Theresa Thorn (co-host of the excellent parenting podcast One Bad Mother and Jesse Thorn (proprietor of the excellent Maximum Fun podcasting network) have a transgender daughter; Theresa has written a beautiful, sweet picture book about gender identity based on her experiences with her trans kid: It Feels Good to Be Yourself.Aimed at small children, It Feels Good to Be Yourself tackles what could be an overly complex subject by reducing it to the simple message at the core of the gender acceptance movement: however you feel about yourself is the right way to feel about yourself, and the people who love you still love you however you feel about yourself -- and being a good person means letting other people define themselves and respecting their choices.The book ranges over the differences between sex as assigned at birth and gender identity, covering transgender identity and several kinds of nonbinary identity, with the kind of matter-of-factness that reveals the complexity as an artefact of grownups' hang-ups, not any intrinsic thorniness.The accompanying illustrations by Noah Grigni, a nonbinary, transgender artist, are as simple and sweet as Thorn's storytelling. This book manages to be both modest and unassuming while simultaneously being a watershed. Highly recommended.It Feels Good to Be Yourself [Theresa Thorn and Noah Grigni/Henry Holt and co](Thanks, Jesse!) Read the rest

A new study from Facebook AI Research evaluates common machine-learning classifiers' ability to label photos of objects found in households in rich countries versus household objects from poor countries and finds that the models' performance lags significantly when being asked to classify the possessions of poor people.Partly that's due to differences in the objects themselves (poor countries' popular brands of dish soap are simply unrecognized by the system and people in poor countries may use products or categories of products that are unknown in rich countries) and partly it's due to the circumstantial differences of people living in poor countries -- for example, the classifiers struggled to recognize toothbrushes when they were appeared outside of the bathroom, as may be the case in people who live in a single room.It's a fascinating look at the thorny problem of sampling and training bias. More interestingly, it's a great mcguffin for a techno-thriller, in which crooks buy up poor-world objects to confound security systems' classifiers.More importantly, our study has identified geographical and income-related accuracy disparities but it has not solved them. Our analysis in Section 3 does suggest some approaches that may help mitigate these accuracy disparities such as geography-based resampling of image data sets and multi-lingual training of image-recognition models, for instance, via multi-lingual word embeddings [9]. Such approaches may, however, still prove to be insufficient to solve the problem entirely: ultimately, the development of object-recognition models that work for everyone will likely re-quire the development of training algorithms that can learnnew visual classes from few examples and that are less susceptible to statistical variations in training data. Read the rest

Hong Kong's 2016 Umbrella Revolution saw weeks of mass protests over a change to nomination rules for the city's ruling council, in which the central government in Beijing arrogated to itself the right to decide who could be on the ballot (Boss Tweed: "I don't care who gets to do the voting, so long as I get to do the nominating").Three years later, the authoritarian rule of Beijing is closer than ever to Hong Kong, with brazen kidnappings of pro-democracy booksellers who were then rendered to the mainland and coerced into televised "confessions."Now, the tame Hong Kong council is seeking to formalize this system of kidnappings and coercion with a law that would allow for Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to mainland China, leading to massive protests on a scale not seen since the Umbrella Revolution (the current wave of protesters are also carrying umbrellas, this time to deflect tear-gas and pepper-spray attacks).The protests are being carried out under the #612strike banner (the related photos and videos are incredible, heartening and distressing by turns).More than one million protesters have repeatedly shut down the city's main arteries and blockaded its key buildings. They're not just braving police brutality, either: it's impossible to overstate how hot, humid and rainy Hong Kong is at this time of year; it may sound like a small thing, but marching in this weather, let alone being kettled without shade or drinking water, is a major physical feat.Black-shirted protesters wearing helmets and goggles taunted police outside the complex as they descended on the streets against the bill which, critics say, will undermine the city's civil freedoms in its "one China, two systems" structure. Read the rest

Every year, VC Mary Meeker (previously) publishes her must-read Internet Trends Report, which comes as a powerpoint deck with hundreds of slides (you can watch her power through them in 30 minutes flat at the Re-Code conference).This year's topline trends: * More than half the world is online so growth is slowing* Ecommerce is still eroding brick-and-mortar retail* Infosec is a dumpster-fire, with global political repercussions* China and India each have more internet users than the US or Europe* Internet ad growth is nosediving* Programmatic rules internet ads* User acquisition costs are climbing* Freemium has moved from entertainment (where it is still strong) to business (where it's growing)* TV is tanking, mobile video is rising, now beats TV* Payment systems like Square are experiencing strong growth, serving businesses that were historically unable to accept electronic payments* Gig working is growing* Image-based communications (videos, photos) are growing at the expense of text-based communications* Gaming is growing, as is game-streaming* Businesses are collecting more data than ever* "Data-plumbers" who provide back-end services for billing, account management, etc are a growth sector and key to the success of many larger businesses* Customers are more privacy conscious but still willing to share their data in exchange for "personalized services"* People are less happy with social media and how it affects their lives* Encryption is growing* Bad news sells better than good news* Social media amplifies bad acts, bad news, bad feelings, bad beliefs* Internet freedom is in global decline, balkanization ("splinternet") is one the rise* Unemployment is a growing problem everywhere except the USA* Online training and education is growing, driven in part by the mounting costs of traditional college* Immigrants are key to US growth, with many successful tech businesses founded by first/second-gen immigrants* Proportion of people in America born abroad is at a high-water mark not seen in a century* US health insurance, costs, efficacy: a total dumpster-fire* Big Tech is moving to hold Americans' health data and involve itself in their health decisions* Chinese consumer confidence is in the toilet* Chinese growth is in the toilet* Chinese account balance is plummeting* Chinese exports have leveled off* Chinese mobile saturation is high, and mobile growth has ended* Chinese mobile internet usage continues strong growth* Chinese "super apps" are totally unlike anything used in the west* Chinese education is migrating online* So are Chinese government services(via Copernican Shift) Read the rest

