Boing Boing

When Christian Bale was cast as Patrick Bateman, the obsessive yet vacuous investment banker and serial killer prowling 1980s Manhattan, he searched for inspiration. He found a Tom Cruise interview, as related by director Mary Harron: "We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy."Now you can watch Tom Cruise play the role, deepfaked over Bale and dubbed by Evan Ferrante. It's so convincing, not just in the technical aspects of the deepfake but the plain fact of Cruise's obvious appropropriateness to the role. There's a petulant, simmering anger that comes naturally to Cruise on screen, an intensity that Bale did not quite fully emulate in his otherwise excellent performance.It's NSFW throughout, but the second half is the actual "sex" scene; stop the video 45s in to avoid it. Read the rest

And by "dirty," I mean "NSFW."There's a marketing mastermind at Granny's Attic thrift store on Vashon Island in Washington state. Instead of tossing out** all the risqué donations the store receives, they instead save the (good/sellable) items for a once-a-year sale for adults 18 and over. I vacation in Vashon and got to experience it for myself. (**I'm assuming that's what thrift stores normally do.)The preview for this "After Dark" sale was held on the island's popular First Friday evening:"Find Out What Your Neighbors Have Been Up To":Outside the shop's actual storefront was this large tent which held all the salacious secondhand goods: Now, I've often thought that you can tell a lot about what a community is about by what ends up in their thrift stores, a sort of anthropological study. What would I learn about the denizens of Vashon? Only one way to find out...(By the way, my 14-year-old was MORTIFIED that I was going to check the sale out and literally crossed the street and hid while I went inside.)Walking past the "It's scandalous in here..." sign and into the tent, I immediately spotted racks of used (and presumably laundered) lingerie and books:Turning around, I saw this table (click image to embiggen):And this one (click image to embiggen):No comment on those pantyhose dolls.Many artists live in Vashon, so it makes sense to me that a bunch of tasteful nude sketches ended up in the sale:Oh, it's worth mentioning that everything was priced to move. Read the rest

Look, this is getting old. Just assume that everyone one is listening to you fart, copulate and sing in the shower, all the damn time. My former co-worker and professional tall person, David Murphy, took the time today to rap about Microsoft humping up on top of the digital surveillance dog-pile. He points out that, according to Vice, an unnamed Microsoft contractor has spilled the beans on the fact that Microsoft has been holding on to five to ten-second snippets of folks using Skype's translation functionality to yammer on with on another. Did I mention that he provided samples of the audio clips? There's totally samples of the audio clips. Apparently, Microsoft's having their contractors listen in on the clips to improve on Skype's translation chops.When confronted about their snooping, Microsoft assured Vice's investigator that the snippets were fired over to the company's contractors via a secure web portal, with all identifying data removed from the recordings.As David points out, there's no way to keep Microsoft from doing this. Worse than this, the company, oh-so greasily, completely neglects to mention that underpaid humans are listening on what you say during your Skype calls.From Lifehacker:...Microsoft doesn’t indicate in its FAQ that your speech is being analyzed by real people. In fact, this description almost implies that it’s a fully mechanical process, which it is not—nor could it be, since a machine wouldn’t be able to pick the correct translation. The entire point is that a human being has to train the system to get better. Read the rest

Or live on, depending on who you talk to. Ponyhenge started when a toy rocking horse was discarded in a field. It had been part of a headless horseman decoration from a nearby, shuttered haunted house. Soon, other toy horses joined it, lined up in a circle. The herd mysteriously multiplies, moves around, and gets decorated seasonally. Roadtrippers reports:The herd has not only grown in the last nine years, but the horses have been known to change positions unexpectedly. Like a less-labor-intensive crop circle, no one is quite sure who moves the residents of Ponyhenge, but every so often they are rearranged into a new formation... For the Kentucky Derby, that the horses were moved into lines, waiting for a starting gunshot that presumably never came. After Labor Day… the horses were arranged in rows as if they were in school. They’re draped in lights at Christmas, and sometimes they’re buried completely by snow during the harsh New England winters. The Rocking Horse Graveyard, as it's also called, has been a roadside attraction since 2010.Want to see it for yourself? Head to 47 Old Sudbury Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts and look by the side of the road. It's on private property, so be respectful.(RED, Nag on the Lake)screenshot via Erin Essex Read the rest

In the market for a workhorse laptop for the upcoming school year? Refurbished gear is the way to go. Here are some of our favorite deals on like-new laptop rigs and PCs.Lenovo N22 11.6" Chromebook 16GB Black (Certified Refurbished)This rig is great for working at home or away, with a 14-hour battery life and 1.6GHz Intel Celeron N3050 processor that can handle any task. The rotating 720p HD camera and water-resistant keyboard are especially nice touches for any user. Get this Lenovo N22 11.6" Chromebook 16GB in black for $99.99, 60% off the retail price.HP Chromebook 11" 16GB Silver (Certified Refurbished)The Chrome OS makes it easy to navigate on this 2014 model, and the 16 GB eMMC storage is enough for a household worth of data. Pick up the HP Chromebook 11" 16GB Silver for $139.99, down 30% from the original cost.HP Chromebook 14 14.4” 16GB Black (Certified Refurbished)The built-in virus protection on this one makes it great for casual users, and the multi-format digital media card makes it easy to share and view videos from anywhere. Pick up your HP Chromebook 14 14.4” 16GB Black for $99.99, a full 66% discount from the MSRP.Lenovo Thinkpad 11e Chromebook 11.6” 16GB Silver (Certified Refurbished)This Thinkpad is durable outside and all about speed under the hood. The 6th Gen Intel® Core™ processors work hard whether you're crunching data or streaming video on the HD display. Get the Lenovo Thinkpad 11e Chromebook 11.6” 16GB Silver for 73% off at $104.99. Read the rest

