Boing Boing

Director Errol Morris made a bunch of darkly funny 30-second spots about climate change starring Bob Odenkirk. From his director's statement:I have never had any trouble believing in climate change, global warming, or whatever you want to call it. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. Galileo famously replied to Archbishop Piccolomini (or some other Vatican prelate), “And yet it moves.” Today we could just as well say, “And yet it changes.” But what to do about it? Logic rarely convinces anybody of anything. Climate change has become yet another vehicle for political polarization. If Al Gore said the Earth was round there would be political opposition insisting that the Earth was flat. It’s all so preposterous, so contemptible.I’ve created nineteen thirty-second spots that profile a character I created: Admiral Horatio Horntower. He’s an admiral of a fleet of one and perhaps the last man on Earth. Hopefully it captures the absurdity and the desperation of our current situation. No pie graphs, no PowerPoint—just a blithering idiot played by one of my favorite actors, Bob Odenkirk.Image: Errol Morris/YouTube Read the rest

I don't have a single piece of hardware that'll be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 when it's released. This fact didn't do a single damn thing to stop me from watching this 14-minute preview video, however.Beyond getting a peek of the incredible environments that the game has to offer, the video, as its title suggests also gives a solid look at two play styles and massive number of character tweaks that will be available to players on launch day. Read the rest

To break a world record, Rob Scallon linked together 319 pedals and played his guitar through them. What does it sound like? A wall of whooshing, muttering, occasionally howling noise!In the video, it's pretty interesting watching the guitar techs slowly assemble and debug the massive pedal chain. Once it's ready to go, Scallon plays a finger-tapping song using different combos of pedals, and then at the end engages them all simultaneously. The ensuing wash of sound is mostly just random noise, but coming at that point in the performance it's kind of aesthetically interesting. Read the rest

The journalists at The Next Web scripted a bot -- Satoshi Nakaboto -- that crawls around the aether looking for Bitcoin news and tweets, then assembles into a daily news story. There's no cutting-edge AI at hand here -- it's just good-old "rule-based phrases and terms we wrote beforehand," as The Next Web folks note. You can see an archive of the bot's daily stories here.Nonetheless, it wasn't long before the bot published a story that was the #1 most-read for the site that day, as the editor noted:Már Másson Maack, a writer for the site, wrote a good essay pondering his own psychological reactions to being outperformed at his job by a few lines of code. As he notes, there's an obvious discomfort at realizing a bot can author a top-viewed story, because of course in a publishing operation, money comes from reader clicks; if a deathless, tireless, un-unionizable bot can deliver those clicks, that's unsettling for all the meatbag authors.As Másson Maack points out, the traditional response of AI optimists is to argue that this will all be fine. Sure, bots can outperform humans at routine drudge work. But this frees the humans up to do the complex, thoughtful, high-EQ stuff that humans are at the moment uniquely capable of, right?Fair enough, in theory. Except Másson Maack identifies the bigger problem: Our economy mostly has no idea how to value those supposedly superior "human" skills. No, today's firms are mostly obsessed with measuring output, which is where bots excel:The phrase du jour of technologists, ‘tech-minded’ CEOs, and other self-proclaimed thinkfluencers is that AI will actually make ‘work more human.’ The argument being that with the rise of AI, ‘soft skills’ like communication, creativity, teamwork, and problem solving will become the most valuable talents in the future job market. Read the rest

PayPal suspended an account used to raise funds for the Ku Klux Klan Monday. PayPal was criticised for allowing the white supremacist group to accept donations through its service, despite earlier committing to banish "Hate, Violence & Intolerance" in a post that explicitly named the KKK. [via]"I have tonnes of concerns that PayPal is not able to act quickly and decisively on hate groups," Nandini Jammi, from the internet-based group Sleeping Giants, told BBC News."There are some examples of them acting in a fairly timely manner."But they're not applying [their anti-hate policy] in a consistent enough manner."A spokesman for PayPal said: "Due to our legal and data protection obligations, we cannot comment on any specific PayPal customer's account.PayPal was unresponsive to complaints about this account. The BBC reports that it took public pressure from several groups to get them to suspend it. Something about this reminds me of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's recent declaration of support for "offensive" content followed by an ostentatious headline-grabbing ban on a single far right figure. The result is to revive far-right usage of the platform while appearing to clamp down on it. There's really no engagement like you get being a far-right provocateur online. It's quick, life-changing money for anyone with a little wherewithal and a lack of shame. Which, ironically, signifies just how behind the times the Klan is with its shabby PayPal donation button. Read the rest

