The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the winners of this year's Pioneer Award (rechristened the "Barlow" in honor of EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow: sf writer William Gibson, anthropologist danah boyd, and activists Oakland Privacy.The Barlows will be awarded at a ceremony in San Francisco on Sept 12, emceed by Adam "Mythbusters" Savage. Tickets for the Pioneer Awards are $65 for current EFF members, or $75 for non-members.I'll be there!danah boyd has consistently been one of the world’s smartest researchers, thinkers, and writers about how technology impacts society, especially for teens and young people. Currently, boyd is focused on detecting and mitigating vulnerabilities in sociotechnical systems. To better understand these vulnerabilities, boyd has been examining the challenges surrounding the 2020 U.S. Census. In 2013, boyd created Data & Society, an independent nonprofit research institute that is committed to identifying thorny problems at the intersection of technology, culture, and community, and advances understanding of the implications of data technologies and automation. danah’s most recent books—“It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” and “Participatory Culture in a Networked Age”—examine the intersection of everyday life and social media, and have helped families around the world navigate technologies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. In addition to her work as a partner researcher at Data & Society, boyd is also Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Visiting Professor at New York University.William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace.” Neuromancer, his first novel, won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Read the rest

Tabloid reporters must live in a constant state of paranoia if this week’s offerings are any indication.

There are many reasons one may not have the ability to open a jar. This Robo Twist has lowered my usefulness around my mother's kitchen.It is loud, but the jars get opened. Can't have it all.Robo Twist Jar Opener via Amazon Read the rest

I made this chart after reading about Opaque Couche. Read the rest

Several injured when black pickup truck drove into protesters at Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility on Wednesday night.

A Florida woman who "pulled a small alligator from her yoga pants" was sentenced to probation after admitting four charges related to illegally possessing wild animals.Florida prosecutors say a Charlotte County sheriff’s deputy stopped a pickup truck in May after it ran a stop sign. The driver, 22-year-old driver Michael Clemons, told the deputy he and his 25-year-old passenger, Ariel Machan-Le Quire, were collecting frogs and snakes under an overpass. He gave the deputy permission to search bags in the truck. When the deputy found 41 3-stripe turtles in a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” backpack, he asked if Machan-Le Quire had anything else. She pulled the 1-foot (0.3-meter) gator from her pants.After all these years, they finally found the interior crodocile alligator, driving a Chevrolet movie theater. Read the rest

A Federal appeals court today upheld an order that requires Trump immigration authorities with the US Customs and Border Patrol to provide detained migrant kids with the humane basics: food, water, bedding, toothbrushes, soap, and conditions in which children can be expected to sleep.“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” said the court. A lot of ICE agents are gonna haz a sad tonight, as will Donald Trump's White House concentration camp advocate Stephen Miller.From Maura Dolan at the Los Angeles Times:A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by the Trump administration to an order by a federal judge in Los Angeles who found the government was violating a 1997 settlement by failing to provide detained minors with safe and sanitary conditions.U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee issued the order in 2017 after finding that minors in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody were held in conditions that deprived them of sleep and did not have adequate food, clean water or basic hygiene items. The settlement, known as the Flores agreement, required the children be given safe and sanitary quarters.The government appealed, arguing the order changed the settlement agreement. The original settlement said nothing about allowing children to sleep or wash themselves with soap, the federal government said.The 9th Circuit disagreed, saying the enumerated items ordered by the judge fell under the settlement’s requirement that children be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. Read the rest

Trump Administration wants Congress to bring N.S.A.’s deactivated Call Records program back to life.

