Boing Boing

[Author Catherynne Valente (previously) posted this outstanding rant to her Facebook page; I asked her permission to repost it here so it would have somewhere to live outside of the zuckerverse and she graciously gave her permission -Cory]I live in Portland, Maine. We have recently had an influx of African asylum seekers and the city has been scrambling to find shelter and support for them.Cue NextDoor, that wretched hive of scum and villainy. Every day someone would post some new hateful jingoistic nonsense about how horrible these people are and that they need to get out of 'Merica and leave it to the 'Mericans.I try not to get involved on NextDoor because I live in a small community and I have to see these people at the ferry dock. But I got mad. And I got involved. And it got long.So I decided to share it with you. Please feel free to share it with others who might need to hear it.You know, I was going to let this thread go by without saying anything. It's not worth it, I said to myself. These people aren't going to listen. But y'all can't stop being hateful and I'm tired of getting notifications that someone else is being and absolute bell-end about their fellow man on NextDoor.So buckle up.First of all, "they" aren't illegal. They are asylum seekers. It is legal in every nation on the planet to seek asylum, and they are abiding by the law. Read the rest

Meet Marcus Epstein, aka Mark Epstein.Marcus Epstein is a former GOP operative, a former Richard Spencer associate, and once wrote for white nationalist site VDare. He also pled guilty to assaulting a Black woman and calling her the n-word. But as white nationalism goes mainstream, so has Epstein. Lately, he's been rehabbed as an opinion contributor to mainstream publications including Wall Street Journal, the Hill, and Forbes, under the pseudonym “Mark Epstein.”As Ryan Mac and Joseph Bernstein at BuzzFeed News write, this is only the latest example of the Trump-aligned racists “becoming part of the mainstream conservative movement over the last decade.” The Wall Street Journal just ran an Epstein piece titled “Antitrust, Free Speech and Google” earlier in June, but wouldn't tell Buzzfeed if Epstein's history was examined before the piece was published. Marcus Epstein, who worked for former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo and founded a nativist political club with white nationalist Richard Spencer, has written more than a dozen opinion pieces for the Journal, the Hill, Forbes, US News and World Report, and the National Review over the past two years. His pieces, which mainly focus on the regulation of the technology industry, were published under the byline “Mark Epstein.”In six different pieces for the Journal, Epstein is identified as an “antitrust attorney and freelance writer” and addresses topics including the supposed threat to conservative speech posed by Google and Facebook, and the ways regulation and antitrust might be used to ensure “viewpoint neutrality” and consumer protection, respectively. Read the rest

In June 1940, German forces took the Channel Islands, a small British dependency off the coast of France. They expected the occupation to go easily, but they hadn't reckoned on the island of Sark, ruled by an iron-willed noblewoman with a disdain for Nazis. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Sibyl Hathaway and her indomitable stand against the Germans.We'll also overtake an earthquake and puzzle over an inscrutable water pipe.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Here we go again. Donald Trump held a rally in Orlando, Florida tonight, and brought out all the great 2016 campaign trail hits -- 'lock her up,' 'acid washed,' 'deplorables', plus he trashed the Mueller report. Trump also made it official: The 2020 Trump re-election campaign slogan is KAG, Keep America Great.As Hunter Schwartz wrote last week, this is not a new tagline.Donald Trump trademarked the reelection slogan "Keep America Great" before he even became president.Excerpt:Trump’s been polling supporters about the “Keep America Great” at recent events, and the reaction isn’t particularly decisive. Even Trump waffled on whether or not he likes it.“KAG. I don’t know if I like that as much,” he said. At another fundraiser in April, he suggested the campaign could also keep “Make America Great Again” and use both.The trademark for “Keep America Great” was filed for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. on January 18, 2017, two days before he was sworn into office and subsequently filed for reelection, and 882 days before his scheduled 2020 kickoff rally in Orlando, Florida. Trump is known for thinking ahead when it comes to political branding; he trademarked “Make America Great Again” on November 19, 2012."My only special interest is you," @POTUS tells #MAGA crowd. pic.twitter.com/5wvdAcYOyV— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) June 19, 2019 Read the rest

Chennai's 4 main reservoirs are completely dry.

It's not supposed to be a political campaign ad. But it will be.