The 'deepfake-style face swap app' ZAO has climbed to the top of Android and iPhone download charts in recent weeks. As its popularity grew, so have privacy concerns on Chinese social media, and now, beyond.Here's how it works:In case you haven't heard, #ZAO is a Chinese app which completely blew up since Friday. Best application of 'Deepfake'-style AI facial replacement I've ever seen. Here's an example of me as DiCaprio (generated in under 8 secs from that one photo in the thumbnail) 🤯 pic.twitter.com/1RpnJJ3wgT— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019 The sudden wide adoption of ZAO is an “intriguing development in a country where mass surveillance and facial recognition technology are prevalent,” writes Jake Newby at radiichina.com.“Some social media platforms, including WeChat, have now started blocking ZAO videos,” Newby writes in an update to his story on Monday. “WeChat has done this before with popular rival short video apps.”The app — developed by Momo, the same company behind popular Chinese dating app Tantan — became an overnight sensation after it began circulating on Friday evening. Hashtags related to the app quickly became some of the hottest on microblogging site Weibo, while the app rocketed up the iOS download charts. Chinese social media feeds quickly became filled with ZAO-produced videos from friends and contacts for many users.The premise of the app is pretty simple: take a selfie and put yourself into your favorite movie or soap opera (chosen from a pre-selected list of clips). Cue users giving themselves starring roles in Leonardo DiCaprio’s filmography or uninvited guest appearances on Game of Thrones. Read the rest

A number of malicious websites that were recently reported to have been secretly hacking into iPhones over a two-year period were in fact targeting Uyghur Muslims, Zack Whittaker of TechCrunch reports today. Android and Windows users were also targeted in the same watering hole attacks affecting iPhone users, Thomas Brewster later reported at Forbes.The entity which would be presumed most likely behind such an attack is the government of China, or an entity working for the government's interests -- so there's been much speculation the attacker is China. Some questions remain. Exactly what the FBI's role in this remains unknown. And were Android users also targeted by the same campaign?— Zack Whittaker (@zackwhittaker) September 1, 2019 But no proof in the code found. And some doubt it was China. Good reporting by Techcrunch here. Not PR for Apple or China, or conspiracy mongering.Read the TechCrunch article, and check out some of the analysis on Twitter below from infosec folks. [via Techmeme, images: Shutterstock]New: @iblametom has confirmed that Android and Windows users were *also* targeted in the same watering hole attacks affecting iPhone users. https://t.co/RV3NCOoRMY— Zack Whittaker (@zackwhittaker) September 1, 2019 I'm going to be the odd one here and say this isn't right. So far China has had complete control of the Uyghurs using physical means and coercion. Their entire lives are controlled so why go this route when you will get burned (china doesn't like people knowing internal stuff)— Daniel Cuthbert (@dcuthbert) September 1, 2019I cannot find anywhere in this article *any* sourcing for the assertion the hack was by China, or to target Uyghur Muslims. Read the rest

May your monday be as charming and as thoroughly moistening as this crew of puppies. Read the rest

Leon Sans is a generative typeface for the web, meaning that its weight and other characteristics can be animated, colorized, fine-tuned or otherwise messed with on-the-fly using javascript. Check out the demo page.The Mask Tiling example is nice! Read the rest

There's nothing I hate in my bag so much as my laptop charger, a heavy Lenovo-grade brick of black plastic with two thick cables sticking out of each end, invariably forming a coiled knot of nonsense three times larger still. So I ordered this alarmingly small universal charger from RAVpower as soon as I saw that Wirecutter didn't recommend it. It's smaller than an iPad charger, but charges a MacBook Pro or Thinkpad. The RAVPower also charges the way it should. We ran the RP-PC112 through our standard testing procedures, which include running Total Phase’s USB Power Delivery Analyzer and its Data Center Software. This test tells us the power rates the chargers make available to connected devices, the actual power output observed when they’re connected, and whether any errors occur during charging. The RAVPower passed without issue. The special sauce in these new power supplies is Gallium Nitride.USB C Wall Charger, RAVPower 61W PD 3.0 [GaN Tech] Type C Fast Charging Power Delivery Foldable Adapter, Compatible with MacBook Pro/Air, Ipad Pro 2018, iPhone Xs Max/XR/X and More [Amazon] Read the rest

The Lima National Security Center was home to a bevy of nuclear weapon tests during the Cold War. Today, it’s still being used to fart around with radiation, but in a way that’s actually beneficial to folks like you and I. This five minute video shows how first responders are being trained to deal with nuclear materials being released, due to an accident, terrorist attack or—holy shit, please no—a tactical nuclear weapons strike on an urban population.Image via Wikipedia Read the rest

This book features 550 recommendations grouped by subject. These “best of” recommendations have been selected from the accumulated pool of 6 brief suggestions Kevin Kelly, Claudia Dawson, and I have sent out each Sunday for the past two years in a free email newsletter called Recomendo.It's available as a searchable DRM-free PDF for $1.99, or you can buy a paperback copy on Amazon for .Sample pages: Read the rest