Ben is host of the BTC Sessions YouTube channel. He appears to be knowledgeable about Bitcoin, so he was the wrong guy to try to cheat, as this scammer learned. The scammer, going by the name of Susan Williams, told Ben via instant message that he could double his money in 24 hours if he sent her bitcoins to invest in a bitcoin mining operation. Ben pretended to be interested but told her that he would send her a bitcoin only if she first sent him $50 worth of bitcoin as a show of good faith. Susan" eventually agreed and as soon as she sent him the money, Ben told her he was not going to send her anything and was sending the $50 to a charity. Susan was so upset that she sent Ben a crying face emoji.Image: BTC Sessions Read the rest

Stephen M. Ross scheduled to host fundraiser for President Trump in his Hamptons home

The largest single-state worksite immigration raid in American history took place today. Under orders from openly racist U.S. president Donald Trump, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 680 Latinx people who worked at numerous food processing plants throughout the state of Mississippi.US Atty Mike Hurst announces today’s immigration raids led to detention of approx. 680 people at 7 sites in 6 cities in MS, setting a new record in a single state. @MSTODAYnews pic.twitter.com/C4A3pDQ5oI— Michelle Liu (@mchelleliu) August 7, 2019The arrestees are identified as being Latinx. The raids are racially targeted, but ICE denies it.Think of the detainees' children, spouses, grandparents, and other dependents tonight.ICE clustered the raids in various small towns near Jackson, where the labor workforce is almost entirely immigrants from central America and Mexico. Communities that were raided today include the towns of Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol.“About 600 agents fanned out across the plants involving several companies, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing,” AP reports. The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to visit El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latino city where a man linked to an online screed about a "Hispanic invasion" was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.Workers filled three buses — two for men and one for women — at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in tiny Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations. Read the rest

Are all the cool kids going to leave AOL now that its official "digital prophet," Shingy, won't be around to tell the company what to do? According to Gizmodo, Mr. Shingy wrote a good-bye letter on LinkedIn that read, "I have decided it’s time to explore a new path.”From Gizmodo:It’s possible no one really knows what Shingy did as a digital prophet. In 2014 he told the New Yorker that his six-figure salary paid for him to watch “the future take shape across the vast online landscape,” adding that, “I fly all around the world and go to conferences” and “I listen to where media is headed and figure out how our brands can win in that environment.”But one anecdote from that story painted a clearer picture of Shingy’s role.Next, Shingy stopped by the office of Erika Nardini, the chief marketing officer of AOL Advertising, and handed her an iPad Mini. “Wanted to show you a little brain fart I had on the plane,” he said. It was a cartoon he had drawn of a bear wearing zebra-print pants and a shirt covered in ones and zeros.“Love it, love it, love it,” Nardini said. “I’m thinking of the bears more as a metaphor.”“A thousand per cent,” Shingy said.Image: YouTube/Cloud Edits Read the rest

A gentleman (dressed in a half-hearted attempt at old-timey choo choo train engineer cosplay) attacked a cement truck with a hammer, knocking out indicator lights and such. He then traipsed through freshly poured concrete, falling into it and struggling to get out. When a man asked him "Everything alright?" He replied, "Everything alright? Does everything look alright you dumb fucker? I want that truck off my lawn."Old man freaks out over a truck parked outside his house, hits concrete company truck with a hammer then falls into wet concrete from r/PublicFreakoutImage r/PublicFreakout Read the rest

Atul Gawande (previously) made an enormous shift in the practice of medicine with his research on checklists, summarized in his book The Checklist Manifesto; Gawande identified a core paradox with checklists, which is that surgeons hate to use them, finding them reductive and tedious, but overwhelmingly, surgeons would prefer to be operated on by other surgeons who were using a checklist to guide the procedure. Now, a decade later, the empirical data on checklists is looking pretty dismal. Not because checklists don't work, but because surgical teams ignore them, skipping over checklist items and assuming that they've taken care of them without bothering to check.A survey of UK surgical staff identified three key reasons that checklists were skipped over: first, peer-pressure, wherein people following the checklist were mocked and exhorted to "shut up and get on with it"; second, "inappropriate or illogical" checklists that had criteria that weren't applicable to the situation; and third, because they were considered time-wasters in a time-constrained environment. The bad news is that these factors have led to much of checklists' promise being squandered. The good news is that they're pretty easy to fix.In a 2013 study13, Dixon-Woods found that an African hospital using the WHO surgical checklist had regular shortages of the basic tools — such as surgical markers, antibiotics and pulse oximeters — that are required to complete the list. But the staff often ticked those boxes anyway; as one anaesthetist pointed out, it was often better for a patient to undergo surgery without these supplies than not to have surgery at all. Read the rest

