Boing Boing

The best thing about being sick as a kid was staying home from school and watching Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting. I'm as impressed by Ross's skill and as entranced by his rap today as I was when I was 8 years old.Karen Corday of Hyperallergic combed through all 403 episodes of The Joy of Painting on YouTube and found five episodes with inspiring Bob Ross pep talks.A couple of examples:“Let your imagination run wild, let your heart be your guide … In the time you sit around worrying about it, you could have completed a painting already. Let it happen.”“People continually say, ‘I don’t have the talent to do what you’re doing.’ That’s baloney. Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything you’re willing to practice, you can do. And this is no exception.”“If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you have nothing. It’s like in life. You gotta have a little sadness once in a while, so you know when the good times are coming. I’m waiting on the good times now.” Ross’s wife died shortly before this episode was shot. In his darkest hour, he still made time to spread the word of hope.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Mega-retailer Walmart on Tuesday announced next-day delivery on more than 200,000 items for orders over $35. The program kicks off first in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Southern California, then expands to reach 75% of the US population by the end of 2019.Just last month, Amazon announced free, one-day delivery as a new perk for all Prime members. Here's an excerpt from the Walgreens announcement:We started with same-day pickup in our stores in 2011 and began offering two-day free shipping two years ago with no membership fee. But, the most exciting development has been the creation of Grocery Pickup and Delivery. We’re on track to offer Grocery Pickup from 3,100 stores and same-day Grocery Delivery from 1,600 stores by year-end, which will provide coverage to approximately 80% and 50% of the U.S. population, respectively. This has been a game-changer for busy families.And, today, to complement our same-day Grocery Delivery, we’re excited to announce a new offering we’ve been working on for a while now. We’re adding free NextDay delivery on a wide range of general merchandise from Walmart.com, without a membership fee. NextDay delivery will be available first to Walmart.com customers in Phoenix and Las Vegas, and will expand to Southern California in the coming days. It will roll out gradually over the coming months, with a plan to reach approximately 75% of the U.S. population this year, which includes 40 of the top 50 major U.S. metro areas.Walmart’s NextDay delivery offers a stand-alone, curated shopping experience where customers can browse up to 220,000 of the items most frequently purchased, ranging from diapers and laundry detergent to toys and electronics, with more assortment to be added. Read the rest

MIT researchers who developed light-emitting plants are now exploring how the glowing greenery could be integrated into future building designs. In their proof-of-concept demonstration, the scientist packaged luciferase, the enzyme that enables fireflies to glow, into nanoparticles that were then suspended in solution. The plants were immersed in the solution and, through high pressure, the nanoparticles entered tiny pores in the plants' leaves. The plants maintained their glow for several hours and they've since increased the duration. Now, project lead Michael Strano, professor of chemical engineering, is collaborating with MIT architecture professor Sheila Kennedy on possible future applications of the green technology. From MIT News:“If we treat the development of the plant as we would just another light bulb, that’s the wrong way to go,” Strano (says)....The team is evaluating a new component to the nanobiotic plants that they call light capacitor particles. The capacitor, in the form of infused nanoparticles in the plant, stores spikes in light generation and “bleeds them out over time,” Strano explains. “Normally the light created in the biochemical reaction can be bright but fades quickly over time. Capacitive particles extend the duration of the generated plant light from hours to potentially days and weeks...."As the nanobionic plant technology has advanced, the team is also envisioning how people might interact with the plants as part of everyday life. The architectural possibilities of their light-emitting plant will be on display within a new installation, “Plant Properties, a Future Urban Development,” at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York opening May 10. Read the rest

May 10, 2019: a case of severe road rage was captured on video on Interstate 635 in Dallas, Texas. Image: YouTube Read the rest

'Hold on. Gotta warm up first.'Gotta warm up that pup engine. This dog has to get his little running start just right before jumping up on the couch.[via] Read the rest

For years, we've covered the efforts of rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously) to make the law free for all to read, from liberating paywalled court records from PACER to risking fines and even prison to make standards that have been incorporated into regulation available, to his longrunning fight with the State of Georgia to make the state's annotated legal code public, which may be headed for the Supreme Court.The freedom to read and know the law is an abstract, technical subject that lacks the sexiness of other fights in the digital age, but it's also one of the most urgent and foundational fights we have. Malamud's tireless decades of work on this issue are finally paying off in the form of mainstream attention, most recently, a great profile in the New York Times that lays out the issue in Georgia with admirable clarity.The annotations include descriptions of judicial decisions interpreting the statutes. Only a very bad lawyer would fail to consult them in determining the meaning of a statute.For instance, Georgia has a law on the books making sodomy a crime. An annotation tells the reader that the law has been held unconstitutional “insofar as it criminalizes the performance of private, unforced, noncommercial acts of sexual intimacy between persons legally able to consent.”Accused of ‘Terrorism’ for Putting Legal Materials Online [Andrew Liptak/New York Times](via /.) Read the rest

Actor Keanu Reeves answers one of life's greatest questions in the way only Keanu Reeves can. He was on Stephen Colbert's show, and summed it up in a single line, thoughtfully and with great depth.Stephen Colbert: “What do you think happens when we die, Keanu Reeves?”Reeves: “I know the ones who love us will miss us.”It's been going viral since, with items on Buzzfeed, TMZ, and the like. Keanu Reeves gives the right answer to an impossible question. pic.twitter.com/hQAgaaGSEY— laney (@misslaneym) May 11, 2019It's interesting to think how people almost always selfishly argue about what happens to us when we die. It's refreshing to see someone who's first thought is sympathy for those who are left behind.— Kilikikero (@kilikikero) May 11, 2019 Read the rest

Hester Burkhalter (69) of North Carolina was arrested at Disney World in Orlando for having a small bottle of CBD oil in her purse. CBD is a non-psychoactive cannabis extract and Burkhalter said her doctor told her to use it for her chronic arthritis pain. Now she is suing the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and Disney World.From Wesh 2:The lawsuit will allege Burkhalter endured "illegal detention, false arrest and a violation of her civil rights when she tried to enter Disney World with her family carrying a small bottle of CBD oil in her purse recommended by her doctor for chronic arthritis pain.”"I have really bad arthritis in my legs, in my arms and in my shoulder," Hester Jordan Burkhalter said to one local news outlet. "I use (CBD oil) for the pain because it helps." https://t.co/jQNDy20aSY— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) May 9, 2019Image: Wesh 2 Read the rest

Other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates took the bait.

On November 16, 2017, the crew of a Navy EA-18G Growler jet delighted sixth graders, launched a meme, and pissed off prudes everywhere by drawing a penis in the sky with their engine exhaust over the state of Washington. Their prank caused quite a stir in the Navy, even leading to an "official information dispatch" to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. It's still unknown how much trouble the pilots got themselves into but the Navy Times has just received a copy of the full report thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request. The cockpit transcripts are fantastic. From the Navy Times:“You should totally try to draw a penis,” the (pilot's cockpit partner, an electronic warfare office [EWO]) advised.“I could definitely draw one, that would be easy,” the pilot boasted. “I could basically draw a figure eight and turn around and come back. I’m gonna go down, grab some speed and hopefully get out of the contrail layer so they’re not connected to each other....”“Balls are going to be a little lopsided,” the pilot advised.“Balls are complete,” he reported moments later. “I just gotta navigate a little bit over here for the shaft.”“Which way is the shaft going?” the EWO asked.“The shaft will go to the left,” the pilot answered.“It’s gonna be a wide shaft,” the EWO noted.“I don’t wanna make it just like 3 balls,” the pilot said.“Let’s do it,” the EWO said. “Oh, the head of that penis is going to be thick.” Read the rest

Online travel and restaurant booking site TripAdvisor will introduce new safety filters after people who used the site raised concerns over sexual assaults. TripAdvisor says it found 1,100 reviews that referenced sexual assault in just the last year alone.The new search filter will show reviews that mention sexual assault or misconduct by employees of a business.“This is a significant and promising change,” says Guardian reporter Rossalyn Warren. Here's TripAdvisor's announcement.TripAdvisor, which has about 456 million visitors a month, faced mounting pressure after Warren's previous reporting on this issue. In March, Warren reported about concerns raised by women who said they were sexually assaulted by staff employees of hotels and businesses promoted on Tripadvisor.com.It seems apparent that because of her report, they're making this much-needed change. Here's an excerpt from her latest report:The first feature the company is introducing is a new “traveller safety review” filter. The feature will allow people to search reviews that contain reports of safety-related incidents at hotels and businesses, and will be available in all 28 languages in which TripAdvisor is available.For reviews posted in the last year, the filter will list reviews concerning sexual assault or misconduct by employees of a business. TripAdvisor said it found 1,100 reviews concerning sexual assault from the last year alone. The company said it would introduce a filter for other safety categories later.From now on, the feature will filter all new reviews concerning multiple safety issues, including sexual assault, death, drugging, sex trafficking, armed robbery, and physical assault. Read the rest

I have heard that unscrupulous people will pack banana peels and sawdust into worn out car gearboxes to stop them from whining long enough to trick a buyer into thinking the car doesn't need serious repairs. In this episode of Project Farm, I learned that people have used bananas as an emergency replacement for engine oil. How well do they work in a lawnmower? Watch the video and find out! Read the rest

Shanghai-based cafe chain Mellower Coffee offers a unique drink called Sweet Little Rain in which cotton candy positioned over an Americano is melted by the steam and drips sugar into the cup. Read the rest

Tired of bulging pockets? It seems crazy that we're carrying around tiny AI computers in one pocket, while the other one is overstuffed with cash, cards and old receipts held together by a flimsy piece of cloth or leather.The bad news is, most of us still need those cards (and occasionally, even the cash). The good news is, we've found five next-gen wallets that will allow you to carry all that stuff in a much slimmer package, with a modern perk or two thrown in.Dash Bando Slim Utility WalletMade of super-thin Saffiano canvas, the Bando can hold up to ten cards in a way that not only saves space but time. Pull on a tab, and out pop the two cards you use most often in an easy-access sheath. There's also a secret compartment in the back, and the entire wallet is lined with RFID protection. The Dash Bando Slim Utility Wallet is $17.99, more than 25% off the original price of $25.Fantom 10 Quick Access Slim Wallet The Fantom 10 features an ergonomic design that stresses accessibility. You can pack 6-10 cards into the single compartment, and they all fan out of the side with a simple flick of the lever on the top. As a bonus, the carbon fiber material is RFID-protected. Get the Fantom 10 Quick Access Slim Wallet for 37% off the MSRP at $49.Minimalist Aluminum RFID-Blocking WalletHere's one for those who need no frills, and want their gear extra light. Read the rest

Microsoft celebrates 10 years of Minecraft by making one of the earliest functional versions available to play online in the form of classic.minecraft.net.Ten years of creating, exploring and surviving. Ten years of mobs, mods and magnificent creations. Ten years of being consistently amazed by what you’ve built with our game. Ten years of you digging straight down despite our warnings. Ten years of being endlessly excited to see what you come up with next.In effect, it's a simple but functional version of creative mode, and you can't save your creations. Read the rest

Probably not a great material for anything that gets much use, but it's the prettiest knife handle I ever saw. angqvist: "Here I show how I made a colored pencil knife handle. The knife blade is the Helle Harding."I didn't actually find it on Reddit's "DiWHY" forum, but that's my new favorite subreddit.BONUS: A guitar made from colored pencils: Read the rest

I'd call it a spoiler, but you already know what's coming: "As Seen On TV" garden gadgets are not much good, however ingenious they seem to be. Household Hacker picked up a few items and subjected them to tests. None were terrible or dangerous, but the gimmicks don't really work — a trimmer that uses cheap zip-ties works OK, for example, but the ties are eaten so quickly that it's a false economy and a great example of the Vimes theory of boots. Read the rest

Vat19 took video of "weird stress balls" being destroyed, which is more satisfying than using them. You can skip all the bits with talking. Read the rest

Use code 3SULMIMO to get this universal travel adapter at a good discount. I just ordered one because I do quite a bit of international traveling and this adapter works almost everywhere, and in addition to an AC outlet, it has 3 USB outlets and 1 USC-C outlet. Read the rest

From u/OrwellianOverseer via r/interestingasfuck -- the underside of great white sharks look demonic.Upside down great white sharks from r/interestingasfuckImage: Joshua Haviv/Shutterstock (enhanced to accentuate the "eyes") Read the rest

The British Columbia government commissioned independent investigator Peter German to produce a report on the role of laundered criminal money in the province's white-hot real-estate bubble, centred on the city of Vancouver; German's report found that last year alone, CAD7b was laundered through BC, with much of that money going into property (as well as luxury cars and casino gambling).The report found that $5b of that money went into real-estate transactions, accounting for 4.6% of the value of all real-estate sales in the Province last year, driving prices up by 3.5%-4.7% (and this increase will have drawn more speculators into the market, further driving up prices).From casinos who accepted hockey bags full of cash (most Canadian shady deal ever) to one in five BC properties being bought for cash, often through legal entities designed to shield their beneficial owners' identities, BC has become a global hub for criminal money laundering, with real-estate serving as the "oil" of the BC economy.German pointed out that he was able to get these figures with a small team of ten researchers in less than a year from public sources alone, suggesting that if the Province hadn't been aware that this was going on, it was because they chose not to be. BC Attorney General David Eby identified the origin of the billions: "foreign organized crime, including a Mexican cartel, Iranian and Mainland Chinese organized crime."* One out of five B.C. properties are bought in cash; over the past two decades, C$212 billion in property has been bought in cash. Read the rest

Superheroically named Infinite Tucker of Texas A&M University won the 400-meter hurdles at the 2019 SEC Track & Field Championships. He clearly wanted the win. Badly."...I saw my ma at the finish, and I jumped to give her a hug,” Tucker told ESPN. “That’s all it is.” Read the rest

The Supreme Court has ruled on a key question in Apple Inc v Pepper, a class action suit arguing that the App Store violated antitrust law by driving up prices through the monopolistic tactic of prohibiting users from buying apps from third parties, and then taking a 30% commission on every app sold, which led software companies to raise prices in order to remain profitable after Apple had taken its cut.Apple had asked the Supreme Court to prevent the case from moving forward on the grounds that Apple customers were really buying apps from the software vendors, and not through the App Store (in Apple's view, the App Store isn't a store, just a commission-collecting system). Not only is this obviously ridiculous, it's also an area where there's good precedent in the form of the 1977 Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois Supreme Court case, which SCOTUS cited in their opinion.The court split 5-4, with Brett Kavanaugh siding against Apple and writing the opinion. In some ways, this isn't surprising, for two reasons: one, Apple had terrible arguments, as it's obvious that the App Store is a store, and two, the one form of antitrust enforcement conservatives are willing to tolerate is preventing "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices.The ruling means that the lawsuit can proceed and the plaintiffs can try to show that Apple did indeed violate antitrust law. If they win, it will have an enormous impact on all the tech platforms that operate "two-sided marketplaces" from eBay and Etsy to Uber and Lyft to Amazon and Google Play. Read the rest

"I Am Easy to Find" is a short film by esteemed experimental (and Hollywood) director Mike Mills in collaboration with The National. A two-way street, Mills took inspiration from The National's new album, also named "I Am Easy To Find," while the film, starring Alicia Vikander, fueled The National's songwriting. (I've heard the record, to be released on Friday, and it is truly magnificent.)“The National gave me the stems for their songs, some were sketches some were finished and encouraged and allowed me to create my own versions of the songs to score the film,” Mills said in a statement. “The album then features different versions of these same 7 songs – and 9 new songs which sometimes refer to the themes, texts, ideas from the film – but are their own work, their own piece of art.” Read the rest

In 2017, law student Lina Khan shifted the debate on Amazon and antitrust with a seminal paper called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, which used Amazon's abusive market dominance to criticize the Reagan-era shift in antitrust enforcement, which rewrote the criteria for antitrust enforcement, so that antitrust no longer concerned itself with preventing monopoly, and only focused on "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices.Khan's paper jumpstarted an important intellectual shift in the global perception of antitrust and Big Tech. For one thing, it revealed the thinness of the argument that Big Tech got big because of "network effects" or "first mover advantages, arguing instead that Big Tech's concentration was the result of utterly mundane monopolistic tactics that would be instantly recognizable to Brandeis, Carnegie and other players from the Gilded Age and the age of trustbusting.Since then, other scholars have performed similar analysis on Big Tech giants like Facebook.One important focus of this critique is the idea of "monopsony", when a single entity is the only buyer in a market, meaning that it can put pressure on suppliers, contractors and other parts of the value chain, distorting markets.Now, Fordham University law student Shaoul Sussman has connected the idea of monopsony with the idea of "consumer harm" in a new paper for the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement: "Prime Predator: Amazon and the Rationale of Below Average Variable Cost Pricing Strategies Among Negative-Cash Flow Firms. Sussman's argument is basically that even if you accept the Reaganist version of anti-trust where the only thing that matters is "consumer harm," then you should still be worried about Amazon's monopsism, because when Amazon squeezes profits at the expense of its suppliers, those suppliers lower the quality of their goods in order to stay profitable despite Amazon's profit-taking. Read the rest

Zachary Crockett wrote an article for The Hustle titled "The professor who beat roulette." It's the story of Dr. Richard Jarecki, a medical professor who spent time in casinos in the 1950s and 1960s studying the ways roulette wheels weren't random, due to wear-and-tear and defects. This information provided him with enough of an edge over the house odds that he ended up accumulating a fortune.According to the article, Jarecki could not use his method today, because roulette wheels "have gone digital, run by algorithms programmed to favor the house," optimizing the money they bilk from the poor suckers who think they have a chance.Image: Shutterstock/Nata789 Read the rest

The City of Victoria, British Columbia rolls out public "peeosks," essentially urinal-shaped garbage cans, on weekend nights near downtown bars. From CHEK:The six “peeosk” urinals are part of the City of Victoria’s Late Night Program to help ensure “that everyone has a safe and enjoyable night out....”(Kyle Massey, owner of a new vape shop,) worries the open-air urinal not far from the store’s entrance will hurt his business.“If they’re going to do it, maybe they should have an enclosed outhouse instead of a urinal like that,” he said.The City also seems to be unaware that women urinate. Read the rest

My friend taught himself to beatbox and play the flute. You might want to unmute this one. from r/toptalentHenceforth, this genre shall be known as hip-prog.(r/toptalent) Read the rest

Becky Stern takes you through the steps of using the simple web-based CAD app Tinkercad to design a 5-chamber geometric planter. Read the rest

In many cities it's become a tourist tradition for lovers to buy cheap padlocks, scratch their initials in them, and then attach them to bridges. But a lot of old bridges weren't built to withstand the weight of so many locks. In 2014 the Des Arts bridge in Paris collapsed from the weight of padlocks people attached to it. Now it's against the rules to put padlocks on bridges. In this video, the folks at Honest Guide (A YouTube channel about Prague for tourists) got a bunch of bolt cutters and an angle grinder and went to work removing love locks, inviting others to share in the merriment.Image: YouTube Read the rest

William Shakespeare authorship conspiracies are ten a penny, but this one's worth the price of entry: Was Shakespeare a Woman?Who was this woman writing “immortal work” in the same year that Shakespeare’s name first appeared in print, on the poem “Venus and Adonis,” a scandalous parody of masculine seduction tales (in which the woman forces herself on the man)? Harvey’s tribute is extraordinary, yet orthodox Shakespeareans and anti-Stratfordians alike have almost entirely ignored it.Until recently, that is, when a few bold outliers began to advance the case that Shakespeare might well have been a woman. One candidate is Mary Sidney, the countess of Pembroke (and beloved sister of the celebrated poet Philip Sidney)—one of the most educated women of her time, a translator and poet, and the doyenne of the Wilton Circle, a literary salon dedicated to galvanizing an English cultural renaissance. Clues beckon, not least that Sidney and her husband were the patrons of one of the first theater companies to perform Shakespeare’s plays. Was Shakespeare’s name useful camouflage, allowing her to publish what she otherwise couldn’t?Such big eyes. Read the rest

The Doris Day Foundation reports her death at 97.Doris Day passed away early this morning at her Carmel Valley home, having celebrated her 97th birthday on April 3 of this year. Nearly 300 fans gathered in Carmel last month to celebrate Day’s birthday. Day had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia , resulting in her death. She was surrounded by a few close friends as she passed.The BBC rounded up tributes:Star Trek actor William Shatner remembered Day on Twitter as "the World's Sweetheart," saying she was "beloved by all".Fellow Star Trek cast member George Takei said she was "synonymous with Hollywood icon", while Spanish actor Antonio Banderas wrote: "Thank you for your talent."Novelist Paulo Coelho marked her passing by quoting lyrics from Secret Love, one of her numbers in Calamity Jane."We've lost another great Hollywood talent," tweeted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, while actor Luke Evans said he had "always loved" her voice and "beautiful" songs. Read the rest

Esteemed collector of vernacular photography Robert E. Jackson curated this delightful collection of snapshots depicting the history of our robotic future. See more: "15 Fabulous Vintage Snapshots Of Robots" Read the rest

China is blocking Wikipedia in every language, reports the Tor Project, expanding its censorship to cover editions other than Chinese.measurements show that many of these Wikipedia domains were previously accessible, but all measurements collected from 25th April 2019 onwards present the same DNS anomalies for all Wikipedia sub-domains. The few DNS anomalies that occurred in previous months were false positives, whereas the DNS anomalies from April 2019 onwards show that Wikipedia domains are blocked by means of DNS injection. Most measurements were collected from China Telecom (AS4134).Wikipedia, of course, blocks edits from VPNs. Read the rest

Michael Friesen generated these abominable pokemon sprites. Be sure to see a similar set hand-drawn by iguanamouth. [via Janelle Shane]Here's a human illustrating some neural net-generated pokemon names and abilities. Humans earnestly engaging with AI bizarreness is one of my favorite things.https://t.co/bMxUoXSbGB pic.twitter.com/RarbkeJfGX— Janelle Shane (@JanelleCShane) May 12, 2019Uncurated samples: https://t.co/CEcXvViZXlPre-trained model: https://t.co/nuXdzwGQtS— Michael Friesen (@MichaelFriese10) May 13, 2019 Read the rest

Julian Assange originally fled to Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden and may be headed there after all. Eva-Marie Persson, the director of public prosecutions in Stockholm, has re-opened his rape case and signaled that a new extradition request is coming.UK authorities will have to decide which extradition request to prioritise if Sweden, too, issues a request."I am well aware of the fact that an extradition process is ongoing in the UK and that he could be extradited to the US. In the event of a conflict between a European Arrest Warrant and a request for extradition from the US, UK authorities will decide on the order of priority," Persson said."The outcome of this process is impossible to predict. However, in my view the Swedish case can proceed concurrently with the proceedings in the UK."Sweden previously dropped the case as Assange's asylum in the embassy dragged on for years. Assange, the co-founder of Wikileaks, was recently handed to UK police and sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for skipping bail; US authorities are charging him with computer-related crimes over his publication of embarassing state secrets. He claims the sex was consensual. Read the rest

"Best season ever!"I understand that the "looking up and to the right" marker for deception is a myth, but I also suspect that Peter Dinklage knows this.Previously: Stuff Happens In Game Of Thrones Read the rest

Ask any webmaster, photographer or graphic designer: Adobe Photoshop is about so much more than touching up pictures. If you want to learn a wide array of marketable skills in this essential software, there's no better way than to dive in with the Complete Photoshop Master Class Bundle 2019.Even if you've never so much as dabbled in Photoshop, this six-course package will get you started off right with a primer on key concepts like layers and filtering. From there, you can focus on some of the most useful applications with dedicated classes on outdoor portraiture, pro-style lighting effects and the use of color grading. For the business-minded, there's a pair of courses that dedicate more than 20 hours to UX web design and the creation of custom graphics. All in all, it's more than 35 hours of lectures, resources and hands-on projects that will get you ready for a range of careers.The Complete Photoshop Master Class Bundle 2019 is currently on sale for $29. Read the rest

No deep dive of this legendary comic exists online from a cartoonist's perspective, let alone 3 cartoonists! The boys, Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and Tom Scioli unpack the Frank Miller 1986 Batman classic over the course of 4 jam-packed episodes, one chapter at a time!For more videos and deep dives like this make sure to subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel You can support the channel by grabbing some stuff from our Spreadshop! Read the rest

Donald Trump, a garbage person, promised the credulous dunces in his "base" that he would build a wall along the US southern border at a cost of $12b (the DHS said it would cost $21.6b) and then failed to do so, despite controlling Congress, the Senate and the White House. He blamed the opposition for this failure.In response, a fellow promised that he would raise the money for the wall through a crowdfunding campaign that the credulous dunces could send money to. He estimated that he could build it on private land for a mere $1b, because why not. They raised more than $20m, less than one thousandth of the DHS estimate of the cost of doing so, and, with less than 1% of the total cost in hand, the crowdfunder was shut down.Now, the credulous dunces would like to know the what Brian Kolfage, the fellow who started the campaign, is doing with their millions. Mr Kolfage created a nonprofit to receive the money, but its records are sparse and mysterious. Mr Kolfage became very upset when the Daily Beast's Will Sommer published an article pointing out that no evidence of progress has been made available, and Mr Sommer countered that he had repeatedly asked Mr Kolfage for a status update, to no avail.In lieu of evidence, Mr Kolfage offered this assurance: "I guaranteed we would build the wall . . . and I’ll leave it at that!"Mr Kolfage has variously promised start-dates of April, May, or June. Read the rest

Plastic straws are on their way out. Big cities and entire states have realized this, and more are sure to join Seattle, California and a growing number of others in curbing the use of single-serve straws in the months and years to come.The thing is, there's already 175 billion of them going into our landfills every year - which means there's no need to wait for legislation to change your habits. Especially not when there's a better alternative in Stainless Steel Straws.This eight pack includes four straight and four folded straws. That's enough to take along in purses or gym bags, glove compartments or anywhere you need one - and still have plenty left for home use. Unlike old-school straws, they'll work in hot or cold beverages. The stainless steel material means it's corrosion and rust free, and they come with a pair of bristle cleaners for quick and easy care. They're the last set of straws you'll buy - and that's good news for you and the planet both.An 8-pack of silver Stainless Steel Straws is on sale for $12.99, almost 75% off the original cost of $49.99. Read the rest

Quantum Physics for Babies and Rocket Science for Babies are the kind of board books you’d find on a toddler’s shelf. They have stiff, tear-proof cardboard pages, simple illustrations, and minimal text. But they actually explain the subjects on a (very) high level. The author, Chris Ferrie, is a physicist and Senior Lecturer for Quantum Software and Information at the University of Technology Sydney. I finally learned why quantum physics is called quantum physics! And even though I know how a wing moving through air goes up, the rocket science book reinforced the concept for me. These books will be entertaining for kids age 2 and up, but the concepts, even though clearly and simply presented, are better suited for readers from age 5-105. Read the rest

In 2017, climate activists Roger Hallam and David Durant painted the words "divest from oil and gas" on a wall at King’s College London in chalk paint; they were facing £7,000 in fines and up to 18 months in prison, and did not qualify for a legal aid lawyer.The pair represented themselves in front of a jury at Southwark Crown Court in London, arguing the rarely used "necessity defense," that their actions were justified by the urgency of climate change. During the trial, Judge Michael Gledhill QC frequently interrupted the pair to instruct the jury to ignore the defense, telling them that climate change was "irrelevant" to the charge.Despite this, the jury exonerated the pair after deliberating for just two hours, the mandatory minimum for such a deliberation.Recently, more than 1000 activists from Extinction Rebellion were arrested in the UK following a week of climate-change-related civil disobedience (Extinction Rebellion has also put forward a slate of independent UK candidates for the upcoming European Parliamentary Elections, and I have instructed my proxy voter to cast my ballot for them).“We were shut down quite a lot,” Durant said. “We’d try to read out case law and we were shut down.” He said he and Hallam snuck climate arguments into their defense and were helped when the prosecution showed clips of their filmed divestment campaign. “That was really handy,” he said. “That was making the case for us.”Durant, 25, said the 2017 campaign was successful because King’s College London subsequently announced it would divest £14 million from fossil fuels and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025. Read the rest

Back in 1995, Newt Gingrich defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, a low-cost, high-yield body that provided neutral, evidence-based assessments of technology to lawmakers so they could avoid making stupid blunders when it came to tech.The OTA needs a $6m appropriate to get running again. For perspective, each one of Trump's golf holidays at Mar-a-Lago cost the taxpayers $3.4m, so for the cost of less than two of Trump's fun weekend breaks, we could inform the entirety of Congress and the Senate about the technical dimensions of their policy choices, at a moment in which the technical details have never mattered more than they do now.A vast coalition of bipartisan and neutral groups have penned an open letter to the Senate asking it to appropriate $6m to reopen the OTA, joined by a long list of tech luminaries, executives, academics, veterans of former administrations, etc. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pointed out, lawmakers are shockingly ill-informed on the issues that they vote upon, largely because they pay sub-starvation wages to their staffers, requiring each to take on second and third jobs, leaving them without the time to research and prepare lawmakers ahead of key hearings and debates.This vacuum has (of course) largely been filled by industry lobbyists who brief lawmakers with stilted accounts of the world (though AOC's answer, paying a living wage to every staffer, is obviously superior). Re-established the OTA would go a long way to filling in some of the gaps with neutral facts instead of parochial propaganda, and at $6m/year, it's a fucking steal. Read the rest

The New Yorker's Mia Mercado asks: What Is Writing and Does This Count as It?• Writing is when you sit—fingertips hovering over your keyboard, cursor blinking on a fresh blank document—and open Twitter for the twenty-eighth time.• You can tell that someone is a writer because she’ll have a pencil behind her ear, a Moleskine notebook in her hand, a pen behind her other ear, coffee on her breath and shirt, eyes that beg for your approval, and a Sharpie she’s somehow hidden in her hair.I have only one laptop sticker, and am therefore not truly a writer. Read the rest

Mark reported earlier this week that a Florida man was charged with a crime over the "I EAT ASS" window sticker on his truck, and with resisting arrest for refusing to remove it; here's the dashcam video. I EAT ASS window sticker [you bet your ass that's an Amazon link] Read the rest

Jeff Berman's got a new job! The former Obama/Clinton staffer is now Beto O'Rourke's senior advisor, having moved laterally from his post-Obama-campaign career working for the DC lobbyists Bryan Cave, where he lobbied on behalf of Seaworld, the Keystone XL pileline and the private prison industry.But definitely this is all OK because purity tests will rip the Democratic Party apart. How can we possibly defeat Trump in 2020 unless we're willing to form broad coalitions with people who want to render the planet unfit for human habitation, lock up an infinite number of brown people to enrich wealthy human rights criminals, and torture intelligent sea creatures on behalf of Seaworld owner Blackstone, the world's largest hedge fund?!Also: lest you fear that Berman will feel isolated in O'Rourke's staff, consider that he's got lots of allies around the office, like O'Rourke chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, cofounder of Precision Strategies, whose client roster includes Pfizer, Bank of America and Facebook,Many of these clients are ostensibly on the opposite side of many of the issues that O’Rourke is campaigning on. Take, for example, immigration, a central theme of O’Rourke’s presidential run: He launched his campaign in the border town of El Paso, Texas, railing against Donald Trump’s immigration policies and stating, “For more than 100 years, this community has welcomed generations of immigrants from across the Rio Grande.” Yet the GEO Group, for which Berman’s work (along with other lobbyists) made Bryan Cave $60,000 in 2010, has profited handily from its business of running private prisons, including immigrant detention centers. Read the rest

From the Palm Beach Post: "an unusual bolt of lightning up to 10 times stronger than a typical flash that was caught on video by Boynton Beach resident Erica Hite on Sunday. The so-called continuous current, or positive lighting, which was identified by the National Weather Service in Miami after seeing the video, hit outside Hite’s apartment when she was taking video to show her family how bad the weather was." Read the rest

Facebook isn't very good at selling you things on behalf of its advertisers, so the company has to gather as much data as possible on you and use it keep you clicking as much as possible in the hopes of eventually scoring a hit with its targeting system, and that means that it often commits unwitting -- but utterly predictable -- acts of algorithmic cruelty.The best example of this is Facebook's "memories" and "celebration" tools, which memorialize the anniversaries of content that attracted a lot of attention from the people in your social graph. Often this is stuff that's legitimately good news, like graduations and other moments of personal triumph, but inevitably, it also includes the most tragic moments in your life. In 2014, Eric Meyer described how Facebook greeted him on the anniversary of his young daughter's tragic death with a picture of her surrounded by dancing figures. Facebook promised to fix it, and never did: last year, Facebook woke up Patrick Gerard on the anniversary of his mother's funeral with an animation of cartoon characters literally dancing on his mother's grave.But it's not just grief that inappropriately triggers Facebook's celebration/memories algorithms. Terror recruiting groups who have scored major PR wins (often because they've won a key battle by murdering their enemies, or because they've posted a particularly grisly atrocity videos) are getting extra mileage out of their victories, courtesy of Facebook's algorithms. According to a five-month-long, 3,000-page National Whistleblowers Center study of terror groups on Facebook, the celebration/memories algorithm is auto-generating anthology pages that celebrate and frame the most effective terror messages created by extremists, giving them much-needed help in promoting their message to their base. Read the rest

To improve the quality of the water, 96 million balls now float upon the Los Angeles reservoir. Here they are going in, like a deranged live-action performance of one of those cheapo cgi educational videos on YouTube with vast oceans of balls and 100 million views. All it needs now is a text-to-speech bot announcing "BLACK COLORED BALLS".The first time I heard about shade balls the claim was they reduce evaporation. But it turns out this isn't the reason they were introduced. Huge thanks to LADWP for arranging this special tour for me. Next time let's put the GoPro on the submersible! The balls are made of high density polyethylene (HDPE) which is less dense than water so they float on the surface of the reservoir even if they break apart. They are 10cm (4 inches) in diameter and contain about 210ml of water. So the main reason they are on the reservoir is to block sunlight from entering the water and triggering a chemical reaction that turns harmless bromide into carcinogenic bromate. This effect occurs with prolonged exposure to bromate so regulators insist that levels be kept below 10 microgram per liter on average over a 12 month period. Read the rest