Boing Boing

Solving 29 = x³+ y³+ z³ is easy (29 = 3³ + 1³ + 1³). Solving 33 = x³ + y³ + z³ has confounded number theorists for a very long time. As far back as 1955, they've been using computers to grind away at a solution. This week, University of Bristol mathematician Andrew Booker's computer program solved it after three weeks of number crunching. The answer: (8,866,128,975,287,528)³ + (–8,778,405,442,862,239)³ + (–2,736,111,468,807,040)³ = 33.From Quanta Magazine:Until Booker found his solution, it was one of only two integers left below 100 (excluding the ones for which solutions definitely don’t exist) that still couldn’t be expressed as a sum of three cubes. With 33 out of the way, the only one left is 42.The reason it took so long to find a solution for 33 is that searching far enough up the number line — all the way to 1016, or ten quadrillion, and just as far down into the negative integers — for the right numerical trio was computationally impractical until Booker devised his algorithm. “He has not just run this thing on a bigger computer compared to the computers 10 years ago — he has found a genuinely more efficient way of locating the solutions,” said Tim Browning, a number theorist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.Image: YouTube Read the rest

If you have young children, it's highly likely that at some point you will be sharing your home with lice. Best to know your enemy. From KQED:Head lice can move only by crawling on hair. They glue their eggs to individual strands, nice and close to the scalp, where the heat helps them hatch. They feed on blood several times a day. And even though head lice can spread by laying their eggs in sports helmets and baseball caps, the main way they get around is by simply crawling from one head to another using scythe-shaped claws.These claws, which are big relative to a louse’s body, work in unison with a small and spiky thumblike part called a spine. With the claw and spine at the end of each of its six legs, a louse grasps a hair strand to hold on tightly, or quickly crawl from hair to hair like a speedy acrobat. Read the rest

Rishiri Ramen Miraku is on one of Japan's northernmost remote islands, Rishiritō (pop. 5,000), and many people go out of their way to eat its famous charred-soy seaweed ramen. The restaurant, which takes 7 hours to get to from Tokyo by plane, train, and ferry, earned the Michelin Guide's Bib Gourmand award in 2012 and 2017.Image: YouTube Read the rest

I predict that fighting while racing motorcycles will become the next big thing in spectator sports.From Guardian Sport:Two motorcyclists have been suspended for two years following a fight that erupted when the pair clashed during a race last month. Jorge Martínez threw the first punch at competitor Marion Calvo after blaming the rider for causing him to lose his balance during the first stage of Costa Rica's National Motorbike Championship in February. Image: YouTube Read the rest

Thanks to everyone who came out to last night's book tour event with Richard Kadrey at Berkeley Arts and Letters; I'm in the final stretch of the tour now, with a keynote tonight at 7PM at the Ft Vancouver Library's Revolutionary Reads series, (Clark Community College’s Gaiser Hall, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver WA 98663) just across the river from Portland, OR. Thursday, I'm at the Seattle Public Library and I'm spending the weekend at Wondercon in Anaheim. Hope you can make it! (Image: Mike Westphal) Read the rest

A new complaint against Charter Communications filed on Friday by Sony, Universal and Warner asks for legal redress for Charter's alleged failure to disconnect people repeated accused of copyright infringement; the complaint specifically lists the provision of a higher-speed tier of internet service as evidence that Charter was profiting from infringement.Charter is one of America's bloated, corrupt, terrible telcoms monopolists; thanks to their lobbying and monopolistic practices, disconnecting someone from Charter's network often means disconnecting them from the internet altogether (remember, 100 million Americans live in areas where every single ISP has admitted to violating net neutrality).The record companies are seeking household-level disconnections from a service that is crucial for conducting life in the 21st century, on the basis that someone within wifi range of those homes might be listening to music the wrong way.This lawsuit is a wake up call: the monopolization of the telcoms sector combined with the corruption of copyright as a tool wielded by giant corporations against individuals (as opposed to a regulatory framework for the entertainment industry's internal negotiations) represent a kind of late-stage-capitalist existential threat to human thriving itself.We need to break up Big Telcoms, Big Tech, and Big Content. This is a ghastly slow-motion train wreck and we can't afford to ignore it. Many of Charter's customers are motivated to subscribe to Charter's service because it allows them to download music and other copyrighted content—including unauthorized content—as efficiently as possible. Accordingly, in its consumer marketing material, including material directed to Colorado customers, Charter has touted how its service enables subscribers to download and upload large amounts of content at "blazing-fast Internet speeds." Charter has told existing and prospective customers that its high-speed service enables subscribers to "download just about anything instantly," and subscribers have the ability to "download 8 songs in 3 seconds." Charter has further told subscribers that its Internet service "has the speed you need for everything you do online." In exchange for this service, Charter has charged its customers monthly fees ranging in price based on the speed of service. Read the rest

In a stunning rejection of the will five million online petitioners, and over 100,000 protestors this weekend, the European Parliament has abandoned common-sense and the advice of academics, technologists, and UN human rights experts, and approved the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive in its entirety.There’s now little that can stop these provisions from becoming the law of the land across Europe. It’s theoretically possible that the final text will fail to gain a majority of member states’ approval when the European Council meets later this month, but this would require at least one key country to change its mind. Toward that end, German and Polish activists are already re-doubling their efforts to shift their government’s key votes.If that attempt fails, the results will be drawn-out, and chaotic. Unlike EU Regulations like the GDPR, which become law on passage by the central EU institutions, EU Directives have to be transposed: written into each member country’s national law. Countries have until 2021 to transpose the Copyright Directive, but EU rarely keeps its members to that deadline, so it could take even longer.Unfortunately, it is likely that the first implementation of the Directive will come from the countries who have most enthusiastically supported its passage. France’s current batch of national politicians have consistently advocated for the worst parts of the Directive, and the Macron administration may seek to grab an early win for the country’s media establishment.Countries whose polity were more divided will no doubt take longer. Read the rest

If you're going to pursue a career in graphic design, videography or web development, there are some essential tools you need to have - and all of them are included in the Adobe Creative Cloud. And whether you need to brush up on Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign - or are a beginner to them all - your new designer's bible will be the Adobe CC A-Z Lifetime Bundle.In 12 different courses, this series covers all the big software tentpoles of the Adobe CC suite. You'll get a rundown on how to fine-tune your images in Photoshop and bring your own graphics to life in Illustrator and Adobe After Effects. Comprehensive beginner and master classes for InDesign show you how to put those images on any page, web or print. Videographers will get the most out of walkthroughs for Premiere Pro, and a course on Adobe XD gives the foundation for UI/UX web design.The grand total for all these courses separately would be well over $2500, but there a new "pay what you want" offer for the Adobe CC A-Z Lifetime Bundle. Make a bid, and take home some or all of the package. Read the rest

TikTok is an app that makes it easy for people to make short lip-synching videos, which unsurprisingly makes it a goldmine of creativity and memes. TikTok recently got in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission because it failed to comply with Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA requires online services that are either “directed at” children under the age of 13 or have knowledge that they have users who are under 13 to arrange for parental permission before they start collecting personal information about those users.The FTC fined TikTok $5.7 million and ordered it to delete personal information of young users, with the option to transfer copies of the videos back to them. The FTC required TikTok to “destroy” the “personal information” of any account belonging to someone currently 13 or under, or who was under 13 when they joined. In other words, the account, its videos, the fans, everything that had been built up by the users, would be deleted. However, the FTC also gave TikTok the option to give users copies of their videos.TikTok’s attempt to comply was riddled with problems. Users logging in for the first time after the order were prompted to give their birthdate, but TikTok’s own interface defaulted to putting in the current date while also not making crystal clear to users why it needed that information and what could result. A number of users had trouble getting the date to change, giving the system the impression that they were zero years old and resulting in the deletion of their accounts and losing their videos. Read the rest

For some reason, Amazon won't ship these super-inexpensive Sylvania LED bulbs to California. I was able to get a box of 24 by having it delivered out of the state and picking it up on a road trip. They're excellent bulbs, and the soft-white style is nice and warm, the way I like my illumination. I haven't seen them at a lower price than this. Read the rest

The first line of Jon Lee Anderson's long-awaited profile of Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro in the New Yorker is a real killer. “The authoritarian leaders taking power around the world share a vocabulary of intolerance, insult, and menace...”As Anderson writes, in Bolsonaro's Brazil--and around the world--“A budding authoritarian borrows from the Trump playbook.”Excerpt:Like many autocrats, Bolsonaro came to power with a suddenness that alarmed the élites. He had run a low-budget campaign, consisting mostly of a social-media effort overseen by his son Carlos. At events with supporters, he posed for selfies making a gesture as if he were shooting a machine gun. He promised to “reconstruct the country”—and to return power to a political right that had been in eclipse for decades. In the inaugural ceremony, he vowed to “rescue the family, respect religions and our Judeo-Christian tradition, combat gender ideology, conserving our values.”Afterward, Bolsonaro received a procession of foreign dignitaries, and as they stepped up to pay their respects the crowd greeted them with cheers or boos. The Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán got perfunctory applause; the bolsonaristas seemed not to know who he was. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is fending off charges of fraud and bribery, got a riotous cheer. Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, the only left-wing leader to attend, was subjected to shouts of “Get out, communist,” and “índio de merda”—“fucking Indian.”Despite Bolsonaro’s divisive rhetoric, American conservatives were enthusiastic about his Presidency. He had expressed leeriness of China and hostility toward socialists in Cuba and Venezuela; he promised to move Brazil’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Read the rest

