burning Man to market fast food... Diplo, is famous for dubstep, sexist tweets, and now for being a FuckJerry sized corporate douche. Popeye’s posed Diplo in front of a giant Popeye’s billboard, in the form of a jet, so that he could pretend he and the billboard were actually at Burning Man, and use the photo-op as an instagram marketing opportunity. He wrote, “Popeyes heard I wanted to try their sandwich so they sent me some in a jet... Wendy’s your move.” What he should have written was, “Here I am, pretending to be at Burning Man, and selling out to a corporation, sick right? Read the rest

EDM whiz Tycho has once again gifted his Burning Man sunrise DJ set by posting it for us to listen to on SoundCloud. Happy to present this year's sunrise set, live from the Dusty Rhino in Black Rock City on Thursday, August 29th, 2019. Thank you all for taking the time to share in this moment, it's truly a highlight for me to spend this morning with you each year 🙏 Big thanks and love to the Dusty Rhino crew...2019 tracks:Van Halen - 1984Boards of Canada - Alpha and OmegaTycho - Japan (Instrumental)Muddy Monk & Jimmy Whoo - DivineBakradze - Quiet LoopKarol XVII & MB Valence - AquaTycho - EasyTigerskin - This Place Is Empty Without YouOctavian - Lightning (Ross from Friends Remix)Bonobo - LinkedKiasmos - DrawnTycho - Into The WoodsLetherette - After DawnFour Tet - Evening Side (Oneohtrix Point Never Edit)You Man - BirdcageIcarus - OctoberPhotay - Illusion Of Seclusion<<>>Westerman - RoadsTourist - ElixirBicep - Opal (Four Tet Remix)Maribou State - TurnmillsTycho - JettyB. Traits NorthShoreTycho - Pink & Blue (Instrumental)Chrome Sparks - The Meaning of LoveTycho - Weather View this post on InstagramA post shared by Tycho / Scott Hansen (@tychomusic) on Aug 23, 2019 at 7:58pm PDT View this post on Instagram ‪Happy to present this year's sunrise DJ set live from the Dusty Rhino in Black Rock City, Thursday, August 29th, 2019 🌞 Thank you all for taking the time to share in this moment, it's truly a highlight for me to spend this morning with you each year 🙏‬ ‪Listen at link in profile 🔊A post shared by Tycho / Scott Hansen (@tychomusic) on Sep 2, 2019 at 7:36am PDTscreenshot via @TychomusicTycho's 2018 DJ set(Kottke) Read the rest

Or not.New rule: You haven't jumped the shark until your likeness is made into a "sexy" Halloween costume. Don't get me wrong, I love Bob Ross but I gotta think he's rolling in his grave with the existence of Yandy's "Happy Tree Painter" costume ($69.95). Art is a joy and you can't make any mistakes! Create a landscape masterpiece while wearing this Happy Tree Painter costume featuring a stretch shirt romper with a scoop neck, paint stains, button detail, and a snap crotch opening, stretch denim booty shorts with an adjustable belt, a plush squirrel, a paint pallet clutch, and an afro wig. (Paint brush not included.)The plush squirrel is a nice touch though.screenshot via Yandy Read the rest

Birdspotting looks like the ne plus ultra of walkabout games, putting the player in a remote yet pleasant section of country and handing them a pair of binoculars. It's by Joram van Loenen and Khalil Arafan and they've been working on it since January 2018.I especially like the implication in the trailer that it should be played at low resolution.Finally made some progress on the ocean shader for #birdspotting. Waves are masked with layers of noise then distorted using more noise. Foam is also composite of multiple layers multiplied with depthblend all combined with some nice planar reflection. #unity3d #indiedev #gamedev pic.twitter.com/eNNel1mg9M— 𝕵𝖔𝖗𝖆𝖒 𝖛𝖆𝖓 𝕷𝖔𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖓 (@joramvanloenen) July 13, 2019 Read the rest

