Google has augmented its preferences for personal data retention; in addition to choosing to have all your data stored until you delete it, or having no data stored (thus depriving you of the benefits of personalization), the company has a new intermediate option: a rolling deletion program, which lets you specify that any data older than either 3 or 12 months should be autodeleted. That way, if you suffer a breach (or if authorities demand your data from Google), only your recent activity will be exposed. Read the rest

Locus Magazine has published its annual Locus Award finalists, a shortlist of the best science fiction and fantasy of the past calendar year. I rely on this list to find the books I've overlooked (so. many. books.). This year's looks like a bumper crop.Now that the finalists have been announced, Locus subscribers and others can cast their votes; the awards will be presented in Seattle during a weekend-long event that runs June 28-30, MC'ed by Connie Willis.SCIENCE FICTION NOVELRecord of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager US; Hodder & Stoughton)The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)If Tomorrow Comes, Nancy Kress (Tor)Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK)Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (Ecco; Orbit UK)Embers of War, Gareth L. Powell (Titan US; Titan UK)Elysium Fire, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Orbit US)Red Moon, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)Unholy Land, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)FANTASY NOVELLies Sleeping, Ben Aaronovitch (DAW; Gollancz)Foundryside, Robert Jackson Bennett (Crown; Jo Fletcher)The Monster Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson (Tor)Deep Roots, Ruthanna Emrys (Tor.com Publishing)Ahab’s Return, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, Theodora Goss (Saga)The Mere Wife, Maria Dahvana Headley (MCD)The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Productions)Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik (Del Rey; Macmillan)Creatures of Want and Ruin, Molly Tanzer (John Joseph Adams)HORROR NOVELIn the Night Wood, Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams)Unlanguage, Michael Cisco (Eraserhead)We Sold Our Souls, Grady Hendrix (Quirk)Coyote Songs, Gabino Iglesias (Broken River)The Hunger, Alma Katsu (Putnam; Bantam Press UK)The Outsider, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton)The Listener, Robert McCammon (Cemetery Dance)Cross Her Heart, Sarah Pinborough (HarperCollins UK/Morrow)The Cabin at the End of the World, Paul Tremblay (Morrow; Titan UK)Tide of Stone, Kaaron Warren (Omnium Gatherum)YOUNG ADULT BOOKThe Gone Away Place, Christopher Barzak (Knopf)The Cruel Prince, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Hot Key)The Belles, Dhonielle Clayton (Freeform; Gollancz)Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman (Random House)Dread Nation, Justina Ireland (Balzer + Bray)Cross Fire, Fonda Lee (Scholastic)The Agony House, Cherie Priest & Tara O’Connor (Levine)Half-Witch, John Schoffstall (Big Mouth House)Impostors, Scott Westerfeld (Scholastic US; Scholastic UK)Mapping the Bones, Jane Yolen (Philomel)FIRST NOVELChildren of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt; Macmillan)Semiosis, Sue Burke (Tor)Armed in Her Fashion, Kate Heartfield (ChiZine)The Poppy War, R.F. Read the rest

Charter isn't America's most hated company, but that's only because Comcast is so next-level terrible that they distort the leaderboard; nevertheless, Charter tries hard! Whether it's slashing billions from network outlays while raising prices way ahead of inflation or lying so egregiously that they get kicked out of New York State, Charter is relentless in its pursuit of ways to be a shitty, shitty company.And like all strivers, Charter never hesitates to borrow from the best. That's why it's adopted AT&T's policy of no longer pro-rating your final bill when you cancel service. So if you move out of your home on the day after your billing date, Charter will charge you for a whole month's service, even though they're disconnecting you after single day.It's just another way to say, "We don't have to care, we're the cable company."Charter is my ISP, because they have the Burbank cable monopoly. I hate them with the heat of a thousand suns.Charter's new notice to customers that the change is "consistent with the Terms and Conditions of Service" may indicate that the policy was previously in the terms of service but not enforced or that it previously applied to cable TV only and now covers Internet and phone service. We contacted Charter to ask for clarification on those details and will update this story if we get a response.We've confirmed that the no-prorating policy will apply at least in Texas and Ohio, and we assume it will be enforced in most of Charter's 41-state territory. Read the rest

Dennis in Hawaii by Alan Wiseman and Fred TooleOne of the most popular comics in American history gets the Kayfabe book club treatment with Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and Tom Scioli.In 1958, Pines and Hank Ketcham sent the Dennis the Menace comic book crew to Hawaii to research a 100 page Dennis the Menace special. The resulting comic book went on to phenomenal success and 9 printings over the subsequent decade.Jaime Hernandez and Dan Clowes both sing its praises. What makes this comic book so special and how does it look 60 years later? Join us to find out!For more videos and deep dives like this make sure to subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel Read the rest

DOJ to House Judiciary: Cancel contempt vote, or AG Barr tells Trump to assert executive privilege over Mueller report.

