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Heading abroad? Even if it's just a short trip, there's a lot to prepare for. Travel can be incredibly rewarding, but it can tricky to navigate different cultures and lodging arrangements - and even trickier to do it cheaply.Before you go shopping for suitcases, here's our pick for a good first investment: The Ultimate Travel Hacker Bundle 2019.This package of nine online courses covers the essential aspects of travel and can be useful even for those who've been around the globe a time or two. There are crash courses on Spanish and Chinese, plus lessons on how to navigate Airbnb and maximize your airline rewards. Best of all, the entire thing is up for grabs on a "pay what you want" basis. Make an offer, and any amount gets you part of the bundle. Beat the average price, and you take home the whole thing.Here's a breakdown of what's included:Become a Digital Nomad - Tips for keeping all your info safe and accessible anywhere you roam.Travel Hacking Mastery: Fly Around the World for Cheap - Find out how you can save on airline tickets by signing up for the right credit cards, all while keeping your score intact and skirting fees.The Abroaders Guide to Points & Miles - Booking the right flights to boost your rewards and reduce ticket prices by up to 90%.Chinese Made Easy: Understand 65% of Chinese In 10 Hours - A language boot camp that lets you speak conversational Mandarin in less than a day. Read the rest

Attorney and disgraced anti-Trump media gadfly Michael Avenatti has been sued again, this time over allegations he siphoned off a paraplegic client's $4 million settlement.Avenatti's disabled client Geoffrey Johnson says the $4 million settlement was from the county of Los Angeles in January 2015, for injuries he received trying to commit suicide by jumping off of an elevated floor in a downtown Los Angeles jail.Johnson's attempt to take his life was the second of two attempted suicides in the notoriously badly managed jail during August of 2011.Jonathan Stempel for Reuters:Geoffrey Johnson is seeking at least $9.5 million, plus punitive damages, from Avenatti and several former colleagues in his civil lawsuit filed with the Orange County Superior Court in California.“I never thought I would get victimized by my own attorney,” Johnson, who uses a wheelchair, said at a press conference on Thursday. “I wish he had just given me my money.”Johnson’s claims are also part of federal prosecutors’ criminal case against Avenatti, who has pleaded not guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud, extortion and other charges, including defrauding other clients, in California and New York.“Mr. Johnson’s claims are categorically false and frivolous, and his case will be thrown out of court,” Avenatti said in an email.Avenatti drew national attention through his representation of Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in lawsuits against Trump and the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, and briefly flirted with a 2020 White House run.Read the rest: Michael Avenatti is sued for allegedly siphoning paraplegic's $4 million settlement Read the rest

Just don't piss them off.

They call him 'The DaVinci of Dirt.'

PlayStation Network was also down for a while on Thursday.

It is sad that any institution, especially such a revered sandwich shop as Langer's Deli, would behave so terribly.DailyDot:A famous Los Angeles sandwich shop, Langer’s Deli, is facing calls for a boycott after the owner kicked out two women for kissing in his restaurant.The woman and her date who experienced aggressive discrimination at Langer’s Deli have chosen to remain anonymous but gave friends permission to share their story. One friend, writer and critic April Wolfe, took to Twitter to share what happened to her friends, posting a screenshot of the Facebook post that details how they were kicked out.“My date and I had finished eating and we shared a kiss in our booth. Suddenly a man with a walkie-talkie was standing at our table. He introduced himself as Norm Langer and told us that he ‘can’t have this in his restaurant because some of the customers don’t understand.’” When the woman told him that she lived nearby and used to love this deli but would never eat there again, Langer told her she was being “selfish and inconsiderate of how other people felt.”Image via Josh Lim/Wikipedia Read the rest

POTUS says Sanders to leave post by end of June, no replacement announced

McMansion Hell (previously) rounds up the ten stupidest megahomes of Waukesha County, Wisconsin ("perhaps one of the most underrated McMansion counties in the country"), which is such a target-rich environment that proprietor Kate Wagner couldn't "choose just one to do a takedown of."This house was built in 2014, a time when people should definitely have known better. Its inclusion in this list is solely due to the absolutely bizarre geometry of its roof, a kind of geometry formerly unknown to mathematics until this time. Bonus points for the continued animosity to trees found in the wealthy populous of this county. 50 States of McMansion Hell: Top 10 Waukesha County, Wisconsin McMansions Read the rest