Wow, this is really something, even for a company as awful as Facebook.“Facebook users who opted into voice-to-text in Messenger had NO warning about human transcribers.”Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed it ran a program that allowed contractors to listen in on and write down the contents of some Facebook Messenger users’ audio clips. Facebook said that only users who'd consented to have their audio messages transcribed were affected, which implies the users clicked a box somewhere that said they knew the content would listened to or read by third parties. “But based on a look at the Messenger permissions pop-up dialogue box, they didn’t,” writes Bloomberg's Sarah Frier:In the Messenger mobile app, as soon as someone sends a voice message, they get a prompt asking, “Turn on Voice to Text in this chat?” Above the “No” and “Yes” buttons, Facebook describes the option: “Display text of voice clips you send and receive. You can control whether text is visible to you for each chat.”There is no mention of human involvement. Even in a separate information page in the app dedicated to understanding Voice to Text, Facebook explains that users can turn it off for each chat, and prompts people to use it more. “Voice to Text uses machine learning,” it says. “The more you use this feature, the more Voice to Text can help you.” There’s no explanation that machine learning doesn’t just involve software code.Companies including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been relying on humans to check and improve their artificial intelligence systems -- they’re just not telling their users about it. Read the rest

Wedged Wonders is a gallery-tribute to futuristic Italian concept cars from '68-'79. From the legendary Lancia Stratos Zero (1970) to the lesser-known Jaguar Ascot (1977), Wedged Wonders documents many highlights from the period. Presented in chronological order, the aesthetic principles of the era can be seen to transform, from the stylishly slanted and groundbreaking Alfa Romeo Carabo (1968), through the purposely science-fiction Alfa Romeo Navajo (1976), to the angular, almost boxy, Volvo Tundra (1979), the shapes evolve with the decades. The curves of the ‘60s were in the past, the triangles of the ‘70s would have their day, and the square of the ‘80s was coming. The look is often associated with British sports cars, but that's just because Lotus was crazy enough to manufacture them in volume, and the Esprit was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro anyway. Read the rest

In 1978, researchers were conducting early experiments in group teleconferencing using packet switching over the ARPANET, which became the basis of the Internet. These "packet speech systems" evolved into the VoIP that we know and love (?) today. Above is a 1979 video from the USC Information Sciences Institute of an experiment involving a "dramatization" of a group teleconference. As /r/ObscureMedia user jetRink posted, "The meeting participants are late, unprepared and frustrated, the audio quality is terrible and nothing is accomplished except the scheduling of another meeting." Just like today!For more on this, see Stanford University professor Robert Gray's "History of LPC Digital Speech and its impact on the Internet Protocol." Read the rest

Ending a multi-generational argument that was supposedly started-up again over my Grandmother Edna's death bed, I will no longer eat Nathan's Famous Hotdogs.BET shares a list of folks to boycott:The 2020 presidential race has kicked off, and as candidates fight to see who will make it on the final ticket, money starts to flood in to support their campaign efforts. We compiled a list in 2016 of all the companies that gave money to Donald Trump's campaign and essentially helped elect him by funding his entire campaign, and we've got you again this time around.Chrissy Teigen, other celebrities and social media users are bringing awareness to and calling for the cancellation of companies that support Donald Trump and his campaign efforts. Whether it be through donations or fundraising events, some heavy hitters, and even entry level employees, from major corporations that affect our day-to-day lives are showing their support for Trump's 2020 re-election.This viral Twitter thread contains a summary of some of those companies:So here’s a list of companies supporting Trump’s re-election: - Bang- inn n out - chick fil a- Taco Bell- McDonald’s - Wendy’s - KFC- Pizza Hut- Olive Garden - Waffle House - IHOP- Carl’s Jr.So if you see me starting to get thinner and toned don’t ask me why.— Costa (@BillyBobSanderz) August 8, 2019 Read the rest

Kool Moe Dee just rules. I've been enjoying his work in my music rotation lately.The Wild Wild West remains my favorite television show of all time.This song taught me to follow a beat. Read the rest

Despite the departure of its most prominent leaders amid claims of harassment and retaliation, the Googler Uprising lives on, with Google employees circulating an internal petition demanding that the company not contract with US border agencies to provide any kind of services, on the grounds that US immigration authorities are notorious abusers of human rights.US Customs and Border Protection has an open tender for bidders to provide cloud services. The organizers of the petition said they had 70 signatures to start with. “We demand that Google publicly commit not to support CBP, ICE, or ORR with any infrastructure, funding, or engineering resources, directly or indirectly, until they stop engaging in human rights abuses,” the protesters wrote. “By any interpretation, CBP and ICE are in grave violation of international human rights law.”Google Workers Demand Company Not Work With Border Agencies [Gerrit De Vynck/Bloomberg] Read the rest

Apple's Faceid -- a facial recognition tool that unlocks mobile devices -- has a countermeasure that is designed to prevent attackers from scanning an sleeping/unconscious (or dead) person's face to unlock their phone, by scanning the face for signs of consciousness.These countermeasures have a weakness in how they perform proof-of-life checks on users who are wearing glasses: they seek out a white dot surrounded by a black area, and this can be spoofed just by putting the right combination of black and white tape on a pair of glasses and put them on your victim's face (presumably without waking them, assuming they are alive).Researchers from Tencent demo'ed the attack at Black Hat last week and used it to unlock a phone and approve a cash transfer from the owner's Apple Pay account to their own. The attack comes with obvious drawbacks – the victim must be unconscious, for one, and can’t wake up when the glasses are placed on their face. However, it does show the weaknesses behind the security and design of liveness detection and biometrics in general, researchers said.In terms of mitigations, researchers suggested that biometrics manufacturers add identity authentication for native cameras and increase the weight of video and audio synthesis detection.Biometrics Flaws Uncovered To Bypass Apple FaceID [Lindsey O'Donnell/Threatpost](via Schneier) Read the rest

The conservative internet loves Zach Vorhies, a lovely activist that exposes leftist mischief at Google! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the Zach is a racist.Right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe published his latest video on tech giants on Wednesday, touting an interview with former YouTube software engineer and self-proclaimed “whistleblower” Zach Vorhies. In the video, Vorhies claims that Google’s search algorithms are riddled with political bias, and touted a cache of internal Google files he alleges prove his case. ... What O’Keefe’s video leaves out, though, is that his much-hyped insider is not as credible as he claims. On social media, Vorhies is an avid promoter of anti-Semitic accusations that banks, the media, and the United States government are controlled by “Zionists.” He’s also pushed conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate, and the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism. Remember the scene where Senator Palpatine says "I love democracy" and, thanks to Ian McDiarmid's acting talent, a crudely-scripted corrupt politician is shaded with pathos and genuine discomfort? In my memory, Palpatine says only "I love surprises" in this scene. I don't know why, but it works quite well and I have no plans to rewatch the Star Wars prequels to correct my neurons. Read the rest

When tiny wigs land in your life, what else can you do but open — not one, but two — pop-up wig shops? One for cats, and one for jars of Fluff. No joke.This one is called the "Cousin Oliver":Hey, since you're here, I wanted to share that I was recently a guest on the Archie McPhee podcast! I talk about my work as a blogger, how I learned I was a superfan of Fluff, and what I know so far about working with Children's Fairyland. You can listen to it here. (Someone asked if we were high when we were recording it. Nope, we just get extra silly and giggly when we get together.) Read the rest

All-black but for the hashtag #knifefree, the official chicken boxes of Her Majesty's Government are presented as a warning about the dangers of knifecrime. The Home Office has suborned some takeout chains into using them. It's not going down well. Policing Minister Kit Malthouse says they "will bring home to thousands of young people the tragic consequences of carrying a knife and challenge the idea that it makes you safer".However, Ms Abbott tweeted: "Instead of investing in a public health approach to violent crime, the Home Office have opted for yet another crude, offensive and probably expensive campaign."They would do better to invest in our communities not demonise them." Read the rest

I don't want to freak anyone out, but I heard some legitimately great news the other day: Ebola is now a treatable disease.It seems that two of four experimental drugs designed to tackle the disease have proven highly effective during field testing. Up until now, 70% infected of those infected with the Ebola virus have died. With the new drugs in play, 90% of those treated have been completely cured of the disease.From Nature.com:One of the drugs, REGN-EB3, is a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies against Ebola made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals of Tarrytown, New York. The second, mAB114, is derived from a single antibody recovered from the blood of a person who survived Ebola in the DRC in 1995 , and was developed by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).Both drugs outperformed two other experimental treatments in the unprecedented multi-drug clinical trial in the DRC, the World Health Organization, INRB and NIAID said in a joint statement on 12 August. Preliminary data from the first 499 people enrolled in the study show that 29% of people given REGN-EB3 died, compared with 34% of those who received mAb114.In order for these treatments to work, its important that a patient receive REGN-EB3 or mAB114 shortly after they were initially infected with Ebola. This could present a problem, however, given that an individual can have the virus coursing through their veins for days without showing any symptoms. Still, it's a wonderful start.Now the trick is to figure out through—you guessed it—more trials, which of the these two drugs are the most effective in destroying the Ebola virus. Read the rest

Greta Thunberg is a young environmental campaigner setting off on a carbon-neutral boat trip around the world. Aaron Banks is a businessman, Brexit campaigner and money man behind the far-right UK Independence Party. On Wednesday, Banks tweeted to Thunberg: "Freak yachting accidents do happen in August." In the resulting outrage, he says it's just a joke.Green Party MP Caroline Lucas ... said she reported his comment, while Mr Banks said it was a joke."Arron Banks' vile tweet about @GretaThunberg makes me sick to the stomach," Ms Lucas wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. ...His tweet faced widespread criticism, with Mr Banks later responding, saying it was "a joke" and accusing his critics of having "no sense of humour".It's worth pointing out that there's no actual joke in the phrase "Freak yachting accidents do happen in August." It's the unspeakable wrapped in jocular sarcasm, so that it can be denied even as it gives public life to a private fantasy.Aaron Banks is encouraging "stochastic" violence, that term having become popular to refer to public rhetoric that hopes to make something more likely without being personally involved in any act that results from its general encouragement.But Banks is a dumb thug, so he just blurted out I hope you die thinking it could pass muster as a "joke."Here's Satre on the right-wing mode of humor, then exemplified by anti-semites and now by alt-right meme culture.They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. Read the rest

Let's face it: People at the gym aren't bragging about their headphones. If they were that great, they'd be listening to them instead of talking about them. So while we're sure those new PowerBeats Pro earbuds are something special, why would you shell out $250 for a tiny pair of speakers when comparable ones are less than half that?For a pair of headphones that bring the noise without taking your entire paycheck, you might want to check out these XT9 True Wireless Fitness Headphones.For one thing, they've got state-of-the-art 5.0 Bluetooth connectivity, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted sound from whatever device you're listening on. They go for a solid 6 hours on a single charge, and the portable charging dock is good for another 2-3 fill-ups of the lithium-ion battery. They're designed to be perfectly stable through even the harshest workouts without chafing your ears.And best of all, they're a fraction of the price of the trendier 'buds. Pick up the XT9 True Wireless Fitness Headphones with Charging Dock for $44.99, more than 60% off the retail price of $119. Read the rest

Just for your information, there are some very teeny and some quite enormous trees.keshitsubograss, wheatsunflower, Apple treeRocky Mountain Juniper, Socotra Dragon treeolive, Salix BabylonicaCommon Hawthorn, Southern Live oakMediterranean cypress, Stone PineLimber Pine, Palm treeBaldcypress, SycamoreAraucaria Araucana, Common OakBrazil Nut, KauriEucalyptus, Patagonian cypressNoble fir, Giant SequoiaCoast Douglas fir, Yellow MerantiSequoia sempervirens Read the rest

I got a sneak peek at the first episode of a new Great Big Story series called "Cracking the Code of Cicada 3301." It doesn't answer the question of who is behind the puzzle world of Cicada 3301 or why it was created, but that's because no one knows. Instead it focuses on a few people who have spent a good part of their young lives solving the maddeningly difficult puzzles posted by Cicada 3301. It's worth watching. In 2012, a secretive group calling itself 3301 began recruiting for “highly intelligent individuals” online. Candidates had to prove their skills in codebreaking, cryptography and computer programming by solving a complex puzzle dubbed Cicada. It required knowledge of steganography, contacts on the ground everywhere from Seoul to Sydney, and the ability to obtain a copy of William Gibson’s famous disappearing poem “Agrippa.” What was the purpose of the puzzle? No one knows, but many set out to solve one of the internet’s greatest mysteries. At the age of 15, Marcus Wanner became one of the few to crack the code. But the Cicada challenge didn’t end there. Suddenly, more mysterious codes appeared—including a 58-page book of runes known as the “Liber Primus.”Image: YouTube/Great Big Story Read the rest

“I was scrolling through old videos of my pup Copper, who is no longer in my possession,” says the human who captured this adorable video footage of a cute Husky pup demonstrating their hunting prowess.“I raised him to about 1.5 years old and had to give him up due to a break up.”Ouch. “Been through some stuff in my life, giving up Copper was by far the most difficult.”Ouch. All the hurts. Dog love is forever.Young husky demonstrating his hunting prowess[Source: Victorian715, via] Read the rest

That right there's an #irishsetter #babysitter.Irish Sitter[via] Read the rest

The Folio Society's limited, slipcased editions (previously) are some of the most beautiful books being produced today; the company's $225 Marvel: The Golden Age 1939-1949 ships in late September, and includes a facsimile of the ultra-rare Marvel Comics #1, reproduced from one of the last surviving mint-condition 1939 copies.The volume is edited by Roy Thomas, who took over as EiC of Marvel after Stan Lee. Other comics featured in the volume include Captain America, The Human Torch, and Namor, The Sub-Mariner, all sourced from mint/near-mint copies in private collections.It's the first in a series of planned Marvel/Folio Society books with the next volume due in 2020.Walker says that he’s most proud of the reproduction of Marvel Comics #1, which was based on an original copy from 1939 that it was able to track down. “We spent hours perfecting this, choosing the right grade of paper and finding ways to recreate the experience kids would have had picking this up from the newsstand for the first time.” The other comics included in the main volume are reproduced from “first-edition comics both from the Marvel archives and from major private collectors, in order to find the most pristine copies to offset,” Walker says.Marvel: The Golden Age 1939-1949 [Roy Thomas/The Folio Society]The Folio Society’s next book brings Marvel’s Golden Age back to life [Andrew Liptak/The Verge] Read the rest

In October 2018, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was invited to speak at the Manhattan Republican club, drawing neo-Nazi supporters and antifa protesters; Proud Boy thugs waded into the protest and began indiscriminately attacking the protesters.The Manhattan DA filed assault and riot charges against four Proud Boys, but that's not all: the DA's office also served Google with a "reverse search warrant" seeking the names of the owners of every mobile device present on the scene, in a bid to unmask and charge antifa protestes.This marks the first known instance in which the Manhattan DA has used the controversial "reverse search warrant."The Manhattan District Attorney's Office admitted it demanded Google hand over account information for all devices used in parts of the Upper East Side. They didn’t do this to find the Proud Boys; they did it to find Antifa members.Manhattan DA Made Google Give Up Information on Everyone in Area as They Hunted for Antifa [Albert Fox Cahn/The Daily Beast](Thanks, Kathy Padilla!) Read the rest

The original Smashing Pumpkins (sans D'arcy Wretzky), on the road again for another US tour, are covering James Taylor's classic "Fire and Rain" from his 1970 masterpiece Sweet Baby James. It's a lovely, trippy cover and hearkens back to their 1994 take on another '70s rock classic -- Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" (video below). Read the rest