CSS-only-chat uses no javascript and doesn't reload the page. It's amazing—and terrible. How is it done? Background-images loaded via pseudoselectors + a forever-loading index pageIn laypersons' terms: cover the page in elements, assign each one an individual background image, but only trigger the image when the mouse interacts with it. Voila: communication with a server without javascript or form submission. Other users get updates thanks to a HTML header that forces a page to render before it completes loading, so you can just keep appending new html to the end so long as you never stop sending data.It's a total abomination and I love it.It occurred to me that you can remotely monitor the cursor location without JS by using some CSS :hover selectors to change hidden background images (causing a GET request).This should work on Tor as well and could be an interesting approach to tracking visitors.— davy (@davywtf) May 3, 2019 Read the rest

Adobe's trailing price hikes for its now subscription-only Creative Suite applications. Comic artist Michael Sexton (Patreon) made this handy at-a-glance chart so you know what pay-once apps can replace each one. I've been in Adobe Jail so long I haven't even heard of some of these! I will definitely be getting myself a Fire Alpaca, for starters. Read the rest

(NSFW)Enjoy the c.1985 promotional video below for the Cypress Cove Nudist Resort in Kissimmee, Florida! It looks like everything you could want from a resort but with, y'know, less clothing. Based on the reminiscing and raving over at r/nudism, The Cove is still a happening scene. You can even live there, but only by purchasing a mobile home from a current resident. And don't forget the reminder from the cheerful narrator: "Volleyball is popular among nudists, no matter what your level of skill." Read the rest

Dillon Shane Webb (23) of Florida was driving his truck on Sunday when a deputy pulled him over. The deputy informed Webb that the sticker in his rear window, which read, "I Eat Ass," was obscene and ordered Webb to remove one of the letters from the word "ass." According to the police report, the officer asked Webb how “a parent of a small child would explain the meaning of the words.” Webb told the deputy that he was exercising his first amendment rights and refused to remove the sticker. The deputy arrested Webb and was charged with "obscene writing on vehicles and resisting an officer without violence."[via Lake City Reporter] Read the rest

Facebook shares are down 2.75% percent from yesterday, which means you should probably adjust Zuckerberg's smile from 0.4 to 0.3. Read the rest

Datagrid says, "We have succeeded in generating high-resolution (1024×1024) images of whole-body who don't exist using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We use these images as virtual models for advertising and fashion." Read the rest

Why do many birds fly in a V formation? The wonderful video curators at The Kid Should See This came across this excellent 2014 clip above from the science journal Nature explaining research into the aerodynamic advantages of the formation. From Nature:...UK's Royal Veterinary College put data loggers on ibises to record their position, speed and wing flaps when they migrated. The ibises position themselves within the V so that they benefit from the flow of air created by the bird in front. They carefully time their wing flaps with their flock mates', to get an extra lift when flying high.More at Nature: "Precision formation flight astounds scientists" Read the rest

Rudy Rucker's 23rd novel is out today! It's called Million Mile Road Trip. Rudy is one of my all-time favorite authors and he has kindly given me permission to run an excerpt here.“Stratocast”An Excerpt from Million Mile Road Tripby Rudy Ruckerrudy@rudyrucker.com2,300 WordsApril 22, 2019==========Villy’s brother Scud and the Szep alien Pinchley are in front seat of the highly modified car that they call the purple whale. Zoe and Villy are in back.Villy’s two-thirds-size Flying Vee guitar is alive. Basically the instrument is a female alien. She stretches her neck so she can nuzzle Zoe’s black guitar, who is male. The instruments chime softly to each other. Villy thinks of them as a pair of race horses that he and Zoe are about to ride.“Or magic broomsticks,” says Zoe inside Villy’s head. The guitars seem to be giving them telepathy.Scud uses his powers to levitate the purple whale high into the air. Pinchley guns the engine—and nothing whatsoever happens. Oh, right, the gigundo tires are spinning in empty air.“You’ll do that stratocast thing now?” says Scud. “Is that the word?”Zoe stares into Villy’s eyes. She looks zonky and vamp. Like a goth rocker. They poise fingers on their frets. Each of them holds a triangle of seashell for a pick. Zoe nods her head once and: Zam deedle squee.In her head, Zoe’s leading the way, sailing the sonic sea, and Villy’s close behind. The two of them do a virtual dance in music-space, orbiting each other like strands of DNA, growing a heaven-tree of sound. Read the rest

