No employees have been exposed to the substance, officials said.

Yes, Russian internet propaganda and military disinformation attacks may really have elected Trump.

Well, there it is.This photograph from Official White House Photographer Shealah Craighead captures the precise moment and position of the border handshake yesterday between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, over the Line of Demarcation.From the White House Flickr account:President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong Un Sunday, June 30, 2019, as the two leaders meet at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)More photos from the surrounding moments, below.[President Donald J. Trump and Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong Un meet and speak with reporters outside Freedom House Sunday, June 30, 2019, at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Official White House Photographs by Shealah Craighead] Read the rest

She was living her best life.

House Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD 7th District) today expanded his investigation into use of personal e-mail by officials in the Trump White House.Cummings says in his July 1 letter to Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone that he wants copies of all emails and other communications sent or received by White House officials, “in violation of federal law and the White House's own records policy.” Here's a link to the letter mailed by Rep. Cummings.2019-07-01.EEC to Cipollone... by on Scribd[via @kylegriffin1] Read the rest

We run out of Lightning cables around here a lot. I think my kids' friends borrow them and forget to return them. Here's a 5-pack for just on Amazon. Read the rest

Washington, DC will be the site of a grandiose self-homage that may cost “well into the millions”

The body language of these world leaders seems to suggest they don't think as much of Ivanka Trump as she thinks of herself.Ivanka Trump appears to be trying to get involved in a talk among Macron, May, Trudeau and Lagarde (IMF head). The video is released by French Presidential palace. pic.twitter.com/TJ0LULCzyQ— Parham Ghobadi (@ParhamGhobadi) June 29, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

I've written about the 11foot8 bridge (aka the Can-Opener) quite a few times here on Boing Boing. Located in Durham, North Carolina, it's a 79-year-old railroad bridge that has a lower clearance than the height of many common commercial trucks. It's scraped the top off of 147 trucks since 2008, the year that Jürgen Henn installed a video camera to record the crashes. The latest victim of the bridge was a bucket truck. From the YouTube description:On June 18, a bucket truck fell prey to the "monster of Gregson Street" ... the driver said he was sure the vehicle would fit, but he was clearly mistaken. The bucket was pretty badly damaged and the "hinge" where the two arms connect hit the beam pretty hard and knocked down a bunch of old canopener debris. They stopped and checked out the problem and cleaned up a bit before carrying on.See all of our posts about the 11foot8 bridge here.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Nahre Sol plays "Happy Birthday" 16 times on the piano. The first time she plays with one finger, and gets fancier each time she replays it.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Brit Cruise is the writer and producer of a YouTube series called Art of the Problem. Someone recently recommended it on Cool Tools, and for good reason. The show description: "Each episode presents an ancient problem and follows its journey from prehistoric through modern times. We tell the origin story of modern fields of study." The latest video is called The Art of Machine Learning: "This video explores evolutionary, experiential and abstract learning + communication. Touches on unsupervised learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning, association learning, genetic algorithms, and language." A lot of good stuff packed into 20 minutes.Image: YouTube Read the rest

For many years, I've been arguing that while science fiction can't predict the future, it can reveal important truths about the present: the stories writers tell reveal their hopes and fears about technology, while the stories that gain currency in our discourse and our media markets tell us about our latent societal aspirations and anxieties. In Fake News is an Oracle, my latest Locus Magazine column, I use this tool to think about the rise of conspiratorial thinking and ask what it says about our world.Fake news is another important barometer of our societal pressure: when we talk about conspiratorial thinking, we tend to do so ideologically, asking ourselves how it is that the same old conspiracy theories have become so much more convincing in recent years (anti-vax is as old as vaccination, after all), and treating the proponents of conspiracies as though they had acquired the ability to convince people by sharpening their arguments (possibly with the assistance of machine-learning systems). But when you actually pay attention to the things that conspiracy-pushers say, there's no evidence that they're particularly convincing. Instead of ideological answers to the spread of conspiracies, we can look for material answers for the change in our public discourse. Fake news, in this light, reveals important truth about what our material conditions have led us to fear (that the ship is sinking and their aren't enough life-boats for all of us) and hope (that we can get a seat in the lifeboat if we help the powerful and ruthless push other people out). Read the rest