Pedro Bell, the visionary painter whose astonishing psychedelic art (and liner notes) appeared on numerous Funkadelic albums and shaped the P-Funk mythos, died on Tuesday at 69. Free your mind, and your ass will follow. From the New York Times:“The artwork of Pedro Bell was an essential component of the alternately utopian and dystopian world of P-Funk, which placed African-American reality in the context of a science fiction future that was both scary and hopeful,” (art curator Pan) Wendt said by email. “Pedro was a brilliant autodidact who was a key source of George Clinton’s ideology through his readings of science fiction, media theory and environmentalist tracts, as well as his knowledge of Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism..."Mr. Clinton was especially fond of what Mr. Bell came up with for Funkadelic’s “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On” (1974): an alien landscape that was both scary and whimsical.“It was a combination of Ralph Bakshi and Samuel R. Delany and Superfly and Fat Albert and Philip K. Dick and Krazy Kat and Flash Gordon,” he wrote in his book, “all mixed together in Pedro’s brain with some kind of blender that hadn’t even been invented yet.”We lost the Master Mind behind the Graphic's & Artwork of Funkadelic. Mr. Pedro Bell is an American artist and illustrator best known for his elaborate cover designs and other artwork for numerous Funkadelic and George Clinton solo albums. Thxs for yr service our brother.😲🙏 pic.twitter.com/PsD8TRxlRU— Bootsy Collins (@Bootsy_Collins) August 28, 2019 'Free your mind & the rest will follow...We believed where the funk was going to take us.' Chicago's Pedro Bell told his funk-tastic philosophy to @kspak in @Suntimesstory. Read the rest

Jazz genius Thelonious Monk was often known for his laconic mumbling and other idiosyncrasies beside his legendary compositions, technique, and contributions to jazz. But in this short clip, Monk is crystal clear in sharing his thoughts on fellow bandmate saxophonist Johnny Griffin’s new pants. “Some bad muthafuckers” indeed!Further reading: “Thelonious Monk's surreally strange and spartan genius gets its due” The Guardian “The Secret Life of Thelonious Monk” The AtlanticImage: YouTube Read the rest

A pharmaceutical lab in Spain mislabeled minoxidil (a hair-loss drug sold in the U.S. as Rogaine) as omeprazole (an antacid marketed as Prilosec). Excess hair growth resulted after babies were prescribed the latter and consumed the former, reports the New York Times.The children who took the mislabeled medicine, some of them babies, began growing hair all over their bodies, a rare condition known as hypertrichosis, Spain’s health minister said on Wednesday. ... Ms. Carcedo, the health minister, told reporters that no pharmacy in Spain still had the mislabeled omeprazole.“We have immobilized all the batches,” she said.Do not drink Rogaine. Read the rest

The internet-famous Chicago native “Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't” talks to an injured coyote he encountered and rescued. The little guy just got a flea bath, and he was on his way to a wildlife rehab facility. If you're not familiar with this guy's YouTube channel, it's amazing.“A Low-Brow, Crass Approach to Plant Ecology as muttered by a Misanthropic Chicago Italian.”The coyote in the video above video is the same sweet critter you see in this previous video about Pitcher Plants, around 30 seconds in. Amazing to watch the rescue. Read the rest

Today, illegitimate, popular-vote-losing, manifestly unfit U.S. President Donald Trump did something extraordinarily stupid on Twitter, even for him. Looks like the president may have just tweeted an image from a classified satellite or drone that shows the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility. Yeah, no big deal.Security experts' jaws were on the floor Friday afternoon as the Trump tweet circulated.Vladimir Putin's having fun with all of this, one presumes.Here's the tweet."The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir [Space Launch Vehicle] Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran," the president's tweet with the image on Friday reads. "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."From NPR's Geoff Brumfiel:NPR broke the news of the launch failure on Thursday, using images from commercial satellites that flew over Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center. Those images showed smoke billowing from the pad. Iran has since acknowledged an accident occurred at the site.Some of the highest-resolution imagery available commercially comes from the company Maxar, whose WorldView-2 satellite sports 46-centimeter resolution.But the image shown in the president's tweet appears to be of far better quality, says Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, who specializes in analyzing satellite imagery. "The resolution is amazingly high," says Panda. "I would think it's probably below well below 20 centimeters, which is much higher than anything I've ever seen."Panda says that the tweet discloses "some pretty amazing capabilities that the public simply wasn't privy to before this."“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions about the image to the White House, which declined to comment.”Oh, and right around the same time this drama hit Twitter, the CEO of Twitter's account got hacked. Read the rest

Glad no one was hurt, but seriously? $250?A white woman in Mississippi who was accused of threatening an African American couple with a handgun while shouting at them to leave a KOA campground has been fined $250, and will receive a misdemeanor charge.Only $250. A misdemeanor.Imagine if the race roles were reversed. “The charge follows a widely shared video of a woman in a Kampgrounds of America shirt holding a revolver as she tells the couple to leave because they had no reservation,” reports NBC News:Local news outlets report 70-year-old Ruby Nell Howell of Starkville was found guilty Tuesday in Oktibbeha County Justice Court of threatening exhibition of a weapon. She was fined $250 and ordered to pay $182.50 in court fees. Howell will not be jailed.The charge follows May's widely shared video of a woman in a Kampgrounds of America shirt holding a revolver as she tells the couple to leave because they had no reservation.KOA has said the woman was fired.Jessica and Franklin Richardson, the couple, said they didn't realize they needed a reservation and would have left if asked.$250 fine for white woman who brandished gun at black couple [NBC NEWS, image: Oktibbeha County MS] Read the rest