Classic three-act narrative structure pic.twitter.com/AP4WgdxlN8— Jack Seale (@jackseale) May 1, 2019Ah, resolution.(via Daily Grail) Read the rest

A 13-year-old boy is wrongly accused of sexual harassment, then railroaded by zealous school administrators. Abused by the system and shunned by real-life friends, he finds new ones—on Reddit and 4chan. What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right. Those online pals were happy to explain that all girls lie—especially about rape. And they had lots more knowledge to impart. They told Sam that Islam is an inherently violent religion and that Jews run global financial networks. (We’re Jewish and don’t know anyone who runs anything, but I guess the evidence was convincing.) They insisted that the wage gap is a fallacy, that feminazis are destroying families, that people need guns to protect themselves from government incursions onto private property. They declared that women who abort their babies should be jailed.Sam prides himself on questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting claims to intellectual scrutiny. For kids today, that means Googling stuff. One might think these searches would turn up a variety of perspectives, including at least a few compelling counterarguments. One would be wrong.Dealing with malicious do-gooder school officials is difficult, not least because some see that fight as an opportunity to dismantle public education or to shield young men from consequences.Tech companies, though, everyone can see those guys coming.The term "complicity" lets them off the hook, but "conspiracy" and "collusion" are too freighted with nearby political goings-on. I think the best term for what Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook do is the plain non-legal sense of connivance: a passive consent to wrongdoing and crisis, a covert willingness to permit behavior they publicly disclaim, and a language of justification to go with it, all in pursuit of outcomes that benefit them. Read the rest

There was some ridiculous gameplay during last weekend's Fortnite World Cup qualifiers. The best players in every region are vying for slots in an upcoming tournament in NYC.Epic Games is offering $1,000,000USD a week in prizes as they lead up to the $30,000,00USD main event. Read the rest

Included free of charge with Windows since 1990, Microsoft Solitaire has finally achieved immortality in the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Microsoft Solitaire meets all the criteria for the World Video Game Hall of Fame: influence, longevity, geographical reach, and icon-status. And yet it is often overlooked—perhaps because it’s a digital version of a centuries-old game, and because it so common as to seem commonplace.Other 2019 inductees include Colossal Cave Adventure, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Kart. Read the rest

Back in 2017, I started writing about the "epistemological crisis" ("we're not living through a crisis about what is true, we're living through a crisis about how we know whether something is true. We're not disagreeing about facts, we're disagreeing about epistemology"); danah boyd picked up on that theme later that year, making the connection between "media literacy" education and the crisis ("If we’re not careful, 'media literacy' and 'critical thinking' will simply be deployed as an assertion of authority over epistemology").I've been developing the idea since, connecting it to inequality and oligarchy; and so has boyd: her latest shows how the epistemological crisis gives rise to far-right conspiracies through "Agnotology," ("the strategic and purposeful production of ignorance").But what’s most profound is how it’s being done en masse now. Teenagers aren’t only radicalized by extreme sites on the web. It now starts with a simple YouTube query. Perhaps you’re a college student trying to learn a concept like “social justice” that you’ve heard in a classroom. The first result you encounter is from PragerU, a conservative organization that is committed to undoing so-called “leftist” ideas that are taught at universities. You watch the beautifully produced video, which promotes many of the tenets of media literacy. Ask hard questions. Follow the money. The video offers a biased and slightly conspiratorial take on what “social justice” is, suggesting that it’s not real, but instead a manufactured attempt to suppress you. After you watch this, you watch more videos of this kind from people who are professors and other apparent experts. Read the rest

Behold the Drain Addict clear blocked stormwater drain #165. Of all the drains thusly unclogged, though, it is #73 that earned the greatest audience:How does the device he uses work, exactly? It eats its way down the drain, blasting water and matter backwards with compressed air? Read the rest

Medieval wood riving is a slow, methodical business. But it's amazing what you can get done with axes and hammers.The movie describes an attempt to split a thirteen meter long log of pine tree. The riving was done by radial cuts. The original was founded in the spire of the church of Hardemo southwest of Örebro city in the province of Närke. The church was built approximately between 1180 – 1220. These rafts are produced from the log by a method which never been documented before. One side of the rafts is raw sapwood which is rare in churches from the Middle age. All woodworking are done with tools that are modelled on archaeological findings. The felling and riving of the tree are performed with a few axes and tools.Amazingly relaxing video. Read the rest

