Boing Boing

A woman at a Kansas City, MO Department of Motor Vehicles office said “the president’s security was in danger,” and pulled out a gun and started shooting because she felt the line was moving too slowly, according to news reports citing witnesses and local police.The Kansas City Star spoke to one of the shooting witnesses/survivors, Patricia Zick, who said the accused shooter walked into the DMV, saw a long line of people, and became belligerent, cursing.“Something was wrong, I don’t know what it is — drugs, mental or whatever — but she just insisted on getting taken care of immediately,” Zick told a reporter. “The president’s security was in danger, she said.”From kansascity.com:Zick was uncertain what the woman needed, but the woman insisted that the workers call their boss, who was not there.One worker said she was going to call police and the woman responded that she had better not.“It will take longer,” the woman said.The exchange between workers and the woman went on for about 10 minutes and others inside the licensing office were becoming irritated because they were losing their time.The woman then said she’d take care of it and walked out, Zick said.Zick followed the woman to get her license plate number. As the woman was walking away, she started digging in her purse. She then pulled out a gun and shot into the air.There's video at the Kansas City Star article.[via @vikkie, Stock Photo at top: Shutterstock] Read the rest

Across America, semi-homeless "nomads" drive from big-box store to big-box store, hunting for items on clearance that Amazon customers are paying a premium for; when they find them, they snap them up and add them to the bins at Fulfillment by Amazon warehouses, whence they are shipped on to consumers.The arbitrage is made possible by a combination of factors: the slow death of big-box retail, which is especially keen in out-of-the-way post-industrial casualties of the Great Recession means that there are stores at the end of every secondary road desperately trying to flog off the merchandise the locals don't want and/or can't afford. Then there's the retail cycle itself, which sees beloved products discontinued despite a faithful following, because that following simply isn't large enough to sustain the product (which is why the deadstock for the orphaned Bounce Dryer Bars sell in two-packs for $300; see also: Walmart pajama bottoms before they switched to a stiffer, less comfy cotton; and a discontinued brand of dental floss whose adherents pay $100 for a six pack that once retailed for $0.99; and discontinued flavors of cat-food that are the only thing that a beloved, aging pet will tolerate).The nomads -- lovingly and beautifully profiled in a piece by Josh Dzieza for The Verge -- are like carrion beetles, stripping the carcasses of the dwindling brick-and-mortar retail industry, except that unlike carrion beetles, they don't consume the few useful morsels still left on the bones; instead, they ship them to Amazon, the pathogen that triggered the die-off, making it more deadly, and hastening the process. Read the rest

In the latest episode of Scam Nation, magician Nate Staniforth went to Anamosa State Penitentiary in Iowa to perform magic for the inmates.Image: YouTube Read the rest

“The kidney has a very special place in the heart,” President Donald J. Trump said today, just before he signed an executive order on kidney health care.Here is the full quote:“The kidney, very special, the kidney has a very special place in the heart. It’s an incredible thing. There’s a spirit like you see rarely.”Yes, this really happened.More from Twitter by reporters who were president at the signing, below.PHOTO courtesy of Bloomberg News White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs.TRUMP: The kidney, very special, the kidney has a very special place in the heart. It’s an incredible thing. … There’s a spirit like you see rarely.— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) July 10, 2019Trump today will announce an overhaul of the U.S. approach to care for people with kidney disease, an effort intended to move more patients out of costly dialysis centers and increase transplants.https://t.co/RxTiUYOYsB— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 10, 2019“The kidney has a very special place in the heart,” Trump says just before signing an executive order on kidney health care. pic.twitter.com/72uaiw6oS3— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 10, 2019Happening now at Ronald Reagan Building, @POTUS is delivering remarks on advancing #kidney health and will sign a related executive order. pic.twitter.com/aEyrQ7l2oc— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 10, 2019President Trump is directing government to revamp the nation's care for kidney disease; aims to allow more people whose kidneys fail to have a chance at early transplants and home dialysis. https://t.co/zNiFJICJJ5— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 10, 2019"America first, American patients first," says @POTUS wrapping up his speech. Read the rest

Not much detail, as the paper that makes the claim is only available at present to American Economic Association members; but in Did Austerity Cause Brexit? University of Warwick economist Thiemo Fetzer asserts that he found a "significant association between the exposure of an individual or area to the UK government’s austerity-induced welfare reforms begun in 2010, and the following: the subsequent rise in support for the UK Independence Party, an important correlate of Leave support in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership; broader individual-level measures of political dissatisfaction; and direct measures of support for Leave. Leveraging data from all UK electoral contests since 2000, along with detailed, individual-level panel data, the findings suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for austerity." (Image: Peter Damian, CC-BY-SA) (via Marginal Revolution) Read the rest

Police say a Canadian man survived after he was swept over the largest of all the waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls.Authorities tweeted about a man “in crisis” near Horseshoe Falls, the largest of the three waterfalls at Niagara Falls park, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border. @NiagParksPolice 0400 responded to male in crisis brink of Horseshoe Falls. On arrival male was observed to climb over retaining wall and swept over falls. Male was found sitting on rocks after search of lower river w/non life threatening injuries. Trans. to hosp. further care— Niagara Parks Police (@NiagParksPolice) July 9, 2019The park draws tens of millions of visitors each year.Officers arrived at the Canadian side around 4 AM and feared they were already too late to save the man. But he survived.The man's name has not been released. He is safe. Many people attempt suicide there each year. No details on the circumstances that led to this incident have been released.“He’s a very lucky guy. Not many people do it and survive,” Ontario resident Andy Essor told the Buffalo News. “He definitely has God in his top pocket.”More from the Washington Post's roundup from various news sources on the unlikely happy ending to this story:Park police said they saw the man climb over the retaining wall, a sturdy barrier made of rough-hewn stone blocks interspersed with decorative metal railings, and enter the raging waters of the Niagara River. Within moments, he was swept over the enormous waterfall, vanishing into the impenetrable cloud of mist rising from the gorge. Read the rest

