With the Prime Minister's Brexit deal failing for the third time to receive Parliament's blessing and the looming possibility of crashing out the EU without a deal, or a snap general election, or a second referendum, or another series of Parliamentary votes, or a general-purpose popular uprising, or alien intervention, the Church of England has a plan: tea parties.Churches are being encouraged to host “informal café-style meetings” over the weekend of 30 March “to bring together people of all standpoints and encourage open discussion.” The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Justin Welby and John Sentamu, have today backed newly-commissioned resources to invite people to “get together and chat over a cup of tea and pray for our country and our future”.Under the slogan “Together”, the packs include specially-chosen Bible passages, prayers and questions designed to prompt conversations. The introductory notes urge participants to have “respect for the integrity of differently held positions, encouraging communities which feel the same about the issues to use their imagination to consider the viewpoints of those who feel differently.”Photo: AS Food studio / Shutterstock Read the rest

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House Judiciary Committee approved Senate Bill 614, which forces doctors to counsel patients seeking medical abortions with false statements claiming the procedure is reversible; doctors who refuse to lie to their patients would be guilty of a jailable felony.The law's backer is Rep Mark Lepak [R-9, (405) 557-7380), who falsely claimed that "medical science has developed a method for reversing the effects of a medication abortion and saving the life of an unborn child."This belief is widespread among anti-abortion extremists, and has prompted the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to issue a statement in 2017 that reads, "Claims regarding abortion ‘reversal’ treatment are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards."Four other Republican-led states (Arkansas, Idaho, South Dakota, and Utah) have passed laws requiring doctors to tell this lie to their patients and seven more are considering it, as part of a nationally coordinated, nonconsensual Handmaid's Tale LARP that made significant advances with the elevation to the Supreme Court of accused serial rapist Brett Kavanaugh.Arizona was the first state to pass such a law, but it was later overturned after a court challenge because the law's proponents couldn't find a single credible expert to testify that "abortion reversal" was a thing.The bills are grounded in a series of flawed and deeply unethical experiments performed by Dr. George Delgado of Southern California.Anti-abortion extremists have made forcing doctors to lie to patients a centerpiece of their tactics: a string of state laws also require doctors to give medically unsupported warnings to abortion patients about a supposed (and unproven) link between breast cancer and abortion. Read the rest

Genie Ogden writes, "Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince (previously) was invited to speak at Beloit College last night, by the right wing group Young Americans for Freedom. A couple of weeks ago, a Beloit student who is Muslim posted on the internet that he was angry - about the shootings of fellow Muslims in New Zealand, and then about the YAF bringing Erik Prince to speak. He was suspended. Fellow students were upset about his suspension, and protested in the hall where Prince was scheduled to speak last night. They banged on drums, and some of them piled their chairs on the stage. Erik Prince cancelled his speech and has threatened to sue." (Image: Tess Lydon/The Round Table) Read the rest

People.cn is a publicly listed subsidiary of The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party; its fortunes are rising and rising with no end in sight as it markets itself as an outsource censorship provider who combine AI and a vast army of human censors to detect and block attempts to circumvent censorship through irony, memes, and metaphors.Analysts praise People.cn for its "precise grasp of policy trends," and the company's customers agree, using People.cn's censorship service to block content in apps and on social media. Full-year net income is expected to have risen as much as 140 percent, People.cn said in late January, the biggest annual increase since 2011. That would mean net profit of as high as 214.8 million yuan ($31.93 million).Revenue from its censorship business is forecast to have jumped 166 percent last year, the company said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.Encouraged by surging revenue, People.cn is raising a bigger army of censors. This month, it signed a strategic deal with the government of Jinan in eastern Shandong province to help the city become China’s censorship capital.Censorship pays: the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper expands lucrative online scrubbing business Read the rest

The Sacklers (previously) are mostly known around the world as "philanthropists," with their names adorning the wings of galleries, museums and institutes of higher learning; but the Sackler family fortune came from their pharmaceutical company, Purdue, whose deceptive marketing and underhanded regulatory evasion for their highly addictive drug Oxycontin has led to the prescription opioid overdose deaths of 200,000 Americans so far, with another 200,000 overdoses from heroin and other opioids likely related to the addiction epidemic created by Purdue and the Sacklers.The Sacklers are anxious to keep details of their criminal activities out of the press and the public eye -- they recently gave Oklahoma $270m to settle a claim rather than have it go to trial, and you only have to look at the recently unsealed deposition of family boss Richard Sackler to see why: it reveals that Purdue execs, led by Sacklers, took steps that addicted as many people as possible and went to elaborate lengths to avoid regulatory detection of their misdeeds.Now the family has been sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose (heavily redacted) legal complaint claims that as the Oxy epidemic drew more legal attention, the Sacklers began to extract millions from Purdue via offshore money laundries that would hide their fortunes from US courts, going so far as to abolish Purdue Pharma's written quarterly reports and replacing them with verbal reports direct to board members, leaving no records to subpoena as fortunes were sent abroad.The suit claims that the Sacklers incorporated a new pharma company, "Rhodes," to use as a "landing pad" if they had to shut down Purdue due to the legal claims and scandal around it. Read the rest

NRA training instructor and program coordinator Mark Richardson is a veteran of the organization, having worked there since at least 2006; in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting, Richardson used his NRA email account to correspond with Infowars correspondent Wolfgang Halbig, a Sandy Hook denier who has pursued a career of harassing the grieving parents of the children murdered there and accusing them of being "crisis actors" in a "false flag operation" whose children were either imaginary or unharmed.Halbig and Richardson pursued a lively correspondence, discussing their belief that the Parkland shooting was a hoax designed to provide cover for the confiscation of guns from musketfuckers and ammosexuals across America.The emails were revealed through the discovery process in a lawsuit against Alex Jones brought by grieving Sandy Hook parents who have been harassed and threatened by Jones supporters who were weaponized by Jones's repeated insistence that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax and that the parents were anti-gun conspirators who had faked their losses and their grief. Wolfgang, You have included me with a lot of Information since the Sandy Hook Incident and I do appreciate it very much. Concerning what happened in Florida yesterday, I have been asking the question and no one else seems to be asking it. How is it that Cruz was able gain access to a secured facility while in possession of a rifle, multiple magazines, smoke grenades and a gas mask? To pull the fire alarm, he had to already be inside. Read the rest

This time she'd promised to resign if they approved it, paving the way for new leadership to execute Prime Minister Theresa May's deal with the European Union for Britain to depart the bloc. Dangling the keys to Downing Street reportedly won over a few power-hungry Tories like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but not enough. Her Brexit deal was defeated again, for the third time.The vote on Friday might have been Mrs. May’s last chance to succeed on the issue that has dominated and defined her time in office, and the result left open an array of possibilities, including renewed demands for her resignation and early parliamentary elections.The defeat appears to leave the increasingly weakened prime minister with two unpalatable options in the short run: Britain can leave the bloc on April 12 without an agreement in place, a chaotic and potentially economically damaging withdrawal; or Mrs. May can ask European leaders – who have ruled out a short delay if her plan failed – for what could be a long postponement.It wasn't quite the thrashing as the first two votes — 344 votes to 286 — but still so far off that the sheer surreal chaos of it all impresses once again. Read the rest

In the extremely unlikely event that you end up piloting a Boeing 737 MAX jet and it decides to nosedive, here's a 20 minute tutorial from Mentour Pilot on how to turn off MCAS. Don't forget your duty free! Read the rest

In this otherwise unsourced video (via Singaporean news site Mothership) we may enjoy seeing parts so finely engineered that when they are socketed together, they appear to become single blocks of metal.UPDATE: Commenter for_SCIENCE pointed out that these are made using Electrical discharge machining, which Mark posted about here. More from RandomDude:"It is the only technology that makes specifically the kind of Parts you saw in that video possible. No other process can create perfect shapes that mesh so perfectly this way they appear seamless. I don’t care how good of a machinist you are it is physically impossible to do with traditional machining techniques what you saw." Read the rest

This desktop phone stand has a heavy base and a platform that swivels up to 45 degrees. The platform is coated with silicone rubber so as not to scratch your precious device. It also has silicone pads on the base to keep it from sliding around. I have an earlier discontinued model and use it every day. Read the rest

After Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered a blistering rebuttal to Rep Sean Duffy's [R-WI] charge that the Green New Deal and environmentalism were "elitist" concerns that ignored the needs of rural people, Congressional Coal Caucus member Rep. Andy Barr [R-KY] invited her to visit Appalachian coal-towns and "go underground" to talk to people in the mining industry.AOC has taken Barr up on his invitation, saying "It’s a complete injustice the cancer levels that a lot of these communities are confronting. We have to plan a future for all of our communities, no matter what. Failure to plan is planning to fail and I feel like we’ve been failing Appalachian communities for a very long time and it’s time to turn that ship around."“We have to plan a future for all of our communities, no matter what,” she said. “Failure to plan is planning to fail and I feel like we’ve been failing Appalachian communities for a very long time and it’s time to turn that ship around.”Ocasio-Cortez says Appalachia ‘close to my heart’ as she accepts Barr’s coal mine invite [Lesley Clark/McClatchy] Read the rest

Former NSA contractor Harold Martin today changed his plea to guilty, on charges of willful retention of national defense information. Harold Martin was originally charged with 20 counts of violating the Espionage Act. He now appears more likely to face up to a recommended 9 years in prison, after pleading guilty to only the one charge, and may get credit for time served. Martin was arrested in 2016 on charges he stole an enormous amount of sensitive information and stored it on various devices he kept at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland.From CBS News, Baltimore:He initially pleaded not guilty.The government recommended a nine-year-sentence. Martin has already served two and a half years, which he will get credit for.He pleaded guilty to one count of stealing a top secret NSA document and leaving it in his car, and another copy in the living room of his Glen Burnie home.His sentencing is scheduled for July.And from a 2016 Daily Beast profile of Martin:The retired Navy officer arrested for allegedly removing highly classified information from the National Security Agency worked with the organization's elite computer hackers, who specialize in using computer code to penetrate the systems of foreign nations, according to a former colleague and the man’s online resume.Harold Thomas Martin, III, who goes by Hal, was also enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The university has a partnership with the NSA, in which the agency helps develop curriculum for the school and agency employees can take classes there. Read the rest

“It’s time, finally, to put a stake in the heart of this unnecessary government surveillance program and start to restore some of Americans’ liberties,” Wyden said in a statement.

The admitted agent for Russia was connected with the NRA and pro-Trump U.S. political groups.

Gymboree is one of the many companies acquired by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, through a "leveraged buyout" through which the company was loaded up with debt so that the hedge fund could cash out; the company was left with massive debts and cycled through a succession of incompetent, inexperienced grifter CEOs who eventually ran the company into bankruptcy.As the company was going through bankruptcy, the board decided to exercise an obscure clause in its contracts to "terminate the severance plan," for all but a handful of favored execs on the leadership team (that is, the people who drove the company into bankruptcy). By doing this, the company was able to fire longterm employees who had stayed on in the runup to bankruptcy despite the obvious warning signs because they had been hired with the promise of generous severance.One of those denied severance was Mera Chung, who was recruited to work at Gymboree by her former boss from Old Navy, where she had been a vice-president. Chung was promised control of Crazy 8, Gymboree's most successful brand, and even though she could see that the company was headed for insolvency, she stayed on the job so that she could continue to pay her household bills, which included the costs of caring for her elderly and infirm mother; Chung assumed that her contractually promised one-year severance would kick in if the company folded and that she would have a cushion while she sought other employment.Instead, she was given no severance -- but watched as colleagues more favored by the company's board and its lead creditor, Goldman Sachs, were given secret severance payouts in the form of "retention bonuses" that nominally ensure that key personnel were available to ensure an orderly wind-down. Read the rest

Today, Twitter announced expanded 'dark mode' options for iOS users. Previously, Twitter offered a blue/gray dark mode theme, but they've added a true black/white “Lights Out” mode, and an automated dark mode.“Giving more people options to personalize their experience on Twitter based on what makes them most comfortable is what the latest update to Dark Mode is all about,” Bryan Haggerty, Senior Design Manager at Twitter, said in the company's announcement.Dim: Dim is the current Dark Mode theme that we introduced in 2016 – a blue/grey color that still gives people a more comfortable way to enjoy Twitter for any environment you’re in and helps reduce eye strain in low lit environments.Lights Out: Our new theme for Dark Mode, which is a pure black color palette that emits no light since the pixels are turned off. This is a great option for those who want an even darker theme for low lit environments that reduces eye strain, and can potentially help with saving battery.Automatic Dark Mode: Now, Twitter for iOS devices can enable automatic dark mode to switch from light to the dark mode theme of their choice according to their timezone. This feature takes the burden off of people to make the adjustments. If you’re using Twitter all day long, it’s better on the eyes to have a tool that adjusts for the varying environments, contexts, and atmospheres you’ll experience throughout the day.You should be able to launch the new modes with a close/reopen of the app, if updates are enabled. Read the rest

Documents from Apple leaked to reporters describe a program of support for third-party repairs, and the details sound like it was intended to comply with the requirements of a slew of new right-to-repair bills proposed in some 20 U.S. states.From Jason Koebler at Motherboard:As Apple continues to fight legislation that would make it easier for consumers to repair their iPhones, MacBooks, and other electronics, the company appears to be able to implement many of the requirements of the legislation, according to an internal presentation obtained by Motherboard.According to the presentation, titled “Apple Genuine Parts Repair” and dated April 2018, the company has begun to give some repair companies access to Apple diagnostic software, a wide variety of genuine Apple repair parts, repair training, and notably places no restrictions on the types of repairs that independent companies are allowed to do. The presentation notes that repair companies can “keep doing what you’re doing, with … Apple genuine parts, reliable parts supply, and Apple process and training.”This is, broadly speaking, what right to repair activists have been asking state legislators to require companies to offer for years.“This looks to me like a framework for complying with right to repair legislation,” Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and a prominent member of the right to repair movement, told me on the phone. “Right now, they are only offering it to a few megachains, but it seems clear to me that it would be totally possible to comply with right to repair.”PHOTO: Shutterstock Read the rest

Photographs we're seeing online today, including one by Mark Lambie of the El Paso Times, below, capture the desperation of the unknown number of men, women, and children currently penned in, inside cages, under the Mexico-US international bridge, in El Paso, Texas.This should have been the featured photo. The United States government is penning in asylum seekers under the international bridge in El Paso. pic.twitter.com/8CDc5MOZjr— Brooke Binkowski (@brooklynmarie) March 28, 2019Hundreds of migrants are being held beneath the Paso Del Norte International Bridge in El Paso. CBP says it has run out of space to process the asylum seekers. In the El Paso Times' photo above, two boys look out from the fence at the bridge as protestors demand their release.As reported yesterday, most are from Central America, many are families, and some are in urgent need of medical attention. Border Patrol holding asylum seekers in tent under bridge in El Paso. Calls it a "transitional camp." More than half are families, most from Central America, “meaning their asylum requests and credible fear interviews must be heard,” reports @abcnews https://t.co/ekCRCyft9B pic.twitter.com/mAP6VVkDjr— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) March 27, 2019Let's be clear about what we are witnessing in these images. The United States government under Donald Trump is creating impromptu wire fence concentration camps for asylum seekers, as part of a manufactured border crisis driven by the Trump administration's white nationalist, white separatist, white supremacist policies.U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan visited El Paso today, El Paso Times reports, and said the border has hit its "breaking point." The recent influx of Central American migrants has made the El Paso Sector the second-busiest location on the U.S.-Mexico border. Read the rest

Sarah Leo is a visual data journalist at The Economist. In this Medium piece, she gives some past examples of Economist charts and graphs that were confusing or misleading and shows her revisions.Mistake: Truncating the scaleThis chart shows the average number of Facebook likes on posts by pages of the political left. The point of this chart was to show the disparity between Mr Corbyn’s posts and others.The original chart not only downplays the number of Mr Corbyn’s likes but also exaggerates those on other posts. In the redesigned version, we show Mr Corbyn’s bar in its entirety. All other bars remain visible. (Avid followers of this blog will have seen another example of this bad practice.)Another odd thing is the choice of colour. In an attempt to emulate Labour’s colour scheme, we used three shades of orange/red to distinguish between Jeremy Corbyn, other MPs and parties/groups. We don’t explain this. While the logic behind the colours might be obvious to a lot of readers, it perhaps makes little sense for those less familiar with British politics.Image: Medium Read the rest

Things keep getting weirder.Look in the background during Interior Secretary Nominee David Bernhardt's opening statement.Watch LIVE on C-SPAN3 https://t.co/i3oegv9okf pic.twitter.com/UiiaVfV8h2— CSPAN (@cspan) March 28, 2019I am wondering what statement the cosplayer would like us to take away from this. Evidently the Democratic Senators in attendance had a lot to say about candidate Bernhardt's ethics. Read the rest

US Representative Adam Schiff responds to all 9 Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee calling for his resignation. Read the rest

Unlike all the breadcore pals I have baking loaves with hand-ground sorghum and Bolivian yeast strains kept at 75% hydration, I left my sourdough starter on the kitchen counter for a week and didn't bother feeding it.After another midafternoon phone call from a friend who newly discovered baking as a relaxing and delicious artform asking for recommendations on baking something crisp-but-gooey, I looked at the live starter I keep on my counter. I transplanted it from the sleeping mass of junk a week or so back, baked a few great loaves of bread, and then kinda forgot about it. I had other stuff on my mind. The phone conversation led me to desire bread.Intending to put up a loaf later in the afternoon, I fed the room temperature but dormant starter. Fi,rst I mixed all the hooch into the starter. I then discarded a cup of starter and added 1/2 cup each of warm water and flour. Then I stirred, covered and gave it 4 hours.I used the starter to prepare my go-to no-knead loaf of bread, flour and whole wheat. Said dough was permit to rise overnight. Pretty much everything looked like dough normally does on a first rise. I then folded the blob! The dough was pretty wet, I left it to proof in its basket.I had a hard time deciding when it was ready for the oven. After 90 minutes I could see some large bubbles had formed in the dough, and a poke-with-index-finger test was getting what I thought were correct springing back results, but something looked off. Read the rest

New York Times reporters Andy Newman and Ana Fota took one (and sometimes two) for the team by visiting subway station restrooms across New York City. It was a shitty job, but someone had to do it. I guess. From the New York Times:Norwood-205th Street, BronxD lineThe cracked concrete floor of the men’s room looked like it had not been mopped in years. But on the plus side, on the frigid day of our visit, the room was toasty hot.So hot that someone had wedged takeout Chinese food between the scalding radiator and the wall, possibly to keep it warm — a full container of shrimp-fried rice and brown-breaded nuggets.“That’s no good,” said the station supervisor, S. Hope, when we brought it to his attention. “That will melt and catch fire.” He threw it out.In the women’s room, fire safety has apparently been learned the hard way. “No storage within three (3) feet,” read a sign on the floor beside a radiator covered in burn marks. The radiator was working fine, though. The environment was reminiscent of the tropical monkey habitat at the Central Park Zoo.(Mr. Hope said the bathrooms are cleaned three times a day.)The main door to the women’s room has a peephole to let you see who’s in the hall. But it does not lock. “People hert people,” reads graffiti on the door.The women’s room offered another unexpected sight: a man, standing at the toilet. He apologized on his way out, but offered no explanation. Read the rest

TossingBot is a robot that teaches itself how to pick up and toss objects with great accuracy. Eventually, the robot -- designed by researchers from Google, Princeton, Columbia, and MIT -- could lead to more efficient pick-and-place (grab-and-toss?) robots for factory automation, debris clearing at disaster sites, or perhaps package delivery. Right now though, the TossingBot is quite good at throwing bananas into bins. From IEEE Spectrum:Part of what makes TossingBot so useful is that the tossing technique significantly decreases the time that the robot spends on the “place” part of a pick-and-place task. Rather than spending time putting an object down, objects are instead (as the researchers put it) “immediately passed to Newton,” and the toss also means that the robot’s effective reach is significantly longer than its physical workspace....The interesting bit of TossingBot itself is a deep neural network that starts with a depth image of objects in a bin, and goes all the way through from successful grasp to parameters for the throw itself. Since the throwing of an object (especially an unbalanced object) depends heavily on how it’s being held, grasping and throwing are learned at the same time. By measuring whether a grasp is successful by whether a throw is successful, TossingBot learns to favor grasps that result in accurate throws. As you can see from the video, the learning process itself is fairly clever, and the robot can be mostly just left alone to figure things out for itself, managing 10,000 grasp and throw attempts in 14 hours of training time. Read the rest

Sgaawaay K'uuna, or Edge of the Knife, is the first feature film to portray the Haida – a group of people from Haida Gwaii, aka the Queen Charlotte Islands (off the west coast of Canada's British Columbia). It's also the first film in which the characters speak entirely in Haida, a language which only 20 people in the world speak fluently (even though the Haida population is a few thousand, according to The Guardian). The actors had to learn the language in order to understand their lines.Via The Guardian:The film, set on Haida Gwaii in the 19th century, is based on an old Haida myth about a man who survives an accident at sea, only to become so weakened that he is taken over by supernatural beings.It is part of a wider push to preserve the Haida language, including a new dictionary and recordings of local voices.Edenshaw said Haida uses a lot of “guttural sounds and glottal stops” and that actors needed to learn it because it differs from English, let alone other languages: “When you upspeak to denote a question in English, that doesn’t exist in Haida. There is an upspeak, but the questioning portion … appears in the middle of the sentence.”That was among the details that his cast of non-Haida speakers had to learn over many months before the shoot.The film will be released in April. Read the rest

Now this is a bedroom suite. "But wait, there's more!" says mansion-explorer Erick Tseng. Even the panic room, which it took cops half an hour to find, is larger than most London apartments. Read the rest

No-one can make you sound quite as great as your enemies can. Here's Dr. Paul Nathanson, responding to conservative host Laura Ingraham's suggestion trans people are merely destroying traditional families:“I think that the trans people have taken it one step further because by abandoning gender altogether, not simply re-writing it, they're basically trying to use social engineering to create a new species. Which is what, in fact, the transhumanists have been doing for the past half century. Using medical and other technologies to develop a new species.“So the goal is really quite radical. We're not talking about people who want to simply do a bit of reform here and there, add a new category. They want, they must, in fact, destroy whatever is in order to replace it with what they think should be. We're talking about revolution, not reform.”Then:Ingraham asks: "And the new species will be looking like what? Will be part human part animal? I mean, will be human mostly…"Nathanson said, "I think human and part machine," to which Ingraham replies "part machine, hmm."Conservatives often see with a suprising clarity and openness before their political instincts kick in. Here they're noodling on 1985 or so in feminist posthumanism. If the enemy has long moved on, this still has the hauntological result of snapping everyone back to a long-ago moment that seems suddenly fresh again (yet weirdly rustic to those who were there). I've never met a trans-exclusionary feminist who has read Haraway, but now everyone will have to at least take a stab at it. Read the rest

Jordan Reeves, 13, was born with a left arm that doesn't extend past her elbow. Last year, Jordan dreamt up a curious prosthetic arm that resembles a unicorn horn and shoots glitter out of its tip. Then, working with her prosthetist and technical designers at Autodesk, she designed and built the magical contraption."I wanted show people that our differences don't necessarily hold us back, in fact, they can give us more opportunity," Reeves told WGN9.After receiving numerous awards for her ingenuity and founding a nonprofit, Born Just Right, Reeves was invited to display her prosthetic at the Chicago Musuem of Science and Industry's Wired to Wear exhibit. "I love that I can show people that our differences aren't a bad thing... just look at how much fun it can be" Reeves said.More on Jordan Reeves in Fast Company: "The Girl Behind The Sparkle-Shooting Prosthetic Arm Is Just Getting Started" Read the rest

Relaxing, and ever so slightly peculiar, is this footage of an American Freestyle Canoeing master at work. American Freestyle canoeing is the art of paddling a canoe on flat water with perfect control of its movements. The canoe is usually leaned over to the side to help the boat turn sharply and efficiently and paddle strokes are taken on either side of the canoe depending on the individual move. Balance, paddle placement and turn initiation are a few keys to this control. Since the movements seem dance-like, some practice this art timed to music, which is the ultimate in control.A redditor on Ornstein's unique abilities: His backstroke tilted side-turn is probably the best you'll ever see. Not to mention he pretty much invented the inverted wind-slide. He was the first one to ever do it in the late 90s. I know some people are going to laugh, but it really is the most dangerous trick in the sport. People have sustained serious arm injuries and muscle tears attempting it. Sven Englewood almost drowned trying to perform it in the 2009 World Championships.Anyway, guys like Ornstein are the reason Freestyle Canoeing has grown with such popularity in the last couple decades.Shhh. Whatever you're about to say: Shhhhhhhh.Also fits the sartorial-semiotic slot that the British and Chinese plug snooker into. Read the rest

We had a fantastic time on Tuesday at the Ft Vancouver Library Revolutionary Reads event for Radicalized, my latest sf book. Tonight, I'll be in Seattle, appearing at the the Central Library at 7PM. From there, I finish the tour with a weekend at Wondercon in Anaheim. See you there (tell your friends)! (Image: Fort Vancouver Library) Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal reports that robocallers go largely unpunished, with all those headline-grabbing fines virtually uncollected.As syndicated to Fox News:An FCC spokesman said his agency lacks the authority to enforce the forfeiture orders it issues and has passed all unpaid penalties to the Justice Department, which has the power to collect the fines. Many of the spoofers and robocallers the agency tries to punish are individuals and small operations, he added, which means they are at times unable to pay the full penalties.“Fines serve to penalize bad conduct and deter future misconduct,” the FCC spokesman said. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which can settle or drop cases, declined to comment.The dearth of financial penalties collected by the U.S. government for violations of telemarketing and auto-dialing rules shows the limits the sister regulators face in putting a stop to illegal robocalls. It also shows why the threat of large fines can fail to deter bad actors.I'd bet a dollar the only fines ever collected were from a tiny handful of otherwise legitimate callers who made stupid mistakes. Robocalls and the like will account for nearly half of all calls in 2019, according to the FCC. Read the rest

In 1869, two well diggers in Cardiff, N.Y., unearthed an enormous figure made of stone. More than 600,000 people flocked to see the mysterious giant, but even as its fame grew, its real origins were coming to light. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Cardiff giant, one of greatest hoaxes of the 19th century.We'll also ponder the effects of pink and puzzle over a potentially painful treatment.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

A report from Bitwise -- an investment firm lobbying for FEC approval for a cryptocurrency based exchange-traded fund -- found that 95% of the trading volume in Bitcoin was fake, ginned up through techniques like "wash trading" where a person buys and sells an asset at the same time.The report analyzed 81 exchanges and concluded that the fake traffic was being generated by 71 of them, in order to lure in lucrative "initial coin offerings" and the associated fees, which can run to millions of (fiat) dollars.Bitwise's hope is that by demonstrating to regulators that there is $273m/day worth of real trades lost in the torrent of $6b/day worth of fakes, that there was the need for a regulated, high-quality product that could assure investors that they were not being defrauded.Note that while the study has been reported on by the Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review, it does not seem to be available on Bitwise's site, and I was unable to review its methodology.There are at least a two important takeaways here. First, the real Bitcoin trading market is an order of magnitude smaller than is broadly reported. If you are eager to see mainstream adoption, perhaps that’s disappointing. On the flipside, however, if zeroing in on the exchanges operating honestly can move the needle with regulators and finally get an ETF approved, this bleak analysis might help spur the kind of adoption you’re hoping for.#134: Fake Bitcoin trading [Mike Orcutt/Chain Letter](via Beyond the Beyond)(Image: Bitcoin.it, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Australian Al Jazeera reporter Rodger Muller infiltrated a meeting between the US National Rifle Association and Australia's far-right/white nationalist party One Nation, where the NRA gave party bosses advice on how to reverse Australia's tough anti-automatic/semi-automatic gun laws (passed after a 1996 mass shooting that killed 35 people) and what to do to deflect public calls for gun control when the next mass shooting happens.In the secret recording, two One Nation officials -- Chief of Staff James Ashby and Queensland party boss Steve Dickson -- seek up to $20 million from the NRA's US supporters to fund their gun lobbying in Australia. NRA PR team members Lars Dalseide and Catherine Mortensen gave the One Nation official extensive advice on managing crisis communications following mass shootings, advising them to "say nothing," and to plant stories that smear gun-control advocates by "shaming" them with statements like "how dare you use their deaths to push that forward. How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?"The NRA flaks also described how they encourage friendly reporters to publish stories about violent crimes that suggest the victims would have been able to defend themselves if they had guns; they also described how the NRA ghost wrote op-eds in favor of looser gun laws that were published under local cops' by-lines. The NRA also boasted about the viral "self-defense" videos they posted to social media.The real meat of the meeting started when One Nation's Dickson asked for advice on spinning his belief that "African gangs" were "coming into the house with baseball bats to steal your car" and the NRA's Dalseide replied that "Every time there's a story there about the African gangs coming in with baseball bats, a little thing you can put out there, maybe at the top of a tweet or Facebook post or whatever, like with 'not allowed to defend their home', 'not allowed to defend their home'. Read the rest

The New York Times asked youngsters what they liked and what they wanted. The results — perhaps as is to be expected — are unexpectedly insightful, uncannily familiar, and disturbingly unready for the consequences. [via Choire] Read the rest

It all seemed so innocent when architecture grad student Kate Wagner started pushing her charming brand of millennial snark on us with her acerbic critiques of gaudy, poorly executed monster homes, but architecture is no laughing matter.The Wall Street Journal has sounded the alarm that boomer-built McMansions in Arizona, Florida, and the Carolinas are selling at huge discounts relative to their asking prices, thanks to millennials' unwillingness to buy sprawling homes that need extensive electrical and plumbing work, come with many additional bedrooms for storing hoards of consumer junk, and tedious fripperies like "crown moldings, ornate details and Mediterranean or Tuscan-style architecture."Also, millennials -- saddled with student debt, and drowning in nondiscretionary avocado-toast-related expenditures -- are broke af.Millennials buying their first home today are likely to pay 39% more than baby boomers who bought their first home in the 1980s, Business Insider’s Hillary Hoffower previously reported.The generation is also facing record levels of student-loan debt, making it hard to take on a mortgage loan, as Business Insider’s Akin Oyedele reported.When millennials can finally afford to buy a home, it makes sense that they’d hold out for something that’s exactly to their taste.Millennials don't want to buy baby boomers' sprawling, multi-bedroom homes, and it's creating a major problem in the real-estate market [Katie Warren/Business Insider](Image: McManion Hell)(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Toledo's WTOL 11 crew thought they were on fleek. Da fuq?(Thanks UPSO!) Read the rest

The Mueller Report is conspicuously absent from this week’s tabloids, despite landing with ample time for their deadlines. It’s a measure of how far the Trump-loving propaganda rags have publicly distanced themselves from the White House that their front covers aren’t screaming “Total Exoneration.” No doubt that has something to do with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York's continuing investigation into the National Enquirer catch-and-kill policy of buying incriminating stories about Trump and suppressing them, with Enquirer publisher and Trump pal David Pecker cooperating with prosecutors. As headlines go, “Total Exoneration” would be about as accurate as much of this week’s fact-challenged tabloid offerings.“Royal Family Disowns Harry & Meghan — Banished to Malta by Fed-up Queen,” proclaims the front page of the Enquirer. That’s doubtless news to the Royal couple, who have spent the past six months renovating Frognall Cottage in Windsor, England, where they plan to move in shortly. Perhaps they’ll turn it into an Airbnb rental once they’re in Malta?“Scott Peterson Death Row Pardon!” declares the Globe cover’s report on its favorite convicted killer. “Gloating killer dances with joy,” the rag reports, which seems unlikely since he hasn’t been granted a pardon, and is unlikely to ever receive one. The story is inspired by a wildly inaccurate reading of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s newly-issued moratorium on the death penalty, which affects Scott Peterson along with 736 others on the state’s Death Row. And while the moratorium is morally and judicially welcome, it has little practical effect in a state where the last execution was more than 13 years ago because of repeated legal challenges. Read the rest

My 16-year-old insists on buying cartridge versions for her Switch games, while I prefer the downloadables. To each their own, even though I'm right and she's wrong. And what better way to store my downloads than on this bright red SanDisk Official Nintendo Switch MicroSDXC card with 128GB? Even though you won't be able to admire the mushroom icon when the card is in your Switch, just knowing it's there is guaranteed to be a lasting source of contentment.If 128GB is overkill, they've got a 64GB Breath of the Wild themed card at a lower cost: Read the rest

For more than thirty years, the beaches of France's Iroise Marine Nature Park have been blighted by a seemingly endless stream of a highly specific form of washed-up plastic waste: part of a toy Garfield telephone -- more than 200 pieces in all.Finally, the mystery of the origins of this weird flotsam has been revealed: a cargo container of Garfield phone parts that fell off a container ship decades ago had been lodged in a nearby cliff-cave and it had been dribbling out bright orange pieces of plastic ever since. On Friday, five members of Ar Viltansoù and two journalists from Franceinfo have finally been able to visit the cave. "I saw garfield and container pieces all over the cave. But the bulk of the phones are already gone, the sea has done its job for thirty years. We arrive after the battle, "says Simonin-Le Meur in Ouest-France . L’affaire des échouages de téléphones Garfield en Bretagne enfin résolue [Le Monde] (Google Translate)(Thanks, Jason!) Read the rest

A Strange Harvest (1980) is a documentary about unexplained cattle mutilations that were widespread in the American West in the 1970s and 1980s. (From a Wikipedia article on cattle mutilation: "A 1979 FBI report indicated that, according to investigations by the New Mexico State Police, there had been an estimated 8,000 mutilations in Colorado, causing approximately $1,000,000 damage.") Many instances of cattle mutilations can be attributed to predation, but others appear to be the result of unexplained human activity.This well-made documentary, which runs about 1.5 hours, is a masterpiece of low-budget creepiness. The synthesizer soundtrack is ominous and weird, and the cinematography is hallucinatory. I don't buy the argument that space aliens are responsible, but it's still a compelling movie.[via Reddit's Obscure Media] Read the rest

Maryland attorney Rashad James, who happens to be black, was packing up his things after a day at Harford County District Court when he says a sheriff's deputy detained him, thinking James was just pretending to be a lawyer. The deputy called the attorney by his client's name, and when James informed the deputy that he was in fact the attorney, the deputy didn't believe him. Even after Rashad showed him ID, the deputy did not believe him. The deputy then called his supervisor.According to WBALTV:After successfully getting an expungement for a client who was not there, a sheriff's deputy stopped him in the courtroom and began questioning if he was really a lawyer or impersonating one."After the hearing, that's when I encountered the officer who incorrectly called me by the name of the client. I stated that I was not the client, that I was, in fact, the client's attorney," James said.The deputy then asked for identification, James says he showed his driver's license.The officer apparently wanted more verification since James didn't have his state bar card or business cards, which he is not required to carry. He had the officer call his supervisor."If Mr. James were white, this would not have happened," said Chelsea Crawford, James' second attorney.And via News Channel 5 :An attorney representing James believes that if he was white, the officer would not have doubted that he was an attorney, would not have questioned his identity and would not have detained him after seeing his driver’s license. Read the rest

At the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern reports that the ultra-thin butterfly keyboards on current MacBooks are still failing. The online version of her column is brilliantly funny, with options to rmv crtain lttrs or make itt so thatt certtain charactters repeatt — the characteristic failures of what Apple watcher John Gruber describes as the "worst products in Apple history."Stern recommends various remedies, from a beta app that kills double keystrokes to blasting your laptop with canned air. But there's a better solution: this $13 polyurethane keyboard protector [Amazon affiliate link]. Preventing disaster is that simple. I've had mine for 6 months and this is what worked. It protects my MacBook from microdust or sebaceous filaments or whatever it is that keeps murdering these butterfly keyboards, and it's nearly invisible—the photo at the top of this post shows it installed. It also protects the machine itself from spills, and the keys themselves have none of the wear, tear and shine they usually pick up after a few months of hammering.I got the UPPERCASE GhostCover brand protector and can vouch for these specific products: the 12" MacBook GhostCover [Amazon] and the13" and 15" MacBook Pro GhostCover [Amazon], which comes in Touchbar and F-key versions. (There are other cuts too for older models, but I haven't tried them.)If you're buying out in the wild, the important thing is to get a polyurethane cover, not silicone. Silicone is cheaper and dominates search results and algorithmic recommendations, but they're thicker and stretchier and don't stay put. Read the rest

“The authenticity of the following anonymous op-ed has been verified by Medium’s editorial staff.”A person identifying themselves as an anonymous Uber employee has written an essay that's getting a lot of attention today on Medium.com.If that's true, and I have no reason to doubt it -- this one's gonna hurt.Excerpt:I am an Uber employee and I support the drivers’ strikes.The strikes called on Monday by Rideshare Drivers United (RDU) in Southern California and Gig Workers Rising in San Francisco are a sign of the deep frustration many ride-share drivers feel — and which, amid ongoing conversations with colleagues, it is clear many internal Uber employees share — about the treatment of those workers that provide the services at the core of our business.As an employee at the world’s leading ride-share company, I see firsthand not only the often meager earnings of our drivers, but also the exploitative labor practices imposed on a systemically disempowered workforce. I, therefore, stand with the striking drivers in calling for the implementation of RDU’s Drivers’ Bill of Rights. While ride-share executives continue to receive vast remuneration packages, and internal employees look forward to an IPO windfall at both Uber and Lyft, my sympathetic colleagues and I will not remain silent as drivers are squeezed in order to shore up initial offerings to investors.Our drivers are the backbone of the platform. Without them — as these courageous strikes have demonstrated — our business would come to a standstill. For this reason, we will not stand by as those that work at the heart of our business are attacked and exploited. Read the rest

The FTC says the 4 companies made 'billions' of pre-recorded calls to phone numbers throughout America.

The kingdom of Brunei has instituted a law that will punish gay people for having sex by stoning them to death.From The Independent:New laws due to come into effect next Wednesday will see the tiny kingdom become the first nation in southeast Asia to impose the death penalty for those found engaging in same-sex intercourse.Homosexuality was already illegal and carried a long jail sentence in Brunei. However, the country is in the process of introducing a sharia law-style system for criminal punishment.Human rights groups have denounced the move, including Amnesty International, which described the new punishments as “heinous” and “inhumane”.Image of Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah: imagemaker/Shutterstock Read the rest

In El Paso, Texas, the U.S. Border Patrol has confirmed that it is holding asylum seekers in a "transitional" camp under the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry bridge. A photo was making the internet rounds yesterday, and it seemed impossible they'd be literally holding them in a tent under a bridge. But yes, that's what's happening in this image.“A photo obtained by ABC News shows what appears to be a couple hundred migrants in and around a tent set up under the bridge. A large fan is in front of the tent's entrance.”Photos by Saul Saenz.A Border Patrol spokesman told ABC-7 the camp is meant to "keep the migrants out of the elements" while they are transported to another facility to be processed. The migrants are not being processed at the camp, the spokesman said. Inside the tent, migrants are given water, food and a medical evaluation. “More than half of the migrants are families and the majority are from Central America, meaning their asylum requests and credible fear interviews must be heard,” ABC News reports. The facility in El Paso is reportedly at 395 percent capacity. Border Patrol told ABC news it expects to detain 95,000 individuals in March, up from 76,000 in February. [via] Read the rest

Caleb Clark of Make magazine found a shower curtain with a photo of the Moon on it, and turned it into illuminated wall art, using a minimum of tools. The end result is nice. Read the rest

A man drank a Power Natural High Energy Drink SX, a product made in Zambia, and got more energy than he bargained for. He ended up with a six-hour erection. Turns out the drink contained Viagra.Now the beverage is banned.According to The Guardian:The ban followed a complaint from the country’s medicine regulator in December suggesting the Power Natural High Energy Drink SX had been spiked with erectile dysfunction drug Viagra...The Uganda National Drug Authority said in a letter dated 28 December 2018 that it made similar findings after a customer complained of constant sweating and a nearly six-hour erection.Zambia ordered the manufacturer to withdraw the drink after tests showed it contained Sildenafil Citrate, which has the brand name Viagra, a Ndola local authority statement said.Needless to say, the Natural Power Energy Drink SX "is very popular among Zambian men," according to The Guardian. These fellows will now have to get their "energy" from another source.Image: by Audrey disse, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

Senator Elizabeth Warren is hoping to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020; she distinguishes herself from other left-wing Democrats like Bernie Sanders in her belief that capitalism is a force for good, but must be reformed and subjected to democratic control, while Sanders and the DSA are skeptical of capitalism and its long-term future (Disclosure: I donated to both the Sanders and Warren 2020 campaigns).Warren's defense of a better capitalism distinguishes itself from the usual fare -- capitalism's apologists rarely have much detail to offer in terms of what a "good capitalism" would look like -- by setting out specific, actionable policies, often in the form of detailed legislative action, for a reforming capitalism and rendering it safe for human habitation.Whether that's ending the Electoral College, state-backed generic drug manufacturing, or a Thomas Piketty-style wealth tax, Warren sets out an extremely plausible case for a humane version of American capitalism.One of Warren's most welcome proposals is an antimonopolistic break-up of Big Tech, which, while laudable, did not go far enough -- for one thing, it was conspicuously silent on the question of breaking up related monopolies like Big Cable and Big Content, and it also spared one of tech's most voracious and abusive monopolists: Apple.Now, Warren has introduced another flagship proposal that has spared Apple while putting other abusive manufacturers square in its crosshairs: a national Right-to-Repair law as part of a family farmer's bill of rights.Warren's Right-to-Repair rules tick all the boxes in the blizzard of state-level Right to Repair bills that have been introduced and largely defeated, thanks to an alliance of big agribusiness companies like John Deere and consumer electronics companies led by Apple. Read the rest