Researchers at the University of Exeter say pesky seagulls at holiday vacation spots tend to be deterred somewhat from stealing your food when you just stare at them. Yep, maintaining hostile eye contact with a gull may deter them from snarfing your french fries.“The research showed that with a human staring at them, herring gulls took 21 seconds longer to approach a bag of chips then when left apparently unobserved,” Reports Reuters:“Gulls are often seen as aggressive and willing to take food from humans, so it was interesting to find that most wouldn’t even come near during our tests,” said lead author Madeleine Goumas, of the Center for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.The researchers tried to test 74 gulls but most flew away or would not approach. Just 27 approached the food and 19 completed the “looking at” and “looking away” tests.“Of those that did approach, most took longer when they were being watched,” Goumas said. “Some wouldn’t even touch the food at all, although others didn’t seem to notice that a human was staring at them.”Staring at seagulls can stop them stealing food, research shows [Guy Faulconbridge/Reuters][images: shutterstock] Read the rest

Christopher Brown is a lawyer and science fiction writer; his debut, 2017's Tropic of Kansas, was an outstanding novel of authoritarianism and resistance, and his next book, Rule of Capture (out on Monday, watch for my review!) is a legal thriller about disaster capitalism, climate catastrophe, and hard-fought political change.In a tremendous and thoughtful essay for Tor.com, Brown explores the role that law plays in science fiction and fantasy, where, despite a wealth of writers who are formally trained in the law, the majority of "legal" drama is courtroom drama that is "about lawyers and almost never about the law" -- instead, they're about "facts -- about the bad things people do to each other, and about the process of finding out who’s guilty or innocent."But some of the most interesting legal sf is about the laws themselves: how they're passed, what changes they wreak on the world, how they get repealed. At its best, sf can subject laws to the same thought experiments it uses when considering gadgets, using narrative to figure out what changes, what stays the same, and who benefits and who loses.Part of the problem is cultural. A genre that creates safe spaces to express difference from prevailing norms is wary of suits telling them what the rules are, as opposed to what they could be. The bigger problem is one of plausibility—lawyers don’t feel like the future. The legal system we have is an immense labyrinth of code and procedure that reflects all the myriad complexity of modern life, but it’s also one of the most extant vestiges of our primitive roots—a system created by our ancient forebears to regulate disputes through a means other than violence. Read the rest

President Donald Trump earlier this week issued a phony and cringe-y “call for unity” after the two mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. Today on noted hate platform Twitter, the President of the United States personally attacked the mayor of Dayton, one of the senators from Ohio, and the former congressman who represented El Paso.Oh, also, Shep Smith.The president makes time for media criticism in between visits to cities that suffered mass shootings. https://t.co/FYWQYYU0Ld— Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) August 7, 2019The president, who earlier this week called for unity in the wake of the two mass shootings, has now attacked the mayor of Dayton, one of the senators from Ohio, the former congressman who represented El Paso. And Shep Smith.— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 7, 2019President Trump, Monday in the Diplomatic Room: "Now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside — so destructive — and find the courage to answer hatred with unity, devotion, and love." https://t.co/ce0EqmaDuT— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) August 7, 2019 Read the rest

In Whisky tasting using a bimetallic nanoplasmonic tongue (Nanoscale/Royal Society of Chemistry), a team from U Glasgow's School of Engineering describe their work on an "artificial tongue" lined with "tastebuds" that sense "plasmonic resonance" (the absorption of light by liquids) to produced highly detailed accounts of the profiles of Scotch whiskys, which can be used to determine whether a given whisky is counterfeit.The team claims more than 99% sensing and identification accuracy. We have presented a reusable bimetallic nanoplasmonic tongue that displays two distinct resonance peaks per region and whose orthogonal surface chemistries can be selectively modified to tune their ‘tasting’ sensitivity. These unique features have allowed us to halve both the sensor size and necessary data-acquisition time while still providing dataset clustering upon PCA and successful classification with LDA. This is a versatile system, allowing the development of high quality nanoplasmonic tongues for any given application via simple alterations to the chosen surface ligands and/or plasmonic metals in order to produce new sensors with unique chemical responses. This new approach to artificial tongue design may spur the development of portable devices for applications in a point of care diagnostics, counterfeit detection in high-value drinks, environmental monitoring, and defense. Whisky tasting using a bimetallic nanoplasmonic tongue [Gerard Macias, Justin R. Sperling, William J. Peveler, Glenn A. Burley, Steven L. Neale and Alasdair W. Clark/Nanoscale](via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

John Lambert is a 23-year-old from Tennessee who has done a lot in his short years on this earth: in addition to co-founding "Students for Trump," he also co-founded a fake law firm called Pope & Dunn, where he pretended to be a lawyer called Eric Pope (law degree: NYU; finance degree: U Penn; years of legal experience: 15), and defrauded clients of $46,000.Lambert was charged in April and now he has pleaded guilty, admitting to wire fraud with an unnamed co-conspirator. Under his plea deal, he faces up to 21 months in prison.“John Lambert represented himself to clients as a prominent New York attorney with a law degree from an elite law school. But Lambert’s de facto career was one of a grifter: he had never been to law school and certainly wasn’t an attorney. Today, Lambert admitted to his crimes and faces time in prison for his misdeeds," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said.Lambert achieved notoriety during the presidential campaign for the group he founded with classmate classmate Ryan Fournier at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C., in 2015. They made frequent media appearances and ran a Students For Trump Twitter account featuring photos of bikini-clad women and pics of themselves at political events.Students for Trump founder pleads guilty to posing as lawyer in $46K scam [Stephen Rex Brown/New York Daily News](Image: Screenshot of rally video) Read the rest

