Hot dog! First, Hearst Castle made it possible for everyday folks to swim in their pools (as a fundraiser). Now, Oscar Mayer has turned one of their Wienermobiles into a rentable RV of sorts. AlexanDog + Jake N' Bacon, two Chicago area Hotdoggers (that's what the drivers of these iconic hot dogs on wheels are called), have listed their one-bedroom Wienermobile on Airbnb.And, starting on July 24, you can rent the darn thing for $136/night:Housed inside an authentic Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, this cozy space for two is located in Chicagoland. Complete with a bed for dreaming of wienies, sitting area for discussing at length whether a hot dog is a sandwich (spoiler alert – it is!) and other amenities like adjacent outdoor spaces for the bathroom and a hot dog picnic zone, this hot dog paradise is the ideal respite for two music lovers in town for the festival weekend… or just those who relish a good story.Amenities include a mini fridge stocked with Oscar Mayer hot dogs and all the Chicago-style hot dog essentials, an Oscar Mayer roller grill to take home, an outdoor space for comfortable hot dog eating and a custom Wienermobile art piece by local artist Laura Kiro. And to help you celebrate your love of hot dogs during your visit, each guest also will receive a welcome kit, complete with all the hot dog-inspired accessories you could want after a music-filled, festival day.It sleeps two non-smoking adults (on a sofa bed) and breakfast is included. Read the rest

"I became obsessed with this old piece of film footage and it evolved into a music video," writes UK Animator Cyriak Harris on his latest work, "Breakfast." As one commenter quips, "1:40 Because it's not a cyriak video until something mutates into a horrible monster." True story. Read the rest

Thor: Ragnarok was, by one million miles (or parsecs, if you will) one of the most delightful surprises in a decade of superhero flicks. Much of the film's charm was arguably due to the joy that Taika Waititi brings to every project he's associated with. Good news everybody: he's coming back for Thor 4!From Gizmodo:Thor will be back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Taika Waititi will once again be steering the ship.The Hollywood Reporter says that the Thor: Ragnarok director has signed on to direct a fourth Thor movie. He’ll also write, according to EW. This happened after some issues arose with what was expected to be his next film, Akira, which is now going to be delayed.Yeah, the rear end of the good news is that Waititi's on-again-off-again push to make a live-action version of Akira is going to have to wait a little while longer. That sucks but hey: more Korg, more Hemsworth, more Waititi! I suppose it stands to reason that they'd let him take a crack at the sequel. the film, which had a budget of $180 million, made $853,977,126 in theaters, worldwideio9 has to say the delay could might be caused by the timing of Thor: Ragnarok (ironic) and issues with Akira's script. What'll happen to Waititi's Akira remains to be seen. However, I'd love to see it made. I might not be a huge Akira fan, but I'd be moderately enthused to see it made, because WAITITI! Read the rest

I'm not sure if the first thing on my to-do list with a late model $1,000 handset would be to tether it to a whack of party balloons and launch it into the atmosphere, but hey: to each their own. That said, you can't argue with the view! Read the rest

A judge has ruled that convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein will stay in detention pending his trial.Judge Richard Miles Berman, Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, said Jeffrey Epstein poses a threat to the community. Judge Berman called this the heart of his opinion. He also finds that Epstein is a flight risk.Judge Berman ended the hearing by scheduling a July 31 conference, primarily for purposes of case management and scheduling.Epstein is sitting still, his hands folded together on the table in front of him. Judge Berman schedules a July 31 conference.— Benjamin Adams (@BenAdamsO_O) July 18, 2019No bail for Jeffrey Epstein. Judge orders accused sex trafficker jailed while awaiting trial. https://t.co/rNfKPk7Ipq— JamesVGrimaldi (@JamesVGrimaldi) July 18, 2019BREAKING: Wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will have to wait out a sex trafficking trial from a jail cell after a federal judge in New York ruled against his request for release on bail. #PerversionofJustice https://t.co/8XOyRtHxhx— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) July 18, 2019Despite offering everything under the sun and close to $100 million, the judge described Epstein's proposed bail package, which would have allowed him to live in his Upper East Side mansion, as "irretrievably inadequate." @eorden— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) July 18, 2019Was just in court as Jeffrey Epstein was denied bail in his sex trafficking case. “I doubt any bail package can overcome danger to the community,” said Judge Richard Berman. https://t.co/UYAFXMJ7fn— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) July 18, 2019Jeffrey Epstein gulped with force when Judge Berman announced he was going to deliver his conclusion. Read the rest

