Archaeologists uncovered the skeleton of this neolithic dog more than a century ago in a 5,000 year old tomb on on the island of Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. Now, forensic scientists and artists have reconstructed the animal's face. According to Historic Environment Scotland researcher Steve Farrar, this dog and 23 others found in the "Cuween Hill (tomb) suggest that dogs had a particularly special significance for the farmers... Maybe dogs were their symbol or totem, perhaps they thought of themselves as the 'dog people.'" From The Scotsman:As HES observes, the fact that the Orkney residents placed canine remains alongside those of humans could also speak to their belief in an afterlife for both parties.The latest work was originally created in clay using traditional methods, with a 3D print of the Cuween Hill skull as the base to build the anatomy on to.It was then cast in silicone and finished with the fur coat resembling a European grey wolf, as advised by experts...(Forensic artist Amy) Thornton, who trained in facial reconstruction methods at the University of Dundee, said: “This reconstruction has been a particularly interesting project to be involved in, as it marks the first time I’ve employed forensic methods that would usually be used for a human facial reconstruction and applied these to an animal skull.“This brought its own set of challenges, as there is much less existing data relating to average tissue depths in canine skulls compared to humans.” Read the rest

MTV has announced RealityCon, a reality TV fan convention to take place next summer. No word yet on whether they will also launch a RealityCon reality show about what happens when people stop being polite and start producing a real convention about reality shows. If only Lance Loud was alive to keynote. From Rolling Stone:Even though it is hosted by MTV — who created the genre with The Real World in 1992 — the event will be an expansive look at reality television’s history and feature the people behind and stars of shows like The Bachelor, The Real Housewives, Duck Dynasty, Big Brother, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Survivor alongside MTV staples like Jersey Shore and The Hills. Read the rest

Frank Sidebottom was a peculiar stage character defined by his enormous papier-mache mask, immortalized in countless UK TV appearances and a fictionalized biopic produced after the 2010 death of creator-performer Chris Sievey (previously at Boing Boing). Sievey included fascinating codes with Frank's promotional material, and British intelligence officers finally cracked it. It was hard to crack because half the characters were nulls."By letting his kids add nonsense into the message, it deliberately obscures the chances of anybody - even top mathematicians - being able to crack it. So I reported back to GCHQ that the outer ring is a red herring and then had an email one day saying, 'Right, we've cracked it during a light-hearted training exercise.'"I'm embarrassed to say, on the very next day Chris's very own code grid was found in the back of his address book. It was almost like Chris Sievey was going, 'There you go, now we've all had our fun, there's the explanation.'" Read the rest

In February 1943, hundreds of German women joined in a spontaneous protest in central Berlin. They were objecting to the roundup of some of the city's last Jews -- their husbands. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Rosenstrasse protest, a remarkable example of civil disobedience.We'll also ponder whether a computer can make art and puzzle over some unusual phone calls.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The Dutch activist/journalists Follow the Money and Platform Authentieke Journalistiek -- last seen revealing the dark money funding thinktanks that backed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership -- have a new project: the #ShellPapers, a deep, crowdsourced investigation into Shell oil, its sweetheart relationship to the Dutch government, its corruption and violence throughout the world, its role in climate change and environmental devastation.The consortium has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for "a copy of all government documents sent by Shell, sent to Shell, or otherwise pertaining to Shell and any of its close to 1600 subsidiaries," and it's created an online platform where the public can follow the path of those requests and collaboratively comb through and annotate the responses.As of yet, it is unclear what documents will result from these procedures. The maximum term for a Dutch FOIA procedure ranges from 104 to 130 weeks, but the government often fails to meet the deadlines set in the Dutch Freedom of Information Act (Wet openbaarheid bestuur).For this reason, Follow the Money (FTM) and Platform Authentieke Journalistiek (PAJ) are launching the Wob-dashboard: a publicly accessible page, on which anyone can track the status of the FOIA requests. Readers are actively encouraged to take part in the investigative process: any document obtained through these FOIA requests will be uploaded and made publicly accessible. This way, the public will have a chance to contribute to the investigation by reading, annotating, commenting and otherwise sharing their insights with the journalists.During the investigation, the journalists have the support of a Board of Recommendation, consisting of some 20 professors and researchers. Read the rest

Firefighters call airdrops "CNN Drops" because they're often useless, but politicians order them in order to produce a TV-friendly spectacle that reassures voters that Something is Being Done.The use of airdrops is spiking the cost of fighting wildfires: up to $296m from $171m in 2004 -- about 20% of the Forest Service's firefighting budget. And the companies that do the airdrops for the Forest Service are private contractors who make bank every time they do a run. Firedrops are mostly useful while firefighters are mobilizing and marshalling fire suppression equipment, but after that they are of limited use. The private forces are offset by military aircraft, which politicians love because they look great on television.It costs up to $14,000 a day to keep an air tanker on call and as much as $4,200 per hour to put it in the air. Heavy-duty helicopters, the workhorses of aerial firefighting, can cost $32,000 a day on standby, plus $6,300 per hour of flight time."When you deal with aviation on a wildland fire, you have a big bank in the sky that opens up and showers money," said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former Forest Service and National Park Service firefighter who has criticized federal firefighting and forest management practices.Air tanker drops in wildfires are often just for show [Julie Cart and Bettina Boxall/Los Angeles Times](Image: Ben Brooks, CC-BY-SA)(via JWZ) Read the rest