Trump’s moon mission threatened

Michael Gardi built a nice replica of the Minivac 601 computer kit, and made the plans available on Instructables.Created by information theory pioneer Claude Shannon as an educational toy for teaching digital circuits, the Minivac 601 Digital Computer Kit was billed as an electromechanical digital computer system. Produced by Scientific Development Corporation in the early 1960s it sold for $85 (about $720 today).Minivac 601 used electromechanical relays as logic switches as well as for very basic storage. Simple DPDT switches and SPDT push buttons made up the binary inputs, with lights to represent the outputs. A large motorized dial allowed the user to enter decimal or hexadecimal numbers, and to output numbers, or to act as a clock signal generator. For more information about the Minivac 601 here are some additional references:WikipediaCenter for Computing HistoryTime-Line Computer ArchiveThe Instructable presented here is for a full size replica of that Minivac 601 from 1961. I have tried to remain as true to the original as possible given the technologies and resources available to me. I don't have a "vintage" unit so this replica has been constructed based on photos and from the original manuals that were available online. I have included these manuals in PDF format as part of this project. I brought these files to a local copy center and had them printed as the spiral bound booklets you can see [below]. I'm really happy with the results. Read the rest

Sir Paul McCartney turns 77 today. To celebrate, enjoy this lovely cover of "Yesterday" as recorded by country music superstar Tammy Wynette in 1968. Read the rest

Master maker Simone Giertz and her friends transformed her Tesla Model 3 into an electric pickup truck. Their fake TV commercial is above; build video below. TRUCKLA: Available nowhere. Now. Read the rest

This is a reminder to wear seatbelts when flying.Image: YouTube Read the rest

I never thought I had a distinctive Colorado accent until people from California noted my dropped Gs at the end of "ing" words. I've since stopped dropping Gs, but when I go back to Colorado I can't help myself and I drop my Gs. In this Condé Nast Traveler video, 50 people from 50 US states speak in their local accents.Image: YouTube Read the rest

I've had a Brother wireless laser printer for close to 10 years. It's so much faster and cheaper than an inkjet printer, and doesn't cause problems like an inkjet printer. Right now, Amazon is selling the Brother HL-L2350DW, which prints on two-sides of a sheet, for . Official toner cartridges are for a high-yield toner cartridge (3,000 pages), but you can get TWO third-party high-yield cartridges for just , making this a cheap, reliable printer. Read the rest

The UK China Tribunal has concluded that China is indeed harvesting organs from prisoners, especially imprisoned members of the banned Falun Gong religion; Falun Gong members have long claimed this to be the case, though the Chinese state denied it and said that it had halted the transplantation of organs from executed prisoners in 2014. The tribunal heard that investigators who cold-called Chinese hospitals inquiring about donor organs found them to be in suspiciously ready supply, with the hospital staff candidly admitting that organs had previously come from Falun Gong members. Jennifer Zeng, a Falun Gong member who was imprisoned in a hard labor camp, testified that she and her co-religionists were repeatedly medically tested, which she believes might have been a prelude to organ harvesting. Former Uighur prisoners also testified that they were subjected to repeated medical tests while imprisoned.Some countries enforce a ban on citizens traveling to China for organ transplants; the UK is considering such a ban. A representative of the Chinese state told the Guardian that they hoped that Britons "will not be misled by rumours."In her statement to the tribunal, she said: “Inmates of the labour camp were not allowed to exchange contact details, so there was no way to trace each other after we were released. When anyone disappeared from the camp, I would assume that she was released and had gone home.“But in reality that cannot be confirmed, as I had no way to trace others after my release and I now fear they might have been taken to a hospital and had their organs removed without consent and thus killed in the process.”As many as 90,000 transplant operations a year are being carried out in China, the tribunal estimated, a far higher figure than that given by official government sources. Read the rest