The Colorado River toad (Incilius alvarius) secretes a substance called 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT). People in a research study at Maastricht University in the Netherlands "found that inhaling dried-and-powdered toad secretions resulted in increased life satisfaction, better mindfulness, and a decrease in psychopathological symptoms for the duration of the four-week-long study," according to ScienceAlert.(Image: kuhnmi, CC-BY 2.0) Read the rest

Oops.Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter account got hacked.You can see the name of the group claiming credit.A Twitter spox confirmed that what we were all seeing was what we presumed. Yes, Jack's account was compromised. We're working on it and investigating what happened.— Brandon Borrman (@bborrman) August 30, 2019A few more screengrabs below. This went on for quite a while, and much N-word was spewed.Some concerns and grim lulz below, from those of us who observed in horror.Prevailing theory, not confirmed at the time of this blog post on Friday afternoon, is that the hacked @jack tweets were posted using Cloudhopper, a tool for for posting tweets by SMS (phone texting). It's possible the hackers who were tweeting from the account got access by spoofing the number linked to his Cloudhopper account to send tweets from his mobile phone.Just imagine the head of Twitter's security team right now, on seven different kinds of mushrooms, nude, in a giant bamboo steampunk rocketship called the Love Temple, ignoring his push notifications— Tom Gara (@tomgara) August 30, 2019In human English:@Jack's hackers had a Discord server (like a Slack for teenz). They linked to it from Jack's hacked account.Discord, the company, killed the hackers' Discord just now.Jack's account remains compromised and tweeting racial slurs.— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 30, 2019We’ve always known that 45 could be hacked #onhere and now it’s confirmed this can easily happen.— #DilettanteInChief (@prisonculture) August 30, 2019Someone found out the number Jack Dorsey linked to twitter for SMS and used that to post. Read the rest

Today is National Slinky Day. As Rachael Lallensack writes in Smithsonian, a spring, a spring, this marvelous thing was invented by accident:In 1943, mechanical engineer Richard James was designing a device that the Navy could use to secure equipment and shipments on ships while they rocked at sea. As the story goes, he dropped the coiled wires he was tinkering with on the ground and watched them tumble end-over-end across the floor.After dropping the coil, he could have gotten up, frustrated, and chased after it without a second thought. But he—as inventors often do—had a second thought: perhaps this would make a good toy. As Jonathon Schifman reported for Popular Mechanics, Richard James went home and told his wife, Betty James, about his idea. In 1944, she scoured the dictionary for a fitting name, landing on “slinky,” which means “sleek and sinuous in movement or outline.” Together, with a $500 loan, they co-founded James Industries in 1945, the year the Slinky hit store shelves...Seventy-two years ago, Richard James received a patent for the Slinky, describing “a helical spring toy which will walk on an amusement platform such as an inclined plane or set of steps from a starting point to successive lower landing points without application of external force beyond the starting force and the action of gravity.” He had worked out the ideal dimensions for the spring, 80-feet of wire into a two-inch spiral. (You can find an exact mathematical equation for the slinky in his patent materials.) It was Betty that masterminded the toy’s success. Read the rest

I think this vase was supposed to shatter on the floor, but it bounced and shattered on a fellow's head.Image: YouTube[via Likecool] Read the rest

Some online retailers (usually clothing companies. like Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty) sneakily insert monthly memberships into customers' shopping carts, and if the customers don't remove the subscription from the shopping cart, they'll get stuck with a $50 monthly bill that can't be canceled unless they talk to a customer service rep on the phone whose job it is to use every persuasion tactic in the book to prevent the customer from canceling. Note that the cost of the monthly membership isn't shown in the shopping cart, so it looks like it's free. From Nicole Dieker's Lifehacker article:I tried shopping at Savage X Fenty, and although the website clearly stated that I did not need to become an “Xtra VIP Member” to make purchases, the site also automatically added a membership to my cart after I clicked on an item. Only after I deleted the membership from my cart was I able to begin the checkout process at the “Basic” (non-member, and twice as expensive) level—and even then, the site kept nudging me to join Xtra VIP.As Vox notes, Savage X Fenty isn’t the only retailer with these types of membership fees. Fabletics is another well-known retailer with a $49.95 VIP Membership, and although the process of making a non-member purchase is more transparent, the site still uses color and contrast to convince you to become a VIP. Read the rest

