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Officially, Americas total 2017 corporate lobbying group spending was $535m, but as much as $675m more was funneled from industry groups to politicians as part of influence campaigns.Maplight found the off-the-books spending by data-mining the tax returns of more than 100 501(c)(6) nonprofits -- a special tax designation for trade groups, from the US Chamber of Commerce to the Washington State Society of Anesthesiologists. Nonprofits tax returns are public. By looking for line-items like "'advocacy,' 'consulting,' 'contributions,' 'coalitions,' 'consortiums,' 'government affairs,' 'communications,' 'programs,' 'special projects,' 'dues,' 'memberships,' and 'subscriptions'," Maplight was able to identify influence money that was not counted because it was laundered through other organizations. For example, the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) funneled $100m to the Chamber of Commerce to fund anti-Obamacare lobbying, but marked up the funds as "advocacy," not "lobbying."There's lots of incredibly vague, high-ticket stuff buried in these tax-returns, spending on "other fees for services" and "other expenses," while other line-items are a little more explicit, like "coalition expenditures" ($1.5m, Financial Services Roundtable) "policy research and consulting" ($4m, Chamber of Commerce), "consulting" ($82m, Phrma), "strategic planning" ($9.2m, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers), etc.Nonprofits are only required to itemize their “other fees for services” if they account for more than 10 percent of their total functional expenses, which offers some trade associations an additional avenue for secrecy. For example, since the American Hospital Association listed more than $126 million in total functional expenses in 2017, it didn’t need to spell out any of the items included in its $12 million line for “other fees for services.”Last year, the health care industry launched the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, or PAHCF, a 501(c)(4) dark-money organization, to oppose growing momentum for Medicare for All or more limited reforms. Read the rest

Ishu Patel's 1977 animated film, "The Bead Game," uses thousands of colored beads as pixels to show animals eating each other, giving birth, fighting, and evolving.From The National Film Board of Canada:In this fascinating, innovative exercise in animation, thousands of beads are arranged and manipulated, assuming shapes of creatures both mythical and real. They continually devour, merge, and absorb one another in explosions of color. The theme is one of aggression and inevitability, but any conclusion is left to the viewer.See also: Using colored beads to remind yourself that you will die soon[via Aeon] Read the rest

A man in Almeria, Spain, disposed of an old fridge by throwing it down a steep incline. Thinking it amusing, he had video recorded of the act and posted to social media. It went viral, the authorities found out about it, and he has now been fined—and ordered to retrieve the fridge.He was fined €45,000 (£41,000; $50,000) and made to dispose of the appliance appropriately. An associate of the man filmed the fly-tipping incident and is heard in the clip joking about recycling as the fridge tumbles down the cliff. "We're going to recycle it!" he said. "How many twists and turns has it done?"Fifty thousand dollars for fly tipping! Not fucking around in Spain, are they? Read the rest

In a new column in the LA Times, business columnist Michael Hiltzik makes the argument that the only thing health insurers have done with any effectiveness is scare us into thinking that the socialized medicine services that every other advanced country has will not work in America.Insurers are not even good at being profitable: the waves of mergers and acquisitions that has resulted in mass-scale concentration in the health insurance sector resulted in billions in losses, the bill for which was passed on in the form of higher premiums.Hiltzik cites the work of Wendell Potter (previously), the Cigna exec who defected to the public's side of the health-care debate and is an excellent source of inside dirt on how dysfunctional and profit-driven the health-care industry is. It's Potter who identifies the industry's most valuable, reliable product as scare stories about socialized medicine, with actual health-care provision lagging far behind. The health insurance industry’s most telling contribution to the debate over healthcare reform has been “to scare people about other healthcare systems,” Potter told me. As a consequence, discussions about whether or how to remove private companies from the healthcare system are chiefly political, not practical.The Affordable Care Act allowed private insurers to continue playing a role in delivering coverage not because they were any good at it but because their wealth and size made them formidable adversaries to reform if they chose to fight it. They were sufficiently mollified to remain out of the fray, but some of the big insurers then did their best to undermine the individual insurance exchanges once they were launched in 2015. Read the rest