Vetements claims its clothes -- like this £291 unauthorized DHL tee -- cost so much because they use special factories and really good materials.It's hard to understand how its unauthorized €800 Pirate Bay hoodie pencils out, though -- which is why Pirate Bay co-founder Marcin de Kaminski denounced the product, citing its price, rather than any notional infringement, as the source of his ire.There's plenty weird going on with this garment, like the list of the nations of the world on the back that omits Sweden -- birthplace of The Pirate Bay.While the full ship emblem on the front isn’t an exact replica of the original, it’s so close as to make very little difference. Those squinting to read the text along the bottom are advised it reads “Vetements Free Downloads”, in case anyone doesn’t recognize this is a Pirate Bay-themed hoodie, of course.The back of this stunning piece of high-fashion cloth is adorned with an alphabetically-sorted list of countries of the world. While that’s perhaps expected given The Pirate Bay’s reach, Sweden – the site’s birthplace – is completely absent.The big question here is whether someone in the setting department screwed up and left Sweden out, or is this one of those clever fashion things that’s designed to provoke conversation. The Pirate Bay can be found everywhere except Sweden? That works – on a couple of levels.Red-Hot Vetements Fashion Brand is Selling an $845 Pirate Bay Hoodie [Andy/Torrentfreak] Read the rest

Biden said he was 'odd man out' with Democrats on abortion in 2006

.a.gif is a new file format from Rancid Bacon, which encodes audio files within standards-compliant GIFs, allow you to play audio during an animated GIF's playback; it is inefficient and weird, and therefore pretty terrific.(via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Alabama has 67 sheriffs -- elected law-enforcement officers who police unincorporated townships where they answer only to voters, not city governments -- and 9 out of ten of the sheriffs who lost their 2018 elections have been accused by their successors of engaging in fraud, waste and destruction of public property before leaving office.This is apparently something of a tradition in Alabama (Propublica's Connor Sheets calls it "vindictive hazing") and while some of the accusations are more prankish (removing the labels from all the sheriffs' keys and jumbling them in a big pile), others are dangerous (destroying all the food earmarked for prisoners) or outright criminal (making off with tens of thousands of dollars from the sheriff's "discretionary fund).Alarmingly, some of the sheriffs accused of these crimes have gone on to work in nearby sheriffs' departments.Here's a selection of the activities that the nine sheriffs have been accused of:* Former Marshall County Sheriff J. Scott Walls is accused of drilling holes in the department's mobile phones and computer hard-drives * Walls is also accused of spending the sheriff's discretionary fund dry by ordering more than 20,000 rolls of toilet paper, 10 drums of dishwashing soap and hundreds of boxes of garbage bags* Walls's successor says that Walls forced an inmate to put 40lbs of rice -- intended for prisoners' meals -- down a garbage disposal (this also broke the garbage disposal)* Walls wired $80,000 from the sheriff's general fund to his personal bank accounts during his tenure* Former Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin (who pocketed $750k earmarked for prisoners' meals and built himself a beach house, claiming that he was allowed to do so under a Prohibition-era law, prompting the Alabama legislature to pass new laws banning the practice) subsequently wrote himself $269,184 worth of checks from sheriff’s office account* Former Barbour County Sheriff Leroy Upshaw ended the handgun licensing and work-release programs (which raise fund the sheriff's discretionary fund) after his election loss, leaving the department effective broke (Upshaw now works for the sheriff in neighboring Russell County)* Former Covington County Sheriff Dennis Meeks spent $6,200 in public money on "coloring books, Frisbees, pencils and other promotional items emblazoned with his name"; and bought each of his deputies sidearms that used different type of ammo* After former Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood lost his election, he spent $126,000 of the sheriff's discretionary fund in his three remaining months, more than he had spent in the previous 10 months -- blowing the cash on $9,000 worth of black rubber gloves (at $70/box -- the same gloves cost $10/box online), and a $13k dishwasher that can be bought for $10kPropublica's Sheets notes that "All the former sheriffs who responded to a reporter’s inquiries denied wrongdoing, often insulting their successor or providing a counternarrative aimed at disproving the claims."Aaron Littman, staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based nonprofit civil rights law firm that advocates for criminal justice reform in Alabama and has sued sheriffs across the state for financial records, said in a statement that sheriffs “are not feudal kings” and need to be held accountable. Read the rest