Back in the 80s, the inventor Cy Enfield created this fascinating device -- a six-button "Microwriter" where you'd chord combos of buttons to produce the entire alphabet, letting you jot down notes on the go.Microsoft's Bill Buxton calls it "the world’s first portable digital word processor" (the front-page photo for this post is from Buxton's hardware collection) and Open Culture wrote a terrific piece about the Microwriter a few years ago, citing from a 1984 interview Enfield did with NPR, discussing his "aha" moment:“It occurred to me that ... it would be possible to combine a set of signals from separate keys, and therefore you could reduce the total number of keys. But, of course, this involved the learning of chords… difficult to memorize… But how do you make these chords memorable? And, one day, staring at a sheet of paper on which I was drawing a set of five keys in sort of the arch formed by the finger ends, it occurred to me, ah! if I press the thumb key, and the index finger key, anybody can do this just listening now, press your thumb key and your index finger down and you’ll see that a vertical line joins those two finger ends, a short vertical line. There is an equivalence between that short vertical line and one letter of the alphabet. It’s the letter “I.”Buxton's site has some scans of the gorgeous user's manual, including this one:There are chording keyboards these days, most notably the Twiddler, and stenography tech. Read the rest

Fifteen years ago Wendy Auger got a vanity license plate that read, "PB4WEGO" (pee before we go). But the New Hampshire Department of Motor Vehicles suddenly decided the plate was "offensive to good taste" and ordered her to return it. She refused, posted about it on Facebook, and ended up getting the attention of the governor, who was sympathetic to her plight.From Reason:Since going public about her predicament, Auger gained a strong ally: New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN yesterday that he had spoken to the DMV on her behalf."Upon this being brought to my attention, I reached out to the Division of Motor Vehicles and strongly urged them to allow Wendy to keep the license plate she has had for the last 15 years," he said. "I recently left a message on her phone to share the good news that her plate will not be recalled."Image: Wendy Lee Auger/Facebook Read the rest

Typically, marine photography is done in rich, saturated color -- the better to show off the riot of life beneath the waves. But the photographer Christian Vizl has done it in high-contrast black and white, producing eerily intense ways of re-seeing marine life. You can see the work on his site, and in his new book Silent Kingdom.From his interview with My Modern Met:Any particular favorite images from the book or a story behind a particularly interesting photo you’d like to share?It’s hard for me to choose only one because I have so many memorable encounters with marine life, but one would be two giant mantas touching each other’s tips. I observed this behavior for the first time during the first dive we did in a very remote and special dive area in Mexico called Revillagigedo Islands. The two mantas were swimming directly towards each other when, at the last second before colliding, they would move upwards, positioning themselves slightly to one opposite side so they could touch each other’s tip of their wings. I was so amazed by this behavior that I wanted to capture it. I tried many times and finally the last day of diving in the last minute before having to go for the surface I managed to take this picture in the exact time. I felt so happy!Some of the images are incredibly striking; in black and white, this school of fish looks like the hull of a ship ... Read the rest

The large primate could not resist touching the little primate. The little primate didn't want to be touched by the large primate, and showed its displeasure by scratching the large primate.Let me just touch this monkey to see what happens Read the rest

You can explain it to them. They can sense the damage, and they can perceive that they have made a mistake. They can pretend to be contrite, and maybe for a brief moment they can even understand what it is they have done wrong. But as soon as the voices of complaint fade away and the crisis subsides, they'll go right back to doing it again, because the truth is they don't care and they are completely indifferent to everything about you that they cannot take and sell. Read the rest

ETH Zurich engineers demonstrated a system enabling a robot to control a marionette. Although a robotic puppeteer is pretty damn cool, that's not the point of the research."Our long term goal is to enable robots to manipulate various types of complex physical systems – clothing, soft parcels in warehouses or stores, flexible sheets and cables in hospitals or on construction sites, plush toys or bedding in our homes, etc – as skillfully as humans do," they write in their technical paper. "We believe the technical framework we have set up for robotic puppeteering will also prove useful in beginning to address this very important grand-challenge."(via IEEE Spectrum) Read the rest

The Jag at 1:29 and Volkswagen Bug at 3:26 are my favorites. Read the rest

Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, the two former New York detectives who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes and nine counts of "official misconduct" for having sex with a handcuffed 18-year-old woman in the back of their unmarked van while she was in their custody, will get no prison time, reports CNN.State Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun said the men didn't deserve prison time because the "credibility of the victim, or the complainant, in this case was seriously, seriously questionable, at best.""These defendants engaged in a shocking abuse of power, which they finally acknowledged," [Brooklyn District Attorney Eric] Gonzalez said. "While I would have preferred to see them serve prison time, they are no longer members of our police department and with today's plea are convicted felons."The district attorney said the case resulted in New York passing a law prohibiting police officers from having sex with people in custody, closing a loophole that allowed police to claim the sex was consensual."We could not apply the new law retroactively, and serious credibility issues in this case precluded us from proceeding on additional charges, yet we remained committed to holding these defendants accountable," Gonzalez said.The woman's attorney, Michael N. David, said the sentence was unacceptable and sent a bad message to victims about police violence."We're outraged. It's complete injustice what happened today. You can't consent when you're 5'3, 100 pounds and they're both over 6 feet and very muscular. They had her in handcuffs. These cops got a free pass," he said. Read the rest

These were the same kids that declared break dancing a memory. Read the rest

This is The Mall, first opened in Huntsville, Alabama and demolished in 1998. Collected by Highway Explorer in 1994 as this former retail haven was taking its dying breaths, this footage could do quite well with a dark vaporwave (or mallwave) soundtrack. From Highway Explorer:This footage was shot on a very quiet Saturday night in February 1994 only a few years before its demolition. Books A Million is still there, and Home Depot is there now too. The sculpture used in the fountain sits in the traffic circle between Home Depot and Staples. The site is now called The Fountain. Read the rest

Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates is a new three-part documentary that premieres on November 20. It's directed by Davis Guggenheim who produced An Inconvenient Truth and directed Waiting for Superman. "When I thought about topics to cover, I knew I didn’t want to make a promotional piece about his work," Guggenheim said. "Instead, I opted to focus on the tougher, more complex problems that nobody wants to think about, like sanitation and nuclear energy. Bill chose to take these issues on, even knowing that he might fail, and I had an instinct that seeing him wrestle with these intractable and frustrating problems would reveal something interesting about him as a person.”It'll be interesting to see how warts-and-all the documentary really is (or isn't). Read the rest

In April, my wife and I returned from a few months in Mexico, to Texas. We were planning on hanging around until the end of the month before driving back up to Canada. On a particularly hot day, we thought it'd be nice to take our pooch to the beach so that she could cool off. Landlocked as we were, in Mission, we opted to drive east, to the coast. We considered South Padre Island, but seeing the traffic thicken the closer we got, we opted out at the last minute. Instead, on the advice of a fella we met while pulled over for a few licks of an ice cream, we set our Garmin to direct us to Boca Chica. The beach was beautiful, we were told, and no one cares if your dog plays the goof, provided she doesn't bother anyone else.We were sold.It wasn't a long drive, but it was a damn flat one. When we arrive in south Texas each year, I'm always thrilled to see the scrub brush, flatlands and palm trees. It's a completely alien world compared to what I grew up with in Canada. By the time we're getting ready to head north, I long for mountains. As the miles down the lone road to Boca Chica clicked by, I starting to whine that I knew what would be around the next corner... it would be flat and dry, with just a hint of dust, just as with the last corner we'd whipped around. Read the rest

No animals were harmed in the making of this video."Vink is a 5-month-old kitten who is blind. He was found on the streets of Greece and thanks to 'Athene Stray Kittens, he found his forever home with me. Vink is a very energetic, happy kitten who loves life! He also loves his crazy cat mum. Who, sometimes, makes a bit fun of him, but Vink is okay with that. Vink has no eyes, and wasn't harmed in this video! As you can tell of his body language."(Geekologie) Read the rest

Diamond and Silk are a social media duo famous for supporting Trump and claiming, without evidence, that Facebook "censored" them. Wonkette is a news, politics and culture website. Bianca DeLaRosa writes for it, and recently offered the opinion that Diamond and Silk were notable as "Black White Nationalists" due to their support of Trump's policies and their own ethnicity. Diamond and Silk threatened to sue Wonkette, it claims, over this opinion piece, and the cease-and-decist letter is amazing.The consensus among lawyers on the internet is that the "Diamond and Silk Legal Team" is probably not, technically, a lawyer. I'm having trouble with the idea that the letter's even real. It's so strewn with spelling mistakes and mangled legal terminology that it reads like a joke about a stupid person pretending to be a lawyer—an exemplar of Poe's Law, the maxim that it is impossible to distinguish parody from authenticity on the Internet.Diamond and Silk sent @Wonkette a cease and desist letter and I haven't been this excited to write about something since Bob Murray sued John Oliver for telling him to eat shit. https://t.co/cerFwN3eur— Needlessly Snarky (@jamielynncrofts) August 29, 2019 Read the rest

I'm actually a big fan of Bread Pong. Razmig writes: "When it comes to calories, 1 beer = 2 slices of bread...but you never have your friends over for a loaf? Or do you? It's a bread party! 🍞🍺 🥖🍻" Read the rest

In this video, a paramedic with San Bernadino County Fire Department attempts to reach the site of an accident, but finds his way blocked by motorists who would rather drive in the shoulder than wait to get by. Read the rest