Brian Kozlowski poisoned his wife repeatedly by pouring massive amounts of diphenhydramine into her coffee when he she wasn't looking. But the woman installed a hidden camera in the kitchen and recorded him in the act. With the tape as evidence, Kozlowski was found guilty and the judge sentenced him to spend weekends in jail for the next several months. When the prosecuting attorney complained about the sentence being a slap in the face to the victim, the judge told her "Counsel, I do not let anybody speak after I've issued a judgment."From Oddity Central:“Brian was trying to kill me to keep his comfortable life from slipping away,” Therese told WDIV. “I felt a horrible coldness in the air, but in this nightmare the predator was Brian. I fell to my knees and cried. I could barely move.”Therese moved out and notified her divorce attorney about the grim discovery as soon as she saw the video of Brian mixing the pills with her coffee. Authorities were able to seize the last coffee he made for her and found that it contained 127 millilitres of diphenhydramine, about eight pills-worth. The woman said that she got suspicious after experiencing weird symptoms after drinking her husband’s coffee, symptoms like tiredness, nausea and blurred vision.Faced with irrefutable proof of his crime, Brian Kozlowski pleaded no contest to charges of poisoning a drink, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years, instead settling for excuses, as the fact that he was going though a rough time when he committed the act. Read the rest

I bought How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema when it came out in 1978, and I think it might still be the best how-to-draw book I've used. It covers a lot of territory in 160 pages - perspective, figure drawing, action, foreshortening, heads and faces, and composition. I found the last section, composition to be the most interesting.I lost my first edition, but it has stayed in print so in 2010 I bought a new copy. As far as I can tell, it is exactly the same as the original.Amazon has it on sale right now for Read the rest

The photo shows two white police officers, on horseback, leading a roped black detainee through the streets. Galveston police chief Vernon Hale apologized, after it went viral, but said there was "no malicious intent" and that "the technique was acceptable in some scenarios." The BBC: "According to a news release from the Galveston Police Department, the two mounted officers, named only as P Brosch and A Smith, arrested Donald Neely for criminal trespass. The officers were taking Mr Neely to a police staging area. Police clarified that he was not tied with the rope, but 'was handcuffed and a line was clipped to the handcuffs"'". Read the rest

The second-bloodiest riot in the history of New York was touched off by a dispute between two Shakespearean actors. Their supporters started a brawl that killed as many as 30 people and changed the institution of theater in American society. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Astor Place riot, "one of the strangest episodes in dramatic history."We'll also fertilize a forest and puzzle over some left-handed light bulbs.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

A Connecticut woman called 911 and told the operator she was locked in the luggage compartment of a moving bus. Police tracked the bus down, pulled it over, and found the woman inside. The woman said the driver, Wendy Helena Alberty (49), had intentionally locked her in the compartment while she was getting her luggage out.Alberty was arrested on charges of unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment, and breach of peace.From NBC News:Alberty has been with the company since 2012 and previously had an "exemplary" employment record, according to Peter Pan [bus line]."Over her tenure she has received many customer commendations for her safe driving and customer service," according to a company statement.Image: Shutterstock Read the rest

The nice woodchipper in West Pittston, Pa., was replaced in the night with a less nice model. Police say they don't know who stole the nice one, but if you do, they'd like to hear from you.If anyone can identify the owner of this wood chipper please contact the West Pittston Police. They dropped this wood chipper off at the West Pittston Public Works Department and stole the Borough’s wood chipper. If you know the person(s) who owned this wood chipper please call the West Pittston Police Chief Michael Turner at 570-655-7780 ext. 306 or you can send a Facebook message and you will remain anonymous. Thank you. Read the rest