Nick Griffiths suffered from frostbite while running in the Yukon Arctic ultra-marathon. After surgeons amputated three of his toes, he mailed two of them to Dawson City in the region where the Downtown Hotel's Sourdough Saloon uses (and reuses) disembodied digits in their infamous Sourtoe Cocktail that's been on the menu for forty years. From The Guardian:The beverage consists of a mummified human toe floating in a whiskey shot; patrons must let the digit – or its blackened nail – touch their lips in order to receive a certificate and qualify for admittance to the Sourtoe Cocktail Club.He kept one of the toes as “insurance” because, (Griffiths) said: “I’m not sure really you should be posting toes.More than a month later, the toes arrived in Dawson City. “We couldn’t be happier to receive a new toe. They are very hard to come by these days,” said the hotel in a statement.Terry Lee, the hotel’s “toe expert” will now preserve the digits in rock salt for at least six weeks before they are served in whiskey. Read the rest

When Elizabeth Warren proposed a Thomas Piketty-style wealth tax (2% annually on family fortunes over $50m, 1% more on fortunes over $1b), she ballparked the returns at $1.9-2.75t over the first ten years.Her opponents disagreed with her math, saying that the 75,000 US households whom the tax would apply to would never sit still for this kind of thing, and instead they would spend fortunes moving even larger fortunes offshore, hiding them in tax-havens, or even surrendering their US residency and citizenship.This is a common response to any progressive taxation proposal, and while I've known a few people who cashed out big on startups and effectively went into exile in the Grand Caymans or wherever rather than paying tax, most of them ended up getting terminally bored living in a place full of drunken wastrels and trustafarians and moved back home, paid their tax, and got stuck in doing their Next Thing. If you're a genuinely driven entrepreneur, yacht life is fucking boring and besides, paying 2% annually on the portion of your fortune exceeding $50,000,000 is not going to leave you a pauper. Neither you nor your kids nor their kids would ever have to work again if you managed that sum carefully.Now, a CNBC poll has found that 60% of American millionaires support Warren's wealth-tax; at the "upper tier" of Americans with a net worth in excess of $5m, the proposal enjoys 66% support.Other redistributive policies had different showings: while there was strong support for AOC's proposed 70% top rate of income tax, other proposals like eliminating mortgage deductions (which subsidize home owners but leave renters, who tend to be poorer, out in the cold) or Ron Wyden's plan to tax unrealized capital gains, are polling poorly. Read the rest

I bought this red retro wall clock in January 2o18. It's lightweight plastic but looks really nice. Amazon has it on sale right now: Read the rest

"That's a UFO! The flying saucer" (これがＵＦＯだ！ 空飛ぶ円盤) is a Japanese "documentary" about unidentified flying objects. It was first screened in 1975 at the annual Toei Anime Festival hosted by the famed Toei Animation studio, creators of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball. The short film features classic UFO encounters like the Betty Barney Hill abduction case of 1961 and the 1948 story of Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantel whose plane crashed while he chased a UFO. (r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

"Where do you think Blondie will be ten years from now?" "San Quentin." Read the rest

In 2012, Facebook settled an FTC privacy investigation by promising a host of privacy protections (that they never delivered on); now, the FTC is probing Facebook's noncompliance and they've demanded that the company let them look at Zuck's email, which prompted the company's legal team to have a look therein, and they really didn't like what they saw.Anonymous sources told the WSJ that Mark Zuckerberg's emails with other top execs revealed that they didn't make the FTC consent decree "a priority" as they planned the company strategy.This matter a lot. The FTC is a weird beast: for the most part, it operates on a two-strikes model. When the FTC determines that your company has done something sleazy, it generally sends you a stern, "Cut that shit out or else" letter, sometimes with specific instructions for conducting your business in the future without getting in trouble.This can feel really wrong. Remember when a bunch of laptop rental companies admitted that they'd been spying on their customers, making covert videos of them in the nude, recording them having sex, taking pics of their kids, plundering their music collections, etc, and the FTC ordered them to end the practice -- unless they added some fine print to their terms of service "notifying" customers that they did this kind of thing?The thing is, while the FTC is a sweetheart the first time around, if you make it come back at you, it can be a serious adversary: the FTC's powers to punish companies that fail to live up to the orders they get the first time around are prodigious, including massive fines and refer execs to the DOJ to face personal, criminal liability. Read the rest