The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch makes a compelling case linking US Bureau of Energy Resources foreign affairs officer Matthew Q. Gebert with a series of violent white nationalist identities that have advocated acts of terror within in the USA and have been involved with recruiting for and promoting white nationalist terror organizations.Hatewatch draws on online history, eyewitness accounts, and a wealth of circumstantial evidence to link Gebert with "Coach Finstock," a prominent white nationalist terror-proponent. Hatewatch also claims that Gebert's wife, Anna Vuckovic, is behind the white nationalist pseudonym "Wolfie James."In addition to building the case linking Gebert and Vuckovic with white nationalist campaigns, Hatewatch assembles a dossier of statements that the Coach Finstock and Wolfie James pseudonyms have made and activities they have participated in, including Holocaust denial, glorifying Nazi soldiers, advocating for ethnic cleansing of non-whites from the USA, advocating for convincing US cops and soldiers to join a traitorous white nationalist movement, spreading antisemitic and anti-Black conspiracy theories, and glorifying mass-murderer Dylan Roof. The Coach Finstock identity is the organizer and leader of a DC-area neo-Nazi group called the "DC Helicopter Pilots," which is affiliated with Michael Peinovich's The Right Stuff network, a white nationalist movement.Gebert did not reply to Hatewatch's request for comment on the allegations. When Hatewatch visited Gebert and Vuckovic's home, Vuckovic denied the allegations.Gebert has worked for the US State Department since 2013 and is an alumn of George Washington University's prestigious "presidential management fellowship" program.The two sources who attended the dinner with Irving recalled that approximately 12 guests, including Gebert and Vuckovic, sat along a rectangular table with Irving in a private room at a hotel in the Washington, D.C. Read the rest

People fleeing and hiding from #timessquare after suspected live shooter #NewYork we caught this from our hotel bar 10th floor #police confirmed this was not a live shooter #timessquare #NYC pic.twitter.com/IKfagFbtzy— The Daniels Group (@DanielsGrp) August 7, 2019 At around 10pm last night in New York City's Times Square, the sound of backfiring motorcycles triggered panic and chaos. Listen below. I'd have run like hell too.Doesn’t sound like a motorcycle backfiring to me. Pure chaos 13 minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/17t425s6c8— Emma (@emma_elizabeth6) August 7, 2019 Please be advised that all is safe and secure in #timessquare 🌃. All reports of suspicious sounds were due to a large group of 🏍 cruising through the area on this nice evening. #connecting #protecting— NYPD Midtown South (@NYPDMTS) August 7, 2019 Read the rest

In Exile (Keeper of Lost Cities,) Sophie Foster is back and still being put through the most horrible adventures Shannon Messenger can imagine for a young teen!I am in love with the Keeper of Lost Cities series. Sophie Foster is a 13-year-old ripped from the loving arms of her human family and manipulated into saving the world. Kept in the dark about her own mysterious past (that everyone else seems to know,) Sophie is forced to sneak around and break every promise she makes about not doing exactly that! Sophie nearly dies every few chapters, while also putting 'friends' and 'family' at risk, however, it is unclear who is really a friend and who isn't!Sophie is an elf. For some reason, still, unbeknownst to the readers, Sophie was placed with a human family as a child and hidden away. When the elves find her they abduct her, brainwash her family into believing she never existed (after Sophie negotiates this fate for them rather than simply DEATH,) and then demand she save the world multiple times. I can not imagine a kid surviving this shit with a shred of self left at the end of the first book -- somehow things got EVEN WORSE for Sophie in book 2.After not really coming to grips with her fate from book 1, Sophie is forced into an adventure to save the only adult who seems to have told her anything much useful. Along the way, Sophie repairs her own damaged mind, which was responsible for losing her buddy in the first place. Read the rest

US Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders went on some podcast to say that if, once he becomes President of these United States, he learns about aliens his wife will force him to tell us all he knows.Vice:Rogan: “If you got into the office and you found out something about aliens, if you found out something about UFOs, would you let us know?”Sanders: “Well I tell you, my wife would demand I let you know.”Rogan: “Is your wife a UFO nut?”Sanders: “No, she’s not a UFO nut. She goes, Bernie, ‘What is going on do you know? Do you have any access?’"Rogan: “You don’t have any access? You’ll let us know though?”Sanders: “Alright, we’ll announce it on the show. How’s that?” Read the rest

Here are some highlights from recent World Chase Tag competitions.“With World Chase Tag as a sport it really puts you in the moment and it almost makes you feel like a rabbit trapped in the head lights of a car,” competitor Richard Thompson, 19, told The Independent. “Will you run? Or will you freeze? This is something I’ve never felt in any other sport I’ve played and it makes things really interesting. But most of all it doesn’t feel like sport, it feels like play. That’s what I love about it.”You're it. Read the rest