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- I've listened to the radio play, enjoyed the text adventure, and read the book multiple times. Amazon has the Kindle version of Douglas Adams' masterpiece on sale at a low price. Read the rest

Emily Lakdawalla and her colleagues at one of one of my favorite science nonprofits The Planetary Society prepared this fascinating map titled "Where We Are: An At-A-Glance Spacecraft Locator." As William S. Burroughs once said, "This is the space age and we are here to go." Read the rest

The latest addition to Amazon's line of always-on, ever-listening, networked, insecure (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) snitchy smart speakers is the new rev of the Echo Dot Kids Edition, whose "kid-friendly" Alexa is like surveillance Barbie without the pretense of being a toy. This All-New release is based on the latest Echo Dot hardware iteration (third-generation), but is 70 percent louder than the old kids model. It also costs $69.99 compared to the standard Echo Dot's $49.99 price tag, however, right now both prices have been reduced by $20.All-New Echo Dot Kids Edition Launches June 26 [Matthew Humphries/PC Mag](Image: Cryteria, CC-BY)(Thanks, Tommy!) Read the rest

"Impossible Somatosensation" is a paper written by Isabel Won, Steven Gross, and Chaz Firestone Johns of Hopkins University. From the abstract: "We show that, even in full-cue conditions with objects that can be freely inspected, subjects can be made to experience a single object alone as feeling heavier than a group of objects that includes the single object as a member — an impossible and phenomenologically striking experience of weight. Impossibility can not only be seen, but also felt."Stimuli and ProcedureSubjects saw three opaque boxes in a stack, which we refer to here as Boxes A, B, and C. Subjects were instructed to perform two lifts, one immediately after the other: In one case, they lifted Boxes A, B, and C together; in another case, they lifted Box A alone. Here in Experiment 1, subjects lifted the boxes simply by grasping them with their hands, in whatever posture felt natural (though later experiments varied this grasp posture).After the two lifts (whose order was counterbalanced across subjects), subjects were asked which lift felt heavier (or, for half of the subjects, which lift felt lighter), and the experimenter recorded the subject’s response.ResultsSubjects overwhelmingly reported that Box A alone felt heavier than Boxes A, B, and C together (90% of subjects reporting A heavier than A+B+C, binomial probability test, p<.001 against chance [50%] responding; Figure 3)1. However, this result should be “impossible”, because the sum of weights over a set of objects could never be less than the sum of weights over a subset of those objects: Unless the boxes somehow changed between lifts, Box A couldn’t weigh more than a group of weighted objects that includes Box A as a member. Read the rest

Swidl is a robot that can quickly slide its thin flat tongue underneath gooey spills without disrupting their shapes. I can't begin to imagine a purpose for it other than forensic-grade vomit archiving (the given example is ... meat towels?) but it's amazing to watch in action. Thluuuuuuuup! Read the rest

Veteran reviewer/interviewer Rick Kleffel (previously) has just posted a long podcast interview (MP3) with Neal Stephenson, discussing his latest novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell ("a science fiction novel with a fantasy novel stuck inside of it"). The interview ranges over the connections between the new book and Stephenson's canon -- it revisits themes going back to Snow Crash and features characters from Cryptonomicon -- and the way that the 2016 election disrupted Stephenson's plans and forced him to rethink his critique of the collapse of consensus reality (the section on this is a real standout).I'm nearly done the book myself and loving it, despite the 880-page length, which contains some draggy sections. I'm planning a review for next week or later this week. In the meantime, here's a little from Kleffel's review:The joy of Stephenson’s fantasy novel-within-a-novel is that it is informed by and intercut with a toe-tapping tale of near-future intrigue. Every coin in the fantasy world has two sides as characters from the supposed real world (assuming we are not a simulation), find themselves reborn in a world that manages to be weirder than ours. Stephenson uses the fantastic not just to externalize our world into his near-future, he uses his fantasy to externalize the characters in his novel. It’s an economical means for him to entertain the hell out of us (you’re ignoring the so-called real world when you’re immersed in this tense-in-all-worlds narrative) while providing a great dose of exploding-head thought experimentation. Read the rest