10-15 is Customs and Border Protection's code for "aliens in custody"; "I'm 10-15" is a secret Facebook group for current and former CBP officers whose participants create and share a torrent of racist and sexist memes, as well as jokes about the deaths of migrants in their care.A particular target for their hostility is Congresswoman Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, who was the first Member of Congress to correctly identify the CBP border detention facilities as "concentration camps." In response, members of I'm 10-15 have posted doctored images of AOC performing oral sex through a border-facility fence, and also an image depicting President Trump forcing the Congresswoman's head towards his crotch.The group is three years old and has 9,500 members. This is the latest in a string of revelations about the broad state of US law enforcement personnel; thousand of whom were revealed as members of secret fascist organizations that advocate the violent overthrow of the US government. On a more individual level, a court-ordered review of the personal messages of a CBP official who killed a Guatemalan migrant by running him down in his F-150 truck revealed that the officer routinely referred to migrants as “guats,” “wild ass shitbags,” “beaners” and “subhuman.” In addition to casual racism, the messages on I'm 10-15 are full of sexist slurs and rape jokes. The CBP has the lowest percentage of female agents or officers of any federal law enforcement agency.The group is also home to many conspiracy theories, including one thread that pondered whether the notorious AP photo of the corpses of Salvadoran asylum seeker Oscar Alberto Martinez and his two year old daughter, Angie Valeria M, had been faked. Read the rest

The American Medical Association has abandoned a neutral stance regarding abortion and has entered the fray. New state laws forcing doctors to lie to patients are seen as incompatible with their oath.Time:But, says AMA President Patrice Harris, the organization feels that, in light of new state laws in the U.S. that would force doctors who perform abortions to lie to patients—put “physicians in a place where we are required by law to commit an ethical violation”—it has no choice but to take a stand. One of these laws, set to take effect Aug. 1, requires physicians in North Dakota to tell patients that medication abortions—a procedure involving two drugs taken at different times—can be reversed. The AMA said that is “a patently false and unproven claim unsupported by scientific evidence.” North Dakota is one of several states to pass such a measure.The AMA, along with the last remaining abortion clinic in North Dakota, is also challenging an existing state law requiring doctors to tell pregnant women that an abortion terminates “the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” The AMA argues in a statement on the lawsuit that law “unconstitutionally forces physicians to act as the mouthpiece of the state.”Image by Michael F. Mehnert via Wikipedia Read the rest

As Russell Brandom writes, "before 1976, corporate tax returns were broadly considered part of the public record" and there's been bipartisan support since for mandating that big companies show us how they're structuring their earnings (this was especially urgent after the Enron scandal).The Treasury studied the matter in 2018 and weighed in strongly supporting the idea, as a means of enhancing both the public dialog about how tax breaks were being used and abused as to "demystify the tax code" and also to help Congress, who could refer to the disclosures when writing law.Today, Amazon claims that it's paying $2.6B/year in taxes, but so far as we can tell from its minimal disclosures to shareholders, it paid $0.00 in federal tax last year. Resolving this discrepancy would be easy: just publish Amazon's tax returns.When politicians like Warren complain about Amazon not paying taxes, the real argument is that the company is abusing the tax deduction system, exploiting poorly designed deductions and using political influence to keep those loopholes open. But if you’re making that case, it’s not enough to simply say Amazon took a lot of deductions. We need to know which deductions Amazon took and why. The only way to know that is to see the filing itself. (It should go without saying that all these arguments apply equally well to a president’s tax returns.)More transparency could also shed light on the thornier topic of foreign tax shelters, which most companies currently report to the SEC as a single number for all non-US income. Read the rest

In my boy scout troop, all the patrols had names stylized around military unit names. Rangers, Zuaves, etc.When I became a patrol leader I named my gaggle of scouts "The Blue Meanies."Only I was amused. Read the rest

Blackadder is the ultimate UK black comedy: a killer team of comic actors, well-couched in historical and contemporary culture, accessible to children and adults in different ways, intellectually sharp yet emotionally honest, and excruciatingly dense: there are only four six-episode seasons and a handful of specials to go around. You could binge it in a day and still get eight hours' sleep.Thirty years after Blackadder went fourth, a fifth season is reportedly on its way. Speaking in a recent newspaper interview, co-writer Richard Curtis said: "The thing about Blackadder was, it was a young man's show criticising older people, saying how stupid those in authority were. So I did once think, 'If we ever did anything again, it should be Blackadder as a teacher in a university, about how much we hate young people'."The Sun's source commented: "It will be in the modern day. Blackadder will be a lot older, of course, so they've come up with the ageing university lecturer idea. Curtis and Atkinson have discussed guest appearances from stars such as Tom Hardy and Russell Brand."Blackadder started in 1983, with the critically acclaimed fourth series airing in 1989. The one-off special Blackadder Back & Forth was made in 2000. Richard Curtis has been working on the film Yesterday, whilst co-writer Ben Elton has been working on a return to stand-up, and writing BBC sitcom Upstart Crow.The conceit of Blackadder is that each season/special features a descendant of the original, in progressively straightened circumstances (Prince, Lord, Knight, Royal Butler, Shopkeeper, Officer), so having reached modern times, the idea of Blackadder V became one of the most infamous glittering mirages of UK pop culture. Read the rest

