Britain's parliament voted Thursday to delay Brexit, giving the government breathing room after its repeated failure to gain approval for an exit deal with the European Union. The EU must also agree to the delay, but it will likely do so quickly to help Britain avoid crashing out of the bloc on March 29. However, all states must agree to the extension, and it isn't a done deal.Mrs May says Brexit could be delayed by three months, to 30 June, if MPs back her withdrawal deal in a vote next week.If they reject her deal again then she says she will seek a longer extension - but any delay has to be agreed by the 27 other EU member states.A spokesman for the European Commission said extending Article 50, the mechanism taking the UK out of the EU on 29 March, would need the "unanimous agreement" of all states.Parliament voted Wednesday against leaving the EU without a deal, after rejecting Prime Minister Theresa May's deal on Tuesday. Read the rest

Picking up one of these twistable snakes pretty much makes an hour disappear.Instantly I immediately remembered how to make the soccer ball and the little terrier. I would never have known to consider these a 'fidget' toy way back in my single digit days, but these snakes kick the shit out of any fidget spinner.Speed Cube Snake Ruler Cube Puzzle 3 Pack via Amazon Read the rest

The headline How to Spot a Jew graced Poland's right-wing national weekly newspaper Tylko Polska. Said headline was an angry response to a panel discussion of Poland's complicit citizenry during the Holocaust at a recent Paris conference.Newsweek:The anti-Semitic headline ran alongside the front page article complaining that speakers at last month’s Holocaust studies meeting in Paris had been attacking Poland. It was printed with a photo of Jan Gross, a Polish Jew who teaches at Princeton University.Gross has regularly said that Poles collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, helping Adolf Hitler’s regime murder millions of their Jewish countrymen. He has become a favored target for Polish nationalists, who rail against any suggestion of Polish complicity in the genocide.Gross was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 1996. However, in 2016, the nationalist Law and Justice government was reportedly considering stripping the scholar of the honor for what it considers his anti-Polish work.The government has been accused of trying to rewrite history by banning any suggestion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Use of the phrase “Polish death camps” to refer to Nazi-run concentration camps like Auschwitz, for example, is now punishable by up to three years in prison. Read the rest

The University of Southern California, one of the schools heavily involved in the college bribery scandal, said yesterday that they will deny any current applicant who is involved with the scam. In fact, they've already identified and denied six such applicants, according to Buzzfeed. USC is also in the process of investigating the students linked to the scandal who are currently attending USC, including Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli, daughters of actress Lori Laughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli. "If UCLA discovers that any prospective, admitted or enrolled student has misrepresented any aspect of his/her application, or that information about the applicant has been withheld, UCLA may take a number of disciplinary actions, up to and including cancellation of admission," a university spokesperson told Buzzfeed.Via Buzzfeed:About half of the 32 parents who allegedly paid the California life coach to fix their children's applications wanted their kids to get into USC...Now, USC officials say they're going to conduct a thorough, "case-by-case review of current students and graduates that may be connected to the scheme alleged by the government..."USC said Wednesday that it will deny admission any applicants "who are connected to the scheme."It's easy to deny current applicants who have lied on their application or cheated in some way to make themselves someone they aren't. But let's see how USC handles the students who are currently enrolled at the university who cheated to get in. The fact that 19-year-old Olivia Jade (who allegedly pretended to be on her high school crew team even though she'd never participated in crew) was on a yacht owned by the Chairman of USC's Board of Trustees the day the story broke, makes this an especially interesting corner of the story to watch. Read the rest

Firstsecond Books (previously, publisher of In Real Life, which I created with Jen Wang) has announced a new line of YA-oriented graphic novels called "World Citizen Comics," on contemporary activist themes like "how to fight corruption in elections, blast fake news with truth-telling, and even battle would-be dictators both near and far through a better understanding of constitutions and the rule of law."Included in the line are What Unites Us, a graphic adaptation of Dan Rather's memoir (co-written with Elliot Kirschner); Citizen Journalist, where former criminal defense attorney turned law professor Seth Abramson describes "how to ethically write and report on their world"; The Fault Lines in the Constitution, adapted from Cynthia and Sanford Levinson's accessible primer on constitutional law; The Media Adventurer's Handbook, Melissa Hart's comic about "Decoding Persuasion in Everyday News, Ads, Videos, and More"; Breaking (the) News, Jennifer L. Pozner's deep dive into "narratives shaped by news and media makers"; Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy Maplight founder Dan Newman's text on dark money and influence; and Re-Constitution, by political scientist and nation-state mediator Beka Feathers, who brings her experience in drafting new constitutions for states that have transitioned out of tyrannical autocracies into democracies to write a book explaining how the US Constitution fits in the global framework.This is a very exciting project from a publisher with a long history of producing incredibly successful, ground-breaking graphic titles for young readers; it couldn't be more timely. Read the rest

"Oh my god, oh my god," says a bystander as powerful winds blow a moving semi truck over on its side. The sideways truck skids for a bit, knocking down a sign in its path. According to the YouTube page, this was shot yesterday in Amarillo, Texas. The stuff of nightmares. Read the rest

Dwarf Fortress, the astonishingly elaborate and in-depth simulation of a community of dwarves settling somewhere in the middle of a vast randomly-generated world, is getting a graphical update, a price tag, and a launch date on itch.io and other game stores. The core game will remain free of charge. The new, premium edition of Dwarf Fortress will include actual graphics for the first time. Traditionally, the game has only offered ASCII-style icons. According to an FAQ published alongside today’s announcement, the graphics will be handled by Michał “Mayday” Madej and Patrick Martin “Meph” Schroeder, two well-regarded members of the game’s modding community. Another community member, who goes by the handle Dabu, will be handling a musical score inspired by the seasons and select bits of audio.Steam Workshop integration may be the biggest selling point here. Fans have made many mods to supplement the core Dwarf Fortress experience. One of the most popular, called Dwarf Therapist, allows you to troubleshoot individual dwarves, digging down into their wants and needs and even controlling them in ways the base game simply doesn’t allow. Many consider Dwarf Therapist and other mods essential to the gameplay experience, and Steam Workshop support will make accessing them easier than ever before.I'd drifted away from Dwarf Fortress as its complexity became more and more forbidding from the outset, making it hard to just jump in and play it as an ASCII-tastic Dungeon Keeper. I'm not sure if I want the premium version to reveal a more approachable version of DF or act as a kind of sadistic enticement to drown as many humans as possible in the full experience. Read the rest

Gambino head Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali was shot eight times then run over outside his Staten Island home Wednesday night. The Daily Beast:The triggerman left 16 holes in Cali’s body, and investigators recovered a dozen spell shell casings at the scene, a senior NYPD official told The Daily Beast.Police on Thursday were searching for a blue pickup truck that fled the bloody scene, and were poring over home surveillance video for additional evidence, one official said.No arrests have been made, and it was not clear if authorities had a lead on who might have whacked Cali—who had been boss of the Gambinos since 2015 and who had very close ties to the Sicilian Mafia.He's the first New York mob boss to be whacked since the 80s, reports the BBC.Such scenes have long been the fodder of TV dramas and big-budget blockbusters. But after a violent killing in a leafy suburb, is organised crime in New York once more on the rise?"It's quite unheard of in New York," Oxford University professor of criminology Federico Varese tells the BBC. "It's a very significant event and shows that the Italian-American Mafia is still active." Read the rest

Big Tech is often in a monopoly situation (for example, Amazon's Audible owns something like 90% of the audiobook market), but even where they aren't monopolies, they are often monopsonies: a single buyer that controls the whole market that a variety of sellers want to sell into.This is a problem with many concentrated markets, from eyewear to Itunes, and it's the end-result of the Chicago School's bizarre version of antitrust, which took over the world in the Reagan years and has been wrecking things ever since.In the Chicago School version of antitrust, the only thing that matters is "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices. So if a company like Walmart can drive every business in town into bankruptcy, then use its control over shopping to force manufacturers to charge so little for their wares that they shift their labor offshore, that's fine -- so long as the shoppers enjoy lower prices (or so long as someone can claim that the prices are lower than they would have been in a different world where there were lots of places to buy things). In the wake of Elizabeth Warren's plan to break up Big Tech, there's been a lot of intense discussion about whether the platforms are truly monopolies, and while they are in some domains, in others they aren't -- but they are all monoposonies. Writing in Wired, former Facebook exec Antonio García Martínez (previously) steps through a bunch of ways to think about the monoposony problem with Big Tech, and how Warren's plan is equally suited to dealing with monoposony effects as it is suited to dealing with monopolies where they exist. Read the rest

Enjoy one minute and eleven seconds of fun from the Lockpicking Lawyer, who makes short work of a Smartkey Kwikset Padlock [Amazon], which you absolutely shouldn't buy as a gift for someone whose property you have plans for. Read the rest

Ketamine is a sedative first synthesized in 1962; its patents have long elapsed and it costs pennies; it has many uses and is also sold illegally for use as a recreational drug, but in recent years it has been used with remarkable efficacy as a treatment for a variety of disorders, including depression, anxiety, and chronic pain (I have lifelong chronic pain and my specialist has prescribed very low doses of it for me at bedtime).Recently, the FDA approved Esketamine, a ketamine-like drug in a nasal spray for use as fast-acting relief, but Johnson & Johnson, the company that developed Esketamine, has only done four efficacy studies of mixed results. Esketamine isn't ketamine: it's a mirror-image of the ketamine molecule ("left-handed ketamine," or "S-for-sinister-ketamine"). This mirroring is what let Johnson & Johnson get a patent on a drug that's been around since 1962.So why is Esketamine -- new, largely unstudied and unpromising -- approved for use, while ketamine -- old, well-studied, and widely used -- still off-label for treating depression and pain?Scott Alexander (previously) has a theory: "I suspect this was a political move based on how embarrassing it was to have everyone know ketamine was a good antidepressant, but not have it officially FDA-approved."Alexander goes into some detail on Estketamine's background, which is bound up in the (pretty terrible) history of antidepressants, as well as the limitations on administering ketamine infusions (which require patients to be sedated and hallucinating, while under medical supervision, for hours at a stretch, or even many consecutive days). Read the rest

Feargu O'Sullivan rounds up the good, the bad and the ugly of public transit seating options.Seat cover designs, we believe, need to consider four things:• Memorability. They need to be striking enough to create an instant impression.• Freshness. Moquette needs to be bright enough in color to appear new(ish) after years of wear, but not so pale as to make stains or fade evident.• Intricacy. Large empty monochrome spaces show wear more quickly, and provide too tempting a canvas for vandals.• Anti-Dazzle. Moquette shouldn’t be so bright and busy that it turns stomachs.Above, behold Pittsburgh's "cosmic spaghetti" seating, as photographed by @CatsBlanchard. Read the rest

One for the olds and one for the kids.I have not seen the new show yet, but a friend tells me it is great. Read the rest

From Drayton Valley, Alberta, Canada comes this devilish prank. A woman noticed that her sister was selling a porcelain doll through Facebook's marketplace so she secretly bought it and sneaked it back into her sister's basement. She then lured her sister into the basement. "I thought that her reaction would be confusion," said the woman in the YouTube description, "but then she screamed and ran, scaring my daughter too. She did get really mad at me, but she does think it's funny now." Read the rest

I've been using Photoshop for years, but I don't know what I'm doing. When I get stuck, I often turn to the YouTube channel Phlearn to learn how to do something. In this easy-to-understand 10-minute video, I learned how to use adjustment layers to make changes to all colors in an image and how to use layer masks to changes the colors of certain areas of an image. I wish I'd learned about these a long time ago. Read the rest

For more than a year, Vox's Sarah Kliff has been investigating hospital price-gouging in America, collecting hospital bills from her readers and comparing them, chasing up anomalies and pulling on threads, producing a stream of outstanding reports on her findings.In her latest installment, Kliff digs deep into the famously bizarre world of ER bills and points out some of the most egregious ways in which these are rigged. For example, if you are injured and also financially precarious, you might travel to a more distant ER just to be sure that the hospital you're visiting is in-network for your insurer, but that means nothing. "In-network" ERs often staff "out-of-network" doctors, and there is no way to find out whether the doctor treating you is covered by your insurer until you get the bill: one of Kliff's readers got bills for $8,000 from an out-of-network surgeon who treated his broken jaw at an in-network hospital.And much of the care you receive at an ER is subject to bizarre price gouging: one of Kliff's readers was charged $238 for two drops of the generic eyedrop ofloxacin which retails for $15/vial; the routine pregnancy test that ERs administer to women of childbearing years can cost up to $465, enough to buy 84 pregnancy kits at the pharmacy; and one Seattle hospital charged $76 for a squirt of generic neosporin. Not all hospitals gouge on all drugs, and many of these drugs are not being administered for urgent health problems -- a halfway honest hospital could advise a patient, "We charge $238 for this eyedrop, why don't you pick up a bottle for $15 next door and administer it yourself?" Finally, Kliff uncovers wild variability in the "ER facility fee," which is a cover-charge you're assessed just for walking in the door at an ER. Read the rest

Denver experienced a "bomb cyclone" snowstorm on Wednesday, with hurricane winds that shut down the runways at Denver International Airport, and parts of the freeway system. CBS news is calling it "the strongest storm in decades." Areas around the city received between 6 and 8 inches of heavy snow. Governor Jared Polis declared a state emergency and dispatched the Colorado National Guard to help people caught in the storm.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Meet Dogbert the German Shepherd. Such a loving gaze from this German Shepherd to their owner, who's rolling video. Dogbert is rolling, too. Watch it all the way to the end.Loving German Shepherd eyes[via] Read the rest

Hypnopup.Australian Shepherds or "aussies" are such intelligent, loyal, work-oriented dogs. Really incredible breed.#HypnoticFrom iwasdoingfinelurking on IMGUR. Read the rest

Who among us has not tried to come up with a novel technique for escaping the consequences of our own foolishness?These dogs try playing dead to avoid getting in trouble for doing something naughty. They're adorably bad at it.“Oliver and Sophia is famous for eating our furniture and playing dead once caught. Mom and Dad wasn't happy.” Watch the whole video, which was originally published by mia van aarde on Aug 13, 2018, and went newly viral this week.Unmute it, sound up.[via] Read the rest

You might say this dog is a wheelie good boy. You might also say the dog is riding a roverboard.A wheelie good boy.From OctopussSevenTwo, via IMGUR. Read the rest

This epic Giant Epoxy Resin Handle Screwdriver “making of” video is really something to behold. Jackman Works has outdone himself. Watch the video, below. he's fun on camera. Hope he makes lots more. Here, he explains the inspiration behind this truly painstaking process to make a gigantic replica of the beloved, partly transparent screwdriver everyone and their parents grew up with:Everyone seems to remember the classic Craftsman screwdriver, it's an icon filled with nostalgia. This is something my father had in his toolbox and so did his father, so I wanted to make a nod towards that in my own way. I recreated the screwdriver perfectly scaled up 4x just in case I come across any massive paint cans that need to be opened or bridges that need to be repaired. The handle is made entirely from a solid pour of epoxy resin. Why epoxy resin? Because it's impractical, it's right on brand for me. It took some clever engineering to make it happen, but it worked out perfectly and made the build process acceptable after you look past all of the sanding. The blade/shaft/bit or whatever you want to call it, was forged by a friend of mine (ZH Fabrications) from some 1" bar stock with his blacksmithing talents. This one was quite the adventure, so strap in and be sure not to miss the full build video on YouTube!The IMGUR gallery has like 49 step-by-step images! [Video link, via]Giant Epoxy Resin Handle Screwdriver Read the rest

Spotify has asked the EU Commission to intervene in its business relationship with Apple, citing the fact that Apple takes a 30% vig on all customer revenues from people who join the service or buy songs through an Iphone app, while Apple's own competing Itunes store does not have to pay this commission.That means that while Apple and Spotify pay the same wholesale rates for the music they sell, Spotify has to give 30% of its revenues to Apple, while either earning 30% less on each of its sales, or charging its customers 30% more. It's as neat an example of the problem of a company providing both a platform and a service on that platform -- and it's why pre-Reagan antitrust regulators didn't let railroad companies own subsidiaries that competed with the companies that bought freight shipping from them (under Elizabeth Warren's proposed new antitrust regime, Apple would have to choose whether to supply a platform or apps for that platform, but couldn't do both).Spotify's complaint takes a different approach. Rather than arguing that Apple shouldn't own the App Store, Ek is seeking changes to Apple's conduct on the App Store. Right now, he says, apps like Spotify that don't pay a 30 percent commission to use Apple's in-app payment system are penalized in certain ways. They're prohibited, for instance, from emailing their own users directly or enabling them to upgrade to premium services inside the app. Ek isn't suggesting anything as radical as Apple giving up the App Store entirely. Read the rest

Ending the widely-feared possibility of Britain crashing out of the European Union without a Brexit agreement, Parliament voted narrowly against the no-deal "option" Wednesday evening.MPs have voted by 312 to 308 to reject leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement. It is not a legally-binding decision - and it does not rule out the UK leaving the EU. But it means MPs could now get a vote on delaying Brexit. That vote would take place on Thursday, and if it is passed - and the EU agrees to it - the UK will not leave the EU as planned on 29 March.The vote increases the likelihood of a softer Brexit or even none at all, though it's anyone's guess how it will shake out. A vote to ask the EU to extend the UK's deadline comes next, but a new referendum, a general election and further negotiation with Brussels are all on various power-players' agendas. Prime Minister May may even try to save her twice-thrashed deal. Read the rest

pic.twitter.com/2qWkPuFDL6— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2019After Canada grounded it earlier today, the U.S became the last major country where Boeing's troubled 737 MAX jets could take off and land. The Federal Aviation Administration insisted it was safe, but President Trump personally reversed its decision and announced a ban: in a tweet, of course.President Trump announced that the United States was grounding Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft, reversing an earlier decision by American regulators to keep the jets flying in the wake of a second deadly crash involving one of the jets in Ethiopia.The Federal Aviation Administration had for days resisted calls to ground the plane even as safety regulators in some 42 countries had banned flights by the jets. As recently as Tuesday, the agency said it had seen “no systemic performance issues” that would prompt it to halt flights of the jet.Previously: Airline pilots have been complaining for months about Boeing's deathliner Read the rest

During a winter-training outing in a helicopter 1,000 feet above a snowy region in Scotland, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency happened to spot a dog perched on the ledge of a mountain, stranded in the snow below. Turns out the dog had been missing for two days. According to AP:They couldn’t fly away and leave the dog in trouble, so winchman Mark Stevens on Wednesday was lowered to the ground, scooped up the cold and frightened animal, and both were raised back to the helicopter.The dog, named Ben, was cuddled and warmed on board before being rushed to a veterinarian.Ben "has recovered from exposure" and is back home with its owner. Image: Maritime & Coastguard Agency Read the rest

Canada's aviation authorities grounded Boeing's 737 MAX jets today, leaving the U.S. as the last major air travel market where they can fly. Two of the brand-new airliners have crashed, killing hundreds of travelers.(UPDATE: Trump grounded it in the U.S., with a tweet.)The UK, the European Union, China, Australia and India are among the countries that have suspended the Boeing 737 Max from their airspace.However, the US Federal Aviation Administration said a review had showed "no systemic performance issues" and that there was no basis for grounding the aircraft.On Wednesday, the chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines, Tewolde Gebremariam, told the BBC that all 737 Max aircraft worldwide should be grounded until the causes of the crash were known.Meanwhile, it has emerged that pilots in the US had complained about problems controlling the Boeing 737 Max 8 during take-off, echoing difficulties that contributed to the fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October.Boeing's seeming regulatory capture of the FAA is bad news: it undermines public trust in aviation (which is extremely safe) for the sake of one company's short-term economic interests. Even if no more of its deathliners fall out the sky, that erosion of trust will lead to conspiracy theories and explosive ignorance when it sits and rots in the dark places of the internet.Previously: Airline pilots have been complaining for months about Boeing's deathliner Read the rest

Yesterday, news broke out that the Feds had uncovered the biggest college admissions scandal in US history. This involved over 30 families, including the families of actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. But now, it looks like the scandal has blown up into something much much bigger. According to NBC, the ringleader of the admissions scam, William Rick Singer, says he helped 761 families cheat their way into college. Or, as he slyly put it, he helped these families get into college "side doors." From NBC:William Rick Singer, who pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Boston federal court to racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, said in a phone conversation recorded by the FBI that he helps "the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school."Singer said he facilitated 761 "side doors" to admission."They want guarantees, they want this thing done. They don't want me messing around with this thing," he said, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. "And so they want in at certain schools."Image: Yale University/Pixabay Read the rest

After this weekend's snow in Chadron, Nebraska, Jason Blundell and his kids spent the afternoon sculpting a snow replica of their 1967 Ford Mustang GTA. Nebraska State Patrol Sgt. Mick Downing spotted the snow car and decided to have his own fun. From the Omaha World-Herald:(Downing) drove by and recorded himself giving the sculpted car a pretend tow notice, then posted the video on the patrol’s social media channels...Downing said he never did the paperwork for the tow notice. It wouldn’t have held up in court.“If it would’ve been a real car,” he said, “it was parked just fine.” Read the rest

Gimlet Media, creator of such excellent podcasts as Crimetown, Reply All, and Science Vs, was recently acquired by Spotify for $230m; in the wake of the acquisition, the staff have announced a successful unionization drive organized under the Writers Guild of America East (WGAE), which is also organizing Vox Media's team: the union will have about 80 members, drawn from the production, editorial, host, and reporting staff, but excluding managers, marketing and sales staff. The team is seeking “consistent and transparent job descriptions and salary bands;” “equitable processes for protecting employees’ intellectual property;” and “employee input in company decision-making;” among other things. Spotify has previously said Gimlet will retain its independence. The team will still work out of its Brooklyn, New York office, and Spotify has equated the deal to Disney’s relationship to Pixar or Marvel. Gimlet will operate as a studio under a bigger parent corporation.Gimlet Media staff moves to unionize following Spotify deal [Ashley Carman/The Verge] Read the rest

so...the less i know the better by tame impala and sexyback by justin timberlake have the same bpm... pic.twitter.com/X9TmmUXfqs— ً (@benadrylled) March 10, 2019Take 'em to the bridge. Read the rest

These cheap sunglasses remind me of Steve McQueen's Persols.I take a lot of fashion cues from the King of Cool. McQueen's signature sunglasses were the Persol 714 with blue lenses and damn if they aren't both cool, and expensive! These SUNGAIT glasses are not expensive, and they certainly share a lot of design elements.The keyhole bridge and blue lenses were McQueen enough for me, but there is an 'amber' pair that looks pretty faux-tortoiseshell if you just gotta. While these are glasses claim to only work for women, they work fine for all small to medium size faces regardless of gender. The materials are light, the frames are thin, the lenses claim to block UV.SUNGAIT Vintage Round Sunglasses for Women Classic Retro Designer Style via Amazon Read the rest

This Swiss watchmaker's micrometer, which was purchased on eBay by a CNC-mechanic for $25, is a rusty, beaten-up old thing that has seen better days. Until the mechanic restores it to a beautiful shiny tool that could pass for a work of art. From his YouTube site: When I was scrolling through the antique section of eBay and first saw this micrometer I wanted to restore it right away. I really like the unique look of those watchmaker micrometers. As a professional CNC-mechanic I'm very familiar with those measurement devices and I'm using them on a daily basis. The measurement range of this micrometer is from 0-25mm and you can measure exactly on 0.005mm. It was once re-painted to yellow, the original colour was black. That's why I decided to paint it black again. In the front of the micrometer there was a plate with the name and the location of the previous owner mounted with two rivets. The plate was in very bad condition and as I'm the new owner of it, I decided to make a new plate with my name and my location...I'm still very happy how this restoration turned out. Read the rest

New York City's ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC) is a cultural treasure packed with actual treasures. Inside the walls of this not-for-profit private research library in TriBeCa are 3 million physical audio recordings, many on vinyl records. The ARC's founder, Bob George, is also a cultural treasure -- warm, obsessive, kind, committed, and a walking encyclopedia of popular music -- from obscure folk to the avant-garde. In recent years, Bob's been working closely with the Internet Archive to digitize many of the ARC's scarce 78s for broader access and, yes, preservation. Bob launched ARC in 1985 when his own record collection outgrew his apartment. Now the ARC needs help. They've launched a GoFundMe to raise $100,000 to keep the ARC alive. From Rolling Stone:Far from the kind of crackpot hoarding that sometimes happens in cities, George’s archive has been supported by powerhouses in music and entertainment. It houses Keith Richards’ blues collection. Their current board is varied enough to include both Youssou N’Dour and Paul Simon (Lou Reed and David Bowie were both once members). It consulted for Tom Hanks on the making of That Thing You Do. It’s the go-to repository for album art for everything from Grammy exhibits to Taschen books...George’s commitment is dogged. When Martin Scorsese wanted an obscure Italian song in Goodfellas, George roamed Little Italy humming the tune until someone recognized it (“You can solve every problem in New York if you just walk through it,” he says).At a time when some in the city were scrubbing Keith Haring murals off subway platforms, George was welcoming every genre, including then-unpopular punk and hip-hop (among the archive’s greatest collection is a trove of punk 45s). Read the rest

The Baller looks like crazy fun! Can't wait to give this a t new vehicle a try. Somehow I think my party will need more than one try to get properly airborne.Can't wait to see this next-level pro-player top-tier rotation strat in the World Cup, @itsfearitself, @timthetatman, and @ninja. pic.twitter.com/xRdwSdEInL— DrLupo (@DrLupo) March 12, 2019 Read the rest

A fox got trapped in a coop and the chickens fucken murdered it.The unusual incident in Brittany took place after the fox entered the coop with 3,000 hens through an automatic hatch door which closed immediately."There was a herd instinct and they attacked him with their beaks," said Pascal Daniel, head of farming at the agricultural school Gros-Chêne.The body of the small fox was found the following day in a corner of the coop."It had blows to its neck, blows from beaks," Mr Daniel told AFP news agency.I remember a children's book, from the mists of a British childhood, where this was the plot. What was it? Read the rest

Well played, IRLrosie! Read the rest

This video illustrates the second-best way to ring a doorbell if you have no free hands. Read the rest

I can open your eyesTake you wonder by wonderOver sideways and underOn a magic carpet rideCredits: Hiskm and Dahlek88 (r/Aquariums, thanks Dustin Hostetler!) Read the rest

With the European Union grounding the 737 MAX, North America is one of the last places on Earth you can get a ride on Boeing's deathliner. Despite the brand-new jet's disturbingly similar crashes and hundreds of dead travelers, the FAA and U.S.-based carriers insist it's safe to fly. Several airline pilots disagree.Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual "inadequate and almost criminally insufficient" several months before Sunday's Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people, an investigation by The Dallas Morning News found. ... The disclosures found by The News reference problems with an autopilot system, and they all occurred during the ascent after takeoff. Many mentioned the plane suddenly nosing down. While records show these flights occurred in October and November, the airlines the pilots were flying for is redacted from the database.Will another one go down before the problem is fixed? Capitalism is all about risk and inertia, and American businesses love taking risks and doing nothing. Read the rest

Yesterday, federal authorities announced 50 indictments of college personnel, wealthy parents, and fixers who ran a multi-million-dollar bribery ring that ensured that the slow, plodding, undeserving fruit of wealthy grifters' loins could be admitted to the top universities in America.On the one hand, this isn't exactly a surprise: after all, our dimbulb of a president somehow attain admission to some of the nation's leading educational institutions, despite scoring such dismal grades that he paid a lawyer to threaten his alma maters with civil and criminal liability if they ever disclosed them.On the other hand, "Don't savvy me" should always be our watchword when something everybody knows gains official recognition.In that spirit, I was delighted to discover that Kate "McMansion Hell" Wagner (previously) had somehow obtained exterior and interior realtor listing photos of the revolting Newport Beach, CA home of William Singer, accused of masterminding the college admissions crime syndicate through his Key Worldwide Foundation, which allegedly laundered payouts to coaches and others. Singer has reportedly had to sell off the house in the wake of a scandal, but through Ms Wagner's brilliantly annotated photos, we can get a glimpse into the rarified existence of someone whose belief in meritocracy was so strong that he was willing to cheat to get the children of the wealthy the positions that poorer children had earned.Wagner also annotated a photo of the home of Lori Loughlin and Massimo Giannulli, accused of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their daughter, a noted Instagram influencer, a place at USC, which truly earned its nickname of "University of Spoiled Children." Also present: the home of William H. Read the rest

In 1799 two Royal Navy ships met on the Caribbean Sea, and their captains discovered they were parties to a mind-boggling coincidence that would expose a crime and make headlines around the world. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the shark papers, one of the strangest coincidences in maritime history.We'll also meet some Victorian kangaroos and puzzle over an expedient fire.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH scary Socialists from 2019 invade the 1950s to spread their evil brand of radical collectivism.

Prince was self-conscious about his height -- 5'3" -- and wore high-heeled boots (either 4" or 3 1/3") whenever he went out in public, and moreover, he did not like to be seen wearing the same pair of boots at two different appearances on the same day.Prince contracted with Andre No. 1, a famous cobbler-to-the-stars on Sunset Boulevard founded by Andre Rostomyan, whose client roster includes everyone from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga. Rostomyan made a shoe last -- a wooden model -- of Prince's feet, and would take orders for 30-40 pairs of boots/month, eventually supplying more than 3,000 pairs to Prince.Each pair was identical in shape, but used unique mixes of materials, colors, and gimmicks like light-up lucite heels. Prince consulted closely on the details, visiting the store in person with fabric, making calls as to whether to cut it with or against the bias, etc. Boots that were to be worn onstage -- where Prince gave incredibly athletic, graceful performances -- got extra-strong structural wood to ensure that they could survive the workout that Prince put them through.Prince refused to have his wooden lasts improved by means of a 3D scanning system, saying that the religious tenets of the Jehovah's Witnesses forbade believers like him from using technology to capture a part of the human body.There was only one instance in which Prince was adamantly against something Gary suggested. “He was a Jehovah’s Witness,” the shoemaker explains. “I wanted to use one of the 3-D scanning machines I’d just gotten to mold the new shoe forms for him and make the process a bit faster, but he refused. Read the rest

A Boston University team have developed an acoustic, 3D-printed metamaterial whose topology is such that it reflects 94% of human-audible sound; the researchers' demonstration involves inserting a ring of this stuff in a PVC pipe and blasting a speaker down one end: light and air emerges from the other end, but sound does not.The metamaterial is in contrast to traditional acoustic insulation materials, which absorb sound and convert it to heat energy; this material actualy reflects the sound back.The researchers muse that their invention could be used to dampen sound from HVAC systems, drones, MRIs, and other hard-to-manage sources of unpleasant sound and noise pollution.Ghaffarivardavagh and Zhang also point to the unsightliness of the sound barriers used today to reduce noise pollution from traffic and see room for an aesthetic upgrade. "Our structure is super lightweight, open, and beautiful. Each piece could be used as a tile or brick to scale up and build a sound-canceling, permeable wall," they say.The shape of acoustic-silencing metamaterials, based on their method, is also completely customizable, Ghaffarivardavagh says. The outer part doesn't need to be a round ring shape in order to function."We can design the outer shape as a cube or hexagon, anything really," he says. "When we want to create a wall, we will go to a hexagonal shape" that can fit together like an open-air honeycomb structure.Ultra-open acoustic metamaterial silencer based on Fano-like interference [Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, Jacob Nikolajczyk, Stephan Anderson, and Xin Zhang/Phys Rev] (Sci-Hub Mirror)Scientists have discovered a shape that blocks all sound–even your co-workers [Mark Wilson/Fast Company] BU researchers develop 'acoustic metamaterial' that cancels sound [Boston University/Eurekalert](via /. Read the rest

Switzerland is about to have a national election with electronic voting, overseen by Swiss Post; e-voting is a terrible idea and the general consensus among security experts who don't work for e-voting vendors is that it shouldn't be attempted, but if you put out an RFP for magic beans, someone will always show up to sell you magic beans, whether or not magic beans exist.Swiss Post contracted with Barcelona firm Scytl to build the system, then consulted with outside security experts and KPMG to audit the system, and then announced a bug-bounty program that would allow people who promised to only disclose defects on Swiss Post's terms to look at some of the source code.This kind of bug bounty is pretty common, and firms like to assert that they can be trusted to be responsible stewards of bad news about their own products and should have the right to decide who can make truthful disclosures about their mistakes and the defects in their offerings. During the fight over DRM standardization for browsers at the W3C, we pointed out that one side-effect of adding DRM to browsers would be that browser vendors and media companies would acquire a new right to silence security researchers who wanted to make factual statements about security defects in their products. At first, the commercial members and browser vendors denied that this was the case, but eventually they decided that it was true, and that this was a feature, not a bug, and set about trying to craft rules for when it would be OK for companies to decide that users couldn't know about defects in their products. Read the rest

As Theresa May continues to pilot the United Kingdom toward a catastrophic, epochal collision with the Brexit iceberg -- even as her ministers are busy slashing every available lifeboat -- Politics Joe have released a flat-out brilliant video casting the PM and her Minister for Ghastly Cosplay Jacob Rees-Mogg (that is, "Snoop Mogg") as the stars of a very Brexit version of Straight Outta Compton.Straight outta the Commons... it’s Still M.A.Y. (featuring Snoop Mogg) pic.twitter.com/JVgFH681lo— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) March 12, 2019 Read the rest

63Red Safe is an app affiliated with 63red, a far-right news site, that is a sort of Green Book for racists, identifying restaurants and other establishments that will serve people sporting MAGA hats and other modern Klan-hood-alikes without calling them out on their overt racist symbology.63Red Safe's developers made a string of amateurish, catastrophic errors in designing the app, leaving plaintext passwords and logins in plain sight and failing to authenticate the API, which allowed attackers to spoof any user, as well as retrieving sensitive user information about every user on the service.The defects were revealed in French security researcher Elliot Alderson's Twitter thread.In response, 63Red's owner, Scott Wallace, downplayed the seriousness of the defects in his product and announced in classic internet tough guy style that he had notified the FBI.63Red Safe is an app for far-right snowflakes who can't bear to be challenged on their political beliefs. It catalogs business establishments where pistols can be openly carried, where customers are not mocked or questioned for wearing far-right and neofascist garb, and whose owners do not talk about politics in ads and social media.Wallace's response was not magnanimous: "No lost passwords, no breach of database, no data changed, minor problem fixed. We're angry by the attempt, FBI notified," Wallace posted to Twitter, along with a link to a Medium post in which he stated: We see this person's illegal and failed attempts to access our database servers as a politically motivated attack, and will be reporting it to the FBI later today. Read the rest

On July 16, 1945, US Army detonated the first nuclear weapon in New Mexico's Jornada del Muerto desert. Codenamed Trinity, the test was part of the Manhattan Project. Three weeks later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the Atom Central page about Trinity:The bomb was detonated, producing an intense flash and a fireball that expanded to 600 meters in two seconds. The explosive power was equivalent to 18.6 kilotons of TNT. It grew to a height of more than 12 kilometers, boiling up in the shape of a mushroom. Forty seconds later, the blast of air from the bomb reached the observation bunkers, along with a long and deafening roar of sound. About this footage:Original Trinity Footage restoration includes removing dirt and scratches and minimizing some defects in the processing of the original negative. Three shots include a wide shot, a medium shot and a close up.Previously: "Nuclear explosion porn: watch newly declassified 1950s-1960s nuke test films" Read the rest