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earned the moniker "Moscow Mitch" for refusing to protect elections from Russian interference. You can't blame him - Russians want to help the GOP take over the USA, so why would he stand in their way? In his annual Fancy Farm Picnic speech in Kentucky, Mitch McConnell did his best to remind folks that he's nothing like those strange lifeforms in "California and New York," and is "guy who sticks up for middle America," but most of his soporific platitudes were drowned out by middle Americans who think he's a traitor.Image: YouTube Read the rest

MxPx plays Aha's classicThe Downbeat 5 singing 'Dum Dum Ditty' is one of my favorites.Me First and the Gimmie Gimmie's cover 'Wild World'Riverboat Gamblers play 'Let's Go Crazy'The Laundrettes sing 'Nobody but Me'NoFX's 'Go Your Own Way'MORE! Add more in the comments...Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash Read the rest

Dominic of The Viral Video Lab demonstrates a paper airplane that will circle "endlessly" when caught in the airstream of seven personal fans. Of course, proper positioning of the plane is key. "It took me about 35 takes to create this video," Dominic writes.Below is a video on folding your own "Infinity Paper Plane."(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

The Tony Martini Variety Hour is running this Saturday, August 8th at the Three Clubs.A desperate variety show clinging to the art, music, and style that worked so well in the late 50s and early 60s takes the stage this Saturday night in the city of fallen angels! Amazing performers put everything they can into an art form we thought went away with the Star Wars Holiday Special! Come and marvel at the madness!Tony Martini, your host, and titular lounge singer-y guy is portrayed by global comedy legend Mark Fite. Mark sings, jokes, and frequently falls flat on his face. Luckily, Martini is accompanied by his super talented wife, Bananas Foster. Foster could only be played by international accordion phenomenon Renee Albert. Jim Turner plays their less than kind and understanding manager.Produced by Steven Espinosa, the cast is joined by a veritable mob of Los Angeles finest variety acts: Michael Rayner, Pam Severns, Karl Herlinger, April Showers, Olive Oz and the always incredible contortionist Bonnie Morgan.I'm gonna be there! Join us Saturday, August 8th at the Three Clubs. Doors open at 7pm. Show starts at 8pm.Photos by Safi Alia Shabaik. Read the rest

Context is everything, especially when it's missing.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

The Lock Picking Lawyer is one of my favorite YouTubers, and he's spreading his wings beyond the usual fare of dreadful padlocks and crap safes. Here he shows how to use a $2 generic remote control to "blind" SimpliSafe, a security gadget that's getting rave reviews from product testers. This however is a little 433 megahertz remote you can get them on Amazon or Ebay for about $2, and even though it'snot very powerful, it's powerful enough. Let's demonstrate using this entry sensor. I'm going to arm the system, and you can see if I were to open whateverthis was attached to—let's say the frontdoor—the keypad starts starts beeping telling me to enter the pin or the alarm will be triggered. Okay let's try that one more time. But before I open the front door, I'm going to press and hold the button on this remote.As you can see, I opened and closed the front door and SimpliSafe had no ideaHere's a $2 one, shipping included, on eBay. Amazon matches the price. If we can't review the security of security devices, we shouldn't be reviewing them at all, should we? Read the rest

As the Hong Kong uprising hits its sixth week, the island is running out of protective gear to guard the surging protesters against police violence; in response, Hong Kongers in Taiwan and Taiwanese sympathizers have been bulk-shipping helmets, gas masks and other materiel (as well as cash) to the protesters (in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, queues formed as people waited to make donations).In response, Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have stepped up inspections of packages from Taiwan to Hong Kong, and have seized anything that might be used by protesters. For now, Hong Kong-based Chunghwa Post has emerged as the preferred method for shipments.The grievances over mainland interference in local politics, as well as the repression faced by Hong Kong protesters, has buoyed support for Taiwanese independence, with a majority of Taiwanese surveyed supporting the Hong Kong protesters; support for Taiwanese independence has risen more than ten points, to 88%.Helmets and other protective gear are in short supply in Hong Kong as opponents to an extradition bill to China and protesters and the police’s anti-riot squads battle for control of the streets and public spaces. Rubber bullets and tear gas canisters have been fired by police in many districts of the former British colony.Asia Times | Helmets, goggles sent from Taiwan to HK protesters [KG Chan/Asia Times](via Naked Capitalism)#Taiwan & the rest of the world are closely watching developments in the #HongKongProtests. As President of a country that walked the long road to democracy, I urge the #HongKong government to address the legitimate concerns of the people & their pursuit of freedom & democracy. Read the rest

It's been a year since Chinese social media giant Bytedance relaunched its super-popular app Musica.ly as Tiktok; the company is now valued at $75b, and in the USA it has become a serious challenge to US-based social media companies, courting a young audience (so young that it's getting into legal hot water over it).Tiktok spend $1b last year advertising in the USA, and this year it's on track to surpass that figure, with $3m/day in US ad spending. It has the power to change music trends, and has been credited with the record-breaking success of Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," the longest run at the top of the Billboard single chart in history.The company is aggressively hiring US execs, too.But Tiktok's US rise has geopolitical implications. In China, Tiktok has been suborned to serve as a state propaganda outlet, serving anti-Hong-Kong-uprising memes to Chinese users, including conspiracy theories blaming the Hong Kong protests on US agitators (other Chinese social media companies have been serving similar content). The propaganda efforts are also intense in Xinjiang, a region where the Uighur ethnic minority have been subject to mass surveillance and torture in "re-education" camps. After a run-in with Chinese state regulators, Bytedance has pledged to hire 10,000 censors to identify and block anti-government content. But the company also faces some real risks in the near future. Here are four:One, TikTok has to fix its funnel. Too many people try TikTok, use it a few times, and never return. Read the rest