Jim Browning got a look into a Kolkata call center via one of the scammers' insecure machines: "You're looking at the webcam of a scammer named Deva ██████. He's currently uploading the phone numbers of people who will be his next potential victims. All are numbers of people who have previously fallen victim to a popup scam."These guys are a particularly nasty group from Kolkata in India. They run a refund scam and this video shows what their call center looks like, how they operate, who and where they are. I've sent a link to the unblurred version of this video to the Kolkata Cyber Police (for all the good that it will do). The offices are "small and cramped" and full of smoke. Read the rest

Even the most easily organized among us have trouble keeping things tidy on vacation. It's enough of a hassle just trying to cram everything in your luggage, much less worry about what goes where. The result: Frantic searches for the right item or garment, and a sloppy trash bag to hold those dirty clothes.Then again, you could try the Oregami FIT 2.0 Unfolding Luggage Organizer. As the brand name implies, it's designed to bring a little zen to the packing process.This collapsible travel aid stores flat, but just flip up the side supports and it expands into a trio of compartments designed to fit into most standard suitcases or large carry-on bags. It's the next best thing to having dresser drawers in your luggage, and when you get to your destination, the Oregami folds out for easy access to all of them.Pick up an Oregami FIT 2.0 Unfolding Luggage Organizer today for $49.99 - more than 35% off the list price. Read the rest

In 2017, cartoonist Brian Fies lost his northern California home in the Calistoga wildfires; in the days after, working with the cheap art supplies he was able to get from a surviving big box store, he drew A Fire Story, a strip about how he and his wife barely managed to escape their home ahead of the blaze, and about life after everything you own (and everything your neighbors own) is reduced to ash and slag. The strip went viral, and in the months after, Fies adapted it into a deeply moving, beautiful book.The book-length version of "A Fire Story" takes those raw, initial comics and carries them on, through the many traumas and small (but precious) triumphs of life in the aftermath of a catastrophic wildfire, exploring the class-based divisions, the social awkwardness, the love and the sorrow that follows from a great collective disaster.Fies devotes several pages to prose transcripts of his neighbors' fire stories, and carries on from the fire into the rebuilding project that followed it."A Fire Story" has the feel of a touchstone book, something that will only (sadly) gain relevance as more and more of us are displaced by severe weather incidents that take our loved ones and our possessions, wiping away whole neighborhoods. It's exquisitely and subtly told.I knew Fies's work from his brilliant 2012 graphic memoir, "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, about the futuristic optimism he'd felt when attending the 1964 World's Fair and the much more ambivalent future that actually arrived. Read the rest

My latest Locus column is "Steering with the Windshield Wipers," and it ties together the growth of Big Tech with the dismantling of antitrust law (which came about thanks to Robert Bork's bizarre alternate history of antitrust, a theory so ridiculous that it never would have gained traction except that it promised to make rich people a lot richer).The problems of Big Tech are almost all the results of how big they are, not the fact that they're doing tech. But all of our regulatory responses to Big Tech -- copyright filters, automated moderation laws, etc -- are about specifying the technology that these companies must use, not making the companies smaller so that their mistakes don't carry so much weight and so that their self-interested preferences aren't so readily turned into laws. 40 years ago, Robert Bork and Ronald Reagan ripped the steering wheel out of our industrial policy's vehicle and since then, we've been "steering" with everything else, because that's all we have. But just because the windshield wipers work and the steering wheel doesn't, it doesn't follow that the wipers can steer the car.A lack of competition rewards bullies, and bullies have insatiable appetites. If your kid is starving because they keep getting beaten up for their lunch money, you can’t solve the problem by giving them more lunch money – the bullies will take that money too. Likewise: in the wildly unequal Borkean inferno we all inhabit, giving artists more copyright will just enrich the companies that control the markets we sell our works into – the media companies, who will demand that we sign over those rights as a condition of their patronage. Read the rest

Software developer Chris Harris is experimenting with machine learning to remove cars from video footage; while the software isn't quite seamless, the results are pure, glorious glitch aesthetic.First attempt at removing cars off the roads with neural nets. Will have to dream harder. pic.twitter.com/DZj63CHo8B— Chris Harris (@otduet) May 6, 2019(via JWZ) Read the rest

