Yahoo News' Adriana Belmonte reports on the fastest-growing jobs in America.Construction and extraction jobs are in high demand in the U.S., along with installation, maintenance, and repair services. Production jobs are also quickly developing, as are mathematical and technology-focused occupations. Read the rest

The Takeout methodically calculated the amount of time fresh McDonalds fries last before they become "inedible." The answer is 18 minutes, but in science, the journey is the destination. [via MeFi] Read the rest

Happy Safer Internet Day! Not so much a holiday as a day to look over our shoulder and remember that more than ever, the anonymity and freedom the internet once took for granted is under attack. Whether you're worried about hackers, malware, or just the steadily increasing access big companies have to your online persona, the time has never been better to hop on a virtual private network. And just for the occasion, you might want to take a look at Disconnect VPN.Don't take our word for it - the service already has kudos from the likes of Tom's Guide and the New York Times for its rock-solid encryption. You can ignore international restrictions thanks to Disconnect's global network of servers, and do it up to 44% faster. It's easy to use, but there's plenty of security at work while you surf, including an embedded malware and tracking blocker that you can use on up to three devices.A three-year premium subscription to Disconnect VPN is already sale priced at $29, but you can take an additional 15% off that price for Safer Internet Day by using the online code DATAPRIVACY15. Read the rest

In 1955, aliens from the planet Clarion contacted a Chicago housewife to warn her that the end of the world was imminent. Psychologist Leon Festinger saw this as a unique opportunity to test a new theory about human cognition. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow him inside a UFO religion as it approaches the apocalypse.We'll also try to determine when exactly LBJ became president and puzzle over some wet streets.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

“This was premeditated murder. People inside are genuinely scared."

Amazon is offering an unusually low price on the Anker's PowerCore II 10000 Ultra Slim Power Bank. I have a number of different Anker chargers and they have performed well for years. This one is 1000 mAh, which is enough to recharge most smartphones about 3 times. Read the rest

They're just gonna drill everything they can while Trump's in power, aren't they.Donald Trump tweeted on Monday, “David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!” David Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist, will be the next head of the U.S. Department of the Interior, assuming Trump has his way.I am pleased to announce that David Bernhardt, Acting Secretary of the Interior, will be nominated as Secretary of the Interior. David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2019From the NYT:While Mr. Zinke had been the public face of some of the largest rollbacks of public-land protections in the nation’s history, Mr. Bernhardt was the one quietly pulling the levers to carry them out, opening millions of acres of public land and water to oil, gas and coal companies. He is described by allies and opponents alike as having played a crucial role in advancing what Mr. Trump has described as an “energy dominance” agenda for the country.“Bernhardt has really been running the show, directing the policy shop in a very strong way,” said Mark Squillace, an expert on environmental law at the University of Colorado Law School.Echoing a frequent critique of Mr. Bernhardt, Mr. Squillace emphasized that the former energy lobbyist and lawyer, if confirmed by the Senate, would have broad authority to shape rules that affect his former clients. Read the rest

The attorney for detained performing artist 21 Savage blasts ICE in a statement the day after his client was arrested: "This is a civil law violation, and the continued detention of Mr. Abraham-Joseph serves no other purpose than to unnecessarily punish him and try to intimidate him into giving up his right to fight to remain in the US."21 Savage is also known as Sha Yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph. He was arrested Sunday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after ICE was informed (wonder by who?) the artist is from the UK, and has been staying in the country with an expired visa.He is now in “removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts,” ICE told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Official statement from @21Savage's immigration attorney @ckuck. Please RT to get the actual facts out about She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph's case. #Free21Savage https://t.co/5kpQDvFNJs— Alida Garcia (@leedsgarcia) February 4, 2019Ella Torres at NY Daily News writes,The lawyer for 21 Savage blasted ICE following the arrest of the rapper, calling his detainment a “civil law violation” solely meant to “unnecessarily punish him and try to intimidate him.”“ICE has not charged Mr. Abraham-Joseph with any crime. As a minor, his family overstayed their work visas, and he, like almost two million other children, was left without legal status through no fault of his own,” Charles H. Kuck said Monday in a statement.Kuck also noted that 21 Savage, whose real name is She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, “never hid his immigration status from the US government.”The Atlanta-based rapper allegedly has a pending U-Visa application, eligible for people who have been the victim of a crime. Read the rest

I've written about the 11foot8 bridge (aka the Can-Opener) quite a few times here on Boing Boing. Located in Durham, North Carolina, it's a 79-year-old railroad bridge that has a lower clearance than the height of many common commercial trucks. It's scraped the top off of 139 trucks since 2008, the year that Jürgen Henn installed a video camera to record the crashes.Jürgen posted the first crash of 2019 on his YouTube channel:During the first 40 seconds, you can see that the traffic light switches to red and the overheight warning sign lights up (triggered by the overheight truck). Then the sign starts flashing and the traffic signal switches to green. The truck driver had about 50 seconds to notice the warning sign next to the traffic signal and to decide whether or not to heed the warning. As many before, this driver decided to go for it. As he is backing out of the bridge, he backs into a car behind him.Image: yovo68/YouTube screengrab Read the rest

"After Gerry’s death, Quadriga’s inventory of cryptocurrency has become unavailable and some of it may be lost," said his widow.