Next month in Chicago, the Pope Leo XIII Institute will hold its annual exorcism conference for clergy. While not directly associated with or funded by the Catholic Church, the Institute was "established for the total education & training of priests in the holy ministry of exorcism and deliverance." According to the conference site, you'll learn the following:- If the devil can read your mind or knows the future.-How to distinguish between divinely inspired visions and those inspired by the devil.-Common pitfalls for beginners in the spiritual life - as well as those of the most advanced.-How the devil adapts his strategy according to where you are in the spiritual life: purgative, illuminative, and unitive stages.-How to grow in prayer.-What are the most effective weapons in combatting the devil - as well as those the devil uses against you to halt your progress.From Mysterious Universe:The independent, non-profit was founded to serve and educate Catholic bishops, priests, exorcists, deacons, and laity and offered its first conference in 2005 in response to Pope John Paul’s recommendation that every diocese appoint an exorcist.This year’s exorcist conference will focus on the teachings of Father Cliff Ermatinger and his book The Devil’s Role in the Spiritual Life. Past conference themes have included the exploration of the Virgin Mary’s role in defeating Satan and the in-depth examination of the motives of rebellious angels. The keynote speaker of the 2016 conference was Father Gary Thomas, the real-life priest on whose experiences the 2009 book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist was based, as well as the 2011 film The Rite, starring Anthony Hopkins. Read the rest

Bangkok's Death Awareness Cafe takes its design cures from a mortuary, complete with funeral wreaths and caskets. Patrons sip cappuccinos, read death-related "inspirational" quotes on the walls, and then climb into the coffins to consider their ultimate fate. Sounds, er, fun? From Rumble:Despite the macabre appearance, owner Professor Veeranut Rojanaprapa says there’s a deeper meaning behind the eatery - improving society by encouraging people to reflect on their life.He said: ‘’We’re concerned about a big problem in Thailand. The problem of corruption, the young mothers and criminal gangs.‘’After a study, we found out that the root of the problems are greed and anger. When people are greedy, then they are corrupt. When they are greedy, they have prohibited sex. When people are angry they do harmful actions.’’Buddhist followers believe that if people are aware of death they will be less greedy and do more good in the world.(UPI via Weird Universe) Read the rest

One of the arguments against hate-speech laws is that once the state starts dividing expression into "allowed" and "prohibited," the "prohibited" category tends to grow, in three ways: first, because company lawyers and other veto-wielders err on the side of caution by excising anything that might be in the "prohibited" bucket; second, because courts respond to these shifts in the discourse by finding more and more edge-cases to be in violation of the law; and finally, because lawmakers are tempted to shovel any speech they or their campaign donors don't like into the "prohibited" bucket.These effects are even more pronounced when it comes to online speech regulation: the boiler-rooms full of traumatized moderators working for the Big Tech platforms are already juggling a massive list of internal policies about what can and can't be said; add to that a set of high-stakes legal consequences for getting it wrong and they begin to err on the side of caution so aggressively that they block messages from people who were the targets of hate speech. Smaller forums who can't afford moderation teams are even worse off, using fewer resources to make these calls and unable to afford the legal penalties if they get it wrong.To watch this in action, have a look at France's proposed "hate speech" laws, which require platforms to remove any "hateful content" within 24 hours; as this rule has progressed through the French legislature, politicians have perceived an opportunity to add all kinds of dubious ideas and sentiments to the nebulous "hateful content" category, introducing a flood of amendments to the bill. Read the rest

Frog and Toad are friends.But Toad had a run-in with the law."Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truthAnd nothin' but the truth?""I got somethin' to say," said Toad."FUCK THE POLICE."Frog and Toad aren't going to take it anymore.---Loads of Etsy sellers have this as a t-shirt design, for both adults and kids. Why...? BuzzFeed has the story:A mom from Benton, Illinois, hilariously discovered the shirt she ordered for her 3-year-old daughter from a Chinese retailer came with an additional design element that wasn't originally advertised on its site.Kelsey Dawn Williamson, 23, told BuzzFeed News she's profoundly confused and has not stopped laughing since she received the T-shirt order from AliExpress, an online, Etsy-like retailer based in Hangzhou, China, that hosts small businesses.On May 10, Williamson placed an order for this shirt, which features an iconic image of classic children's book characters Frog and Toad, for her daughter Salem...On Tuesday, however, she opened the package to find the Chinese retailer had taken liberty with 3-year-old Salem's new shirt by adding a slogan to it.Image via KeyshaDesignThanks, Mishpen! Read the rest

Nintendo finally unveiled the long-rumored Nintendo Switch Lite. Besides the compact size, the biggest difference is a classic D-pad control. Due out in September, it will retail for $200. From The Verge:Nintendo says the Lite features “slightly” improved battery life — the company wouldn’t get any more specific than that — due to a more power-efficient chip layout, as well as the lack of additional batteries in the built-in controllers. The Switch Lite also does away with the device’s controversial kickstand...The Lite comes in multiple colors at launch — yellow, grey, and turquoise — as well as a special light grey Pokémon Sword and Shield edition, and they all have a pleasant matte texture that feels great to hold....The new device has a 5.5-inch touch display, compared to 6.2-inch for its predecessor. If you take a single Joy-Con off of an original Switch, you’ll have a good idea of the size of the new version. Read the rest

