In 1851, Michael Faraday secretly measured the muscle movements of Ouija board users who believed that the planchette was under ghostly control. According to Faraday, the users were unconsciously moving their muscles and but truly thought a spirit was pushing the planchette. A few decades later, physiologist William Carpenter dubbed this the "ideomotor effect." To this day, the ideomotor effect is a powerful phenomena and one that scammers have used to sell bogus "scientific" instruments. From the Wellcome Collection:For example, in 2014, James McCormick, a British businessman, was convicted of selling fake bomb detectors to various international police forces. McCormick’s devices were marketed as using principles similar to dowsing, with extreme life-or-death stakes. The operator was supposed hold the device, called the ‘ADE 651’, like a wand, and allow its subtle movements to direct them towards dangerous substances.The devices themselves have been determined to be entirely non-functional. But thanks in part to the ideomotor effect, they could easily feel functional, especially if the operator were confident in their legitimacy.Since the late 1990s, non-functional detection devices with names such as ‘Sniffex’, ‘GT 200’ and ‘Alpha 6’ were sold by various scammers to governments throughout the world, including those of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, India, Thailand and Mexico. The World Peace Foundation of Tufts University, which tracks corruption related to international arms trading, estimates that fake bomb detectors generated more than $100 million in profit between 1999 and 2010."The psychology of Ouija" (Wellcome Collection via Daily Grail)Vintage image: SFO Museum Read the rest

Caterpillar, Inc., a company that manufactures construction equipment like bulldozers and tractors, sent a cease and desist to the Cat and Cloud coffee shop in Santa Cruz, California because the coffee shop sells shirts and caps with the word "cat" on it.Here's what a Cat and Cloud cap looks like:And here's what a Caterpillar cap looks like:See the similarity?From 25 News:“It seemed ridiculous, so we responded, we got a lawyer obviously and asked them to further explain their case, asked them to drop it as we are in a completely different industry and they didn’t want to, and so we went back and forth a few times and called them out for bullying,” said [Cat and Cloud Coffee owner Jarred Truby].Truby says when they opened the shop almost three years ago, they couldn’t have predicted something like this happening.“Could anybody imagine a 54-billion-dollar machinery company coming after a coffee company? I don’t think that’s even in the cards,” said Truby. “The first biggest thing they want us to do is not print the name Cat and Cloud on anything again. And so, I think that is unbelievable. I don’t think that’s going to hold up.”Caterpillar issued a statement about the cease and desist letter it sent:We are not suing Cat & Cloud, not targeting a small business and not focused on Cat & Cloud’s primary interest: coffee. We’ve simply asked the U.S. Trademark Office to remove Cat & Cloud’s trademark registration on footwear and apparel only, products for which Caterpillar has long-standing trademarks and a considerable business. Read the rest

William Happer -- a physicist and former Princeton professor -- already serves on Trump's National Security Council as deputy assistant for emerging technologies; but now he's been promoted to chair of a climate review panel charged with discrediting the National Climate Assessment.Happer isn't just a garden-variety Trumper: he's a guy with a long track record of comparing the drive to reduce atmospheric CO2 to Hitler's mass-extermination attack on Jews during the Holocaust. He made the comparison first in 2014 and then when questioned about it in 2017, he doubled down, comparing CO2 reduction efforts to "the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels."Happer has clarified his remarks to make it clear that he's not talking about the treatment that climate deniers get from mainstream scientists: he's defending CO2 itself, not people who deny anthropogenic climate change.Greenpeace once sent undercover agents to Happer who posed as a representatives of "an unnamed oil and gas company in the Middle East" and offered to pay him to deny climate change and promote higher CO2 levels on their behalf, and made the payment conditional on Happer disguising the source of his funding. Happer agreed to take the job. He later told the New York Times that he didn't "think I have anything to be embarrassed about."Trump climate adviser compared ‘demonization’ of carbon dioxide to Jews’ treatment under Hitler [Robert Schroeder/Marketwatch](Image: Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA; Ben Watts, CC-BY; Trump's Hair) Read the rest

How's this for a sales pitch: "The Weinermobile as a daily driver was a novelty and enjoyable for about a week. Now I suffer." It's yours for $7,000.Image: Craigslist Read the rest

Besides @jack, I can't think of a worse Twitter account than @twitter to have to manage. Read the rest