Callum Booth of TNW created this animated bar chart showing the rise and fall of different social media networks over the last 16 years.Firstly, I had no idea how old LinkedIn is – that damn network has been around since the beginning. We also talk a lot about MySpace’s fall from grace, but the creators of Friendster must be kicking themselves at losing such a big market share.I was also surprised that Google Buzz (remember that?) was the third most popular social network for a year or two – what a world.That’s just scratching the surface though, I’ve watched that social media bar chart race multiple times and always find another interesting nugget. One thing’s for certain, judging by how many times the top spot changed hands over the past 16 years, none of the social media giants should be resting on their laurels. Really, anything can happen. Read the rest

I am not enthusiastic about Google Stadia's chances.Ars:Google says you'll need 35Mbps to play at maximum settings—that's 4K resolution, high dynamic range (HDR), and 60 frames per second (fps) with 5.1 surround sound. As PC Gamer noted last week, that adds up to 15.75GB per hour, which would use up an entire 1TB monthly data allotment in 65 hours of game time.Stadia will work at lower resolutions, with Google recommending 20Mbps for 1080p/60fps with 5.1 surround sound, and 10Mbps for 720p/60fps with stereo sound. That's 9GB and 4.5GB per hour, respectively, potentially using up a 1TB data cap in 114 or 228 hours. Read the rest

Thanks to advances in rapid prototyping, "fake watches are a one-to-one replica of the real thing." Until the camera zoomed way in, I could not tell which watch cost £10,000 and which one cost £1,000.<p><em>[<a href="https://www.doobybrain.com/blog/2019/6/11/comparing-a-fake-rolex-to-a-real-one">via Doobybrain</a>]</em><em>Image: YouTube</em> Read the rest

Twitter's Sensitive Media Policy bans the display of "symbols historically associated with hate groups" in your profile or banner, and of course that includes the covers of books that criticize hate groups, such as David Neiwert's 2017 book, Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, whose cover features a stylized US flag in which the stars are all wearing little Klan hoods.Twitter has suspended Neiwert's account for violating the policy by including his book cover in his profile, and Neiwert is refusing to remove it on principle.Does this sound familiar? It should. Youtube's anti-Nazi policies are also resulting in mass removals of anti-Nazi videos. As Jillian C York writes in EFF's Caught in the Net: The Impact of "Extremist" Speech Regulations on Human Rights Content report: "The examples highlighted in this document show that casting a wide net into the Internet with faulty automated moderation technology not only captures content deemed extremist, but also inadvertently captures useful content like human rights documentation, thus shrinking the democratic sphere. No proponent of automated content moderation has provided a satisfactory solution to this problem."“My account was suspended because of the photo of the cover of my book in my profile. This book, 'Alt-America,' is a history of the rise of the radical right in the United States over the past 30 years. It naturally has an illustration featuring KKK hoods because that is its subject. I am one of the nation's leading experts on this subject, and it is insane that you would suspend my account because of this photo. Read the rest

Beneath a crater on the moon lies what could be the remains of a colossal, metal-rich asteroid that hit our moon 4 billion years ago.From NY Mag:It sits 180 miles beneath the South Pole-Aitken basin — one of the solar system’s largest impact craters, and the moon’s oldest, at over 4 billion years — a massive dent spanning some 1,550 miles on the far side of the moon. (It’s also where China landed its Chang’e 4 lunar rover in January.) Publishing in Geophysical Research Letters, the Baylor scientists have two theories for the origin of the huge subterranean blob. It could be the leftovers of dense oxides created in the last years when the moon’s surface was an ocean of magma — a theory that relies on the giant-impact hypothesis, when an impactor the size of Mars may have collided into a magma-covered Earth, ejecting magma into orbit that became the surface of the moon.Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU Read the rest

"On average, people could actually be ingesting approximately 5 grams of microplastics every week - that’s the equivalent of a credit card." That's according to a study by WWF, Dalberg, and the University of Newcastle, Australia.From the report (PDF):The long-term effects of plastic ingestion on the human body are not yet well documented. But studies have shown that beyond a certain exposure level, inhalation of plastic fibres seem to produce mild inflammation of the respiratory tract. In marine animals, higher concentrations of microplastics in their digestive and respiratory system can lead to early death. Research studies have demonstrated toxicity in vitro to lung cells, the liver, and brain cells.Some types of plastic carry chemicals and additives with potential effects on human health. Identified health risks are due to production process residues, additives, dyes and pigments found in plastic, some of which have been shown to have an influence on sexual function, fertility and increased occurrence of mutations and cancers. Airborne microplastics may also carry pollutants from the surrounding environment. In urban environments, they may carry PAHs – molecules found in coal and tar − and metals.Image: WWF Read the rest

The 2321 piece LEGO Voltron is the first non-Star Wars set I've really, really wanted in a long time.Make no mistake, this is Lion Force Voltron, and it looks awesome!Amazon is offering one-day delivery in my area, so it'd still arrive in plenty of time for a Father's DAy build.LEGO Ideas Voltron 21311 Building Kit (2321 Pieces) via Amazon Read the rest

You gotta give it to these French-speaking folks for trying to pronounce these difficult-for-them English words. And you gotta give it Frenchly, the makers of the video, for making the words more challenging as it goes along. Psychophysicotherapeutics, anyone? [via; Previously] Read the rest