I was attracted to Station Eleven by the short description,it smacked of Commedia dell'arte: a post-apocalyptic tale of new-troubadours desperate to keep music and performance alive in a time of death. I was captivated, however, by the author's format in story telling.Emily St. John Mandel starts this book off like almost any other book about the apocalypse. People are doing things so high-up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs to demonstrate how far or bad they are about to fall. The book opens in a theater, where stuff happens. Shortly thereafter humanity loses its shit.Years after the collapse, we meet the Traveling Symphony, a group of musicians and a troupe of Shakespearian actors who merged and travel the north-central former United States and Canada, entertaining folks. Star Trek gave a member of the Symphony the quotation “Because survival is insufficient.” and it has become their guiding light. Life on the road is very hard, but it is their life.The book temporally jumps all over the place, telling the life story of a famous Hollywood actor who died the night before the world fell apart, and following some key players in his life through their experience of the new world order. The jumps are connected, but disjointed. The story is touching, occasionally heart-rending, and utterly meaningless to the destiny of the folks who survive the actor. The interactions with him helped make them who they are, they may inform some decision-making, and perhaps even scarred one or two for life, but they mostly serve to show how everyone's concerns about everything beyond survival are either immaterial or amazingly important. Read the rest

They might be the shiny new thing, but AirPods aren't for everybody. Maybe you're looking for a new sound or you understandably lost those tiny buds during a brisk run. If so, here's 10 headphones and earbuds that break out of the Apple mode with a return to quality and wearability.Klipsch R5 Bluetooth Neckband In-Ear HeadphonesThe Bluetooth 4.2 aptX audio is top-notch, but these earbuds are all about the comfort with four different types of ear tips, including the super-secure Comply Comfort Ts-100s. Pick up the Klipsch R5 Bluetooth Neckband In-Ear Headphones for $66.95, a full 43% off the list price.TRNDlabs Ventura Wireless HeadphonesThe 40 mm drivers on these headphones deliver a big sound, and you'll be able to blaze through multiple playlists with up to 10 hours of battery life. Grab a set of TRNDlabs Ventura Wireless Headphones for $34.99, down 64% from the original price.360 5.1 Virtual Surround Sound EarbudsWith infrasonic frequencies in the back cavity, these headphones replicate the seat-rattling feel of a subwoofer in a tiny package. Perfect for gaming, these 360 5.1 Virtual Surround Sound Earbuds are $72, more than half off the MSRP.Culture Audio V1 Noise-Cancellation Bluetooth HeadphonesThe AptX and AAC low latency tech in the V1s filter out surrounding noise for a fully immersive experience. But if you absolutely must get back to the real world, a built-in sensor automatically pauses the music when you remove the headphones. The Culture Audio V1 Noise-Cancellation Bluetooth Headphones are now $135, more than 30% off the original cost of $200. Read the rest

Texas Rep. Al Green introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump this week. Today, the House voted against them.The vote was to table, or kill, impeachment.332-95, House rejects Al Green effort to impeach Trump over racism. While an overwhelming bipartisan rejection, 95 Democrats voted against tabling it. That's more than the 58 Democrats who voted against tabling impeachment in 2017 and 66 Dems in 2018. https://t.co/dMs0aNc1Cg— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 17, 2019The House has voted to table Rep. Al Green's impeachment resolution. The vote was 332 to 95. Of note: More Democrats voted against tabling the resolution than have publicly come out in support for impeachment. @MSNBC— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 17, 2019332-95-1 final vote. Trump NOT impeached.— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) July 17, 2019UPDATE: House overwhelmingly votes to table measure to impeach the President. While easily ending the effort, more Democrats that ever voted to continue impeachment proposal, at least 90 including Judiciary Chair @JerryNadler, who wants to refer the matter to his committee.— Nick Weig (@tbweig) July 17, 2019Al Green never has a strategy for *passing* the impeachment resolution; all he ever does is irritate Dems who have to explain why they oppose it. Plenty of Dems who want to begin the actual process will oppose this bc it's toothless. https://t.co/Hadex1xXpf— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 17, 2019Impeachment article against @POTUS, drafted by @RepAlGreen, voted down by the House.— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 17, 2019The House now voting to table Al Green’s resolution https://t.co/i1p0VwF9g8— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 17, 2019 The House of Representatives is voting to table impeachment resolution. Read the rest

Government prosecutors just revealed new details about that super suspicious passport —- his photo, different name -- Jeffrey Epstein kept hidden in a safe..Epstein's lawyers previously said the government did not offer evidence that Epstein had used the passport.Not so fast, say federal prosecutors.“In fact, the passport contains numerous ingress and egress stamps, that reflect use of the passport to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.”Epstein's lawyers said in a previous filing he had the doctored passport in case he encountered hijackers or terrorists. Mr. Epstein and his attorneys have some splaining to do.Epstein didn't say he never used it, but his lawyers said the government didn't offer evidence that he used had it. Now, they have. https://t.co/oJwxUompuP— erica orden (@eorden) July 17, 2019 Read the rest

The company hasn't ruled out doing other work for China.