I love the mindlessness of a good quest-for-loot dungeon crawler. After a long stressful day, playing one for an hour or two gets me right out of my head. They're good games! But, for me, they'll never match the gory, cartoonish charm of Torchlight and Torchlight 2. When I bought my Nintendo Switch, around this time last year, I thought about how great Torchlight 2 would be a perfect port to play on the portable (alliteration, I know. I'm afflicted). I didn't think that it would happen: the game's development studio, Runic Games, closed down in 2017. But here we are: Torchlight 2 was released for the Nintendo Switch this week. After spending a good number of hours with the port, I can tell you that playing the game on a handheld, with control sticks and buttons trumps a keyboard and mouse in every way.Playing with a joystick provided me with more of a challenge than pointing and clicking at enemies with a mouse. At the same time, it also gave me more of a challenge. Being able to map the Switch's buttons with my various abilities, spells and scrolls? Icing on the cake. Graphically, the game looks a lot tighter: but that could be more about the display resolution than anything else.My only complaint about the port is that there's no way to tinker with mods like you can with the PC version of the game. But, for $20 Canadian (so, like what: three U.S. dollars?) it's pretty hard to beat the levels of portable entertainment that Torchlight 2 on the Switch delivers. Read the rest

In 1968, Richard Proenneke left his career as a heavy equipment operator and took up an entirely new existence. He flew to a remote Alaskan lake, built a log cabin by hand, and began a life of quiet self-reliance. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll hear Proenneke's reflections on a simple life lived in harmony with nature.We'll also put a rooster on trial and puzzle over a curious purchase.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

This video shows two fellows building a small cabin out of pallet wood, hand tools and cinematic depth-of-field, but no dialog whatsoever. We build a cheap off grid cabin using free pallet wood. We saved money building the pallet wood cabin by using recycled pallets. This is a great off grid wilderness project as pallet wood is light and easy to carry into the forest. It is also easy to work with using hand tools. Many people do not have the space, time or money to build a log cabin. But building a tiny home off grid is still achievable using cheap or even free materials, and that is where pallet wood works so well. Although only small, this one man cabin has a raised bed, folding table, bookshelf and chair - all made from pallet wood. We fit it out with a woodstove to heat it through the winter months and we installed a pipe cooking oven and water tank to boil water and cook food on. The stove heats the cabin up really fast as the cabin is only small. This small hut in the woods has no electricity or power, but that isn't needed. Be sure to check the markings first, even if you're just making a coffee table. Also, be sure that the cost of making pallet wood last six weeks outdoors where you live isn't greater than the cost of just buying pressure-treated lumber. But now I'm ruining it for everyone!P.S. let's make a short horror movie that starts off as one of these "making something out in the woods with no narration" videos but gets progressively stranger until it's clear They are Here. Read the rest

The so-called Islamic State no longer has the resources to go toe-to-toe with a well trained and equipped army, but its capacity for insurgency and guerrilla warfare is still on point. From The National Post:SIL has been reluctant to use humans to carry bombs because of the group’s reduced numbers, so it has tried out a new tactic: Bovine suicide bombers.Residents of Al Islah, Iraq, on Saturday said they had witnessed “a strange” sight: two cows harnessed to explosive vests roving the northern side of the village, according to Col. Ghalib Al-Atyia, the spokesman for the police commander in Diyala province.The animals wandered into the outskirts of the community, and when they seemed close to houses, the bombs were detonated remotely, killing the cows, and damaging nearby houses, but not harming any people, Al-Atyia said.In the colonel’s assessment, the attack signalled that ISIL, whose ranks were sharply reduced by the group’s four-year fight against Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. special forces, was resorting to unconventional methods since they lacked manpower.Exploding cows! A nightmare right out of Fallout 2! Also, It’s horrible.In addition to the fact that an animal can’t choose to become a living weapon as it lack free will, a cow can cost well over a thousand dollars in Iraq—a small fortune by Iraqi standards. The loss of a cow to ISIL’s cause can mean no milk and a whole lot less meat for a village’s worth of people. The National Post notes that the cows were most likely donated to the poor man’s answer to COBRA by villages sympathetic to the so-called Islamic State’s cause. Read the rest

"Alice Campion" is the pseudonym used by a group of Australian writers -- who, back in 2013, published their first collectively-written book, The Painted Sky. Five of them wrote the first book, and four continued on to collaborate on Alice Campion's next one, The Shifting Light.In The New Yorker, Ceridwen Dovey profiles "The Alices", as they call themselves, as well as some other groups of collaborative novel-writers. And Dovey asks an interesting question: "So why are group-written novels so rare?"Aesthetically, of course, the challenge is whether a group of people can all write in the style of a single person. The Alices seem to have pulled it off -- at least, according to their publisher, who loved the "unified voice" and couldn't put it down. And as Dovey points out, plenty of collaborative art surmounts this challenge. Scripts for TV shows are products of writer's rooms, a lot of songs are co-written, and everyone figures out how to work in single style. There are some intriguing technical challenges in collaborating on a text as long as a novel. Version control is a nightmare; you've got to keep so many little contributions that I'm almost surprised the Alices don't use Github. (Instead, they appointed one of their group to be "the 'sacred kow,' or Keeper of the Words", fulfilling a function sort of like Linus Torvalds in the early period of Linux.) The thing is, these technical and aesthetic challenges are all surmountable. The real reason more novels aren't written collaboratively, Dovey argues, are cultural. Read the rest