I recently wrote about how much I enjoyed testing the OnePlus 7 Pro. One of the nicer things about it was the fact that its in-display fingerprint reader, unlike the one in the last-gen OnePlus handset, works in a timely manner. Too bad that, no matter how quickly it can read a fingerprint, it still isn't smart enough to stand up to a bit of arts and crafts from a determined security hacker. Now, before anyone goes and loses their minds over this hack, it's important to note that in order for it to work, a digital interloper would need to get hold of the fingerprint belonging to the handset's owner in order to copy it. The best way to secure your phone against a hack like this, or being forced to unlock your smartphone for the authorities is to lock it down with an alphanumeric code. While using biometrics to unlock your hardware might be convenient, when push comes to shove, it won't keep your digital life secure from professional snoops for long. Read the rest

Jeff Bezos and a "dozen tech titans" enjoyed a mini-conference in a medieval Italian hamlet, reports GQ magazine. Leading the story was a group shot of the gang, which includes only two women: Ruzwana Bashir and Lynn Jurich. Problem is, Bashir and Jurich are photoshopped into the photo, as demonstrated when BuzzFeed's Ryan Mac noticed their odd poses and @benjymous found the untamperered original on LinkedIn.I got some questions about this story on "tech titans" in Italy, and uhhh I think this photo is photoshopped? ... Look at the woman, supposedly SunRun CEO Lynn Jurich, in the background. Some weird stuff is going on with her leg, which isn't aligned with the rest of her body.Here is the LinkedIn post where it came from that went up a week ago. The person is Ferdinando de Bellis, a corporate communications professional who has worked with Cucinelli from Milan. (This will inevitably be taken down, so enjoy while you can.) https://t.co/8mV2jhqFWg pic.twitter.com/DL7dAGidjt— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) June 12, 2019Is two women enough to photoshop into the techie trip to Umbria? They should have photoshopped in at least four. Read the rest

Using vintage equipment, including the DECTalk Express (the machine that physicist Stephen Hawking once used to synthesize his speech), Youtuber bd594 creates an old school remix of Vanilla Ice's 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby." Yo, VIP, let's kick it!Devices Used:Stephen Hawking's vocals - DECTalk Express (Paul)Backup vocals - DECTalk Express (Harry)DECTalk TTY Controller - MiniComm IIBass - Yamaha CX-5M ComputerSynth Bass - 3.5" Floppy / CDRom head mechanism.Drums - Hard Drive HeadsCymbals - Hard Drive PlattersHand Claps - High voltage DC automotive spark coil(Blame it on the Voices) Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Donald J. Trump becomes Tariff Man to flex his Tariff-Powers in Mexico!

When Witcher III: The Wild Hunt was released a few years ago, everyone lost their minds over how great it was. Because my aging 2015 MacBook Pro lacked the guts to even consider running it, I never had the opportunity to take the game for a spin. It looks like the Nintendo Switch--the best port machine ever created--will finally give me a chance to step into Geralt of Rivia's shoes.From Nintendo:The Complete Edition contains every piece of downloadable content released for the game, including two massive story expansions: Hearts of Stone & Blood and Wine. It's the perfect opportunity to enter this world for the first time or relive the adventure — on the go! Coming to Nintendo Switch in 2019.The lack of a firm date for the game's release sucks, but it's not surprising. I suspect it'll be pushed out once the port is damn well good and ready. Being as I've gone this long without playing the game, I suspect I'll survive a little while longer without it. Image via Flickr, courtesy of BagoGames Read the rest

Cyber threats get more advanced every year, and "white hat" hackers are in demand. Online security experts are required to keep up on systems and strategies that are constantly updating, and it can be hard for employers to reliably know who is capable.Enter the Complete Ethical Hacking Certification Course, a comprehensive online master class in cyber-defense.All 21 hours of this boot camp are taught by Mohamed Atef, an ITC consultant with more than 20 years of experience. His course takes you through the makeup and vulnerabilities of 18 popular security domains and teaches how to counter 270 different attack strategies that malicious hackers can use to penetrate them. Along the way, you'll learn preventative measures like penetration testing and understand the various scanning and enumeration countermeasures that are part of any defense expert's toolbox. From Trojans to viruses to malware, you'll have the tools and know-how to deal with them all - and the certification to prove it.The Complete Ethical Hacking Certification Course is on sale now for $12.99, a full 93% off the original cost. Read the rest

Is there anything Adam Savage can't build? His new Discovery TV show attempts to answer the riddle.Yes, someone in a position of authority actually gave permission to Adam, of MythBusters fame, to build whatever he wants. So naturally, the first thing he chose was a real-life Iron Man suit (3D printed in titanium, no less). Adam ALSO decided to try to make a functional ZF-1, the infamous weapon from Fifth Element, as well as a sword from a meteorite. And his decked-out Mad Max car may just come in handy during the apocalypse.He had a little help from his friends, too, including Peter Jackson, Gary Oldman, Simone Giertz, MythBusters co-host Tory Belleci, and Richard Browning (of Take on Gravity ). Failure is always an option. You'll have to watch to see what flies, and what... doesn't.Here's a sneak peek of #SavageBuilds, in which @donttrythis tries on pieces of the #IronMan armor at @coschoolofmines. Watch Friday, June 14, at 10p E/P on @Discovery, following @BattleBots! pic.twitter.com/YZU9cXIoR8— Tested (@testedcom) June 12, 2019Watch the first episode of Adam's new series 'Savage Builds' on Friday, June 14, at 10p E/P on Discovery, following BattleBots.Boing Boing pal Bonnie Burton wrote a preview of what's to come with the show for CNET some months ago, here's a snip:The eight-episode series ... features Savage making epic creations like a 3D-printed titanium suit of armor that's inspired by the Iron Man films and actually flies.Each Savage Builds episode will focus on one project as Savage collaborates with experts, colleagues and friends who include filmmaker Peter Jackson, former MythBusters cast member Tory Belleci and others (...)One episode has Savage attempting to create a working version of one of history's most notorious engineering failures -- the British military's World War II rocket-propelled explosive weapon called The Great Panjandrum. Read the rest

Trump-aligned extremists are busily spreading disinformation online this week about 'Immigrants Are Bringing Ebola To The US.' Officials say the conspiracy amplified by Alex Jones of Infowars, Gateway Pundit, and other right-wingers is "Patently False."“Baseless rumors that asylum-seekers crossing the southern border were infected with the Ebola virus gained so much traction on social media this week that officials in Texas held a press conference Tuesday to dispel the fake reports,” writes BuzzFeed News Reporter Salvador Hernandez:Rumors about people from Congo infected with the potentially deadly virus had been circulating on social media for days from prominent conservative, alt-right, and white supremacist figures. On Tuesday, officials from the city of San Antonio addressed the misinformation after unsubstantiated reports were published on the conspiracy theory websites Infowars and Gateway Pundit, suggesting Ebola-infected immigrants were roaming the city's streets."This is a little bit much ado about nothing," said Colleen Bridger, assistant city manager and director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. "Any rumors that they are bringing Ebola or are at risk of Ebola are patently false."About 250 family units seeking asylum from Central Africa have crossed the border near San Antonio since June 4, Bridger said, including migrants from Congo and Angola. None of them have exhibited any signs of the virus or been flagged for the virus during their health screenings, she said.The rumor quickly spread Monday after the Alex Jones-owned outlet claimed in a headline, "U.S. Cities Overwhelmed With Numbers of Illegal Migrants Arriving From Ebola-Stricken Countries."An Infowars reporter also went to a temporary immigrant shelter at the San Antonio Resource Center to follow up on rumors about the virus. Read the rest

Eyelid wiggles! A useless superpower.This video is going around the internet with no attribution. The young woman (girl?) in the clip appears to be able to wiggle her eyelids in a way that few humans can. Are you one of the people who can do this?Watch:Eyelid wiggles Read the rest

Comedian, activist, and former late-night TV host Jon Stewart spoke on Capitol Hill today about getting health care and benefits for 9-11 first responders.Jon Stewart is a good man.Watch, listen, and be ashamed for America.CNN: “Stewart chokes up and slams Congress over health care for the 9/11 first responders during the hearing for reauthorizing the 9/11 victim compensation fund.” Read the rest

We knew it was a matter of time before someone tested Facebook's claim they won't remove so-called 'deepfakes,' aka convincingly real faked videos like that recently viral clip of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, edited to appear 'drunk'.Someone now testing Facebook's no-takedown policy is artist Bill Posters.“A fake video of Mark Zuckerberg giving a sinister speech about the power of Facebook has been posted to Instagram,” Motherboard's Samantha Cole writes. “The company previously said it would not remove this type of video.”Here's that video. View this post on Instagram Mark Zuckerberg reveals the truth about Facebook and who really owns the future... see more @sheffdocfest VDR technology by @cannyai #spectreknows #privacy #democracy #surveillancecapitalism #dataism #deepfakeA post shared by Bill Posters (@bill_posters_uk) on Jun 7, 2019 at 7:15am PDT Excerpt from her story:The video, created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe in partnership with advertising company Canny, shows Mark Zuckerberg sitting at a desk, seemingly giving a sinister speech about Facebook's power. The video is framed with broadcast chyrons that say "We're increasing transparency on ads," to make it look like it's part of a news segment."Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people's stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures," Zuckerberg's likeness says, in the video. "I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future."The original, real video is from a September 2017 address Zuckerberg gave about Russian election interference on Facebook. Read the rest

Suspension of disbelief is real, yo.WPXI:“I’m thinking this lady must have vaped this THC oil and got a high level in her system and (it) made her stop breathing, like a respiratory failure,” Montegut, who has served as coroner since 1988, told The Advocate.However, experts are doubtful. There are no reports of teens or adults dying solely from marijuana, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We know from really good survey data that Americans use cannabis products billions of times a year, collectively. Not millions of times, but billions of times a year,” Keith Humphreys, a former senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told The Advocate. “So, that means that if the risk of death was one in a million, we would have a couple thousand cannabis overdose deaths a year. Let’s assume (that the woman died from THC) is a fact. What do you conclude from that? It doesn’t justify really anything from a policy viewpoint. It’s just so incredibly unlikely.”Montegut stands by his report. "I'm 100 percent sure of the readings we've found,” he told WWLT. “I definitely did some research before I came to the conclusion that this was the cause of death." Read the rest