Deniss Metsavas was a well-known military officer who frequently appeared on TV on behalf of his country's armed forces. He was also, thanks to a event of passion, blackmail and a constant fear of incarceration, a Russian intelligence asset. In this emotional video from The Atlantic, Metsavas talks about the consequences of his being blackmailed into becoming a witting Russian asset and the quick, dark path that led him to betraying his uniform and the country that he served.Image vis Klickr, courtesy of Thomas Depenbusch (Depi) Read the rest

Bottled water is bullshit. Its production and transport to market are sucking the marrow out of our planet and the majority of the disposable bottles that it comes in wind up in landfills instead of recycling centers. What's more, in most parts of the world, when you buy bottled water it's pretty much the same shit that comes out of your tap that you've already paid your taxes (I assume: do what you feel and keep both knees on the wheel,) to get.Carrying a reusable bottle with you is a very small way to slow the pillaging of our planet and a big way to stick it to the water-for-money-grubbing corporations that are taking advantage of us all. There's just one problem: where to fill up. There's a good chance that you can trot into a coffee shop where you're known to top off your canteen. If you're feeling daring, you could even brave the sink of a public restroom for a bit of water. Things get more complicated, however, when you're out of town, say in a foreign country where you don't speak the language as well as you should. When I went hiking across Spain a few years back, there were days when I had no choice but to buy una botella de agua because I couldn't find the community faucet in the village I was passing through. That sucks. Fortunately, there's a new app out there to help you sort your hydration situation out:Tap is a simple, effective app that does one thing very well: points out the places in area around you where you're invited to fill up water bottle up. Read the rest

In this footage, Connecticut State Trooper First Class John Barone, Sgt. John Jacobi and Master Sgt. Patrick Torneo are recorded discussing how to justify ticketing Michael Picard, an activist who filmed them detaining him.According to a 2017 story in the Hartford Courant, they were exonerated by an internal investigation despite planning to falsify witness reports of the encounter. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2016, which remains active as of June 2019.A state police internal affairs investigator concluded there was "no evidence" to support an activist's claim that three troopers conspired to concoct charges against him during a contentious interaction at a DUI checkpoint in 2015.Michael Picard, who supports the open carrying of firearms and opposes random DUI checkpoints, was charged with two infractions while protesting at an I-84 ramp in West Hartford.Police seized Picard's camcorder during the confrontation, which, unbeknownst to the troopers involved, captured them discussing whether to file charges. In the audio, one trooper is heard stating that the officers "gotta cover our ass," while another adds they could "claim that, um, in the back-up, we had multiple people stop to report" a man with a gun.The best part is when trooper Barone claims that it's illegal to film him because state property isn't public property. The "oh shit!" when they realize the camera's still running is a close second.They do this day in and day out, which is why catching them once is addressed by internal investigators as an attack on law enforcement rather than a problem to solve. Read the rest

It helps that he's using a high-end hammer action keyboard, but Yohan's Kim's incredible skill cannot be denied. Perhaps Creative Labs needs a new spokesman:BONUS REMIX: Read the rest

Remember Polaroids? The tactile joy of waving around one of those little plastic pictures, the anticipation of waiting for it to develop: These have been pleasures that some of us thought we'd only be telling our confused children about. But think again. Polaroid's got a batch of great new bundles and special editions for its innovative OneStep 2 that are guaranteed to get you snapping and sharing pics all over again.Polaroid Originals OneStep 2 Camera: Stranger Things Edition + Film BundleCreated "in collaboration with Hawkins National Laboratory," this camera not only honors the popular Netflix show with red and blue colors and a clever "upside down" design, it boasts an extra powerful flash that'll send any extra-dimensional monsters packing. You'll also get an iType film pack that frames your photos in one of 16 Stranger Things logos and designs. The Polaroid Originals OneStep 2 Camera: Stranger Things Edition + Film Bundle is now $126.99, down 5% from the original price.Polaroid OneStep 2 Camera Graphite with PhotoboxAs fun as it is to share Polaroids with your friends, you're going to want to keep some of them. This bundle makes that easy with a premium cardstock photo box that holds up to 40 pictures. Pick up the Polaroid OneStep 2 Camera Graphite with Photobox for $99.99, more than 15% off the list price.Polaroid Originals OneStep 2 Camera: Summer Blue Edition + Film BundleThis Summer Blue edition of the OneStep 2 has great looks outside and in, with a film pack that gives you the choice of 8 different cool blue frames. Read the rest