Darius Brown, an awesome kid from Newark, New Jersey, makes bow ties for shelter animals to help them get adopted (because they're more cute). The cause is righteous, and so is the creativity he puts into designing and making the bow ties.His organization is called Beaux and Paws.There's a GoFundMe. You know what to do.From People.com:Darius Brown’s passion for animals is matched only by his love of bow ties, and the Newark, New Jersey, 12-year-old decided to combine the two into something useful.Brown’s organization, Beaux and Paws, dresses shelter pets up in fancy bow ties, made by the preteen himself, so the animals can look good while seeking adoption.“It helps the dog look noticeable, very attractive,” he told the Today Show. “It helps them find a forever, loving home … I love everything about dogs and cats.”Brown was diagnosed with comprehension delay, speech delay and fine motor skills delay when he was only two years old, and over time, his family encouraged his creativity as he developed his love for animals and fashion, according to Today.More: Boy Creates Bow Ties for Shelter Animals to Help Them Get Adopted View this post on Instagram Meet some of my new Furry Friends wearing their 4th of July Bow tie handmade by me! They look PAW-some!!!! Swipe left👈🏽 . 1st pic - Walter 2nd pic Top L-R: Callan & Quinn Middle L-R: Rico & Geist Bottom L-R: Bogart & Rowdy 3rd pic - Jude . Read the rest

“Sam Nunberg and Michael Cohen recalled David Pecker meeting with Trump in 2015 in Trump Tower, where they talked about what the Enquirer/Epstein may have had on Prince Andrew and President Clinton,” writes Emily Jane Fox.In the months before he ran for president, she reports, Trump was in conversation with National Enquirer tabloid owner David Pecker about Jeffrey Epstein, a Trump acquaintance for many years -- and how a growing scandal over Epstein's sexual abuse could affect Bill and Hillary Clinton. “Trump said that Pecker had told him that the pictures of Clinton that Epstein had from his island were worse,” recalls a former Trump Organization employee.From Emily Jane Fox's piece for Vanity Fair, out one day after Epstein told a federal court he was not guilty on sex trafficking charges:Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, who would later go to prison in part for his role in these hush money schemes, was in the room when Pecker sat down. Pecker, he later told me, used to send him articles and issues before they were published so that he and Trump could read them. After the meeting Trump called in Sam Nunberg, then a Trump Organization employee, who saw Pecker leaving Trump’s office. “Michael was sitting in there when I came in, and the issue of the National Enquirer with the pictures of Prince Andrew was on his desk,” Nunberg recalled. “He said not to tell anyone, but that Pecker had just been there and had brought the issue with him. Read the rest

In 2016, EFF suedthe US Government on behalf of Andrew "bunnie" Huangand Matthew Green, both of whom wanted to engage in normal technologicalactivities (auditing digital security, editing videos, etc)that put at risk from Section 1201 of the Digital MillenniumCopyright Act.EFF's lawsuit argues that Green and Huang's activities areconstitutionally protected, and that DMCA 1201 -- which imposes ablanket ban on bypassing Digital Rights Management (DRM), without adequate safeguards for speech -- was unconstitutional.The case has been sitting in limbo for over two years, waiting for thejudge to rule on whether our clients’ claims could proceed, and, atlong last, the judgehas ruled and the case will go forward!As my EFF colleague Kit Walsh writes,the ruling is a "mixed bag":The ruling is a mixed bag. While the "as-applied" First Amendment claimswill go forward, the court did not agree that rulemaking by theLibrarian of Congress is subject to judicial review under theAdministrative Procedure Act, even when the Librarian is performing anexecutive branch function rather than a congressional one. The courtalso did not agree that the Librarian's rulemaking is subject to theFirst Amendment scrutiny that applies when a government official ismaking determinations about what speech to permit. Finally, the courtsaw no need to adjudicate the claims that Section 1201 is overly broad,because it concluded that determining the constitutionality of thestatute as applied to the plaintiffs will turn on the same issues aswith other potential targets of the law. Read the rest

How bad are things at Donald Trump's garbage Doral golf resort? On Saturday the resort is scheduled to host a golf tournament run by a Miami-based strip club. “The club is auctioning off dancers as 'girl caddies',” writes the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold. “But it says there will be no nudity at the president’s club.” Just at the afterparty.From the Washington Post:The “Shadow All Star Tournament” is organized by the Shadow Cabaret, a strip club in Hialeah, Fla. Emanuele Mancuso, Shadow Cabaret’s marketing director, said in a telephone interview that this was the first time the club had held a tournament at Trump Doral.The Trump name and family crest are displayed prominently in the strip club’s advertising materials, which offer golfers the “caddy girl of your choice.”Mancuso said the strip club did not intend to send a political statement by choosing Trump’s resort. Rather, he said, the choice was for luxury. These golfers are VIPs, Mancuso said. “They deserve a VIP environment.”Mancuso said there would be no nudity at the resort. On the course, he said, the caddies would wear pink miniskirts and what he called “a sexy white polo.” Afterward, however, the golfers and the dancers would return to another venue — the cabaret itself — for what he described as a “very tasteful” burlesque show, which could involve nudity.“They’re going to be clothed the whole time” at the golf course, Mancuso said. “At the venue is different.”Trump still owns Doral, but says he has delegated day-to-day control to his idiot sons Don Jr. Read the rest