Since May of 2013 I've enjoyed this Vivere double hammock and its space-saving steel stand.The price dropped to around $90 on average last year. It has been down to $70-ish once or twice, but I've gotten so much service from this kit, I think it was a deal at $140. Here is my first review.I have once replaced the hammock itself! I fault myself, and not the hammock due to my leaving it in the sun, wind, and rain for a few years. I now respectfully take the replacement hammock down at night and bring it in. Several years of use and the replacement looks good as new. I am sure if you care for yours it will last as well.The stand is good as new. Even in the salty sea air, it has merely developed a patina. I have kept this hammock about 200ft from the Pacific Ocean.My daughter and I frequently use the hammock. I love it for recovering from any illness, and sleeping outside at night. My kid likes to watch YouTube videos in out, as WIFI easily reaches the deck.Vivere Double Hammock with Space-Saving Steel Stand via Amazon Read the rest

These transit safes were designed to keep people from snooping or stealing contents of FedEx packages but look how easily this guy picks the lock using simple lockpicking tools.[via Doobybrain]Image: YouTube Read the rest

Multilevel marketing companies are legal pyramid schemes that screw over gullible, desperate people who believe they'll make money by convincing other desperate people to convince other desperate people to fork over money to the people at the top of the pyramid. Samantha Bee does a great job exposing these shady outfits who happily ruin people's lives. Read the rest

You’re a tabloid reporter and you’re used to fabricating many of the “facts” and “quotes” in your stories, but there are some days when you can’t even be bothered to do that with any conviction, days when your fevered imagination doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed.So you get what we see in this week’s tabloids.George & Amal Clooney are "Dating Other People!” reports the ’National Enquirer,’ in an “Exclusive" inspired by the Clooneys announcing a charity fundraiser offering the winner a private dinner with the celebrity couple at their home in Italy.The ‘Enquirer’ amazingly interprets the Clooneys' altruism as “an excuse to ignore their wedding vows,” suggesting that the couple are wife-swapping swingers for charity, and that George has “opened the door to other men to enjoy the company of his leggy 41-year-old wife!” Expect the Clooneys to fire off an uncharitable lawsuit any minute now.The ‘Globe’ cover’s obligatory story about the British Royals boasts: “Explosive Police Dossier Found! Charles’ Motive For Murdering Diana!” Prince Charles allegedly had Diana killed because she was scheming to have him bypassed by the Queen so that the crown would go to son William after QE!!’s death. Which makes no sense: As we’ve noted before, The Act of Settlement of 1701 demands that the monarch’s male heir succeed to the throne no matter what anyone wants. Moreover, Diana was divorced from Charles and anathema to the Palace at the time of her demise, so there’s no way the Queen would have done Diana’s bidding. Read the rest

Joint pain. Poor digestion. Hair loss. Erectile dysfunction. No libido. These are just a few of the lasting symptoms experienced by Kim Dong-hyeon, a bodybuilder in South Korea, after using over $3,000 of black-market steroids per month for many years. In this video he tells an Asian Boss reporter that he injected himself with steroids 20 times a day and that 98% of bodybuilders in South Korea take steroids. Read the rest

Evidently that wasn't all, folks.Animation Scoop:Looney Tunes Cartoons is a series of new short form cartoons starring the iconic and beloved Looney Tunes characters. With a crew of some of the premier artists working in animation today, each “season” will produce 1,000 minutes of all-new Looney Tunes animation that will be distributed across multiple platforms — including digital, mobile and broadcast.Looney Tunes Cartoons echoes the high production value and process of the original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts, with a cartoonist-driven approach to storytelling. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other marquee Looney Tunes characters will be featured in their classic pairings in simple, gag-driven and visually vibrant stories. Each cartoon will vary from one to six minutes in length and, from the premise on through to the jokes, will be “written” and drawn by the cartoonists, allowing their own personality and style to come through in each cartoon.Looney Tunes Cartoons is produced by Warner Bros. Animation and features veteran Looney Tunes voice cast members, including Eric Bauza, Jeff Bergman and Bob Bergen. Sam Register (Teen Titans Go!) and Peter Browngardt (Uncle Grandpa) serve as executive producers. Read the rest