In February 2018, Denmark's Ministry of Environment and Food published its Life Cycle Assessment of grocery carrier bags, which looked at the overall embodied energy, materials and labor in different grocery bags, and also evaluated the environmental impacts of different kinds of plastic bags.Their conclusion was that single-use, flimsy disposable plastic bags are the best option in terms of environmental and climate costs (however, the Ministry's analysis did not factor in marine life impacts of these bags, which are severe). By far the worst performer was organic cotton, which has about 3x the environmental impact of conventional cotton (organic growing requires more land, water, and pesticides than are used when growing GMOs with synthetic pesticides).Update: Arthur Yip's Twitter thread on the study points out some methodological problems with the study: "The required reuse number actually varies from 52x - 7100x! 52x is very doable! This is a ridiculously different result than 7100x. Use a cotton bag once/week for a year & it will have "paid off". We're talking abt nice cotton cloth bags, not the thicker plastic ones...Notably, 52x on climate. After using a cotton bag 52x, cotton has lower climate impact than plastic! Again, this is very different from "7000x" or even the average number, 840x, which equally weights all the impact categories discussed... It also did not go through academic peer review. I can only hope that further reviews would have identified the problems I noted and forced the authors to provide some more clarity, footnotes, &re-consideration into how the information was presented and would be interpreted."With plastic bag bans soaring in popularity globally (127 countries have adopted plastic bag restrictions, and New York just passed one this week), the question of what will replace plastic bags has become more pressing. Read the rest

Umair Haque (previously) writes about how the last days of the Soviet Union were filled with "forced apathy" (an inability to care about what was going on because just surviving took everything you had) and "self-referentialism" (an obsession with domestic affairs to the exclusion of everything else going on elsewhere in the world)Haque also remembers those days for the "one party rule" and notes that while the US is dominated by a single party (one that cheated its way into control over the presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court and many state governments), it is technically a two-party system, but any Democrat who offers real progressive policies is marginalized and backstabbed by the Democratic establishment.Other similarities include "power seeking" or structural corruption (think of the establishment's refusal to enact popular programs like universal health care or network neutrality) and the silencing of dissenting voices and the lack of a real public discourse on the failings of capitalism and the ways that other countries solve their problems.Friends across the world often ask me: “why don’t Americans do more to fix their crumbling society?” They’re aghast, astonished. I tell them the reality of American life: Americans would, if they could, but they can’t, mostly. Apathy is forced on them by a predatory kind of capitalism that forces them to live something like poor people in a rich country. Breadlines — insulin lines — what’s the difference, really? Americans are forced into being apathetic, weary, drained of energy and ideas and time, by a fatally broken political economy which makes them more and more of them live at the edge of ruin, more and more so every day — but that forced apathy, my friends, is the kind of trap that has led societies throughout history to collapse, whether the USSR or Rome. Read the rest

Dave Maass from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes, "Facebook’s practice of taking down these individual accounts when they learn about them from the press (or from EFF) is insufficient to deter what we believe is a much larger iceberg beneath the surface. We often only discover the existence of law enforcement fake profiles months, if not years, after an investigation has concluded. These four changes are relatively light lifts that would enhance transparency and establish real consequences for agencies that deliberately violate the rules." 1. As part of its regular transparency reports, Facebook should publish data on the number of fake/impersonator law enforcement accounts identified, what agencies they belonged to, and what action was taken. 2. When a fake/impersonator account is identified, Facebook should alert the users and groups that interacted with the account whether directly or indirectly. These interactions include, but are not limited to, a friend request, Messenger messages, a comment, membership in a group, or being shown an advertisement. The user should know what agency operated the account and how long it was in operation. Facebook should also add a notification to the agency’s page informing the public that the agency is known to have created fake/impersonator law enforcement accounts. 3. Facebook should further amend its “Amended Terms for Federal, State and Local Governments in the United States” to make it explicitly clear that, by agreeing to the terms, the agency is agreeing not to operate fake/impersonator profiles on the platform. Facebook has the right to take actions in response to violation of their terms, but when they do so, Facebook should be fair and consistent with the Santa Clara Principles. Read the rest