On the 15th anniversary of Facebook's launch, Mark Zuckerberg says his company will spend more on safety and security in 2019 than the total amount of revenue his company had on hand at the date of its IPO. In a Facebook post today, Zuckerberg takes a swipe at America's technology journalists, and complains about news coverage in 2018 that was critical of Facebook.Here's Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook post.And below, journalists and observers calling him on his utter bullshit.fascinating pic.twitter.com/Kuh9GQgaos— Natalie Martinez (@natijomartinez) February 4, 2019This is madness.Mark Zuckerberg, his company credibly accused of compromising multiple democratic elections and abetting ethnic violence, dismisses criticism as people emphasizing the negative.Again, he needs to resign.https://t.co/lIvOw2c70s pic.twitter.com/rPUAVFOSU3— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) February 4, 2019Zuckerberg's TL;DR argument—"Facebook destroyed traditional news, so traditional news is now targeting Facebook"—evidences such a simple worldview.Reporters scrutinize FB because its our job to question power. And when you have 2.7 billion users, you have the power!— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) February 4, 2019This paragraph of Zuckerberg’s 15-year anniversary post is getting a lot of attention as seeming dismissive of legitimate criticism of Facebook raised by traditional institutions — problems $fb has since copped to & wouldn’t have without outside pressure. https://t.co/4XVCTcyG8c pic.twitter.com/nCcQ8JPU9X— Deepa Seetharaman (@dseetharaman) February 4, 2019Zuckerberg also continues a talking point that we've seen in speeches from Sheryl Sandberg that "some people" resisting change will "overly emphasize the negative."This is... wild. Dismissing valid criticisms (i.e. Read the rest

I've been reading a 1978 book called The Art of Problem Solving, by Russell L. Ackoff. (Used copies sell for $7 including shipping on Amazon). At the beginning of the book, Ackoff tells about the time his school-age daughter came home with a familiar puzzle. On a piece of paper, there are nine dots arranged in three rows of three, like this:The challenge is to put a pen on the paper and, without lifting the pen, draw four straight lines that go through all nine dots. You probably remember this puzzle, because it's been around for a long time. Ackoff remembered it, too, but he'd forgotten the solution. But he came up with another way to solve it. He folded the paper so two rows of dots touched each other and used a felt pen to draw through both rows with one stroke. Then he unfolded the paper and drew two more lines to cover the rest of the dots.When Ackoff's daughter went to school the next day, she started to show the teacher the solution her father came up with. As soon as she began folding the paper, the teacher stopped her and said she was not allowed to fold the paper, even though the instructions didn't say she couldn't."This is how creativity is suppressed, although usually not so overtly," writes Ackoff. "The teacher made it clear to her class that the objective of the assignment was not to find a solution to the problem, but to find the solution she knew and could pretend to have discovered on her own. Read the rest

Louis CK is in disgrace in so many ways, and while comedians have often found humor in shocking and sorrowful current events, the combination of CK's lack of credibility and the extraordinary tastelessness of his jokes about the activism of the survivors of the Parkland high school shooting are a bridge too far.In December, CK tried out some Parkland-related material in a set that leaked onstage: "You’re not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot. Why does that mean I have to listen to you? Why does that make you interesting? You didn’t get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I gotta listen to you talking?" Then, after a storm of public disapprobation, CK followed up in January with this joke: "If you ever need people to forget that you jerked off, what you do is you make a joke about kids that got shot."Manuel Oliver is the father of one of the students who was murdered at Stoneman Douglas High School. His son, Joaquin, was 17 when he died.In a promotion for Change the Ref, a nonprofit founding in Joaquin's memory to advocate for gun control, Manuel Oliver performs a set styled to look like the opening of CK's TV show "Louis," that responds with frankness and unflinching irony to CK's jokes. Hey, everybody, how’s it going tonight? Recently, I heard this great line from a comedian. He said, “If you want people to forget that you were jerking off, just make a joke about kids getting shot.” And I thought, “Jokes about kids getting shot? Read the rest

