Boing Boing

Attorneys General from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, have initiated an antitrust investigation into Facebook, seeking to determine whether the company "endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising."The contours of the investigation hew closely to the framework laid out in Dina Srinivasan's seminal Berkeley Business Law Journal paper, The Antitrust Case Against Facebook, which does incredible, yeoman service into framing the obvious, manifest problems with Facebook in terms that even members of the bizarre Robert Bork antitrust inaction cult have to pay attention to.Facebook is under investigation by state attorneys general for antitrust violations [Colin Lecher/The Verge] Read the rest

For decades, Happy Mutants met one another and got seriously warped by the astounding books and other media of RE/Search Press (previously), now, after a long drought, RE/Search is publishing a new book, Underground Living (RE/Search #19), featuring the photos of V.Vale ("early Ramones shows, Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch, John Waters, Genesis P-Orridge, William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Survival Research Labs, and many more!"). The book launches this Sunday at San Francisco's legendary City Lights Books, where V.Vale will be in conversation with that happiest of mutants, the magnificent Rudy Rucker (previously). (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

An American Airlines mechanic who wanted overtime was arrested yesterday for deliberately damaging a plane ready to take 150 people from Miami to the Bahamas. According to CNN:Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani has been charged with "willfully damaging, destroying, disabling, or wrecking an aircraft, and attempting to do so," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.Alani allegedly tried to damage or disable the aircraft's air data module (ADM) system, which reports aircraft speed, pitch and other critical data, on July 17.On Thursday, investigators interviewed Alani and he "admitted that he accessed the ADM" and that he "inserted a piece of foam into the ADM's inlet where the line connects and that he applied super glue to the foam so as to prevent the foam from coming off," the complaint says.Alani told investigators that he meant no harm to the passengers — he was hoping the damage would allow him to work more hours and get overtime. The plane had actually started its flight, but after picking up speed on the runway, received an "error related to the ADM system," so the plane turned back to the concourse. None of the passengers were injured.Image: by Zidane hadeed - Taken with the Canon T3i by Tevin Belasco, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43686908 Read the rest

The latest turn in the Gamergate sage: Zoe Quinn (previously) outed their former partner, game dev Alec Holowka as a sexual and emotional abuser, which prompted others to come forward with their own stories of abuse at Holowka's hands, which led to Howalka being kicked out of his Night in the Woods game project -- and shortly thereafter, Howalka committed suicide.Though Howalka made a point of telling people not to blame Quinn or the other women who came forward for his death, the shitty men of Gamergate -- who already consider Quinn to be the living embodiment of the antichrist -- launched a campaign of terror and harassment so extreme that Quinn has resigned from Twitter.Central to Gamergate's indictment of Quinn is that she should have given more considerations to Howalka's emotional health before coming forward to reveal the ways he'd abused her. Laurie Penny (previously) reaffirms her status as a national treasure in her Wired op-ed on the matter, pointing out the asymmetry of this concern for male fragility, and how it never extends to an equivalent concern for the much more severe emotional, physical and economic toll born by women who survive the abuse doled out by these broken men.And the men are broken: toxic masculinity is a thing. Hurt people hurt people. Trauma, not contagion, is the source of radicalization. Any solution to sexism and misogyny will involve helping men as well as women, because men, not women, are the primary reservoirs of misogyny. Read the rest

If you know the name Robert Bork, it's probably in the context of his failure to secure Senate confirmation when Ronald Regan put him up for the Supreme Court (his sins from his days in the Nixon administration caught up to him).But Robert Bork's failure to attain a Supreme Court seat did nothing to erode his influence: indeed, Bork's work, more than anyone else's, is responsible for the new Gilded Age, with its inequality crisis, political instability, and looming environmental disaster. If the human race ends up extinct in a generation or two, Robert Bork will be high up in the list of people to blame for it.Bork was a liar, who invented a fictional history of US anti-monopoly law in which the lawmakers who authored, debated and passed those laws didn't actually mind monopolies at all -- all they cared about was "consumer harm" (that is, the prices paid by the public rising in the short term after a company or handful of companies cornered their markets); and "collusion" (especially trade unions, consumer groups, and other checks on corporate power).Bork's ideas were radioactively implausible, but they did have an important advantage in the "marketplace of ideas": they stood to make the richest people in America much, much richer, and so Bork found no shortage of corporate backers who helped him create a network of judicial "education" programs, political campaigns, think tankies, and intellectually dishonest academics who would line up behind his idea. Every president since Reagan has expanded Bork's doctrine, allowing for even more aggressive market concentration, producing a country (and a world) where a handful of firms dominate virtually every industry, from telcoms to talent agencies, wrestling to eyewear, to Big Tech. Read the rest