Apple pioneered the use of dirty tricks and lobbying to kill Right to Repair legislation, but they're not the only tech player who's putting lobbying muscle into ensuring that you can't decide who fixes your stuff (and when it is "unfixable" and must be sent to the landfill).Rep. Jeff Morris told iFixit Repair Radio that national Right to Repair legislation was killed by Microsoft, in a piece of horse trading that saw Microsoft backing funding for STEM education in exchange for Right to Repair (and unrelated privacy rules) dying.In an interview on iFixit’s Repair Radio, Rep. Jeff Morris said that “word on the street” was that Microsoft, “marshalled forces to keep the bill from moving out of the House Rules committee.”He claimed “there was a tax proposal here … to pay for STEM education,” and that “in exchange for Microsoft support[ing that tax,] having Right to Repair die…” was a condition, as well as another privacy policy Microsoft wanted to advance.“Microsoft was going around telling our members that they wouldn’t sell Surface Tablets in Washington any longer if we passed the bill,” he said.Microsoft named as stopping “Right to Repair” in Washington [Nathan Proctor/Medium](via /.) Read the rest

This ain’t it, chief.Previously: Fire at Notre Dame cathedralUPDATE: Ryan Broderick points out the plain fact: YouTube's little truth widget is algorithmically-generated fake news.I'm not sure there's a better metaphor for the state of the tech industry right now than an American social platform slapping an algorithmically-generated related article about an American terror attack on to a live stream about a completely unrelated French news story. pic.twitter.com/KLWGlg5NEc— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) April 15, 2019 Read the rest

As workers at companies from Kickstarter to Gimlet to Vox vote to unionize, and as traditional labor organizers call on game devs and others to organize, Silicon Valley is a lot more friendly to pro-labor policies than ever before.That's partly because tech companies can be terrible places to work, and party because their leaders keep trying to pad their quarterly numbers by selling some truly evil shit to some truly evil organizations, governments and people.And as monopoly has set in, tech workers are finding libertarian market-oriented pitches less and less convincing, as they see their potential for launching their own startup or for switching to a disruptive new entrant dwindling.The whole thing has made Silicon Valley ripe for the new, resurgent socialist movement in America, as technies sign up to join the Demcratic Socialists of America and begin to identify as socialists themselves.“I think there's a quiet group of people who are willing to speak about it to each other,” Areeb Ahmad, who works at an ad tech company in New York City, told Salon. “But I think there is also a second group of people who maybe are open to those ideas. But I think the word [socialism] still has a lot of stigma.”Ahmad said he was drawn to democratic socialism partly because he is a first-generation immigrant, and partly because he works in the digital advertising field, which is dominated by two megaliths, Facebook and Google.“Being that roughly 85 percent of the ad marketplace at this point are those two companies, and it's basically impossible to look at that ecosystem and not think those two companies are monopolies, and to not want to do something about that, and to say, ‘Hey, there are all these people who have concerns about privacy,’” he said. Read the rest

A fire at Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral was reportedly started by accident, and is related to ongoing work, according to France 2 News which cites police. The Paris bureau chief for Reuters said the news “is terrible and a hideous blow to the symbolic heart of the city.”MORE: Spire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has collapsed https://t.co/mgO4CkDAwb pic.twitter.com/TPTs30FjZT— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 15, 2019The entire structure is involved. The spire has collapsed.This is the worst day for France since June 14, 1940. Patrick Galey of Agence-France Presse shot photos and video from Paris, and they're below. Police just evacuated the Île but that spire is lost #NotreDame pic.twitter.com/rd0g8SuSBo— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019#NotreDame right now. I feel sick pic.twitter.com/UFqsSrtwGu— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019#NotreDame now. Entire spire is on fire pic.twitter.com/3410wSwhf3— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019The smoke from #NotreDame is blocking out the sun pic.twitter.com/v3ibVL41T7— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019There are people crying. People on rooftops. I can hear the burning from here #NotreDame pic.twitter.com/Pd80q6Etcg— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019#NotreDame is on fire pic.twitter.com/8n6DaEEyGv— James McAuley (@jameskmcauley) April 15, 2019PARIS: Here's a closer view of the #NotreDame fire pic.twitter.com/JkQk2I9pHF— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) April 15, 2019Reuters: A fire broke out at Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris on Monday afternoon, a spokesman from the fire department said.Smoke could be seen billowing out from the top of the medieval cathedral, as flames lept out besides its two bell towers, a Reuters witness said. Read the rest

A consortium of Facebook investors led by Trillium Asset Management and controlling $3B in shares has put a proposal before the shareholders to fire Mark Zuckerberg for his mishandling of a string of ghastly scandals; they will lose, however, because Facebook's share structure gives Zuckerberg's personal shares more votes than other shareholders, ensuring that the company can run as a cult of personality beholden to his whims, rather than one disciplined by shareholder choices (this corporate structure is also in place at News Corp, Google, and other companies whose founders are able to raise funds in the capital markets without having to be beholden to their shareholders). Another shareholder proposal would put Zuckerberg's shares on even footing with other shares -- currently, each of Zuck's shares have ten times more votes than ordinary shares -- and this proposal will also fail. (via /.) Read the rest