This footage of a garage on a busy road reminded me that a) life is fleeting and b) it's high time to get those dashcams installed.young kid in a truck hauling a trailer got distracted and went off the road and plowed into my friends truck. This is in spicewood TX.The vintage car under the tarp was reportedly unharmed.BONUS VIDEO: Here's a truck driver receiving "instant karma" after trying to slipstream through a toll booth behind another truck. The beam comes down and hits his cab, and his tires blow up. They get spiked, perhaps, or maybe the beam coming down made the driver veer too close to the barriers. Either way, that truck ain't goin' far. Read the rest

Shannon Byers was an investigator with the Gwinnett County (Georgia) Medical Examiner's office, until this week, when she resigned after news got out that a body whose death she had declared to be of "natural causes" had been found in a bloody murder-scene with a stab wound to the neck.Ray Neal, 61, was found in a bedroom of his home, surrounded by blood, with blood throughout the scene. When Neal's body was released to a funeral home, they discovered a stab wound in Neal's neck. This triggered an autopsy that found the cause of death to be murder by stabbing.Byers has since resigned. The County is advertising for a new medical examiner to take her place.According to the police report, Byers examined Neal’s body and determined the cause of death to be natural. The report stated Byers released the body to Byrd and Flanagan Funeral home. But the report explained, once at the funeral home, an employee noticed a hole in Neal’s neck. That’s when the Neal’s body was returned to the morgue where a further autopsy determined he had been murdered, the medical examiner’s office confirmed to FOX 5 News.Gwinnett County ME investigator resigns after misinterpreted autopsy [Fox 5 News](via Lowering the Bar) Read the rest

As hilarious as it is to see Nick Offerman deepfaked into every part in Full House, it's ctrl shift face's videos of Bill Hader subtly taking on the appearance of those he impersonates which really get under my skin. As soon as you spot it, you realize it actually started some time ago, sneaking in under the cognitive veil like a knife through the ribs. Read the rest

Entrepreneur and Product Designer Matt Benedetto is an inventing machine. Under the umbrella of "Unnecessary Inventions," he's brought the world a-mazing, and absolutely absurd, creations. His latest pièce de résistance? Fingerless Crocs Gloves. Yup, he's made Crocs that you can wear on your hands. And, no, he didn't cut up a pair of shoes. No, no. These little beauties were 3D-printed. Watch the video to see the entire process to get from idea to prototype. It's impressive! Read the rest

In the past, bowtied racist Tucker Carlson defended statutory rape, said women were "primitive" and "need to be quiet," and claimed that white people weren't "designed to digest" life alongside immigrants. Now, he says, white supremacy isn't even a thing.“It’s actually not a real problem in America,” Carlson said. He then added: “This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax. It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.” Carlson’s argument is belied by many experts and seemingly contradicted by a recent wave of deadly attacks by men motivated by those views. As The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported on Monday, violence tied to far-right ideologies has killed roughly as many Americans since 9/11 as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State combined.Trump has faced heavy criticism for his role in stoking white racial grievances. Numerous Democratic presidential candidates denounced Trump after El Paso for boosting “white nationalism,” while polling has consistently found that most Americans believe he’s encouraged white supremacists. The president has often called Hispanic migration an “invasion” — language echoed in a manifesto police believe the accused El Paso shooter posted online decrying a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”He's the living incarnation of that old Simpsons gag about Fox News proving how racist it was by claiming not to be racist while taking pride in its popularity with racists. UPDATE: "Tucker Carlson is literally our greatest ally." -- Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, The Daily Stormer.— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) August 7, 2019 Read the rest

DrFakenstein: "Full House needed more Mustaches" Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the Russians invade, and it's up to a small resistance cell of teenagers to fight back, under the bold leadership of RED DON!

In an October 7, 2018 blog post, Tesla claimed that the Model 3 achieves the lowest probability of injury of any vehicle ever tested by NHTSA. Alas, no.NHTSA Chief Counsel Jonathan Morrison sent Tesla CEO Elon Musk a cease-and-desist letter in October last year to say it had become aware of “misleading statements” made by the company about the vehicle’s safety rating.The agency’s main contention was with Tesla’s claim in a blog post that month that NHTSA tests showed the Model 3 has “the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested.”Tldr, the agency insists that its crash ratings in the warehouse, the stars, aren't injury probabilities on the road. Here's the cease-and-decist sent to Tesla, exposed with a FOIA request. It includes a response from Al Prescott, Tesla's deputy chief counsel, telling the NHTSA it doesn't understand its own safety tests and claiming that it is "taking sides" among auto manufacturers. Read the rest