Public Domain Review calls our attention to the gorgeously illustrated 1921 Fabre’s Book of Insects.Like Jacques Cousteau in the twentieth century, Fabre’s greatest accomplishment was perhaps to have brought out the beauty and drama in the lives of creatures that had hitherto been regarded with horror, if regarded at all. He turned his attention not just to bees, whose praises have of course been sung since the classical era, but to wasps, weevils, ants, glow-worms, caterpillars, and cicadas. He also sometimes wrote about wild flora and fauna, and in one rare chapter about his cats — all in prose characterized, a little like Cousteau’s, by a well-informed wonder at the natural world, appealing to both children and adults:Few insects enjoy more fame than the Glow-worm, the curious little animal who celebrates the joy of life by lighting a lantern at its tail-end. We all know it, at least by name, even if we have not seen it roaming through the grass, like a spark fallen from the full moon. The Greeks of old called it the Bright-tailed, and modern science gives it the name Lampyris. Read the rest

Here's a tip: if you're thinking of getting a Nintendo Switch -- skip the current model (HAC-001) and wait for the HAC-001(-01), which offers significantly improved battery life.From Ars Technica:Switch model HAC-001-01 will last approximately 4.5 to 9 hours on a single charge, depending on the game being played, according to Nintendo. That's a 38 to 80 percent increase from the 2.5 to 6.5 hours of the original model HAC-001. For The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo promises an increase from approximately three hours of single-charge play on the old model to approximately 5.5 hours on the new model. For comparison, the Switch Lite will get three to seven hours on a single charge, and it can last four hours on Breath of the Wild, according to Nintendo. Read the rest

Hardly a day goes by that I don't use my Instant Pot to make chili, curry, soup, or yogurt. I paid about $100, but right now this 6-quart model is just , which is the lowest price I've seen for it. Read the rest

The Europa Disc Padlock Picked (Model P-370) is advertised as "UNPICKABLE" by the manufacturer. It took the Lockpicking Lawyer 15 seconds to open it using basic lockpicking tools.Image: YouTube Read the rest

AI Portraits does an amazing job of creating original portraits based on photos of faces. The generative network was trained with 45,000 portrait images."Not only colors, but shapes, the lines of the face are completely redesigned by the model. In the above example, the model decides upon a Renaissance style, highlighting the elegance of the aquiline nose, the smoothness of the forehead."Notice how the AI didn't show Isabella Rossellini's teeth. I tried it with a photo where I'm smiling and got the same result:According to the folks who made AI Portraits, "Portrait masters rarely paint smiling people because smiles and laughter were commonly associated with a more comic aspect of genre painting, and because the display of such an overt expression as smiling can seem to distort the face of the sitter. This inability of artificial intelligence to reproduce our smiles is teaching us something about the history of art." Read the rest

Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin made a fortune during the real estate boom when he “rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”This unctuous gentleman would like you to believe that Bitcoin is the place where financial crime is happening now, most likely as a way to distract people from the fact that the crimes perpetrated by the major financial institutions owned by his friends dwarf the fraudulent activities around Bitcoin.Mnuchin really wanted to go after financial fraud, he'd do something about Deutsche Bank. But he won't because he likes his job too much. Read the rest

NBC shared this video.Back in 1992 Trump and Epstein sure seemed to know one another. Since 1992 both men have independently been accused, multiple times, with criminal behavior towards women, many of them minors. Read the rest

Twenty democrats entered, one will lead.The latest Quinnipiac run poll shows a US Senator from the Republic of California, Kamala Harris, leading the pack in the countries largest and probably most progressive state.Sentator Elizabeth Warren also gains ground. Old white men still hang on, however.Politico:The latest Quinnipiac California poll shows Harris leading among 2020 presidential hopefuls, with 23 percent of California Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters now behind her — surging six points since the last Quinnipiac survey in April. Biden, at 21 percent, has lost five points in that same period.Closely following are Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has remained static at 18 percent, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, now at 16 percent, more than doubling her 7 percent standing in April. Read the rest

Illustrator Alisha Giroux was drawing the map of Canada "for fun," when she noticed that its shape aligned with the shape with animals.CBC News:She turned Quebec into a snowy owl taking flight, and Ontario into a loon with its wings folded. British Columbia, meanwhile, became a spirit bear.Giroux decided to design a two-colour version of her map for Canada's 150th anniversary and posted it online. About a year ago, she received a call from the mint, with an offer to have her design featured on a coin...The coin also includes Giroux's initials just below a chickadee representing New Brunswick, something she said "hasn't quite sunk in." The Royal Canadian Mint is now offering this 3 oz. pure silver Canada-shaped coin for $340. It's guaranteed to never fit in a vending machine.That's Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the reverse side of the coin.(Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