Mediawatch was a column that ran in Britain's Gay Times for almost 25 years, with author Terry Sanderson cataloging coverage of LGBT issues by the mainstream press. The archives are being posted online in a blog format, and Buzzfeed published an interview and retrospective with Sanderson himself.Poofters. Benders. Shirtlifters. Bumboys. Lezzies. This was how British tabloid headlines referred to gay men and lesbians in the 1980s — an echo of the taunts heard on the street before a beating. The stories beneath would expand on the pejoratives, justifying them with news of “sick”, “evil”, “predatory” gays — all arising from a presumption: that readers would agree.The twist is that the readers didn't agree. The pervasive homophobia of British newspapers was increasingly out of step with the times, revealing more about the neurotic obsessions of Fleet Street creeps than the country at large. The open bigotry evaporated in the early 1990s as circulations began to decline and reality asserted itself. But I must admit to being taken aback by just how homophobic they were. Sanderson chronicles not merely slurs and AIDS-baiting headlines, but calls for reprohibition, pogroms and executions--all delivered in the same blurting, jokey yet seething-angry tabloid cadence that foreshadows the reactionary right's approach to social media now. One thing stood out to me in particular: an old quote from Garry Bushell, then a columnist in The Sun, remarking that Stalin had the right idea by getting rid of the poofs. By the time I hit my teens in the 1990s and started paying attention, such talk was not merely history, but forgotten: Bushell was a mainstream TV star by then, an award-winning critic, but I never saw a whisper of that talk. Read the rest

Bon Appetit's 20-tip roundup of salad-making tips is full of culinary wisdom, from the mechanical (how to use a salad-spinner properly and how to apply dressing for a good, even coat that doesn't turn delicates to mush) to the chemical (using salt to tenderize raw cabbage) to the culinary (toast your nuts, put chopped veg in your dressing, mix your vinegars). It's a great and timely piece for anyone getting ready to enjoy the summer's garden veg or anyone trying to get kids to eat more veggies. (via Kottke) Read the rest

For decades, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has been missing in action, standing idly by as Canada's telcom companies merged with each other and with media giants, created three bloated, anticompetitive vertically integrated monopolies; now the CRTC has repented its sins, adopting its proposed pro-competition agenda (which was bitterly opposed by the Big Three), with far-reaching implications for mobile virtual network operators, facilities sharing, rural coverage, accessibility and investment. The policy goes into effect immediately. Read the rest

Sheelah Kolhatkar's 10,000 word New Yorker profile of Elizabeth Warren is mostly a "color piece," giving a sense of where Warren is coming from, personally and politically; as such, it's a good read, but mostly redundant if you've already read Warren's (very good) 2018 book This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class; that said there's a couple of key political insights that are very timely for anyone trying to figure out whom to support in the Democratic presidential primary (I am a donor to both Warren's and Sanders's primary campaigns).First is the relationship between Warren's rhetoric and Trump's, which bears some similarities in that both campaign on economic justice for the "forgotten" people of America. As a staffer says, the inflammatory "rigged system" rhetoric is deliberate, "It’s not enough just to inspire. You have to inspire and fight for something. You have to name a villain." Warren describes the difference: "Donald Trump says, ‘Your life isn’t working, and the reason is all those people who don’t look like you. They’re not the same race as you, they don’t worship like you, they don’t talk like you. So blame them.’ His answer is: divide working people. It’s racist. And, ultimately, it makes everyone poorer." Kolhatkar also provides a glimpse of how well Warren's proposed wealth tax is playing out, as Warren reminds people that middle-income voters -- whose only substantial asset is likely to be their home -- already pay an annual wealth tax in the form of property taxes: "All I want to do that’s different is include the Rembrandt and the diamonds!" (to which an audience member yells, "And the yacht," and Warren agrees, saying "And the yacht with the Imax theatre!"). Read the rest

My daughter is taking a precalc summer school course. Last night she was doing her homework, which was about verifying trigonometric identities. Out of the 25 homework problems, there was one that she got stuck on. I decided to give it a try and spent two hours on it without solving it.Here it is. Verify the identity:(sec x - tan x)² = (1 - sin x )/(1 + sin x )You don't need to know anything about trigonometry to solve this. All you need to know are the fundamental trigonometric identities, which are:My daughter is in class now and she texted me the answer. There's not too many steps involved. Let's see how fast you can solve it. Read the rest

It's not Photoshop. I can tell by the pixels and from seeing a number of levitating fishermen in my time.(r/confusing_perspective) Read the rest