Theron of IDIDTHAT.com isn't letting old rotary phones go to waste. This Bay Area artist is repurposing them into cool lamps ($167+) whose headset is hovering in mid-air as its light source. The cord is flexible and can be repositioned as you like. Neat!They write:In the early 1970s herds of rotary phones spanned the countryside. Social by nature, the phones bred in most homes and soon every imaginable color was available. Hunting was easy! Firmly attached by a cord, trappers harvested their cases by the thousands. They were at the brink of extinction when a few cordless models got into the population. Today’s cellular phone is the result of careful breeding management. We celebrate the near extinction event, with the release of our popular recycled phone lamps in every imaginable color. Relive the 1980s or earlier and be the talk of the town. Like really, people talked on these and now they will talk about these. One customer said “Truly the coolest thing I’ve ever purchased.” View this post on Instagram (Princess and her regal consort both SOLD) Our expeditionary team returned with one of the last breeding pairs of turquoise blue phones known to exist. Behold a princess phone lamp and her regal consort in their corded glory. Several large and unnamed museums have made offers, but we just can’t see them locked in a glass case! They belong in their natural habitat, the rumpus rooms of America. Take one home today before they are forever extinct. Read the rest

The Pogues gave rise to an entirely new genre of music: Paddy Punk. For better or worse (during an interview with Spider Stacey, I was told it was the latter), thousands of bands have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to ape the Pogues' sound. In my opinion, these pretenders to the throne may sound great but they can never hope to measure up, due to two factors: They lack Shane MacGowan's dark, poetic view of the world and James Fearnley's percussive accordion playing.Here's the thing, though: unless he's singing or I've heard it before, I might not know that MacGowan wrote a particular pile of lyrics. But the moment I hear a tune being played I've no doubt that it's Fearnley minding the box. His sound rang in my ears throughout my teen years and continues to do so, today. Recently, Fearnley and a number of other notable musicians came together to form a new outfit, The Walker Roaders. From what I've heard so far, a whole LP from them should be a very fine thing.From the band's Facebook page:In the course of a widely celebrated thirty-year career, the sound of seminal London-Irish band The Pogues launched a generation of rowdy and explosive Celtic-Punk bands. James Fearnley, co-founder and long-time accordion player in that legendary group, has now teamed with two of its most notable devotees, Flogging Molly co-founder and Grammy Award-winning producer Ted Hutt and Dropkick Murphys’ multi-instrumentalist Marc Orrell, forming The Walker Roaders whose music splices anthems of Celtic-punk with the poetry of The Pogues. Read the rest

Cloud storage isn't just for big businesses. If you've got more pictures, videos or work files than your device can handle (and who doesn't?), then the cloud is where it needs to be.Luckily, there are more options for you than just Dropbox these days. Here's a roundup of some newer services that can help you manage and secure your data - not just find it a home.ThunderDrive Cloud StorageThunderDrive boasts that you can access their service six times faster than Amazon, and they've certainly got the infrastructure to back it up. Their Tier IV data centers can hold your data behind 256-bit encryption, retrievable from any browser on the web or mobile. Lifetime subscriptions include a Personal plan for 500 GB of data ($29) or Pro plan that will get you 2 TB of storage for $59, a full 95% off the MSRP.Zoolz Cloud Backup For HomeZoolz uses the Amazon Web Services infrastructure to supply 1 TB of cold storage, perfect for large amounts of inactive data. It's a great way to secure entire computers or even networks, and the service uses deduplication, block-level uploads and other methods for faster backup. Single-user plans are available for one year at $19.99 (90% off the list price) or three years at $34.99.Koofr Cloud Storage PlanHere's a handy one even if you've got an existing cloud storage account. Koofr lets you connect to Dropbox, Google Drive or other cloud storage services and transfer those files freely. Read the rest

Traffic disappears into a higher dimension, on this bridge. Witchcraft. https://t.co/9jXxSFjXv6 pic.twitter.com/yO9MaGokHy— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) August 5, 2019 Where they're going, they don't need roads. Read the rest

Winston the French bulldog fell from a six-story building in Manhattan's Lower East Side on Friday night. Fortunately, he only sustained minimal injuries and will be just fine. Emma Heinrich was walking Winston when he ran off, raced up the stairs of a building onto the roof through an open door, and then... jumped. "He managed to break his fall perfectly on top of (a) car’s closed sunroof," Heinrich wrote on Instagram. "He crashed through it and tumbled safely into the front seat." From CNN:"I was told by the vet initially that despite not having broken any bones, X-rays showed significant bruising to his lungs," Heinrich said.Due to the bruising, Winston had to stay in an oxygen chamber for 36 hours to make sure that he could breathe.Now, Winston's home and is "doing absolutely amazing," she told CNN. "He is still a little bit stiff (as to be expected), but that is quickly fading and we are seeing him start to return to his regular playful self." View this post on Instagram We now interrupt your regularly programmed negative news stories to bring you one with a miracle happy ending! *Winston is unenthused about being on the local news. He told me he won’t settle for anything less than @theellenshow moving forward.* . . Our Frenchie Winston got loose in the stairwell of our LES apartment building and managed to make it onto the roof. Trying to play a game of keepaway he dashed away from me and ran the length of the roof toward the front edge. Read the rest