On June 7, the Prince estate will release Originals, a compilation of familiar songs that the artist put to tape as demos but eventually gave to other musicians to record and release. Included are the original versions of killer Prince songs later recorded by Sheila E., Kenny Rogers, Martika, The Family, Sinead O'Connor, and the Bangles. Gavin Edwards writes in the New York Times:When Prince saw the Bangles on MTV, he wanted to be some kind of friend to the band, and after making a guest appearance at one of their shows, offered them a song.“I knew it was an incredible gift,” said the Bangles singer-guitarist Susanna Hoffs. “It was like putting on the slipper in a fairy tale.” She drove across Los Angeles to Sunset Sound studio, nervous and excited for the charming Prince to hand-deliver the song to her. As it turned out, he was busy recording, so she picked up a cassette tape and drove back to the Bangles’ studio.“We all hovered around a cassette machine,” Hoffs said. They listened to the tape, which had two songs: “Manic Monday” and “Jealous Girl.”The band unanimously opted for “Manic Monday,” which rewrote Prince’s hit “1999” with lyrics about a woman’s 9-to-5 travails instead of a nuclear apocalypse. (“Jealous Girl” was later sung by Bonnie Raitt but remains unreleased.) They recorded the song, carefully following his blueprint — except they rearranged the bridge. “His bridge had almost a psychedelic, classical feel,” Hoffs said. “Looking back, why didn’t we do it that way?”Pre-order "Prince: Originals" (Amazon) Read the rest

Kids is a new $3 video game that "allows you to move with and against crowds until everyone is gone."Here's a review on iTunes from KupaMan:This is a weird game. The combination of smooth animation, crowd mechanics, and spartan audio make for a weird, satisfying experience. It’s sometimes amusing, sort of gross, and a little unnerving. There’s no puzzles or scores, just a series of interactions. These repeat themselves in similar ways over the course of the short game, which is a little disappointing. This isn’t for everybody, but if the trailer looks appealing to you, you will probably find something to like about Kids. Read the rest

The British empire was a globe-spanning criminal enterprise that produced vast riches for England (and, to a lesser extent, Scotland and Wales) by stealing the lands of others while slaughtering and enslaving them; today the empire is in decline and the UK is no longer reliant on direct looting.Instead, the UK and its former colonies have become the world's most prolific money-laundry for other looters, servicing criminal oligarchs who steal from their own countries. The latest Corporate Tax Haven Index from the Tax Justice Network (previously) puts the UK and its overseas possessions firmly in the lead in the global money-laundry league tables.The story is complex: many of the former colonies (now euphemistically termed "overseas territories" or "dependencies") were deliberately set up as financial secrecy havens during the decolonization process, a maneuver that provided British elites with a convenient way to hide their wealth from British authorities while creating (some) jobs on these "treasure islands."But turning an impoverished, looted colony into a tax-haven is no path to riches: instead, these treasure islands get stuck in a long period of stagnation (the "finance curse") that prevents them from realizing their full potential. In the meantime, the looted trillions that they're skimming pennies from are the source of enormous suffering other countries (many of them also former colonies). All told, financial secrecy havens are depriving the world's governments of £500b every year. The UK and its dependencies lead the pack, but the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland (the "Axis of Avoidance") aren't far behind. Read the rest

Boris Johnson (previously) is the racist, cowardly serial liar whose Old Etonian wealth and privilege warped and corrupted him into the kind of man who smashed up restaurants in acts of wanton, drunken vandalism, the sort of man who could never win a general election in the UK.Despite this, he is tipped to be the country's next PM, thanks to the catastrophic failures of Theresa May, which have forced her resignation and triggered a leadership race in the Conservative party.But even as he is being presumptively anointed to preside over the Brexit omnishambles, he's heading into court to answer for his role in deceiving the country during the Brexit referendum campaign, specifically, the claims stenciled on the side of a red "battle bus" that promised £350m/week for the NHS if Brexit were accomplished. This was a lie and everyone involved with creating the bus knew it at the time.Prosecutor Marcus J Ball raised £255,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to bring three charges against Johnson in a private prosecution for "misconduct in public office."After an initial court battle, Judge Margot Coleman has ruled that the prosecution can proceed, writing "Having considered all the relevant factors I am satisfied that this is a proper case to issue the summons as requested for the three offenses as drafted."Ball's complaint claims that Johnson knew that his NHS promises were lies, and as evidence, cites instances in which Johnson used accurate figures. The complain calls for a criminal sanction as remedy for these lies, because "lying on a national and international platform undermines public confidence in politics."There will be preliminary hearings tomorrow, and then one of four things may happen: Johnson may appeal, the Criminal Prosecution Service may allow Ball to continue with his own private proceedings, or the CPS may take over the proceedings, or they may shut them down on the basis that the prosecution is not in the public interest. Read the rest

"We chose those words carefully and the report speaks for itself."