This Nelson-Rigg backpack crushes into a tiny stuff sack.Nelson-Rigg makes covers for bikes that last a long time. I thought I'd take a shot on their super-light backpack, designed to be stuck in tiny motorcycle storage compartments for all those times you realize you'd like to bring something home but can't possibly carry it on your bike.I used to keep a bungie net with hooks under my seat. The paint on my BMW is too precious for that. I wear a backpack when I need to bring my laptop places but mostly I motorcycle with a notebook jammed into my waistband and a pen in my pocket. This frequently leaves me saying "I'd stop by the market on the way home but..."No more. This backpack will certainly do for day trips and will come into play on trips where I'm traveling super light but may want a backpack somedays, or extra space on the way home.Nelson-Rigg CB-PK30 Black Compact Backpack via Amazon Read the rest

Yoga and videogames to see who can be the most serene. Read the rest

If Vladimir Putin didn't convince you that good pecs and hair do not qualify you to govern, I give you Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime ministerial princeling whose years in office have proven that there is no policy so progressive that he will not back it -- provided he never has to do anything to make it happen.This was obvious even before Trudeau was elected prime minister in 2015, when he whipped his MPs to vote in favour of a made-in-Canada version of the USA PATRIOT spying bill that he'd spoken out against, publicly admitting that he was abdicating his duty as leader of the loyal opposition and supporting a mass surveillance bill to avoid having "soft on terror" thrown at him during the upcoming election.Trudeau promised that he would reform the spying powers once he was PM, but he did no such thing. In this regard, Trudeau is indeed Canada's Obama: as a senator, Obama voted to immunize the telcos for their participation in illegal mass surveillance, promising he would still hold the NSA itself to account when he became president, but then he spent eight years expanding NSA spying powers and fighting those who sought to subject America's spies to Constitutional limits and democratic oversight.With one significant exception, the entire Trudeau administration has been a litany of broken promises: on trade (and NAFTA; on indigenous reconciliation and missing and murdered indigenous women; on selling arms to brutal dictatorships; on rooting out corruption and depoliticising the justice system; and even on refugees. Read the rest

Check out this lovely interactive version of an Enigma machine coded up by Tom MacWright!You can type in your plaintext message and then watch an animation simulate how the signal would travel through an Enigma, encrypting it. It's quite mesmerizing to observe; I almost want to set one of those up to translate a novel, and run it as a screensaver over several months.As MacWright notes, the joy of Enigma-style devices is how they span the worlds of both analog gear-turning and electronics:This notebook simulates an Enigma Machine and visualizes how it works. The Enigma Machine is an especially neat thing to visualize because it was electromechanical. As you used it, it moved. Instead of circuit traces, it had beautiful real wires connecting its pieces.To understand this model, first consider the design of the machine itself: as someone typed into it, electrical current flowed through rotors, which are essentially 1:1 mappings of one letter, represented as a signal from 0-26. Just one stationary rotor wouldn’t give much of a quality encryption, so the rotors also rotated.The main pieces were three rotors, a reflector - which was basically a rotor that connects to itself, and a plugboard, which swaps letters for each other on the way in & out. In order, a signal would go through the plugboard, each of the three rotors, the reflector, and then back through the rotors, and then back through the plugboard.Think of this view of the engima as looking 'through the barrel' of the machine: you're seeing wires snaking around the rotors and then looking at the rotors at the end. Read the rest

