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You don't want to miss the technicolor "rainbow of love" that is Verasphere: A Love Story In Costume. This new KQED Truly CA short documentary film made me smile, laugh, tear up, and want to pull out my glue gun and start making costumes again, all in the span of 20 minutes.[It] follows two San Francisco artists, David Faulk and Michael Johnstone, who fall in love at the height of the AIDS epidemic. While most of their community is overcome with grief and rage, David and Michael discover an unlikely joy through the creation of Mrs. Vera, an outrageous costumed character made from found materials. What began as an intimate art project and a way to pass the time while they faced an inevitable death, soon took on a life of its own. Now 25 years later, a large and diverse community has evolved around Mrs. Vera, all centered around one day of costumed celebration in the San Francisco Pride Parade.For SF Pride this past weekend, Mrs. Vera and Michael Johnstone rode in the parade as Community Grand Marshals, followed by colorful members of the "Verasphere." Put on your sunglasses because the photos are super bright!:Mrs. VeraMrs. Vera and Michael JohnstoneMarcos Sorensen and Isabel SamarasAndy Cowitt and Michael WertzAlso, don't miss Mrs. Vera's Daybook, an ongoing series of photos by Michael of David as Mrs. Vera. Thanks to Ruby Rieke for the SF Pride photos! Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the Smythe family of Chagrin Falls, USA, deals with regular weather, definitely not Climate Change, in the year 2029

It's hard to believe that the source code of successful games is lost, but often proven true when it comes time to re-release or "remaster" classics. A recent example is Final Fantasy VIII, vanished by Square-Enix's fire-and-forget philosophy of version control and remade from scratch. Even more amazing, a single programmer, GalaXyHaXz, spent four months reverse-engineering classic 1996 action RPG Diablo, recreating it from the ground up without the original code at hand. This video explains how he did it--and what it means for game preservation. Read the rest

In 1914, 132 sealers found themselves stranded on a North Atlantic icefield as a bitter blizzard approached. Thinly dressed and with little food, they faced a harrowing night on the ice. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Newfoundland sealing disaster, one of the most dramatic chapters in Canadian maritime history.We'll also meet another battlefield dog and puzzle over a rejected necklace.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Finding a place home depends on what you can afford, deciding upon what you can live with and coming to understand what you can't live without. Many of us will never have the opportunity to build our own home, much less be able to scrape together enough currency to buy a parcel of land to plop it down upon. Ben Uyeda no longer has this problem: He bought 10 acres of land in Joshua Tree, California and built a lovely, modern home out of shipping containers.If you've got the money and you're so inclined, Ben's series of videos on how he built his home, explains the whys and the hows of creating a place to call your own out of shipping containers. While I have no particular urge to settle down, I found myself enthralled by what went on behind the scenes to make this build happen. Read the rest

The guys at KeySmart hit it big on Kickstarter in 2013 with their streamlined alternative to keychains, and they haven't stopped innovating since. For Independence Day, they're celebrating that good old American entrepreneurship with a deal on all their best stuff: Right now, you can take an extra 15% off the final price listed on all their gear below by entering the code FIREWORK15.KeySmart FlexThis was the idea that started it all: a jingle-free, fumble-free way to carry your keys. The Flex makes it easy to access up to 8 keys in a polycarbonate, stainless steel case. Pick up a 2-Pack of the KeySmart Flex for $15, a full 25% off the list price.Dapper Slim Keychain KnifeWhether you need it for dire emergencies or just prepping a cigar, the Dapper Knife is right by your side. It's easily attachable to any keychain or KeySmart fob and is just as durable. Grab the Dapper 150 Ultra Slim Knife for $18 (a 27% discount), or a 2-pack of its smaller cousin the Dapper 100 for $22 (26% off the MSRP).KeySmart LeatherThis leather-lined version of the classic KeySmart fob has the same durable construction, plus a more secure grip and greater carrying capacity (up to 10 keys). Get the KeySmart Leather in black for $39.99 today.KeySmart 10,000mAh Portable ChargerKeySmart's charger packs ample power for charging your smartphone or other device multiple times, and it's lightweight enough to go anywhere. It's also fully compatible with their Urban 21 commuter bags and organizers. Read the rest