Many large-scale data-breaches involve attackers gaining access to administrators' database logins; from there, they can clone the whole database and plunder it at will; but leading nosql database vendor Mongodb proposes to add another layer of security it's calling "Field Level Encryption" which encrypts the data in database fields with its own key -- possibly a different key for every user or every field. That means that attackers will have to compromise a lot of cryptographic keys as well as breaking into a server.Depending on how it is configured, Field Level Encryption also severely limits the ability of vendors to spy on their customers. The downside is that it adds complexity -- key management -- to the design of clients and possibly user key-management. The Field Level Encryption tool is free/open source software, and open to auditing and improvement by all comers. Both Adobe and Google -- as well as other giant tech companies -- rely on Mongodb for some database technology and could use Field Level Encryption to add another layer of security to their data-handling practices. However, relational SQL databases would struggle to implement comparable measures, so Field Level Encryption will be limited to nosql applications.For regular users, not much will be visibly different. If their credentials are stolen and they aren't using multi-factor authentication, an attacker will still be able to access everything the victim could. But the new feature is meant to eliminate single points of failure. With Field Level encryption in place, a hacker who steals an administrative username and password, or finds a software vulnerability that gives them system access, still won't be able to use these holes to access readable data. Read the rest

Snail slime -- called an epiphragm -- is an incredibly strong yet reversible adhesive.Now, University of Pennsylvania scientists have developed a new kind of glue that employs the same mechanism as the epiphragm. The new material dries like superglue but once wet, it loses its adhesion. For years, scientists have explored adhesions inspired by nature but none have been demonstrated to have the same amount of strength and reversibility. For example, the researchers report that their new adhesive "is 89 times stronger than gecko adhesion." From the University of Pennsylvania:The breakthrough came one day when Gaoxiang Wu was working on another project that involved a hydrogel made of a polymer called polyhydroxyethylmethacrylate (PHEMA) and noticed its unusual adhesive properties. PHEMA is rubbery when wet but rigid when dry, a quality that makes it useful for contact lenses but also, as Yang's team discovered, for adhesives.When PHEMA is wet, it conforms to all of the small grooves on a surface, from a tree trunk's distinct ridges to the invisible microporosity of a seemingly smooth wall. This conformal contact is what allows PHEMA to stick to a surface.To demonstrate just how durable their PHEMA adhesive is, one of Yang's lab members and co-first author, Jason Christopher Jolly, volunteered to suspend himself from a harness held up only by a postage-stamp-sized patch of their adhesive; the material easily held the weight of an entire human body. Based on the lab tests, the team determined that, although PHEMA may not be the strongest adhesive in existence, it is currently the strongest known candidate available for reversible adhesion. Read the rest

A combination of hubris (failing to heed the stern warnings that bidders should only participate if they know what they're doing), cryptic annotations and confusing illustrations resulted in a bidder buying a 12" wide, 100' long strip between two properties in Broward County, Florida -- an odd parcel that had been formerly owned by the developer, who folded and stopped paying tax on it, sending it to the auction.The buyer thought he was buying the "villa" next to the property, which is valued at $200,000; apparently so did the other bidders in the auction, who bid up the strip of grass to $9100.All sales in the auction are final, but the buyer is trying to get out of his purchase.On the other hand, it is strange that this piece of turf was ever defined as a separate “parcel” at all. It seems more likely there was a mistake in defining the adjacent parcels, and this strip was just left over. According to the report, it still belonged to the subdivision’s developer until that company dissolved and stopped paying the taxes. The unhappy buyer apparently has some internal memos in which county officials ponder the oddity of selling a 1′ x 100′ strip of land that runs under someone else’s building, but they decided the relevant statutes required them to put it up for auction. So far as I can tell, nothing in the statutes precluded them from adding a little note about the weird circumstances here, but they chose not to do that. Read the rest

Not only are owls incredibly agile flyers, they're also silently stealthy.(r/NatureIsFuckingLit)Owl through legs (full speed) Read the rest

The Senate of Berlin has approved a five-year, citywide rent freeze in a bid to halt the city's skyrocketing rents, driven by increased demand that has attracted large-scale corporate landlords who have acquired swathes of properties and raised rents on them, pricing tenants out of their own neighborhoods. Next, the bill proceeds to the Berlin Parliament for approval; it is expected to pass, and will go in effect in January, and apply retroactively to June (heading off any last-minute rent-hikes ahead of the freeze).The corporate landlords say that the rent freeze will discourage new building to take up demand; historically, Berlin managed this dynamic through the construction of public housing. The rent freeze exempts new buildings.Berlin rents have doubled in a decade, rising 7% last quarter alone. Rents nationwide are climbing, and there is a movement for a national rent freeze.The flyers appeared overnight on lampposts in my neighbourhood. A picture of a young couple who explained that they were flat-hunting and, as professional photographers, would offer a free photoshoot to any landlord who'd take them on.It's not an unusual phenomenon. One woman recently offered to bake regularly for anyone who'd rent her their flat.Berlin can't build affordable accommodation fast enough for the city's rising population. An open showing of a newly available flat is likely to attract well over 100 hopeful, would-be tenants. Demand is pushing up rents as corporate investors buy up and renovate old or dilapidated buildings, and it's pricing Berliners out of their old neighbourhoods. Read the rest

Male stag beetles' horns are longer than their body, and these two boy beetles put them to use in a scuffle to win the heart of a girl beetle. The winner mates with the girl beetle of his dreams, but then makes a terrible mistake. Image: YouTube Read the rest

Roll up! Roll up! Who dares be first to board the BREXIT DEATHLINERS?Boeing Co. announced its first deal for 737 Max jets since a March grounding that followed two deadly crashes, landing a $24 billion agreement with British Airways owner IAG SA.The airline group signed a letter of intent for 200 of the single-aisle planes, Boeing said in a statement Tuesday. IAG, led by a former 737 pilot, would take delivery of the planes between 2023 and 2027 assuming the deal is formalized.“I wouldn’t ask anybody to do something I wouldn’t do myself,” IAG Chief Executive Officer Willie Walsh, who flew 737 jets for about 18 years, told reporters at the Paris Air Show. “If you ask me, I would get on board a Max tomorrow.”Quite a tall order.Photo: Shutterstock; Illustration: Beschizza Read the rest

This lightweight, durable MSR kitchen knife comes sharp and stays sharp.You can also sharpen it quite easily.I used to buy camping kitchen knives at the dollar store. I'd use them for a season, or part of a season, and then throw them away. They were cheap but unfortunately also disposable. Years ago this MSR Alpine Kitchen Knife came with a set of cooking kit. I have not needed a new knife since.Good for chopping, paring, slicing and spreading -- this knife will do it all if I'm camping alone and not feeling like taking out silverware. Sure, I'll eat with the kitchen knife.I have gotten a lot of use out of this blade and only had to sharpen it once. It holds an edge very well.The Alpine Kitchen Knife is lightweight and has a bit of flex, but is a pleasure to work with. The knife comes with a lightweight plastic sheath for the storaging, as well.MSR Alpine Kitchen Knife via Amazon Read the rest

At The Atlantic, William Langewiesche meticulously catalogs and narrates the flight and dissapearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. Though the investigation continues to focus on the water--where did it go down? where are its remains?--the truth is found on land, in the results of a police investigation that one of Asia's most plainly corrupt and insecure governments does not want made too public. The pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was known to friends to be lonely and depressed, and had played out the bizzare flight to nowhere on Microsoft Flight Simulator. He is surely a mass-murderer and a suicide. Read the rest

Jon Stewart is having none of McConnell. Read the rest

Today I wanted to speak directly to the people of CA-45. There's been a lot of noise in D.C. and in the press about impeachment, so I wanted to share my thoughts with you. pic.twitter.com/ceri6lHwbY— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) June 18, 2019 Katie Porter is the first Democrat to win California's 45th Congressional district. Her victory helped flip the Congress. Here Porter explains why she supports impeachment. Read the rest

Gordon Buchanan is a ladies man... lady polar bears, that is.While on assignment for the BBC, Buchanan, in what I'm sure he hopes is a polar bear-proof enclosure, is accosted by a hungry, frozen waste-wandering beast. Nope. All the nopes that ever noped.Image via Wikipedia Read the rest

Karl Schroeder (previously) is literally the most visionary person I know (and I've known him since 1986!): he was the first person to every mention "fractals" to me, then "the internet" and then "the web" -- there is no one, no one in my circle more ahead of more curves, and it shows in his novels and none moreso than Stealing Worlds, his latest, which is a futuristic roadmap to how our present-day politics, economics, technology and society.Stealing Worlds is a near-future novel of ecological and economic catastrophe, in which an ever-larger pool of people have been replaced by automation and an ever-expanding proportion of our planet is becoming uninhabitable due to climate change. Mass surveillance has spread to the internet of things, and every corner of the world is now studded with sensors that monitor things like compliance with a too-late ban on fossil fuels (while simultaneously feeding into a tight mesh of surveillance of every living thing, including humans), and ubiquitous blockchain technology is used to create transparency for the powerless masses, revealing their debts and locations to bounty hunters.Sura, the heroine of Stealing Worlds, is barely clinging to survival when her father -- an activist doing mysterious research in Peru -- is assassinated in an attack made to look like an accident. His friends warn Sura to go underground, to use the synthetic identity her paranoid father created and nurtured for her. His paranoia is finally vindicated -- but proves to be insufficient, as Sura is quickly snatched by an armed skip-tracer who hauls her off to be turned over to her father's killers, who have used her massive debts as a pretense for kidnapping her. Read the rest

Back in the day, I had a Datel Action Replay wedged into my Commodore Amiga. More than just a cheat device, it let you peek into all the internal goings-on of a game, manipulating content as well as a few select variables, scrambling the reality so carefully devised by the developers and artists. But, let's face it, more life, father, was where it was at. Engadget's Andrew Tarantola offers a brief history of video game cheating.As far back as the Commodore 64 era, players themselves used POKES to access the contents of a game's specific memory cell before loading the program. The Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC all allowed POKES. Doing so allowed players to edit various values and, if done properly, boost their stats, impart damage immunity or otherwise modify how the game played. For example, using "POKE 755, 4" on an Atari 8-bit system instructs the graphics card to invert all on-screen text. Of course, finding the right memory cell was a hit-or-miss endeavor. Just as often as you'd find a POKE that boosts your characters powers, you'd find one that imparts the same stat boost to your enemies. Read the rest

While everyone outside of Mexico is moaning about the steep cost of avocados, those living inside of the country are paying a far higher price.From The Yucatan Times:Every day, avocado producers are victims of robberies and lose an average of four loaded trucks of around 12 tons (26,448 pounds) during the journey from the orchards to the packing zones on the state’s highways. They ask the authorities to stop the criminal gangs, which threaten the economic activity and the lives of the workers.When a truckload of the fatty fruit gets hijacked, instead of being compensated by insurance for the full price of what was lost, the producer and shipping company are only awarded 15 pesos--less than 80 cents--per kilogram.According to the Yucatan Times, avocado industry representatives have pretty much said that their regional and national governments couldn't give two shits that their shipments of the fatty fruit are routinely pirated by armed, well organized criminals. Even if they did, with the nation's law enforcement agencies and military already neck deep in combating violent crime (not to mention credible claims of wide-spread corruption within their ranks), it's unclear whether what Mexico's avocado industry would like to be seen done could be done. Given that the revenue generated by avocado production rakes in billions of dollars every year, you can bet that the trouble those associated with the industry are seeing won't disappear, anytime soon.Image via Flickr, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Read the rest

A woman in England named Siobhan asked her colleagues to put pop star Mariah Carey's image on her birthday cake. Instead, she got French physicist Marie Curie on it.Lye writes, "They misunderstood, and [this] is the cake they made her instead. It’s Marie Curie, looking very festive."Mariah Carey, Marie Curie. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.Siobhan's cousin, author Harriet Alida Lye of Toronto, shared the funny mix-up on Twitter:My cousin in England told her colleagues she wanted a Mariah Carey birthday cake. They misunderstood, and is the cake they made her instead. It’s Marie Curie, looking very festive. pic.twitter.com/LMHJnMATqD— Harriet Alida Lye (@harrietalida) June 14, 2019To which Mariah Carey, not Marie Curie (who's been dead for nearly 85 years), replied:This could've been me if only I hadn't failed remedial math 🤦‍♀️ happy birthday Siobhan!! 😘 https://t.co/Ffz69lTRkc— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) June 15, 2019Can we all just agree that female Nobel Prize winners should be the new normal for birthday cake decorations?(Mashable) Read the rest

No matter whether your memories of George Lucas' Star Wars prequels are fond or furious, there's no denying that, at the time that films were released, their cutting-edge visual effects were unlike anything else out there--but how do they hold up today? It's a question that the VFX experts at CorridorCrew take the time to answer. Over the course of this fun 15-minute video, the 'Crew examine what of the prequels' VFX still hold up, what mistakes were made and, in some occasions, what didn't work, even at the time that the movies were released. Image via Wikipedia Read the rest

There are, occasionally, some concrete barriers on the road to Munsiyari, Uttarakhand. Wonderful views, too! Born Idiots writes:In June, we went to Munsiyari, Uttarakhand, which is a narrow and dangerous Himalayan road. As we climb up the kumaon ranges, roads get narrow and dangerous, many times without any barriers. There is a steep fall down the mountain and driving on it keeps you on the edge of your seat. Special mention of the brave HRTC bus and truck drivers who drive on these roads on a daily basis. Read the rest

An echo of disco bouncing off the Kremlin walls, just a few years out of sync. Советская аэробика. Ритмическая гимнастика. С Лилией Сабитовой (1985) (YouTube) Read the rest

Even if you feel like AirPods are worth the price tag, you've got to admit there's a certain anxiety that comes with using them. What if I lose them? What if they get wet in the rain? Or drenched in sweat? Or fall into the drink you dropped them into? Shiny tech is great, but when we're talking about wearable tech, it's got to be, well ... wearable.For people that want that wireless freedom but want to actually use it, there's an alternative: xFyro ARIA True Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds.Let's look at these things from the inside out. The wireless connectivity is up to the best that's currently out there: Bluetooth 5.0, which not only produces a more accurate sound through the 16mm drivers but is up to 2.5 times more reliable. The sound gets even more immersive with a one-two punch of CVC noise isolation and ambient sound protection. It's Google Assistant and Siri-enabled, which means the operation is a breeze. And the longevity is especially remarkable: You'll get 8 hours of listening on a single charge, plus an additional 24 hours of power with a boost from the included charging case. It's quick to juice up too, with 15 minutes of plug-in getting as much as 3 hours of playback time.But the casing is where the real peace of mind comes in. The xFyro ARIAs are certified waterproof and dustproof with an IP67 rating. That means in the rain or in the hot tub, you can keep the soundtrack going without fear of losing your investment. Read the rest

As someone who makes a lot of Korean food, this is the best method for getting garlic peeled!👌 pic.twitter.com/14GGJDQhRj— 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖆 ✣ 𝖑𝖔𝖗𝖉 🌑 (@VPestilenZ) June 17, 2019If you've got a lot of garlic to peel, Twitter user @VPestilenZ shows how to release the cloves from both the bulb and its protective sheath quickly and easily. It looks like you'll need to poke, and then pull out, the individual cloves one by one with a paring knife (or is that a pocket knife?). Either way, be careful to not stab yourself.(Digg) Read the rest

Back in 2017, a law student named Lena Khan made waves in policy circles with the publication of her massive, brilliant, game-changing 24,000-word article in the Yale Law Journal, Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, which revisited the entirety of post-Ronald-Reagan antitrust orthodoxy to show how it had allowed Amazon to become a brutal, harmful monopoly without any consequences from the regulators charged with ensuring competition in our markets.Now, Khan (who is now a Columbia Law fellow) is back with The Separation of Platforms and Commerce -- clocking in at 61,000 words with footnotes! -- that describes the one-two punch of contemporary monopolism, in which Reagan-era deregulation enthusiasts took the brakes off of corporate conduct but said it would be OK because antitrust law would keep things from getting out of control, while Reagan-era antitrust "reformers" (led by Robert Bork and the Chicago School) dismantled antitrust).As Khan points out, it's hard to find a theory of antitrust that monopolist-friendly courts and theoreticians will accept. Bork and his pals said that the only time that antitrust should kick in was when there was "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices in the short term (which effectively makes it impossible to enforce antitrust against free-to-use internet services, where there are no prices); but in last year's Ohio v. American Express Co, the Supremes ruled that in "two-sided markets" (like a credit card company, but also like, say, Ebay, Itunes, Amazon, etc), you had to show harm to both the buyers and the sellers, "effectively creating an insurmountable hurdle." And despite innovation's centrality to "dynamic efficiency and long-term welfare," "innovation harms seem to go unaddressed under the consumer welfare framework."In the meantime, regulators have continued to allow megamergers between giant, market-dominating companies (NBC-Universal, Ticketmaster-Live Nation) on the condition that the new conglomerates accept "conduct remedies" -- rules barring them from doing nasty stuff with their new position, like using Ticketmaster's dominance to get acts to book Live Nation venues, or using Live Nation's dominance to force acts to sell their tickets through Ticketmaster, but the agencies that are supposed to monitor this activity are not structured to do so, and find it nearly impossible to keep up with abuses, or mete out punishments when they do manage to catch an abuse ("a highly enfeebled and impoverished set of tools for confronting dominant intermediaries in network industries"). Read the rest