Whether it's chronic muscle stiffness or the soreness that comes from an epic workout, there are some pains that can't be soothed by those automatic massage chairs. If you haven't tried a handheld massager, they can be a lifesaver - and the Vortix Muscle Massager aims to be the go-to therapy tool no matter what your aches are.If it looks like an industrial tool, it's because this thing means business. It comes with a variety of massage tips: Two ball massagers and a cone tip. These allow you to target problem areas with pinpoint pressure or broad waves of relief. And with six speeds, you can pick your intensity. Need a gentle approach for sensitive areas? A firmer attack for deep fatigue? The Vortix comes with six speeds that slowly ramp up the torque and vibration frequency according to your needs.And it turns out there's an equal dose of relief on the price. The Vortix Muscle Massager is currently on sale for 57% off the retail price at $170. Read the rest

The Most Dangerous Writing App is a simple, attractive text editor on the web. But there's a twist to Manuel Ebert's design: if you stop typing before 5 minutes is up, your work starts to fade, and if you don't start again immediately, it disappears completely. It's not absolute—you can copy your work out of the box, and it's not bugging you with a spellchecker to stop you going klsdafjgh alskdfjhasd kjfh to get through moments of block. But you are gonna be typing all the same, and that's the point.Do you write your best content under some pressure? Well, I wrote an app for that: https://t.co/9VM3JGe2Rc #MDWA pic.twitter.com/OWuqHtmj2p— Manuel Ebert (@maebert) February 29, 2016 Read the rest

It's not clear to me why the driver of this car didn't just drive through the plastic barriers and avoid having her car destroyed by a train engine. Maybe her car stalled at the worst possible place? Read the rest

“When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found,” tweeted Basecamp CEO and co-founder Jason Fried, yesterday, along with the funny ad he bought to show up in Google's search results.When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom. But at least we can have fun with it. Search for Basecamp and you may see this attached ad. pic.twitter.com/c0oYaBuahL— Jason Fried (@jasonfried) September 3, 2019From CNBC:In a statement, a Google spokeswoman said the company prohibits the use of trademarked terms in the text of an ad if the owner files a complaint. “Our trademark policy balances the interests of users, advertisers and trademark owners,” the statement said. “To provide users with the most relevant ads, we don’t restrict trademarked terms as keywords. We do, however, restrict trademarked terms in ad text if the trademark owner files a complaint.”The CEO of Shopify, Tobias Lutke, shared and weighed in on Fried’s tweet.“It’s totally crazy for google to get away with charging what’s basically protection money on your own brand name,” he wrote. ”‘Nice high intend traffic you got there, would be a shame if something were to happen to it.’” Read the rest

Jacob Wohl is among the more baffling right-wing grifters to grace social media. So inept and comical are his antics (framing politians for impossible crimes, false claims of location belied by the selfies in which the claims are made, claiming to overhear hipsters in coffee shops admit to conservative beliefs, etc) that he's become a figure of fun online. The fun is over; he's being indicted. Wohl and former business partner Matthew Johnson were both charged with the unlawful sale of securities in a Riverside Superior Court criminal complaint filed on Aug. 19. Wohl has not been arrested yet on the charge, according to the court docket. Prosecutors recommended $5,000 bonds for both Wohl and Johnson.The allegation that Wohl and Johnson unlawfully sold securities centers on one of Wohl’s financial companies, Montgomery Assets. A warrant application filed by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office notes that the three-year statute of limitations on the case was set to expire at the end of August 2019, meaning prosecutors had to file by the end of last month if they wanted to pursue charges.Behind the blundering and ridiculous claims, Wohl has been accused of at least one horrible small-time fraud by a person to whom the money -- peanuts to rich-kid Wohl but years of savings to them -- will likely never be recovered. He's a nasty son of a bastard and, all things considered, no joke.Update: Wohl's arrest warrant was rescinded after he appeared in court today and was released on his own recognizance, pending arraignment next month. Read the rest