A bear was spotted outside the Omni Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire this week by hotel worker Sam Geesaman, who snapped a couple of breathtaking shots around 5 a.m. on June 29.From New Hampshire's WMUR News:Geesaman said he was working the overnight shift at the hotel and wanted to catch a glimpse of the sunrise off the back veranda of the hotel when he spotted the young black bear coming up the stairs to investigate a nearby trash can.Geesaman said he notified fellow staff members and stood guard to prevent any guests from stumbling upon the bear.“While following behind it attempting to usher it to the nearest exit, the bear decided to hop up on the rail and enjoy the sunrise as I had intended to do myself,” Geesaman told WMUR.[photos: Sam Geesaman] Read the rest

I am an extremely dedicated swimmer, thanks to a chronic pain condition that is just barely held in check by an hour in the pool every day. I go through a couple pairs of goggles every year: generally the thing that goes first is the elastic or the ratchet for the headband, but sometimes a pair of goggles will get so fog-prone that I just can't swim with them anymore.There's nothing like a fresh pair of swim goggles. The manufacturers coat them with some kind of gel that prevents them from fogging better than any product I'd ever tried (and I'd tried a lot of them). What's more, whatever this gel is made of doesn't sting if it mixes with water that seeps in and then gets in your eyes (a bunch of anti-fog products I've tried appear to be dilute dishsoap that stings like crazy).After literally years of trying different products (Cat-Crap, Liquid Spit, etc), I finally found an anti-fog concoction that actually works: Gear Aid Sea Gold Anti-fog Gel Coating, which appears to be the same stuff that manufacturers coat their goggles and masks with at the factory. Just put a tiny bead of it on each lens, rub in with your fingertip, rinse a couple times, and you're good to go. No fog forms, not any, and even after a month of using this stuff, there's no visible buildup on the inside of my goggles.The stuff is sold for SCUBA divers and I'm definitely putting a tube of it in my dive-bag the next time we go on a diving holiday. Read the rest

Trump says Google wants to rig the 2020 election.

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my May Locus column: Steering with the Windshield Wipers. It makes the argument that much of the dysfunction of tech regulation -- from botched anti-sex-trafficking laws to the EU's plan to impose mass surveillance and censorship to root out copyright infringement -- are the result of trying to jury-rig tools to fix the problems of monopolies, without using anti-monopoly laws, because they have been systematically gutted for 40 years.A lack of competition rewards bullies, and bullies have insatiable appetites. If your kid is starving because they keep getting beaten up for their lunch money, you can’t solve the problem by giving them more lunch money – the bullies will take that money too. Likewise: in the wildly unequal Borkean inferno we all inhabit, giving artists more copyright will just enrich the companies that control the markets we sell our works into – the media companies, who will demand that we sign over those rights as a condition of their patronage. Of course, these companies will be subsequently menaced and expropriated by the internet distribution companies. And while the media companies are reluctant to share their bounties with us artists, they reliably expect us to share their pain – a bad quarter often means canceled projects, late payments, and lower advances.And yet, when a lack of competition creates inequities, we do not, by and large, reach for pro-competitive answers. We are the fallen descendants of a lost civilization, destroyed by Robert Bork in the 1970s, and we have forgotten that once we had a mighty tool for correcting our problems in the form of pro-competitive, antitrust enforcement: the power to block mergers, to break up conglomerates, to regulate anticompetitive conduct in the marketplace. Read the rest

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (Alphabet) will testify next week before a House congressional committee at a hearing on the power held by online platforms, and whether government should be regulating it.The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee said on Tuesday that witnesses at the July 16 hearing would include Adam Cohen, Google's director of economic policy, Amazon general counsel for regulation Nate Sutton, Facebook’s Matt Perault, and Kyle Andeer, who is Apple's head of global policy development and Apple vice president for corporate law.Reuters reports:Apple and Google did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth said they will testify but did not share details. Facebook had no immediate comment.This comes as the House Judiciary Committee is probing competition in digital markets as part of an investigation announced last month, with both Republicans and Democrats expressing concern about the power exercised by several of the world’s most valuable companies.The executive branch has antitrust probes underway with the Justice Department looking at Google and Apple while the FTC probes Facebook and Amazon.Read the rest: Big tech executives headed to Capitol Hill for antitrust hearing next week Read the rest

The Seth Rich conspiracy traces back to an SVR operation, reports Yahoo News today. Huge if true, and possibly the Russian military's biggest coup yet, not counting the one that landed Trump in the White House.“Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony “bulletin” — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.,” writes Michael Isikoff for Yahoo News:The purported details in the SVR account seemed improbable on their face: that Rich, a data director in the DNC’s voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by the former secretary of state’s hit squad.Yet in a graphic example of how fake news infects the internet, those precise details popped up the same day on an obscure website, whatdoesitmean.com, that is a frequent vehicle for Russian propaganda. The website’s article, which attributed its claims to “Russian intelligence,” was the first known instance of Rich’s murder being publicly linked to a political conspiracy.(...) The Russian effort to exploit Rich’s tragic death didn’t stop with the fake SVR bulletin. Read the rest

I've been using these illuminated magnifiers for years, mainly to read the tiny printing on capacitors and integrated circuits. They require 3 AAA batteries, which are not included. Shipping is free on Amazon. Read the rest

Hold my ring.“Yes. wait. yes. wait. no. yes. no. wait. yes. wait. NOW!”From kaomaru42.[via IMGUR] Read the rest

Netflix Hangouts lets you watch Netflix at the office without your boss knowing by playing it in a quadrant of a fake video conference call. Read the rest