Kathryn Kidd's neighbors in LA think her bright pink and yellow emoji-daubed house is an eyesore. Kidd disagrees.Neighbors say it’s retribution in a property dispute that has turned into a battle with the city. A neighbor reported the home’s owner, Kathryn Kidd, to the city for using the property for short-term rentals, such as Airbnb, which is illegal in Manhattan Beach. Now the property is painted bright pink with yellow emojis.Frustrated homeowners and renters in the El Porto neighborhood plan to raise their concerns again at a City Council meeting Tuesday night, marking the latest chapter of a saga that began in May. It was first reported by Easy Reader News.It's the artwork of Z the Art, who maintains an insta feed.THE EMOJI HOUSE 🤐🤪 🎨 @ztheart#TheEmojiHouse#theemojihouse #emojiart #beachfrontproperty #art #beachlife #Manhattanbeach #artdaily #pink #emoji #selfie #eyelashextensions #eyelashes #ladypink #artcommission #comissionart #wallart #exteriordesign #funnyart View this post on Instagram Rpost from the @thegoneman THE EMOJI HOUSE 🤐🤪 🎨 @ztheart #TheEmojiHouse #theemojihouse #emojiart #beachfrontproperty #art #beachlife #Manhattanbeach #artdaily #pink #emoji #selfie #eyelashextensions #eyelashes #ladypink #artcommission #comissionart #wallart #exteriordesign #funnyartA post shared by Z the Art (@ztheart) on May 31, 2019 at 5:25pm PDT Read the rest

A French neonatal specialist named Dr Arnaud Gagneur has created a "vaccine counselling" program within Quebec's health-care system that uses a non-judgmental technique called "motivational interviewing" with parents of newborns to allay their fears about vaccines.The program doesn't target anti-vax or vaccine denial, but rather, "vaccine hesitancy," in which parents with a cursory awareness of anti-vax talking points infer (reasonably enough) that if there's a lot of controversy about vaccines, there might be some reason to be concerned about it. Anti-vax talking points about taking "too many vaccines at once" or the disproven links between vaccination and autism, as well as inaccurate scare stories about mercury and live viruses, can seem plausible to a casual observer.The "motivational interviewing" technique draws parents out about their concerns. They don't tell parents that their fears are wrong, but when the parents have finished expressing their fears, they reply with the best scientific evidence of actual known side-effects of vaccines; the known facts about Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study linking autism with vaccination; and the best evidence about the benefits of vaccination. They tell the parents that their concerns reflect a desire to protect their kids and keep them healthy, and make a connection between vaccination and health.The nonjudgmental approach is crucial, but so is the timing: the counsellors talk to parents months before their children's first scheduled vaccination, giving them lots of time to think this over, so the parents aren't feeling cornered when their pediatricians call them up to schedule that first round of shots. Read the rest

In 2010, Jerry Alex neglected to renew jerryalex.com, and woke up one day to find his website had turned into a squatter's template, with a $1500 ransom. So he waited 9 years before pouncing on the drop.I had given up hope of ever retrieving my personal domain name. Then, a few months ago, I got really lucky. ... It went from a reseller to a popular domain auction where it sat waiting to be bid on. Generally, these auctions will drive up the price by bidding on their own domains to get you to pay more. For me, I felt that it was a good idea to avoid bidding all together. I didn’t want to encourage price gouging, so I decided to wait on the domain to make it look undesirable. Fortunately, my gamble paid off.He had a good gameplan, but his domain-drop script only ran once every 10 minutes! A few years ago the domain might have been sniped within seconds by a bot slurping up every dropped .com that contains English words or common names. Fortunately the assumed value of whatever dot com seems to have fallen off a cliff. Read the rest

On Saturday at the X Games Minneapolis, Mitchie Brusco landed the first 1260 in the history of professional skateboarding. And yep, he acts like it was nothing.This was exactly twenty years since Tony Hawk famously landed the first 900 at the X-Games in 1999 (video below). Read the rest

When Congress legalized phone unlocking in 2014, they added a bunch of carve-outs that let phone companies veto your attempt to unlock your phone, with the big one being that you couldn't unlock your phone while you were still in a contract that provided it to you at a reduced price. That meant that you couldn't (for example) unlock your phone so you could use it with a foreign SIM while traveling, or simply continue to pay your bill to the company that sold you the phone while using another company's SIM to get cheaper data or some other desirable service.This created a black market in unauthorized phone unlocking. The DOJ has just indicted Muhammad Fahd and extradited him from Hong Kong, claiming that he paid out $420,000 to AT&T employees in a five-year fraud operation that resulted in his unlocking of millions of phones. The indictment says that Fahd systematized his operation, paying insiders to install malware and compromised routers that let him have the run of AT&T's network so he could unlock phones on his own. These insiders have pleaded guilty and are apparently going to give testimony against Fahd.The DOJ estimates that, in total, his actions cost AT&T millions of dollars in lost revenue as phones were transferred off its network. Forbes reports that Fahd would take payments from customers who were looking to unlock their phones and leave AT&T’s network. He would make payments to his AT&T contacts via a series of front companies after initially approaching them over Facebook Messenger or via a telephone call. Read the rest