Today was a bad day in court for Alex Jones and Infowars, who lost an appeal in the defamation case brought against them by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Jones had accused the parents of lying as part of his conspiracy theories concerning the event. The appeal was in regards to Infowars' efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed as frivolous; it may now proceed after months of delay.Infowars filed its now-dismissed appeal one day after Sandy Hook parent Neil Heslin filed a motion for contempt against Infowars as part of an ongoing legal battle against the outlet, which in 2017 broadcast claims that Heslin argued were meant to insinuate that he lied about holding his murdered son’s body and to subject him to harassment and emotional damage by those who believe Sandy Hook was a “false flag” conspiracy—a conspiracy theory advanced by the host of an Infowars program and amplified by Jones himself. Heslin had filed a motion for expedited discovery and a motion for sanctions against defendants Jones, Infowars employee Owen Shroyer, Free Speech Systems LLC, and Infowars LLC, after it was revealed that Jones had ordered Infowars employees to remove “social media pages and video content relating to the Sandy Hook shooting” from the internet. Jones and his lawyers had previously filed a motion to have Heslin’s lawsuit dismissed under the Texas Citizens Participation Act, a 2011 Texas law meant to aid individuals facing a frivolous lawsuits, but the judge hearing the case agreed with Heslin’s argument that Infowars’ efforts to delete content relevant to his case had hampered his ability to respond to Infowars’ motion to dismiss. Read the rest

Get over it! Despite the mockers and complainers, and even attempts to make it illegal to perambulate while looking at your own damned phone, science concludes that the risks of it are negligible. As part of the mandated study, the DOT conducted an in-depth review of written crash narratives in the city between 2014 and 2017. They found just .2 percent of reports made any mention of pedestrians using electronic devices. In one of those cases, the victim was actually reaching to pick up a dropped cell phone when they were fatally struck by a driver.Those numbers bore out at the national level as well. According to the last six years of available federal data, fatalities involving the use of portable electronic devices by pedestrians represented between 0 and .2 percent of pedestrian deaths.Phones are to cars as video games are to guns. Read the rest

The wife of a West Virginia pastor apparently wanted to shoot another woman, but the Pastor realized her intent as she stormed out of the Church to fetch her pistol. Her husband followed her to her car where a single shot was fired, in the Church parking lot. Reportedly they wrestled for the weapon.Newsweek:According to authorities, Melinda walked out of the church during the disagreement and went to her car in the parking lot, where she got her handgun.Realizing what she intended, Earl and followed her outside.Willis reports Pastor Toney intercepted his wife before she was able to come back inside the church and attempted to wrestle the gun out of her hand. The weapon fired a single shot during the struggle, but nobody was hurt.Haywood, who was leaving the church when the gun discharged, called the police and told them that she was Toney's intended target. The department reviewed parking-lot surveillance video but could not determine whether the pistol was aimed at Haywood before it was fired.Image via the NEW LIFE APOSTOLIC CHURCH Read the rest

Meet Chanel Miller, the woman who was Emily Doe in the trial of rapist Brock Turner, a man treated with absurd leniency by the courts.The New York Times:For four years, the woman whose Stanford University sexual assault case caused a public outcry, has been known only as “Emily Doe.” In her new memoir, “Know My Name,” which charts her life since then, she reveals her real name: Chanel Miller.In 2016, Ms. Miller’s case made headlines after BuzzFeed published the statement she read at the sentencing hearing for Brock Turner, the Stanford student convicted of the assault.Mr. Turner, then 20, was found guilty of three counts of felony sexual assault, for which the maximum sentence was 14 years. But the presiding judge, Aaron Persky, sentenced Mr. Turner to six months in county jail, of which he served three.Here's an excerpt from the book's introduction:Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways--there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. Read the rest

Kaiser Kuo (previously) is one of the best-informed, most incisive commentators on China -- he's a Chinese-American (literal) rock star, entrepreneur and writer whose presentations on China I've been privileged to attend several times, and each one was insightful, surprising and nuanced.Kuo recently took to Quora to conduct a kind of masterclass on contemporary Chinese politics, authoritarianism, liberalism and dissidence; he's edited this together into a long, beautifully argued piece that tries to answer the question, "Why do Chinese people like their government?"The short answer is "it's the economy, stupid." The dissolute rulers of pre-Revolutionary China governed badly, and between their wealth hoarding and colonial extraction by the British, China was a deeply unequal place whose political instability tipped over into revolution. But the post-Revolutionary Chinese catastrophes -- the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution -- left tens of millions dead and scarred the psyches of hundreds of millions of others.The market reforms of the Deng era changed that, creating massive, sustained growth and (less unequal, but still imperfectly distributed) prosperity. The result is a kind of bargain between the authoritarian technocrats of the Chinese state and its people: "let us govern as we wish, and we will keep chaos at bay and sustain the growth that is lifting you out of poverty." As Kuo notes, this is the opposite of the American doctrine of Benjamin Franklin: "Anyone who would trade a little freedom for a little personal safety deserves neither freedom nor safety."This explains why anti-corruption programs are so popular (and why corruption scandals are so politically consequential), even if they hint at the political purges of the Cultural Revolution; it explains why Chinese censorship is so focused on social order and preventing online dissent from erupting into physical manifestations of political anger. Read the rest