I loved The Mummy back in the day... although it hasn't held up very well.If I were home and dying of the flu in bed, I wouldn't use the last of my strength to get up and change the channel if The Mummy Returns came on, right up to the point where the Scorpion King appears. That's some fugly VFX work. The folks from Corridor Crew agree. On one of their days off, they decided to do something about it.Image via YouTube Read the rest

On Saturday night, a blackout darkened Manhattan's West Side for several hours. But that didn't stop cast members from several Broadway shows, and Carnegie Hall, from performing. Not in their scheduled stage performances but impromptu ones outside on the sidewalks. The New York Times:The electricity failed about an hour before curtain for most shows, meaning the casts and crew were already in place and audiences were on their way.Some lucky patrons were treated to brief sidewalk songs while producers tried to figure out whether the lights might return in time to salvage Saturday night — generally the most lucrative night of the week for Broadway.The shows got canceled, but "the show must go on," as they say:When the NYC #blackout hit the Walter Kerr tonight, André and the company had to take this party to the streets! (🎥: @misskimizzo) #Hadestown #Broadway pic.twitter.com/oZTW3gaimm— Hadestown (@hadestown) July 14, 2019Impromptu performance #broadwayblackout @wecomefromaway pic.twitter.com/PfHYZeFJ6v— Chad Kimball (@chadkimball1) July 14, 2019The cast of @WaitressMusical entertaining stalled theatergoers outside during the NYC blackout. (via @meganrgaffney) #Blackout #NYCBlackout pic.twitter.com/vLLnAcKV8D— Dave Quinn (@NineDaves) July 14, 2019I guess this is what they call a New York moment. After being trapped on the F for an hour because of the power outage I emerged to see dark restaurants & traffic lights, civilians directing traffic, & an evacuated Carnegie Hall concert happening in the street. #nyc #Blackout pic.twitter.com/3p9UWtRrel— Briallen Hopper (@briallenhopper) July 14, 2019How @RockOfAges handled the #NYCblackout, tonight! Read the rest

Microsoft has a history of attempting to give Microsoft das boot (yes, I know boots in German is stiefel, but work with me here...)Around 14 years ago, the municipal government in Munich decided that they'd had enough with Microsoft Office and Windows, opting to switch over to Linux and OpenOffice, instead. The switch had a whole lotta kinks in it, but they worked it out. Earlier this year, Germany's federal association of municipal IT service providers (Vitako), raised concerns that the use of Office 365 by municipal council employees could lead to the private information of German citizens being leaked to Gott knows who. The latest blow—Microsoft's products are no longer welcomed in classrooms across Germany.From Ars Technica:This time around, the Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HBDI) isn't just saying that schools would prefer not to use Microsoft, he's stating that their use of Office 365 is outright illegal. In August 2017, the HBDI ruled that Office 365 could legally be used by schools so long as the back end for the school accounts was stored in Microsoft's German-located cloud. A year later, Microsoft closed its German cloud datacenter, and schools migrated their accounts to the European cloud. Now, the HBDI states that the European cloud may offer access to US authorities; with no way for the German government to monitor such access; this makes use of that cloud illegal without specific consent being granted by its individual users.In addition to the physical geography of the cloud, the HBDI is unhappy about telemetry in both Office 365 and Windows 10 itself. Read the rest

Pretty much everyone of reading age, from grandparents to 11-year-olds, are reading Shannon Messenger's Keeper of the Lost Cities series.I think a 13-year-old niece discovered these books and suggested them to my sister. My sister knew I needed a book to co-read with my kid this summer because if I do not discuss books with her chapter-by-chapter she forgets everything she just read. When I told my mother about it she already had it on hold at the library. I am certain my 15-year-old niece read the entire series in about 1 day (eight books) just so she may tell us all the problems with the plot, characters and covers.IT IS JUST HARRY POTTER WITH ELVES, UNCLE JASON!Another branch of the family is likely to start on this once my awesome 8-year-old nephew finishes reading the most recent Star Wars: Thrawn books.Shannon Messenger's universe is absorbing. My daughter and I were immediately drawn into this reality where elves, goblins, and all sorts of fantasy creature are real. Evidently, ages ago, humans acted like real turds and all the magical folks decided to retreat to their own 'impossible' to find cities. Either waiting for a day when humans could be trusted or just sitting around waiting because humans never will be trustworthy, elves seem to spend all their time convincing themselves their dystopian society is a utopia. Unwilling to engage outside their slowly rotting culture, packed with class issues and bitterness, the elves fail to notice BIG TROUBLE is brewing with the humans. Read the rest