Facebook gave "as many as" 260 contractors at Wipro, Ltd in Hyderabad, India access to users' private messages and private Instagram posts so that the contractors could label them prior to their inclusion in an AI training-data set.The posts are randomly selected and shown to two or three contractors who are asked to label the contents, intent and occasion depicted in the post (posts are shown initially to two different contractors for labeling; if their labels contradict each other, a third contractor breaks the tie). The posts are drawn from both public updates to Facebook and Instagram and private messages whose creators took an affirmative step to prevent them from being seen by people they hadn't personally vetted.Facebook is hoping to use the labeling data to train a machine learning system that can identify potentially offensive posts so that it does not place ads alongside of them.The privacy flag on Facebook and Instagram's interfaces is designed to assure users that they have control over who can see the content of the messages when it is used.Reuters learned of the labeling project thanks to Wipro whistleblowers who spoke on condition of anonymity. Facebook's provision of this private data to an outside contractor is radioactively illegal under Europe's GDPR.In March, Facebook made a big announcement committing the company to a new era of respect for user privacy. In December, Facebook admitted that it had provided access to users' private messages to Spotify and Netflix. More than a year ago, Facebook promised to deliver a "clear history" feature to let users have more control over their data. Read the rest

Since 2014, open source hackers have been perfecting the OpenAPS, an "open artificial pancreas" made by modifying the firmware of discontinued Medtronic insulin pumps, which were discontinued due to the very security flaw that makes them user modifiable (that flaw also leaves them vulnerable to malicious modifications).Once modified, these devices automate the process of monitoring the user's blood sugar, calculating an insulin dose, and administering it, a task that has to be performed with great precision, often while the user is experiencing blood sugar troughs or spikes that can impair cognition. Over- and underdosing with insulin has negative effects in both the short and long term.Open artificial pancreas hackers have formed a tight-knit, cooperative community that shares knowledge and techniques, as well as continuously improving the code. By contrast, commercial artificial pancreases are fully locked down and force users to buy proprietary insulin at severe markups (insulin is already one of the most marked up medical products in common usage, with prices rising over 1000% in the past ten years). Medtronic strenuously objects to the OpenAPS project and has not released any more user-modifiable pumps. Last year, EFF released its Catalog of Missing Devices, including this trio of artificial pancreases that illustrate three very different possible futures for artificial organs and proprietary and exploitative software.In the meantime, people with diabetes (and parents of kids with diabetes) are left to relentlessly scour the internet for used, obsolete Medtronics pumps that can be integrated into user-controlled, open, auditable artificial pancreases. Read the rest

I appeared on this week's Canadaland podcast (MP3) with Jesse Brown to talk about the promise of the internet 20 years ago, when it seemed that we were headed for an open, diverse internet with decentralized power and control, and how we ended up with an internet composed of five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four. Jesse has been covering this for more than a decade (I was a columnist on his CBC podcast Search Engine, back in the 2000s) and has launched a successful independent internet business with Canadaland, but as he says, the monopolistic gentrification of the internet is heading for podcasting like a meteor. Read the rest

According to NZ opposition party leader Simon Bridges, the loud mooing noise he made during Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's turn at the mic during Question Time on May 7 was not a "barnyard noise," contrary to the Speaker of the House's characterisation when he was kicked out of Parliament for his behavior.As Bridges was directed to leave the chamber, he said, "I made no such noise and it is entirely unfair for you as a Speaker to say that sort of unprofessional comment."Bridges has been censured in the past for making barnyard noises in Parliament, and has denied it then as well.Bridges first argued that the Speaker was showing favoritism to the other side, claiming that their points of order were frequently “ridiculous” but when he took issue with something they said, he suddenly became “the naughty boy of this Parliament.” The “barnyard noise” allegation followed, and thence the argument that resulted in Bridges’ expulsion. National Leader Simon Bridges has been kicked out of the House and accused of making 'barnyard animal' noises [Jason Walls/New Zealand Herald]New Zealand Lawmaker Accused of Making “Barnyard Noise” [Kevin Underhill/Lowering the Bar] Read the rest

Reporters imprisoned by Myanmar since 2017 for exposing Rohingya Muslim crackdown