To boldly go where no pitchman has gone before.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Video artist Benjamin Grosser on his freakish supercut titled "Order of Magnitude:"As the founder and CEO of the world’s largest social media corporation, what does Mark Zuckerberg think about? While we get clues from his posts on Facebook and elsewhere, a primary window into this question is through his public video recorded appearances. Covering the earliest days of Facebook in 2004 up through Zuckerberg’s compelled appearances before the US Congress in 2018, these recordings reveal what’s changed and what hasn’t changed about the way he speaks and what he says. For ORDER OF MAGNITUDE, I viewed every one of these recordings and used them to build a supercut drawn from three of Mark’s most favored words: “more,” “grow,” and his every utterance of a metric such as “two million” or “one billion.” The result is a nearly fifty minute film that reveals primary topics of focus for the tech CEO, acting as a lens on what he cares about, how he thinks, and what he hopes to attain. Read the rest

Special Counsel Robert Mueller will speak about the Russia investigation at about 11:00 am ET, according to an announcement released by the Trump administration early Wednesday morning.A White House source told a Washington Post reporter the statement will be “substantial.”The press release says Mueller will not take any questions from reporters. Mueller's statement will be streamed live here.There are speculations floating around that this announcement may be about a new book by Michael Wolff, in which Wolff alleges there was a draft indictment on Mueller's desk accusing Trump of 3 counts of obstruction of justice. Mueller's camp has denied this. At least one reporter, Ken Dilanian of NBC News, is saying now (one hour before the scheduled remarks) he's heard the Wolff book will not be the subject of Mueller's remarks today.Robert Mueller has not spoken publicly in more than 2 years, since he took over the Russia probe.The Justice Department says Mueller's statement will be “on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. This will be a statement only.” This is a breaking news event, and this blog post will be updated as Mueller speaks.if you think there's more than a 20% chance Mueller is gonna say anything earth-shattering today, you have learned nothing through this whole process— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) May 29, 2019I am very skeptical Mueller is going to drop any bombshells. I expect this is about the draft indictment claim by @MichaelWolffNYC and the issue of Mueller testifying. Read the rest

Fans of The Witcher are up in arms after leaked set photos suggest that ... changes ... have been made to the beloved game series' fantasy milieux. Darren Lim Geers:"The Witcher" Nilfgaardian armor in game on left. Netflix "adaptation" on right. I know it's a meme to shit on Netflix and their inability to adapt things to live action, but honestly... Who approved this? How does this even happen? So many questions.It reminds me a bit of those "Book vs Show" comparisons for Game of Thrones characters, where Tywin Lannister is transformed from "300 pound Hulk Hogan clone given the power of flight by his muttonchops" into "Charles Dance." But in this case, a little more extreme: from "cosplay melting under the convention center lights" to "problematic sex toy.""Fans are up in arms over iphone photos of disappointing costumes in upcoming science fiction movie, an online petition to replace the unknown art director has already hit 4000 votes. Fox refuses to comment" pic.twitter.com/BUJoNFKsfG— Mike Bithell (@mikeBithell) May 29, 2019 Read the rest

You can't solder a leak! "Take freash bread, take out the core, roll it into a tight ball, stuff it into the pipe, and it'll stop the leak long enough to let you solder the pipe.""I'm going to post this on a site called Reddit.""Oh my God." Read the rest

Unusually for retro game consoles, Polymega includes an optical drive and they offer five custom controllers to make it more fun to play games from all the old systems.Polymega™ is a modular multi-system game console that lets you enjoy original game cartridges and CD’s for classic game consoles on your HDTV.Polymega™ was created by a team of passionate game developers who formerly worked for Insomniac Games, Bluepoint Games, and others. The team has a diverse background and has shipped products such as AAA video games like Ratchet & Clank and Titanfall. We’ve also shipped digital storefronts like the Google Chrome Store, consumer electronics like the Vizio M-Series TVs, and TV boxes like the Roku 2, 3, and 4k. In addition to our internal team, we also have many external development partners who are listed in the About page on Polymega.com.If you’re a person who remembers playing classic games from the 80’s and 90’s and would like to re-experience those games in a modern way on your HDTV, then Polymega™ is for you! If you’re someone who doesn’t want to spend days or weeks building and tuning an emulation PC, and wants a solution that “just works” with your original game cartridges and CD’s — this system is for you. If you have children and want to share with them the joy of playing classic games without needing them to handle cartridges or navigate clunky, unfamiliar interfaces — this is for you.At $500 (at least for the deluxe multi-controller set) it's pretty fancy. Read the rest

After too many trips to the mechanic, we're conditioned to think anything you add to our car is going to be expensive. In a word: Nope. Turns out there's plenty of tech you can add on to your car for a steal, both inside and outside. Here are ten of our favorite auto accessories, from chargers to dash cams, all of which are on sale. What's more, you can take an extra 15% off the final price on any of them by entering the online code WEEKEND15.Hudway Cast Dashboard Heads-up DisplayTurn your phone from a potential driving hazard to a full-on HUD navigator with this handy conversion kit. Any Miracast or Airplay-enabled phone can throw up a map in an easy line of sight, and you can still answer calls and switch music tracks while it guides you. The Hudway Cast Dashboard Heads-up Display is $199, a full 13% off the list price.Papago GoSafe 366 Dash CamYou're covered literally anytime with the GoSafe, which records in HD even when your car is parked. An onboard sensor automatically saves files in case of a collision, and you can view the footage on any Wi-Fi connected smartphone. The Papago GoSafe 366 Dash Cam is now $249.99, 16% off the MSRP.14,000mAh Car Jump Starter KitThe hefty internal battery on this super-portable unit can not only jump-start your car up to 20 times on a single charge, but it can also juice up your handheld devices too. Read the rest