Robin Houston reports that 42 is the sum of three cubes. It's special in this regard not because it is alone, but because it was for an obvious reason the last remaining number under 100 where the sum was undiscovered.42 = (-80538738812075974)^3 + 80435758145817515^3 + 12602123297335631^3...This computational breakthrough was achieved in a collaboration between Andrew Sutherland (MIT) and Andrew Booker (Bristol). They announced the result by both replacing their homepages with the expression – with the page title Life, the Universe and Everything.Every cube of a whole number is within one of a multiple of nine, which means that a sum of three cubes must be within three of a multiple of nine. So numbers of the form 9𝑘+4 or 9𝑘+5 cannot be written as the sum of three cubes.In 1992, Roger Heath-Brown conjectured that every other whole number can be written as the sum of three cubes, in infinitely many different ways. Mathematicians on the whole seem to have been convinced by Heath-Brown’s argument that this ought to be true – but actually finding ways to write any particular number as a sum of three cubes remains a difficult problem. Read the rest

I remain convinced that Dr. Julius Strangepork was up to no good. It is entirely possible he is in league with Sir Topham Hatt.I am also rather certain that was a chicken lovin' Sith Lord. Read the rest

From "The One With the Theme That's Depressing As Hell."(Chase Holfelder) Read the rest

Sorry, I mean the "Inflatable Outdoor Color Dot Game." This Twister-like game by Hammacher Schlemmer can hold up to 1,500 pounds — meaning you and your posse can all play together. Want it? Prepare to cough up a mere $2000.This is the inflatable outdoor game that challenges up to 10 players to touch different colored dots on a playing surface using only their hands and feet. Based on the popular game that originated in the 1960s, and built by a company that only manufactures products for the amusement industry, the inflatable 18 oz., double-stitched vinyl 15' x 15' playing mat is comprised of 64 colored dots arranged in eight rows of eight dots each. An included 24" diameter, 3'-high wheel spun at the beginning of each turn indicates which hand or foot players are to use and what color dot to touch. Contortions and human pretzel poses aside, no other part of the body may touch the playing surface; the last player to remain "standing" wins.(POPSUGAR) Read the rest

The entries at the dumb-password-rules hall of shame are truly dreadful, especially the banks. My favorite ones are sites whose security measures run in the user's browser, which means it can be overridden by opening the web inspector and editing the rules. Why yes, javascript, 敗' OR 1=1 -- is a fine username. At Hacker News, turdnagel writes about one astonishing example of incompetence.My favorite dumb password experience involves EZPass, a system for paying tolls without cash, in New York.I signed up for EZPass using a relatively “long” password (20 chars). I then received a letter in the mail about a toll I had to pay, even though I’d had the EZPass at the the time. But, the letter said, I could pay the toll by logging in to their site and using my EZpass credentials. Didn’t use OAuth but I figured it would be OK. I input my username and password using my password manager but it didn’t work. Pretty strange, as I was able to log in to the “main” EZpass site using those same credentials. I tried logging in on the payment site again to no avail. Finally I realized that my password was being truncated by the password input field itself.The solution was to inspect the page and change the maxlen attribute of the password field. There are sites that block password managers! One site has you send three characters of your old password when picking a new one. American Express is apparently still on 8-character case-insentive alphanumeric passwords, which at this point suggests you might go to a public library to read about the security defects of its systems, in printed books written by people who have been dead for decades. Read the rest

LEGO announced the latest addition to its Ultimate Collectors Series today - a massive replica of the Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars: A New Hope. Coming in at almost 5000 pieces, the Destroyer is one of the largest sets in the Collectors Series with a large price tag ($700) to match.Here are the official stats from LEGO:Build and display an icon of the Galactic Empire – the Devastator. With over 4,700 LEGO® pieces, this Ultimate Collector Series 75252 Imperial Star Destroyer model captures all the authentic details of the starship as it appeared in the opening scene of Star Wars: A New Hope, including swiveling guns, a tilting radar dish, huge engine exhausts, intricate surface detailing and of course a buildable scale version of the Rebels' Tantive IV starship to chase down. This galactic civil war UCS set also includes a display stand with informational fact plaque and 2 Imperial minifigures, making it the perfect LEGO Star Wars collectible for discerning fans.-Includes Imperial Officer and Imperial Crewmember minifigures.-The Devastator Imperial Star Destroyer model features swiveling guns, a tilting radar dish, huge engine exhausts and intricate surface detailing.-Also includes an attachable, buildable scale version Tantive IV starship for added Star Wars: A New Hope authenticity.-With a display stand with informational fact plaque for the ultimate display piece.-Also comes with 2 blaster pistol weapons.-This Ultimate Collector Series set has 4,784 pieces.-Inspire unforgettable Star Wars: A New Hope moments.-The perfect LEGO® Star Wars™ collectible for fans of the Star Wars saga. Read the rest