A Brazilian prison inmate whose attempt to escape jail dressed as his own teen daughter went internet-viral has been found dead in his cell of an apparent hanging.Rio de Janeiro state authorities reported on Tuesday that Clauvino da Silva, 42, hung himself with a bedsheet.The convicted Rio drug dealer was serving a decades-long sentence and almost managed to escape jail last Saturday, disguised as his daughter. Authorities found him in a weird plastic mask, and a wig and women’s clothes, including a bra.From Reuters:A video, released by prison authorities, in which he slowly removes his surreal disguise went viral, shining a light on Brazil’s longstanding struggle with its violent, overcrowded prison system, the world’s third largest.On Tuesday, however, in a gruesome twist, Rio prison officials said Silva had been found dead in his cell in a high-security unit in the state’s Bangu prison complex.“The inmate appears to have hanged himself with a bed sheet,” Rio’s prison authority said in a statement, adding that an investigation had been opened.The death of Silva is an embarrassment for Rio’s prison authorities, which had initially cheered their actions in preventing his unusual escape plan. He is the latest prisoner to die in Brazil’s jails, which have become a major headache for new tough-on-crime President Jair Bolsonaro.Last week, at least 57 people died after a prison riot broke out in the northern state of Para. More than 50 inmates died in similar circumstances in May during prison riots in the northern state of Amazonas. Read the rest

Talk about a shitstorm. In Florida, a Port Charlotte woman said that lightning destroyed her septic tank, and made the toilet in her house explode.Marylou Ward, one of the property's co-owners, told local TV station WINK News that the one and only toilet in the Port Charlotte home was shattered into hundreds of pieces on Sunday.Ward told a reporter she’ll have to get the toilet and septic system repaired, but she’s grateful neither she nor anyone else was injured. The bathroom toilet was shattered into hundreds of pieces.“I’m just glad none of us were on the toilet,” Ward said. “That’s the main thing.”From WINK News in Southwest Florida:Ward and her husband are not only without a toilet, but the indoor plumbing is destroyed, along with the septic tank.The odds were not in their favor as a lightning strike, in a chain reaction, led to the septic tank to toilet explosion.“We come in here and the toilet was laying on the floor,” Ward said. “There’s all pieces everywhere. Pieces everywhere.”Their plumber said the lightning hit the methane gases from fecal matter built up in the pipes. Ward said she thought the house was on fire.“We smelled smoke and I looked outside.” Ward said. “It was the smoke from the septic tank that was coming.”[via AP] Read the rest

”AT&T employees took bribes to unlock millions of smartphones.”

From one of the longest-running homegrown “cute animal video” bloggers, kagonekoshiro -- the video you didn't know you needed right now, until you see it. Beautiful hydrangea flowers worn on the head of these cute cats, somewhere in Japan on a warm summer's day.Watch:A related gem from the same channel:[source, youtube link] Read the rest

You're gonna want to unmute for the happycrys.This video is pretty amazing. “Daughter was with grandma for a month and we got the kitten a week ago I told her we have a gift for her and wanted to make sure she didn’t suspect it’s a kitten,” says IMGURian romansamurai.My daughter’s reaction to our new kitten. Daughter was with grandma for a month and we got the kitten a week ago I told her we have a gift for her and wanted to make sure she didn’t suspect it’s a kitten.My daughter’s reaction to our new kitten [IMGUR] Read the rest

Over at Medium's Forge, Nicole Dieker writes about her experiment testing the $200 Pavlok 2 electronic shock bracelet as a way to help herself cut down on checking social media. From Forge:Giving myself more time to think and focus pays off; according to RescueTime, I’ve been consistently beating my productivity averages since I began the experiment.The next two days are weekend days, and I don’t even check social media then. I am very excited to add up to three hours back in Saturday leisure time.I never hit my 30-minute limit, but I still shock myself a few times (at 50%, never 100%) when I feel the urge to check social media, as instructed in the the Pavlok 2 How-To Guide.I probably shocked myself fewer than 10 times that weekend, but by Sunday evening my left arm develops a lingering soreness. That’s where I tell the Milgram-esque experimenter in my head that I’m done; I’ll let the Pavlok shock me if I go beyond 30 minutes of social media time, but that’s it. Read the rest

An electric-eel-powered Tesla? Jason Torchinsky does the math at Jalopnik.We can get a jolt of 600 watts from an eel, but only for one hundredth of a second, and we can get up to 50 of these pulses per second. With each eel giving 50 pulses of 0.01 seconds, then we could use two to get a full second of electricity. At 600 watts, that would take 2.4 times to equal the wall outlet’s 1,440 watts.And that means if 1,440 watts give four miles per hour and 5.85 feet per second, then we can reasonably expect—since the charging rates seem pretty linear, that our 600 watts will give us 2.44 feet per second of eel-charging.That’s about 146 feet per minute, and 8,784 feet per hour, or about 1.66 miles per hour of eel-charging.Image: Jalopnik/Jason Torchinsky Read the rest

Zupagrafika's new book Eastern Blocks (subtitle: "Concrete Landscapes of the Former Eastern Bloc") collects more than 100 beautiful photos of the brutalist towers of ex-Soviet nations, "‘Sleeping districts’ of Moscow, Plattenbauten of East Berlin, modernist estates of Warsaw, Kyiv`s Brezhnevki."David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka (AKA Zupagrafika) started photographing the towers as design reference for their studios but soon fell in love with brutalism itself and began commissioning photographers around the region to take pictures for the book.Wired has a smashing gallery of images from the book, which retails for €19.Eastern Blocks: Concrete Landscapes of the Former Eastern Bloc [Zupagrafika]Ugly or Beautiful? The Housing Blocks Communism Left Behind [Laura Mallonee/Wired] Read the rest