Reasonable folks in El Sobrante do not like living with a symbol of hatred and oppression out in the open. A petition asking the idiot who cemented a swastika in his yard to remove it has been created. A protest has been planned.Mr. Swastika thinks it is funny that fighting Nazism isn't just a local thing. I hope he likes cleaning egg off his cars.SF Chron:Johnson, reached by phone, said he hadn’t seen the petition, but he didn’t sound impressed.“It sure is funny that all those people signing the petition don’t even live in this neighborhood,” he said.Care2’s website notes that less than a third of the people who have signed the petition live in California.Since news stories about the swastika appeared, Johnson’s car and two pickup trucks have been egged, he said. He suspects neighbors. The answering machine on his phone has been filled with insults and threats, he added, and lots of people have driven past and taken photographs.Johnson covered the swastika with “blankets and stuff to calm things down,” but he hasn’t removed the offending symbol — though he held out the possibility.“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” Johnson said. “There’s been a lot more (reaction) than I expected. Everybody’s on my butt about this.”Clearly, the petition won't work but it helps keep the heat on. Read the rest

During a commercial break at the Tony Awards, host James Corden ran down to the audience and asked Billy Porter if he'd sing an impromptu karaoke song. Porter took the opportunity, as the pro that he is, and belted out "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from the Broadway classic "Gypsy." Of course, he slayed it! Read the rest

With Theresa May stepping down as Conservative Party leader, her position—and with it the job of Prime Minister—will go to one of many candidates standing to replace her. In the first round of voting today, presumptive favorite Boris Johnson won the most votes and three others were knocked out. Seven proceed to the second vote next week.Mark Harper, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey - have been knocked out, in the secret ballot held in the House of Commons. Mr Johnson received 114 votes, Jeremy Hunt was second with 43, and Michael Gove third with 37 votes. The BBC graphic above shows how things shook out. Gove was badly hurt by last week's media exposé on the candidates' youthful drug habits due to the extent of his hypocrisy: as education secretary, he imposed a lifetime ban for teachers caught using drugs. Leadsom underperformed compared to opinion polling of party rank and file; she may have popularity issues among her peers in Parliament. Boris is not as inevitable as the first round suggests, as he received only 36% of the total, another candidate might surge as others drop out, and his propensity for gaffes and bigoted remarks offers latitude for a "June surprise". But he is surely the runaway favorite to lead his party—and Britain—into Brexit. Read the rest

Hong Kong's previous mass-protest uprisings -- 2014's Occupy Central, 2016's Umbrella Revolution -- were ultimately smashed by the state through a combination of violent suppression and electronic surveillance, greatly aided by the hierarchical structure of the protest movements (which made it possible to decapitate them by arresting their leaders) and their internal divisions and infighting.But the latest eruption -- more than a million strong and gaining -- has learned from the mistakes of the past. The #612strike movement has a flat, self-organizing structure that emerges deputies who take on functional roles (like keeping lookouts for cops planning kettling operations, which surround protesters with fencing and keep them locked down while they are identified and/or arrested), that is augmented by the use of encrypted Telegram chats (the Umbrella Revolution also made heavy use of encrypted chats, with some P2P mesh apps emerging as the Hong Kong government shut off the internet). The cultural shift is also marked by a spirit of cooperation, which is making it easier to resolve tactical disagreements -- where to put barriers, whether to risk storming key buildings -- in a collegial fashion, despite the high tensions, physical risk and punishing physical conditions (being on the streets for hours in Hong Kong June weather presents real risks of heat exhaustion, to say nothing of regular soakings in the torrential rains).This third wave of networked protests seem close to realizing the promise of Occupy: a collaborative, networked protest movement devoted to mutual aid, where a protester can call out a request for an asthma inhaler, have that call amplified through the crowd, and then get the inhaler they need, followed by a round of applause from the crowd, justifiably pleased with itself. Read the rest

Always check for droids. Read the rest

Eating the stuff that cows eat instead of eating cows is so hot right now! It's fine by me: last summer, I had the opportunity to nosh an Impossible Burger while I was in Boston. It was absolutely delicious (although I did have bacon with it, so there's that) and, as it's better for me and better for the planet, I'm all in on the idea. Protein-rich plant-based faux-meat is the way of the future, friendos. As it slowly gains popularity in restaurants and homes across America, it's also making a dent up north. From The CBC:Tim Hortons announced Wednesday that starting immediately, the chain's 4,000 locations across Canada are offering breakfast sandwiches made with Beyond Meat patties, a plant-based meat alternative whose popularity seems to be soaring.The chain will offer three varieties of the Beyond Meat patty, including in an English muffin with egg and cheese, in a tortilla wrap with egg, cheese and other ingredients, or in a 100 per cent vegan form on a baked biscuit with lettuce and tomato.For anyone that's every had to suffer through a Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich over the past few years, this could be great news: anything would be better than the taste sensation of an over-spiced sausage patties on a dryer-than-a-popcorn-fart biscuit that the chain has been churning out of late. Timmy's won't be the first chain in Canada to get in on the Beyond Meat action. A&W--which in Canada is superior in almost every way to the American chain of the same name--has been offering Beyond Meat burgers, for some time now. Read the rest

This video shows a lowpoly 3D Scooby Doo animation found in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom, an XBox video game, where it served as an advertisement for the game Scooby Doo Night of 100 Frights. People who play the video report that the sound is badly messed up, giving it an unsettling, disorienting vibe. The timeline bar claims it is 3:48 long, but the bar fills and ends in 1:07. The video then displays a loading spinner for another minute, then ... depending on the configution of your box ... the rest of the music will begin to play. The rest of the video footage is, presumably, forbidden.While one might assume it is obviously just a corrupted video/audio stream whose metadata the YouTube player is misinterpreting, it says right in the comments that it is cursed. I'd assume that it's a very bad idea to FFprobe if you like living in this dimension.Scooby Scooby do, zalgo you. Read the rest

HBO's Chernobyl was widely praised for its realistic depiction of the disaster and of the late Soviet Union itself: so meticulous that its mistakes and simplifications stood out in uncanny relief to those who were there.In this video, Thomas Flight compares footage from the show with the documentary footage it was based upon. I'm curious about why the text on the scene below, derived from Soviet TV broadcast announcing the disaster, differs from the original. Did HBO use a different source, or did they change it themselves some reason? НОВОСТИ (Novosti) means "NEWS" and was then (and now) the name of the official news agency, while ВРЕМЯ (Vremya) means "TIME" and is apparently the name of the evening news show. Read the rest

The Soviets built a bunch of nuclear icebreakers: overbearing, overpowered, faintly absurd, and completely awesome.This video was shot in the Arctic Ocean in March 2018. For 7 days the film crew passed through the Barents Sea to Karsky around the Novaya Zemlya archipelago on the nuclear icebreaker Yamal - we saw the northern lights and polar bears, watched the ships stuck in the ice being towed and were very cold.Directed by Andrew Efimov. Andrey Rodin piloted the drones. Ivan Golubkov and Yaroslav Kuryanovish worked the footage. Read the rest

In 1800 a 12-year-old boy emerged from a forest in southern France, where he had apparently lived alone for seven years. His case was taken up by a young Paris doctor who set out to see if the boy could be civilized. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll explore the strange, sad story of Victor of Aveyron and the mysteries of child development.We'll also consider the nature of art and puzzle over the relationship between salmon and trees.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Survivors of London's Grenfell fire, where 72 perished in a tower block with no sprinklers but lots of flammable cladding, are projecting messages on similarly-unsafe buildings in the UK.The BBC reports that one of the towers, Frinstead House, is a "stone's throw" from Grenfell and still has no fire sprinklers.The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, which took over management of the high-rise in March last year, said its staff had met residents to talk about sprinklers and other fire safety measures.It said there was a fire safety programme under way across its borough and it was "seeking clear guidance and recommendations from central government on fire safety systems".The inferno highlighted Britain's shoddy safety standards and the dangers of cladding, often installed on older towers to make them appear more modern. In response, the government banned combustible cladding and mandated sprinklers, but only in new construction: "Building owners are ultimately responsible for the safety of the building and it is for them to decide whether to retro-fit sprinklers." Read the rest