If you don't have a pressure cooker, prepare for some tough love - because there is absolutely no reason not to own one. They can cook almost anything with little to no effort, they save space and they're super easy to clean.If you do have a pressure cooker, prepare to level up. There's a gadget that can actually add a ton of functionality onto that go-to device without any added space: The Mealthy CrispLid Pressure Cooker & Air Fryer.The concept is simple. The 1,000W unit replaces the lid on any 6- or 8-quart pressure cooker and circulates hot air evenly through the pot, instantly turning it into an air fryer. That means your recipe book just got a lot bigger. You can enjoy flaky french fries, crispy pork chops, rotisserie chicken - even a range of desserts if you get creative. It's got easy-to-use controls, and just like your pressure cooker, it wipes clean easily.Right now, you can get the Mealthy CrispLid Pressure Cooker & Air Fryer for more than 15% off the regular retail price of $59.95 - that's just $49.95. Read the rest

Yarn does one thing very well: return a brief video clip of a movie based on the dialog you type in.I especially like that if you paste in a URL, you get an automatic subtitled GIF that links to the video instead of the full embed. A real USDA grade A GIF image, not a bottom-quality mpeg hacked into its mime type or some other shenanigan that makes it effectively impossible to repost. Read the rest

On Tuesday of Burn week, a ragtag group of musically-minded Burners played a (truly) moving rendition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," positioned in front of the massive art installation called "The Folly." Photographer Evan Halleck was there, capturing the performance on video from the sidelines. These performers are both amateur and pro musicians who are part of the Black Rock Philharmonic. There's no audition process to join this orchestra, applicants just have to fill out a form and be prepared to perform (mostly) classical music concerts at Burning Man. Rehearsals happen on the playa, as do the concerts. This year, they played four concerts on four different days at three different locations. Here is what they played at those concerts: Read the rest

Dan Bell's YouTube channel features explorations of moribund shopping malls, all set to vaporwave aesthetic moments and clips from 1980s and early-1990s television culture. #DillardsLife Read the rest

“The enormity of their flat brain; the enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming. You have to do yourself a favor, when you’re out in the country: try to look a chicken in they eye, with great intensity and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you is just amazing”.Look, I've got no reason for posting this video other than the fact that I would follow this weird, talented, delightfully menacing man right into the sun, if he asked me to.Image via Flickr, courtesy of Raffi Asdourian Read the rest

The Frying Pan Tower is an old oil rig 34 miles off the Carolina coastline, now an adventurous and rather expensive bed and breakfast. I don't think anyone's staying at the moment, though, because it's in the middle of a hurricane, as evidenced by the live feed from a camera there. Warning: as of Sept. 5, 2019, it's loud!Here's footage of the tower in calmer seas: Read the rest

Like the Amazon seller says: "This Fashion bikini suits is both high quality and low price,make you charming and lively,cone and buy it quickly." Best of all, it's only Read the rest

No, we still don't know if 'Nessie' is real.But a New Zealand scientist who gathered and analyzed DNA from the fabled Loch Ness in Scotland says there's a possibility the so-called 'Loch Ness Monster' monster might be a very large eel. Or, maybe, lots of little eels.Neil Gemmell of the New Zealand University of Otago says the DNA material his project collected from the water at Loch Ness included a high count of eel DNA. Whether such a finding, if legitimate, might indicate one huge eel or many little eels, no one knows.Professor Gemmell, who is a geneticist, said at a news conference in Scotland on Thursday his findings make the notion of a giant eel more plausible.He told reporters, “People love a mystery, we've used science to add another chapter to Loch Ness' mystique.”Excerpt from the BBC's coverage of his pitch:"We can't find any evidence of a creature that's remotely related to that in our environmental-DNA sequence data. So, sorry, I don't think the plesiosaur idea holds up based on the data that we have obtained."He added: "So there's no shark DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling. There is also no catfish DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling. We can't find any evidence of sturgeon either,"There is a very significant amount of eel DNA. Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at pretty much every location sampled - there are a lot of them. Read the rest