@BUGPOSTING discovered something funny and desperately sad at Target: "womens" laxatives in a special pink box at more than twice the price. The real difference appears to be that they are "Comfort Coated", i.e. enteric coated so they dissolve slower.paying the big bucks so i can perform gender, with my Ass pic.twitter.com/IYJo9SMMTh— ask not for whom the bug posts (@BUGPOSTING) May 28, 2019 Read the rest

The Universal Serial Bus first showed up in 1996, replacing SCSI and other interfaces—and the haphazard wizardry it took to get anything working with them. That's not to say, however, that it was easy—or that things just worked from then on. Joel Johnson (previously) interviews Ajay Bhatt, formerly of Intel, who dreamed of "one port to rule them all." I also struggled, even as a technologist. I struggled with upgrading my PC when the multimedia cards first started coming out. I looked at the architecture, and I thought, you know what? There are better ways of working with computers, and this is just too difficult.I like the idea of solving the world's interoperativity problems with "power breakfasts at Denny's". Read the rest

I love it when really smart people, especially those well-versed in science, technology, and DIY, sit down and ramble on about whatever's currently tickling their proverbial fancies. In this video, Adam and Norm from Tested.com chat with the always-informative Kevin Kelly. While the conversation is free-ranging, there is a loose theme about learning-on-demand, knowledge sharing, and the power of tools to inspire possibilities.Here are a few useful take-aways from the discussion:Being your own signal-to-noise ratio – Kevin and Adam chuckle over instances of searching on a subject online and mainly scooping up what they’ve written about that subject. E.g. Kevin looking up “superorganism” for a talk he was giving and finding out that the Wikipedia definition was taken from him.Adam talks about the joys of lifelong curiosity and the time that Richard Feynman and Danny Hillis were trying to have dinner together but got sidetracked when the two of them became fixated on the physics of breaking dry spaghetti (i.e., how the pieces never break cleanly in two; there's are always multiple fractures). BTW: You can find out more about this here.To learn more about a product your are interested in, search for the highest price of that object on eBay to find out the broad landscape of the object, from the most expensive, feature-rich, highest quality expressions of it, on down.Use the Incognito Mode on Google to experience something you are searching for without your previous interactions influencing the search algorithms. The trio talks about how great it would be if YouTube’s algorithms were better at taking you to new places with suggested videos (rather than the same “murder’s row” of channels that you already know about). Read the rest

Facebook is about to pay the largest privacy-related fine in US history: $3-5B (the company made $3.3B in Q1/2019).The FTC's fines are a nice start, but fines are just part of the cost of doing business. To change Facebook's conduct, the FTC should impose structural changes on the company, and EFF's Bennett Cyphers has some suggestions: ban third-party tracking; prohibit the combining of data from Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook; and ban the company from targeting ads with information from data brokers. That's for starters.Stop Third-Party TrackingFacebook uses “Like” buttons, invisible Pixel conversion trackers, and ad code in mobile apps to track its users nearly any time they use the Internet—even when they’re off Facebook products. This program allows Facebook to build nauseatingly detailed profiles of users’—and non-users’—personal activity. Facebook’s unique ability to match third-party website activity to real-world identities also gives it a competitive advantage in both the social media and third-party ad markets. The FTC should order Facebook to stop linking data it collects outside of Facebook with user profiles inside the social network.Don’t Merge WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook DataFacebook has announced plans to build a unified chat platform so that users can send messages between WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram accounts seamlessly. Letting users of different services talk to each other is reasonable, and Facebook’s commitment to end-to-end encryption for the unified service is great (if it’s for real). But in order to link the services together, Facebook will likely need to merge account data from its disparate properties. Read the rest

Now *that* takes some real ducking talent.Costume designer and prop maker Melissa Vian [Instagram] shows off a duck-head mask she hand-glued thousands of feathers to herself. Amazing work. View this post on Instagram Gluing billions of feathers @chriscreatures Had the pleasure to learn the process of making realistic bird masks. #chriscreatures #creaturedesign #propmaking #mask #duck #feathergluing #realisticmask #cosplay #3dprinting #duckfaceA post shared by Vian Clothing&Props (@melissa.vian) on Oct 11, 2018 at 9:35am PDT Read the rest

Bush baby go Boing.Boing Boing.[via] Read the rest

“This is probably my favorite thing I’ve ever drawn,” writes IMGURian @smallssss. “It’s on the back of a pizza box but I’m pleased with how it turned out.”I'll say! Amazing work....And a more detailed view, below. Read the rest