The Mini Cooper SE battery electric vehicle will go on sale in 2020, according to Ars Technica. The manufacturer specified range of 148-167 miles will more likely be 150 miles between charges, and it has a 181 hp motor.From Ars Technica:Throughout Mini's 60-year history, the brand has always been about small front-wheel-drive cars, and that continues here. In this case, the front wheels are going to be driven by a 181hp (135kW), 199lb-ft (270Nm) electric motor, powered by a 32.6kWh lithium-ion battery pack. To avoid compromising the Mini's diminutive form factor, the battery pack is T-shaped, and apparently there's no reduction in cargo volume as a result.Image: Mini Read the rest

Pillman is Oscar "Nanochess" Toledo's reimplementation of Pacman ("a game about a yellow man eating pills") in 512 bytes -- small enough to fit in a boot sector -- written in 8088 assembler. (via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Three basement levels of the Louvre are given over to the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF), which provides research and restoration services to France's 1,200+ art museums and galleries.C2RMF operates a 27m long particle accelerator called AGLAE that can bring particles up to 20% of the speed of light; the instrument is used to solve mysteries by determining which elements are present in artworks -- for example, determining whether a piece of antique Venetian glass sculpture really came from Venice.Science journalist Annie Minhoff, who co-hosts the Undiscovered podcast, got to tour the AGLAE facility as part of a science-journalist's junket put on by the Association des Journalistes scientifiques. Her Twitter thread on the trip is a charming delight, including the note that "every single person I heard from on this tour, from the AGLAE engineer to the director of this whole shebang, was a woman" and a photo of the "weird sculpture the AGLAE engineers made out of spare accelerator parts."Did you know there is a legit ✨particle accelerator✨in the basement of the Louvre museum!? I heard about this a few years ago, and have been dying to see it ever since. Well mes amis, yesterday I DID!Join me! On y va! 1/ pic.twitter.com/2iwqMx8uhn— Annie Minoff (@annieminoff) July 6, 2019(Image: Annie Minoff) Read the rest

From Wuhu in China's Anhui province comes one of the best worst insurance scam attempts ever.(Newsflare) Read the rest

I used to be on the program committee for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conferences; one year we decided to make the theme "magic" -- all the ways that new technologies were doing things that baffled us and blew us away.One thing I remember from that conference is that the technology was like magic: incredible when it worked, mundane once it was explained, and very, very limited in terms of what circumstances it would work under. Writing in Forbes, Kalev Leetaru compares today's machine learning systems to magic tricks, and boy is the comparison apt: "Under perfect circumstances and fed ideal input data that closely matches its original training data, the resulting solutions are nothing short of magic, allowing their users to suspend disbelief and imagine for a moment that an intelligent silicon being is behind their results. Yet the slightest change of even a single pixel can throw it all into chaos, resulting in absolute gibberish or even life-threatening outcomes."And just like magicians, the companies and agencies that use machine learning systems won't let you look behind the scenes or examine the props: Facebook won't reveal its false positive rates or allow external auditors for its machine learning system, which is why Instagram's anti-bullying AI is going to be a fucking catastrophe.Another important parallel: magic tricks depend on the deliberate cultivation of a misapprehension of what's going on. A magician convinces you that they're doing the same trick three times in a row, while really it's three different tricks, so the hypothesis you develop the first time is invalidated when you see the trick "again" a second time. Read the rest

Since its inception in 1988, David Byrne's Luaka Bop label has been a sure-fire source of some of the best music I've ever heard, from its compilations of Brazilian and Cuban music to bands like Cornershop, Os Mutantes, and Tom Ze. Though Byrne is no longer running the label, it continues to blaze a remarkable musical trail: its next album will be The Time For Peace Is Now, a collection of "secular gospel" rarities from the 1970s, "focusing not on Jesus or God, but instead on ourselves, and how we exist with each other."The music was recovered from "obscure 45s found in attics, sheds and crates across the American south" and it captures "an intense, soul-stirring version of gospel, unvarnished and honest, devout but never doctrinaire."Above: a trailer for the album; below, Willie Scott & The Birmingham Spirituals performing "Keep Your Faith to the Sky."Macarthur-prizewinner and science fiction writer Jonathan Lethem provided the liner notes. They read, in part:Music as permanently strong and meaningful as this doesn’t come from where—it comes from the opposite of nowhere. It comes from individual inspiration fired and forged and upheld by community, tradition, and context. Some of these songs are made by unknown persons who remain hidden from view; some by working musicians who moved from occasion to occasion and circumstance to circumstance. In either case, the creators in question left behind the particular piece of amazement collected here as a testament of one moment of synchronicity. This music has arrived here to change the world at last, or again. Read the rest

Ayla Kirstine of Norway can run like a horse. The effect, especially at a distance, is uncanny.Norwegian woman Ayla Kirstine developed an unusual skill — running and jumping like a horse because of her love for horses. Love takes so many wondrous forms👇 pic.twitter.com/9myyPuEoBy— MadhuPurnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) June 24, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

I have certainly made this mistake and had to rush bad to my starting to roll car. It has not gotten away from me, however. Read the rest