It's pop art! It's furniture! It's a stack of plastic coat hangers! Yep, the frame of this chair stacks plastic coat hangers. And not just stack them, Designer Joey Zeldon's Coat Check Chair isn't a chair without them. By bringing the elements of the closet into the foreground of a person’s daily routine, the Coat Check Chair offers a unique design and a gentle encouragement to stay neat. The hangers’ flexible plastic makes the chair surprisingly comfortable, while its impermanent construction lets users customize in terms of hanger color and pattern. Timeless and practical, the Coat Check Chair can fit in your studio, home, boutique, hotel or gallery, letting your closet join the party. He reports that the chair can withstand at least 170 lbs., which is what he weighs:You can get the Coat Check Chair through Kickstarter for the early bird price of $449. (Apartment Therapy) Read the rest

An entire genre of Saturday Night Live-style skit humor--what if celebrity x were absurdly cast in role y?--is made obsolete by deepfakery. Read the rest

Using an Arduino, a bunch of code and a little machine learning, Benn Hamm created a cat door to keep his cat from bringing dead--and sometimes live--rats and birds into his home in the middle of the night. It's not often that I'm down with bringing surveillance technology into homes but, as a former cat owner who's had to clean bird shit off a flat-screen TV, I have nothing but love for this project.Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest

"Juicy Ghost" is a new tale from Rudy Rucker (previously), an explicitly politican sf story told from the point of view of a suicide-assassin who is getting ready to take out an illegitimate president during his inauguration; as Rucker describes, he really struggled with the story, and couldn't figure out where or if to publish (he even contemplated rebooting his late, great, much-lamented webzine Flurb with an "all-politics" issue as a means of giving the story a home).Ultimately, Rucker decided to publish the tale on his own site, in both text and audio formats.I listened to Rucker's reading of the story yesterday and it's quite an experience: all the whimsy and playfulness that is Rucker's signature, blended with a dark, almost frantic view of the moment we're living through today. Strong tonic for a Sunday.“A mob of Freals,” says Leeta. “I feel safe. For once.”She makes a knowing mm-hmm sound, with her gawky mouth pressed shut. She’s not one to think about looks. Lank-haired and fit. A fanatic. I’m a fanatic too. We’re feral freaks, free for real.Is Leeta is my girlfriend? No. I’ve never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I don’t get that close to people. My parents and brother and sister died when I was eight. A shoot-out at our house. I don’t talk about it.It’s nine in the morning on January 20, a cold, blue-sky day in Washington D.C. Inauguration Day for Ross Treadle, that lying sack of shit who’s acting as if he’s been legitimately re-elected. Read the rest

Locus Magazine announced the winners of its annual reader-voted awards last night, with top honors for Mary Robinette Kowal, who won Best SF Novel for The Calculating Stars (which also won a Nebula Award this year), as well as Brooke Bolander, who won Best Novelette for The Only Harmless Great Thing (also a Nebula winner); and Phenderson Djèlí Clark whose Nebula-winning short story The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington also won a Locus.Congrats to all the winners!Best SF Novel: The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)Best Fantasy Novel: Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik (Del Rey; Macmillan)Best Horror Novel: The Cabin at the End of the World, Paul Tremblay (Morrow; Titan UK)Best YA Novel: Dread Nation, Justina Ireland (Balzer + Bray)Best First Novel: Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga)Best Novella: Artificial Condition, Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)Best Novelette: The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander (Tor.com Publishing) Read the rest

The idea that you can detect lies by analyzing "microexpressions" has absorbed billions in spending by police forces and security services, despite the fact that it's junk science that performs worse than a coin-toss.What could be griftier than selling latter-day phrenology to law enforcement? Adding "machine learning" to the mix!The UK startup Facesoft used "a database of 300 million images of faces, some of which have been created by an AI system modeled on the human brain" (that is: "modeled" on the "human brain"), to "identify emotions like anger, fear and surprise based on micro-expressions which are often invisible to the casual observer."The problems with replicating and falsifying this proposition don't matter when you're building a Weapon of Math Destruction whose predictions aren't compared to objective truth once they're deployed (see also: automated sentencing, predictive policing, etc).The company was co-founded by a plastic surgeon named Allan Ponniah who claims that the police in Mumbai might use his product "for monitoring crowds to detect the evolving mob dynamics."You know why this won't work? Because they haven't put it on the blockchain. Everyone knows that machine learning junk science products can only be salvaged by putting them on the blockchain.“If someone smiles insincerely, their mouth may smile, but the smile doesn’t reach their eyes — micro-expressions are more subtle than that and quicker,” co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Allan Ponniah, who’s also a plastic and reconstructive surgeon in London, told the newspaper.Face-Reading AI Will Tell Police When Suspects Are Hiding Truth [Ellen Milligan/Bloomberg](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY) Read the rest

Canada's Irving family is one of the richest in the world, owning more land than anyone except the British royals and the Catholic church; they also own virtually all the media in New Brunswick, as well as the industries that those newspapers cover, and they augment their media control over the public discourse with a ruthless approach to their critics.The Irvings are in the news today due to their role in a massive Canadian scandal that many believe could cost Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party its chance at re-election in October.Now, the Irvings' newspapers have all canceled Micheal de Adder's editorial strip, after the New Brunswick native drew a comic featuring Donald Trump playing golf over the corpses of Salvadoran asylum-seekers Oscar Alberto Martinez and his two year old daughter, Angie Valeria M, whose bodies were photographed after they washed up on the shores of the Rio Grande.According to de Adder, none of the Irvings' Brunswick News Inc outlets ran the strip. De Adder is Canada's most-read cartoonist.De Adder wrote that despite his sorrow at being cut from the papers in his home province, "I’m not a victim. I just finished a book, that will be out in September and I still freelance for some amazing newspapers. It’s a setback not a deathblow."In a statement, President Wes Tyrell of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists wrote, "The Irvings have considerable corporate interests in the United States, but why would they care about cartoons potentially offending the American president? Read the rest

What could be more zeigeisty and revealing of our present moment than John Carpenter's 1988 sci-fi/horror flick They Live? How about Rob Israel's They Live, We Look Back illustration, a mashup with Distracted Boyfriend meme, which you can pre-order today as a 12x12 print? (via JWZ) Read the rest

Microsoft is no stranger to the use of "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" in the pursuit of monopolistic goals; the company perfected the tactic in the early 1990s as a way of scaring enterprise customers away from GNU/Linux; today, the company shows off its mastery of FUD in its filings to the Federal Trade Commission condemning proposals for Right-to-Repair rules.In its comments, Microsoft argues that allowing third-party repairs of Microsoft products could compromise its DRM systems, including dual-purpose security systems like the "Trusted Platform Module" (TPM) that are used to lock out rival operating systems as well as malicious actors.Luckily, we have Securepairs, a coalition of security experts devoted to debunking claims from repair monopolists who claim that opening repair markets will pose a security threat.Microsoft submitted its comments ahead of the FTC's "Nixing the Fix" workshop on Right to Repair, arguing that "If the TPM or other hardware or software protections were compromised by a malicious or unqualified repair vendor, those security protections would be rendered ineffective and consumers’ data and control of the device would be at risk. Moreover, a security breach of one device can potentially compromise the security of a platform or other devices connected to the network."As Securepairs writes in rebuttal, this is undeniably true, as are the following: "If you invite someone into your home to repair your dishwasher they could, instead, pilfer your jewelry and credit cards," and "If you hire a managed service provider to do your network security they could, instead, compromise your network and steal your intellectual property."That is: "In other words: the provisioning of repair or any other commercial service – requires trust between the customer and the service provider. Read the rest

Back in 2011, I bought a new countertop made from "Curface," a composite material made from a mix of melted down used coffee cups and coffee grounds; we still have it and it's wearing beautifully -- you can treat it like solid wood, sanding off imperfections and oiling it back up to a shine; or you can treat it like a polymer and treat it with waxes like Turtle Wax for a durable finish.Unfortunately, Curface is no more, but the idea of using coffee grounds as a cellulosic base for aggregates lives on; a German company called Kaffeeform is making coffee cups out of grinds suspended in resin -- everything from go-cups to demitasses, espresso cups, and latte cups.Their marketing material notes that "The cups are very durable, light, and have a mild smell of coffee."Kaffeeform(via Red Ferret) Read the rest

Many tech entrepreneurs are self-starters. The secret is in knowing where and when to start. And if your career plan involves programming or IT skills, the answer might just be "right here, right now" - because these ten online course bundles aren't just packed with training and insight into essential work platforms. They're all priced on a "pay what you want" basis. That means any offer gets at least a partial course package, and beating the average price gets the entire thing. No matter what your specialty, there's the potential for hundreds of dollars saved.The Big Data eBook BundleNo matter what the size of your database, this bundle will allow you to make the most of it. You'll get overviews on how to funnel big data into artificial intelligence, plus specific lessons on how to use Python, MySQL, SAS and more for data analytics.CompTIA CSIS Prep BundleThis package gets you CompTIA certified in all the essential aspects of IT, giving you everything you need to set up, manage and protect the network infrastructure of any company.Cisco Networking & Cloud Computing Certification BundleThere's a wealth of resources in this one - more than 100 hours of training to be exact. It's everything you need to get you certified and confident as a cloud systems expert in Cisco, Microsoft Azure, and Windows Powershell.The Epic Excel 2019 Mastery BundleMastery in Excel means more than just being able to knock out some payroll spreadsheets. This bundle explores the popular platform's full potential in automation and data analysis, but it kicks off with overviews suitable for any beginner. Read the rest