Every time I write about the unfolding scandal of Amazon's secret partnerships with hundreds of US police departments who get free merch and access to Ring surveillance doorbell footage in exchange for acting as a guerrilla marketing street-team for Ring, I get an affronted email from Amazon PR, implying that I got it all wrong, but unwilling to enter into detailed discussions of what's actually going on (the PR flacks also usually ask to be quoted officially but anonymously, something I never agree to). For example, when I published this story, an Amazon PR person wrote to tell me that the statement that "Amazon provides their local law enforcement with comprehensive dossiers on everyone who activates a Ring doorbell, including 'where they live, the MAC addresses of each of their devices, and how to reach them by email or phone'" was incorrect, but could not explain why a public records request showed that the cops had all that information. At first, they said that the Ring owners must have provided it voluntarily to law enforcement, but when I asked if they really believed that someone had found the MAC address for their surveillance doorbells and painstakingly entered the long hexadecimal number into a website or dictated it over the phone, they said "We defer to law enforcement for questions about their process and operations." One common thread in the PR spin I get on this story is that any access that law enforcement gets to Ring footage is a result of the cops asking -- via Amazon -- whether Ring customer will voluntarily provide it. Read the rest

Granted, the ancient box hosting rhyal.com has had a few upgradesThis site is being hosted and served by a Macintosh SE/30 running MacOS 7.5.5. This SE/30 is a 16MHz computer built in 1989. Mine shipped with 2 megabytes of RAM, a floppy drive, and an 80-meg internal SCSI ("Scuzzy") hard drive. It has recently been upgraded with a custom 32-bit ROM, 68 megabytes of RAM, and a 4,000-megabyte Solid-State Drive. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself. Thanks for visiting! Read the rest

The ADL surveyed 1,045 US adult gamers (oversampling Jewish, Muslim, African American and Hispanic/Latinx individuals) and asked them about their experiences in multiplayer games: on the one hand, they found that playing these social games brought many benefits: friendship, support, fun, connection and romance; on the other hand, they found that a very high proportion of gamers experienced harassment of varying kinds, that many players had quit games because of harassment, and that some games were home to much more harassment than others.The most "positive" games (where players said they were unlikely to experience harassment) were World of Warcraft (59%), Minecraft (55%), NBA 2k (51%), Overwatch (49%), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (48%), and Fortnite (47%); while the worse offenders for harassment were Ancients 2 (DOTA 2) (79% of players of the game), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (75%), Overwatch (75%), PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (75%) and League of Legends (75%). That one set of figures is itself a little arresting: the most positive games are actually pretty negative (about half of players experience harassment), while in the world of negative games, the players reporting harassment represent large supermajorities of all sampled players.Harassment often targets players based on race, gender and gender identity. Racial harassment varies based on race: if you're Black, it's 31%; Latinx, 24%; and if you're Asian, it's 23%. Jews and Muslims are harassed for their background 19% of the time. The highest levels of targeted harassment are experienced by women (38%) and queer players (35%).This should probably matter to games companies: about one in five players have quit a game to escape harassment. Read the rest

Having a snooze on the grass in bear country is never a great idea, especially when the pair of assholes watching you get checked out by a bear prefer to film shit going down instead of yelling a warning. Read the rest

An explosion at a military base in Siberia rocked residents of remote Kamensk Sunday, according to reports, and 11,000 were evacuated. The blast was caused by wildfires reaching ammunition stores. The incident comes after wildfires engulfed thousands of hectares of forest in Siberia. The fires, which have been raging for two days, have been described by environmentalists as an "ecological catastrope." Russia sent military planes to help firefighters battling the fires engulfing more than 3.1 million hectares, an area roughly the size of Belgium.The base is three miles out of town; the nearest large settlement is Krasnoyarsk. No fatalities, they're saying, just some shrapnel wounds.Here's the local "keep calm and carry on" siren."Please keep calm" alert warning pic.twitter.com/ArAFm43LMz— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) August 5, 2019 Read the rest