Fried foods are a weakness for many of us. There's nothing quite like that extra crisp crackle on chicken, fries or onion rings. And for years, our arteries have been paying for the privilege.Lately, the air fryer has been a godsend for those who love the fried stuff but love their body too. If you haven't tried one before, the Wolfgang Puck 7.2-Quart XL Air Fryer is a pretty failsafe bet.With a 7.2-quart basket capacity, this chosen cooker of celeb chef Wolfgang Puck can accommodate almost anything you care to fry: Chicken, french fries, veggies - even a five-pound pot roast. But instead of submerging it in oil, this gadget circulates hot air evenly over the food, cooking it thoroughly and delivering that addictive fried taste - sans the additional fat or calories. With a 1700 watt capacity, it preheats in a flash and can cook for up to 30 minutes.Right now, the Wolfgang Puck 7.2-Quart XL Air Fryer is $59.99 - more than 50% off the original list price of $129.95. Read the rest

Thomas Martin Lewins V has done what they said was impossible. He's made modern technology work with old fashioned devices. First, he installed Apple TV on his big, clunky floor console television and now he can watch TV apps, like Netflix and Hulu, on it.He writes:Best Buy said it couldn’t be done. The internet said it was impossible. Eat my ass Best Buy, eat my ass internet.HDMI to rca, rca to vcr, vcr to coaxial, coaxial to antenna.After months of pulling my hair out and eating it. I present to you.Vintage Apple TV.Then, he installed Alexa on a bunch of vintage devices around his house.Might have went a little overboard on this one,The police were called to my house twice for noise complaints. (worth it)I present to you,Vintage Alexa.Impressive! Read the rest

If that cat ever figures out how this is done, it's gonna gut that guy in his sleep. Read the rest

More than 2,500 years ago in western China, people in mourning gathered at a cemetery for a ritual that involved getting high from cannabis plants burning in wooden pots. It's likely that they were trying to communicate with spirits. From Science News:Evidence of this practice comes from Jirzankal Cemetery in Central Asia’s Pamir Mountains, says a team led by archaeologist Yimin Yang of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Chemical residues on wooden burners unearthed in tombs there provide some of the oldest evidence to date of smoking or inhaling cannabis fumes, the researchers report online June 12 in Science Advances....East Asians grew cannabis starting at least 6,000 years ago, but only to consume the plants’ oily seeds and make clothing and rope out of cannabis fibers. Early cultivated cannabis varieties in East Asia and elsewhere, like most wild forms of the plant, contained low levels of THC and other mind-altering compounds.Yang’s team identified a chemical signature of cannabis on charred plant material from 10 wooden burners, or braziers, found in eight Jirzankal tombs. Chemical signs of an unusually high level of THC were found inside nine braziers and on two stones that had been heated and used to burn plants in the braziers.image: Xinhua Wu Read the rest

This is Digit, a new bipedal bot from Agility Robotics, out for a stroll in its hometown of Albany, Oregon. Next year, you'll be able to order your own Digit, but the price hasn't been announced yet. From Agility Robotics:Although still in testing, Digit is strong enough to pick up and stack boxes weighing up to 40 lb (18 kg), as well as durable enough to catch itself during a fall using its arms to decelerate. In addition to the physical changes, the control system for Digit has been overhauled to enable advanced behaviors such as stair climbing and footstep planning, all controlled through a robust API that can be accessed both onboard the robot and via a wireless link... Out-of-the-box, Digit will be up and walking within five minutes, even for users who are not legged locomotion control researchers. Read the rest

Unmute! Something wholesome for your internet enjoyment.This classic clip from AcousticTrench is going newly viral without attribution, so it's a good excuse to revisit the source -- first published on Aug 3, 2016.“Sorry for the vertical aspect ratio,” they wrote back then. “This was filmed on an iPhone from inside of the guitar.”You can find more of Acoustic Trench's music and Maple on► Twitter► Instagram►Facebook Read the rest

Bill would extend fund expiration to 2090, no specific amount, whatever funds needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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