When it comes to passwords, there's no such thing as paranoia. You want them secure and complex, and you definitely don't want to repeat them on all your accounts. The trouble is, the internet seems to keep growing. And so do those accounts.Just one lockout from an important email or banking site is enough to make anybody want to throw up their hands and just go back to using their kid's name and birthday for everything. And that's exactly what hackers are hoping. While we're equally leery of a lot of password management software, the Keeper Password Manager is emerging as a super-secure service that also happens to be easy to use.They're also passing the smell test with sites like PC Mag (who gave them a five-star rating), not to mention the hundreds of thousands of users on the App Store and Google Play who gave them high marks. Doubtless, part of the reason has to do with the way it streamlines the process of your logins. Keeper can randomly generate rock-solid passwords for any site, then auto-fill them on any form. It can do the same with your credit card and address info, making online checkouts a breeze.And if all that sounds like a lot of personal info to put in one place, we should mention the real strength of this service: Security. All that data gets digitally encrypted and locked down, accessible with two-factor authentication in your choice of methods: TOTP, Face ID, fingerprint, or U2F security key, just to name a few. Read the rest

At Barcelona's international airport, police arrested a Colombian gentleman who arrived from Bogota with half a kilogram of cocaine under his toupée. According to a Reuters report, "The man attracted police attention as he looked nervous and had a disproportionately large hairpiece under his hat. They found a package stuck to his head with about €30,000 (£27,000) of cocaine."No word whether the unnamed man is a drug bigwig. Read the rest

The Googler Uprising was a string of employee actions within Google over a series of issues related to ethics and business practices, starting with the company's AI project for US military drones, then its secretive work on a censored/surveilling search tool for use in China; then the $80m payout to Android founder Andy Rubin after he was accused of multiple sexual assaults.Tens of thousands of Google employees participated in the uprising, including 20,000 who walked off the job in February. The activist Google employees moved from victory to victory, including the ouster of a a transphobic, racist, xenophobic ideologue who had been appointed to Google's "AI Ethics" board.Two key organizers, Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, publicly accused the company of targeting them for retaliation in April (to enormous internal uproar).Now, Whittaker has resigned (on the thirteenth anniversary of her employement with Google), along with Celie O’Neil-Hart, who had been global head of trust and transparency marketing at YouTube Ads, and Google News Labs' Erica Anderson.In Whittaker's farewell note to her colleagues, she calls on them to "unionize — in a way that works," "protect conscientious objectors and whistleblowers," "demand to know what you’re working on, and how it’s used" and "build solidarity with those beyond the company." She says that Google's entry into "new markets" like "healthcare, fossil fuels, city development and governance, transportation, and beyond...is gaining significant and largely unchecked power to impact our world (including in profoundly dangerous ways, such as accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels and the deployment of surveillance technology)." Whittaker will devote her work to AI Now, the group she co-founded to build and promulgate critical, ethical frameworks for AI research. Read the rest

The US House passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that orders the Inspector General of the Department of Defense to "conduct a review of whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975." The amendment was spearheaded by New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith. From CBS News:The theory, which sounds like something straight out of a science fiction novel, contends that bioweapon specialists packed ticks with pathogens that could cause severe disabilities, disease and death among potential enemies to the homeland. Smith said he was inspired to add the amendment to the annual defense bill by "a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons."Those books, however, have been questioned by some experts who dismiss long-held conspiracy theories that the federal government aided the spread of tick-borne diseases, and federal agencies, including the CDC, may have participated in a cover-up of sorts to conceal findings about the spread of Lyme disease. Here's the amendment.image: "Chelicera of the sheep tick" by Richard Bartz (CC) Read the rest

Human rights activists in Washington DC who oppose the Trump administration's racist policies against mostly Mexican and Central American refugees at the southern border protested at ICE headquarters in the nation's capital today.Activists with NeverAgainAction say the are “shutting down ICE,” and they're livestreaming here on Facebook.From the video data:A group of Jewish allies and immigrants have been shutting down every entrance point to ICE headquarters for over 2 hours, and arrests just happened both outside and inside the building.Facebook video embed follows.The protestors have now left, marching away from ICE HQ singing “never again, para Nadine” pic.twitter.com/ztBzea8WRT— julia reinstein 🚡 (@juliareinstein) July 16, 2019[via @W7VOA] Read the rest

SPOILER: He's now in #TheSquad.

When President Trump said on Sunday that "'Progressive' Democratic Congresswomen" should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” was he violating federal workplace discrimination law? We aren't lawyers and we don't know, but here's something relevant from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website, “Immigrants' Employment Rights Under Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws” —Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person's foreign accent or comments like, "Go back to where you came from, " whether made by supervisors or by co-workers.HT: @nick_ramseyOne things many minorities hear more than a few times in their lives is, “Go back to where you came from.” I always responded, “What, Los Angeles?”— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 15, 2019 Read the rest

F Scott Fitzgerald, in a 1928 letter to Blanche Knopf: "As ‘cocktail,’ so I gather, has become a verb, it ought to be conjugated at least once." (via JWZ) Read the rest

This 6.5-inch Lodge cast iron skillet is on sale at a bargain price on Amazon today for Read the rest