“Facebook and Twitter each said on Tuesday they had disabled a sprawling disinformation campaign that appeared to originate in Iran, including two accounts on Twitter that mimicked Republican congressional candidates and may have sought to push pro-Iranian political messages,” reports the Washington Post's Tony Romm.Some of accounts Twitter says it disabled seem to have been targeting propaganda at individual “journalists, policymakers, dissidents and other influential U.S. figures online,” which suggests “a new escalation in social-media warfare, with malicious actors stealing real-world identities to spread disinformation beyond the web.”Buckle up. Excerpt:Twitter said it had removed about 2,800 accounts originating in Iran at the beginning of May, but it did not tie the accounts to the country’s government. Its disclosure came at the same time as a report from the cybersecurity firm FireEye that identified a “network of English-language social media accounts” on the site that often posted on “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian themes.”FireEye did not directly attribute the activity to either Iranian state leaders or malicious actors operating within the country. But it noted that some of the tweets supported the Iranian nuclear deal, which President Trump withdrew from a year ago, while opposing some of the White House’s policies in the Middle East.Two of those accounts also impersonated Republicans who ran for Congress — Marla Livengood, who lost her bid to represent California’s 9th Congressional District, and Jineea Butler, who was defeated in her attempt to win a seat representing New York’s 9th Congressional District. Read the rest

You're browsing a news app on your phone in bed, alone, late at night. Did you know your physical location and IP address are being shared with the app maker?A new study reveals that many iOS apps, including the Washington Post's own very popular news app, use “background app refresh” to transmit highly sensitive information like user location and IP address. Here's one of many examples of first-party tracking from Washington Post reporter Geoffrey Fowler's privacy experiment, detailed in the piece. “Yelp was receiving a message from my iPhone *once every five minutes* that included my IP address,” Fowler tweeted. “It says I found a 'bug.' But now it has months of granular data about me.”Excerpt:You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” My investigation suggests otherwise.IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties — just while I was asleep — include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.And your iPhone doesn’t only feed data trackers while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. Read the rest

The Navy is reviewing whether service members violated Defense Department regulations by wearing "Make Aircrew Great Again" uniform patches during President Trump's visit to their ship in Japan, reports the Associated Press.Here's a photo of the patch by Vivian Salama, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal.Airmen onboard the USS WASP wearing patches on their jumpsuits that read “Make Aircrew Great Again.” The patches include an image in the center in the likeness of President Trump. pic.twitter.com/rQKAyrcDte— Vivian Salama (@vmsalama) May 28, 2019There's an AP photo of the patch we dare not include here, but go look at it on the AP site. It's red. There's a dude in the middle who looks like a thin, handsome, non-insane version of Trump pointing at you. Pretty dumb.From the AP story:The military has uniform dress codes and regulations against partisan political acts while in uniform.In a brief statement Tuesday, the Navy said only that the matter was under review by Navy leadership to ensure that the wearing of the patches did not violate policy or regulations.Trump visited the USS Wasp assault ship on Tuesday before returning to Washington from four days in Japan.Been a bunch of other little stories like this during Trump's tenure, about service members wearing MAGA hats and the like when he visits. It's the little things like this that add up to thorough corruption. Read the rest

“Combining the public humiliation of racists and one of nature’s most delicious frosty treats is pure poetry in motion,” writes Kim Kelly at VICE's Munchies, where we also read a disclaimer we'd like to pass on to you: “For legal reasons, we must mention that throwing milkshakes qualifies as assault in some jurisdictions.”Scoop the ice cream into the base of a blender jar, and top with milk. Pulse the blender a couple times to incorporate, then add the chocolate syrup and pulse until combined, pushing the ice cream down the sides if necessary. If you blend for too long, the blender heats up and melts the ice cream, making the shake unideal for drinking but perfect for throwing.Adjust the texture as needed with more milk or ice cream, pulsing after each addition.Remove the chilled glass from the freezer and pour the milkshake in. Serve (or throw, if legal in your jurisdiction) immediately.Such a shame to waste such deliciousness on someone like Nigel Farage. But there you go.How to Make the Perfect Milkshake for Throwing at Fascists [vice.com] Read the rest

Ahh, thanks, New Orleans Fire Department.We needed these dumpster fire photos. Got a feeling people are going to be meme-ing these up in their Photoshop-o-matics a lot, and if you do, maybe you could also donate to Friends of the NOFD to support their work protecting lives and homes in Louisiana's most spectacular town.05/28/2019. 517 Conti St. Construction Dumpster. pic.twitter.com/IddWTekgSx— NOFD (@NOLAFireDept) May 28, 2019 Read the rest

Transdigm is a notorious military supplier/hedge fund that used acquisitions to attain a monopoly over many spare parts so they could charge exorbitant markups -- as high as 4,451%! -- on materials procured with tax dollars.Many attempts have been made to rein in Transdigm (who, despite their massive profits, clearly can't afford to buy a vowel, perhaps they could ask their retired $61m/year CEO, Nicholas Howley, to buy them one), but they have all failed. Transdigm's price-gouging is repugnant, but not illegal.Rep Ro Khanna [D-CA] got on Transdigm case as a freshman Congressman two years ago, and after two years of work, he dragged them in front of the House Oversight Committee, where they were made to answer for a scorching DoD Inspector General report.During the years he fought for his hearing, Khanna was subjected to a dirty-tricks campaign to discredit his work, including the false claim that he was motivated by having taken a short position on Transdigm's stock. But he stuck with it and recruited the aid of the likes of Elizabeth Warren, prompting the Inspector General to audit the company's transactions with the US military.That report was so damning that even the Republicans on the committee condemned Transdigm and called on them to return the $16.1m in "excess profits" that the Inspector General had identified.Less than a week later, the company refunded the $16.1m. As committee chair Elijah Cummings [D-MD] said, "We saved more money today for the American people than our Committee’s entire budget for the year."This crooked dealing happened on the watch of multiple Congresses and administrations that concerned themselves with the most meanspirited cuts to education, food assistance, and subsidies for housing -- whereas merely auditing the Beltway Bandits who were gouging the taxpayers for hundreds of millions in aggregate would have saved much more for the taxpayer. Read the rest

US booksellers and public libraries are reporting strong growth in demand for print books, but research libraries are increasingly serving as archives, rather than references.Despite this, there is little political will to reorient academic research libraries around electronic materials; attempts to reduce print collections or move them to long-term storage are staunchly opposed by students and faculty who often win their battles...but then fail to patronize the libraries they've saved, a phenomenon documented in an excellent Atlantic article by Dan Cohen, Vice Provost for Information Collaboration at Northeastern University.Some of this is down to different nature of reading for academic reference and reading for other purposes: Cohen quotes historian Michael O'Malley: "We learn to read books and articles quickly, under pressure, for the key points or for what we can use. But we write as if a learned gentleman of leisure sits in a paneled study, savoring every word." Academics approach books like "sous-chefs gutting a fish."I'm torn here. I love the idea of long-term preservation of books (the Internet Archive is trying to amass every book ever published, scanning them and then preserving them in giant, climate controlled warehouses), it's also clear that the use-case for research is very different from other forms of reading, and libraries have finite resources that should be oriented around serving their patrons needs -- and what the patrons demonstrate a need for is very different from what they demand.With the rapidly growing number of books available online, that mode of slicing and dicing has largely become digital. Read the rest

MBA programs are the origin node of a lot of ugly, exploitative business trends over recent decades (see this excellent documentary for more), and their star is in decline, with MBAs commanding a much lower wage premium after graduation, leading to declining enrollment in full-time MBA programs.As full-time MBA programs become money-losers for their universities, they're being shut down, with the universities blaming millennials' unwillingness to incur unsustainable levels of student debt (nice going, millennials!). To add to their woes, Trump's anti-immigration policies have scared off many of the foreign students who'd fill out the enrollment numbers otherwise.On Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith reflects on their own MBA and the positives and negatives of the MBA phenomena. On the plus column, MBAs brought a lot of engineers into management, and they were a counterweight against the outsourcing trend ("Engineers understand that there are physical constraints, that tradeoffs matter and need to be evaluated, and that while production in theory can be made more efficient, there is often a difference between theory and practice, particularly if you keep losing people who have accumulated knowledge").Financialization and the rise of PCs synergized in a pernicious way, also fueling self-serving managerial and executive behavior. Remember how the product that put the PC on the map was VisiCal? If you’ve ever done a financial forecast on green ledger paper with a calculator, it’s torture, because if you make one mistake, everything to the right is wrong. Spreadsheets made it possible to do much more modeling of M&A deals, facilitating the use of more complex financial structures, and it also made it easier to create new products like non-government-guaranteed mortgage securities. Read the rest

I bought this pistol grip garden hose nozzle in 2014 and it still works perfectly. I can control the flow from a cone of mist to a tight high-pressure beam by squeezing the trigger. For the price, it's a great deal. Read the rest

Toronto's Metro Reference Library is hosting a Retro Futures exhibition until July 28, filled with exhibits from the collection of the Merril Collection (previously), the largest science fiction reference collection in any public library in the world.The Merril is hosting its own annex to the exhibition at its branch (Lillian H. Smith Branch, 239 College Street, 3rd floor).Included in the exhibitions: original Buck Rogers cartoons from a 1935 edition of the Toronto Star, collectible Jules Verne cards from 1900; pulp covers illustrating early visions of video-phones, life under domes and rapid transit and much more.The exhibition accompanies a lecture series on related subjects with talks from Karl Schroeder, Madeline Ashby and Hugh Spencer, and there are guided tours every Tuesday at 2PM. Read the rest

MakeCode Arcade is a Scratch-like programming language for writing retro-style games. In this video, John Park shows how to make arpeggio music using MakeCode arcade. In the early days of video games, the existing technology didn't allow for chords, so arpeggios were a way to get the feel for a chord by playing all the individual notes in a chord as quickly as possible.Image: Adafruit/YouTube Read the rest