Alistair Wooldrige's MacBook Air died after a drop. So he popped it in the oven.With confidence high and the bake nearly finished, for the final 60 seconds I thought I’d go off-piste and crank up the temperature to 180 °C - I wanted to make sure things were cooked through. Curiously peering through the oven window, all hell broke loose within 30 seconds: The room filled with sounds of popcorn being made as resistors and components desoldered themselves from the logic board and dropped onto the oven floor. The previously clear air was replaced with an acrid haze. Then the bake reached it’s finale as the logic board bowed up in the middle, accompanied by the screeching sound of the CPU being wrenched off its socket. I lunged for the power switch and yanked open the oven door, hoping to limit damage.Chances are that your oven cannot nail or sustain the exact temperature to "safely" remelt solder without damaging the board, and it's a bad idea anyway: figure out the break, then use a heat gun and a temperature probe. Say experts. Read the rest

Carol Monahan writes, "In the summer of 1996, James Ernest began his quest to bring happiness and joy to all the people of the world, by creating clever tabletop games and selling them really cheap. He named his company Cheapass Games, and now he's writing a book about it." "Cheapass Games in Black and White: A Retrospective" includes the rules and histories of all of our black and white games, from the well-known Kill Doctor Lucky, Lord of the Fries, and Button Men, to many more obscure games, such as Escape from Elba, Pennywise, Dogfight, and The Lost Pueblo of Doctor Green, plus a few prototypes and unreleased games you've never heard of. Get the complete history of Cheapass Games, all collected into one big heavy book! On Kickstarter until April 30th.Cheapass Games in Black and White [Cheapass Games/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Torrentfreak published an article disclosing the fact that screeners of American Gods had leaked online ahead of their air date (they did not make the screeners available, nor did they link to any of the places where the screeners could be downloaded from) and they tweeted about the story.Starz, who puts out American Gods, sent a bogus DMCA takedown notice for the tweet, claiming that it infringed copyright (the tweet included a screenshot from one of the circulating screeners -- a single frame that contained no plot developments or other key materials, and which showed that the leaked copies were labeled as screeners).Then, Torrentfreak wrote an article about the takedown, which included a quote from EFF attorney Kit Walsh. EFF tweeted about the article, and -- wait for it -- Starz abused the DMCA again, to remove EFF's link to a story in which the fact that Starz had previously abused the DMCA was disclosed.You'd think that this could go on all day, but you'd be wrong: EFF has filed a counternotification, and if Starz knows what's good for them, they'll back down, learning a lesson from the eight years of stupid litigation that Universal engaged in to defend its right to abuse the DMCA, before losing big.Sending a DMCA complaint requires a sworn statement that the person sending the complaint actually believes it to be copyright infringement. Look at this sequence of events again and try to imagine sending a takedown for our tweet honestly believing it to be infringement. Read the rest

Last September, the French Directorate of Military Intelligence prepared a "highly classified" report on the Saudi war in Yemen to brief the "restricted council" of cabinet-level officials; the report has been obtained by the French media organization Disclose, which has published it jointly with The Intercept and four other French media organizations.The report paints a damning picture of western complicity in the Saudi war. It lays out how the Saudis are completely dependent on US arms sales to continue their campaign against the Yemenis, and how if the US were to pull out, replacing US arms with Russian or Chinese systems would involve years of retrofitting and incredible expense.It also implicates the US in "targeting" operations that have resulted in massive civilian casualties, and describes the key role that French tanks and other armaments are playing in the fighting.Finally, it paints a picture of the Saudi forces as bungling incompetents whose strikes do little of military value despite the terrible toll they are taking on the country's civilian population (by contrast, the report is very complimentary to the UAE forces operating on the Saudi's behalf in the theater of war). The French intelligence report also describes a massive operation by the Saudis to secure their border with Yemen, and says that five brigades of the Saudi army and two brigades of the Saudi National Guard — about 25,000 men — are deployed along the border. The troops are reinforced by 300 tanks and a battalion of 48 French-made Caesar self-propelled Howitzer guns capable of firing dozens of miles into Yemeni territory. Read the rest

Pioneering cyberpunk author and old-school bOING bOING contributor Rudy Rucker hips us to his forthcoming novel about "three teens driv(ing) across space to save our world from invading UFOs" and asks for support:My wild SF adventure Million Mile Road Trip is being published in hardback and paperback by Night Shade Books in May. And I'll publish the ebook version via my Transreal books. Also I'm publishing my novel's companion, Notes for Million Mile Road Trip.So I'm running a Kickstarter again. The campaign is athttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rudyrucker/million-mile-road-tripThere's a fun video trailer for the book at the top of the Kickstarter page, so if nothing else, take a look at that. It's fast-paced.And the permanent Million Mile Road Trip home page ishttp://www.rudyrucker.com/millionmileroadtrip. Read the rest

Engineers digging to lay water pipes in Oxfordshire, England turned up more than two dozen 3,000-year-old human skeletons, some of which were likely killed in sacrifices. From CNN:The remains of 26 people from the Iron Age and Roman periods were found, including a woman with her feet cut off and her arms bound behind her head, and another person with their skull placed by their feet...Archaeologists inspecting the remains believe the people found were from the same community involved in creating the Uffington White Horse, a prehistoric chalk sculpture on a nearby hill...The findings "provided a glimpse into the beliefs and superstitions of people living in Oxfordshire before the Roman conquest," said Neil Holbrook, chief executive of Cotswold Archaeology. "Evidence elsewhere suggests that burials in pits might have involved human sacrifice." Read the rest