22-year-old Brian Isaack Clyde reportedly opened fire in Dallas's federal courthouse today and was killed by cops shortly thereafter. From his Facebook feed, a few months ago: a photo of a man posing with a rifle in medieval armor, his anime waifu bodypillow nestled in one arm.An initial search of public records did not uncover a criminal history.Incredible photo by @TomFoxPhoto from DMN of the shooter this morning in downtown Dallas, 22 year-old Brian Isaack ClydeClyde was shot and killed by authorities shortly after this pic was taken pic.twitter.com/20jMuwcVY1— 🆃🆁🅾🆈 🅷🆄🅶🅷🅴🆂 ™️ (@TommySledge) June 17, 2019ACTIVE SHOOTER: A gunman who opened fire outside a courthouse in Dallas did not survive after police officers engaged in a shootout, with video shot from above showing gunshots exchanged before the suspect, 22-year-old Brian Clyde, fled into a parking lot. https://t.co/ezRA2BtTte pic.twitter.com/dzVzLhZu9H— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) June 17, 2019There is nothing in The Onion that will not be made literally true as the dark enlightement encroaches. Read the rest

The easiest way to secure shoddy internet-of-things gadgets like TV sets and cameras? Make it the consumer's problem.Samsung has advised owners of its latest TVs to run regular virus scans. A how-to video on the Samsung Support USA Twitter account demonstrates the more than a dozen remote-control button presses required to access the sub-menu needed to activate the check. It suggested users should carry out the process "every few weeks" to "prevent malicious software attacks".Think it's a ridiculous idea that you should have to run antimalware scans on your television? Want to feel the bottom fall out? Sure you do! Get this: the announcement is a covert advertisement for the custom McAfee bloatware antivirus app installed on the sets.McAfee extended its contract to have McAfee Security for TV technology pre-installed on all Samsung Smart TVs produced in 2019. Along with being the market leader in the Smart TV category worldwide, Samsung is also the first company to pre-install security on these devices, underscoring its commitment to building security in from the start. McAfee Security for TV scans the apps that run on Samsung smart TVs to identify and remove malware. Read the rest

Three herding dogs expertly guide a group of ducks through a hula hoop and a human arch.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Applying a cat filter to a politician is an egregious act. Everyone knows politicians require clown filters.So this happened today when PTI's SM team forgot to turn off the cat filter while live streaming a press conference on Facebook. @SAYousafzaiPTI looks kinda cute pic.twitter.com/IjjJrua7DL— Ahsan Hamid Durrani (@Ahsan_H_Durrani) June 14, 2019 Read the rest

Genius is a lyrics website, and it has long suspected that Google has been copying its song lytic transcriptions. Google has denied the accusation. But in 2016 Genius started using combinations of straight and curly apostrophes in its lyrics in such a way as to spell out "red handed" in Morse code. When Google was caught serving "red handed" lyrics it said it would terminate agreements with the licensing partner suspected of lifting the lyrics from Genius.From The Wall Street Journal:After this article was published online Sunday, Google issued a second statement to say it was investigating the issue raised by Genius and would terminate its agreements with partners who were “not upholding good practices.”In 2016, Google forged a partnership with LyricFind, a Canadian company that secures deals with music publishers allowing companies such as Google to publish lyrics online. LyricFind Chief Executive Darryl Ballantyne said in an email that his company creates lyrics using its own content team. “We do not source lyrics from Genius,” he said.I'll bet LyricFind soon blames a "rogue" employee or contractor for lifting the transcriptions from Genius.Image: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/children-painted-hands-404214976 Read the rest

Casino dealers told Vice what kind of customers they don't like: ones who call them bad names, throw chips and cards at them, watch pornographic videos on their phones while playing at the table, go to the bathroom without washing their hands then handle chips and cards, micromanage them, get french fry grease on the cards, don't shower and smell bad, don't tip (dealers get $5 an hour), tell the dealer they hope they die, stab other players with a fork, sexually harass them.Who would have guessed?Image: YouTube Read the rest

What a fantastic idea, a sinking ship simulator!This seems like an incredible way to get much needed high-stress training before you really need it!Only the Senior Service could have an HMS Excellent that truly, truly lives up to its name. Read the rest