Chinese spies got a hold of NSA hacking tools, and “repurposed them in 2016 to attack American allies and private companies in Europe and Asia,” reports the NYT. How'd they get those cyberweapons? Symantec researchers “believe the Chinese did not steal the code but captured it from an N.S.A. attack on their own computers — like a gunslinger who grabs an enemy’s rifle and starts blasting away.”Here's the Symantec researchers' report, released on Monday and the focus of the NYT article: Buckeye: Espionage Outfit Used Equation Group Tools Prior to Shadow Brokers Leak [Symantec] “The episode is the latest evidence that the United States has lost control of key parts of its cybersecurity arsenal,” write Nicole Perlroth, David Sanger and Scott Shane:Based on the timing of the attacks and clues in the computer code, researchers with the firm Symantec believe the Chinese did not steal the code but captured it from an N.S.A. attack on their own computers — like a gunslinger who grabs an enemy’s rifle and starts blasting away.The Chinese action shows how proliferating cyberconflict is creating a digital wild West with few rules or certainties, and how difficult it is for the United States to keep track of the malware it uses to break into foreign networks and attack adversaries’ infrastructure.The losses have touched off a debate within the intelligence community over whether the United States should continue to develop some of the world’s most high-tech, stealthy cyberweapons if it is unable to keep them under lock and key. Read the rest

“Why are we just apprehending them (…) not lining them up and shooting them? We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber.” • Remember that US-Mexico border white supremacist terrorist group that published videos of members detaining hundreds migrants at gunpoint, with the Border Patrol's apparent tacit consent? Today, we learn that one member of that racist New Mexico border militia told police that another fellow member once said, “Why are we...not lining them up and shooting them? We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber,” reports Ken Klippenstein.Klipperstein obtained the documents under FOIA.From his report: “Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them,” a border militia member in New Mexico is alleged to have said of border migrants that the group had been monitoring.“We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber,” the militia member, Armando Gonzalez, is also alleged to have said. Gonzalez did not respond to multiple requests for comment by TYT.The disturbing comments appear in an April 24 police report containing allegations by a former member of the militia group. The former member, Steven Brant, contacted the Sunland Park Police Department to notify them of what he called “terroristic threats” he had witnessed by the group. The report was produced by the Sunland Park Police Department and was obtained by TYT through a public records request. Read the rest

Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday gave a speech in which he praised the Arctic region's rapidly shrinking sea ice for all the economic opportunities the melting waterways present to shipping commerce. No mention of climate change or any risks from anthropogenic changes at all, nothing bad, just new trade routes."The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance," Pompeo uttered glibly today in remarks in Rovaniemi, Finland. "It houses 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 percent of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore."Oh, and it houses Russia, too!"Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade," he went on. "This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.""Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals," Pompeo today said.“POMPEO delivered his Arctic policy speech, which largely focused on the threats Russia and China posed to the region, on the same day a UN report warned that one million species were at risk of extinction due to human action, including climate change,” reports CNN. Read the rest

'Drain the swamp,' said the man whose resort swimming pools are so filthy, Florida state health inspectors had to close 'em ten times in one year, reports QZ.Swimming pools at President Donald Trump's resort properties in Florida have been cited for poor water quality and other violations of health and safety laws far more frequently by the state’s Department of Health than pools at comparable luxury properties, show records reviewed by ⁦QUARTZ News.Writes Justin Rohrlich:The violations were so serious that Trump’s Florida properties were forced to close their pools by health inspectors 10 times over the past 12 months. State records show multiple citations for violations like improper pH levels, problems with “disinfection feeders” that pump chlorine into the water, and inadequate safety features, including deficient handrails and ladders.Improper pH and chlorine levels result in automatic closures, according to Florida regulations. They can lead to conditions that permit the spread of gastrointestinal, skin, ear, respiratory, eye, and neurologic illnesses, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.In comparison to Trump Florida properties, nearby four and five-star resorts and private clubs had mostly pristine pool inspection records over the same time period.[via Steve Herman, Voice of America] Read the rest

If you saw the critically-acclaimed 2004 documentary Dig! about the frenemy neo-psych bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, you'll remember that the real star wasn't either of the bands' frontmen but rather the BJM's inimitable, lovable tambourine player Joel Gion. Rocking his impressive mutton chops and 60s shades, Joel has spent the last 25 years performing with the BJM and releasing his own excellent music while slinging vinyl to make ends meet in the impossible city of San Francisco. Combine that unconventional life with Joel's odd sense of adventure, razor wit, and relentless pursuit of laughs, and you end up with some killer yarns. Joel's got stories for ages. And now he's writing a memoir to share the weirdness with the world. I've read bits of what he's been writing and it is far fucking out, a modern Beat's notes from the underground. Support Joel Gion's Patreon so he can get it all down on paper. View this post on Instagram I’ve just launched a Patreon page for my book focusing on the few run-up years before the documentary-era. Click on the link on my profile page and become a patron to read over 3K words posted right now. I’ll be posting new writing or project related stuff every week. #joelgion #bjm A post shared by Joel Gion (@joelgion) on May 3, 2019 at 8:11pm PDT Read the rest