Scammer software is usually quite crude and, as demonstrated here, vulnerable to clever victims aware of their shortcomings. Engineer Man: "Taking it to another scammer using some nmap analysis and a common exploit to save 105 people. Mission accomplished." Note that what he's showing here is not necessarily what he's doing, and doing it without due care and attention to the risks is gonna get you in trouble. Read the rest

Jonathan Frakes, the actor and director associated most strongly with his Star Trek role as bearded lothario William Riker but with many other feathers in his cap, here informs you that you are wrong for a solid 47 seconds. Read the rest

Enjoy the sense of scale in this image, stitched together from 16 smaller images and 1060 hours of exposure.The image is a mosaic made of 16 smaller fields of view, which, once stitched together form a high-resolution image of 204 Million of pixels! As of matter of fact, this is not the work of a single person but by a team of five french amateur astronomers called "Ciel Austral": Jean Claude CANONNE, Philippe BERNHARD, Didier CHAPLAIN, Nicolas OUTTERS et Laurent BOURGON. Read the rest

Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Democratic candidate and a proponent of "democratically influenced capitalism", has his own campaign brand typography. Faces include Aktiv Grotesk ("sleek lines [that] feel equally modern today as they would have in an old Studebaker ad"), Industry ("the visual language of American manufacturing ... industrial, sporty or military") and Domaine Text ("a sophisticated companion to the modern geometry of Aktiv and the stark boldness of Industry")Here's the (since removed) placeholder text, as spotted by Brett Banditelli.Says it all, really. Read the rest

There's an unimaginable amount of data out there on the web today, more than any IT team could possibly manage. That's the real, nuts-and-bolts purpose of machine learning: Enabling AI to do the heavy lifting, sifting through the data to find out what's important - and valuable. If you're looking to break into this field, there's a number of ways in, and the Complete Machine Learning A to Z Bundle covers most of them.After an overview that allows you to understand AI and deep learning through the innovations of Siri and Tesla's self-driving cars, you'll learn the many ways it can be implemented. There are separate courses on how to create chatbots using Google DialogFlow or Amazon Lex, and another on how to build voice apps using Amazon's popular Alexa device. You'll get deep dives into the art and science of data analytics with Spark 2.x, plus walkthroughs on the framework of systems like ApacheMXNet and Pytorch.Right now, lifetime access to the Complete Machine Learning A to Z Bundle is $25. Read the rest

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, an unidentified man, age 40 is suing his parents for $87,000 for dumping his porn collection. Apparently he had been living with his folks following a divorce but recently moved into his own home. When his folks delivered his stuff to the new digs, his 12 boxes of porn magazines and films were nowhere to be found. He called the cops but the Ottawa County prosecutor would not pursue charges. In an email filed as evidence in the suit, the man's father wrote: "I did you a big favor by getting rid of all this stuff."According to the Associated Press, the porn has an estimated value of $29,000 but "the man is seeking triple financial damages."(image: Frank Carroll/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Read the rest

More than a century before the Disneyfication of Snow White, German folklorists the Brothers Grimm collected the fairy tale in their anthology Nursery and Household Tales. But their version, and earlier tellings including one titled "The Young Slave" from the 17th century, was not quite the Snow White that in 1937 became Disney's first animated feature film. No, the original story, as summarized by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo at the Daily Grail, "has elements of murderous jealousy, ritual cannibalism, sexual temptation, necrophilic imagery and capital punishment." From the Daily Grail:Mad with envy, feeling that her power is at stake by the young girl’s increasing beauty, the queen orders the huntsman (who in other versions is her lover) to kill Snow White and bring back her lungs and liver. The huntsman takes her to the forest, but when he is about to kill her, she begs for mercy and he feels incapable of harming someone with such beauty. He finally abandons her in the deep forest, convinced that the wild beasts will take her. The queen wanted her internal organs, so the huntsman, in what historian of religions Norman Girardot suggests is a reminiscence of the “sacrificial rites of the virgin maiden”, kills a wild boar instead – in antiquity, these were frequently used as a substitute for human sacrifice to appease the gods.The subsequent event has been largely forgotten – and rarely shown in film adaptations. When the queen receives her daughter’s viscera, she decides she’ll have them salted and boiled, then feasts upon them with epicurean pleasure, convinced that they’re Snow White’s. Read the rest

Marvin Hajos, 75, of Gainesville, Florida, fell in his backyard and was then attacked by his pet cassowary, a giant bird from ratite group that also includes emus and ostriches. Native to northeastern Australia and tropical forests of New Guinea, cassowaries have three-toed feet with long, sharp claws. From CNN:The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considers cassowaries Class II wildlife, meaning they pose a danger to humans and are subject to specific cage requirements. Owners must also have "substantial experience" with the animals, the commission says...They can grow more than 5 feet tall and the heaviest females can weigh more than 160 pounds, the (San Diego Zoo) says. Males weigh up to 120 pounds."The cassowary is rightfully considered the most dangerous bird in the world!" the zoo says. "Each 3-toed foot has a dagger-like claw on the inner toe that is up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long! The cassowary can slice open any predator or potential threat with a single swift kick."image: "Southern cassowary" by Scott Hamlin/CC BY-SA 2.0 Read the rest

Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg continue to dissect the turbulent comic book speculator boom on the 1990s while looking through antique copies of Wizard Magazine.Some of this issues contents:* Jack Kirby comes back to comics via his line of Topps Comics* Palmer's Picks. Rick Veitch*Jae Lee's Youngblood Strikefile is on the horizon!* Larry Hama's origin story* Mike Mignola talks about drawing the Topps adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula* Dave Sim writes an issue of SpawnSubscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel for more vids celebrating the medium of comics. Read the rest

Pepsi has announced plans to contract with the Russian space startup Startrocket to project massive "artificial constellations" spelling out ads for a "nonalcoholic energy beverage" in the night sky; Startrocket is planning to launch a cluster of cubesats with reflective mylar sails in 2021.Futurism first reported on StartRocket back in January, when the company announced plans to project huge ads into the night sky using cubesats with Mylar sails that’ll reflect sunlight back down to Earth during the twilight of early morning or evening.“We are ruled by brands and events,” project leader Vlad Sitnikov told Futurism at the time. “The Super Bowl, Coca Cola, Brexit, the Olympics, Mercedes, FIFA, Supreme and the Mexican wall. The economy is the blood system of society. Entertainment and advertising are at its heart.”Pepsi plans to project a giant ad in the night sky using cubesats [Jon Christian/Futurism] Read the rest

Sculptor Art Donovan (previously) writes in about "Event Horizon," his newest lamp, inspired by black holes.Two weeks ago, I had finished this design called, "Event Horizon" to find that the subject of Black Holes and that incredible, historic image was all over the news last week. My own "E.V." was inspired by both my NASA experience and also the 2014 Christopher Nolan film, "Interstellar". That film's beautiful vision of the fictional Black Hole, "Gargantua" was dramatically and accurately rendered courtesy of Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist, Prof. Kip Thorne. Yesterday, physicists claimed that Gargantua is remarkably similar to that actual image published yesterday by the Event Horizon Telescope. Now the specs: the "Event Horizon stands 24" tall and scratch-built from solid maple, bronze, brass and glass.The globe bulb is obscured front and back by a circular "veils" of bronze and the light echoes back and forth in the gold and glass reflections. An orbital kind of movement is nicely implied by the shield's different diameters and materials- Solid bronze on top and a hexagonal brass mesh in front. A forward trajectory pierces the glass globe like an arrow. Smoked gray maple. 24K plated brass and bronze. One-Of-A-Kind!Event Horizon [Art Donovan/New Art and Design] Read the rest

I'll be at the LA Times Festival of Books today, with a signing at 1PM at the Mysterious Galaxy booth (#368) and then a 3-4PM "in conversation" with John Scalzi, moderated by Maryelizabeth Yturralde from Mysterious Galaxy. I sure hope you can make it! Read the rest

We're well past the golden age of the internet, when you could surf where you liked without being sure that ad trackers or some other bot were hungrily following your trail of cookies - not to mention actual human hackers and other threats. Ever wish your virtual self had an invisibility cloak? A good virtual private network is the next best thing. And among VPNs, Nord VPN still stands out as one of the best.This is still the well-supported VPN that earned an "Outstanding" rating from PCMag, among other accolades. With it, you can route your signal through one of over 3,500 remote servers worldwide, thereby foiling tracking algorithms and enabling you to bypass the browsing restrictions of whatever country you're in. The service includes double data encryption and automatic shutdown in case of a dropped connection. And best of all, Nord VPN maintains a strict no logs policy, meaning nobody records your browsing history - not even Nord VPN.Get a three-year subscription to Nord VPN for $107.55 - a 75% discount off the list price. Read the rest

Within the topography of the human soul there is a strange land called the Uncanny. As Sigmund Freud wrote in his classic essay on the topic:The subject of the ‘uncanny’ (...) is undoubtedly related to what is frightening—to what arouses dread and horror; equally certainly, too, the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with what excites fear in general. The Uncanny is a liminal zone at the outer fringes of our normal awareness. Both repelling and attractive, the Uncanny magnetizes the mind with its potent brew of sublime and horrible, beautiful and obscene, familiar and alien, enchanting and morbid, the ultimate mysterium tremendum et fascinans. For the intellectually adventurous, a signpost of the Uncanny is the blog Bizzarro Bazar.Bizzarro BazarDevoted to all things “strange, macabre, wonderful,” Bizzarro Bazar is a virtual wunderkammer made up of queer collectibles, absurd oddities and twisted curiosities from the history of medicine, anatomical collections, anthropology, tanathology, alternative sexuality, literature, cinema and other obscure sources. The result is a swirling tapestry of eldritch, poignant, otherworldly delights.Bizzarro Bazar is the brainchild project (and nom de plume) of Ivan Cenzi. Based in Rome, Cenzi is a prolific author and eclectic intellectual, Arbiter Elegantiae of all things weird and wonderful. His books, with text both in Italian and English, are devoted to Italy's most unusual anatomy museums, catacombs and charnel houses. With a peculiar mix of erudite poise and eerie playfulness, Cenzi's work articulates the words of JBS Haldane: "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine." Web seriesBizzarro Bazar's latest creative endeavor is an enjoyable and entertaining web series. Read the rest