The federal appeals court in the DC circuit has overturned the FCC's decision to make it effectively impossible for people on tribal lands to make use of the federal "Lifeline} program that provides cheap broadband access to poor communities.The order to freeze Native Americans out of Lifeline was typical of the style of Donald Trump's FCC and its chairman, the ex-Verizon executive Ajit Pai, whose arrogant overreach and administrative incompetence means that, time and again, he does not dot the eyes and cross the tees that must be seen to in order to create binding policy. Instead, Pai has treated his ideology -- "corporate handouts and no regulation" -- as a kind of trump card, which he can lay down to effect whatever changes he wants in the administrative branch.But that's not how US law works. The administrative agencies are "expert agencies" and they have to show that they are soliciting expert, factual input to their rulemaking, and that the rules they arrive at reflect those facts. This process is far from perfect, and many's the administrative agency chair who's figured out how to stack the deck in their favor, but Pai doesn't stack the deck, he simply throws it away.This incompetence is his downfall. Because the FCC could not justify its decision on the basis of even flimsy or one-sided evidence, the court struck it down. Last week, the DC circuit heard an appeal of a case against the FCC that could reinstate Net Neutrality, and while the particulars differ, the shape of the case is the same: Ajit Pai didn't do the hard work, and tried to regulate like a monarch instead of a public servant, and so his order must not stand. Read the rest

Many of us have anecdotes by which we recall shedding bigoted beliefs or otherwise evolving beyond the shortcomings of youthful unreason. Liam Neeson's is, to put it mildly, in-character."I asked, did she know who it was? No. What colour were they? She said it was a black person. I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I'd be approached by somebody - I'm ashamed to say that - and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some 'black bastard' would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could kill him."*Liam, sat in darkness, picks up the phone*LIAM: Who is this.GRAVELLY VOICE: "I know who you are. I know what you want. If you are looking for a way out I can tell you you're going to need a lot of money, and what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a dream for people like you. If you keep your fucking mouth shut from now on that'll be the end of it. I will find you, I will look out for you and I will represent you as your crisis public relations consultant." Read the rest

Genius! A serving fork would be useful for taller frames.(Creative Ideas via Kottke) Read the rest

Punk legend and Boing Boing pal Bob Mould's new album Sunshine Rock is out this Friday, February 8. To tide you over, enjoy Bob's funny-'cause-it's-true music video for the track "Lost Faith.""There's a hint of migration, a dash of border security and a whisper of government surveillance, climaxing across the multicolored canvas of an abandoned NSA listening station perched atop the highest hill in Berlin," Bob told NPR. "But at the end of the day, it's a high-end music video for a catchy, inspirational, uplifting pop song."Directed and filmed by Philipp Virus; Filmed and edited by Mario Bergmann; Treatment by Bob Mould. Read the rest

MrConsumer specializes in spotting packaging tricks such as mouse print: small, low-contrast or otherwise obscured text designed to fool the consumer into thinking a product is something it ain't He spotted this very bland, normal looking bottle of olive oil at Target. It's just olive oil, right? It says right there that it's olive oil. Look closer, with a child's perfect eyes.So how does this company get away with a label so seemingly deceptive? No one had gone after them — until last month. A New York law firm just filed a class action lawsuit against the company alleging that its label is violating the deceptive practice consumer protection laws of all 50 states. Here's the class-action lawsuit filed against Iberia Foods, the company behind Sunflower Oil & Extra Virgin Olive Oil.The “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” is in conspicuous gold that is prominent to the eye. By contrast, the sunflower oil disclosure is in black typeset that b lends into the dark green background and will be readily missed once the more ostentatious olive oil disclosure catches the hurried shopper’s eyeIn any case, much supermarket olive oil is reportedly fake even when it's "honestly" labeled. Same with many other products marketed around a key ingredient. Read the rest

Ascii World isn't a 3D shader, nor is it is a graphical toy. It's a complete "isometric"-style game, like Monument Valley, that uses basic ASCII characters to draw (and define) all its forms and geometries. It's startlingly fresh, yet makes you wonder how much of it could be implemented on a Commodore PET. And it's maddeningly difficult! Read the rest

PNG, the classiest just-works web image format, offers unique opportunities for glitch art—all flowing from the fine details of its specification.PNG is a very simple format compared to JPEG or other new image formats. The filter algorithms are like toys, and its compression method is the same as oldschool Zip compression. However, this simple image format shows a surprisingly wide range of glitch variations. We would perhaps only need one example to explain a JPEG glitch, but we need many different types of samples in order to explain what a PNG glitch is.PNG was developed as an alternative format of GIF. However, when it comes to glitching, GIF is a format that is too poor to be compared with PNG. PNG has prepared surprisingly rich results that have been concealed by the checksum barrier for a long time. Mandatory: Read the rest

Over at Riff Magazine, my old pal David Gill looks back at the birth of distortion and its position as "central to rock and roll as the sex and the drugs." From Riff:In March 1951, a 19-year-old Ike Turner was recording his saxophonist Jackie Breston’s song “Rocket 88,” an ode to the Oldsmobile 88 (and later inspiration for Public Enemy’s “You’re Gonna Get Yours”). (Listen above.) Turner played his guitar loud, so loud, in fact, that his amplifier couldn’t handle it. The resulting distortion is the stuff of legend in the fable of rock and roll, giving voice to the intensity of the times.The 1950s in America were the best of times and the worst of times. A victory in World War II and the spoils that came with it led to a baby boom, sprawling suburbia, rising standards of living, and a new thriving middle class, while at the same time racism, sexism and economic exploitation lingered in this landscape of opportunity. America also clung to its puritanical origins, cultivating a Victoria-era disdain for exuberance and physicality into a repressed and buttoned-down society that mocked, scorned and punished deviation from the norm.As the 1950s progressed, the rising wave of progressive hedonism embodied by the new musical phenomenon of rock and roll crashed on the limitations of American culture. That tension is evident in Turner’s guitar tones, in its refusal to obey or to conform."Professor Music: Like ‘This is Spinal Tap,’ this column goes to 11" (Riff) Read the rest

Space owls. Read the rest

At the New York Times, Katie Rogers reports on the "mystery" of Trump's January tan. Spoiler: he uses creams or sprays, not tanning beds or other ultraviolet gadgets. Hence the revolting orangeness.“There have been enough people that have asked me in his orbit,” though not on the president’s behalf, to see what Mr. Trump could do to achieve a more even skin tone, Dr. Alster said. “I have nothing against self-action tanning creams, but I think you need to be careful about how you apply it.” ... He has complained that his skin and hair appear too yellow or orange on the screen, according to one person familiar with his views.As a result, events in the White House are now more dimly lit than in previous administrations. The president has also become a fan of natural light, like the setting of the White House Rose Garden, where Mr. Trump chose to announce the end of the government shutdown in 40-degree weather.Photo: Reuters Read the rest

A new report from Betterley Risk Consultants, shared with The Intercept, reveals that many of the world's largest insureres will no longer conside whole industries for "employment practices liability insurance" (EPLI), which covers liability from "sexual harassment, sex discrimination, and other employee claims."Ten of the 32 largest insurers will no longer write EPLI policies for financial firms (brokers, investment banks, VCs, etc); eight will no longer sell EPLI coverage to entertainment and media companies. Also blacklisted are law firms, car dealerships, and other industries where "superstars" or "celebrities" or "high-billing rainmakers" have historically been able to get away with bad behavior so long as they continued to perform for the firm.The blacklists mean that insurers that will extend coverage to the affected industry have a seller's market, with customers not able to shop around, and that means muchhigher prices and deductibles and lower caps on coverage; but more importantly, it requires that the companies seeking insurance demonstrate extensive institutional changes to minimize the risk of claims.Companies are being asked to undertake steps like contracting with "confidential outside service for employees to report complaints anonymously" and "circulating anti-harassment policies" and "setting up sexual harassment compliance programs."Insurance is one of the great, largely invisible levers for changing corporate behavior. Companies that can't get insurance face the threat of existential legal crises every day, and if their boards of directors and senior staff can't get coverage, the threat extends to them, personally, as well.But that doesn't mean that markets sort this stuff out automagically. Read the rest

Sukhe's plan for an "adminbook" is an audacious, well-developed plan for a laptop tailored to the needs of network administrators: small, intended for use in dark, cramped places, convertible into an external drive or display for headless systems or those needing their ROMs flashed, multilingual, with many options for I/O and power. It's also the kind of heroically ugly device that you get when functionalism is the sole consideration. Notwithstanding Don Norman's important thoughts on the importance of aesthetics to function, I flat-out love this thing. It's pretty much everything I loved about Thinkpads, and which Thinkpads have been steadily whittling away for a half-decade (my latest machine, a sixth-generation X1, is such a lemon that I'm actually on the verge of throwing it away, and if it wasn't for my allegiance to trackpoints I'd be considering one of those Linux-certified Dells).These are just renders; and Sukhe says that all the components fit -- in theory. But there's a lot of potential engineering snags on the road from render to production. Still, if these ever get crowdfunded, consider me an early backer.A quality keyboard is very important for me. “Quality” there means the fastest possible typing and hotkey speed. It needs to be so “matter-of-fact” I don’t have to think about it at all, as if it types seemingly by force of thought.This is possible if the keys are normal size and in their typical positions. But the adminbook is too small for that. In width, it is even smaller than the main block of keys of a desktop keyboard. Read the rest

Science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek's recent book The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin, is a secret history of women in science fiction, reframing the story of exclusion ("women weren't welcome in early sf writing circles") as one of erasure ("women made vital contributions to early science fiction, and these were systematically expunged from the record when the first wave of historical sf anthologies were published, as part of a backlash against first-wave feminism").Yaszek's work is very personal to me, dealing extensively with Judith Merrill, the great feminist sf writer, editor and critic, who was my mentor growing up in Toronto.In a new interview with the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast (MP3), Yaszek elaborates on her work and its ramifications for how we think about the story of the future.“[Campbell] was going on and on about how women can’t write science fiction, and [Merril] said, ‘Well, I bet I could write a science fiction story you’d buy,’ and he said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen,’ and she said, ‘I bet I could write a story you’ll buy, and you’ll beg me for more.’ … So she wrote [‘That Only a Mother’], and Campbell loved the story. He bought it from her, and he was like, ‘Oh my gosh. You were right, I was wrong. This is an amazing story. I want more from you.’ So she sent him her next story, which was a space colonization story—good standard science fiction fare—and he rejected it because he said, ‘There are no mothers in it. Read the rest