Actor Luke Perry, who died last month following a massive stroke, was buried in a mushroom suit. According to his daughter, Perry had requested that upon his death he wear Coeio's "Infinity Burial Suit" that the company describes as "made up of of mushrooms and other microorganisms that together do three things; aid in decomposition, work to neutralize toxins found in the body and transfer nutrients to plant life."(CNN) View this post on Instagram 💋In December I went to San Francisco with two of my best friends. One of them, had never never been to California, so we went to show him the Redwoods. I took this picture while we were there, because i thought, “damn, those mushrooms are beautiful.” Now, mushrooms hold an entirely new meaning for me. Any explanation i give will not do justice to the genius that is the mushroom burial suit, but it is essentially an eco friendly burial option via mushrooms. All i can say is that you should all look into them at coeio.com or just by googling “mushroom burial suit” . My dad discovered it, and was more excited by this than I have ever seen him. He was buried in this suit, one of his final wishes. They are truly a beautiful thing for this beautiful planet, and I want to share it with all of you. A post shared by Sophie Perry (@lemonperry) on May 3, 2019 at 4:53am PDT Read the rest

In a Bolivian rock shelter likely used 1,000 years ago for religious rituals, archaeologists found a collection of drug paraphernalia that still contains traces of psychoactive plants. A pouch made from three fox snouts likely contained a stash of leaves and seeds. From New Scientist:(The items) include a 28-centimetre-long leather bag, a pair of wooden snuffing tablets, a snuffing tube, a pair of llama-bone spatulas, a textile headband, fragments of dried plant stems and a pouch made from three fox snouts stitched together. The snuffing tube and tablets feature ornate carvings of human-like figures.Melanie Miller at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and her colleagues used mass spectrometry to analyse samples from the pouch and plant stems. They detected five psychoactive compounds: cocaine, benzoylecgonine (BZE), bufotenine, harmine and dimethyltryptamine (DMT).The presence of these drugs suggests the pouch may have belonged to a ritual specialist or shaman with extensive knowledge of plants and their psychoactive properties, and used to hold leaves, seeds and other plant matter. More in the scientific paper: "Chemical evidence for the use of multiple psychotropic plants in a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle from South America" (PNAS) Read the rest

This gravity defying water trick, watch til the end. from r/blackmagicfuckeryA science teacher uses a classic but eternally astonishing magic trick in a lesson on atmospheric pressure and surface tension. The real magic though is the infectious curiosity she sparks in her students. (Here's the secret and the science.) Read the rest

While shooting a scene in "Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back," the late Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) talks to Harrison Ford (Han Solo) in his own Cockney English so Ford can respond more naturally. Of course Chewie's grunts and growls -- an amalgam of bears, lions, badgers, seals, and a walrus-- were overdubbed later. (More on that in this post.)(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

Democratic hopeful Joe Biden is not burying his face in women's hair anymore, as was his wont, reports Politico:But after nearly a week on the campaign trail, including nearly a half-dozen events in Pittsburgh, Iowa and South Carolina, it appears Biden got the message. Gone are the episodes of canoodling with voters, replaced by a less tactile brand of retail politicking marked by selfies and more physical reserve than Biden is accustomed to.Where once Biden was famously photographed in an Ohio diner burying his face in the back of a woman biker’s head, rubbing her shoulders and sitting so close that it initially appeared she was sitting on his lap, the former vice president is now showing signs of deliberately holding back in one-on-one encounters.Image: Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock Read the rest

Michael Cohen is reporting to prison today to serve a three-year sentence for lying to Congress and assorted crimes involving money. He's staying at a camp for nonviolent offenders at Otisville Federal Correctional Institution, about 70 miles from Manhattan. His fellow inmates include Fyre Festival con man Billy Shire and Jersey Shore star Michael "The Situation" Sorrentino. The Otisville camp is one of "America's 10 Cushiest Prisons" as reported in Forbes.From CBS News:Inmates have lockers to store personal belongings, they can do their own laundry in washers and dryers and use microwaves to heat up food. They also have access to ice machines. It also has tennis courts, horseshoes and cardio equipment, leading the Associated Press to observe that it's "the closest thing the federal prison system has to sleepaway camp."Also from CBS News:About 115 inmates sleep in bunks lined up in barrack-style halls, instead of individual or two-man cells like in higher-security facilities. There are lockers to store personal belongings, washers and dryers for laundry, microwaves to heat up food and ice machines to keep cool... Otisville is also known as a favorite among prison-bound Jews for its Kosher meals and Shabbat services.Image: JStone/Shutterstock Read the rest