Heartwarming, but also quite tailwarming. Read the rest

Thoughts and prayers. Video games are fucking folks up. He's white so let's call it mental illness. Apologists for the far right talking shit. It's always the same song and dance anytime some asshole with a credit card buys an assault rifle to do what they feel entitled to do to innocent souls. As an outsider who watches terrorist acts like the one that unfold unfolded in El Paso this past weekend, one after another, it's a tune that I'm tired of hearing. I can't imagine how the citizens of your nation must feel. I mourn for your dead the way that I mourned for our own when a similar tragedy struck a few years back. Mourning and rising up in protest are all that we as citizens have available to us to give voice to our outrage.That's not the case, however, where a grieving nation is concerned. During the El Paso terrorist attack, seven Mexican nationals were killed. Six were wounded. Their nation's government, in their grief, has decided that it's had enough.From Buzzfeed News:Mexico's foreign minister on Monday called the mass shooting at a Texas Walmart that claimed the lives of eight Mexican nationals an act of terrorism against its citizens on US soil and vowed to take legal action.Marcelo Ebrard, who had threatened to take action after the shooting, said the Mexican government will "definitely" launch legal action against the selling and distribution of assault rifles in the US, like the one used by the shooter in Saturday's attack. Read the rest

You're fretting about hackers, political shenigans and data breaches. Then your creepy uncle shares photos of your newborn baby, complete with its location, to his thousands of fake facebook "friends". The call is coming from inside the house.“Older folks, certainly, there’s a learning curve because this is new,” said Amy Nofziger, who, as director of fraud victim support for AARP, helps older people parse the new rules of the internet. “People who are grandparents or great-grandparents today are the first people to have color TVs in their homes, and now they have this thing called the internet.”“My mom has a public profile and posts several times a day on her page and has tons of interactions, often with people she doesn’t necessarily know,” said Danielle. “Because I want to be more private about photos of my son, I have had to ask her to please not post his picture — or, if she’s going to, that she please change the privacy settings for that specific post. For the most part she has done what I’ve asked, but I could tell she was really annoyed about it. One time she posted a photo that straight-up had our home address on it, and she couldn’t understand why I was so upset!”The posting of it is the small part of the problem. The resentful-boomer "how dare you tell me not to" is the bigger part. Read the rest

Via Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post, here's the official White House transcript of President Trump's remarks on the terrorist mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio. It includes his mistaken statement that it occured in Toledo, two hours up the road. Struck out, at least: God bless America, he cares!This is what the official White House transcript of Trump's remarks this morning, just emailed to journalists, looks like pic.twitter.com/X6cVAsa9iJ— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) August 5, 2019 Read the rest

Your binge-watching options just got a lot more interesting. Get ready to be the first choice venue for movie night, because there's a giveaway right now on a Samsung 65" QLED 4K Smart TV.Size isn't quite everything for this theater-quality set, though it is impressive. The Q70 series TV is able to upscale even older games and movies to 4K quality, and it's fully compatible with major voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Google Home.All you need to do is register here, and you'll be eligible to win the TV, free and clear.Too good to be true? Suit yourself. While you're sipping that half-empty glass, here are a few deals that will allow you to pay actual money for some great video technology, albeit at a heavy discount:Rveal Digital Indoor HDTV AntennaFill in that blind spot in your TV diet with free network channels, thanks to this new school unit that picks up local and national stations the old fashioned way, up to 50 miles from broadcast antennas. The best part: It broadcasts them in HD. The Rveal Digital Indoor HDTV Antenna is on sale for $19.99, more than 30% off the list price.LG B8 Series 55" OLED 4K HDR TVThis ultra-thin set made Consumer Reports' list of top 4K TVs for 2018, thanks to its α7 intelligent processor and Dolby Atmos sound. It's also controllable with Alexa or Google Home for full smart home integration. The LG B8 Series 55" OLED 4K HDR TV is now $1199.99, down from the previous sale price of $1553.99 and a full 47% off the retail price. Read the rest

Here's a sweet little sanity break for your achy-breaky brain.🐶 This video shared by IMGURian @Toast2 during IMGUR's #PetShow2019 is a great example of how to use a GoPro camera to great effect with dogs.Love it.That's one happy little pupper, living their best little life.Here's the video:Backyard ZoomiesWe should each live so well. Read the rest