Zoom is an incredibly popular videoconferencing tool. In late March, security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh notified the company that its Mac software contained a ghastly vulnerability that allowed attackers to take over your camera after tricking you into clicking a malicious link. Leitschuh gave Zoom 90 days to fix the bug before going public (a common courtesy extended by security researchers when they discover dangerous bugs) then watched in dismay as the company slow-walked a response, so that when the deadline rolled around, the vulnerability was still in place.To make things worse, Zoom's installer silently installs an insecure web-server as part of its package -- a server whose defects leave Mac users vulnerable to denial of service attacks -- and then doesn't uninstall the server when you remove the software, leaving former Zoom users vulnerable until they undertake an elaborate and complex uninstall process.Zoom defended its partial response to the vulnerability, saying that leaving the vulnerability in place preserves its convenient "one-click to join" function, calling this its "key product differentiator." It says that if users want to choose a higher level of security, they can manually reconfigure Zoom to turn off their camera until they turn it on.Zoom has made some back-end tweaks to make this attack harder to execute, but Leitschuh describes ways that these can be trivially bypassed. Leitschuh estimates that about 4 million systems are vulnerable.I am a regular Zoom user and I'm aghast at this behavior, which, per Leitschuh's description, was a shitshow from start to finish. Read the rest

Peter Beinart has written a piece for The Atlantic that uses the measles epidemic as a pretty good example of what is happening to our society as a whole.Our amnesia about vaccines is part of a broader forgetting. Prior generations of Americans understood the danger of zero-sum economic nationalism, for instance, because its results remained visible in their lifetimes. When Al Gore debated Ross Perot about NAFTA in 1993, he reminded the Texan businessman of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised tariffs on 20,000 foreign products—prompting other countries to retaliate, deepening the Great Depression, and helping to elect Adolf Hitler. But fewer and fewer people remember the last global trade war. Similarly, as memories of Nazism fade across Europe and the United States, anti-Semitism is rising. Technology may improve; science may advance. But the fading of lessons that once seemed obvious should give pause to those who believe history naturally bends toward progress.Declining vaccination rates not only reflect a great forgetting; they also reveal a population that suffers from overconfidence in its own amateur knowledge. In her book Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, the University of Colorado at Denver’s Jennifer Reich notes that starting in the 1970s, alternative-health movements “repositioned expertise as residing within the individual.” This ethos has grown dramatically in the internet age, so much so that “in arenas as diverse as medicine, mental health, law, education, business, and food, self-help or do-it-yourself movements encourage individuals to reject expert advice or follow it selectively.” Autodidacticism can be valuable. Read the rest

Watch twins Niko and Marko Martinovic use their natural born prank powers for good. (LifeOfTwinz) Read the rest

At least ten unexploded bombs are hidden somewhere deep in the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. They are leftovers from a 1943 allied air force raid that dropped 165 bombs in the area. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pompeii attracts more than 2.5 million visitors annually. From The Guardian:“Ninety-six bombs were located and deactivated,” the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reported. “The other bombs ended up in an area of the site that has not yet been excavated. Many of them were defused or had already exploded. But at least 10 of those explosives are still there.”Of the 66 hectares (163 acres) of the archaeological area, only 44 have been excavated. At least 10 unexploded bombs are yet to be found in the 22 remaining hectares, according to the investigation.The Archaeological Museum of Pompeii said: “There is no risk for visitors. The site has regularly drawn up the reclamation project, which is carried out by the military. Area reclamation was carried out per metre.”But Il Fatto said there was no sign of official documents for the location of at least 10 bombs...According to statistics from the Italian defence ministry, thousands of second world war bombs are defused in the country every year.image: Mark Vuaran (CC) Read the rest

IGN tells us a movie about Jesus Quintana, The Jesus, is coming to the big screen.A spinoff of The Big Lebowski called Jesus Rolls and starring John Turturro himself has been confirmed for a 2020 release date by Screen Media, according to ComicBook.The movie is being written and directed by Turturro and will tell a new story that features his classic character of Jesus Quintana and what he's been up to in the time following The Big Lebowski.As rumored previously after the Stella Artois commercial that premiered during the 2019 Super Bowl, this is not a sequel to The Big Lebowski, and both Jeff Bridges and John Goodman will not be in the movie, nor will the Coen Brothers have any hand in the production, although they did give Turturro permission to use his character in a spinoff movie.The handling of this character will be interesting, based on the original film 'The Jesus' is a registered sex offender.In a statement, Turturro said, "It feels like a good time to release a transgressive film about the stupidity of men who try and fail and try better to understand and penetrate the mystery of women. I look forward to working with Screen Media and bring our work and the character of the Jesus to American audiences.” Read the rest

More than 100 hours of MIR scanning has generated an image of a whole human brain with unprecedented level of detail. Massachusetts General Hospital researchers and their colleagues used a 7 Tesla MRI machine, recently approved by the FDA, to scan the donated brain from a 58-year-old-woman. The image shows detail down to .1 millimeter. From Science News:Before the scan began, researchers built a custom spheroid case of urethane that held the brain still and allowed interfering air bubbles to escape. Sturdily encased, the brain then went into a powerful MRI machine called a 7 Tesla, or 7T, and stayed there for almost five days of scanning...Researchers can’t get the same kind of resolution on brains of living people. For starters, people couldn’t tolerate a 100-hour scan. And even tiny movements, such as those that come from breathing and blood flow, would blur the images...These (new kinds of) detailed brain images could hold clues for researchers trying to pinpoint hard-to-see brain abnormalities involved in disorders such as comas and psychiatric conditions such as depression. "7 Tesla MRI of the ex vivo human brain at 100 micron resolution" (bioRxiv.org) Read the rest