The wonderful folks at Paleotronic (previously) have rounded up scans of articles from 1980s-era computer magazines that advised new computer users on navigating the burgeoning world of dial-up BBSes.Dial-ups were my introduction to networked computing. We had an acoustic coupler and teletype connected to a PDP at the University of Toronto in 1977 when I was 6, but it wasn't until we got an Apple ][+ and a Hayes modem card in 1979 that the world opened up for me. That system didn't have enough expansion slots to accommodate all the cards we had for it, so installing the modem meant swapping out the 80 column card, which meant that we lost access to lower-case characters when we were online. My modem days started out in ALL CAPS.Within a couple years, my friends and I were inveigling our parents to drive us to one anothers' houses with our computers and modems for all-night dial-up runs through Toronto's BBSes. By the late 1980s, there were multiple local systems that bridged into Fidonet and then (through Tim Pozar and Tom Jennings's gateway) into Usenet. Then I started to dial The WELL in San Francisco after reading about it in Reality Hackers (the precursor to Mondo 2000), and rang up some gigantic long-distance bills, until the University of Toronto started offering paid dialup shells to its General Purpose Unix system, and telnet became an option. Right from the start, dial-up systems were a gateway to physical meetups: SCA nights making chainmail; hormonal teen mass get-togethers for the Free Access Network chat system; rollicking dinners with the denizens of the Pyroto Mountains; face-to-face meetups for Magic and TVOnline. Read the rest

Now THIS is podracing. Read the rest

Sidewalk Labs is Google's sister company that sells "smart city" technology; its showcase partner is Toronto, my hometown, where it has made a creepy shitshow out of its freshman outing, from the mass resignations of its privacy advisors to the underhanded way it snuck in the right to take over most of the lakeshore without further consultations (something the company straight up lied about after they were outed). Unsurprisingly, the city, the province, the country, and the company are all being sued over the plan.Toronto Life has run a great, large package of short essays by proponents and critics of the project, from Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff (no, really, that's his name) to former privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian (who evinces an unfortunate belief in data-deidentification) to city councillor and former Greenpeace campaigner Gord Perks to urban guru Richard Florida to me.I wrote about the prospect that a city could be organized around the principle that people are sensors, not things to be sensed -- that is, imagine an internet of things that doesn't relegate the humans it notionally serves to the status of "thing."Our cities are necessarily complex, and they benefit from sensing and control. From census tracts to John Snow’s 19th-century map of central London cholera infections, we have been gathering telemetry on the performance of our cities in order to tune and optimize them for hundreds of years. As cities advance, they demand ever-higher degrees of sensing and actuating. But smart cities have to be built by cities themselves, democratically controlled and publicly owned. Read the rest

Kim Kelly is Teen Vogue's labor columnist and has written a series of excellent pieces on labor politics for the #resistance glossy.Kelly has had a distinguished career as a journalist and a labor organizer (she led the union drive at Vice) and has incredibly smart things to say about labor politics in the current moment. KIM KELLY: That’s a big question, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think the Green New Deal is a good start, but that’s assuming that we can even make it work. I think it’s very easy to understand why people in these industries are scared. If you’re going to work every day, trying to feed your family, trying to just get through life, and then it seems like everyone is screaming at you about how you’re killing the planet, your job is a problem, it needs to be legislated out of existence, of course you’re going to push back to that because it’s easy to make grand proclamations and talk about big solutions, but it’s really hard to make your rent. There’s a disconnect there, and I think that’s something that really – I think the labor movement needs to really be rallying around these workers and actually putting in the effort to create infrastructure that will lead to a just transition.You can’t just send a couple of people with laptops down to teach people in West Virginia how to code. That’s something that you can do, but that can’t be all of it. Read the rest

I've always been fascinated with dumpster diving: my first feature sale to Wired (21 years ago!) told the tale of Darren Atkinson, the most successful high-tech diver I know.In Germany (where 18 million tons of food are thrown away every year), a subculture of anticonsumerist activists have turned dumpster diving into a political act, defying a law that treats trash as private property and dumpster diving as theft.Senior dumpster divers are giving masterclasses to young, would-be divers, explicitly linking the activity to a wider anticapitalist project and supplying intensely practical advice (watch out for broken glass because dumpster-borne pathogens are gross; don't make noise lest the neighbors call the cops; if you think the food is spoiled, leave it because there's plenty more; don't hop fences or gates because that is a pretense for a trespassing bust).The legal prohibition on dumpster diving was challenged by Hamburg's city-state justice minister, Till Stephens (Green Party), but the national legislature voted down his reforms, citing hygiene, the slippery slope to theft, and other thin excuses.Where Stephens failed, a young radical lawyer named Max Malkus may succeed: he's representing "Caro" and "Franzi," two pseudonymous divers who were convicted to theft in January. Malkus is running an appeal, arguing that the law is unconstitutional (Malkus dives himself).Recently, though, prosecutors elected to discontinue one case of garbage theft, partly thanks to the efforts of lawyers like Max Malkus. The 29-year-old believes dumpster diving is legal -- for personal reasons, because he himself dumpster dives, but also for professional ones, since he represents other divers as well. Read the rest

My wife recently expressed an interest in learning how to use Final Cut Pro to do a bit of video editing to record her dives and time on trail when she’s out in the wilderness doing her thing. We already own the software, so no problem there. However, she’s rocking a 2012 11” MacBook Air: a hand-me-down laptop that I gifted her a few years back when I bought a new MacBook Pro. It just doesn’t have the guts to work with high resolution video in a meaningful way. Happily, instead of having to discuss the purchase of a new computer for her, I was able to suggest that she switch over to using my MacBook Pro, instead. Of late, I’ve been doing most of my photo editing, tinkering video and other processor heavy work with the late model laptop issued to me by my employer. The only time I ever use my personal Mac is when I’m working on my novel or to transfer music or movies to my phone.I spent the day setting my MacBook Pro—now my wife’s MacBook Pro—with all of her files and the software she’ll need to do what she wants to do. While that was getting sorted out, I turned my attention to the 11” MacBook Air. I’ve always loved the size of this thing and, despite the amount of space taken up by its sinfully large display bezels, I used to enjoy working on it. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever owned a computer that I’ve enjoyed using more. Read the rest

Kristen Stewart, in a wide-ranging interview with Harper's Bazaar, says she was told to hide her sexuality if she wanted to get a Marvel movie role. Stewart identifies as bisexual and has publicly dated both men and women.If she can make the conversation about sexuality easier for anyone, she’s happy. She also couldn’t care less about the impact any of this might have on her career. In the past, she says, "I have fully been told, 'If you just like do yourself a favour, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie.'" She looks almost amused at the memory. "I don’t want to work with people like that." Now, by contrast, people approach her, drawn to that undefined sexuality, wanting to make movies about it. Stewart shakes her head in mock despair. "Literally, life is a huge popularity contest." Hollywood is, contrary to media myth, a deeply conservative place. In fact, the most distinctively liberal thing about is how its presents its homophobia as something it is forced to do by conservatives. Read the rest

With Labor Day in our rear view for another year, it's time to get back to work after a much-deserved long weekend. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is out there already, working for you.For the record, the AFSCME is a labor union that's been standing up for the rights and dignity of its members since 1932. Nothing but respect.Image via Flickr, courtesy of ufcw770 Read the rest

China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office hosted a press conference on the ongoing Hong Kong pro-democracy uprising, with spokesman Yang Guang directing every branch and agency of Hong Kong's government (including airports, universities, and the public transit system) to attack the protests, promising "Especially to those key violent criminals and their backstage masterminds, organisers and agitators, [we] must show no mercy and pursue till the end."Yang doubled down on Beijing's autocratic policy of disqualifying electoral candidates it does not deem sufficiently loyal to the central government, a spectacular misreading of the moment, in which ever-larger swathes of Hong Kong's educated, wealthy class are joining the rank-and-file to protest the heavy-handed actions of Carrie Lam, the figurehead installed by Beijing in the last (sham) elections (Lam was forced to finally withdraw her signature legislation -- a rule allowing political dissidents to be extradited for trial on the mainland -- this week).Through its party mouthpiece People’s Daily, Beijing has in recent weeks criticised the city’s railway operator, the MTR Corporation, for not forcefully dealing with protesters who had been obstructing its trains and using them as an easy means to flee from police.Yang also hinted that any revival of the city’s stalled electoral reform process must be based on a framework that would effectively allow Beijing to screen out candidates it did not deem trustworthy.“Only with that framework can it produce a chief executive who loves the nation and Hong Kong, is trustworthy to the central government and accepted by Hong Kong people through universal suffrage,” he said. Read the rest

I'm a pencil fanatic, who sits around reading pencil blogs and meditating on my favorite pencil sharpeners. (Mark once filmed me gushing about the Kum long-point pencil sharpener packaged by the folks at Blackwing.) I buy all the reissued Blackwing pencils, too. I've got it bad.When it comes to back-to-school pencils for my kids, where you want to buy in quantity, my faves are these ForestChoice ones -- acquirable in big 144-count boxes, enough for an entire school year. I just got this box delivered.They're lovely pencils -- a smooth and soft lead, with a satiny, almost buttery finish that makes them a joy to write with. When you buy them in a 144-count box, they're about 26 cents apiece: Much pricier than 10-cents-a-pop Ticondera pencils, but way more than double the quality in writing pleasure. Read the rest

I was familiar with the little, silver "you are beautiful" stickers (and have gifted many of them) but this swell yard sign was new to me. You Are Beautiful started as a passion project in 2002 with 100 stickers, with a goal to help people feel better every day. The project was run (and all orders were shipped) out of a two car garage until 2018. YAB HQ was then opened in Chicago, offering a retail store front (open to the public daily), as well as housing our studio where we build our installations. We are extremely grateful for the global community who has supported this message, and helped spread millions of stickers, art murals, & installations far and wide - all with the goal to add a little positivity to the world.$25 at the "You Are Beautiful" store.(swissmiss) Read the rest

The bad news: Summer - and the beach excuses that come with it - are coming to an end. The good news: Labor Day sales are here to soften the blow. Take advantage of the right deals, and you could be spending that extra day off breaking in a new household widget you've been pining for.In fact, you can start right now. Here are 10 tech innovations that almost anybody can use, and anyone can afford.EarDial: The Invisible Smart Earplugs for Live MusicWant to live in the now but keep a little insurance for the future? Wear these super-discreet plugs to concerts or clubs. They'll protect against ear-damaging sound while still keeping things clear, thanks to a high-def noise filter. They even come with an app that can let you know when ambient sound is getting loud enough to warrant their use, and how long you can safely stay around it.They were sale priced at $21.99, but you can now get EarDial: The Invisible Smart Earplugs for Live Music for $19.99, almost 40% off the original cost. iPM World 360-Degree 1080p Wireless IP Security CameraThis high-tech watchdog is infinitely quieter than the real thing, offering 360-degree views of any room that you can control remotely with your smartphone. Day or night, you're covered thanks to the camera's infrared mode. And the video is encrypted with multiple protocols for that extra dose of security.The iPM World 360-Degree 1080p Wireless IP Security Camera is now on sale for $44.99, down 65% from the MSRP. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Super-Fun-Pak Comix features Gibbon the Ocelot, Guy Walks into a Bar, and MUCH MORE!!

Every year at the Hugo Awards, a lucky writer is given the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, named for the noted sf editor and fascist John W Campbell, whose editorials in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction lamented the demise of slavery, cheered the murder of the Kent State 4, advocated violent reprisals over the Watts Uprising, and promoted Dianetics (Campbell wasn't just a racist kook: he was several kinds of kook).This year, Campbell Award winner Jeannette Ng correctly described Campbell as a fascist in her acceptance speech, and attracted no small amount of racially charged condemnations from sf fans who were nostalgic for the Campbell days.Luckily, the management of Dell Magazines -- which sponsors the Campbell Award -- were more intellectually honest, and last week, they announced that they'd be changing the name of the award to the Astounding Award, which is great, even if it means that in years to come, the Hugo program and ballot will celebrate "The Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the Campbell Award) (not a Hugo Award)." Speaking as a winner of both Campbell Awards (I think I'm the only one!), I'm grateful to Ng for her bravery and intellectual rigor. Well done!Though Campbell’s impact on the field is undeniable, we hope that the conversation going forward is nuanced. George Santayana’s proverbial phrase remains as true today as when it was coined: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We neither want to paper over the flaws of those who have come before us, nor reduce them to caricatures. Read the rest

My latest Locus Magazine column is DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we'd all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book for an hour-long plane ride), but instead (unsurprisingly) everything got more expensive and less capable.For 40 years, University of Chicago-style market orthodoxy has promised widespread prosperity as a natural consequence of turning everything into unfettered, unregulated, monopolistic businesses. For 40 years, everyone except the paymasters who bankrolled the University of Chicago's priesthood have gotten poorer.Today, DRM stands as a perfect example of everything terrible about monopolies, surveillance, and shareholder capitalism.The established religion of markets once told us that we must abandon the idea of owning things, that this was an old fashioned idea from the world of grubby atoms. In the futuristic digital realm, no one would own things, we would only license them, and thus be relieved of the terrible burden of ownership.They were telling the truth. We don’t own things anymore. This summer, Microsoft shut down its ebook store, and in so doing, deactivated its DRM servers, rendering every book the company had sold inert, unreadable. To make up for this, Microsoft sent refunds to the custom­ers it could find, but obviously this is a poor replacement for the books themselves. When I was a bookseller in Toronto, noth­ing that happened would ever result in me breaking into your house to take back the books I’d sold you, and if I did, the fact that I left you a refund wouldn’t have made up for the theft. Read the rest

Hong Kong's democratic uprising has been a long masterclass in high-tech protest tactics (and the hits keep coming).But Beijing and the HK police force aren't sitting idly by: they've started bombing protestors with fluorescent powder that can be identified later with UV lights.Hong Kong police dropped fluorescent powder from a helicopter to people who rally for democracy. It’s visible under UV light, and useful to tag protesterspic.twitter.com/EFOYmoIDJ4— Alfons López Tena #FBPE (@alfonslopeztena) September 2, 2019These authoritarian measures are backfiring. new research from Samson Yuen at The Conversation reveals that protesters -- overwhelmingly well-educated professionals -- are becoming radicalized, specifically citing police violence as their reason for turning out.The protesters want city administrator/Beijing figurehead Carrie Lam to resign, but that's just for starters. They view Lam as the visible symbol of deep structural problems with Hong Kong's relationship with mainland China. The Umbrella Revolution -- HK's last uprising -- was deeply divided over tactics, specifically whether militant tactics including property damage and self-defense against police beatings were acceptable.That division has largely vanished: the protesters have seen the police respond to nonviolent protest with all-out violent attacks, and they've largely abandoned hope that nonviolence will get them the reforms they're seeking.Protesters overwhelmingly identify themselves as being in solidarity with one another, and they also overwhelmingly favor more militant, intense tactics for future demonstrations. They do not expect the government to make any meaningful concessions, either. In the meantime, artists like Oliver Chang are reviving the iconography of Tiananmen Square (Thanks, Matteo! Read the rest

You know what's great about putting wifi-enabled, Turing-complete computers into things like lightbulbs? Not. A. Single. Fucking. Thing.In the latest installment in the Internet of Shit edition of the unanticipated (but totally predictable) consequences, Americablog editor John Aravosis discovered that the Philips Hue lightbulbs he returned to Amazon were now on in someone else's house -- but still under his control.He discovered this because the new owner, "Amanda Jean," initialized the bulbs, and then his Hue app started to send him a stream of updates from Amanda Jean's house, along with the address for her IoT hub and her email address.He writes, "Because I’m a nice guy, I deleted my account, which I’m hoping didn’t just delete her account."So, it seems the Philips Hue light bulbs I returned to Amazon are still somewhat under my control, even though some woman named Amanda Jean has now bought them. At least I can see her Bridge, her name and email. All a bit odd. Am I going to forever get updates about her acct?— John Aravosis 🇺🇸 (@aravosis) August 30, 2019(Image: Cryteria, CC BY, modified) Read the rest

For decades, architectural critic and photographer John Margolies obsessively documented roadside attractions: vernacular architecture, weird sculpture, odd businesses and amusements. By his death in 2016, his collection consisted of more than 11,000 slides (he published books of his favorites, with annotations).The Library of Congress purchased the Margolies archive and has released it to the public domain, with hi-rez scans of 11,710 slides.Almost all of Margolies’ work was done in the interest of preserving images of what would otherwise be lost to time. Even his first book, published in 1981, was elegiacally called The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America. From the start, Margolies knew the quirky motels, miniature golf courses, diners, billboards, and gas stations were being endangered by franchising and changing fashions — not to mention changing patterns of automobile traffic. (For decades now, most drivers have, of course, opted for the high speed-limits of superhighways and the convenience of service areas, leaving the old local highways in the lurch.)John Margolies’ Photographs of Roadside America [Public Domain Review]John Margolies [Library of Congress] Roadside America [Library of Congress/Flickr Commons](Thanks, @ridetheory!) Read the rest