“Looks like he is howling but he was almost completely silent while he was doing this,” says Max's temporary human.“Our foster dog was a silly boy!,” says IMGURian Kika1112“GOOD NEWS, he was just recently adopted out to a wonderful family!”Happy ending. Hope he has a nice place in which to practice his yoga now.Yoga with Max Read the rest

Aww. Poor little sweet thing.An archival image of awkward, tender, funny cuteness, photographer uncredited, viral from years ago. Looks a lot like this poor pet getting an uncomfortable groom, which is frankly how I feel, too, when I have to go in for medical scans. I feel you, pups and babies.Help! Read the rest

That Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining features a wealth of subtle references is not in doubt, not least the inconsistent geography of the Overlook Hotel, which seems unremarkable at first viewing but becomes a brain-worm of weirdness when you think about it. Trying to map it out was a fetish of the early 2010s web, but I recalled those efforts ending as inconclusively as the location of the Gold Room. With the sequel coming soon, I decided to check in, and can happily report that the Overlook mappers have taken it to the next level. Check out this beaut:The Overlook is not exceptional amongst Kubrick's films for its disequilibrium.The interior of The Overlook doesn't at all begin to fit with either the exterior on the studio set or the real life exterior of the Timberline in Oregon. At first glance it seems he might have had it constructed to fit with the set exterior, but he didn't. Eventually one realizes that there is likely only one window in the whole of the film that works with the interior, and only one entry/exit likewise. Nor do the different parts of the hotel's interior connect together in the way Kubrick visually leads one to believe. His manner of editing establishes assumptions, but those assumptions are wrong. One finds that the only possible room in the second floor section around which Danny cycles, is room 237. I think that Kubrick's obsessive, idiosyncratic approach to cinematic composition is the only true reason for the hotel's impossible geography. Read the rest

Unmute the video below. You need this, in all its glory.Brian Kidd, aka the Unipiper, has been featured before here on Boing Boing. He's internet-famous and locally renowned in Portland for for playing the flaming bagpipes on his unicycle while wearin' a Darth Vader mask.He upped the ante on himself by doing it with two flaming bagpipes, and it's awesome. This video of him playing the bagpipe as he unicycles around a blow-up Star Wars All Terrain Armored Transport, or AT-AT walker is a wonderful weird balm.Now I want a giant inflatable AT-AT, too.Watch out, you never know where you're going to run into the Unipiper. View this post on Instagram Watch out for what's behind door #2. You might run into the Portapiper. #bagpipesinthebathroom #honeybucketsurprise #keepportlandweird #HoneyBucketSelfie @officialhoneybucketA post shared by The Unipiper (@theunipiper) on Aug 1, 2019 at 7:05pm PDT You can follow and contribute on Patreon.PREVIOUSLY: Brian Kidd is the Unipiper: the unicycling bagpiper Read the rest

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Wait for it.🐈 TFW you encounter something you seriously did not anticipate.BOX: [exists]CAT: [figures shit out]Kitty gets a little surprise. Read the rest