Scotty of Strange Parts went to Akihabara (an area in Tokyo loaded with electronics, game arcades, and maid cafes) and found these cool wireless LEDs that can be illuminated with inductive chargers. He then bought some electronic components and a soldering iron and went back to his hotel room and made his own wireless LED.Image: Strange Parts/YouTube Read the rest

I have 4 or 5 beautiful great horned owls in my backyard. I see them every day. This short National Geographic video explains why owls are such great hunters: huge light-sensitive eyes, fringed wings that allow them to fly silently, and asymmetrically placed ears that picked up sounds a fraction of a second apart to help them pinpoint their prey's location.Image: National Geographic/YouTube Read the rest

Racism and oligarchy aren't merely Blue/Red phenomena: Connecticut has had a Democratic legislature for 22 years and a Democratic governor for eight years, and it is one of the nation's most racially segregated, unequal states, divided into affluent, all-white cities and towns with virtually no affordable housing and poor, underserved towns primarily inhabited by racialized people, whose children are five times more likely to be imprisoned than the white children across the city line a few miles away.The problem isn't new: 30 years ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court allowed the state to overrule local governments that refused planning permission for high-density, lower-cost homes. The state legislature used this freedom to pass bill 8-30g, which gives developers the powers to seek court orders overturning planning decisions that go against any development that include 30% low-income units.Despite this, it's rare that developers manage to invoke the law, because the lengthy court battles associated with 8-30g challenges are a powerful disincentive (a case in Westport has been underway since 2005!). And some city governments claim that developers used threats of 8-30g challenges to win permission to build high-rise luxury condos: they say that developers demand permission for luxury condos on pain of having the building plan re-filed with 8-30g-compliant low-income housing, effectively threatening city governments with poor people if they don't get permission to build high-rise luxury housing. Meanwhile, 8-30g is under sustained legislative assault, with the state legislature frequently introducing laws to weaken it. Though the official rhetoric about keeping poor and brown people away from white enclaves isn't overtly racist, the dog-whistles are pretty loud, with claims that low-income housing would cut against the "character of the community" or reduce the "quality of the schools," or that the communities would become less "attractive and desirable" if low-income housing were built. Read the rest

Fukuoka, Japan is home to the Ichiran ramen museum, where you can see ramen noodles being made. You can also eat at an Ichiran restaurant, where you buy a menu item ticket from a vending machine then sit in one of the walled-off cubicles along the counter, so you can eat without having to interact with anyone else. That's my kind of eatery.Image: Abroad in Japan/YouTube Read the rest

A swimming mouse is in a circular pond. A non-swimming cat on the perimeter of the pond can run four times as fast as the mouse can swim and will always run in the most optimal way around the pond to catch the mouse. The mouse can run faster than the cat. The question: can the mouse get away from the cat? Mathematician Ben Sparks explores different methods the mouse can try.Image: Numberphile/YouTube Read the rest

F-Secure Labs used a bot to harvest and analyze high-ranked disinformation tweets aimed at influencing the EU elections; they found that some of the highest-ranked xenophobic/Islamophobic disinformation came from a pair of related accounts: NewsCompact and PartisanDE, both in "the top three most engaged accounts in the EU election conversation space on Twitter two weeks ago."These accounts tweeted disinformation (for example, a video of someone vandalizing a statue in Algeria, misidentified as "A muslim #migrant destroying a statue in #Italy, because part of the body is showing"), and then got retweeted by vast constellations of semi-plausible, newly created accounts, as well as infamous far-right figures. They were also amplified by accounts identified as belonging to Korean, Japanese, and Arabic-speaking users; as well as a large number of US-based Trump supporter accounts, who appear to have found the disinformation through their attention to the British neo-Nazi Tommy Robinson. The constellation of suspicious amplification accounts is incredibly diverse (an India-based account that tweets almost exclusively about military hardware, for example). Some of them are obvious "retweet for money" accounts (something readily determined by looking at their tweeting history), who have also retweeted verified users, ecommerce-based accounts, and many other types of content.NewsCompact and PartisanDE were both in the top three most engaged accounts in the EU election conversation space on Twitter two weeks ago. This blog post conclusively illustrates that these two accounts are heavily fabricating engagement and, at least PartisanDE is also purchasing retweets. “Twitter Marketing” services that allow users to pay for retweets don’t seem to care about the political implications of the services they provide. Read the rest