You've got one week to vote in the Children's History Book Prize, whose nominees this year include Out of Left Field by Ellen Klages -- the third book in the Gordon Family Saga, which includes 2009's incomparable White Sands, Red Menace, a book that like a genderswapped, woke Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, with extra helpings of Cold War paranoia and terror, all wrapped up in poetic, Bradburian nostalgia.The other nominees are also promising:* Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man, by Tonya Bolden* Front Desk, by Kelly Yang* The Journey of Little Charlie, by Christopher Paul Curtis Read the rest

Since 1968, 77 East Third Street in Manhattan's East Village housed the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's New York City clubhouse (and apartments for some of its members). But the building was recently sold and the Angels have purchased new digs, a former church on Long Island. The New Yorker's Sarah Larson stopped by on moving day:“The parties used to be great,” (neighbor) Nancy said. “Until the explosion.” In 1990, a garbage-can firecracker killed a fourteen-year-old boy. Over the years, the East Village Angels both caused and prevented mayhem. In 1994, the Times characterized this mayhem, part “lore and part police reports,” as “countless decibel-cranking parties, LSD-laced misadventures, drug deals, orgies and random acts of violence against passers-by.” In recent years, parking-space tussles resulted in beatings and a shooting; a woman who pounded on the door, screaming, was badly beaten. In 1978, the chapter president, Vincent (Big Vinny) Girolamo, of plaque fame, allegedly pushed his girlfriend off the roof, to her death. (He died, of stab wounds, before he could stand trial.) Innumerable bad vibes were doled out after unwanted bench-sitting, dog-peeing, and photography incidents. But, from the scuzz era to the N.Y.U.-and-condos era, club members also defended their neighbors; the Angels’ block was considered the safest around.“I haven’t heard anybody say ‘Good riddance,’” (neighbor) Janet said."Moving Day at the Hells Angels Clubhouse" (New Yorker)image: Beyond My Ken/CC BY-SA 4.0Delicious piece by @asarahlarson on the departure of the Hells Angels from my block https://t.co/oCuYPAMyHf— MarjorieIngall (@MarjorieIngall) April 8, 2019 Read the rest

I've been using a Wen variable speed rotary tool since early 2017. It works as well as a Dremel tool costing several times as much, and the accessories are interchangeable. Right now, Amazon is selling it at a lower-than-usual price. Read the rest

I don't know French, but that didn't prevent me from being able to play this web-based game. The goal is to get the ball from one pillar to the next by holding down your finger (or mouse cursor) for the right amount of time. If you don't hold down long enough the ball will fall short of its goal. If you hold down too long, the ball overshoots. My high score so far is 194. Read the rest

As a kid I set my friend's kitchen on fire melting potassium nitrate and sugar on the stove, so be careful when making these cool colored smoke bombs, which use oil pastels as pigment. Read the rest

At their own peril, the Swiss government has decided that coffee is "not essential" for human survival. After World War I, Switzerland built an emergency reserve of human necessities for use in the event of war, disease, or other catastrophic events. They've now declared that the emergency food supply doesn't need to include coffee. From BBC News:It currently has 15,300 tonnes saved up - that's enough to last the country three months."Coffee contains almost no calories and therefore does not contribute, from the physiological perspective, to safeguarding nutrition," the Federal Office for National Economic Supply said (in German).image: Julius Schorzman/CC BY-SA 2.0 Read the rest

Bon appetit. Read the rest

After earlier denying that it had considered dumping migrants in sanctuary cities to "punish" Trump's political enemies, the White House today confirmed that it is considering doing so."Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump posted on Twitter. Trump's tweet came a day after The Washington Post reported the White House tried to pressure immigration authorities into releasing captured immigrants into sanctuary cities, particularly targeting liberal strongholds in hopes of hurting Democrats.Straight from "immigration president" Stephen Miller's pen, I hazard. Read the rest

For his next trick, he should put sharks into the pool and then... Oh, never mind. Read the rest

A few weeks ago at Appleton, Wisconsin's Lawrence University, a group of experimental musicians, dancers, and performance artists staged "Breathe," a "multidisicplinary water opera" in the college's swimming pool. (The video above is from a previous performance at Middlebury College's Natatorium). From Fox Cities Magazine:Lawrence University’s Margaret Sunghe Paek, professor of dance and curator of Dance Series, will work with music director Loren Dempster and director/choreographer Gabriel Forestieri to bring (the performance) to life...“I wanted to see if I could make sound underwater,” Dempster says. “I experimented with microphones underwater, I bought a hydrophone, I [even] played the cello underwater.”Dempster will be the only underwater musician in the entire opera as he will be in the shallow end, playing his cello while underwater microphones transmit the sounds above the surface.Forestieri choreographed the opera, combining the practice of dance and free diving, called dancing in apnea, to create the water visuals.“[I’m] taking cues from the space and the people in the space and how they relate to each other,” Forestieri says. “The choreography is a mix of [dancing] on deck, sometimes in the pool, partner dancing in the shallow end, and dancers floating with float belt.”(via Weird Universe) Read the rest

The Pinkertons rose to notoriety as a vicious army of mercenary strikebreakers who beat and murdered working people who stood up to robber barons like Andrew Carnegie; now they are a division of Securitas, a global private security giant at the forefront of profiting from human misery.The Pinkertons have a detailed plan for climate change: as climate chaos displaces people, wipes out their food, infects them with diseases and subjects them to extreme weather, the Pinkertons plan to sell their services to the ultra-rich as personal bodyguards and as mercenaries to guard their homes and supplies of luxury goods, which they will eat and chortle over while the rest of us drown, starve and burn.They're already at it, providing high-priced services to executives and big companies during "crises" like Hurricane Maria, during which Donald Trump left millions of Americans to live or die without aid from their government.Whatever the exact costs of climate change, it is Pinkerton’s job to read between the numbers looking for the potential for violence. If you’re suffering only one hurricane every 20 years or so, shelling out $1 million to Pinkerton isn’t such a big deal, Paz Larach explained; you bake it into your risk. “But if there’s a disaster every year, which is happening more and more, it makes more sense to have dedicated staff on standby.” A Pinkerton on standby doesn’t mean protection for just your insurable risks but also for the uninsurable risks — business interruptions, theft of trade secrets, pandemics. Read the rest

Tesla500 rigged an array of 48 high-speed cameras "capable of recording 68 gigapixels per second - 720p at 72000fps!"Bullet Time meets Moore's Law. Read the rest

Vasile Savu is accused of walking into a Western Union in Hollywood, Florida and asking the clerk to print out his flight itinerary, a pretense he used to get the clerk to insert a thumb-drive loaded with malicious software into his computers, which allegedly allowed Savu to steal $32k from the business.Savu then went into another Western Union, in nearby Opa-locka, and allegedly tried to do it again. The clerk recognized him and called the cops. Savu is now under house arrest pending trial.Florida man hacks into Western Union computers and steals $32K [NBC2](Image: Usien, CC-BY-SA)(Thanks, @dontbenebby!) Read the rest

Montreal designer Sofia Zakia created her Medusa veil ring in 2018, and she sells it in yellow or rose gold (also available with ruby eye). They're gorgeous and pricey: $1430-$1510.(via Super Punch) Read the rest

This week, Keep Internet Devices Safe Act was gutted by the Illinois senate: it would have allowed people sue manufacturers if they determined that a device had engaged in remote recording without notifying its owner.The Senate was heavily lobbied by trade groups led by the Internet Association, groups that represented Microsoft, Google and Amazon (all of whom make creepy, surveillance "smart speakers" that sport networked, always-on microphones that the manufacturers claim are under user control), and senators amended the bill to render it effectively useless. Under the stripped-down bill that passed the senate, Illinoisians who have been nonconsenually recorded by their devices can notify the state Attorney General, who then decides whether to investigate.It's at the Illinois House of Reps now, and is unlikely to have its original, strong language restored. In the bill’s original form, users could file a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General’s office that could lead to penalties of up to $50,000. But after technology trade associations, led by the Internet Association objected, claimed that the state’s definition of a “digital device” was too broad, and that the Act would lead to “private litigation which can lead to frivolous class action litigation,” the bill was scaled back.In its current, neutered form, the bill provides exclusive authority to the Attorney General to enforce the Act, which means regular citizens won’t be able to bring forward a case regarding tech giants recording them in their homes. Big Tech Lobbying Gutted a Bill That Would Ban Recording You Without Consent [Rob Dozier/Motherboard] Read the rest

Ben Snell's sculpture Dio was created by training a machine learning system on a corpus of 1,000+ sculptures, tweaked in some unspecified way by Snell, who then 3D printed a mold based on the final shape: he filled the mold with a resin impregnated with the computer that ran the algorithm, which Snell had ground to powder.“I consider myself, not the computer, to be the artist,” he says. But he also talks enthusiastically about the agency of his algorithms, saying that “Dio began by trying to recreate from memory every sculpture it saw” and that he asked the computer “to close its eyes and dream of a new form.” He says he choose to use this figurative language because it makes these digital processes more relatable to humans. Artist Ben Snell says he wanted give his sculpture control over the systems that created it [James Vincent/The Verge] Read the rest