Laura Dale is a trans woman who got a "new vagina" through "bottom surgery"; afterwards, as she cast about for ways to strengthen her pelvic floor muscles, she discovered Perifit, a Bluetooth kegel-based video-game controller that registers every time the user bears down on it with their pelvic floor muscles.The controller is not a simple on-off switch, but rather it registers subtle gradients of pressure, making it suited to controlling a variety of video-game sprites.Dale describes the games she played: Catch the Lotus (a Flappy Bird clone), Manage the Gate (a block-the-falling-objects game) and the actual Flappy Bird, though Perifit calls it Perifit Bird.With all the prepackaged games played, I was honestly a little disappointed by the lack of compelling software for this new gaming controller. Off the top of my head, I am pretty sure I can come up with a decent list of other gaming applications this vagina controller could be used for. You could make a slot car racing game, where you have to contract harder to speed up on the straights, but lessen your pressure on corners to not fly off the track and lose time. How about using the controller to play a music rhythm game, with contractions done in time with the music. Maybe a Pong-style game, where players contract to raise the paddle and relax to lower it? You could use it as a boost button in a racing game, or to launch your ultimate attack in a fighting game, or even use it to mash through dialogue in a text adventure game until the next actual choice based moment comes up. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay "IBM PC Compatible": how adversarial interoperability saved PCs from monopolization, published today on EFF's Deeplinks; it's another installment in my series about "adversarial interoperability," and the role it has historically played in keeping tech open and competitive. This time, I relate the origin story of the "PC compatible" computer, with help from Tom Jennings (inventor of FidoNet!) who played a key role in the story. All that changed in 1981, when IBM entered the PC market with its first personal computer, which quickly became the de facto standard for PC hardware. There are many reasons that IBM came to dominate the fragmented PC market: they had the name recognition ("No one ever got fired for buying IBM," as the saying went) and the manufacturing experience to produce reliable products.Equally important was IBM's departure from its usual business practice of pursuing advantage by manufacturing entire systems, down to the subcomponents. Instead, IBM decided to go with an "open" design that incorporated the same commodity parts that the existing PC vendors were using, including MS-DOS and Intel's 8086 chip. To accompany this open hardware, IBM published exhaustive technical documentation that covered every pin on every chip, every way that programmers could interact with IBM's firmware (analogous to today's "APIs"), as well as all the non-standard specifications for its proprietary ROM chip, which included things like the addresses where IBM had stored the fonts it bundled with the system.Once IBM's PC became the standard, rival hardware manufacturers realized that they had to create systems that were compatible with IBM's systems. Read the rest

Under Covers is a delightful NSFW animation by Mighty Oak.On the night of a lunar eclipse, we uncover the sweet, salacious, and spooky secrets of a small town. From a pigtailed psychopath to naughty nuns and everything in between, this stop motion animated film conjures a comforting thought: that weird is relative.From the Vimeo blog:The film, which originally debuted as part of Sundance Film Festival’s 2018 Midnight Shorts Program, provides a God’s-eye-view into the bedrooms of seemingly sweet characters hiding a secret or two under their blankets. What may seem innocuous is not always as innocent as it appears, and Olsen shows us that through a powerful combination of stop-motion animation, detailed character design, and a sick sense of humor. Read the rest

An Ashland, Oregon man dropped an old shoebox into his recycling bin, somehow forgetting that he had stashed $23,000 in the box. He contacted the Recology recycling center in California where the haul had been sent for processing. The facility wasn't optimistic but promised to alert staff to look out for it. Then on Friday, en eagle-eyed employee spotted the box before it reached the baler. Only $320 was missing. (UPI) Read the rest

Nancy Segula (79) of Garfield Heights, Ohio, doesn't like the idea of allowing stray cats to starve, so she feeds them when they come around, which is a crime. She's been sentenced to 10 days in jail for allowing the cats to accumulate on her property.From Reason:Segula's actions are clearly creating a nuisance for her neighbors. But while police are justified in responding to their complaints, it is not beyond the realm of possibilities for the court system to find a more humane approach than incarceration. After all, Segula's 10-day jail sentence is longer than the punishments given for other, much more heinous animal-related offenses that have occurred in the area, including starving dogs, the strangulation of a cat, and leaving kittens in a hot car. And when it's over, is there any reason to think she won't do what she's done after every other intervention, and go back to feeding the cats?Image: WKYC Read the rest

Approximately 14 percent of the world's population suffer from dry eye disease (DED) but treatments are limited because it's difficult to model the complex human eye for drug development. Now though, University of Pennsylvania bioengineers developed an "eye-on-a-chip" complete with a motorized blinking eyelid. The hope is that the artificial eye will lead to a deeper understanding of dry eye disease, enable drug screening, and even become a testbed for contact lens technology and eye surgery. Their technology also received the 2018 Lush Prize awarded for innovations that could help eliminate animal testing for shampoos and other beauty product. From Eurekalert:In this study, (Dan) Huh and (Jeongyun) Seo focused on engineering an eye model that could imitate a healthy eye and an eye with DED, allowing them to test an experimental drug without risk of human harm.To construct their eye-on-a-chip, Huh's team starts with a porous scaffold engineered with 3D printing, about the size of a dime and the shape of a contact lens, on which they grow human eye cells. The cells of the cornea grow on the inner circle of scaffolding, dyed yellow, and the cells of the conjunctiva, the specialized tissue covering the white part of human eyes, grow on the surrounding red circle. A slab of gelatin acts as the eyelid, mechanically sliding over the eye at the same rate as human blinking. Fed by a tear duct, dyed blue, the eyelid spreads artificial tear secretions over the eye to form what is called a tear film. Read the rest