CBS News reports that Hurricane Dorian has become more alarming overnight and may grow to Category 4, making it "very dangerous" to the Miami-area coastline it's headed toward.There's a good chance Dorian will power its way into a Category 4 with potentially catastrophic 140 mph winds before making landfall on the mainland U.S., the center added, according to CBS News weather producer David Parkinson.He said Dorian would probably make landfall early Monday evening at the earliest and Tuesday morning at the latest, probably over the central Florida Atlantic coast though possibly farther south.Florida residents rushed to supermarkets across the state to buy food and supplies.CNN is now predicting a "monster.""If you're anywhere on that east coast of Florida, you want to have food, water, medicine for up to seven days," Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday. Dorian warrants a multibillion dollar price tag, FEMA associate administrator Jeffrey Byard told reporters Thursday."This is going to be a big storm. We're prepared for a big response," he said.Since Dorian had minimal impact on Puerto Rico, the agency is shifting staff from the island to Florida in preparation.Illustration: CNN. Headline: Heather Beschizza Read the rest

The Brady "kids" have been busy all year helping to renovate the Brady Bunch house (well, the Studio City home that served as its exterior shot). You may remember that HGTV bought the house last year and has been updating its interior to look like the Brady home we saw on TV. Well, the show they've been filming, A Very Brady Renovation, has a premiere date: Monday, September 9. The show's host, Jasmine Roth, was interviewed in The Orange County Register about the project:...It was completely surreal to be able to work with the Brady kids, and I didn’t know what to expect at first because I was, “OK, are they going to be into this? Are they going to actually swing a hammer? Are they going to be excited? Are they going to remember things?” Because that was part of it, we don’t know the paint colors, we don’t know what stone was used on the fireplace, but being able to research and go back and watch the show and then to have the memories of the six Brady kids, who aren’t kids anymore, to help us was so cool, and everybody was really into it. So that made it so much more fun. They really wanted to work on it, they were super excited to make everything exactly like it was back when they were on the set as children, and for that I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out.It’s interesting to see like, the show, it’s been 50 years, to see where everybody’s careers have taken them and all of their various experiences all kind of came back together to work on this project. Read the rest

Just in time for your songs of the summer playlist, we've got a roundup of headphones, speakers, and earbuds. The best part? They're all 15% off the already discounted price. Just use the online code SAVE15SOUND to take the extra savings off the final listed cost.Owlee Scroll Wireless Bluetooth SpeakerNo matter how big the party, this 4.0 Bluetooth-enabled speaker can provide the soundtrack. Connectivity is rock solid as far as 32 feet away, and the 360° Soundstage™ technology ensures a full, rich sound. Right now, you can get the Owlee Scroll Wireless Bluetooth Speaker for $79.99, down 33% from the original cost. Take an extra 15% off with the online code SAVE15SOUND.TREBLAB X5 Wireless EarbudsWith an ergonomic fit, these earbuds are well-equipped for any workout or adventure - or even just a long commute. The built-in microphone is compatible with leading voice assistants for quick calling, and the beryllium drivers deliver sharp, static-free sound when it's time to get in the zone. You can get the TREBLAB X5 Wireless Earbuds for $64.99, a 17% discount off the MSRP. Take an extra 15% off with the online code SAVE15SOUND.Bluetooth 5.0 Sweatproof HD Sport EarphonesAn impressive IPX7 sweatproof rating means these buds won't stop when the burn gets intense. And thanks to RAWtronics' 5.0 Bluetooth connectivity, you won't have to worry about losing your signal halfway through the playlist. Pick up a pair of Bluetooth 5.0 Sweatproof HD Sport Earphones for $25, a full 66% off the original cost. Read the rest

Who let the dogs out... and into the swimming pool? L.A. County does, as part of their third annual "Pooches in the Pool" event.Come Monday, September 2, 2019, doggos will get the opportunity to swim (doggy paddle?) in select Los Angeles-area public pools. Little dogs can swim from 5 to 6 p.m., and big ones from 6 to 7 p.m. at these eight participating locations:City Terrace Park - 1126 N. Hazard Ave., City TerraceDon Knabe Park - 19700 Bloomfield Ave., CerritosEl Cariso Pool - 13100 Hubbard St., SylmarKnollwood County Club - 12040 Balboa Blvd., Granada HillsLane Pool - 5520 W. Ave., L8, Quartz HillLoma Alta Park - 3330 Lincoln Ave., AltadenaMartin Pool - 35548 N. 92nd St. E., LittlerockVictoria Park - 419 E. M.L.K. Jr., CarsonBut wait, you have to fill out a form and there are rules.KTLA5:Before their pooch can jump in, dog owners will have to present current licensing and vaccination documents, and fill out a form.There are a few rules, like there must be one handler for every two dogs and they can only be off-leash on the pool deck. Click here for a full list.This is the final event before the pools are closed and cleaned for the season. What a terrific idea!.@lacountyparks are closing out the summer season with #PoochesInThePool! Bring your dog for a dunk on Labor Day https://t.co/FNpVRFWuOP 🐶💦 pic.twitter.com/B2SiceqoeP— Los Angeles County (@CountyofLA) August 28, 2019image via L.A. Read the rest