Citizen Lab has expanded its analysis of how censorship and filtering work on Chinese social media (previously). In (Can’t) Picture This 2 An Analysis of WeChat’s Realtime Image Filtering in Chats , researchers probe and document how Wechat complies with Chinese state censorship policies in private chats.Wechat maintains a massive index of the MD5 hashes of every image that Chinese censors have prohibited. When a user sends another user an image that matches one of these hashes, it's recognized and blocked at the server before it is transmitted to the recipient, with neither the recipient or the sender being informed that the censorship has taken place.Separately, all images not recognized in the hash database are processed out-of-band. This processing includes checking for bitmaps representing text (to catch things like photos of banned articles) and also to see whether it is a partial match for an already-banned image (if it's been resized, transformed, etc). Anything that is found to be "harmful content" (including material critical of the Chinese state) is removed from the chat on the sender and recipients' devices and the hash of that image is added to the blocklist.The system very slowly expires these hashes out of the banned database, in a way that seems non-systematic and hard to predict.Looming over all of this is the prospect of being blocked or suspended from Wechat, which is a "mega-app" that is used for taxi-hailing, food delivery, paying utility bills, booking doctor's appointments, and interacting with state services. Read the rest

Following a raid where they caught a suspect flushing evidence down the toilet Loretto, Tennessee Police Department has asked the citizenry to refrain from flushing dope due to the potential risks to local wildlife, including the possibility of creating "meth gators.""Folks … please don’t flush your drugs m’kay ... our sewer guys take great pride in releasing water that is cleaner than what is in the creek, but they are not really prepared for meth," the post read. "Ducks, Geese, and other fowl frequent our treatment ponds and we shudder to think what one all hyped up on meth would do.""Furthermore, if it made it far enough we could create meth-gators in Shoal Creek and the Tennessee River down in North Alabama," police wrote. "They’ve had enough methed up animals the past few weeks without our help. So, if you need to dispose of your drugs just give us a call and we will make sure they are disposed of in the proper way."'Meth-gators': Tennessee police warn flushing drugs could create hyper-aggressive alligators [Kalhan Rosenblatt/NBC] (via longtimelurker)(Image: Andrea Westmoreland, CC-BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

Musician Robert Hazard (1948-2008) wrote and recorded "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on a demo tape in 1979. Four years later, Cyndi Lauper covered it and it made her famous.From Wikipedia:The song was written by Robert Hazard, who recorded only a demo of it in 1979. Hazard's version was written from a male point of view. Lauper's version appeared on her 1983 debut solo record, She's So Unusual. The track is a synthesizer-backed anthem, from a feminist point of view, conveying the point that all women really want is to have the same experiences that men can. Gillian G. Gaar, author of She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (2002), described the single and corresponding video as a "strong feminist statement", an "anthem of female solidarity" and a "playful romp celebrating female camaraderie."[via r/ObscureMedia ] Read the rest

I was part of the team that launched MAKE: (a technology project magazine) and served as its editor-in-chief for 12 wonderful years. I just found out that archive.org has a searchable archive of all past MAKE: issues. Enjoy! Read the rest

Made from servo motors and tree branches, these robots were trained to successfully walk across the floor. Read the paper. (The project was undertaken by Preferred Networks of Japan, which also made this cool website called Paintschainer that colors black and white images using AI.)The robots were trained with "deep reinforcement learning" (DRL). Here's how VentureBeat defines DRL:Unlike supervised machine learning, which trains models based on known-correct answers, in reinforcement learning, researchers train the model by having an agent interact with an environment. When the agent’s actions produce desired results, it gets positive feedback. For example, the agent gets a reward for scoring a point or winning a game. Put simply, researchers reinforce the agent’s good behaviors.Image: YouTube Read the rest

The founders of German National Socialist fan-site "The Daily Stormer" were ordered to pay $14MM in damages for being trollish assholes. NBCThe founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer should be ordered to pay more than $14 million to a Montana real estate agent against whom he organized an anti-Semitic "troll storm," a federal magistrate judge found on Monday.The judgment was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Montana, against Andrew Anglin, who encouraged the online intimidation campaign against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in the Montana resort town of Whitefish, her husband and their 12-year-old son.In an opinion that must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen, the magistrate judge, Jeremiah C. Lynch, recommended a default judgment against Anglin, who failed to appear for a deposition in April.But Lynch went further than finding for Gersh on procedural grounds: He recommended that Christensen order Anglin, who is in his mid-30s, to pay $4,042,438 in compensatory damages and $10 million, the maximum under state law, in punitive damages for "the particularly egregious and reprehensible nature of Anglin's conduct."Writing about these guys the first time got me a lot of unwanted late night phonecalls. Read the rest