Earlier this month, I reviewed Richard Kadrey's new novel "The Grand Dark" for the LA Times; as I wrote, "His latest is “The Grand Dark,” a noir, diesel punk book set in a Weimar world of war trauma, debauchery, cabaret and looming disaster — and it's superb."As part of his publicity for the book, Kadrey appeared on Rick Kleffel's (previously) podcast, "Narrative Species," for a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation about the various species of noir, what is and isn't horror, and the role of art during the buildup to a fascist takeover (MP3). It's a characteristically great interview with Kadrey, who is always fascinating, and Kleffel, who is a perspicacious literary thinker and critic.Kadrey’s urban creation knows no boundaries of genre. He crafts his world with the precise language of science fiction and the wild abandon of modern fantasy. Keeping it tightly focused and ever-immersive are his carefully crafted characters. Read a page or so of this book, and you won’t be thinking of genre. Instead, you’ll start to worry for and with Largo. He’s no naïve kid from the sticks. He’s a scrappy, yet caring underdog from a bad part of town with no plans to return.Richard Kadrey The Grand Dark [Rick Kleffel/Narrative Species](Thanks, Rick!) Read the rest

Looking for new tablets or other essential gear? Normally, you're out of luck in the summer - that no man's land for shoppers at the farthest point from the holidays. But here are ten examples where the prices have most definitely thawed out. Check out these deep discounts on Chromebooks and other refurbished gear, from chargers to robots.Rock Space WiFi Range ExtenderGot a big house that needs coverage? This booster is just the ticket, with a 2.4 and 5 GHz dual-band extender that will supercharge your wi-fi. The Rock Space WiFi Range Extender is $24.99, down 58% from the original price of $59.99.Samsung Chromebook 11.6" 16GB (Refurbished)Chromebooks make any web-based work easier, and this one comes pre-loaded with Chrome OS and the latest Google products plus Gmail and YouTube. Pick up the refurbished Samsung Chromebook 11.6" 16GB for $99.99, more than 80% off the MSRP.Samsung Galaxy View 18.4" 64GB WiFi + AT&T 4G LTE Black (Refurbished)Binge anywhere with this big-screen viewer, capable of bringing your favorite shows to life in 1080p HD. All that, plus the battery will outlast even the longest movies with 8 hours of life on a charge. The Samsung Galaxy View 18.4" 64GB WiFi + AT&T 4G LTE Black (Refurbished) is on sale for $449, down 43% from the list price.rero:micro Coding RobotEquipped with IR sensors and an LED matrix, this roving robot is perfect for teaching kids to code. Program it to follow a hand-drawn track, play music and more through the MakeCode editor or with simple JavaScript. Read the rest

The shame just keeps on coming, America.Illegitimate United States President Donald Trump just met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 in Japan. During their brief meetup, Trump referred to MBS “a friend of mine,” and said the prince blamed for the grisly assassination of Jamal Khashoggi has done “really a spectacular job” and that it's a “great honor” to meet with him.Bone saws, people.JUST IN: President Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman at G-20 in Japan, calls him "a friend of mine" and says that he's done "really a spectacular job" and that it's a "great honor" to meet with him. pic.twitter.com/cKvZ8qWFQc— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 29, 2019Reactions from Twitter, below.Every journalist in America should cover Trump appropriately given the unequivocal knowledge that he would warmly greet someone who murdered you. This is no different than high-fiving Al Qaeda after they murdered Daniel Pearl. https://t.co/2Z9gkUE42S— Anil Dash 🥭 (@anildash) June 28, 2019Trump and MBS are meeting on a high floor of the Imperial Hotel in Osaka right now. Trump calls the Saudi crown prince “a friend of mine” and says it’s an “honor” to be with him. pic.twitter.com/4EMhkS4Mqj— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 28, 2019We’ve already had to sue the government over Jared Kushner’s meeting with the Saudi crown prince. https://t.co/rGIX9CDPzE— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) June 29, 2019Trump lavishes praise on MBS at breakfast, telling him he has done a "spectacular job." He makes no mention of Khashoggi murder, which the US has concluded the crown prince ordered. Read the rest

Holy crap this is the most ambitious 'hey I think I'll build a fishpond' project I've ever seen.IMGURian @jcardona1 shares this incredible step by step photo gallery, and starts with the finished product:You can't have a DIY post without showing the finished product first so here it is! This is the koi pond as of a few days ago. Still have a few projects to wrap up and some finish landscaping but it's mostly complete for now. Been running for almost 4 months now and the fish are doing great.About the photo below, they say: “In a few years these baby water cows will be full-on meat torpedoes.”Now, here are the first three steps of the project:Go check out the whole gallery, with shot-by-shot commentary. Hats off, this is a great HOWTO post, and it's a lot of fun to keep koi.I used to keep koi, in a suburban but wild-hills-adjacent part of the East Bay in the SF Bay Area. Coyotes were always finding a way to come in and eat them, though.How I built a 4,000 gallon Koi Pond Read the rest

Is this good boi eating... PUP-CORN?I'll see myself out.This bulldog is really enjoying his popcorn treat, eaten directly from the hoodie he's wearing.You gotta unmute for his om nom nom chompy chomper sounds.Right way to wear a hoodie[via imgur] Read the rest

Call me maybe

Today is the one year anniversary of the 2018 Capitol Gazette mass shooting, in which a gunman shot and killed 5 people, and injured more.At the G20 summit today on the other side of the world, illegitimate United States president Donald Trump shared a chuckle with his boss, Russian president Vladimir Putin, over their shared wish to “get rid of” of journalists. Trump expressed mocking disdain for “fake news,” and mockingly dismissed the seriousness of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. The Committee to Protect Journalists says 26 journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin became president. Here are their names.At the G20 photo op in front of news photographers, Trump appeared to bond with Putin over their shared scorn for journalists and the press in general. “Get rid of them,” said Trump of journalists. “Fake news is a great term, isn't it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.”“We also have,” Putin replied to Trump, in English. “It’s the same.”Then they shared a laugh.Here is the bizarre video clip right before that of Trump telling Putin not to meddle in the 2020 elections. Trump wags his finger at Putin, appears to do it to appease the idiot journalists, mocking all of us.WATCH: President Trump can be heard telling Russia's Putin not to meddle in the upcoming U.S. election ▶ 🔊 https://t.co/THyCggUA5Z pic.twitter.com/EbfOcKBna6— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) June 28, 2019More from journalists who were there, and who observed the pool footage of the Trump-Putin theatrics. Read the rest

GrubHub is buying up thousands of restaurant web addresses, and “also appears to publish shadow pages without owners' consent—sometimes in direct competition with real websites,” reports The New Food Economy. Why would the app-based restaurant delivery service do such a crazy thing? It looks like the reason may be -- shocking, I know! -- predatory greed.H. Claire Brown writes:The New Food Economy has found that GrubHub owns more than 23,000 web domains. Its subsidiary, Seamless, owns thousands. We’ve published the full list here. Most of them appear to correlate with the names of real restaurants. The company’s most recent purchase was in May of this year.Grubhub purchased three different domains containing versions of Shivane’s restaurant’s name—in 2012, 2013, and 2014. “I never gave them permission to do that,” she says. Shivane believes GrubHub purchased her restaurant’s web domain to prevent her from building her own online presence. She also believes the company may have had a special interest in owning her name because she processes a high volume of orders. She rattles off a list of names of local restaurants that she suspects may be in the same predicament. I find versions of about half those names on the list of GrubHub-owned domains. Additionally, it appears GrubHub has set up several generic, templated pages that look like real restaurant websites but in fact link only to GrubHub. These pages also display phone numbers that GrubHub controls. The calls are forwarded to the restaurant, but the platform records each one and charges the restaurant a commission fee for every order, according to testimony from GrubHub executives at a hearing at New York City Hall on Thursday. Read the rest

There are two days left to bid on this famous protest poster from 1968 at Heritage Auctions.Fuck the Draft by Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1968). Rolled, Very Fine. Protest Poster (20.25" X 29.75"). Offered in this lot is arguably one of the most iconic anti-Vietnam War posters ever created, depicting a young man burning his draft card in a symbolic act of defiance. Designed by famed activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya under the pseudonym Dirty Linen Corp, this poster was distributed via mail order, with suggestions to mail a copy to mothers, and even the White House. Eventually, the FBI arrested Kuromiya for using the US postal service to distribute 'lewd and indecent materials,' but this poster had already made its rounds and secured a place in anti-draft history.A good reminder that the FBI, in general, is not on the side of progress.From Wikipedia:Kiyoshi Kuromiya (May 9, 1943 – May 10, 2000) was a Japanese American author and civil rights activist. He was born in a Japanese American internment camp on May 9, 1943 in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. He was a committed civil rights and anti-war activist. He was also one of the founders of Gay Liberation Front - Philadelphia and served as an openly gay delegate to the Black Panther Convention that endorsed the gay liberation struggle. Kuromiya was an assistant of Martin Luther King Jr. and took care of King's children immediately following his assassination.To protest of the use of napalm in the Vietnam War in 1968, he announced that a dog would be burned alive in front of the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library. Read the rest

Jony Ive, who is leaving Apple after decades as its design chief, once designed a toilet. It looks very much like it could be an Apple toilet, but the thing is, of course, that everything Apple makes is simply the work of Jony Ive.His work was not well-received by his client Ideal Standard, however. In a 2014 interview with Time magazine, Sir Jonathan recalled how his client - sporting a Red Nose Day plastic nose - joked about how his work was overly modern and expensive.The photo is couretesy of Tangerine, the London-based agency where he then worked. Read the rest

BONUS: Man cutting cheese with a chainsaw: Read the rest

You are probably familiar with the tech support scam. You get a call from someone (usually from a call center in India) pretending to be from Apple or Microsoft. They tell you they have noticed a problem with your computer and ask you to open a web site that gives them remote access to your computer. Once they do that, they get you to log into your bank account so they can rob you blind.Here's one such scammer who thinks he's talking to a woman, but he's really talking to a bot programmed to act like a harried mother. The scammer quickly becomes frustrated, and at the 2:20 point he starts to become sexually abusive. Of course, the bot doesn't react as he expects, which frustrates him even more. In the end, the bot wastes 10 minutes of the scammer's time.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Wanna work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation? We're looking for "a confident, experienced, and energetic manager to oversee our donation processing team of three" -- "The Donor Operations Manager will manage a team whose job is to guarantee success in all steps of a supporter’s donation process: easy gift transaction, quick and friendly response to any questions, prompt acknowledgement, shipment of requested premiums, and meticulous record-keeping." Read the rest

Here's a tour of a 20-foot long house on wheels that Jessica, a social worker, set up in a British Columbia forest. It has a sleeping loft and plenty of clever storage space.Image: YouTube Read the rest

This footage of presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard appears to show a small blemish on her chin--a pimple or bug bite, perhaps--that suddenly disappears as she's talking. Conspiracy theorists suggest MSNBC (producers of the footage) added the pimple to make her look bad. But it's obviously more likely that they were using filters to smooth out everyone's meat on a live broadcast (see below) with limited time for makeup, and the pimple got through for a few seconds. Or maybe it's just a bug and it flew off...If it's a filter, the filter should go. The times are not amenable to even the most innocuous digital manipulation. Read the rest

Perfect👌🏾Meghan McCain: How dare you say open borders & no repercussions?@JulianCastro: Thats a Right Wing talking point. I say criminalize crime—not desperation. I clearly defend border security & deportation for criminals.MM: but...but..pic.twitter.com/NMiHJe7kl4— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) June 28, 2019 Megan McCain gets a lesson on how talking points aren't actually real. Read the rest

In Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf we visit a mysterious and strange magic theatre, where some pretty weird things happen. Meant for madmen and madwomen only, the price of admission is nothing less than one's mind. In High Weirdness, you are invited to enter another kind of magic theatre. It is a place of magic and madness, heaven and hell, beauty and terror. Luckily, the price of the ticket is not your sanity, but just the price of the book, High Weirdness, the latest literary exploration by Erik Davis.Erik Davis, PhDA long-time Boing Boing pal, Erik Davis is an intellectual of the highest caliber: a persuasive and provocative essayist, an erudite and unconventional scholar of religions, a charismatic and engaging speaker, an adventurous-minded tripster and all-around experienced explorer of the edges of our reality. Davis is one of the most admired and refined interpreters of all matters mystical, psychedelic and occult. His decades' long travels in hyper-reality—roaming seamlessly from musical festivals to Burning Man to academia—make him a uniquely qualified cyber-anthropologist, a keen observer of our contemporary and turbulent cross-cultural mazes of techno-mystical realms, fringe subcultures, neo-shamanic practices, pop mythologies, conspiracy theories, and spiritual impulses. For those who arrived late to Erik Davis' extensive body of work, let me single out three important contributions: his classic (and still relevant) read Techgnosis; his musical hermeneutic homage to the Led Zeppelin IV album; and his podcast, a cornucopia of weekly interviews with artists, intellectuals and all sorts of weirdos, all concerned with the cultures of consciousness. Read the rest