Regular readers will know Richard Kadrey (previously) from his bestselling Sandman Slim series, but as much as I love those books, I think I love his latest, "The Grand Dark" -- a noir/dieselpunk novel set in a fictionalized weimar city in a brief, hectic interwar period -- even more.As I write in my LA Times review of The Grand Dark: "If you read “Sandman Slim,” you know that Kadrey can do hard-boiled like nobody’s business, like a Tom Waits ballad in novel form. And you know that he can do plot like hell, a fast-burning, violent and relentless storytelling mode that propels his gentleman loser antiheroes along with great energy, in the face of adversity, beatings and impossible odds."Kadrey's latest tugs on so many timely threads about inequality and automation, forever wars and authoritarianism, environmental degradation and urbanism, all while thundering along like the first-rate adventure novel it is, steeped in so much wickedness that it's like someone put a cigar and a pint of prison wine in a nutribullet and inked a typewriter ribbon with the resulting slurry.Largo is a bike courier in the city of Lower Proszawa — once the down-at-heels ghetto to High Proszawa’s stately mansions but now all that remains of Proszawa, practically speaking, ever since the great war reduced High Proszawa to a deadly snarl of plague pits, bomb craters, unexploded ordnance and ruins. The great war is over now, and Lower Proszawa has been reborn, with new fancy neighborhoods springing up alongside the ruins of buildings that were shelled or merely left to rot during the long fight. Read the rest

A couple of weeks ago, I was thrilled to hear Subgenius founder, the Reverend Ivan Stang, interviewed on the Comedy on Vinyl podcast (previously) and to discover that the Church of the Subgenius was selling a $35 Salvation/Membership/Ordainment kit that was chock full of goodies.Growing up, Subgenius tropes were a secret recognition symbol for identifying fellow mutants, and I consumed their materials voraciously -- I not only memorized the Brag of the Subgenius, I also laboriously transcribed it to a set of my bedsheets using fabric crayons so I could sleep under the holy writ.The kit arrived last week and it did not disappoint. Naturally, it included a signed, personalized copy of the Book of the Subgenius:And then there was the folder full of goodies, including a minister's card and a handsome badge:Owning this material makes you an official, paid-up priest of the Church of the Subgenius, though you need to send away to the Universal Life Church before you can start officiating weddings:(If you're too impatient to wait for the ULC, you can perform unofficial, short term marriages right away)Once you're fully clergified, the kit has you covered, with a ministerial guide:A Doktorate to fill in and frame and display:And a ton of small ads and other missionary materials to take down to the photocopy shop, cut and start leaving under peoples' windshield wipers, etc (I've packed a supply in my travel bag to slip into the pages of Gideon bibles and Books of Mormon at the Marriott):The kit also includes some holy relics, like the first and second Subgenius pamphlets (the little brochures that started it all):Your official church vehicle and laptop will benefit from a selection of religious stickers:And you can decorate your religious chapel with some swanky Dobbsart:As well as a fine selection of inspirational broadsides, including The Brag (!):If you're going door-to-door to spread the good word about "Bob," be sure to take these with you:Look, we are living in some genuinely awful, fucked up, terrifying times. Read the rest

As a kid I was a dial pad virtuouso. Thanks, YouTube!Image courtesy of Amazon Read the rest

Rebecca Giblin (previously) writes, "We've just dropped a new study we've been working on for a year. You know how it keeps being claimed that we need longer copyrights because nobody will invest in making works available if they're in the public domain? Heald and some others have done some great work debunking that in the US context, but now we've finally tested this hypothesis in other countries by looking at the relative availability of ebooks to libraries. It's also the first time anyone has been able to compare availability of identical works (by significant authors) across jurisdictions. The books we sampled were all in the public domain in Canada and NZ, all under copyright in Australia, and a mix in the US (courtesy of its historical renewal system).""So what'd we find? That Canada and NZ (public domain) have access to more books and at cheaper prices than Australia (copyright) and the US (mixed). Also that publishers don't seem to have any problem competing with each other on the same popular titles. And, sadly but not surprisingly: 59% of our sampled 'culturally significant' authors had no books available to libraries in any country regardless of copyright status. That's because even the shortest terms wildly outlast most books' commercial life (even where they still have cultural value). "I think this new work is going to be important feeding into the next stage of the Canadian reform process in particular. I'm hopeful the Canadians will think very carefully about the ownership of that additional 20 years of rights they've been forced to give up (we talk about this on the final page)."There can be no doubt that radical action is needed to address copyright’s ongoing failures to secure a fair share of economic rewards to authors and promote widespread access to knowledge and culture. Read the rest

Data from facial recognition scans performed by US Customs and Border Patrol on travelers crossing at an unnamed lander border point (an anonymous source says it's a US-Canada crossing) have been stolen by hacker or hackers unknown.The CBP doesn't know how many records were leaked, but estimates the number at less than 100k. The CBP refused to state which contractor breached the data, but the memo it sent to the Washington Post about the breach was titled "CBP Perceptics Public Statement" and since Perceptics is a CBP contractor that does facial recognition (as well as license plate cameras and other forms of surveillance), it's a good bet that Perceptics is the culprit -- especially since Perceptics had hundreds of gigs of data breached and dumped last month by a person or persons going by "Boris the Bullet-Dodger" (it's possible that the facial recognition database was part of that dump.The CBP says the stolen facial recognition data isn't circulating, so maybe it wasn't part of the Boris the Bullet-Dodger dump, or maybe they're just lying or incompetent (see above, re: a memo entitled "CBP Perceptics Public Statement").As Brian Barrett points out on Wired, the fact that this was a contractor breach shouldn't make you feel any more secure -- the most sensitive data being collected by US government agencies is being stored insecurely by grifty Beltway Bandits who are leaking it all over the fucking internet.CBP collects tons of facial recognition data at border crossings, airports, etc, both overtly (by making you scan your face) and covertly (using CCTV footage to feed its databases). Read the rest

We use baking soda to clean surfaces around the house. We also pour it down sink drains to remove bad smells. Amazon has a great deal on a 5lb bag, so I just stocked up: Read the rest

Music critic Casey Rae's new book William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll explores the vast influence that Burroughs had on musicians both underground and mainstream, from David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Patti Smith to The Beatles, Kurt Cobain, and Radiohead. In a Longreads excerpt from the book, Rae tells the tale of Burroughs's 1965 meeting with Bob Dylan:Burroughs and Dylan took their meeting at a small café in Man­hattan’s East Village, the precise location of which has been lost to time and memory. “He struck me as someone who was obviously competent,” Burroughs later told Victor Bockris. “If his subject had been something that I knew absolutely nothing about, such as math­ematics, I would have still received the same impression of compe­tence. Dylan said he had a knack for writing lyrics and expected to make a lot of money.” Personally, Burroughs had little use for money beyond its utility in purchasing narcotics and avoiding hard labor. But he could easily spot élan, which Dylan had in spades. “He had a likable direct approach in conversation, at the same time cool, re­served,” Burroughs later recalled to Bockris. “He was very young, quite handsome in a sharp-featured way. He had on a black turtle­neck sweater.” Although they only met once in person, Burroughs left a mark on the younger artist. According to critic R. B. Morris, “There’s no doubt that he was greatly influenced by Burroughs’ wild juxtaposing of images and scenes, as well as subject matter.” After encountering Burroughs, Dylan’s work became even more abstract, caustic, and surreal. Read the rest

Chicago police are urging people not to use mobile phone cases that look like handguns because, y'know, it's just stupid. Apparently Illinois Conservation Police officers stopped a stolen car and saw a handgun in a passenger's waistband. According to a Facebook post by the agency, the police officer “observed this object and was able to quickly secure the individual in handcuffs and remove it. Only then was it apparent it was a cell phone case and not a real firearm." The people in the car were all minors and while the mobile phone gun cases are illegal in many places, they are not banned on state property where the incident occurred. From the Chicago Tribune:After the juvenile was released to a parent, the case was returned to the parent “and the parent was reminded of the dangers of carrying a product like that,” Torbert said.The department’s Facebook post said the incident “serves as a reminder how quickly situations unfold for officers under high-stress conditions, often leaving fractions of a second to make critical decisions.”Despite such bans, which exist in other states too, the cases — in black, white and pink — appear to be easily available to purchase on eBay and from stores that ship them from overseas.• Previously: "Man pointing bong shaped like a rifle causes major scare in San Diego" Read the rest

In 1989, Bic, makers of pens, shaving razors, and, of course, lighters, launched Parfum Bic. I really like the packaging inspired by cigarette lighters! Maybe the original idea was that the scent would cover up the stale funk of cigarette smoke. Weird Universe found this bit from a Detroit Free Press article at the time:Made entirely in France and packaged in little portable spritzers that look more than a bit like Bic lighters, Parfum Bic will retail for just $5 a quarter-ounce, one-tenth the price of a typical French perfume. Parfum Bic already is selling briskly in Europe, the company reports. Already, cocooned in decidedly downscale blister packs, the product is hitting the speed racks of American supermarkets, drug and variety stores. With this product, Bic hopes to create a whole new low-price perfume category by advancing the notion of perfume as a product that can be bought and used spontaneously."Bic Perfume" (Weird Universe) Read the rest

Google's decision to restrict access to the Chrome API needed for full ad-blocking to paid enterprise customers was especially worrisome because Chrome's free/open derivative, Chromium, is the basis for many other browsers, including Microsoft's Edge, as well as Opera and the privacy-focused Brave.Now, the other shoe has dropped: in statements to Zdnet's Catalin Cimpanu, representatives from Opera, Brave and Vivaldi said that they would not implement the change in their browsers, allowing their users to continue to block ads.Microsoft refused to comment on the matter.Forking Chromium is quite a drastic step, one that puts Google's control over the browser in jeopardy. The question is whether Google will yank any of the many levers it has at its disposal to override its open-source licensing to bring these other companies into line, or whether it is worried enough about antitrust that it sits this one out.In an email to ZDNet on Friday, Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave Software, said the Brave browser plans to support the old extension technology that Google is currently deprecating."To respond on the declarativeWebRequest change (restricting webRequest in full behind an enterprise policy screen), we will continue to support webRequest for all extensions in Brave," Eich told ZDNet.In addition, Brave itself supports a built-in ad blocker, that users can utilize as an alternative to any extension.Furthermore, Eich told ZDNet that Brave would continue to support uBlock Origin and uMatrix, the two extensions developed by Raymond Hill, the Chrome extension developer who's been highlighting Google's plans to sabotage Chrome ad blockers for the past months. Read the rest

I really hope Florida representative Matt Gaetz puts on more self-owning performances like this one, and I'm sure he will, because one of the distinguishing features of a MAGA politician is an utter lack of shame or self awareness. Here, he interrogates John Dean (former White House counsel to Richard Nixon), who makes short work of every one of Gaetz's limp gotcha questions. At one point everyone in the room laughs at one of Dean's comebacks.what a joke pic.twitter.com/Oqn80Djgyi&mdash; jordan (@JordanUhl) June 10, 2019Image: C-Span Read the rest

Whiskers are a fantastic natural sensor that enables cats, fish, seals, and many other animals to detect not just direct contact but even air flow indicating an approaching object. In a fascinating example of biomimicry, University of Queensland engineer Pauline Pounds and her colleagues have developed tiny whisker sensors for drones. According to the researchers, the whiskers are well-suited for "navigating through dark, dusty, smoky, cramped spaces, or gusty, turbulent environments with micro-scale aircraft that cannot mount heavier sensors such as lidars." At IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman writes:The whisker fibers themselves are easy to fabricate—they’re just blobs of ABS plastic that are heated up and then drawn out into long thin fibers like taffy. The length and thickness of the whiskers can be modulated by adjusting the temperature and draw speed. The ABS blob at the base of each whisker is glued to a 3D-printed load plate, which is in turn attached to a triangular arrangement of force pads (actually encapsulated MEMS barometers)...It can detect forces as low as 3.33 micronewtons, meaning that the researchers had to be careful not to stand too close to the whiskers while making measurements since the force of their breathing would throw things off. This sensitivity allows the whiskers to detect the wave of air generated by objects moving towards them, perhaps not in time for the drone to actually stop, but certainly in time for it to take other steps to protect itself, like cutting power to its motors. The whiskers can also be used to measure fluid flow (a proxy for velocity through the air), and of course, at slow speeds they work as contact sensors. Read the rest

The Thanos bikini is so popular that it is sold out. But a one-piece version is available. Read the rest

Since the earliest days of the "semantic web,", millions of dollars and hours of coding effort have been thrown at the problem of really organizing large corpuses of information, with two approaches emerging: rigid ontologies (like the Dewey Decimal system) that require a system's users to be deeply expert in the structures they're working in; and "folksonomies" (aka hashtags), which allow anyone to tag anything with anything, and leads to fragmentation (like #sign or #signs; or #photos, #pix, and #pictures, etc).Writing in Wired, Gretchen McCulloch looks at the "tag wranglers" of Archive of Our Own (AO3), the fanfic community maintained by the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation (disclosure: I am a volunteer advisor to the PCF), a group of about 350 volunteers who work behind the scenes to hand-craft equivalences between different tags, so that fanfic about John Watson and Sherlock Holmes can be tagged with "Johnlock or Sherwatson or John/Sherlock or Sherlock/John or Holmes/Watson" and still all be grouped together.The degree of organization and flexibility this brings to AO3 is significantly better than those used by "news sites, library catalogs, commercial sales websites, customer helpdesk websites, and PubMed (the most prominent database of medical research)," and where these sites perform better, it's thanks to the "ghost labor" of Mechanical Turks and other low-paid clickworkers who engage in tag-wrangling comparable to AO3, except that clickworkers are unlikely to have the deep understanding and commitment that AO3's tag-wranglers bring to the project.Archive of Our Own is up for a Hugo Award this year for "Best Related Work."Another of the Tag Wrangling Chairs, Qem, also thinks that machine tag wrangling is unlikely, pointing to machine translation as a cautionary tale. Read the rest

My Great Pyrenees and I are looking for options to beat the heat. Read the rest

In this Wired video, Clint Emerson, a retired Navy SEAL and crisis management professional, explains the difference between observation and "true situational awareness." Read the rest

ETA Prime takes a look at the new Pocket Go from Bittboy. The $40 device emulates GBA, SNES, MD, SMS, PCE, NES, GBC, GB, NEOGEO, and more. Read the rest

A Guam man plead guilty to stealing $12,000 worth of corned beef and mackerel from a supermarket there, reports the Pacific Daily News. Edwin Guiao Ocampo paid a $500 fine and "must also stay away from the store owner." A co-defendent, Iacinto Namio, will pay a $100 fine. Read the rest

Are your gambles paying off of late? Maybe it's time to double down on something wonderful, friends. The worst that can happen is that you'll die knowing that you tried for something better... or that you live a long life with your failure. In either event, you did your best.Image via Sin Bozurt via The Urban Voodoo Machine Read the rest