One imagines the late Queen frontman might have enjoyed this very much.“I crocheted Freddie Mercury!,” says the very eager and talented crafter birdsaremybuddies on IMGUR.I usually crochet animals. Freddy was my first attempt at a person. Here's the full view of their crafty creation:They got this delightful pattern from Mojo Moji design, and with it you can crochet the iconic and legendary former singer of Queen yourself.Moji Moji offers the pattern for free, but the considerate thing to do is donate something if you can, because this wonderful crafting project supports the Mercury Phoenix Trust:The Mercury Phoenix Trust was founded by Brian May, Roger Taylor and their manager Jim Beach in memory of rock band Queen’s iconic lead singer Freddie Mercury who sadly died in 1991 from AIDS related pneumonia. In the last 21 years the Trust has given away over 15 million dollars in his name and funded over 700 projects in the global battle against HIV/AIDS.As a tribute to the legendary Freddie I’ve created his likeness in amigurumi, capturing his essential awesomeness in yarn!Here's the full crocheting process from birdsaremybuddies on IMGUR.I crocheted Freddy Mercury Read the rest

You need this.A rare and beautiful full spectrum rainbow documented at Yosemite Falls. This gorgeous location is situated 2,400 feet (730 meters) above sea level at Yosemite National Park in California. This amazing Instagram video was shot by Greg Harlow of GREG HARLOW MEDIA, Salt Lake City, UT.Nature is pretty awesome. So is the science behind the human perception of color and light.The occasion of a full spectrum rainbow at this site is pretty rare, and may not have been captured in video before.Here's the full video. View this post on Instagram This phenomenon lasted over 8 minutes. This is how the 1400’ Yosemite Falls rainbow looked from Glacier Point in real time. This certainly was not a planned event. I spent over 3 months total in Yosemite last year and just got lucky. For those asking...this happened November 1st, at 9:15 AM. #yosemite #natgeoA post shared by GREG HARLOW MEDIA (@gregharlowmedia) on Mar 27, 2019 at 7:12am PDT Read the rest

Bite my shiny metal deathstar.

Now I have a great excuse to rewatch Midsommar, Ari Aster's disturbing and beautifully executed horror movie about a group of American grad students who visit a creepy Swedish nature cult. After I saw it I tweeted that it was the best Wicker Man remake I've ever seen, and I meant it as a compliment.From the iTunes Store:Your purchase of Midsommar comes with Ari Aster’s extended and unrated director’s cut, exclusive to Apple TV. Plus go behind the scenes with the cast and crew of Midsommar in an exclusive featurette, and watch the creation of Hälsingland in time-lapse footage of the elaborate and meticulous set construction.In her review on Bloody Disgusting, Julieann Stipidis writes: "After witnessing the more comprehensive version of Aster’s vision in this (nearly) three-hour film, I’m happy to say I prefer this cut in spades.” Read the rest

This is a really incredible game-inspired DIY art project.IMGURian M3l4rl03 shares the creation of their playable Super Mario Bros 1st level 19-foot mural.“The sprites are attached with Velcro so they can move around or be removed altogether!”Scroll down to the bottom of this wonderful gallery of how they did it, and turn your sound on for the video.Creation of my playable Super Mario Bros 1st level 19 foot mural! Read the rest

And this dude finally got his moment. Your caption in the BBS thread.Dorian in Charleston[via IMGUR] Read the rest

"Differential privacy" (previously) is a promising, complicated statistical method for analyzing data while preventing reidentification attacks that de-anonymize people in aggregated data-sets.If differential privacy were to be perfected, it would represent an amazing have-your-cake-and-eat-it proposition for Big Tech, which could continue to mine "behavioral data" for insights without having to worry about privacy scandals, regulation or liability (it would also have giant benefits for other kinds of research, such as medical studies).So far, though, differential privacy has been all promise, no pants, as implementations have been shown to be weak or flawed or both (and once these implementation defects have been published, all the data that was released prior to the disclosure is in danger of re-identification attacks).Now, Google has published a set of differential privacy libraries under the very permissive Apache License, which anyone can use, study, modify or distribute for free. Google is hoping that flaws and weaknesses in its library will be discovered through widespread scrutiny of its code, and that uptake of the differential privacy tools will reduce the pressure to end commercial data collection and retention. Google has also published a suite of testing and auditing tools to spot problems with implementations before they are made public.Developers could use Google’s tools to protect all sorts of database queries. For example, with differential privacy in place, employees at a scooter share company could analyze drop-offs and pickups at different times without also specifically knowing who rode which scooter where. And differential privacy also has protections to keep aggregate data from revealing too much. Read the rest

Amazon's got a tried-and-true way to deal with the negative consequences of high-speed ecommerce logistics: use subcontractors who can absorb the blame for the human toll wrought by the machine-like pace it demands of its workers.Until ow, the majority of attention has been on the conditions in Amazon warehouses, from the humiliating searches to the punishing physical labor to limits on things like bathroom breaks. True to form, Amazon's boilerplate response to the deaths and injuries (and lesser evils like wage theft) at these facilities has been to blame contractors and subcontractors for cutting corners.Now, a masterful, long, deeply researched Propublica/NYT investigation shows that the same pattern has been manifested outside of Amazon's warehouses, on our city streets, where the pressure to meet unrealistic delivery promises has led to an epidemic of deaths and injuries to Amazon drivers and the bystanders who happened to get in their way.These drivers are classed as contractors or subcontractors by Amazon, though the company retains the right to blacklist disfavored drivers, and uses an app to minutely schedule and direct the work of these "independent contractors" who are expected to indemnify Amazon for damages arising from the people they kill on the road. Many of the contractors providing delivery services to Amazon only have one customer: Amazon.To aid in these layers of obfuscation, Amazon has fought local ordinances that require drivers to affix signs to their vehicles identifying them as Amazon delivery vehicles, leaving the dead and injured to imagine that they were run over by some rando in a Penkse rental box-truck. Read the rest

State and federal labs reported that an oil called vitamin E acetate was discovered in samples of cannabis products that have made people sick around the United States, reports the Washington Post.From the article:Vitamin E acetate is basically grease, said Michelle Francl, a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College. Its molecular structure means that “you have to heat it up pretty hot” for it to vaporize. Its boiling point is 363 degrees Fahrenheit, which is well above the 212 degree F boiling point for water, and nearly four times higher than normal human body temperature.Once the oil is heated hot enough to vaporize, it can potentially decompose and “now you’re breathing in who-knows-what,” Francl said.When that vapor cools down in the lungs, it returns to its original state at that temperature and pressure, she said, which means “it has now coated the inside of your lungs with that oil,” she said.Photo by John Caroro on Unsplash Read the rest

As if zipping along a track at speeds up to 83 mph is no big deal, a man riding PortAventura Park's Shambhala rollercoaster in Spain also had enough wits about him to grab a stranger's phone that was flying through the sky. Amazing reflexes, to say the least. Read the rest

Who Said That? is a chunky 340-page book that tests your trivia knowledge on the origin of famous quotes. The quotes are arranged by topic (Love and Marriage, Work and Money, Politics and War, Aging, etc.) and are presented in different ways to keep things lively.Sometimes you'll be asked to choose which person said a particular quote:"History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants."A: Margaret MeadB: Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the UnabomberC: Susan B AnthonyD: Maximilien RobespierreAnswer: B. This line occurs in the Unabomber’s infamous manifesto. Kaczynski’s brother read it in the newspaper, recognized his older siblings writing style, and tipped off the FBI, leading to Ted’s arrest.Other times you'll be asked which quotes a person actually said:John Lennon said only one of these quotes. But which is it?A: "We thought we’d be really big in Liverpool."B: "We're more popular than Jesus now."C: "Everything is OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end."D: "There was no play on words, we just didn’t know how to spell the word 'beetle.'"Answer:B. Lennon’s "bigger-than-Jesus" comments in 1966 sparked outrage in America, leading to boycott and death threats. Lennon would remain controversial until his untimely 1980 death. "If there is such a thing as genius, I am one," he once said. "And if there isn’t, I don’t care."There are a number of other question formats, too. Read the rest