A few years ago bad dealmaking with the park concessionaire cost the National Parks Service the names of Yosemite's famous Ahwahnee Hotel, The Wawona Hotel and Curry Village. Restoring the historic names to the historic properties cost the American taxpayer $12,000,000 and legal fees.CNN:The Ahwahnee was renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel after the park's former concessionaire filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service in September 2015, claiming ownership of some of the park's trade names and trademarks.The Ahwahnee Hotel became The Majestic Yosemite Hotel. The Wawona Hotel became Big Trees Lodge. Curry Village became Half Dome Village. And Badger Pass Ski Area was renamed Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area.As part of a $12 million settlement signed July 15 and paid to the park's former concessionaire, names that had been changed during the lawsuit will revert to their original names. Read the rest

#Vanlife would be intolerable without coffee. This GSI Glacier series 30oz 'java' press is my new best friend.I transition back and forth from tea to coffee and spent most of the last year pounding shots of espresso. Upon moving into my VW Vanagon camper for the summer I forgot to pack either. After one day on the road my daughter, who is a mere 12-years-old, made the observation that I am a lot meaner and less fun to be around without the caffeine.An exgirlfriend declared my old press "no good" and threw it away after trying to brew loose tea in it. It had been used for coffee for years and was of course, not good for tea.Tea is lovely but it doesn't get the job done when camping. This 30oz french press does. I'm currently drinking pre-ground Trader Joe's medium roast, but when it is gone I'm thinking Illy or Lavazza. I used to hand grind beans when camping but the fuck if I have time for that now.This GSI insulated press is just the right size for me to brew a pot and drink it as I get my work done in the morning. The coffee stays hot for the 3-4 hours I am working, and always seems to be empty just when I am done typing away.Praise the press.GSI Outdoors - Glacier Stainless JavaPress, 30oz Camping French Press via Amazon Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the adorable racist Donald Trump complains about America so much, true patriots send him back to where he's originally from.

America has an epidemic of untested rape kits, thanks to the institutional misogyny of police departments and prosecutors, especially when it comes to rapes committed against poor and racialized women. An Obama-era subsidy for clearing rape kit backlogs, combined with DNA testing, has completely upended the conventional wisdom on rapists and how they commit their crimes.The first insight is that serial rapists are very common and very prolific. Police departments had assumed that rapes with different types of victims and different techniques were committed by different men, but it turns out that serial rapists aren't meticulous and careful repeaters of patterns: they're chaotic and impatient and even if they're looking for a specific kind of woman to attack, if they can't find someone who matches their desires, they'll just attack any handy woman.So rapists also aren't very smart about their crimes: their poor impulse control leaves behind plenty of physical evidence that can be used to convict them (Former Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty: "These are not the Napoleons of crime. They’re morons. We were letting morons beat us"). They get away with it because the cops don't investigate rapes.They're also not discriminating as to the kind of crimes they commit: as the old rape kits are subjected to DNA tests, we're learning that many men who've been committed for petty property crimes or non-sexual assaults have also committed strings of rapes. Frequently, these men start with vulnerable women (poor women, sex workers, women with disabilities, women who are addicted) and then rape women with more privilege, which sometimes leads to the police taking action. Read the rest

Modern Monetary Theory is the latest incarnation of chartalism, the economic theory that holds that government spending -- and a federal jobs guarantee -- doesn't create inflation, so long as the spending is on things that the private sector isn't buying: if a factory can produce ten widgets but is only producing five because that's all the public sector wants to buy, the government can put in an order for five more widgets, putting more workers to work, without driving up the price of widgets.That is, government spending (which it pays for by simply minting as much money as it needs) doesn't create inflation, provided there are idle resources (workers, physical plant) for the government to spend on. If the number of dollars in circulation does rise to the exceed the supply of goods and labor, and inflation starts to rise, governments tame inflation by imposing taxes, which reduce the supply of money and stabilize prices.This runs counter to the neoliberal monetary theory, which holds that people have money from their businesses and labor, and then government takes it away from them to provide services. In MMT (and in reality), money only comes into existence when governments "deficit spend" on some good or services. Only governments are allowed to issue money, after all, so it follows that all money enters the system when the government spends it into existence. The government can issue as much money as it needs to in order procure the services it need (cops, bureaucrats, teachers, tax collectors, soldiers, as well as hospitals, schools, roads and tanks), provided it isn't bidding against the private sector for those goods and services (when governments have to bid against the private sector, such as during WWII, it needs to tax money out of existence and use other techniques like selling "War Bonds" to reduce the amount of money in circulation in order to tame inflation). Read the rest