Hurricane maps, like the ones created by the National Hurricane Center, tend to show a cone that indicates the predicted path of the hurricane.But it turns out those maps do a terrible job of communicating their intended info, because people -- myself included -- routinely misunderstand them. In this terrific little click-through interactive at the New York Times (if inaccessibly paywalled for you, my apologies), Albert Cairo and Tala Schlossberg break it all down. As they note:Studies show that some people misinterpret the map as indicating the hurricane getting bigger over time. Others think it shows areas under threat. Research by Hurakan, a University of Miami team I’m a part of, suggests 40 percent of people wouldn’t feel threatened if they lived just outside of the cone.People who are inside the cone, but far from the center, tend to prepare less than those closer to the central line. All of these interpretations of the map are incorrect.In reality, the cone is a series of circles that predict where the center of the hurricane might be as it travels; the circles get bigger because uncertainty increases as time goes on.So no, chart doesn't indicate the hurricane is getting bigger. And the cone doesn't even represent the boundaries of where the damage might happen; it only shows where the center of the hurricane might be, so the actual blast radius of water, wind, and hail can wreck cities that lie quite outside the cone.As Cairoa and Schlossberg note, the cruddiness of this dataviz has real-life implications: People just outside the cone tend to downplay their risk and fail to prepare. Read the rest

Adorable and fun!Bring A Trailer:This 1964 Sunbeam Tiger GT reportedly was discovered in a garage in Palo Alto, California in the 1990s by Tiger historian Norman Miller, who verified it as a genuine GT car built by the Rootes Group in August 1964. The car was then purchased by a collector who refurbished it in the early 2000s with a rebuild of the numbers-matching 260ci V8, a bare-metal repaint in black, a new interior, and more as described below. The car spent time with another owner in Hawaii before returning to California in 2015 and being offered on BaT in November 2017. Service by the most recent owner has included the replacement of the clutch, clutch master and slave cylinders, generator, voltage regulator, spark plugs, wiring harness, and brake booster. This Tiger GT is now offered at no reserve by the selling dealer with a Certificate of Disclosure by Norman Miller, owner’s manual, matching hardtop, service records, and a clean California title. Read the rest

An organization that monitors sea turtles in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, reports they've found a two-headed Loggerhead turtle hatchling.Sea Turtle Patrol Hilton Head Island reported that they found the hatchling alive on Tuesday, and released the little turtle baby into the ocean.Marine biologist Amber Kuehn, who is the leader of Sea Turtle Patrol Hilton Head Island, says the second head on the turtle was caused by a genetic mutation. The turtle has been named Squirt and Crush.From the rescue group's Facebook page:We thought we had seen it all during this very busy season on Sea Turtle Patrol! Yesterday on patrol during a nest inventory this bicephalic hatchling was discovered. This mutation is more common in reptiles than in other animals but it is still very rare. As with other live hatchlings found during a nest inventory, this hatchling was released to the ocean. Good luck to Squirt and Crush!Some people are upset that the critter was released, since it probably won't be able to survive given that it cannot swim. What would you have done, and why? [via AP, photo Sea Turtle Patrol Hilton Head Island Facebook page] Read the rest

Perhaps you needed to be reminded that sweet and good things exist in this world.“My Youngest Son Meeting Mickey Mouse” is that video.My Youngest Son Meeting Mickey MouseFrom IMGURian GoodAsDad.[via imgur.com] Read the rest

White nationalist activist Martin Sellner and British YouTuber the Iconoclast are free to rake in those YouTube views—and the money that goes with it.

In Maryland, a 16-year-old girl texted a video of herself engaging in a consensual sex act to her best friends. The highest court in Maryland has decided the girl is a child pornographer. “For the first time, the Maryland Court of Appeals said it had to grapple with applying the state’s child pornography law to minor teens who consensually engage in sexting,” writes Tasneem Nashrulla at BuzzFeed News:In a similar case last year, a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota was charged with a felony distribution of child pornography after she sent an explicit Snapchat selfie of herself to a boy she liked. The boy distributed the selfie to other students without the girl's permission."It is nonsensical to suggest that [Jane Doe] is both a victim and the perpetrator of her own abuse," the ACLU said in a statement in 2018 urging the court to dismiss the charge against the Minnesota teen. "Jane created the sext of her own body. She was not an exploited child victim. She was exhibiting normal adolescent behavior in the digital age," the statement said.A district judge in Minnesota later dismissed the "absurd" and "unjust" charge against the 14-year-old, saying that the state's child pornography law was targeted at adults who abuse children, and not at teens who sext each other.Earlier this year, Maryland’s lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have determined if sexting violated the state’s child pornography statute.The Maryland Court of Appeals urged lawmakers to consider such legislation again to “address this contemporary issue.”A Teen Is A Child Pornographer For Sexting A Video Of Herself To Her Friends, A Court Ruled [buzzfeednews.com, image: shutterstock] Read the rest