Kick-ass political posters were a big deal generations before the moral panic over whether the #resistance was too concerned with instagrammable anti-trump signs; democratized access to layout, design and publishing tools have made the new authoritarian era into a golden age of brilliant protest art, as is evidenced by the Internet Archive's collection of protest posters from the Hong Kong uprising. Read the rest

In 1988, I worked in a toy store and quickly became annoyed by all the requests for the Snuggle bear. But this I can tolerate. For a moment anyway. Read the rest

Up for auction is one of Darth Vader's helmets worn by actor Dave Prowse in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. It's estimated to sell for nearly half a million dollars. That's a lot of galactic credits. From iCollector:David Prowse "Darth Vader" screen used signature mask and helmet from Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. (TCF, 1980) Without question, Darth Vader is one of the greatest villains ever portrayed on film. His angular, skull-like mask and helmet has been lifted to iconic status and is universally recognized as a symbol of evil in pop culture. Both the mask and helmet are constructed of fiberglass. The Mask is painted in dark metallic gray with black accents; its interior is marked with a "1" in white paint with worn foam rubber padding and tinted plastic lenses. Two of the original three elastic straps are present to secure the mask to David Prowse's head. The top of the mask originally secured to the jet-black helmet with a circular PVC connection (now missing; the three screw holes used to attached the PVC fitting are present). For added security, the mask's forehead attached to the inner portion of the helmet with Velcro (still present on the helmet's interior, but only the adhesive remnants remain on the mask, and remain hidden behind the helmet). The helmet's interior is marked with a "3" in brown paint. Interior metal mesh behind the triangular respiratory vent and "chin grille" are missing, as are the turned aluminum "atmospheric sensors" at either side of the vent. Read the rest

Tom Deininger, previously seen on Boing Boing, is a Boston-based assemblage artist who creates incredible sculptures and 3D "paintings" from plastic garbage. Deininger created the self-portrait below from "studio trash kept for two months. The size of the self portrait was determined by the trash." Read the rest

With Hurricane Dorian threatening a Florida man's property in Jacksonville, he didn't want to take any chances with his Smart car. Although he had a garage with space for one car, his wife, Jessica Eldridge, already had her car parked in that spot. Worried that his tiny vehicle would blow away — and up for a challenge — he made a cozy spot for it in the kitchen. According to AP:“I said there was no way he could. He said he could,” Jessica said. “So he opened the double doors and had it in. I was amazed that it could fit. He had it in with no problems.”Images by Jessica EdridgeVia YouTube: Read the rest

The Really Rude Map is a Glitch app that renders customizable maps of the world featuring only the rudest place names. Zoom in to reveal more geographical grotesquery! Read the rest

Shardcore (previously), "I made a video for Saddy Waddy by The Private Sector using a new deepfake lipsync method to get Boris Johnson to sing the words." [Ed: Warning, strobe effects] Read the rest

Open Culture and Class Central compiled a list of thousands of enticing free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and lectures from top-shelf educators at great universities like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. Here are just a few:• Astrobiology and Space Exploration -- Lynn Rothschild, Stanford • Science, Magic and Religion - Free iTunes Video - Free Online Video - Courtenay Raia, UCLA• 21 Hours of Lectures by Howard Zinn - Boston University• Hacking Consciousness: Consciousness, Cognition and the Brain - Michael Heinrich, Stanford• Heidegger Meets Van Gogh: Art, Freedom and Technology - Simon Glendinning, London School of Economics• Jack Kerouac – Allen Ginsberg, Naropa University• Science Fiction and Politics - Courtney Brown, Emory University"3,700+ MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in September: Enroll Today" (Open Culture) Read the rest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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