With the rising temperatures on tap this summer, the climate is going to be a frequent topic of conversation, and those conversations won't be happy ones. Luckily, there's a way to do a little climate change of your own - in a safe and sustainable way. When it comes to personal air conditioners, EvaPolar is putting out some innovative gear, and their EvaChill EV-500 is a particularly affordable example.This compact unit does more than just cool the air, though it does that extraordinarily well. It uniformly and quickly lowers the temperature in a 45 square foot area in front of it, and it does it without the use of Freon or other toxic elements. The filter and other components are made from non-organic EvaBreeze material that's completely biodegradable and won't harbor bacteria. Those same properties also enable it to filter dust and other allergens out of the air. As if that weren't enough, the EV-500 also functions as a dehumidifier. With all that working in tandem, you'll notice the change in air quality within a few breaths of turning it on.The EvaChill EV-500 is now available for $79, a full 20% off the list price. It's available in white and gray. Read the rest

Vlad Taltos is the (anti)hero of Steven Brust's stupendous, longrunning fantasy series (which is nearly complete, a generation after it was begun!); Issue 220 of Dragon magazine (August 1995) included a feature by Ed Stark explaining how to play the human assassin and witch who lives amidst a race of nearly immortal elves, against whom he bears a serious grudge. I just love that there's a stats-sheet for Vlad! The only thing that would make me happier would be the next goddamned book. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay Occupy Gotham, published in Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman, commemorating the 1000th issue of Batman comics. It's an essay about the serious hard problem of trusting billionaires to solve your problems, given the likelihood that billionaires are the cause of your problems.A thousand issues have gone by, nearly 80 years have passed, and Batman still hasn't cleaned up Gotham. If the formal definition of insanity it trying the same thing and expecting a different outcome, then Bruce Wayne belongs in a group therapy session in Arkham Asylum. Seriously, get that guy some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy before he gets into some *serious* trouble.As Upton Sinclair wrote in his limited run of *Batman: Class War*[1], "It's impossible to get a man to understand something when his paycheck depends on his not understanding it."Gotham is a city riven by inequality. In 1939, that prospect had a very different valence than it has in 2018. Back in 1939, the wealth of the world's elites had been seriously eroded, first by the Great War, then by the Great Crash and the interwar Great Depression, and what was left of those vast fortunes was being incinerated on the bonfire of WWII. Billionaire plutocrats were a curious relic of a nostalgic time before the intrinsic instability of extreme wealth inequality plunged the world into conflict.MP3 Read the rest

Clayton Morris -- a former host of Fox & Friends -- was part owner of Oceanpointe, a company that sold turnkey landlord services in Indianapolis to investors who could send Oceanpointe money, which the company would invest in properties that they would repair and rent out.Investors in the scheme -- mostly out of towners, many of them attracted by Morris's Youtube videos promising great returns with no work on their part -- say it was a Ponzi scheme and that Morris and his partner Bert Whalen did substandard repairs that left investors in the position of being slumlords who were liable for unsafe living conditions for their tenants. They claim that many properties were unrentable and that Morris and Whalen forged leases purporting to come from tenants, and used payments from new investors to pay off existing investors. Several lawsuit have been filed against Whalen and Morris and states' attorneys general have officially queried the men. At least 700 homes were flipped by Oceanpointe, many in poor neighborhoods.Morris's primary defense is that he was unaware of all this and was merely the pitchman for Whalen, who was responsible for the inhumane living conditions and financial shenanigans.Morris's wife, Natali Morris, blamed the focus on her husband on "polarization," implying that the public had latched onto him because of their political differences with him and Fox News, and not because he had shilled for a grifter who immiserated Indianapolis's poorest people while defrauding Morris's fans of their life's savings. IndyStar reported in March that investors were accusing Morris of running a Ponzi scheme with Whalen's help. Read the rest

5G cellular networks are able to transmit data at very high speeds, with incredible spectrum sharing that allows multiple 5G towers to operate in close proximity without their transmissions clobbering one another. There's only one problem: for 5G to deliver high speeds to our homes and businesses, each of those 5G towers has to be fed by a high-speed link -- like, say, the fiber optic links that America's ISPs have been vastly underinvesting in (while getting state laws passed that ban cities from picking up the slack) for decades.Putting a 5G tower next to your house will only help you if the 5G tower is connected to a fast internet pipe. Basically, 5G is fiber to the curb with wireless distribution over the final few yards, the very thing that America's telcoms sector is pathologically allergic to, and incapable of delivering on.There are those who say that the way the cellular companies will handle future growth is through millimeter wave spectrum. However, that technology will require a fiber-fed small cell site near to every home. We really need to stop referring to millimeter wave spectrum as 5G wireless and instead call it what it is – fiber-to-the curb. When thought of that way, it’s easy to realize that there are no carriers likely to make the investment to deploy that much fiber along every residential street in America. Wireless 5G fiber-to-the-curb is not coming to most neighborhoods. The bottom line is that the world is not going to go wireless, and anybody saying so is engaging in hyperbole and not reality. Read the rest

Amazon's Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote is the media player we use. I even keep an extra set with me to use in hotels and Airbnbs. Amazon is selling it as a Prime Day deal at a very low price. Read the rest