The war-dialing safe-opener takes a maximum of 8 hours to open a safe. It looks like something that could be pretty easily built with an Arduino and a stepper motor, but how does it know when is has arrived at5 the right combination? Maybe it feels a change in the torque on the dial, or senses a certain kind of click?Image: YouTube Read the rest

An Lord Ashcroft Poll for Holyrood found that the largest group of Scots with a preference favour independence from the UK: 46% leave vs 43% remain; after removing undecided voters, the figures are 52%-48%.The Scottish Conservatives are adamant that there is no appetite for a Scottish independence referendum; the other major UK-wide parties are also officially opposed another referendum. The majority of poll subjects were in favor of a referendum in 2021.(via Bruce Sterling) Read the rest

Here's your daily dose of deepfaking and Keanu. Read the rest

These highly rated noise cancelling bluetooth headphones are normally but if you use code MPOW284A1 at checkout on Amazon, you can get them at a much lower price. They are USB chargeable and have a wired mode, too. Read the rest

Good morning Jakarta. Macam mana lah diorang terfikir nak develop taman perumahan atas bangunan? pic.twitter.com/TNQrnEQ8eA— shahrirbahar (@shahrirbahar1) June 24, 2019 Jakarta's Comsmo Park is an entire village built on top of a ten story building above a shopping mall and parking garage. Built a decade ago, Cosmo Park only recently garnered attention when @shahrirbahar1 posted the above drone photo of the curious community. From The Guardian:“It’s a lovely oasis,” says (resident) Fazila Kapasi, as she tails her four-year-old son around on his bike along one of the complex’s neat roads. “I cannot recommend it enough.”Fazila and her husband moved to Jakarta from Mumbai, and chose Cosmo Park partly because they were concerned about Jakarta’s floods. But after living there for six years Fazila can reel off a string of other advantages, including that it is less isolating than standard apartment living.In the afternoon Fazila stops to chat to her neighbours, while most days she and her son feed the pigeons that live in a nearby tree. She also has her own garden, where she has a hammock and space to grow aubergines, tomatoes and chillies.“It is so good. There is so much open space, my son can ride his bike around. It’s so central, it’s really safe, and there is a lovely neighbourhood feel,” she says. Read the rest

A tree discovered a way to thrive in an urban environment by squeezing through a multi-story drainpipe. via GfycatImage: gfycat Read the rest

The Art of Warez by Oliver Payne, celebrates the rise and fall of ANSI art in the 1980s and early 90s. ANSI graphics were made from small rectangles. There were 256 rectangles to choose from - 4 density patterns and 16 colors per pattern.Image: The Art of Warez/Vimeo Read the rest

Brazilian drug lord Clauvino da Silva attempted to escape a Rio de Janeiro prison on Saturday by impersonating his teenage daughter. From The Guardian:hen Silva – AKA Baixinho (“Shorty”) – requested the return of his daughter’s ID card at the prison entrance, officers saw through his low-budget disguise and asked him to strip in front of the cameras. Reports on Monday said the 42-year-old drug trafficker had been moved to solitary confinement but was unlikely to face extra prison time since his unsuccessful bid for freedom had not involved violence.His daughter, Ana Gabriele Leandro da Silva, who had remained behind in the prison as part of the ruse, seemed to have been less lucky.According to Rio newspaper Extra she will be charged with abetting prison escape, a crime punishable with up to two years in prison. Seven other visitors – including a pregnant woman suspected of smuggling the disguise into the jail – are also being investigated. Read the rest

"Coca-Cola: Blade Roller," directed by David Fincher in 1993. (via ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Last month Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe announced that shipments of high tech equipment and material to South Korea will undergo additional screening to make sure the imported materials are not being used for military or weapons purposes. The screenings will start on August 28. Until the announcement, South Korea' enjoyed most favored nation status with Japan, but now it will be treated like any other Asian country Japan trades with. Many Koreans have taken to the streets to protest.Asian Boss went to Seoul to interview Koreans about the new restrictions.Image: YouTube/Asian Boss Read the rest