My brother was having a ton of issues with his home WIFI network. One quick look and his 7 to 10-year-old WIFI router suggested he needed a new one.The number of packets we expected early generations of 802.11 wifi to push barely anticipated the huge amounts of internet traffic we currently sling around. Ten plus years later, a router that was perfectly fine for surfing early YouTube video and maaaaybe occasionally streaming a movie is no longer adequate. My brother is paying for a connection that'll burst well over 100mbps and should sustain 60-80mbps no problem. Sadly, he hadn't upgraded his WIFI router in forever.His 100mbps pipe was limited to around 20mpbs. Laden with packet loss whenever 2-3 people were doing much beyond web surfing, the old box was overloaded. With 3-4 phones, 2-3 laptops, 2-3 tablets, and two tv's attempting to use this tiny, not much bigger than a deck of cards, router connections were hard to maintain.My brother was looking at all sort of online configuration options with Google Home wifi and other tools. Years ago the solution for bad connectivity in parts of the house, or failing connections, was to add these god awful WIFI repeaters. They rarely worked as described very well, or for very long. I suggested he simply buy one big honking wifi base-station with great antenna and a lot of CPU.Enter the NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S AC2600 4x4 Dual Band Smart WiFi Router.A few years ago I switched from an OG Apple Airport to a slightly older model Netgear. Read the rest

This is thought to be the first photo of an all-albino panda. The beautiful animal was photographed by a trail camera at the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, China. From The Guardian:Local researchers said they believed the panda to be between one and two years old. The sex could not be determined from the photo, taken by an infrared camera installed in December last year to monitor wildlife in the area.Spotting the albino panda is incredibly rare, given how infrequently albinism manifests. The giant panda, native to China, is the rarest member of the bear species, with fewer than 2,000 remaining in the wild...Scientists from the China Conservation and Research Centre said the photo suggested the recessive albinism gene is present in the local panda population in Wolong. Whether the gene will be passed down will require further monitoring of the field site, the reserve said. Read the rest

Salto is a single-legged, hopping robot that its UC Berkeley inventors compare to a "hyper-aggressive pogo-stick." Previously, Salto was constrained to a highly-structured indoor environment with a motion caption system. Now though, roboticists Justin Yim and Eric Wang have imbued Salto with the onboard smarts to bounce freely through the world albeit still under human control. From UC Berkeley:Salto’s single, powerful leg is modeled after those of the galago, or Senegalese bush baby. The small, tree-dwelling primate’s muscles and tendons store energy in a way that gives the spry creature the ability to string together multiple jumps in a matter of seconds. By linking a series of quick jumps, Salto also can navigate complex terrain — like a pile of debris — that might be impossible to cross without jumping or flying.“Unlike a grasshopper or cricket that winds up and gives one jump, we’re looking at a mechanism where it can jump, jump, jump, jump,” (UC Berkeley robotics professor Ronald) Fearing said. “This allows our robot to jump from location to location, which then gives it the ability to temporarily land on surfaces that we might not be able to perch on.”From IEEE Spectrum:...The researchers expect that “higher precision estimation and control can enable jumping on more finely varied surfaces like stairs, furniture, or other outcroppings” as well as “soft substrates like upholstery or natural foliage.”The researchers tell us that Salto’s hardware is capable enough at this point that aside from potentially upgrading the motor or battery for more jumping power or run time, the focus now will be on new behaviors, although they’re toying with the idea of adding some kind of gripping foot so that Salto can launch from, and land on, tree branches (!). Read the rest

Yennihlecm Montevideo plays another Song of Ice and Fire. This one's surpising and jaunty, at least until the end. Then, as with the TV series, we head into darker territory. Read the rest

From its archives, RTÉ floats an Irishman with a motorized bar stool. It turns out that "I shall motorize this bar stool" is a frequent independent innovation, as many videos on YouTube attest. I've stacked a bunch after the jump for your education and amusement. Read the rest

Christian Cawley listicled 10 old devices upcycled to house a Raspberry Pi (including the Tomy toy dashboard OutRun previously at BB).Embedded above is a Pi, with a wee LCD monitor, embedded in a 1975 mini TV by Martin Mander. Perfection! This is a Hitachi I-89-311 portable TV that I've converted into a retro wall-mounted information station! It displays useful content in a series of full-screen Chrome tabs, and turning the TV's tuning dial switches between the pages. The volume button controls scrolling, the on-off button refreshes the page, and the TV has a PIR motion sensor so it turns off when you walk away. Read the rest

2Doom is a 2D demake of the classic first-person shooter Doom, featuring faithfully-drawn sprites in a side-scrolling arcade adventure. [via Rob Sheridan]Despite its cute pixel art, prepare for an intense, violent and bloody adventure! ... You're not the hero. You're just another Marine lost on Mars in a demoniac invasion. But you know how to use a shotgun and a BFG, you've been trained for that.Re-discover the DOOM universe in this unique tribute and discover a new part of the red planet.Made by:Damien Mayance (@valryon)Simon Coroller (@pluspixels)Quentin Gendre (@Enyo_) - sound designer + musicianHugo Houriez (@HhUrGzO) - 2d artist + devBenjamin Magnan (@dayster27) - 2d artist + level designerPerfect way to start my week. Read the rest

In 1944, an American soldier discovered a Yorkshire terrier in an abandoned foxhole in New Guinea. Adopted by an Army photographer, she embarked on a series of colorful adventures that won the hearts of the humans around her. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Smoky the dog, one of the most endearing characters of World War II.We'll also contemplate chicken spectacles and puzzle over a gratified diner.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest