Thanks to everyone who came to last night's launch event at San Diego's Mysterious Galaxy! The next stop on my tour is an event at 7PM at The Strand in NYC where I'll be appearing with the award-winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin, who is pinch-hitting for Anand Giridharadas, who has had a family emergency.Tomorrow night, I'll be appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library at 7PM, with the Globe & Mail's Barry Hertz; from there, I go to Chicago's C2E2 festival and then to Berkeley for an event with the writer and photographer Richard Kadrey, and from there, the tour takes me to Portland/Ft Washington, Seattle, and Anaheim! I hope you'll come out and say hi! Read the rest “NYC! I'm coming to The Strand tonight at 7PM with my new book RADICALIZED! Next up: Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco...”

Seems like drones are doing a lot of jobs these days, from reconnaissance to delivery. Now, we can add "keeping the Death Star safe" to that list. Whether you're a drone enthusiast or a Star Wars fan, these Star Wars Propel Drones are undeniably the coolest toy around.Yes, that's a fully functional drone replica of Darth Vader's Advanced X1 Tie Fighter. Fire up the controller and it takes off into the sky at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour, lifted by reverse propulsion technology. That means the rotors are on the bottom of the craft instead of the top, spinning invisibly to complete the "starfighter" illusion and - thanks to some engineering - allowing the craft to pull off some nifty stunts with the push of a button. With the help of a companion app, you can take on challenge missions or even "dogfight" with other Star Wars drones.Take your pick from replicas of the Tie Advanced X1, T-65 X-Wing or 74-Z Speeder Bike. The Star Wars Propel Drone: Collector's Edition is currently on sale for $49.99 - a 66% discount off the MSRP. Read the rest “Fly space missions in your yard with this Star Wars drone”

This is so wonderful. Hikaru Davis is the son of the late session drummer, Dennis Davis, who died in 2016. Among many others, Davis played with Stevie Wonder, George Benson, Roy Ayers, and Iggy Pop. But he is most famously remembered as one of David Bowie's drummers, playing on Bowie's 70s records, from Young Americans to Scary Monsters. When Davis died, his son, then ten (now 13) decided that he wanted to know more about his father and what made him a great drummer by interviewing friends and fellow musicians who'd worked with his dad. The result is HD Projects, a YouTube channel presenting these interview videos as they're finished. In the most recent upload, Hikaru interviews producer and longtime Bowie collaborator, Tony Visconti. In the video, Tony breaks down Davis' drumming on Bowie's Lodger track, "Look Back in Anger."Here is Hikaru's statement about his documentary project and interviewing Tony Visconti:After my father’s passing, I didn’t want to hear anybody say his name. It was not because I wanted to forget about him. It was my way of mourning. It made me sad, angry, and depressed to hear his name from someone. I wanted to keep him only inside of me. Maybe I was too selfish. But I was only 10 years old. After a while, I started looking at social media to see what people were saying about my father. And I saw an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about Dad’s death. That’s when I saw Mr. Read the rest “Ten year old son of the late, great drummer, Dennis Davis, interviews Tony Visconti about his father's work with Bowie”

Apex Legends engages in the Seasonal format for managing major and minor game updates. With Season 1 comes a battlepass, a paid-for ticket to cool but not game influencing bling.I enjoy Apex but gravitate towards the more cartoony and clownish action of Fortnite. Perhaps I am immature. Read the rest “Apex Legends Season 1 starts today”

My mother told me I should be using reusable produce bags. She's right.The logic behind reusable grocery bags is pretty hard to shake. The bags create less waste, save money, resources, and hold more than the normal market supplied bags anyways. It is much easier for me to carry my 2 large bags than try to wrestle 4 paper ones.When my mother suggested reusable produce bags my first thought was something along the lines of "Well, I got used to people with their reusable straws." I've always kind of assumed the thin plastic bags the market offers for produce were biodegradable. Research shows that they can be but in many cases are not. Additionally, what passes as biodegradable for plastic bags can still take a very long time to breakdown.I got a set of these bags. They work as you would expect.Vandoona Food-safe Reusable Mesh Produce Bag – Set of 9 Strong See-Through Mesh Bags for Fruit, Veggies via Amazon Read the rest “Reusable produce bags to limit even more bag waste”

In an aggressive move to block youth access to addictive products, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Supervisor Shamann Walton have introduced legislation that bans the physical sale or delivery via shipping of any nicotine-containing vaping product.A second bill bans any manufacturers of e-cig products from city property. If passed this would kick Juul out of its headquarters.Supervisor Walton is pretty much dancing at the idea.SF Chronicle:Two bills authored by City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Supervisor Shamann Walton — whose district includes Juul’s corporate headquarters in the Dogpatch neighborhood — are part of several actions the city wants to pursue to crack down on youth vaping in general, and Juul in particular.Walton said the proposed legislation should also serve as a warning and statement to Juul that “we don’t want them in our city.”Juul is currently headquartered on city-owned property in Pier 70.“I don’t eventually want to see them leave this city,” he said. “I would have liked for them to have been gone yesterday.”One bill that Walton plans to introduce at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting would ban the sale and shipment of e-cigarettes to San Francisco stores and customer addresses until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration begins a vetting process known as a pre-market review, in which manufacturers must prove their products are appropriate for public health before selling them on the market.The city already bans kid-friendly flavors like candy and fruit in tobacco products through Proposition E, which voters passed in 2018. Read the rest “San Francisco considers banning the sale and manufacture of nicotine e-cigarettes”

They're acting like it was intentional now, because Trump.

Flushin' Frenzy [Amazon] is a toy wherein you push a plunger until a poop pops up. All the fun of clearing out a blocked toilet! The game's tagline is "Poop there it is!"Game night just got gross - in the best way!Flushin' Frenzy makes being a plumber fun! Push the toilet handle to release the die. When a number pops up, you plunge the toilet that number of times. Be ready to catch the poop when it flies out at any moment! POOP - there it is! The player to catch the poop wins a token, or two tokens if they catch it in mid-air! Set includes 1 toilet, 1 plunger, 1 die, and 10 score tokens.Safe for ages 5 and up. 2-4 players.At Mattel, play matters. We strive to help children learn and develop through play ever since our founding in 1945.Note: WARNING:CHOKING HAZARDFurthermore:Flushin' Frenzy [Amazon] Read the rest “The worst toy: Flushin' Frenzy”

Do not press the wrong tooth. Only press the correct other tooth. When you press the wrong tooth, something very surprising will happen, it is a big bamboozle.When you press the wrong teeth[via] Read the rest “Warning: Do not press the wrong tooth”

“Hey. Are you coming, or what?”Unmute this one for the swishies.“Swish, swish, swish, swish.”This dog is almost entirely water resistant. I mean, golden retrievers are naturally pretty water resistant anyway, but this takes it to the proverbial whole 'nother level.I'm so glad the tail shows.Water resistant![via, from IMGURian gpm1120] Read the rest “Dog walks perkily through rain in spiffy raincoat and booties”

Guy tries to rob house but the owner is there from r/PublicFreakoutIn this video of a resident quietly filming a man trying to pick his front door lock, the stellar direction makes it. It's Coen-esque, almost, from the indisinct peephole shot to the pathetic excuses the allegeable burglar made after the door is opened. Read the rest “Man films suspected burglar working on his front door, then opens it”

“We believe voting is the sacred right of every American, and every American should be able to exercise it.” — spreadthevote.org.

US Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren supports directly electing the United States President and ending the electoral college.Make all votes equal. Read the rest “Warren calls for end to the Electoral College”

Shadows: Amsterdam (Libellud, 2-8 players, ages 10 and up) is the newest entry in the micro-genre (that includes Dixit and Mysterium) of “guess what the other people are guessing about ambiguous pictures” games.The ambiguous pictures, in the case of Shadows, are a multitude of charming, somewhat dark paintings of what is best described as a furry-noir Amsterdam-by-way-of-Zootopia. Anthropomorphic animals tend tulip fields, enjoy clog dancing, and take romantic selfies, but also lurk in doorways, bribe officials, discover bodies, and brood menacingly in the 150 or so images that make up the game’s board and deck of cards.Thematically, the game is a race between teams of private eyes (or as one team against the clock) to solve an unspecified mystery by navigating your team’s pawn to the locations of clues while avoiding locations with police. These locations are marked on a map visible only to each team’s “dispatcher,” whose job it is to give the clues to their teammates.The dispatcher guides their team by silently handing them cards from a face-up pool of 10, and the team’s job is to figure out from the picture where it is the dispatcher wants them to move. The meat of the game lies in the fact that most of the pictures aren’t really that similar, or alternatively might be equally good/terrible matches to multiple spaces for different reasons. Does the baby raccoon in the stroller match the panicking scientist behind the biohazard door because they both have big eyes? Or does it match the chicken fingers and fries in the cafe because that’s what he’s going to want to eat? Read the rest “Shadows: Amsterdam - a game where you guess what the other people are guessing about ambiguous pictures”

[Editor's note: Gigapixel panorama impressario Jeffrey Martin (previously) offers us "an eye full from Eiffel" in this astounding gigapixel pano of Paris -Cory]I shot this gigapixel photo in autumn 2018 from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Using an SLR camera and a variety of telephoto lenses, I shot a few thousand photos from both levels of the Eiffel Tower. The image you see here was shot from the top level, and you can actually see the Eiffel Tower itself in the image.The Eiffel Tower, for those of you who haven't been there before, is an astonishingly huge bunch of cast iron, bolted together sometime in the 1800's. It is unbelievably large and tall for such a thing. No matter how iconic it is, no matter how many times you've seen it in pictures and movies, it doesn't fail to amaze with its sheer size when you're standing under it, or in it.Anyway, on this particular day, all I knew was that Paris, being Paris, was totally mobbed with tourists, and I'd better get there early. I tried buying tickets online but they were all sold out - the tour companies buy up all the tickets and resell them for 3x more. Every day. This is kind of unfair, isn't it? Ok, so I paid for one of those tickets, not knowing any better at the time. (As it turns out, the tickets for the elevators are hard to get, but the tickets for the stairs are easier to get - just show up before the tower opens, and buy a ticket for the stairs. Read the rest “An astounding gigapixel panorama of Paris affords "an eyeful of the Eiffel"”

Facebook says it temporarily blocked Dan Scavino because he was behaving like a bot. Seems reasonable.

Kickstarter United is organizing Kickstarter employees under the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153, joining other tech startups like Gimlet and Vox in a bid to unionize.The employees say they're unionizing to "promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table," adding that "Kickstarter’s efforts are incomplete, and these values [of democratizing access] have failed to manifest in our workplace. We can do better together — for ourselves and our industry."Kickstarter staffers say they chose the OPEIU because of its approach to organizing, its experience domestically and internationally, and its diversity of members. As the union organizers mention, OPEIU supports “everyone from helicopter pilots to researchers.” At Kickstarter, all employees, aside from senior management, will be eligible to join the union.Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing [Bijan Stephen/The Verge] Read the rest “Kickstarter employees want to unionize under OPEIU and have formed Kickstarter United to make that happen”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Chao told DOT inspector general to conduct an audit of the FAA's certification process for the Boeing 737 MAX 8.

A senior source at Uber has confirmed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners programme that Uber Australia illegally deployed an in-house piece of spyware called Surfcam in order to spy on drivers for a rival rideshare company called Gocatch; Uber was able to compile lists of drivers' emails, car registration numbers and other details and it used these to poach Gocatch drivers and turn them into Uber drivers.Uber was previously caught using Surfcam illegally in Singapore. A company spokesperson reported that they have "conducted an audit of the use of Surfcam and it has been prohibited," and blamed the tool's use on the previous CEO, the disgraced and ousted Travis Kalanick.Gocatch was notable for not launching until after the Australian government had created a regulatory framework for the lawful operation of rideshare systems; by contrast, Uber entered the market before the practice was legalized.Uber developed Surfcam in-house. It was just one of many in-house dirty tricks software: in 2017, it was caught using an internally developed program called Greyball to kick people off the system if they were suspected of being cops or investigators in territories where the company was fighting with regulators.GoCatch's co-founder and chief executive, Andrew Campbell, has told Four Corners that while GoCatch survived, Uber's tactics damaged the company."The fact that Uber used hacking technologies to steal our data and our drivers is appalling," he said."It had a massive impact on our business. It sets a really dangerous precedent for the Australian economy and Australian businesses as well. Read the rest “Uber used spyware to surveil and poach drivers from Australian rival service Gocatch”

I will take 6 gpu terraflops hardwired to my 1ms refresh rate monitor over 10gpu terraflops and a BGP-4 routed TCP-IP backbone for gaming.While presented as a wonderful way to buy a videogame and instantly have it appear on your screen, Google Stadia seems to be ignoring both that most online multiplayer gaming is super latency sensitive, and most ISPs suck.Google plans to enter the arena of cross-platform play, but I can not see the latency allowing for much more than a good game of Hearts. FPS and other shooters, which are the mainstay of the streaming game realm Google hopes to latch onto as its advertising engine, seem unplayable in this model and bandwidth restrictions might limit you to playing only next door to a Google datacenter.IGN:The claim that Stadia runs with 10.7 GPU teraflops is when working with a single GPU. However, using multiple GPUs, Google claims Stadia can run even faster, making computing-intensive tasks like water simulation much easier, and more realistic. This power, of course, is dependent on players having a super-fast internet connection.Google also claimed it is aiming to make games playable on Stadia fully cross-platform compatible. Phil Harrison, VP of Google, said during the keynote “As a new-generation game platform, Stadia will of course embrace full cross-platform play. Developers will have the ability to enable cross-platform multiplayer for all players and even bring game saves and progression across as well." Read the rest “Google Stadia sounds like a bad idea”

A comic book can go through many stages before it reaches its final form. This Show and Tell episode with your hosts Ed and Jim tracks Piskor's comic, Wizzywig, from its humble beginnings as a xeroxed zine shipped from his mama's basement to the more familiar hardcover graphic novel that's easily found in your local comic shop.Subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channelGrab your Cartoonist Kayfabe merchandise at our new storefront Read the rest “Cartoonist Kayfabe Show and Tell 08: Ed Piskor's Strategy for Publishing His First Graphic Novel”

New Zealand is one of the Five Eyes countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ) who collaborate on mass surveillance, and it has a notoriously off-leash, invasive surveillance apparatus that has been caught spying on NZ Greenpeace, the NZ Green Party, the Mana Movements and anti-TPP activists; the state was also caught giving private corporate spies access to its national surveillance data to help them hunt down and neutralize activists; unsurprisingly, the NZ police also abused these records, accessing them without a warrant on thousands of occasions (NZ also recruited the NSA to spy on kiwi activists).This was especially dire under former PM John Key, who is personally implicated in the illegal surveillance. Key was also a notorious enabler of offshore money-laundering, massively expanding NZ's role in the global dark money network, and the surveillance the state engaged in helped shield financial criminals from scrutiny.Notably, despite all this surveillance, the NZ security services was either unaware of the white supremacist terrorist who murdered 49 people last week; or did not judge him to be a threat.This blind-spot is typical of security services, who tend to follow the tacit media/political consensus that treats nonviolent pipeline activists and animal-rights advocates as dangerous terrorists, while ignoring the rise of heavily armed, right-wing militia and white supremacist movements. The rot goes all the way up to the top, with Donald Trump tacitly informing right-wing terrorists that they can continue to have a free pass to operate.In the wake of this ghastly terrorist atrocity, the NZ security forces will be demanding more powers to spy on more people, but they will doubtless continue to insist that their surveillance practices -- which went so terribly awry and proved so completely inadequate -- be hidden from public scrutiny and criticism. Read the rest “New Zealand's domestic spies, obsessed with illegally surveilling environmental activists, missed a heavily armed right-wing terrorist”

The finances of the US armed forces have been in a state of near-continuous audit for decades and despite spending billions of dollars and thousands of person-years trying to make sense of what the military spends, we're no closer to an answer, and no one disputes that there are trillions of dollars' worth of unaccountable transactions (but importantly, not trillions of dollars in spending) that make it impossible to figure out whether and when and how the Pentagon is being ripped off, or wasting money, or both.Enter Matt Taibbi (previously), who is one of journalism's princes of incandescent invective, a superb polemicist at short and longer lengths. But that's only half of the Taibbi story: the other half is his uncanny knack for unravelling baroque scams, cutting through the mind-numbing complexity and getting right to the chase.That's what he's done in The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit, an 8,000-word explainer on the Pentagon's budget crisis that is one of the clearest pieces of financial writing I've ever read, drawing in the structural, economic, personal and historic elements that have created the "bottomless money pit" that is the US military.The problem is a snarled knot of many smaller problems. For example, the Pentagon has terrible IT systems. Leaving a "quantity" field blank in a purchase order form caused the computer to place an order for 990,000 units, for a total of $3.5 trillion. The order never went' through, but the system also had no way to unwind the transaction, so it was just left on the books, and mysteriously deducted later, creating an accounting overhang a third the size of the US GDP. Read the rest “Matt Taibbi finally makes sense of the Pentagon's trillions in off-books "budgetary irregularities"”

Elizabeth Holmes, well-known Theranos fraudster, apparently also deepened her voice in an attempt to command more gravitas. Read the rest “Sounds like even the Theranos CEO's voice was fake”

I just ordered this 6-pack of Lightning charging cables for a very low price using promo code VW2PVZLM. You get 3-foot, 6-foot, and 10-foot cables (2 of each). The reviews are very positive (though it's always hard to tell how many are shills). I'm not sure how they can be MFi certified at this price, but its worth buying to find out. Read the rest “6-pack of supposedly MFi certified Lightning charging cables for cheap”

Unbeknownst to me until just now, several episodes of Battle of the Planets, the classic American adaptation of Science Team Ninja Gatchaman, were edited into a "feature length movie."I loved 7-Zark-7 and Jason. Read the rest “There was a 'Battle of the Planets' movie”

Mark your calendars for April 11 - that's when Black Summer starts streaming.Set in the dark, early days of a zombie apocalypse, Black Summer stars Jaime King as Rose, a mother torn from her daughter who embarks upon a harrowing journey to find her. Thrust alongside a small group of American refugees, these complete strangers must find the strength they need to fight their way back to loved ones. But in order for Rose and her team to brave this hostile new world, they will need to make brutal decisions to contend with zombies - and each other. It looks like they're fast zombies.Image: YouTube Read the rest “Trailer for a new Zombie series on Netflix: Black Summer”

This TV commercial for prunes (directed by Stan Freberg) stars Ray Bradbury, who keeps insisting he never mentioned prunes in any of his stories. I like the futuristic home with the people-moving tubes and the giant television screen, though I was nervous that Malcolm McDowell and his droogs were going to waltz into the front door at any second and cause trouble.[via r/ObscureMedia] Read the rest “This is a 1960s TV commercial for prunes starring Ray Bradbury”

Fires, earthquakes, floods and now overwhelming throngs of flower seeking tourists: California has it all.Intense rainfall has caused California's deserts to bloom. Tens of thousands of folks just want to see all the flowers. Evidently pandemonium ensues.BBC:Lake Elsinore Mayor Steve Manos described it as "insane" in a post on Facebook."One of our employees was hit and run by a driver. A rattlesnake bit a visitor. Residents have been screaming at the people directing traffic."The city brought in all available staff as well as outside traffic controllers to help control the situation on Saturday, issuing a plea to visitors to visit during the week instead."People are creating chaos out there and we have already had an injury," officials said on Instagram. "This is a public safety crisis so we ask your support."Over the weekend, residents of Lake Elsinore were faced with up to three hours of traffic on their commutes. Many began expressing their frustrations on social media with the hashtags #Isitoveryet and #HanginthereLE.It could deter visitors from coming, but more rain could mean more or prolonged blooms into the next couple of weeks.Either way, Ms Dailey explained: "The city is preparing to reopen the trailhead entrance by providing alternative ways to reduce the impact that the tourism has had on our community."Instructions for safely viewing flowers.Photo by Joe Doherty Read the rest “Super bloom creates new California natural disaster: tourism overflow”

The Bowery Lodge is the cheapest hotel in Manhattan. At $45 a night, the Chinatown hotel costs about 1/5th the average price for a hotel room in Manhattan. In this video, a checked into the Bowery Lodge to learn what it's like to spend a night there. It's a tiny room with no furniture other than a bed and a bedside table. There's no window and it was hot and stuffy when the guy stayed there. The bathroom is down the hall.At the end of the video, the guy says, "So I'm sitting here editing this video, two days later, and I've noticed that I have these red welts all over my arm and legs and they itch like crazy. Another one on my finger..." [via Doobybrain] Read the rest “What it is like to spend a night at the cheapest hotel in Manhattan?”

Thrawn begins the backstory of Grand Admiral Thrawn, perhaps the most fearsome non-Force user in the Empire.Timothy Zahn's Heir the the Empire series introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn. The blue-skinned, red-eyed, master of strategy and tactics inspired decades of speculation and debate.Then Star Wars Rebels re-introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn as the super villain intended to crush the nascent Rebellion. I was thrilled. Sadly, Thrawn was kind of a doofus and not nearly as tough for the Rebels to get around as I'd hoped.That said, Thrawn was still fascinating. A blue-skinned non-human who appears a peer with Darth Vader? I wanted to know more and luckily Timothy Zahn was brought back to flesh out the story.Marooned on a deserted planet for simply suggesting a non-standard approach to solving his people's problems, Thrawn is discovered by the Empire. The blue-skinned alien who outwits dozens of Imperial Troopers is taken to Coruscant to meet the Emperor and enlisted to help subdue the dangers of the Outer-Rim.This adventure is a fantastic story, but learning Thrawn's motivations and backstory have set me down the path of reading the entire trilogy.Thrawn (Star Wars) by Timothy Zahn via Amazon Read the rest “Star Wars origin story for Grand Admiral Thrawn is as wonderful as I hoped”

During the week of March 25, the European Parliament will hold the final vote on the Copyright Directive, the first update to EU copyright rules since 2001; normally this would be a technical affair watched only by a handful of copyright wonks and industry figures, but the Directive has become the most controversial issue in EU history, literally, with the petition opposing it attracting more signatures than any other petition in change.org’s history.How did we get here?European regulations are marathon affairs, and the Copyright Directive is no exception: it had been debated and refined for years, and as of spring 2017, it was looking like all the major points of disagreement had been resolved. Then all hell broke loose. Under the leadership of German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Axel Voss, acting as "rapporteur" (a sort of legislative custodian), two incredibly divisive clauses in the Directive (Articles 11 and 13) were reintroduced in forms that had already been discarded as unworkable after expert advice. Voss's insistence that Articles 11 and 13 be included in the final Directive has been a flashpoint for public anger, drawing criticism from the world's top technical, copyright, journalistic, and human rights experts and organizations.Why can no one agree on what the Directive actually means?"Directives" are rules made by the European Parliament, but they aren't binding law—not directly. After a Directive is adopted at the European level, each of the 28 countries in the EU is required to "transpose" it by passing national laws that meet its requirements. Read the rest “The European Copyright Directive: What is it, and why has it drawn more controversy than any other Directive in EU history?”

Massimiliano Fedriga, a member of Italy's far-right League party, is dead-set against the country's mandatory vaccination laws. Guess who contracted chickenpox and had to spend four days in the hospital?From The Independent:Roberto Burioni, a prominent Italian doctor who runs the website MedicalFacts, said the incident served as a warning to adults to ensure they were vaccinated.“Dear President, first of all let me wish you a speedy recovery,” he wrote on Facebook. “I’m glad you vaccinated your children.“[Mr Fedriga], like many adults, did not get vaccinated... if he had been vaccinated as an adult he would be in perfect health.“If he had infected a pregnant woman we would be facing a malformed child or an abortion.“The only way we have to avoid such tragedies is to vaccinate us all to prevent the circulation of this dangerous virus, which could have hit a much more vulnerable person.”Image used for illustration: Di dati.camera.it, CC BY 4.0, Collegamento Read the rest “Politician who opposed mandatory chickenpox vaccine has been hospitalized after getting chickenpox”

Mike Hutchinson designed a screw-together box that looks like a 4X Oreo cookie (of the Double Stuf variety). He printed it on a 3D printer and it looks great! Here's the Thingiverse model. Read the rest “This 3D printed box looks like a large Oreo cookie”

Thanks to the folks who came to last night's LA launch for Radicalized, my latest book of science fiction for adults; I'm about to hop a train to San Diego for an event tonight at Mysterious Galaxy at 7:30 PM. From there, the tour takes me to NYC on Wednesday (The Strand, 7PM); then Toronto on Thursday (Metro Reference Library, 7PM, with Barry Hertz), and then to Chicago for events at C2E2. From there, I head to San Francisco, Fort Vancouver, WA (Portland, essentially!), Seattle and Anaheim. Looking forward to seeing you! Read the rest “San Diego! I'm coming to town tonight with my new book Radicalized! (next: NYC, Toronto, Chicago...)”

How do you know for sure if your carefully-recreated 18th-century paint would fool pass muster as art dealers a legitimate recreation long enough to get away with it? of the authentic originals? Tom Scott visits the Forbes Pigment Collection.The Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums is a collection of pigments, binders, and other art materials for researchers to use as standards: so they can tell originals from restorations from forgeries. It's not open to the public, because it's a working research library -- and because some of the pigments in there are rare, historic, or really shouldn't be handled by anyone untrained. Read the rest “The Forbes Pigment Collection”

Thor is in the house.

Tonight is the launch for my latest book of science fiction for adults, Radicalized: I'll be at the Barnes and Novel at The Grove in Los Angeles, in conversation with director/activist/stuntwoman/champion kickboxer Lexi Alexander, starting at 7PM.From there, the tour takes me to San Diego tomorrow (Mysterious Galaxy, 7:30 PM; then NYC on Wednesday (The Strand, 7PM, with Anand Giridharadas); then Toronto on Thursday (Metro Reference Library, 7PM, with Barry Hertz), and then I'm in Chicago, San Francisco, Fort Vancouver, WA (Portland, essentially!), and Seattle. I hope to see you! Read the rest “Los Angeles! I'm launching my new book Radicalized with Lexi Alexander tonight (next: San Diego, NYC, Toronto...)”

The term "meritocracy" was popularized in the UK sociologist Michael Young's 1958 novel, "The Rise of the Meritocracy," in which aristocrats insist that they are the natural rulers of their society based on "objective" measures of worth ("merit" + "aristocracy" = "meritocracy") that are obviously tilted to favor them, a fact that they are conveniently blind to.But satire has a way of being overtaken by doctrine, and today, a majority of Americans believe that they live in a meritocracy where the market elevates the worthy to positions of wealth and privilege (and power!) despite widespread evidence that the rich cheat. Even as inequality has worsened, the 9.9% have only become more convinced that merit is the factor that determines success, freaking out when you point out the role that luck paid in their elevation, and despite the extensive literature showing that meritocracies become oligarchies in short order.Today, the belief in "meritocracy" has become a hallmark of violent, right-wing harassment and terror movements, whose doctrinal conviction that they live in a meritocracy is also a convenient reason to deny calls for inclusiveness ("If women are so smart, how come they're paid less than men?!"). The meritocratic delusion finally seems to be in decline. Behavior economists are producing reams of research showing that people who believe in meritocracy make decisions that harm them, while management scholars are producing research that shows that "meritocratic" evaluation criteria causes managers to downrank women who fare as well as men when the idea of meritocracy is taken off the table. Read the rest “Believing in "meritocracy" makes you act like a dick”

A sloshed gentleman thought the high-speed train he was traveling on was moving too fast and became aggressive, grabbing a fire extinguisher and smashing a window in hopes of saving the day. According to USA Today:Police say passengers said the man took a fire extinguisher off the wall, smashed a glass door separating the cab from the passenger compartment, and told the shocked driver the train was going much too fast and he had to save the passengers.And:Federal police said the ICE train operated by Germany's Deutsche Bahn stopped near Frankfurt after the incident Sunday morning. The 30-year-old man from Heideberg, who wasn't identified, was arrested and faces an investigation into dangerous interference in rail traffic, among other things.Fortunately, his heroic act did not injure any passengers.Image: Max Pixel Read the rest “Drunken gentleman on a high-speed train threatens the engineer with a fire extinguisher for speeding”

David Perell's 13,000 word essay, "What the Hell is Going On?" presents a reassuring -- and contrarian -- view on how our current dysfunction in politics, media, and business has come to pass, drawing on orthodox economic theories about "information asymmetry" in a way that makes the whole thing seem like a kind of adjustment period between a middling old world and a fine new one.I think Perell is wrong. His theory omits the most salient, obvious explanation for what's going on (the creation of an oligarchy that has diminished the efficacy of public institutions and introduced widespread corruption in every domain), in favor of rationalizations that let the wealthy and their enablers off the hook, converting a corrupt system with nameable human actors who have benefited from it and who spend lavishly to perpetuate it into a systemic problem that emerges from a historical moment in which everyone is blameless, prisoners of fate and history.Perell's theory goes a little like this: once we had incomplete information and so we had to rely on rules of thumb to navigate the world. We trusted brands because we couldn't access realtime customer reviews to tell us whether a product was any good. We trusted universities because we couldn't access libraries and communities that let us train ourselves. We trusted political parties because the news media pushed a narrative that made it hard to find out when the parties were corrupt or ineffectual.All of this is true, as is Perell's conclusion. Read the rest “What's wrong with blaming "information" for political chaos”

I do remember eating at Souplantation when I lived in LA. Buffets were soul-less and scary unless they were at an Indian food restaurant where they became pretty hilarious. All you can eat and drink sushi was awesome.LA Magazine sure makes Souplantation sound like a buffet-style restaurant to me.LA Magazine:Since its founding by a surfer in 1978, Souplantation has survived bankruptcy, an e-coli outbreak, and food-stealing customers. The restaurant is treated like a punchline on social media, but certain locations—like the one at Beverly Connection which, until recently, featured a quote from Fran Lebowitz on its walls—seem to be thriving.“It doesn’t have a bleak Sizzler vibe,” says Bethany Cosentino, one-half of the band Best Coast. “It’s its own mood and its own thing, and the pure joy it brings me can never ever be replaced by any other salad bar—not even the Whole Foods one.”Some still can’t get over the name. Search Twitter for “Souplantation” and the results are a mix of pop culture GIFs and bafflement that a restaurant in 2019 would want to associate boiling liquids and broccoli dishes with the history of slavery. (Throughout most of the country, the chain is called Sweet Tomatoes.)The Smorgasbord at the Magic Castle was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. Read the rest “LA Magazine wrote an entire article on how cool Souplantation is”

I recently received a pair of Audeze Mobius to review and I have to agree with Lisabel's "HOLY SHIT!"I am too new with these cans to give them a thorough review but my initial impression is that Audeze has figured out how to make their incredible planar magnetic headphone technology accessible to folks for an all-in price of around $400.Typically, if you dive into the world of high-end audiophile headphones you are going to need a DAC and a specialized headphone amplifier in addition to cans. There is a lot of dickery about which headphones and what components sound best to whomever the hell is writing in an internet forum at this exact moment in time.The Audeze Mobius have all the hardware built-in to the set of headphones!You do not need to spend 1-2x more on components than you already did on headphones. You can take the Mobius out of the box, connect them via USB, Bluetooth or a 3.5mm jack to almost any source. You absolutely everything you need and can skip there "where is that one magic cable?" experience after spending $1000s on gear you can not connect.While billed as "Gaming" headphones the Mobius are really much, much more than that. I am looking forward to a call with Audeze CEO Sankar Thiagasamudram sometime this week to start really diving into the functionality of the headset.I was blown away with them in video games. Watching TV and movies are a whole new world where the audio is really evocative of a well-designed movie theater. Read the rest “SGeek goes nuts for Audeze Mobius headphones”

After reading this NY Times review of Citizen, which seems to be a Next Door on steroids, I downloaded the app to see what's happening in the part of LA I live in:FLAMING TRASH TRUCK ROLLED DOWN STREETMAN VANDALIZING MARKET, THREATENING STAFFPERSON CHOKED BY ARMED ATTACKERWOMAN THROWING METAL INTO THE STREETINDECENT EXPOSURE IN BACKYARDIt looks like I'm living in the movie, Children of Men.From the review:It is not clear, at first, where Citizen’s reports come from or how they’re selected. But they arrive constantly, in an authoritative voice, providing the app’s signature ambient sense of alarm and disorder.Under the hood, Citizen is essentially a transcription service for emergency radio. The company employs teams of people to listen to police, fire and emergency radio transmissions and to submit certain categories of incident for including in the app. (“Citizen has a detailed editorial guide about what goes into the app and why,” Mr. Donald said. “Citizen does not include, for example, suicides inside a private residence, suspicious people, or vague suspect descriptions.”) Read the rest “NYT reviews Citizen, a live map of crimes in your city”

A year ago, smarting over public criticism of its role in promoting division and stoking racism, Facebook announced a major shift in its newsfeed algorithm which would downrank posts from media organizations and uprank the things sent by your friends on the network, in the name of promotion a gentler form of "engagement" that would emphasize discourse over clickbait, which founder Mark Zuckerberg promised would be "time well spent."A year later, Facebook's feeds are dominated by furious debates about abortion, religion and guns, sparked by Fox News stories shared by users' right-wing, racist friends and relatives. Fox stories attract twice as many "angry" emojis (😡) as news from any other source. The top news table of stories from other sources tilt heavily towards hoaxes and conspiracies, including a fake story about New York State permitting abortions up to the predicted birth date, Henry Winkler being dead (he's not), the Momo hoax, and a fake site called "Conservative Tears."The findings are documented in Newswhip's 2019 Guide to Facebook Publishing and summarized in an excellent Nieman Lab post.There are a lot of takeaways here, the one that strikes me hardest is that this is a perfect story about the dangers of paying engineers by the amount of "engagement" their feature delivers from the system's users. We know that hoaxes, racism, acrimony, and harassment all increase the amount of time people spend engaging with a service, because these unpleasant things are hard to look away from. If you ask an engineer to maximize engagement without asking them to minimize these unpleasant things, you will always end up with a slot-machine whose jackpot is Fox News. Read the rest “Facebook's year-old "improvements" to the newsfeed have elevated enraging Fox News posts to the service's dominant form”

A new study suggests that humans can subconsciously sense Earth's magnetic field. While this capability, called magnetoreception, is well known in birds and fish, there is now evidence that our brains are also sensitive to magnetic fields. The researchers from Caltech and the University of Tokyo measured the brainwaves of 26 participants who were exposed to magnetic fields that could be manipulated. Interestingly, the brainwaves were not affected by upward-pointing fields. From Science News:Participants in this study, who all hailed from the Northern Hemisphere, should perceive downward-pointing magnetic fields as natural, whereas upward fields would constitute an anomaly, the researchers argue. Magnetoreceptive animals are known to shut off their internal compasses when encountering weird fields, such as those caused by lightning, which might lead the animals astray. Northern-born humans may similarly take their magnetic sense “offline” when faced with strange, upward-pointing fields...Even accounting for which magnetic changes the brain picks up, researchers still don’t know what our minds might use that information for, (Caltech neurobiologist and geophysicist Joseph) Kirschvink says. Another lingering mystery is how, exactly, our brains detect Earth’s magnetic field. According to the researchers, the brain wave patterns uncovered in this study may be explained by sensory cells containing a magnetic mineral called magnetite, which has been found in magnetoreceptive trout as well as in the human brain."Transduction of the Geomagnetic Field as Evidenced from Alpha-band Activity in the Human Brain" (eNeuro)"Evidence for a Human Geomagnetic Sense" (Caltech) Read the rest “Humans have a sixth sense for Earth's magnetic field”

The funny folks at Squirrel Monkey made a fantasy promotional video for a computer that never existed, called the DC 640. It had a number of cutting edge features, including a built-in LED alarm clock, an FM transmitter (for data and voice communication), and a solderless breadboard. Read the rest “Imaginary dream computer from 1984”

On March 13, the driver of a Ryder truck missed multiple warnings signs and ran into infamous "can-opener" bridge in Durham, NC. People have been offering solutions for this problematic bridge for years, but there doesn't seem to one that will take care of the problem.What about some kind of system that senses the height of the truck and unfurls a banner from the bridge that reads STOP! in red letters? Here's a mock-up of what I'm thinking:Images: YouTube Read the rest “Truck-eating bridge claims a new victim”

Ponden Hall, a nine bedroom house in Stanbury, West Yorkshire, England, is considered to be the inspiration for Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and sister Anne's Wildfell Hall. The Brontës spent a great deal of time on the property in the early 1800s. Now it could be yours. Current owner and Brontë superfan Julie Akhurst and her husband have put it on the market for £1.25m. In their twenty years of ownership, they've completed a major, yet careful, renovation and opened it as a B&B for other Brontë geeks. From the Yorkshire Post:The most popular B&B room at Ponden Hall is the Earnshaw room. It features a tiny east gable window that exactly fits Emily Brontë’s description in Wuthering Heights of Cathy’s ghost scratching furiously at the glass trying to get in...“We think that Emily based that scene on this room because old documents relating to the house describe a box bed in a room across from the library and you can see where it was bolted to the wall by the window. It is just how it is described in Wuthering Heights. “Plus the date plaque above the main entrance identifies the hall as being rebuilt in 1801 and Emily’s story starts with that exact date,” says Julie who has had a replica box bed made for the room. Read the rest “For sale: home that inspired Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights”