Boing Boing

New studies seem to support that very short, intense cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may be as helpful as traditional CBT treatment schedules in helping kids with anxiety disorders like OCD. And when I say short, I'm talking about three hours of treatment for phobias and four days of therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder. According to a meta-analysis by Thomas Ollendick, director of Virgina Tech's Child Study Center, and Stockholm University professor emeritus Lars-Göran Öst, as described in Scientific American, "with the quicker therapies, 54 percent of patients were better immediately post-treatment, and that rose to 64 percent on follow-up—presumably because they continued to practice and apply what they had learned. With standard therapy, 57 percent were better after the final session and 63 percent on follow-up." I'm sure mileage varies tremendously between individuals but cognitive behavioral therapy absolutely works and if there's a more efficient way for kids (and adults) to learn the techniques and then actually use them to get relief, that's fantastic news. From Scientific American:The details vary, but the quick treatments have some common features. They generally begin with “psychoeducation,” in which patients learn about their condition and the catastrophic thoughts that keep it locked in place. In Bergen, this is done in a small group. With children, the lessons may be more hands-on and concrete. For instance, Ollendick might help a snake-phobic kid grasp why the creature moves in a creepy, slithering way by having the child lie on the floor and try to go forward without using any limbs. Read the rest

Fernando and Fabrício are identical twin men from Brazil. Neither will admit to being the father of a baby girl, so a court told them they both must pay child support.From BBC:Each man will have to pay 230 reais; ($60; £45) a month, or 30% of the minimum salary in Brazil, as maintenance.This means the girl will get twice as much as other children from the same economic background in Brazil.Judge Filipe Luís Peruca, in the central state of Goiás, also ruled that the names of both men would be on the girl's birth certificate.Image: iofoto/Shutterstock Read the rest

This is super important. A key House committee is voting on the Save the Internet Act RIGHT NOW and we need Congress to know that the whole Internet is watching.Watch live video from Fight_for_the_Future on www.twitch.tvClick here to tell your lawmakers to pass the Save the Internet Act with no bad amendments.Unfortunately, telecom lobbyists have been working around the clock to try to derail the bill. Their main strategy right now is to punch it full of holes with bad amendments. So be sure to tell your rep to vote for a clean bill and oppose amendments that weaken it.Taking action takes just a minute or two and it makes a huge difference.The vote is imminent and we can’t afford to lose this one! If we pass the bill through the committee it will likely get a vote on the House floor next week. But if the bill is gutted through hostile amendments, then we’re back to square one. Read the rest

Two drivers in LA's Koreatown decided they wanted the same parking spot on the street and they refused to budge their cars for OVER AN HOUR. They blocked traffic, causing a safety hazard. @Mrhflrs caught the action from her second-floor window and posted an epic and hilarious Twitter thread with videos:Thread by @Mrhflrs: "Parking in Koreatown, Los Angeles. A thread: Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedde […]" #TEAMBLACKCARImage: Twitter Read the rest

Pyramid schemes are the perpetual motion machines of the business world. They seem like they just might work until you do the math. Don't be a sucker. Read the rest

Scientists have identified what is likely one of the world's tallest trees, a 330.7-foot (100.8 meter) yellow meranti tree in the rainforest on the island of Borneo. They spotted the tree growing in the Malaysian state of Sabah during an aerial laser scan of the forest. The rainforest is protected yet Yellow meranti trees are are highly endangered because they're relentlessly chopped down in other parts of Borneo for construction use. To accurately measure the tree, arborist Unding Jami of the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership climbed it with a tape measure in hand. From National Geographic:What was it like to climb?I knew it would feel very exposed [to climb], like you are just hanging in the air. There were really strong winds and a Colugo (flying lemur) nest! It was flying all around as we were trying to shoot the line up into the tree.It took me 15 attempts to shoot that line 86 meters (282 feet) up to the lowermost branches. Honestly, I almost gave up. We were so lucky to be able to finally shoot the rope over the lower branch.Once we had the rope up I took nearly an hour to climb up to 86 meters. And then another two hours from there to get to the top to take the final measurement. That last two hours the wind was very strong, and it rained, which slowed me down...It’s not easy work to do. I climb up slowly, checking the trunk every meter for centipedes, snakes, and things. Read the rest

This video reminds me of deer who lock antlers when they fight.Guy doesn’t want his car towed from r/PublicFreakoutAccording to HuffPost, this happened in 2018. The pickup was being repossessed because the owner failed to make payments. The driver was arrested and "charged with grand theft and criminal mischief."Image: Reddit Read the rest

In this wonderful video, Ben Burtt, sound designer for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, reveals the secrets behind the fantastic zaps, beeps, and growls in that first film in the series. His first task was to figure out Chewbacca's voice that, ultimately, came from a pet bear on a farm in Tehachapi, California.Also, I distinctly remember when I was a kid hearing for the first time that Burt discovered the blaster sound during a hike when he accidentally banged his backpack on a guy-wire anchoring a radio tower. After I learned that, I hammered on any guy-wire I came across for at least a week. Read the rest

Eva Galperin is one of my colleagues at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, running our Threat Lab project, where she has made it her personal mission to eradicate stalkerware: malicious software marketed to abusive spouses, overbearing parents, and creepy employers, which runs hidden on mobile devices and allows its owner to spy on everything his target is doing ("Full access to someone’s phone is essentially full access to someone’s mind" -Eva).Eva's project is already bearing fruit: she's about to give a major talk at Singapore's Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit where she's shaming antivirus and security companies for their refusal to grapple seriously with stalkerware (for example, mobile anti-virus tools sometimes flag stalkerware, but confusingly label it as "not a virus"). Ahead of her talk, Kaspersky has already announced that it will change the way it handles stalkerware warnings.Eva's also responsible for a major outreach effort to survivors of stalkerware: she's followed up with the respondents to an open call for stories of suspicious, stalkerware-like events in the lives of survivors of domestic abuse, intervening with tech companies, finding lawyers, and sitting with them, "holding their hand and telling them everything will be OK."Andy Greenberg's Wired profile of Eva gives a great peek into the kinds of extraordinary people I'm privileged to work with at EFF, and a sense of just how excellent Eva is, personally."The stories don't start with 'my phone is acting weird,'" says Dave Maass, another staffer for EFF's Threat Lab, who at one point helped Galperin sort through the flood of requests. Read the rest

For many years, we've celebrated Tokyoflash's glorious and impractical contributions to horology: the company has set itself on a long path to imagine what a watch can be in an era where we all have unbelievably precise, self-setting timepieces in our pockets at all times, playfully experimenting with what a watchface can do while still telling the time (nominally, at least!).I love their latest watch: the $189 PSI Pressure Gauge Watch features a medium-large-sized bezel with lovely curves, a spare and austere industrial face, and a little mechanical animation that it plays when you ask it for the time, sweeping a single "needle" around the face three times: first for hours and then twice more for minutes.The watch comes in black or white and a choice of leather or nylon straps. Read the rest

The bitter, yearslong debate at the World Wide Web Consortium over a proposal to standardize DRM for web browsers included frequent assurances by the pro-DRM side (notably Google, whose Widevine DRM was in line to be the principal beneficiary) that this wouldn't affect the ability of free/open source authors to implement the standard.The absurd figleaf used to justify this was a reference implementation of EME in open source that only worked on video that didn't have the DRM turned on. The only people this impressed were people who weren't paying attention or lacked the technical depth to understand that a tool that only works under conditions that are never seen in the real world was irrelevant to real-world conditions.Now the real world has arrived, and it was just as predicted. Samuel Maddock is a free software developer who is creating a new browser called Metastream, derived from Chromium, the free/open version of Google's Chrome. Metastream is designed to allow users to "playback videos on the web, synchronized with other peers." This is obviously not a copyright violation of any kind. Metastream allows users to stream copies of videos they are allowed to see, but synchronizes playback so they can watch them together. In an age of Twitch, this is obviously useful (also: it's something I personally ghost-wrote in to the BBC's 2006 Charter Renewal document as a favor to one of the people involved, so it's something that major rightsholder groups like the idea of, too).Maddock wanted to allow his users to do this with the videos they pay to watch on Widevine-restricted services like Hulu and Netflix, so he applied to Google for a license to implement Widevine in his browser. Read the rest

"It should be up to a judge — not the President or his political appointee — to decide whether or not it is appropriate for the committee to review the complete record." — House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler

Yujing Zhang hacked her way into Donald Trump's private Florida club Mar-A-Lago with social engineering skills any self-respecting DEFCON or HOPE attendee would recognize. Federal prosecutors allege in court documents the 32 year old Chinese woman lied to Secret Service agents, and told them she was a club member going to the pool.According to the feds, at the moment she was lying to Secret Service agents, Yujing Zhang was carrying on her person:• Two Chinese passports• Four (4!) cellphones• One laptop• One external hard drive• One USB thumb drive containing malware.• She had no swimsuit.The Secret Service agents apparently believed her. She briefly gained access to the club during the President's visit there this weekend. From the Associated Press:Agents say she wasn’t on the membership list, but a club manager thought Zhang was the daughter of a member. Agents say that when they asked Zhang if the member was her father, she did not answer definitively but they thought it might be a language barrier and admitted her.Zhang’s story changed when she got inside, agents say, telling a front desk receptionist she was there to attend the United Nations Chinese American Association event scheduled for that evening. No such event was scheduled and agents were summoned.Agent Samuel Ivanovich wrote in court documents that Zhang told him that she was there for the Chinese American event and had come early to familiarize herself with the club and take photos, again contradicting what she had said at the checkpoint. Read the rest

So serious. I can't find a legit upload on YouTube, so expect the embed above to vanish. Here's the official Tweet:Put on a happy face. #JokerMovie - in theaters October 4. pic.twitter.com/TxF3Jqxjjr— Joker Movie (@jokermovie) April 3, 2019I'm warming to it; naturalism is truly the an antidote to the last one, and he's such a good actor. Read the rest

The months of debate over Article 13 of the new EU Copyright Directive (passed in a tragicomedy of errors when some MEPs got confused and pushed the wrong buttons), the most contentious issue was whether the rule would require online service providers to spend millions on copyright filters, which are known to be error-prone and the source of mountains of algorithmic censorship, as well as being easily abused by would-be censors who can make false copyright claims with impunity and use them to prevent images, videos, sounds and words from ever appearing on the internet.Now that the Directive has passed (barring a final formality: it still needs to be approved by the Council, whose members represent EU member-states), the critics are vindicated. It definitely requires filters.Duh.For example, the German negotiators who backed Article 13 said that the German version of the Directive would do away with filters and substitute some kind of copyright licensing system for them (this was a frequent argument made by people who insisted that filters would not be necessary). ButGunther Oettinger, the EU Commissioner who led the charge for the Directive, has now admitted that this will not work: "I am convinced that the guideline sets relatively clear guidelines. As things stand, upload filters can not be completely avoided." And then there's France, whose negotiators were so eager to see the Directive passed with Article 13 intact that they dropped their opposition to a Russian gas pipeline to get Germany to go along with it. Read the rest

This might be the best trailer I have ever seen in my life.Is this teaser trailer for JOKER available as a vape? I want to inhale it nonstop until the movie comes out in October. Good Lord this is a perfect trailer. SO GOOD. So Travis Bickle. Right: Taxi DriverLeft: #Joker Joaquin Phoenix going full Travis Bickle. https://t.co/cLIHJ0klWB pic.twitter.com/AZsKw1p0Nn— Zack Sharf (@ZSharf) April 3, 2019JOKER - In Theaters October 4.Trailer Link.Put on a happy face. #JokerMovie - in theaters October 4. pic.twitter.com/TxF3Jqxjjr— Joker Movie (@jokermovie) April 3, 2019The many faces of Joaquin Phoenix's #Joker. The first trailer has arrived and it does not disappoint. Watch now: https://t.co/sVsKlukXVa pic.twitter.com/Bo7mL7n3LD— IndieWire (@IndieWire) April 3, 2019Joaquin Phoenix suffering for his art #SAGStuntEnsemble #Oscar #BestActor pic.twitter.com/nADlwamwCS— Matt Neglia (@NextBestPicture) April 3, 2019 Read the rest

I'm not even a knowledgeable layperson when it comes to storage technology, but I enjoyed reading Chris Siebenmann's post about how m.2 solid-state drives became standard. Just three years ago, it seems, people in the know expected another standard, u.2, to replace the aging SATA hookups anyone who built a PC in the 21st century will know well. But m.2. won, at least with consumers. Pictured above is a photo of an m.2 SSD resting on top of a u.2. SSD, from PCPer.Technology change and failed standards are not exactly new to the PC world, but for me this is still an interesting and impressive example of it in action. U.2 was the obvious thing in the middle of 2015, and then two years later it had just disappeared completely. ... While U.2 theoretically makes it easier to have larger NVMe SSDs, my impression is that in the consumer market the largest limiting factor on SSD sizes is how much people have been willing to pay for them. This certainly is the case for me.He lays out some of the m.2 advantages, such as compatibility with SATA and laptop-friendliness, but the thing that strikes me is how incomprehensible it is to some that m.2 won out. Siebenman links to u.2.'s wikipedia article. The article includes a "comparison to m.2" section that sounds like it's about to burst into tears...... and yet to me it's obvious. Why would anyone prefer a bulky, case-bound SSD with thick double-decker connectors and annoying rubbery cables over one that looks just like a wee stick of RAM — and slots right into the motherboard in similarly convenient fashion? Read the rest

Facebook is asking new users to give it the passwords to their email accounts as the price of entry, reports The Daily Beast.Facebook users are being interrupted by an interstitial demanding they provide the password for the email account they gave to Facebook when signing up. “To continue using Facebook, you’ll need to confirm your email,” the message demands. “Since you signed up with [email address], you can do that automatically …”A form below the message asked for the users’ “email password.”“That’s beyond sketchy,” security consultant Jake Williams told the Daily Beast. “They should not be taking your password or handling your password in the background. If that’s what’s required to sign up with Facebook, you’re better off not being on Facebook.”At this point, the most unsettling thing about Facebook is that it keeps churning out the apologies and promises as it descends to abuses that would have seems impossible to get away with even a few years ago. It's a wolf with a tiny, creepy sheep mask balanced on its snout that far too many journalists feel bound to respect. One of the most nauseating things online is writers who are scathing about Facebook on social media but whose published journalism takes everything it says in steeple-fingered good faith. Twitter, the bar next to the public defenders' office. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Li'l William Barr issues his classroom book reports, and lawyers up his summaries

What's an outlaw comic? Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg attempt to answer that question as they examine this misunderstood comic book subgenre. Outlaws comics are a strain of offensive, ink-drenched, violence-soaked indie comics began to spread through the direct market in the 80s and 90s. These comics featured nightmarish visions of graphic torment far beyond the vanilla, Comics-Code-approved 4-color fantasies. Welcome to comic book hell!SUPPLEMENTAL LINKS:Ed and Jim highlight Bootleg Comics Tim VigilFaust 1Faust Love of the Damned movie trailerBenjamin MarraTerror AssaulterAmerican BloodTraditional Comics ad Lawrence HubbardReal Deal ComixJason KarnsFukitorHart D. Fisher Boneyard Press ad:Subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel.Cartoonist Kayfabe merchandise available at our Spreadshop Read the rest

Starting in 1974, illustrator Marilyn Church has spent her workdays in court. Church is a courtroom artist who masterfully captures the intensity, drama, and strangeness of high profile proceedings involving John Gotti, Martha Stewart, OJ Simpson, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, and even Donald Trump. From an interview with Church in Topic:How and when did you begin working as a courtroom artist?It was 1974. I had been doing fashion illustration, which is really based on drawing gestures and being very quick to get everything down.I had a lawyer friend who was covering a big case, and he told me that there were these artists, hired by television channels, sitting there drawing in court. I was not really a television watcher, so this was a revelation to me. So I turned on a news program and it was the first time I saw a courtroom drawing on television. I was so thrilled to see it, because I can remember seeing drawings in Life magazine when I was young, courtroom drawings, and thinking, God, how exciting. An artist can sit in court, draw some life, and watch these amazing cases happen.So, right away I just thought, I can do that. I know I can do that. I showed up in court the next day. You were in the courtroom with Donald Trump a couple of times—for the 1986 USFL v. NFL case, and also his 1992 divorce from Ivana. Can you tell me a little bit about the experience of drawing Trump? Read the rest

Mitch Wagner attended an Intel press and analyst event today where he spotted these notices "posted discreetly in a couple of places on the walls": at first glance, they seem like your garden-variety abusive bullshit release ("Abandon hope all ye who enter here") but there's a decidedly Vessel-esque clause that seems to be saying that Intel claims the copyright in any photo or video in which any of the event appears, even "distorted in character or form, throughout the world, in all media now known or hereafter invented." This is some next-level bullshit. Read the rest

Patagonia's iconic "power vest" is a favorite for co-branded company swag, but the company has quietly enacted a new policy that shuts out h oil, drilling, dam construction, etc. companies" as well as some "financial institutions" on the grounds that they are "environmentally damaging."Instead, the company is partnering with mission-oriented B-corps, and companies engaged in "outdoor sports that are relevant to the gear we design, regenerative organic farming, and environmental activism."Patagonia has become explicitly political in the years since the Trump election, backing an organization whose mission is to defend public lands with the fervor of the NRA. The company has always advocated for democratic fundamentals, giving employees the day off on election days.Kim, president of the communications agency Vested (the reference is to the finance term, not the sleeveless layer), attempted to place an order for a client, something her firm had done in the past through a reseller for Patagonia’s corporate sales.But she got back a rejection email from the reseller saying, “Patagonia has nothing against your client or the finance industry, it’s just not an area they are currently marketing through our co-brand division. While they have co-branded here in the past, the brand is really focused right now on only co-branding with a small collection of like-minded and brand aligned areas; outdoor sports that are relevant to the gear we design, regenerative organic farming, and environmental activism.” Patagonia, the person said, is “reluctant to co-brand with oil, drilling, dam construction, etc. Read the rest

Wholesome content to brighten up your internet right here.Get a load of this adorable dog having a happy dream.What's he dreaming about?My dogs do this, too. I love it so much.Happy dreams Read the rest

Just as pretty much everyone predicted, one week after Facebook made a big deal of banning white nationalist and white separatist content on its platform.... Facebook now says a viral video on its site which is obviously and explicitly white supremacist and toxic does not break Facebook's new policy. It's explicitly white supremacist content. No, this does not make any sense. Welcome to 2019.“HuffPost showed the company a racist, fear-mongering video by Faith Goldy. Not a problem, a spokesperson said.”From Huffington Post's Andy Campbell [Twitter]:Now it’s unclear what that new policy actually means, if anything. On Tuesday, HuffPost showed a Facebook spokesperson a video on Facebook in which prominent Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy laments white “replacement” and demands that Jews and people of color repay the white European countries they’ve “invaded.” The spokesperson said that no policy had been broken, not even the social media giant’s new policy banning the promotion or praise of white nationalism.In a much-discussed move last week, Facebook had issued a statement declaring that its policies banning white supremacist ideology and hate groups weren’t enough. The company said it would add “praise or support for white nationalism and white separatism” to the list of things that violate its terms of service, and noted that those rules would extend to Instagram, which it owns.“We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and white separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism — things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity,” the company wrote in its March 27 press release. Read the rest

The action was brought in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, against DNI Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel, NSA Director Paul Nakasone, and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

“I cut people. I got a knife right in that pocketbook,” Carpenter said, gesturing toward her seat.

Joe Hughes found this long forgotten treasure of an old VHS video. It was filmed by his grandfather.This has been sitting in my Grandfathers VHS collection for decades, and I don't believe it has ever been shown to the publicWhen filming the "Jock! Start the Engine!" scene, the production of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark rented a plane from my Grandfathers neighbor (who was a good piloting friend as well). His family was there filming during the trip to Hawaii, and captured a lot of behind the scenes footage of the creation of the small moment. This upload is for educational purposes. It is amazing the ups and downs the whole process took, and it must have taken a very large budget for such a small moment. I will soon have a commentary track with my grandfather to provide more details. I mean really, they wrecked the plane and had to repair it. It's quite the story.Converted from original VHS by doily0 on Reddit if that works for proof. Read the rest

"The Comedian" is the first episode of Jordan Peele's long awaited, hotly anticipated reboot of "The Twilight Zone." Peele's reboot is perfect, absolutely faithful to Rod Serling's love of complexity, comeuppance, and ambiguity. Love this. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Following director Joseph Berlinger's Netflix docu-series "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," he brings us "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," a Ted Bundy biopic starring Zac Efron as the alluring and horrible serial killer. The story is apparently told from the viewpoint of Bundy's girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, played by Lily Collins.Coming to Netflix on May 3. Read the rest

The epic battle inside YouTube over content moderation and recommendation algorithms is detailed brilliantly in a damning new report from Mark Bergen at Bloomberg News.New story: I spent weeks talking to folks who've worked at YouTube (and Google) about how the company has wrestled with recommendations, conspiracy theories and radicalism. https://t.co/FHmpHPyaz3— Mark Bergen (@mhbergen) April 2, 2019Bottom line: YouTube failed to moderate extremely harmful content on its platform, and we are all paying the price. "Scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world’s largest video site surfaced and spread... Each time they got the same basic response: Don’t rock the boat."Executives sacrificed everything for engagement, allowing conspiracies and disinfo campaigns to spread, and killing proposals from workers that would have changed the technology that recommends these toxic videos, staff say.Excerpt:The conundrum isn’t just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube. The massive “library,” generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTube’s problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.Wojcicki and her deputies know this. In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world’s largest video site surfaced and spread. Read the rest

A collection of comics all-stars (including Scott Snyder, Kelly Thompson, David Lafuente, Ariela Kristiantina, Jamal Igle, Devin Grayson, Joe Keatinge, Doselle Young, Marguerite Sauvage, Ron Marz, Stuart Moore, Shannon Wheeler, Steven Grant, Roger Langridge, Matt Miner, Ray Fawkes, CW Cooke, Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil, Kelly Williams, Emma Beeby and more) come together for Every Day: An Anti-Gun Violence Comics Anthology to benefit The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Community Justice Reform Coalition; $10 gets you a digital download, $20 gets you a paperback, and if you're a retailer, there are bulk-buy packages so you can stock it in your store. (Thanks, Doselle!) Read the rest

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is now being investigated by the state prosecutor over questions of corruption surrounding sales of her self-published children’s book series, 'Healthy Holly.'JUST IN: Health insurer Kaiser Permanente paid Baltimore Mayor Pugh more than $100,000 for “Healthy Holly” books during a time when it sought a lucrative city contract. https://t.co/eziPrQrSkA— The Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) April 1, 2019"Kaiser Permanente paid Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh more than $100,000 to buy about 20,000 copies of her 'Healthy Holly' children’s books...when the company was seeking a lucrative contract to provide health benefits to city employees," according to The Baltimore Sun.UPDATED: Kaiser Permanente, Associated Black Charities paid Baltimore Mayor Pugh almost $200K for 'Healthy Holly' books In addition to the Kaiser payments, ABC solicited nearly $90K from multiple groups for books, most of which went to Pugh’s company:https://t.co/amUpah4WUW— Kevin Rector (@RectorSun) April 1, 2019Mayor Pugh “will be cooperating with that investigation to the fullest extent possible,” her attorney told The Baltimore Sun just now, in response to a query from a reporter about sales of Pugh's 'Healthy Holly' books to health insurer Kaiser Permanente and the nonprofit organization Associated Black Charities.“As this matter is now being investigated by the state prosecutor’s office, I am not in a position to comment,” her attorney replied.Excerpt:Republican Gov. Larry Hogan asked the state prosecutor, who investigates public corruption, on Monday to start an investigation of books the University of Maryland Medical System bought from Pugh while she was on its board. Read the rest

Vonda N McIntyre, author of the Hugo/Nebula/Locus-winning 1979 novel Dreamsnake, founder of the Clarion West Workshop, and icon of science fiction, has died of pancreatic cancer. She was 70. Vonda and I never really met, but we were on BBSes together in the 1980s and I later taught the Clarion West workshop she founded, and she has always been a significant presence in the field.Vonda was a stalwart of both the Seattle science fiction scene and the world of feminist science fiction and was a dear friend to people I really care about in both worlds; I want to extend my most sincere condolences to all of them, and to her family.There will be a memorial in Seattle with details to come. Vonda requested that "in lieu of flowers, people make memorial donations to one of their favorite charities."Here's some of her File 770 obit, by Tom Whitmore:McIntyre wrote novels, short stories and media tie-in books, edited a groundbreaking anthology of feminist SF, and founded the Clarion West Writing Workshop. She won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for her 1979 novel Dreamsnake, and won the Nebula again for her 1996 novel The Moon and the Sun. Her short stories were also nominated for awards. In media fiction, she will probably be most remembered as the author who gave Ensign Sulu a first name (Hikaru) in her Star Trek novel The Entropy Effect: that name was later written into one of the Star Trek films. With Susan Janice Anderson, McIntyre edited one of the first feminist science fiction anthologies (Aurora: Beyond Equality, 1976). Read the rest

Democrat Bill McLeod became a civil court judge in Harris County, TX less than three months ago. Then yesterday he accidentally resigned, thanks to a stupid online post he made, in which he announced his intention of running for state supreme court. The new judge apparently wasn't aware that the Texas constitution doesn't allow for such announcements from a judge and leads to automatic resignation.According to Reuters:Article 16, Section 65, of the state’s constitution says that a judge’s announcement of candidacy for another office “shall constitute an automatic resignation of the office then held.”The county attorney’s office will present the matter to county commissioners next Tuesday, First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard said in a phone interview on Tuesday. County commissioners, who can appoint replacements, may decide to keep McLeod in office until there is a special election, KHOU 11 reported. Read the rest

Numberphile takes a look at three interesting infinite series. The first is 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... which equals 2. The second is 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 ... which equals infinity. The third is 1 + (1/2) + (1/3) + (1/4)... which π/6 Read the rest

The host of a popular American television tabloid show will undergo surgery to remove thyroid cancer, spotted for the first time not by a doctor but by one of her regular viewers. "Inside Edition” anchor Deborah Norville says in the video above that she will soon have surgery to remove a cancerous nodule on her neck first noticed by a fan.“You know we live in a world of see something, say something. And I’m really glad we do," Norville says in the video, posted yesterday to the “Inside Edition” YouTube channel. “When you work on television, viewers comment on everything: your hair, your makeup, the dress you’re wearing. And a long time ago, an ‘Inside Edition’ viewer reached out to say she’d seen something on my neck. It was a lump."“The doctor says it’s a very localized form of cancer.” “Which tomorrow I’ll have surgery to have removed.”Norville says her oncologist has not recommended chemotherapy or radiation, “But I will have surgery and I’ll be away for a bit, so Diane [McInerney] will be holding down the fort.”Some 50,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with thyroid cancer each year. More at USA Today and New York Daily News. Read the rest

If you have an old PC or Mac machine, you can use CloudReady to run Chrome OS on it through a USB stick. It's basically like having a ChromeBook You can run thousands of Google Chrome apps on it, and watch all the streaming services. This video shows you how to do it. Read the rest

The inimitable Robert Smith on the red carpet following The Cure's induction last week into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Here's their performance: Read the rest

One lucky fellow flying from Lithuania to Italy had a Boeing 737-800 all to himself. A travel agency had bought up all the seats in the plane, thinking it would charter the plane for a group that was headed back to Italy. But only one man – Skirmantas Strimaitis – bought a ticket, according to Huffington Post.He had five crew members doting on him throughout the two hour flight, and all the room he wanted. As he told the Associated Press, it was “a once in the lifetime experience." He looks mighty happy in the Twitter pic below.Lithuanian Man Discovers He’s Lone Passenger On Huge Plane - VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — A Lithuanian man flying to Italy got a pleasant surprise when he boarded the plane: He was the only passenger on the Boeing 737-800.Skirmantas Strimaitis, who was flying from capital Vilnius... pic.twitter.com/4sC6bH7Try— effinfun (@effinfun) April 2, 2019Image: pxhere/CC0 Public Domain Read the rest

Indonesia government officials are shutting down tourist visits to Komodo Island for 2020 because smugglers are stealing the fantastic Komodo dragons and selling them on the black market. All next year, conservationists will focus on boosting the dragon population and habitat preservation. From CNN:Though plans to limit the number of Komodo visitors have been under discussion for months, Tempo reports the closure comes in response to the March bust of an alleged smuggling ring in which 41 Komodo lizards were taken from the island and sold abroad for 500 million rupiah each (about $35,000)...Part of the UNESCO-listed Komodo National Park, Komodo Island has grown increasingly popular in recent years thanks to the addition of new flights and hotels in the nearby town of Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores. The park currently receives an average of 10,000 visitors per month.According to UNESCO figures, there are more than 5,000 dragons spread across the national park's islands of Komodo, Rinca, Gili Motong and some coastal regions of western and northern Flores.(image: UNESCO) Read the rest

In 1979, the USS Enterprise flew onto the big screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Without giving away too much of the plot, NASA's Voyager probes, launched in 1977, featured prominently in the film. Of course, the Voyager probes carry the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials that my friends Timothy Daly, Lawrence Azerrad, and I released on vinyl for the first time as a lavish box set.While the Voyager Record isn't mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I was still delighted when my old pal Ariel Waldman invited me on to her wonderful talk show Offworld, on Adam Savage's Tested channel, to talk about Voyager, the Golden Record, and the heady, awkward, and pretty great Star Trek: The Motion Picture! Even more exciting is that the other guest was Frank Drake, father of the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the technical director of the original Voyager Golden Record! Far out.The Voyager Golden Record 3xLP Vinyl Box Set and 2xCD-Book edition is available from Ozma Records.Below: Frank and I scrying with his original copy of the Voyager Record cover. Read the rest

Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn't making enough money, so they're shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1.Customers will receive refunds.This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years, thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own those books.When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn't get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid. People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon's Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job. Read the rest

At the end of 2019 first quarter fundraising for his campaign, would-be Democratic Party 2020 Presidential nominee Bernie Sanders has raised $18.2 million from 525,000 small-money donors (I'm one of them; I also gave to the Elizabeth Warren campaign).The average donation was $20.Sanders is the fundraising frontrunner, beating out Kamala Harris ($12m) and Pete Buttigieg ($7m) (Beto O'Rourke's campaign has not released its totals yet).Sanders' campaign said the makeup of their donors puts the Vermont independent in a good position to continue raking in contributions as the campaign heats up and they begin to set down stakes in new states. Shakir reported that 88% of the total came from donations of $200 or less and that 99.5% of donations were for $100 or less. The majority of donors were young, he said, and that the occupation most likely to give were teachers.Bernie Sanders raises $18.2 million during first 41 days of his 2020 campaign [Gregory Krieg and Fredreka Schouten/CNN](Image: Gage Skidmore) Read the rest

LEGO has released a wonderful diorama of the San Francisco skyline!Sadly, the San Francisco skyline is now dominated by the giant Salesforce tower, atleast until the Millenium tower falls into it.LEGO Architecture Skyline Collection 21043 San Francisco Building Kit , New 2019 (565 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest

The 2019 Hugo Award nominees have been announced; the Hugos will be presented this summer at the 2019 World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland.Normally, I find that I've read and reviewed a huge slice of the year's finalists, but this year is different; I've done a lot less reading lately, partly because I wrote two books in 2018 and partly because the new EU Copyright Directive ate my life for about 10 months in the past year.I was a little sad to be so far behind the curve when I saw the new list, but then I realized that this meant that I had a bunch of really exciting books to add to my to-be-read pile!One notable inclusion: the Archive of Our Own fanfic archive -- a project of the Organization for Transformative Works (for whose advisory board I volunteer) -- is up for "Best Related Work."Congrats to all the nominees!Best Novel* The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)* Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)* Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)* Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)* Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)* Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga)Best Novella* Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)* Beneath the Sugar Sky, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)* Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)* The Black God’s Drums, by P. Read the rest

The Soviet Synthpop Alliance is jam-packed with music that sounds familiar but isn't.The video is just too awesome.(Thanks, Charlie!) Read the rest

When you've got somewhere to go, but someone's in your way waiting for a parking spot to clear, what can you do about it? If you're a traffic cop with the NYPD and answerable to no-one, this is what you do: ram them.An NYPD spokesperson said the traffic supervisor appeared disoriented and was taken to a hospital for evaluation. Police sources say he was not intoxicated.The owner of the parked truck said he doesn't believe the incident was the result of a medical episode.The incident remains under internal review. So far no charges have been filed. Read the rest

Color Splash is an "automated AI enabled room painting technology" — which is to say, they gave a bot a bucket of paint and arms to throw it. I want one! Read the rest

Martin Shkreli, infamous for hiking the prices of life-saving drugs and jailed on unrelated fraud charges, is in solitary confinement. The Wall Street Journal reported that he was running businessess from inside using a contraband phone.One source close to Shkreli’s legal team said the fraudster was in the special housing unit (SHU) a week and a half after the article was published on March 7, but the source had not received an update on his status. But according to Justin Liverman, a fellow inmate and ex-member of notorious hacker crew Crackas With Attitude, Shkreli was indeed put in solitary and was still there as of Sunday. “Martin is in the SHU,” Liverman told Forbes.According to the Journal, Shkreli was operating his business, Phoenixus AG, via a cellphone. The company appears to be a reincarnation of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, which jacked up the prices of rare drugs to the fury of patients, doctors and insurers. In one of the worst examples, Turing increased the cost of a pill for patients with HIV/AIDS from $13.50 to $750. Read the rest