I am addicted to Shannon Messenger's Keeper of Lost Cities series. Everblaze continues the saga of seriously reluctant hero Sophie Foster.Sophie was abducted from her human family by elves who claim she is one. Unwittingly Sophie has averted genocide, provided a long-awaited hope for the future, and somehow convinced the elves not to ruthlessly murder the people who raised her.Sophie was cruelly rejected by her elven Foster family and has suffered so many other indignities in the first two books it is shocking. In Everblaze, Sophie fucks some shit up.Ignoring the ONE RULE they gave her about being a telepath, Sophie nearly starts an interspecies war by invading the mind of the Ogre King. This comes shortly after Sophie participates in the near destruction of the Elven capital. It looks like she is starting to blossom!These books are fantastic!Everblaze, Book 3 in Shannon Messenger's Keeper of the Lost Cities series via Amazon Read the rest

Good news everybody: Apple's really sorry about recording our conversations with Siri. In a statement issued earlier today, the company's talking heads stated that they realized that the '...haven’t been fully living up to our high ideals'. The letter goes on to say that, to make up for their eavesdropping shenanigans, Apple's going to be making a few changes to how Siri does its thing.From Apple:First, by default, we will no longer retain audio recordings of Siri interactions. We will continue to use computer-generated transcripts to help Siri improve.Second, users will be able to opt in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples of their requests. We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better, knowing that Apple respects their data and has strong privacy controls in place. Those who choose to participate will be able to opt out at any time.Third, when customers opt in, only Apple employees will be allowed to listen to audio samples of the Siri interactions. Our team will work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger of SiriThis of course, is great news for anyone that uses Apple's Siri voice assistant. Unfortunately, that less people will be needed to snoop on the conversations between the companies customers and their tech likely means that some resources will need to be shifted around in order to accomoda—wait, what?From The Guardian:Hundreds of Apple workers across Europe who were employed to check Siri recordings for errors have lost their jobs after the company announced it was suspending the programme earlier this month. Read the rest

It is all the fake media, she says."No. I don't believe the President has lied."Trump campaign national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tells @ChrisCuomo President Trump has never lied to the country. pic.twitter.com/oSlLHZ4h0m— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) August 29, 2019 Read the rest

There's an AI algorithmic technique known as "Progressive Face Super-Resolution", which can take low-rez photos of people's faces and enhance them into higher-rez versions.It's actually a rather unsettling development for public privacy, as Futurism points out, because it means it's increasingly possible to take grainy surveillance-cam pictures and produce detailed pictures. (Or even more worryingly, I'd add, it'll produce pictures that have seeming realism but are in fact inaccurate up-rezzings of the low-rez pictures, thus misidentifying innocent people. These days, some AI's biggest dangers come not from its omnipotent successes but from its clown-show failures ... particularly when authorities can't tell the difference, or don't care.)Anyway! Over at I Forced A Bot, Jonathan Fly wondered what would happen if he used Progressive Face Super-Resolution to increase the resolution of emoji.Super freaky results, as it turns out! Fly used it on Twitter emoji, and the result is the picture above. As he writes:Because this model is trained specifically to look for facial landmarks it will take any excuse to draw eyes and nostrils on a pixel. And I’m pretty sure the pepperoni on that pizza is made out of human lips… 😶Here are a few more of Fry's transformed Twitter emoji ...I'm gonna have trouble getting to sleep tonight. Read the rest

DC makes some fabulous animated movies and their television programming has, even where budget has been a concern, been pretty good (I still cry over Constantine and what could have been, however). I've been way less thrilled with the last few DC Universe movies, however. Batman vs. Superman, Justice League and Aquaman weren't to my liking. I've got high hopes for The Batman movie though. Between now and when filming is complete on what will hopefully be a gem of a film featuring the Dark Knight Detective, I've got my hopes fixed on Joker. It looks dark as hell, complex and, with a stellar cast including Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro and Zazie Beetz, could well be worth forking over $40 for a ticket and popcorn to see in the theater.We won't have to wait long to find out if it's as great as it looks. Joker'll be released this October. Read the rest

In an effort to reduce the amount of false and extremist content pushed to viewers, Google's video platform YouTube will adjust its presentation algorithm for UK users. YouTube tried a similar algorithm tweak in the US recently, and recommendations of such ‘borderline’ videos were cut by 50%.After six months of the US trial, YouTube says recommendation-led views to extremist content fell by half. Because the trial was so effective, it will now be extended to the UK, Ireland, South Africa “and other English-language markets”, says Susan Wojicki.According to the video sharing site’s chief executive, Susan Wojcicki, the move is intended to give quality content “more of a chance to shine” and has the effect of reducing views from recommendations by 50%.YouTube has long taken action against content that violates the site’s policies, removing infringing videos and issuing “strikes” against creators that can ultimately result in them being blocked from uploading new videos.But only recently has the company moved against content that, in Wojcicki’s words, “brushes right up against our policy line”. This sort of content is the bedrock of the fear that YouTube is a driver of extremist views worldwide: the combination of borderline content and a recommendation algorithm that rewards the most engaging content can, critics argue, cause audiences to spiral towards more radical viewing.YouTube first took action against borderline content in the US earlier this year, and focused on videos that “could misinform users in harmful ways – such as videos promoting a phoney miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11”. Read the rest

Exhibit A is this tweet, from the President of the United States of America, angered at the presence of criticism on his favorite channel:Exhibit B is this almost-plaintive response from Fox News anchor Brit Hume, not quite able to plainly say Fox News doesn't work for him, but at least managing to say it isn't supposed to work for him.Exhibit C is all the responses to Brit Hume from angry Fox News viewers, which don't need to be embedded here, or even read, because you already know exactly what they say. Read the rest

Be still my heart. There's a cereal bowl that lets you listen to the snap, crackle, and pop of your Rice Krispies! I'm just hearing about it but apparently the "Snap Crack and Pop Amplifier Cereal Bowl" was designed by Dominic Wilcox back in 2015: Kellogg’s challenged artist and designer Dominic Wilcox to make breakfast more interesting and fun for families and children going back to school in September. Over the course of 10 weeks he designed 7 inventions and prototypes from a robot spoon to a head worn cereal serving device.The sound of Rice Krispies popping is a well known sound for many breakfast eaters, particularly from their childhood. Instead of hearing a quiet snap crackle and pop why not increase the sound? This technological cereal bowl amplifies the sound of Rice Krispies using a microphone and volume control. Simply fill the bowl with Rice Krispies, pour in the milk, with on the bowl and increase the volume of the pops by turning the dial."Well, turn it up, man!"Check out Dominic's other neat-o inventions at his website.(Dude I Want That)Thanks a million, Kent! Read the rest

I am a sucker for a good flowchart; furthermore, a fan of hand-drawn infographics; and also a partisan of overly-systematized grammatical guides.So this chart on how and when to capitalize headlines, created by Publishers Weekly managing editor Dan Berchenko -- and published by The Millions -- lands perfectly in the tiny Venn overlap of these three passions. Read the rest

The New York Times reports that the DNC has whittled the Dem field down to 10 candidates—enough to fit on a single stage for the next debate—after another round of dismal polling for the tail-end vanity candidates.• Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.• Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey• Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.• Julián Castro, the former housing secretary• Senator Kamala Harris of California• Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota• Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas• Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont• Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts• Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur Pause to consider how overwhelmingly important it is to lower-ranked Dem candidates to be on that privately-owned, legacy-media stage. Read the rest

Your home is your castle, but that doesn't mean it has to be cold and stony. The summer is almost over, and that means the Labor Day sales are nigh. Here are 10 essential home accessories you never knew you needed, and you can take 15% off the final price (including any stated discounts). Just enter the code SAVE15HOME at checkout.EcoQube C AquariumThis ingenious mini-aquarium gives you serenity without the maintenance. Its aquaponic filtration system uses a plant to soak up fish waste and use it as fertilizer, meaning there are no filters to change and the water stays clean indefinitely. Get the EcoQube C Aquarium for $99.99, more than 40% off the list price. (15% discount code: SAVE15HOME)Comfort Linen Ultra Soft 1800 Series Bamboo-Blend Sheets: 4-Piece SetMade from a 40% blend of bamboo fiber, these sheets come with hypoallergenic properties that also make them breathable and wrinkle-free. Pick up the entire four-piece set of Comfort Linen Ultra Soft 1800 Series Bamboo-Blend Sheets for $25.99, down 84% from the MSRP. (15% discount code: SAVE15HOME)ECOVACS DEEBOT 901 Robotic Vacuum-CleanerThis vacuum bot is equipped with Smart Navi Mapping to find its way around obstacles all on its own, but there are enough customization options to suit any control freak. Set virtual boundaries, assign areas and cleaning schedules - even adjust the suction mode to the job, all with the companion app or through voice-activated smart home devices. Previously sale-priced for $309, the ECOVACS DEEBOT 901 Robotic Vacuum-Cleaner is now half off the original price at $249. Read the rest

A man suspected of killing three people in Virginia was spotted at large, naked, attacking people in the street. But when police approached, the man instead began pursuing one of the heavily-armored officers, who fled while attempting to spray him with mace. The man dashed off to attack another bystander; he was eventually apprehended with the help of a police dog.UPDATE: The suspect in a triple homicide, 19-year-old Matthew Bernard, ran toward our reporter, @KyleMWilcoxTV, before attacking a pastor and being maced, tazed by authorities. https://t.co/4OVjvg9kkQ pic.twitter.com/L5SoNfOKgW— ABC 13 News - WSET (@ABC13News) August 27, 2019I wonder what it was about this "very dangerous" rampaging triple-murder suspect that led a police officer to humiliate himself on camera rather than use his weapon to stop him. Read the rest

Matcha (powdered green tea leaves) is usually pretty expensive. When I saw a one-pound container of Organic Matcha Green Tea Powder on Amazon selling for I was suspicious, but I decided to give it a try. It's delicious. Our favorite way to drink it is to blend a teaspoon with 8 oz of soy or almond milk. We use this fantastic Nespresso Aeroccino Milk Frother to mix it up. Read the rest

When I see the price that you payI don't wanna grow upI don't ever wanna be that wayI don't wanna grow upSeems like folks turn into thingsThat they'd never wantThe only thing to live for is today...The Toys R Us jingle was written by James Patterson and Linda Kaplan Thaler. The other one is Tom Waits. Read the rest

In this BBC video, a troop of Langur monkeys come across an animatronic spy monkey with a camera in its eye, and assume it's a dead baby. They gather around it and appear to mourn it. Image: YouTube Read the rest

In this video, The Q shows how to cut the heads out of coins. Start by putting the coin in a vise. Drill a small hole through the coin. Run a jeweler's saw blade through the hole and start sawing away. That's really all there is to it!Image: The Q/YouTube Read the rest

Restored by Guy Jones, who said, "Early sound film of the latest flapper fashions from House Doeuillet in Paris, France in the year 1928."I kept hoping for the Marx Brothers to appear. Image: YouTube/Guy Jones Read the rest

Jeremy Soule, composer of game soundtracks such as Morrowind and Total Annihilation, was named by developer Natalie Lawhead as having raped her when the two worked together in 2008. Following her post, other game developers spoke out about having been assaulted by their peers, with Alex Holowka (Night in the Woods) and Luc Shelton (Gears of War) among the accused. At The Verge, Andrew Webster suggests that #MeToo may have finally reached the insular game-dev community.Zoe Quinn — developer of games like Depression Quest, author of Crash Override, and a focal point of the misogynistic Gamergate movement — posted a harrowing account on Twitter, recounting alleged abuse from indie developer Alec Holowka, best known for his work on Aquaria and Night in the Woods. “I’ve been silent about this for almost my entire career and I can’t do it anymore,” Quinn wrote. The post includes disturbing accounts that include Quinn hiding in a bathroom to avoid an attack. It also notes that Quinn was inspired to come forward in part because of Lawhead’s post, which Quinn says “shook me to my core.”In a statement on Twitter, Scott Benson, who worked with Holowka on Night in the Woods, wrote that “we believe Zoe’s account of Alec’s actions, we’re very sad and very angry.”A third incident came to light when indie developer Adelaide Gardner wrote a lengthy Twitter thread accusing Luc Shelton, a programmer at British studio Splash Damage, of sustained psychological and physical abuse two years ago. Read the rest

Nordstrom just totally loses it and the moon. Themesong rocks, tho. Read the rest

JazzFM shares:Legendary US jazz musician Ahmad Jamal has announced a solo album - something he’s never done before. The pianist who just turned 89 says this project, titled ‘Ballades’ is a French-inspired love letter to his past, as he reflects on his “transcendent journey”. It includes three original compositions and three duets with his longtime bassist and friend James Cammack. There’s a nod to Bill Evans with his composition ‘Your Story’ and the album finishes with Johnny Mandel and Johnny Mercer’s ‘Emily’. ‘Ballades’ is released on Harcourt Records September 13th.Ahmad Jamal was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Jazz FM Awards in 2013. Read the rest

CORRECTION: The gentleman in the video linked below contacted us and does cite his sources. Twitter thread embedded blow.Can't believe the BS spewed on @TuckerCarlson show!"Did u know that 40% of people that murder children, are Cannabis users" jfc.... pic.twitter.com/7qkKbPCtkY— Walter Dirion (@WalterDir3) August 28, 2019 I guess if you are talking to Tucker Carlson you don't worry about having to cite your sources.(Editor--Again, please see correction above and twitter thread below.)1/ @Jlw @@frauenfelder @doctorow @pesco @xeni @beschizza @carla_sinclair - today you accused me without evidence of "making up facts about marijuana and violence towards kids." I'm a journalist and a writer of non-fiction. Accusing me of "making up facts" is false and defamatory. https://t.co/dTTD0Z8XKc— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 28, 2019 Read the rest

Oh boy, here we go. Archie McPhee has just announced their 2019 candy cane flavors. The star of this year's line-up are the ham-flavored ones, which are aptly called Hamdy Canes.When the holidays come around, that can only mean one thing: ham! As much ham as you can eat! We think ham flavor is going to be the pumpkin spice of Christmas. Eventually, you’ll be able to get a ham latté. To get the ball rolling, we’ve created Hamdy Canes! You’ll get six ham-flavored candy canes in a box illustrated with a personified ham with a cane. It will cure what ails you. We could make all kinds of hammy jokes, but we’ll stick with the meat of the product. Each candy cane is 5-1/4" tall with pink and white stripes.Right now you can get a box of six of them for $6, you sicko.While you're there, pick up boxes of the runners-up too: Kale Candy Canes and Pizza Candy Canes. (I know what I'm secretly gifting in this year's Yankee Swap!) Read the rest

The picture doesn't do it justice but this string art mandala that I recently scored is really gorgeous. Plus, it has some cool history. When I saw it at the thrift store, it was just sitting on the floor. I immediately picked it up and flipped it over. That's when I saw this letter:(Notice that it's addressed to "Rus," and that my name is Rusty!)And this handwritten note by the artist:I didn't recognize the artist's name and don't know much about string art but I liked the piece (and that terrific logo!), so I took it home. I soon discovered that the artist, John Eichinger, is the person who kicked off the string art fad in the late sixties with his String Mandalas. I also learned that he later designed patterns for mass-produced string art hobby kits.String of the Art:A popular hobby kit distributor at the time, Open Door Enterprises, first marketed his string art kits in the late 1960s. This is noted as one of the first times everyday people took interest in string art. It became widely popular in the 1970s with an uncountable amount of U.S. homes boasting home-made string art on their walls.This was a real thrift score for me. I got this original Eichinger mandala for just $6.99.Here's a closer look at the piece's details: Read the rest

A woman born in 1852. A gentleman birthed in 1841. A lovely couple, very much in love since well before the opening of the 20th century. This short film, captured using a early Movietone camera, was lovingly restored restored by Guy Jones. It's an amazing window, not only into 1934 when it was filmed, but into the 1880s.That said, man, Washington County, Iowa was whiter than a pale of milk in a snowstorm. Read the rest

I don't think that I've ever met anyone that actually enjoys using LinkedIn. I mean sure, depending on what you do for a living, it might help you land a new gig. Maybe, it can help you to network with folks within your industry. But it's awful. On the occasions where I need to use it in order to get hold of a PR rep from some hard-to-reach tech firm, I've always found it slow to load and a drag to navigate. That said, the problems that folks like you and I have leveraging the platform for anything useful might not be enough to keep a motivated employer from using the social media platform to track down top-shelf talent.From the New York Times:Foreign agents are exploiting social media to try to recruit assets, with LinkedIn as a prime hunting ground, Western counterintelligence officials say. Intelligence agencies in the United States, Britain, Germany and France have issued warnings about foreign agents approaching thousands of users on the site. Chinese spies are the most active, officials say.“We’ve seen China’s intelligence services doing this on a mass scale,” said William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a government agency that tracks foreign spying and alerts companies to possible infiltration. “Instead of dispatching spies to the U.S. to recruit a single target, it’s more efficient to sit behind a computer in China and send out friend requests to thousands of targets using fake profiles.”Lazy access to potential intelligence assets? Read the rest

For Popular Science, the photographer and journalist Stan Horaczek took a deep dive into NYC's repair shops -- places that repair cameras, musical gear, lighting fixtures and even jeans.Horaczek does a short writeup describing each shop he visits, including this description of the camera-repair shop depicted above: Husks of vintage film cameras and lenses litter this workbench at Camera Doctor. Owner and technician Frank Rubio has scavenged many of their components for repairs because manufacturers have either disappeared or no longer make replacement parts. When a piece like an odd-size film spool is so scarce that even the secondary market is out of stock, Rubio might hire a specialist to build one out of carbon fiber. The Midtown NYC shop fixes digital cameras, but an increasing share of its work is servicing classic shooters.His photos are an amazing record of a repair scene that is slowly vanishing, as more and more modern devices are engineered for disposability, sometimes built literally to be antagonistic to repair. It's a loss not just for the environment (we generate tons of e-waste when we toss gadgets into the trash) and for the pocketbook (we buy new stuff instead of being able to fix what we own), but as Horaczek shows, it's a loss for culture. There's something magnificent about these repair shops, filled with decades of experience, byzantine domain-specific knowledge, and raw ingenuity.(Thanks to Horaczek for permission to use his photo here!) Read the rest

Allergies. A sinus infection. Neglecting to swallow often enough as the plane your riding in depends towards your final destination. A head cold. There's hundreds of reasons why your ears might be too plugged up to hear anything but the sounds of your throat taking a swallow or the beating of your heart.Here's another fabulous cause.From Fox 4 Kansas City:A not so itsy, bitsy spider not found on a waterspout. Instead, doctors removed a brown recluse spider from the ear of Susie Torres."Gross. Why, where, what and how," she asked.Torres, who despises the creepy, crawly arachnids, said she first noticed some discomfort in her ear Tuesday morning."I woke up Tuesday hearing a bunch of swooshing and water in my left ear. It was like when you went swimming and you have all of that water in your ear," Torres said.At first, she just thought it was the effects of an allergy shot. But when she went to get her ears checked out, it turned out to be much more."The medical assistant came to check me out, and she`s the one who noticed it," she said.With the help of a few tools and a bit of magic, doctors removed a dime-sized brown recluse spider from her ear.Holy shit.Somehow, the medical staff on duty, managed to extract the dangerous spider from Torres' head without the thing injecting her full of venom. That's fabulous news, considering the fact that the bite of a brown recluse spider can turn flesh necrotic leading to large areas around the bite needing to be amputated or, you know, death. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Louis of Earth must think fast to keep secret the ways of the Star Wars

Need to expand your IT know-how? It doesn't happen overnight - but there are courses out there that can get you there quickly. Big businesses need the security, storage, and flexibility that cloud computing can provide, and they need competent IT professionals that know their way around those systems. Here are three online training packages that can distill a wealth of complex technical knowledge into a few short lessons.The Complete Cloud Computing BundleNo matter what path to certification you're taking, this bundle will get you there. It gives you an overview of how to integrate big databases into the cloud, then shows you the nuts and bolts of how that works with the most popular platforms: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Over 24 courses, you'll learn how to deploy that cloud infrastructure, configure it to suit your company's needs and keep it humming for the long term. Right now, you can get lifetime access to the Complete Cloud Computing Bundle for $49.99, more than 90% off the MSRP.The Complete Oracle Master Class BundleIs your company using Oracle? If so, this exhaustive boot camp gives you everything you need to handle their database needs. It gets you up to speed and speaking Oracle's language quickly with an overview on PL/SQL, then moves on to spotlight tools like Toad 12.6, RMAN and more. In all, it's more than 180 hours of training designed to enable you to troubleshoot any Oracle system. Pick up the Complete Oracle Master Class Bundle for 92% off at $29.99. Read the rest

The US is increasingly rejecting entry to people because of content sent to those persons by others, on social media and messaging apps. Customs and Border Patrol searched at least 30,000 tech devices at border checkpoints in 2018, an increase of 4 times over the number of devices 3 years prior.Increasingly, individuals who have been subjected to those warrantless border device searches are told they've been rejected entry because of images, videos, or messages sent to them by family members or others they're connected to on social media.Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch writes:It’s a bizarre set of circumstances that has seen countless number of foreign nationals rejected from the U.S. after friends, family or even strangers send messages, images or videos over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, which are then downloaded to the traveler’s phone.The latest case saw a Palestinian national living in Lebanon and would-be Harvard freshman denied entry to the U.S. just before the start of the school year.Immigration officers at Boston Logan International Airport are said to have questioned Ismail Ajjawi, 17, for his religion and religious practices, he told the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson. The officers who searched his phone and computer reportedly took issue with his friends’ social media activity.Ajjawi’s visa was canceled and he was summarily deported — for someone else’s views.The United States border is a bizarre space where U.S. law exists largely to benefit the immigration officials who decide whether or not to admit or deny entry to travelers, and few protect the travelers themselves. Read the rest

ProPublica's Minhee Cho says: "Thought you might be interested in ProPublica’s latest report detailing how insurance companies are actually fueling a rise in ransomware attacks by choosing to pay the ransom, even when they could recover the files on their own. Why? Plain and simple: the attacks are good for business."More often than not, paying the ransom is a lot cheaper for insurers than the loss of revenue they have to cover otherwise. But, by rewarding hackers, these companies have created a perverted cycle that encourages more ransomware attacks, which in turn frighten more businesses and government agencies into buying policies. In fact, it seems hackers are specifically extorting American companies that they know have cyber insurance. After one small insurer highlighted the names of some of its cyber policyholders on its website, three of them were attacked by ransomware."The cyber insurance industry is now estimated to be a $7-8 billion market in the U.S. alone. In the past year, dozens of public entities in the U.S. — including the cities of Baltimore and Atlanta — have been paralyzed by ransomware. Just this month, attackers seeking millions of dollars encrypted the files of 22 Texas municipalities."You can read more in her full story here.Image: Unknown - http://hyphenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/petya-ransomware-screenshot.png, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

The administration of Donald Trump is pulling $270 million from the Department of Homeland Security, including $155 million of FEMA disaster relief funding, to pay for all migrant concentration camps, according to DHS and a leading congressional Democrat.Money will also reportedly be taken away from the budget for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System, and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard.Everything is awful, and getting worse.From Reuters:The money, which was also set aside for the U.S. Coast Guard, will be used to pay for detention facilities and courts for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS officials say they have been overwhelmed by a surge of asylum-seeking migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.The Trump administration is seeking to circumvent Congress and move money originally designated for other programs. This will allow the administration to continue to house immigrants arriving at the border, part of President Donald Trump’s promise not to “catch and release” migrants and allow them to await hearings outside of custody.The administration plans to take $115 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster-relief fund just as hurricane season is heating up in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a letter from U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the congressional panel that oversees Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending.The letter also details that money will be taken for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard, Roybal-Allard said. Read the rest

Deutsche Bank disclosed in a court filing on Tuesday that financial records requested by congressional Democrats that are related to U.S. President Donald Trump and three of his adult children include tax returns. The bank won't publicly disclose whether those tax returns are Donald Trump's. The illegitimate, popular-vote-losing, manifestly unfit president has famously failed to release his tax returns, and it's widely speculated that the financial documents would point the way to dirty doings he'd rather keep secret.Excerpt, Reuters:Two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in April to provide financial records belonging to the president and his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.Deutsche Bank’s filing, in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, revealed that it had tax returns that it would need to hand over if it complied with the subpoenas, which the Trumps are seeking to block. It was not clear whose tax returns it had, because names were redacted from the filing.A lawyer for the Trumps could not immediately be reached for comment. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.The disclosure comes as Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are seeking to obtain Trump’s personal and business tax returns, which the president has refused to turn over, from the Treasury Department.Deutsche Bank has long been a principal lender for Trump’s real estate business. A 2017 disclosure form showed that Trump had at least $130 million of liabilities to the bank.Deutsche Bank says records sought in Trump congressional probe include tax returns [reuters.com, photo: Shutterstock] Read the rest

Illegitimate, popular-vote-losing president Donald J. Trump, just yesterday:“I’m an environmentalist. A lot of people don’t understand that. I think I know more about the environment than most people.”Illegitimate, popular-vote-losing president Donald J. Trump, today: Says he wants to log the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, which is in Alaska. If Trump’s reported plan goes into effect, 9.5 million acres of forest would be impacted.Did we mention that in Brazil today, the Amazon rainforest is burning? The the Washington Post reports that “President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago, according to three people briefed on the issue, after privately discussing the matter with the state’s governor aboard Air Force One.”Excerpt:The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it up to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule” that has survived a decades-long legal assault.Trump has taken a personal interest in “forest management,” a term he told a group of lawmakers last year he has “redefined” since taking office.Politicians have tussled for years over the fate of the Tongass, a massive stretch of southeastern Alaska replete with old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar, rivers running with salmon, and dramatic fjords. Bill Clinton put more than half of it off limits to logging just days before leaving office in 2001, when he barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country. Read the rest

Tokyo is a sound-saturated city: bustling traffic, train station announcements, people everywhere, the barrage of loud adverts, drunk salarymen singing in the Ginza streets at night, and even the loud caws of the Tokyo’s infamous large crows. Then there’s the seemingly ubiquitous background music in shopping centers, department stores, offices, and super markets.Tokyo Listening – Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City, by anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Lorraine Plourde is a compelling examination of listening cultures via four main ethnographic sites in Tokyo which includes an experimental music venue, classical music cafes, office workspaces, and department stores. The book provides fascinating insights on two different types of sonic spaces: places where people go specifically for the music (experimental music venue, classical music café), places where the music comes to them (offices, department stores).Tokyo Listening looks at how sound and music impacts life, leisure, work and productivity in modern day Tokyo. Plourde’s analysis is academic but her prose, narratives, and supporting historical background explanations are fascinating, clear and accessible for non-academics like myself. There is a precision and clarity in the descriptions of listening spaces – whether in a classical music listening café or sterile modern office – often written as a first-person account that places the reader into the setting. Overall, it’s this attention to detail combined with Plourde’s ground-breaking field research and respect for the subject that makes Tokyo Listening an illuminating work.I caught up with Plourde to get more insights on her research and field work presented in Tokyo Listening. Read the rest

Purportedly searching for a missing girl, a cop barged into a house in Carpentersville, Illinois, without a warrant and choked a teenage boy who was home alone. The attack was captured on video and the family is suing.In video of the raid, the 16-year-old boy, who wishes to remain anonymous, was knocked off his feet by the officer, who charges through the doorway. ... As the officer's partner searches upstairs, there's more grabbing and pushing. Twice the officer grabs the boy's neck, and then he throws him on the couch again. The missing girl is not at the home, but the officers handcuff and arrest the boy, whose mother is at work."It was an illegal search of this home," said Keenan Saulter, attorney for the family. "It was an illegal seizure of that minor, and ultimately it was a false arrest."The Washington Post reports that the cops arrested the boy only after he told them they were being recorded on video. Read the rest

Behold StoryAI: Type in a few sentences, and the model autocompletes your story, writing a few hundred more words that, by its calculations, could plausibly follow.It was created by the folks at BotSociety Inc, using the GPT-2 774M model created by OpenAI, which is eerily good. As an example, it was fed these three sentences as a seed ...President Trump is buying Greenland in a surprise deal. The state of California is traded in return. The deal was well received by Republicans.... and it generated this following story:The Washington Post reports:"Trump said the country's unique geography and natural mineral resources would be 'an asset' to the state over its lifespans. He is expected to move swiftly to make good the investment in the $10.8 billion purchase of a national park that he and the president of Denmark, Jens Stoltenberg, announced last year."The sale of the state could help the U.S. in its fight against global warming, which is already heating up the planet. The government of Denmark says the purchase will pay for a 10-year expansion of a national park in the north of the island, which is one of the world's most biodiverse areas."This move doesn't come as a surprise to political analysts. A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund and the Smithsonian's National Center for Atmospheric Research revealed several Arctic nations have substantial oil reserves and natural gas reserves and they are in talks to trade them in for the Arctic. Read the rest

If you have "large" hands, it's your lucky day. Amazon has a box of 100 nitrile gloves on sale for just . I use them for any kind of messy work - gluing PVC pipe, wiping up cat barf, fixing greasy garage door mechanisms. I appreciate having a never ending supply, so I just bought another box. Read the rest

In the late 1980s, Woolworths made a training video to help its staff catch shoplifters. Video of actual shoplifters are narrated by a former shoplifter, who says things like, "People do not shop looking back and forth. Watch how people move," and "watch people's hands. We steal with them."See also: Gentleman shoplifts a drink right before inquiring about a job there[via Weird Universe]Image: YouTube Read the rest

Pete Davidson seemed to hate the students at University of Central Florida during his stand up performance last night. The Saturday Night Live comedian was triggered by students who were recording him on their phones.“I don’t have to be here. I can just give them their money back because I don’t give a fuck,” he yelled. He called the students "privileged little assholes," "idiots," and "fucking retarded." The audience laughs at first, but the room seems to get tense as his rant goes on.Jeez, not sure where his sense of humor went. Read the rest

Apple wants you to "unwind with the whispered legend of Ghost Forest," with this ASMR video designed to send tingles through your body.In a previous Boing Boing post, Gareth Branwyn explains ASMR in a nutshell: "For those unfamiliar, ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is an intense tingling sensation some people claim they experience when they hear certain soft voices, pleasant repetitive sounds, or while watching someone doing a particularly mundane, repetitive activity."See also:A neuroscientist explains the "brain orgasm" response of ASMR videosChina announces crackdown on ASMR videos as pornographicImage: YouTube/Apple Read the rest

Photographer Claire Droppert experiments with using gravity as a mechanic for art, tossing natural objects in the air and snapshotting how they fly and fall. She's just released a second set of "Sand Creatures" -- gorgeous and ghostly shapes created by clumps of sand being tossed in the air, and photographed as they begin to break apart.As she writes on her site ...“Sand comes alive and creatures are born in frozen moments of weightlessness...” [snip]... these are captured on beaches in Holland, and contain landscape, natural elements and zero gravity. The Sand Creatures series focuses on nature in an unexpected way. The explosive and at times powdery scenes of the grainy sand being thrown into the air can be taken as a manifesting life form, and they become sand creatures. Here are a few more of them ...You can see more of Droppert's work via her Instagram, Twitter, her online print store, or Facebook accounts.(Thanks to Droppert for permission to use her photos here!) Read the rest

Leave it to Japan to design a modern television that's styled to look like it's from the fifties. That's just what Japanese electronics brand Doshisha has done with this fun, retro-styled cabinet that houses an LCD TV. Technabob:This ’50s-style TV has a wooden cabinet, real working volume and channel knobs on front, and stands on spindly wooden legs. While its facade looks a bit like the cool, but fragile Bakelite of the era, I’m betting it’s just cheap plastic that’s been colored that way. Inside, it’s got a 20″ LCD screen with HDMI, AV and USB inputs.And, because the TV itself isn't hogging up space in the cabinet, the top opens and reveals a place to store things:The bad news? This TV isn't going to work outside of Japan. Bummer. For ~$786 plus shipping, it better be able to do a lot more than look pretty. (Pee-wee Herman) Read the rest

Hackaday has a great post about a recreation of the GENIAC, an electric toy from 1955 that used simple switches to creative a turn-based interactive game narrative.The GENIAC, short for "GENIus Almost-automatic Computer", lets the player work through a scenario called "The Uranian Shipment and the Space Pirates", where the goal is to figure out whether a ship traveling from Callisto to Earth is a uranium shipment or a pirate vessel disguised as a shipment. Depending on how you decide to react, you rotate the switches back and forth and the game displays the reaction via four lightbulbs -- "PIRATES WIN", "ALL LOST", "NO COMBAT", and "PIRATES KILLED".The GENIAC is super rare, but Michael Gardi -- who has a track record of doing fabulous builds of old lost logic games from the predigital era (previously) -- created a functioning model. If you want to built it yourself, he's made a guide on Instructables.As Tom Nardi notes over at Hackaday: This might seem a little silly to modern audiences, but thanks to a well written manual that featured a collection of compelling projects, the GENIAC managed to get a lot of mileage out of a couple light bulbs and some wire. In fact, [Mike] says that the GENIAC is often considered one of the first examples of an interactive electronic narrative, as the carefully crafted stories from the manual allowed players to go on virtual adventures long before the average kid had ever heard of a “video game”. Read the rest

Normally at this time, I'd already be in Black Rock City. But I left on such a high note last year that I decided to take a year off. Still, I've been feeling tinges of FOMO and have been looking for ways to feel part of this year's Burn somehow. I thought some of you might be in the same boat (Mutant Vehicle?), so I'll share what I've been doing to stave off the FOMO from the comfort of my own home.1. I've been watching the official livestream webcast. Apparently, Vimeo is sponsoring it and it's better than I've ever seen it. Crystal clear. Plus, the temperature of Black Rock City is posted in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. At 9 a.m., it was 89 degrees. Here in Alameda, where I live, it was 64 degrees at the same time. FOMO decreasing... (Seriously though, the webcast is terrific!)2. I also signed up for the BMIR Phone Experimentâ„¢ 2019 which promises to put an on-playa Burner on the phone with me at some random time. People calling you may or may not know anything about this sign up form, why they're calling you, or what's going on at all.Feel free to say whatever you'd like or mess with anyone calling you. Really! Anything goes, but we ask that you aren't a racist, a perv, or a racist perv. Gee, thanks for that. I haven't gotten a call yet but am looking forward to my first one. Read the rest

This is the hardest man I’ve ever seen in my life pic.twitter.com/muRQGCDPF9— Kenjac (@JackKennedy) August 25, 2019 “No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.” --Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Read the rest

Antonio De La Rosa, from Spain, just paddled his way from San Francisco to Honolulu. It took the ultra-endurance athlete 76 days in his stand-up paddle boat, celebrating his 50th birthday by himself along the way.According to AP:He ate dehydrated food, using heated water, and sometimes fished. He paddled eight-to-10 hours daily and slept every night. But he was always tired because he woke up hourly to check on his gear.He said he was disappointed to see fishing gear refuse every day of his voyage — including nets and lineHe used a tracking device to record every minute of his journey and called it a record because he believes no one has ever done what he accomplished. It’s a record because “I certify it,” he said with a laugh.Here's a video of him approaching Waikiki:Image: YouTube Read the rest

When you say you're super into the great outdoors and nature and -- something weird shows up.From Myles and Willows on Instagram. View this post on Instagram Don't you feed that duck my treats!! 🦆 ____________________________________________________ #whattheduck #iloveducks #quackquack #ducksofinstagram #dogsofbark #dachshund #dachshunds #lakelife #dogsofinstaworld #outdoorswithdogs #dachshundsofinstagram #9gagcute #buzzfeedanimals #dachshundworld #dogsandpals #pupflix #petco #9gagcute #chien #perrosdeinstagram #bestwoof #minidachshund #wildlife #sausagedogcentral #animalscoA post shared by Myles, Willow, Finn & Ember (@mylesandwillows) on Oct 9, 2018 at 4:26pm PDT Read the rest

It's rough out there for Uber and Lyft contract drivers. And getting rougher.Based on data from some 14,756 fares, Jalopnik reports that in recent years the ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft have slashed the amount of pay drivers receive by taking a larger portion of each fare. This amounts to slashing driver pay a lot more than they publicly report, Jalopnik reports.“Jalopnik asked drivers to send us fare receipts showing a breakdown of how much the rider paid for the trip, how much of that fare Uber or Lyft kept, and what the driver earned.”Excerpt from what they found:In total, we received 14,756 fares. These came from two sources: the web form where drivers could submit fares individually, and via email where some drivers sent us all their fares from a given time period.Of all the fares Jalopnik examined, Uber kept 35 percent of the revenue, while Lyft kept 38 percent. These numbers are roughly in line with a previous study by Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute which concluded Uber’s take rate to be roughly one-third, or 33 percent.Of the drivers who emailed us breakdowns for all of their fares in a given time period—ranging from a few months to more than a year—Uber kept, on average, 29.6 percent. Lyft pocketed 34.5 percent.Those take rates are 10.6 percent and 8.5 percent higher than Uber and Lyft’s publicly reported figures, respectively.Uber And Lyft Take A Lot More From Drivers Than They Say [Dhruv Mehrotra and Aaron Gordon] Read the rest

“Undisclosed amount of products” stolen from the clinic by