After announcing that, inevitably, it wasn't going to build an LCD factory in Wisconsin, and would instead use its $4.1 billion subsidy to build a modest R&D facility employing out-of-state skilled workers; Foxconn reversed itself and promised that the factory was back on.The factory is not back on.LCDs are pure commodities, among the lowest-margin components, and about to be made obsolete by OLEDs. There is zero business-case for building these outside of Asia-Pacific. It was a stunt, it was always a stunt, just like it was a stunt all the other times they did it.The reason for the announcement is that Donald Trump called them up and asked them to announce that the factory would be built. Donald Trump will be president for two or fewer years, during which time Foxconn can dither and dick around and do very little, and then they can announce that the factory is off. This news will be welcomed by Trump's successor, from either party, as a way to further discredit him.This is obvious to anyone except desperate cognitive-dissonance types wanting more than anything to believe that their white supremacist in the White House is an infallible god-king of negotiations.I mean, obviously.Wisconsin promised nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives to Foxconn if it invested $10 billion and created 13,000 jobs for the project, which Trump heralded last year as the "eighth wonder of the world."But Foxconn's repeated changes to its plans led critics of the project this week to accuse Foxconn of a "bait and switch."Foxconn says it will build Wisconsin factory after all, citing conversation with Trump [CBS] Read the rest

Anand Giridharadas is the Aspen Institute Fellow and former McKinsey consultant whose book Winners Take All is a must-read indictment of the way that charitable activities are used to launder the reputations of billionaires who have looted and boiled our planet, amassing titanic fortunes while starving the public coffers, and still retaining sterling reputations and massive influence thanks to the trickle of funds they release through "philanthropy."In a new Business Insider interview, Giridharadas reflects on Davos (see his remarks in advance of the event) where Bill Gates called him a communist and Tony Blair dismissed his critiques with a wave of his blood-stained hands.Giridharadas uses the interview as a way to distinguish between two kinds of intervention by the wealthy: on the one hand, you have those who seek to fix structural problems in the public sector through private means ("It would be weird if your approach to segregation in the 1940s in Alabama was to say, "Well, let's create some points of light. Let's create some white-owned restaurants that don't mind having black people, and we'll celebrate that, and we'll give them a certification, and we'll put them on magazines and on change-the-world lists. Let's celebrate the good."); and on the other you have the use of private wealth to right inequities in the public sector ("Carnegie built libraries privately in order to turn them into public libraries and create a habit of public libraries around this country, and on a scale that not even he could have afforded."). Read the rest

If the UK does not secure a Brexit deal, it will lose its export license for "millions of tonnes of waste," meaning that the British Isles will have to find somewhere to stockpile all that waste, with concomitant "odours" and "runoff of leachates, causing secondary pollution."But that's nothing compared to the problems generated once farmers can no longer export livestock to the EU, because "they may have problems with slurry storage capacity and insufficient land spreading capability." ("Slurry" is an industrial euphemism for "shit mixed with piss")It all comes from a UK Environment Agency email circulated to staff, seeking 42 "crisis management" volunteers to "deal with incidents."“If there is a no-deal scenario, the current export of waste may cease for a period. This could result in stockpiled waste which causes licence breaches,” the email said. “Odours will obviously be an issue as the stockpiled waste putrefies and there may be runoff of leachates, causing secondary pollution.”The email said the waste could become a high-profile issue. “It will quickly escalate into a political one because the operators will state that they have no means to move the waste.”The second example related to animal slurry. “Problems may arise in exporting livestock to the EU. In that situation, farmers may be overstocked and unable to export lamb/beef etc. That means that they may have problems with slurry storage capacity and insufficient land spreading capability.”The EA source said: “The examples seem like real possibilities. There’s a serious amount of panic going on.” Officials warn of putrefying piles of rubbish after no-deal Brexit [Damian Carrington/Guardian](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Bixentro, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

June Chikuma is the Japanese composer behind the beloved soundtracks to Nintendo’s Bomberman series and countless other videogame, TV, and film scores. Now, Chikuma's 1986 album "Divertimento" has been expanded into a new edition titled Les Archives, available from the Freedom To Spend label. The vinyl edition of Les Archives also includes a limited 7" with tunes from the era that didn't make the original Divertimento release. The above video, "June Rebuilds," was directed by Amanda Kramer and features the track "Broadcast Profanity Delay" from Les Archives. From the release announcement:While Freedom To Spend’s reinvented edition bares little visual evidence of its origins in the composer’s name, title, or sleeve design, the album, a whooping gonzo of synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and a mysterious string quartet, remains as vibrant now as it did when released on Toru Hatano’s Picture Label as Divertimento in 1986. In fact, the music of Les Archives now glows with a different purpose; one that revises the past while maintaining, and finally elevating, its hidden influence.A woman of multiple disciplines and identities, June Chikuma (竹間 淳, Chikuma Jun) has composed for TV, film, and video games over the past thirty plus years. Her proto-techno and drum and bass soundtracks for Nintendo’s Bomberman franchise in the 80s and 90s is an oeuvre unto itself. In more recent years her musical focus has turned toward classic Arabic and Egyptian music. Chikuma studies Arabic nay, playing and performing with Le Club Bachraf ensemble. In a melding of June’s contrasting, colorful worlds, Le Club Bachraf composed part of the original score for the 2007 video game Sonic and The Secret Rings. Read the rest

Gov. Ralph Northam (D)’s medical school yearbook page has a striking photo on it. 1984.The page is labeled Ralph Shearer Northam, along with pictures of him in a jacket and tie, casual clothes and alongside his restored Corvette.It shows two people, one in plaid pants, bow tie and black faced, and the other in full Klan robes. Both men appear to be holding beer cans.The person in black face is smiling. Beneath the photo is a writeup about Northam listing his alma mater, noting that his interest is pediatrics and giving a quote: “There are more old drunks than old doctors in this world so I think I’ll have another beer.” Read the rest

The Gerber Shard is a TSA safe multitool that I've been grateful to have on a number of occasions while traveling. It's only 3 inches long and weighs 1/3 of an ounce, so you won't notice it until you need it. Read the rest

I sometimes have to accept that an organization knows me as "Mark Frauenfeld" because it won't allow surnames longer than 10 characters. But having a truncated name is not nearly as annoying as being forced to add extra characters to a name just because a form won't process surnames less than 3 characters.Discrimination :( pic.twitter.com/C6n4arMbsV— Jane Hu (@hujane) January 27, 2019 Read the rest

Brandon Schaefer, creative director at Jump Cut, used six photos of Luke Skywalker at various stages of his life to illustrate the six stages of a designer. This could apply to a lot of occupations.Design School Freshman > Design School Graduate > Junior Designer > Senior Designer > Creative Director > Freelance Designer pic.twitter.com/dopxVrOi4M— Brandon Schaefer (@seekandspeak) January 30, 2019 Read the rest

Following protests against a neo-Nazi rally, the FBI opened a terrorism investigation into By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a civil rights group, conducting surveillance and citing the fact that a BAMN member had been stabbed by a neo-Nazi to justify it.The investigation is detailed in records retrieved through Freedom of Information Act requests by Property of the People (previously) and reported on by The Guardian's Sam Levin.The FBI was seeking to determine whether BAMN was engaged in a "conspiracy" to deprive the KKK of its "rights," and the Bureau helpfully noted that "the KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda."According to the files, the FBI's investigation was prompted by BAMN's advocacy against "police brutality" and "rape and sexual assault."Yesterday, news broke that the FBI had invented a fictitious pro-abortion extremist movement and warned law-enforcement of its domestic terror threat, despite the fact that there are zero verified killings or attempted killings by "pro-abortion extremists," while anti-abortion extremists have murdered, bombed, firebombed, maimed and threatened thousands of people.The FBI has a history of this kind of thing, helping white supremacists, right-wing terrorists, and other pro-establishment forces in America do battle against black and brown people, poor people, and anyone on the margins of US society.The 2016 rally was organized by two white supremacist groups: the Traditionalist Worker party (TWP) and an affiliated California entity, the Golden State Skinheads. California law enforcement subsequently worked with the neo-Nazis to identify counter-protesters, pursued charges against stabbing victims and other anti-fascists, and decided not to prosecute any men on the far-right for the stabbings. Read the rest

The Group FaceTime bug that set the internet on fire this week? Apple's sorry about that, and says they've figured out a fix that all iOS users can load next week. They also thanked the mom and 14 year old kid who struggled to alert Apple of the vulnerability.Re-enable the feature after next week's software update, they say, and they promise better bug reporting practices. The truly massive FaceTime bug allowed users' calls to be surveilled by others, even if the user didn't answer the incoming FaceTime call. The vulnerability was discovered by a 14 year old in Arizona whose mom had a heck of a time trying to report it. Apple told them to go get a developer account and submit a formal bug report. That was the extremely wrong answer. Here’s Apple's full apology and statement:We have fixed the Group FaceTime security bug on Apple’s servers and we will issue a software update to re-enable the feature for users next week. We thank the Thompson family for reporting the bug. We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we complete this process.We want to assure our customers that as soon as our engineering team became aware of the details necessary to reproduce the bug, they quickly disabled Group FaceTime and began work on the fix. We are committed to improving the process by which we receive and escalate these reports, in order to get them to the right people as fast as possible. Read the rest

“I believe it’s better for counsel and parties to do their talking in pleadings, not on courthouse steps, not on the talk show circuit."

Foxconn says the factory plan is back on after Trump personally reached out.

Quite a bust. And not a great look for Russia. Nearly ten tons of cocaine hauled by 11 Russian nationals on a vessel registered in Panama. The sailors and their 9.5-ton coke stash were arrested in Cabo Verde (Cape Verde), an island nation off the north-western edge of Africa. A lot of cocaine and meth passes through Cape Verde (Google Map location) en route to Europe and Africa.Russian state media RBK (look 'em up) was first to report the news. “The authorities of the Republic of Cape Verde suspected Russian sailors, who went under the flag of Panama, in transporting 9.5 tons of cocaine,” reported rbc.ru, with photos from the Cape Verdean government, at pj.gov.cv. Police say this is the largest single drug haul in the island country’s history.More from Reuters:An Atlantic archipelago of 500,000 people off Africa’s west coast, Cape Verde has long tried to tackle gangs trafficking Latin American cocaine to Europe via West Africa.The 9.5 tonnes of cocaine were seized overnight after the ship, which was travelling to Morocco from South America, docked at the port of Praia for legal reasons following the death of a crew member, the judiciary police said in a statement.Photos provided by the police on Friday showed dozens of brick-like packages wrapped in plastic and cloth sacks at the port.The police said they was alerted by the Maritime Analysis and Operation Center - a platform coordinating the anti-drug trafficking actions of seven E.U. Read the rest

There will not be fresh Sweethearts candies this Valentine's Day.Known as "conversation starters," these candies have always tasted like a chewable antacid or gas relief pills. Never have they helped me find love.Next year in candyland!People Magazine:For the first time since they made their debut in 1866, the New England Confectionery Company (Necco) will not be selling Sweethearts Conversation Hearts.Last July, Necco closed its doors and the SweetHearts brand was sold to Spangler Candy Company, according to CandyStore.com. Since it typically took Necco 11 months to produce 8 billion candy hearts, there was not enough lead time for the new company to create the hearts and sell for this season. Read the rest

According to the Encyclopedia of Pasta, there are hundreds of pasta shapes. At Smithsonian, Elizabeth Chu and D. Lawrence Tarazano of the US Patent Office look at relatively recent machinery to crank out the floury forms. From Smithsonian:The various shapes can be categorized based on the means by which they are formed: by hand, rolled into sheets, or extruded. For each pasta making method, there have been a number of inventions to ease and mechanize the process.Pastas formed by hand have been the most difficult to replicate by machine because of the complexity of the actions done by hand. Cavatelli, gnocchi and orecchiette, for example, are made by rolling pasta dough by hand into a long snake shape, cutting it into equal sized dough pieces, and dragging the dough to form a cup like shape. With cavatelli and gnocchi, the dough is dragged against a fork or grooved surface with a thumb to form a curled dough piece in the shape of a hot dog bun; the only real difference between the two is the dough. Gnocchi is made from a dough containing eggs, flour and cooked potatoes, whereas cavatelli are typically made from an eggless semolina wheat dough. Orecchiette, Italian for “little ear,” are made by dragging the dough pieces against a flat surface using a small spatula or knife, followed by a little hand shaping to round it out.Italian inventors Franco Annicchiarico and Adima Pilari, who received U.S. patent no. 4,822,271 on April 18, 1989 for “an improved machine for manufacturing short cut varieties of Italian pasta (orecchiette, etc.),” developed a machine for making these cupped pastas. Read the rest

When I spent a week in Singapore I didn't see a single graffiti tag anywhere. I did see a lot of great street art on buildings. This video profiles Singapore's most famous street artist. known as “Zero.” I remember his work well. Image: Great Big Story/YouTube Read the rest

Here's a guy who went to a monkey park in Takasaki-yama in Japan and donned a monkey park worker uniform for a day to see what it was like. One reason Japan has monkey parks is to get them used to eating food there so they don't invade nearby farms. The monkeys didn't really like having a stranger tend to them, and they made their displeasure known by chattering. They settle down pretty quickly, though. My favorite part was when an experienced worker ran through the park with a cart loaded with sweet potatoes. The monkeys chased after him and picked up the sweet potatoes as the fell off the cart.I went to a monkey park near Kyoto with my family in 2010. Here's a video: Read the rest

Forget bottle flipping. Frozen pants flipping is the new hotness (coolness?).(via r/gifs) Read the rest

The 3D-printed robot above weighs just one milligram and is only 2.5mm at its longest point. Designed by University of Maryland mechanical engineer Ryan St. Pierre and his colleagues, it is likely the smallest walking robot in the world. Video of the microbot scurrying along is below. From IEEE Spectrum:Like its predecessors, this robot is far too small for traditional motors or electronics. Its legs are controlled by external magnetic fields acting on tiny cubic magnets embedded in the robot’s hips. Rotating magnetic fields cause the magnets to rotate, driving the legs at speeds of up to 150 Hz. With all of the magnets installed into the hips in the same orientation, you get a pronking gait, but other gaits are possible by shifting the magnets around a bit. Top speed is an impressive 37.3 mm/s, or 14.9 body lengths per second, and somewhat surprisingly, the robot seems to be quite durable—it was tested for 1,000,000 actuation cycles “with no signs of visible wear or decreased performance.” Read the rest

"It may not be pretty or tidy, and it certainly hasn't been cleaned and the floor hasn't been swept for five years at least..."In this 1982 interview, Roald Dahl, author of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, takes us inside his backyard writing hut in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England. The hut is now part of the Roald Dahl Museum. Dahl modeled his hut on Dylan Thomas's own writing shed in Carmarthenshire, Wales. From BBC News:Although Dahl based the design of his hut on Thomas's shed, there was one major difference - the lack of natural light. He often kept his curtains drawn (10) to block out the outside world and was dependant on an angle-poise lamp for light....Dahl's widow Felicity said: "He realised he had to have a space of his own in the garden away from the children and the noise and the general domesticity and he remembered that Dylan had felt the same."And so he went down to Wales to look at Dylan's writing hut and, like everybody, fell in love with it."Built to the same proportions, with the same angled roof - the similarities could be a coincidence. But according to his widow it was built in a similar design by Dahl's builder friend Wally Saunders, who the BFG was based on."He built it exactly to the same proportions as Dylan's hut, the same roof, one skin of brick," said Mrs Dahl. "Of course Dylan's hut was a garage originally, whereas Roald had nothing, it was an empty space that he built on.""How Dylan Thomas's writing shed inspired Roald Dahl" (BBC News) Read the rest

Detroit cop Gary Steele pulled over a young black woman for expired plates, forced her to leave her car in -18f weather, took video of her walking off in the freezing cold, and taunted her with racist insults. He posted the video online for the amusement of other racists, went viral, was "reassigned" by his chief, and turns out to have a history of domestic violence during his time on the force.WXYZ Detroit:Moore was ordered to walk to her destination because of the expired tags. As she walked away, the officers recorded Moore with a cell phone camera. The officers referred to Moore as making a "walk of shame in the cold." One of the officers used the phrase "bye Felicia."The video also included a "Celebrate Black History Month" filter that included the caption "what black girl magic looks like."He was a cop when he shot at his ex-girlfriend a decade ago, and he's still a cop today.UPDATE: Here's his mugshot and charge sheet from the 2008 attack on his ex-girlfriend. He was originally charged with torture and assault with intent to commit murder, among other crimes, but got to plead to a misdemeanor charge of reckless discharge.Original charges: Torture; assault w/intent to commit murder; assault w/intent to do great bodily harm less than murder; 2 counts felonious assault w/a dangerous weapon; weapons / firearm discharge in or at a building; felony firearm. ... Plea bargain: Pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of reckless discharge of a firearm, and was placed on probation for one year. Read the rest

A sly gentleman working as an independent contractor thought he'd pull a fast one by faking an accident to earn some big insurance bucks. 57-year-old Alexander Goldinsky from New Jersey was at a job when he threw some ice cubes on the kitchen floor and then lay down on top of them, pretending he had slipped. What he didn't think about were the surveillance cameras watching his every stupid move. According to CNN, Goldinsky "filed a false insurance claim for the ambulance service and treatment he received at a local hospital for his injuries...He was arrested in January over this incident, which occurred between September 1 and November 1 last year." Read the rest

An appeals court in the Federal Circuit is hearing arguments today from plaintiffs who say that Donald Trump's FCC Chairman -- and former telcoms exec -- Ajit Pai violated federal law when he overturned Net Neutrality without considering millions of public comments and expert opinions on the proposal.The hearing will also consider whether Pai had sufficient evidence to reclassify your ISP as an "information service" provider, like Google or Facebook, and thus exempt it from regulations that require fairness and transparency.Net neutrality advocates and scholars predicted early on that this line of argument would overturn Pai's order -- Tim Wu, who coined the term "Net Neutrality," made the case back in November 2017.The arrogant overreach of Pai might be his downfall: as with all of the Trumpsquad, he thinks that bullshit beats administrative competence, and that servicing donors and low-information voters with windfalls and red meat is a substitute for actually knowing how US law and government work.One key issue in the case is whether the FCC violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids federal agencies from making "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. The brief from the organizations challenging the FCC alleges that the agency's about-face on net neutrality, less than three years after approving those rules, was arbitrary and capricious, and ignored evidence that contradicted its preferred decision. For example, the agency refused a request from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, one of the groups bringing the suit, to include informal complaints filed with the FCC related to net neutrality in the record during the public comment process. Read the rest