So the kids are on summer vacation? That doesn't mean you can't do a little schooling yourself. These eLearning bundles from CreativeLive can teach you photography, finance, podcasting or other life skills with curriculum from established professionals in each field. Read on for details:The Complete Outdoor Photography BundleEvery day, there are sunsets and landscapes just begging to be captured on camera. All you need is the gear and the know-how, and this five-course master class can help you find both. Get tips on lighting, post-processing and wildlife photography from award-winning, internationally published photogs like Thomas Mangelsen and Matt Kloskowski. The Complete Outdoor Photography Bundle is now $29, a full 93% off the MSRP.How To Start A Podcast Bundle Feat. Award-Winning Podcast ProducersAnyone who's got a favorite podcast has thought about making their own. There's much more to it than just a microphone and some stories, though, as you'll find on this bundle that features producers from hit NPR shows like "This American Life" and "Snap Judgement" sharing inside info about the business and creative side of this rapidly expanding corner of the media landscape. Pick up the How To Start A Podcast Bundle Feat. Award-Winning Podcast Producers for $19, more than 92% off the list price.Smartphone Photography Basics BundleWith the power that smartphone cameras have these days, it's a shame to limit them to the occasional selfie. Whether you're snapping with your phone or more traditional gear, you'll get all the knowledge you need to jumpstart a career as a professional photographer from experienced veterans like Chris Orwig and Tony Corbell. Read the rest

Dr. Latisha Rowe, a family-medicine specialist, was on the way to Miami with her 8-year-old son. She says that an American Airlines flight crew publicly humiliated her by demanding she wrap herself in a blanket to conceal her dress, which they deemed "inappropriate".Here is what i was wearing when @AmericanAir asked me to deplane for a talk. At which point I was asked to “cover up”. When defending my outfit I was threatened with not getting back on the flight unless I walked down the aisle wrapped in a blanket. #notsofriendlyskiesBuzzfeed News interviewed her.Rowe told BuzzFeed News she and her 8-year-old son were guided outside the aircraft and she was asked if she had a jacket. Confused, Rowe replied, “No, I don’t.” After questioning Rowe further, the flight attendant made it clear that she could not board the plane as her romper was too revealing.“I felt powerless,” Rowe said. “There was nothing I could do in that moment other than give up my money and my seat to defend my position that I was completely appropriate.”Using a blanket that was provided by the crew, she covered up her waist and walked back to her seat feeling “humiliated.”Business Insider adds:After she wrapped the blanket around her waist, she said, another flight attendant came up and warned her not to make a scene, despite the fact that she was deliberately behaving calmly to avoid escalating the situation. When they tell you not to "make as scene", that's a tell. Read the rest

This is quite a sight! At Emerald Downs in Auburn, Washington, a bunch of folks in inflatable T-Rex costumes struggled to make their way down the horse-racing track this past weekend. Triguard Pest Control puts on this annual race, which serves as a terrific promotion of the racetrack. This video was placed on Facebook late Friday night and has already garnered over 195K shares.Here's a video of the dinos racing back in 2017: Read the rest

This bird is smarter than I am. The Independent:In a video posted on social media, titled ‘Fuck the police”, the sulphur-crested cockatoo is seen patiently ripping out sections of metal spikes and dropping them on the pavement outside the Town Centre Arcade on Katoomba Street. The camera later pans down to reveal the bird has torn out dozens of the sections across the entire length of the wall.The footage, which was posted on Monday by Isaac Sherring-Tito, has been shared more than 34,000 times on Facebook. Read the rest

In 1930 Harold Lasseter claimed he'd discovered an enormous deposit of gold in the remote interior of Australia, and a small group of men set off into the punishing desert in search of a fortune estimated at 66 million pounds. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Lasseter's reef, one of the most enduring legends of the Australian outback.We'll also reconsider the mortality rates of presidents and puzzle over an unlocked door.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Ex-Secret Service officer Liam Booth was the head of security for Mark Zuckerberg's "family office" and charitable foundation; two former employees accused Booth of homophobia, transphobia, "pervasive discriminatory conduct," and "horrific levels of sexual harassment and battery," saying that he had made racist remarks about Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan; that he had told a staffer that he "didn't trust Black people" and that he believed that "white lives matter more than Black lives" and had personally sabotaged Chan's attempt to hire more diverse staff; that he'd complained about the number of Black people working for the family charity; and that he'd "angrily advocat[ed] against diversity in the workplace and the movement Black Lives Matters, which he called 'reverse racism.'"The accusers hired attorney Lisa Bloom to represent them; Bloom previously represented survivors of Bill O'Reilly's workplace sexual abuse.Zuckerberg's family office launched an internal investigation and concluded that Booth was not guilty. Booth resigned despite this conclusion. His accusers say that the unwillingness of Zuckerberg to hire an independent, external investigator is evidence that he isn't interested in uncovering the truth -- rather, he just wants the scandal quickly and quietly done away with.The accusers do not allege that Zuckerberg knew about Booth's conduct. In response, The Bloom Firm continued to call for an independent investigation into the allegations. "We continue to urge the family to retain a truly neutral, independent investigator experienced in harassment and discrimination claims to make factual findings and recommendations on these urgent and important claims," Lisa Bloom, the head of the firm, said in an emailed statement. Read the rest

In 2012, the Wall Street Journal first reported on a mysterious cellphone surveillance tool being used by law-enforcement; years later, we learned that the origin of this report was an obsessive jailhouse lawyer who didn't believe that the cops had caught him the way they said they had.It turned out that law enforcement across America had been secretly buying and using a location-tracking cellphone surveillance tool from the Harris Corporation, which called the device a "Stingray." The Stingray -- shrouded in secrecy -- was the first know "cell site simulator": a fake cellphone tower that tricked nearby phones into connecting to it briefly in order to capture their unique identifiers.As the years went by, we learned more about this form of surveillance, including disclosures about the existence of more powerful CSSes with wider features -- including Drtboxes, which are affixed to the underside of planes or drones and used to capture citywide location/identity data from millions of phones.CSSes remain shrouded in mystery. None of the police agencies that use them will describe their capabilities -- they seem to have been bound by nondisclosure agreements -- and the companies jealously guard the details of how they work. Thanks to leaks and diligent work by independent researchers, we have a fragmentary record of what these devices do, which defects in mobile phone standards they exploit, and what avenues we might pursue in order to avoid being caught by them (at least 40 CSSes of unknown origin were discovered to be in operation in DC in 2018; many presume that they are being operated by hostile foreign powers). Read the rest

Insane Clown Posse fandom has some pretty jazzy membership benefits.Consequence of Sound:It turns out that Juggalos face makeup cannot be accurately read by many facial recognition technologies. Most common programs identify areas of contrast — like those around the eyes, nose, and chin — and then compare those points to images within a database. The black bands frequently used in Juggalo makeup obscure the mouth and cover the chin, totally redefining a person’s key features. Read the rest

Roxanne Lehmann defines herself as a “👗Dressmaker🧶Knitter🧵Quilter🌼Crafter🤓Cosplayer” on Instagram, where she posts images of her incredible sewing projects and whimsical DIY dresses.She made a “Starbucks dress.”It is awesome.“I was trying to think of a unique costume idea for weeks,” she writes. “When I glanced at my coffee one day, I immediately envisioned what i wanted to sew.”“I love those moments of creative inspiration.”I made a Starbucks dress!She's also a contributor to IMGUR. Check out her work on sewing.patternreview.com. View this post on Instagram Starbucks Coffee Cup Dress I was searching for inspiration for a unique costume idea that would be true to my style. This dress was so much fun to make! The bodice was lined, and I layered the dress over a purchased dress extender slip. I prefer to use slips rather than lining my skirts because it saves me time, money, materials, and the frustration of dealing with slippery fabrics! I digitized the logo for machine embroidery, and due to my limited hoop size it had to be split into four sections so I could rehoop the bodice after each quadrant. My Janome SkylineS9, the AcuSetter app and my iPad made this process so simple. I'm not sponsored but I love my sewing/embroidery machine! 💖 S1651: Flared skirt in white crepe suiting M6955: Bodice with waistline dart in white crepe suiting S1415: Princess seam strapless bodice in brown stretch corduroy #cosplay #costume #coffee #starbucks #starbuckscostume #dresses #sewing #creativesewing #mccallspatterns #simplicity #janome #sewingmachine #embroideryA post shared by ❤🧵Roxanne Lehmann👗❤ (@roxisasewingmachine) on Mar 16, 2019 at 9:35pm PDT Read the rest

Newly unearthed scandals are placing a harsh spotlight on the United States Government agency behind Voice of America, Radio Martí, TV Martí, and other broadcast entities purportedly in the business of amplifying American values abroad.One top executive billed $37,000 in made-up travel expenses. A reporter and a cameraman are accused of faking a mortar attack on the US propaganda channel that beams news to Cuba. The U.S. government agency tasked with broadcasting American values to the world behaves like it has no values at all.“The United States Agency for Global Media, the government’s foreign broadcast service, already struggling to clean house after a series of scandals last year at flagship operations like Voice of America and TV Martí, is now being rocked by two new cases that have raised further questions about its journalistic and financial management,” writes Elizabeth Williamson at the New York Times:In one, Tomás Regalado Jr., a reporter for TV Martí, which broadcasts into Cuba, and a cameraman for the network, Rodolfo Hernandez, were suspended amid allegations that they faked a mortar attack on Mr. Regalado during a broadcast from Managua, Nicaragua, last year.That incident surfaced only days after Haroon Ullah, the former chief strategy officer at the global media agency, which operates Martí and foreign-language networks around the world, pleaded guilty on June 27 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to stealing government property.A former deputy to the agency’s chief executive, John Lansing, Mr. Ullah admitted to fleecing the government of $37,000 between February and October last year by claiming reimbursements for expensive hotels he did not book, double-billing the government for official travel and forging a doctor’s note to allow him to fly business class. Read the rest

Even the fireworks were corrupt at Donald Trump's July 4th rain-dampened, taxpayer-funded, narcissistic dick-wag fascism fiesta.Bruce Zoldan is the CEO of an Ohio fireworks company, and is reported to have donated $750,000 dollars worth of fireworks to President Trump’s 2019 Fourth of July military parade.Zoldan also successfully lobbied the president to not implement tariffs on all the pyrotechnics they import from China, where fireworks were invented and are still mostly created to this day.From ABC News:President Donald Trump's Fourth of July celebration will feature $750,000 of donated fireworks from an Ohio retailer who has lobbied the White House against expanded tariffs on Chinese imports.And last week, the same day the donation was announced, the company -- Phantom Fireworks of Youngstown, Ohio -- got what it wanted: Trump decided to hold off on his threatened $300 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which include fireworks."This is another example of how private companies attempt use their money to influence the government by stroking the president's ego," says Jordan Libowitz from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics is FOIA-ing for more financial information on the matter:Following reports that Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan both donated $750,000 dollars worth of fireworks to President Trump’s Fourth of July celebration and successfully lobbied the president to not implement tariffs that could negatively impact his business, CREW requested documents from the Interior Department to establish how the donation came about and details about Interior’s use of its gift acceptance authority. Read the rest