French singer Cecil L. Recchia's 2018 album The Gumbo is a tribute to New Orleans jazz; I found it while searching for an online stream of Tootie Ma is a Big Fine Thing, the track that Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Band released in 2010 as a limited-edition 78RPM album that came with its own gramophone (!); and while Waits's rendition is amazing, Recchia's is spectacular, with just the most amazing vocals. I bought it yesterday and have listened to it at least 50 times since. Read the rest

Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei announced that he has changed his mind about executing people for having gay sex."I am aware that there are many questions and misperceptions with regard to the implementation of the SPCO [Syariah Penal Code Order]," the oil-rich billionaire said in a speech. "However, we believe that once these have been cleared, the merit of the law will be evident."The sultan's decision might have had something to do with the fact that businesses around the world are boycotting Brunei-owned businesses.From Reuters:Banks, including Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Citi and Nomura, have banned staff from using [nine hotels owned by the sultanate], which include the Dorchester in London and the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, while numerous organizations have canceled events.Transport for London (TfL), which is responsible for London’s transport system, removed adverts promoting Brunei as a tourism destination from the city’s public transport network last month.STA Travel, a global travel agency, stopped selling flights on Royal Brunei Airlines, while Virgin Australia Airlines ended an agreement that offered staff discounted tickets on the national carrier.An article in Prolific London examines the "cynical," "groveling" message posted on the Dorchester hotels' website:In what many will view as a cynical attempt to distance itself from the outrage over the new laws in Brunei, the Brunei Investment Agency posted a groveling message on its Dorchester Collection website.The unsigned message on the site’s home page claims that “Inclusion, diversity and equality are the foundation of the Dorchester Collection. Read the rest

From last night's episode of Game of Thrones, as posted to Twitter."He was no dragon. Coffee cannot stimulate a dragon." Read the rest

An Aeroflot jet crash-landed while returning in flames to Moscow's Sheremtyevo airport Sunday, and only 37 of the 73 passengers and crew escaped with their lives. One took this video from inside the cabin, showing the engine fire and smoke. The video ends as the plane comes to a halt and fire starts to engulf its rear end.The survivors were all out in less than a minute, according to the BBC's sources. Survivor Mikhail Savchenko posted video that shows how quickly the fire progressed: View this post on Instagram Ребят, со мной все хорошо, жив и цел. Успел выскочить. Это рейс Москва-Мурманск 17.50. Остальное смотрите в новостях. Огромные соболезнования семьям погибших. Upd - моя фамилия в списке раненых фейк. Либо ошибка. Я здоров. Спасибо вам всем за тёплые слова и за поддержкуA post shared by Mikhail Savchenko (@mikkentosh) on May 5, 2019 at 8:51am PDT Read the rest

CodeParade shows how he made a bot that can post YouTube comments that are often more comprehensible than human-written comments. It's called YouTubeCommenter and the source code is here if you want to train your own bot. Read the rest

The 11-foot-8 bridge in Durham, North Carolina, went relatively easy on the driver of this truck, taking just a small nibble from the top.From the YouTube description:A boxtruck hit the crash beam at the canopener bridge and then almost backed into another overheight truck right behind it, as that one was turning onto the side street. After a bit of back and forth and a honk, the dance was over and everyone went about their business. This is crash #146 since 2008.Image: YouTube Read the rest

In this interesting post from 2015—getting a viral second wind—Alex Danco offers a model to understand how the "middle ground" of interest in things is fading. That's the normal distribution, the traditional bell curve that suggests the best place to make your business is at a middle optimum of scale and interest, like so:Instead, these days, you're either interested or not. To make a go of something, you have to nail either scale or interest (i.e. cheap vs quality):It strikes me that what Danco's defined here is a flip (on the horizontal axis) of the classic early-2000s theory about how the web would allow creators to make money like never before, the long tail. The idea was that the internet dissolved gatekeepers, democratized the marketplace, and allowed consumer internet to roam over (and buy) a "long tail" of options that was revealed to them by new technology.And it did, for some. Mostly, though, the long tail ended up as aggregated social media content. The bonds of content, creator and consumer, far from being remade by the internet, were also dissolved by them. Instead of a long tail, we have a green goo of nanocontent which wants to become as vast as possible, with a couple of big corporations making all the money.I don't have a clever point to make, I just think it's interesting that social media not only submerged the long tail but made us forget it ever existed—and now it's going to be rediscovered from other viewpoints over and over again, each time in increasingly imprecise and alarmed terms. Read the rest