A simple but effective tip for a better burger, from Boing Boing buddy Gareth Brawnyn's excellent "Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales" e-newsletter:Here’s a life-thing that you need to know about, especially before this weekend’s cookouts. How often do you get a restaurant burger, or grill one yourself, and before you’re finished horking it down, the soggy bun has lost the will to live and has disintegrated in your hands? Here’s the fix for your fixins. Don’t place the meat directly on the bun or the condiments on top of the lettuce. Place lettuce between the meat and the bun and between the condiments and the bun. No more soggy burger. Read the rest

After Star Trek was cancelled, Nichelle Nichols, aka Lieutenant Uhura, volunteered her time to help NASA recruit women and minorities to join the space agency. The 1977 reel above is from that era. In the clip, astronaut Alan Bean and Nichols check out NASA's shiny new Space Shuttle Enterprise. From The Space Archive:In 1975 Nichols established Women in Motion, Inc., an astronaut recruitment project that helped to find over 1000 minority and 1600 women applicants, and this video reflects her significant efforts in that field. The Space Shuttle program did indeed expand the ranks of astronauts, including Sally Ride, the first woman in space, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Mae Carol Jemison, the first African American in space, who flew over 190 hours in space and attributed her interest in the field to seeing Nichols on television as a child. The Space Shuttles were the first spacecraft designed for reuse, and the Enterprise (originally named the Constitution until president Gerald Ford was inundated with a letter-writing campaign to change the name), was the first shuttle, performing tests to ensure the spacecraft would be able to function as gliders and land on conventional runways after missions in space. Read the rest

Leo Corvaisier, an art student in Paris, created this 3D rendered "bio-modem" based on an illustration from Things From the Flood, an alternative future-history of Sweden published in 2016 by Simon Stålenhag (previously), which was turned into a crowdfunded RPG last year. Corvaisier notes, "Tried getting a handpaint feeling to stick with Stålenhag's illustration style." (via JWZ) Read the rest

Pippin Barr writes, "This is Season 2 of my video series Let's Play Permadeath Speedrun. In these videos I play various games trying to die (permadeath) as quickly as possible (speedrun). Beyond their entertainment value, I feel like they offer an interesting perspective on what playing videogames feels like, perhaps especially for people who aren't necessarily a part of the culture. For more experience players, these runs can also help to raise question or suggest observations about how games are designed. (Mostly I just think they're kind of hilarious though.)" Read the rest

Bill Murray is deepfaked into playing Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.Here's the original, with R. Lee Ermey:Image: YouTube Read the rest

A fellow thought it would be a splendid idea to drive a tall U-Haul truck through a low-clearance parking garage. Unfortunately for him, his antics were captured on a dashcam.Bought this dash cam two days ago. And to the top we go! from r/IdiotsInCars[via r/IdiotsInCars] Read the rest

Privacy advocate Allie Funk was surprised to learn that her Delta flight out of Detroit airport would use facial recognition scans for boarding; Funk knew that these systems were supposed to be "opt in" but no one announced that you could choose not to use them while boarding, so Funk set out to learn how she could choose not to have her face ingested into a leaky, creepy, public-private biometric database.It turns out that all of Funk's suspicions were misplaced! It is as easy as pie to opt out of airport facial recognition: all you need to do to opt-out is:* To independently learn that you are allowed to opt out;* Leave the boarding queue and join a different queue at a distant information desk;* Return to her gate and rejoin the boarding queue; and, finally* Show her passport to the gate agent.Simplicity itself!As I watched traveler after traveler stand in front of a facial scanner before boarding our flight, I had an eerie vision of a new privacy-invasive status quo. With our faces becoming yet another form of data to be collected, stored, and used, it seems we’re sleep-walking toward a hyper-surveilled environment, mollified by assurances that the process is undertaken in the name of security and convenience. I began to wonder: Will we only wake up once we no longer have the choice to opt out?Until we have evidence that facial recognition is accurate and reliable—as opposed to simply convenient—travelers should avoid the technology where they can. Read the rest

Joël Franusic became obsessed with Krazy Kat, but was frustrated by the limited availability and high cost of the books anthologizing the strip (some of which were going for $600 or more on Amazon); so he wrote a scraper that would pull down thumbnails from massive archives of pre-1923 newspapers and then identified 100 pages containing Krazy Kat strips to use as training data for a machine-learning model.After a couple of false starts, which Franusic documents, he was able to train a model by feding the 100 "krazy"-containing thumbnails and a set without Krazy Kat thumbs that he labeled as "negative" to a Microsoft Custom Vision algorithm. He shelled out $180 for Microsoft's "Advanced Training" to be applied to his data, then set the model it produced loose on the remaining thumbnails.The model crunched through the remaining thumbnails, then Franusic automated the download of full-sized scans from pages identified as likely to contain a Krazy Kat comic. When the dust settled, he had hundreds of Krazy Kat comics in a folder, including one strip that does not appear in any published book that Franusic was able to find.Franusic has done an excellent job of summarizing his process notes, including source code, and has offered to share a complete set of notes with anyone who wants to build on his work. He's also produced a set of recommendations for people trying this kind of work in future, as well as a wishlist for newspaper archivists who are hoping that projects like this will surface interesting things in their archives. Read the rest

A camera shy elephant in Zambia flicked its trunk at a woman taking its photo, knocking the phone from her hands. It then grabbed the phone. The video ends before we find out what happened next.When in Zambia....don’t stand too close!!#phoneenvy #elephants #MissionZ2019 #viralvideo pic.twitter.com/HybhmYe6Vn— Ernie Ley (@FritoCorn1) June 28, 2019Via Digg Read the rest

New Orleans is festooned with police cameras, the legacy of a secret partnership with the surveillance contractor Palantir, which used New Orleans as a covert laboratory for predictive policing products.One such camera was wired into a public light pole outside 6119 Vicksburg. It looked like other Real-Time Crime Monitoring Center-connected cameras, and was emblazoned with NOPD logos. But when the cops tried to pull the footage from the camera after a car break-in, they discovered that it wasn't connected to their network, and no one knew where it came from (not even the private entity that does neighborhood security, the Lakeview Crime Prevention District).One possible clue: 6119 Vicksburg is down the street from the former home of Jeff Burkhardt (he recently signed over the house to his wife in a separation agreement), and the victim of the car break-in believed that the camera was Burkhardt's. Burkhardt is vice president and chief operations officer for Active Solutions, LLC, a surveillance contractor that installs cameras for the city of New Orleans.Burkhardt's responses to questions about the camera were not reassuring. First he told The Lens's reporters that he had no comment because it was "fake news." Then he said he didn't know who the camera belonged to. Then he said he wouldn't comment. Then he said that neither he nor his company were involved with the camera's purchase or installation, stating "My company had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever." But when asked whether he "had anything to do with the camera being there" he switched back to "no comment." Burkhardt's wife, Samantha Burkhardt, told The Lens she would call them back with comment, but did not. Read the rest

Yesterday, Guadalajara's 30'C heatwave broke suddenly when, at 1:50AM, the nighttime temperature suddenly plunged from 22C to 14C, causing small, sub-1cm hailstones to form and fall in great profusion, carpeting parts of the city in an 1.5m-thick layer of ice.Although there was some flooding and damage to at least 200 homes, no one has been reported injured by the freakish storm.State governor Enrique Alfaro attributed the storm to climate change.According to BBC Weather, the hail probably melted on contact due to the high temperatures forming a layer of water upon which more hail could land and float.This combination of water and hail likely moved down slope, with obstacles such as buildings blocking the flow and allowing more ice to accumulate on top.The actual hailstones were relatively small, less than 1cm in diameter, and nothing like the golf-ball sized hail seen at times in severe storms in the US.Mexico hail: Ice 1.5m thick carpets Guadalajara [BBC](Thanks, Kathy Padilla!)(Image: @EnriqueAlfaroR)En varios puntos de la ciudad sucedió esto que nunca había visto: una capa de granizo de decenas de centímetros. pic.twitter.com/56ZTfaW2lE— Enrique Alfaro (@EnriqueAlfaroR) June 30, 2019 Read the rest

In my latest podcast, I read my new Locus column: Fake News is an Oracle. For many years, I've been arguing that while science fiction can't predict the future, it can reveal important truths about the present: the stories writers tell reveal their hopes and fears about technology, while the stories that gain currency in our discourse and our media markets tell us about our latent societal aspirations and anxieties. Fake news is another important barometer of our societal pressure: when we talk about conspiratorial thinking, we tend to do so ideologically, asking ourselves how it is that the same old conspiracy theories have become so much more convincing in recent years (anti-vax is as old as vaccination, after all), and treating the proponents of conspiracies as though they had acquired the ability to convince people by sharpening their arguments (possibly with the assistance of machine-learning systems). But when you actually pay attention to the things that conspiracy-pushers say, there's no evidence that they're particularly convincing. Instead of ideological answers to the spread of conspiracies, we can look for material answers for the change in our public discourse. Fake news, in this light, reveals important truth about what our material conditions have led us to fear (that the ship is sinking and their aren't enough life-boats for all of us) and hope (that we can get a seat in the lifeboat if we help the powerful and ruthless push other people out). Ten years ago, if you came home from the doctor’s with a prescription for oxy, and advice that they were not to be feared for their addictive potential, and an admonition that pain was “the fourth vital sign,” and its under-treatment was a great societal cruelty, you might have met someone who said that this was all bullshit, that you were being set up to be murdered by a family of ruthless billionaires whose watchdog had switched sides. Read the rest

Roy Moore, the former Alabama judge and failed Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, is running again. Reuters:Alabama's Roy Moore launches 2020 Senate bid despite Republican Party opposition https://t.co/Rpd2s5rw5A via @ReutersTV pic.twitter.com/WuLf7MLggM— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 21, 2019Moore lost a safe seat to his Democratic Party opponent, Sen. Doug Jones, when sexual assault allegations crippled his 2017 campaign. Moore was allegedly banned from the Gadsden mall for bothering girls there.In the wake of the allegations, Moore took and "likely failed" a polygraph test as part of the effort to clear his name, according to attorneys for one of his alleged victims. Polygraph tests are held to be pseudoscientific, easily fooled with practice and generally inadmissable in court. Read the rest

Kirk looks like he enjoys this far too much. Read the rest

The UK arm of international sports brand Adidas turned its twitter account over to an autoresponder that generated soccer kit images based on anything twittered at it, inviting senders "to the squad". The resulting soup of bigotry and warmly-welcomed Nazis could be predicted by almost anyone alive in 2019, but no-one at Adidas or "Guud Campaigns" has the slightest clue about how the internet works, so here we are.the promotional campaign was hijacked by people with offensive or insensitive Twitter handles, including @GasAllJewss, @MadelineMcCann, and @96wasnotenough.The images of the offensive handles on Arsenal shirts were retweeted widely.The offensive tweets were posted from the @AdidasUK account late on Monday night and were still visible on Twitter through the early hours of the morning, but have since been removed.In a statement, Adidas says its 'Twitter Team' is 'investigating'. Good luck figuring it out, Adidas Twitter Team! Read the rest

United Airlines reportedly ignored internal policies and allowed an unaccompanied minor to travel internationally alone. After charging the mother an unforeseen $150, to ensure the child arrived safely, a night of panic ensued as United placed the teenager on the wrong flight to the wrong country.Business Insider:A United representative told Business Insider that a 14-year-old flying alone typically wouldn't be allowed when there's an international connection involved. However, because the ticket was sold by SAS, which considers children 11 and under to be minors, the check-in agent decided to allow the teenager onto the connecting flight with the airport escort service.The paperwork that the 14-year-old was given had the correct flight information on it, but there was a gate change between when it was printed and when he arrived at Newark for the connecting flight. A Eurowings plane, Flight EW1113 to Düsseldorf, was sitting at the gate at that point.The United representative said the Düsseldorf flight was ready to leave, awaiting one more passenger, who had a similar name as the boy. They were preparing to close the doors, calling the passenger's name, when the person escorting the boy heard the announcements, assumed it was supposed to be him, and rushed him onto the incorrect plane. Read the rest

Everything in my life seems to be held together by bungie cords.This 24-pack of bungies is currently keeping most of my possessions from sliding around, or off, my VW Vanagon camper. I'm living in the bus for most of the summer, with my dogs and occasionally the child and space is at a premium!Bungie cords let me strap stuff into place and keep it there.In addition to keeping my solar panel from smashing itself to bits on my truck fridge, or my bucket of bottles from rolling into my stove, these bungies also keep raccoons out of my trashcans back at home!It takes a lot of bungies to keep those raccoons out. 4 or 5.The ball end bungie straps come in handy too.Cartman Bungee Cords Assortment Jar 24 Piece in Jar - Includes 10”, 18”, 24”, 32”, 40” Bungee Cord and 8” Canopy/Tarp Ball Ties via Amazon Read the rest

In the late 1800s, the American Medical Association invented the anti-abortion movement, but over time, its ceased to advocate on either side of the debate -- until a bizarre 1997 statement supporting a GOP bill banning late-stage abortions (later revealed to be a "blunder" on the part of the trustees), after which the group returned to silence.Now, the AMA is taking a stand again: against the slew of GOP state-level anti-abortion measures that are designed to put Roe v Wade before the new Supreme Court, whose two illegitimate Trump-appointed Conservative justices are expected to vote to overturn the landmark decision that legalized abortion in America in 1973.So why has the AMA come down off the fence? There are a number of factors at play:* This is the first year in medical history in which all of the AMA's elected officials are women;* The state GOP anti-abortion bills require doctors to lie to patients, advising them (for example) that medication abortions are reversible, or to falsely state that there is a link between abortion and breast-cancer or depression;* The Trump administration has created new rules that directly target AMA members' ability to receive federal funding for elements of their practice that touch on family planning;* Public support for abortion rights is at an all-time high (remember, the only real American polarization is between a tiny elite in Washington and everyone else in the country).AMA Abortion Lawsuit Puts Doctors In The Thick Of Debate [Julie Rovner/Kaiser Health News](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Lorie Shaull, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

From Kennedy Space Center:A fully functional Launch Abort System (LAS) with a test version of the Orion spacecraft attached, launches on NASA’s Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) atop a Northrop Grumman provided booster on July 2, 2019, at 7 a.m. EDT, from Launch Pad 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. During AA-2, the booster will send the LAS and Orion to an altitude of 31,000 feet at Mach 1.15 (more than 1,000 mph). The flight test will prove that the abort system can pull crew to safety in the unlikely event of an emergency during ascent.Note that there will be a parachute, they just didn't test it this time around. Read the rest

Boris Johnson is a racist, sexist, homophobic lying buffoon who has been repeatedly caught out using lies to sway public opinion, and that's why he's likely to lead the UK Conservative party and become the country's Prime Minister.Johnson is a master of media manipulation (right down to his bufoonish public persona), but his powers were taxed by the police responding to a seeming incident of domestic violence at his home, after which Johnson went into hiding, refusing to talk to the media. This silence was a major impediment to Johnson's ability to campaign for leadership of the Conservatives and the country, so eventually he was going to have to talk to a reporter and answer questions about what had gone on at his home that night.Finally, on June 25, Johnson gave a bizarre interview with Talkradio in which he announced, apropos of nothing, that he liked to turn wine-crates into models of buses: "I have a thing where I make models of buses. What I make is, I get old, I don't know, wooden crates, and I paint them. It's a box that's been used to contain two wine bottles, right, and it will have a dividing thing. And I turn it into a bus."As Glyn Moody writes, the derision and satire that followed might well have been a deliberate strategy. First, it downshifted the Boris Johnson scandal: instead of asking "Did Boris Johnson beat up his wife?" the press started asking "Does Boris Johnson really make buses out of old wine-crates?" The former is (presumably) a disqualifier in a campaign to be Prime Minister; the latter is merely faintly absurd. Read the rest

Alan McCarty Jr. was charged with threatening a judge. After his court hearing in August, 2018, he was described as "extremely belligerent" by the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Shut the fuck up, bitch, I'm trying to think over here!The judge made his own threat in response -- to have him "duct-taped" shut -- but eventually was satisfied to have McCarty thrown out.McCarty was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He attended his sentencing and it went swimmingly:A man who spewed so many profanities in court that a judge threatened to have his mouth shut with duct tape read a book and ignored the judge Wednesday while sitting in handcuffs and leg shackles for his sentencing hearing.... McCarty, 36, didn’t stay quiet for long.Excellent comic timing. Read the rest

You can see the punchline coming a mile off, but it's a good one. Read the rest

Just when you thought pool floats couldn't get any stranger, a beheaded swan floatie has surfaced for your summertime-buying pleasure. It comes after last summer's bizarro pink coffin float and what is possibly its precursor, David's Shrigley's Ridiculous Inflatable Swan-Thing. This $79 toy is a two-piece item that includes both the swan's body and its chopped-off head. It's brought to us by mschf internet studios and artist Lukas Bentel (glancing at his site, it appears decapitated flamingo and unicorn floats are also in the works).While we're talking about unusual water toys, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention two new lawn sprinklers: the giant mermaid tail and the "JumpOff Jo" unicorn -- both of which suggestively squirt water out of their tails.(Swiss Miss) Read the rest

As long as there are cabinets to be fixed or cheap dressers to assemble, you're going to encounter screws in tight corners where a screwdriver just won't fit. It's enough to make you give up on any project, which is why the Flip Out Rechargeable Screwdriver is poised to be the go-to tool in any household kit.A rotating head isn't the only trick this tool has up its sleeve, but it's a big one. You can adjust two different points of articulation easily through 360 degrees of orbital rotation. All told, it can be configured into 380 different positions, enough to tackle any screw no matter how hard to reach. There's also a pivoting LED light on the head that allows you to see into that dark corner you're working on.Behind that innovative head is a powerful brushless motor that can deliver up to 65 inch-pounds of torque, adjustable by way of the pressure-sensitive trigger. And the 8-volt Lithium Ion battery can be charged up to full power in 45 minutes, so you'll never be without this helping hand for long.Pick up the Flip Out Rechargeable Screwdriver & Bit Set for $29.99, a full 33% off the original price. Read the rest

Because they can, that's why (and because it's National Ice Cream Month, and because, marketing.)For a limited time, LongHorn Steakhouse is serving steak and bourbon-flavored ice cream -- complete with swirls of jerky, steak sprinkles, char seasoning, and a Jim Beam caramel sauce -- in its participating restaurant locations nationwide.This boozy, meat-filled ice cream is also available in to-go pints. View this post on Instagram Introducing Steak & Bourbon Ice Cream. A chilled take on LongHorn’s legendary steak. Available on July 1st at select locations. www.longhornsteakhouse.com/steakicecreamA post shared by LongHorn Steakhouse (@longhornsteaks) on Jun 25, 2019 at 7:12am PDTMy 14-year-old thinks it might be the most "Ron Swanson" thing ever, and I don't think she's wrong. Thanks, Josh A. Cagan! Read the rest

It was 40 years ago today.On July 1 of 1979, Sony first began to sell the TPS-L2, first known as the Soundabout and soon rechristened the Walkman. This original Walkman wasn’t the first portable tape player, but it was the first that didn’t have a record function. Portable cassette recorders had mostly been used by reporters; this one, with its newly designed lightweight headphones, was specifically intended for music. It changed the world.Photo: Dave Jones (CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

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

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

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

She was living her best life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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