More bad news for Google's beleaguered spinoff Jigsaw, whose flagship project is "Perspective," a machine-learning system designed to catch and interdict harassment, hate-speech and other undesirable online speech.From the start, Perspective has been plagued by problems, but the latest one is a doozy: University of Washington experts have found that Perspective misclassifies inoffensive writing as hate speech far more frequently when the author is Black.Specifically, candidate texts written in African American English (AAE) are 1.5x more likely to be rated as offensive than texts written in "white-aligned English."The authors do a pretty good job of pinpointing the cause: the people who hand-labeled the training data for the algorithm were themselves biased, and incorrectly, systematically misidentified AAE writing as offensive. And since machine learning models are no better than their training data (though they are often worse!), the bias in the data propagated through the model.In other words, Garbage In, Garbage Out remains the iron law of computing and has not been repealed by the deployment of machine learning systems.We analyze racial bias in widely-used corpora of annotated toxic language, establishing correlations between annotations of offensiveness and the African American English (AAE) dialect. We show that models trained on these corpora prop-agate these biases, as AAE tweets are twice as likely to be labelled offensive compared to others.Finally, we introduce dialect and race priming,two ways to reduce annotator bias by highlightingthe dialect of a tweet in the data annotation, and show that it significantly decreases the likelihood of AAE tweets being labelled as offensive. Read the rest

In this excellent Mashable article about Yahoo's disastrous $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr and its subsequent mishandling is this bit: Top Yahoo executives clashed with Tumblr, or just flat out confused employees. On one occasion, an executive overseeing [Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp] and his division perplexed employees by saying he thought Tumblr had the potential to "create the next generation PDF," according to multiple sources. And that is why Yahoo became the next generation fax machine. Read the rest

A teenage girl lost her phone privileges so she used her 3DS to go online. Her mother found out and confiscated it. The girl resumed tweeting on her Wii U. After her mother took that away, the girl started tweeting from the LG smart refrigerator in the kitchen. The girl said her mother has made plans to remove it.[via New York Magazine]Image: Twitter Read the rest

A 12-year-old boy found this woolly mammoth molar outside his family's inn near Ohio's Honey Run Creek. From a post on the Inn at Honey Run's site:Jackson writes in an account of the discovery, “I found the mammoth tooth about ten yards upstream from the bridge we had our family pictures on. It was partially buried on the left side of the creek. It was completely out of the water on the creek bed.”Within a few days, the item was indeed identified by numerous scholars and professors including Dale Gnidovec of The Ohio State University’s Orton Geological Museum, Nigel Brush of Ashland University’s Geology Department, and P. Nick Kardulias College of Wooster’ Program of Archeology.Now, Jackson awaits the safe return of his tooth, also writing, “I would like to have my tooth back in my hands as soon as possible. I want to show my friends.” Read the rest

She's called Cardi B because her family nickname, Bacardi, couldn't get past the trademark defensebots on Instagram!Sanders and Cardi B talk minimum wage, unionization, jobs, and economics, drawing on questions from Cardi B's social media followers. The video was vertical.It's the second time the pair have teamed up to discuss the 2020 elections and Sanders's candidacy: the last time around, they covered student debt and climate change as well as raising the minimum wage. Sanders told Jimmy Kimmel that he often talks with Cardi B and considers her "really smart...deeply concerned about what's happening in this country. She wants to make sure we improve life for working people in this country, and I'm delighted that she is a supporter." Sanders has not ruled out a Cardi B performance at his inauguration.I am a donor to both the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren campaigns."Like, for example me, as a New Yorker, not now, but you know, when I was not famous, I just felt like no matter how many jobs I get, I wasn't able to make ends meet," she said. "Like, I wasn't able to pay my rent, get transportation and eat."Sanders said that's an issue in America, adding tens of millions are living on what he described as starvation wages."Can you imagine somebody today earning $9 an hour?" he asked. "How do you pay your rent? How do you pay for food? How do you pay for transportation?"Sanders said unions are crucial in helping negotiate fair wages. Read the rest

The forthcoming album "Songs from the Bardo" is an exploration of the Tibetan Book of the Dead by beloved composer Laurie Anderson, Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal, and composer/climate activist Jesse Paris Smith, daughter of Patti and Fred "Sonic" Smith. "Songs from the Bardo" will be released September 27 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings:Like a guided meditation, this album suspends time, allowing listeners to fully lose themselves in the piece, as well as bringing to a new light the ideas expressed in the text, connecting the past and the present by illuminating death, the one constant in the impermanent human experience.The origins of the project lie in shared activist work. Smith and Choegyal met in 2008 at a benefit concert that raised money to preserve Tibetan culture and traditions. They began conceptualizing this album back in 2014, first performing a shortened version of it as a duo in 2015....Songs from the Bardo perfectly combines Anderson’s storytelling genius with Choegyal’s expression of traditional Tibetan music and Smith’s background in composition to create a piece that transcends genre and form, emblematic of the text, which speaks of the experience of beings as they transform from one life into the next. Read the rest

Americans mostly used to say "daa-ta", as Brent Spiner relates in an appearance at Big Apple Comic Con earlier this year. Now they mostly say "day-ta". It's all because Patrick Stewart won an argument at the first reading of the first episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation.Brent Spiner tells a funny story about the Data name from "Star Trek: The Next Generation", and how Patrick Stewart is responsible for the way the word is now pronounced. This panel was moderated by Larry Nemecek. For more information on Big Apple Comic Con, head to www.BigAppleCC.comBut I have prior art: 1985's The Goonies. Jump to 50s in for the daa-ta v. day-ta moment.Also, has anyone written about out how much ... weirder? creepier? offbeat? ... early TNG was? The first season has little of the cosy, formulaic rythyms and Flanderized characters we associate with late-century Star Trek stuff, but I feel we've forgotten how interesting it sometimes was because it was so rough (and mostly bad). I'm thinking a supercut of "weird early TNG" is needed. I'm certain I saw someone riffing on this on Twitter a while ago--who was it? Read the rest

I've been following the Modern Monetary Theory debate for about 18 months, and I'm largely a convert: governments spend money into existence and tax it out of existence, and government deficit spending is only inflationary if it's bidding against the private sector for goods or services, which means that the government could guarantee every unemployed person a job (say, working on the Green New Deal), and which also means that every unemployed person and every unfilled social services role is a political choice, not an economic necessity.I was delighted to be invited onto the MMT Podcast to discuss the ways that MMT dovetails with the fight against monopoly and inequality, and how science-fiction storytelling can bring complicated technical subjects (like adversarial interoperability) to life.We talked so long that they've split it into two episodes, the first of which is now live (MP3). Read the rest

"The Ohio State University" is apparently the full name of Ohio State, and to remind everyone of it, they're selling a line of clothing emblazoned with the stark word "THE," and so they've asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to give them the exclusive right to sell t-shirts, baseball hats and hats with the word "THE" on them. This is stupidly generic and unlikely to survive a challenge or even examination. Doesn't THE university have a law-school that could prevent this kind of public embarrassment? Read the rest

I've been playing a game called "Chess" lately. I'm not much good, but have found that a good way to get people mad is to use only the "Pawn" characters. Oftentimes players will end up snarled up on them and it's apparently quite humiliating. In this game the white player quit and msgd me "what the fuck are you doing?" Read the rest

Omni Calculator asks a few questions about your internet usage and tells you what else you might consider doing instead. And yet, for some reason, I find myself wary of completing an online questionnaire about my online habits. Thankfully it's a simple calculation, writes Emma Charlton: Cutting out three 10-minute social media checks a day means you could read as many as 30 more books a year. Many of us are spending more time on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram than ever before: 2 hours and 23 minutes per day, on average, if you accept GlobalWebIndex’s Flagship Report for 2019. Read the rest

Bloomberg reports that Facebook retains recordings of users' voice chats and paid contractors to transcribe them. Now that this has been exposed, the social media giant says it has "paused" the work.Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work.The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained -- only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said.Facebook is a fast zombie, sprinting at the details of your life, and can't see beyond the next bite. It can pretend to be human for brief moments when it perceives a threat, remaining motionless while something in its hungry mind utters a few words that it has learned will mollify prey. But it lurches back into motion as soon as your attention drifts away. Attributing human motivations and concerns to it is pointless, and the only option that makes any sense at all is to destroy it. Read the rest

In 1934, two Englishwomen set out to do what no one had ever done before: travel the length of Africa on a motorcycle. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron from Algiers to Cape Town on a 14,000-mile adventure that many had told them was impossible.We'll also anticipate some earthquakes and puzzle over a daughter's age.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Big companies take on big projects. When they do that, they need a project manager to lay out a roadmap for the entire team - and they're typically willing to pay a big paycheck to the person who can fill those shoes.So what does it take to become a project manager? If you don't have a good handle on methodologies like Agile and Scrum, the Complete Project Management Bundle might be a good place to start.In this 11-part online master class, you'll get step-by-step examples of how to plot a workflow in Agile or Scrum, setting up "sprints" for teams of specialized workers that will result in fast goals and constant progress. To keep track of all this, you'll also get hands-on with Jira, a software package specifically designed to help you and your team visualize those goals. By the time you're done, you'll have all you need to get PMP certified and on the path to a new career.Right now, the Complete Project Management Bundle is $29, a full 98% off the original price. Read the rest

George Sink Sr. is well-known to South Carolina couch potatoes thanks to the endless rotation of ads pitching his personal injury firm. George Sink Jr. is his son, also a lawyer, and now forbidden from using his own name to market his own firm.A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order banning the younger Sink from using the “George Sink” name on his firm’s website, social media accounts and email address. The ban will stay in place until the case is heard by an arbitrator. The elder Sink’s corporation — George Sink P.A. Personal Injury Lawyers — sued Sink Jr. in April to stop him from using his birth name professionally, saying it violates trademark laws and confuses consumers.Sink the Younger used to work for his dad but was fired by him: first from the family firm, then from the family name. Read the rest

It lived some 60m years ago, but the giant penguins are still with us. Standing about 5ft 3in and weighing up to 176 pounds, the monster penguin roamed New Zealand's balmy waters and ruled the beaches for millions of years.It's not entirely clear why the giant penguins disappeared from the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. The most commonly held theory is that it's simply due to growing competition with marine mammals. "At the time giant penguins evolved, the large marine reptiles just had become extinct," Gerald Mayr, another author of the new study, told the BBC. "In Antarctica and New Zealand, there were no large marine competitors until the arrival of toothed whales and pinnipeds (seals) many million years later." Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the Trump Organization posts its Help Wanted advertisement, directed at citizens of Latino nations

Rule #1: Give the people what they want.Thank you to Jack Black, and Tenacious D's Kyle Gass, for joining forces with Jack White to bring the world the rock collab we've been wanting: Jack Gray. Vulture:Over on his Jablinski Games YouTube channel, Black posted a video of the pair’s recent visit to White’s predictably macabre Third Man Records studio in Nashville, as well as his equally Tim Burton–esque home. We don’t actually get to see the inside of White’s reportedly antique-filled house, which sucks, but Black does confirm that the trio recorded a single, the “legendary collab” you’ve been waiting for. It’s no Bobby Castro or band made entirely of Led Zeppelin moms, but still satisfying.Jack White invited us to party pic.twitter.com/0PLAqNnYqH— Jack Black (@jackblack) August 8, 2019 Read the rest