Sarah Sanders: "They literally accused the President of the United States of being an agent for a foreign government. That's equivalent to treason. Thats punishable by death in this country." pic.twitter.com/nz5fsKTW7F— The Hill (@thehill) March 25, 2019Emboldened by her bosses non-exoneration, Sarah Sanders seems to use lies to call for the death of her enemies. Read the rest

What are they hiding?

Made from laser-etched titanium, Apple's new credit card appears to use the company's San Francisco typeface, not Silian Rail.The Verge:Daily cash back of 2% on purchases with external vendors; and 3% cash back on purchases from Apple ... APR rates start at 13.24 percent, up to 24.24 percent.Also announced today was Apple Arcade, the company's new game service. The name's perfectly sweet; it's great that games are getting a place of their own outside the App Store, which is a terrible place to find them. Hopefully the payment incentives will change too to keep it out of the attention casino. All the games, at least at launch, are exclusive, with Apple reportedly investing directly (!) in development costs. Read the rest

A 19-year-old Enterprise Rent-A-Car employee from Missouri decided to unwittingly dose his c0-workers with LSD because they had "negative energy." The employees were hospitalized and the young man was arrested. He should have Timothy Leary's "Two Commandments for the Molecular Age" from his book The Politics of Ecstasy (1968):Thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow manThou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his own consciousness.Image: Shamanska Kate/Shutterstock Read the rest

In the Savvy Pscychologist, clinician Ellen Hendriksen of Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, looks at the profound psychological and physiological impacts of feeling awe, whether it comes from looking up at the expansive night sky or hearing an incredible musical performance. She reflects on scientific evidence that awe makes us "feel small" and humble, nicer, and expands our worldview, all of which seem like fairly obvious effects. But Hendriksen also points to a recent curious study published in the journal Emotion showing that "awe is linked to decreased inflammation." The University of Toronto researchers had examined whether amusement, compassion, contentment, joy, love, pride, and awe resulted in "lower levels of a marker of inflammation called interleukin-6, or IL-6, which has been linked to diseases as diverse as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and diabetes." From the Savvy Psychologist:Why on earth might standing on a mountaintop connect with our levels of inflammation? One hypothesis is that proinflammatory cytokines like IL-6 lead to physical and social withdrawal—curling up in your den and resting speeds recovery from illness or injury more quickly than pushing through. By contrast, awe triggers the opposite: an urge to explore and experience more. It’s unclear whether awe reduces inflammation or reduced inflammation makes us seek out awe, but either way, the two seem to be linked."Awe: The Most Incredible Emotion and Its Spectacular Effects"Here's the scientific study: "Positive affect and markers of inflammation: discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines" (Emotion) Read the rest

Rob Landes shows how to play the Mario theme as in noob, amateur, hardcore, and elite levels. Read the rest

This new 859 piece LEGO Pop-Up Book is at the top of my must-have LEGO list.This new for 2019 set comes complete with pieces to build two functional pop-up scenes from two different fairy tales.Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk associated minifigs are also included in this one of a kind LEGO set.LEGO Ideas 21315 Pop-up Book Building Kit , New 2019 (859 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest

Just days after the suicides of two Parkland school shooting survivors, the father of a six-year-old girl who was killed during the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut has apparently taken his own life. The body of Jeremy Richman, whose daughter, Avielle was killed in the 2012 shooting, was found at Edmond Town Hall in Newtown where he had an office for the Avielle Foundation. From The Hartford Courant: Richman, who led the charge on mental health issues with his wife in the wake of the shooting, had an office for the Avielle Foundation at Edmond Town Hall. The foundation is dedicated to pushing for “brain science research” to attempt to discover the reasons behind some individuals’ murderous actions.Weeks after the shooting, Richman and others went to the Connecticut state legislature calling for fixing a broken mental health care system and removing the stigma from psychiatric illness. “We must act to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” he told lawmakers in the January 2013 hearing.For those who knew, Richman remained dedicated to this mission.“He had such a clear purpose of what he wanted to do to honor his daughter,” said a family member of one of the Sandy Hook shooting victims. “I’m just shocked. I’m sitting in my car right now crying. The foundation was doing really important work and was doing such good things.”Richman and his wife, Jennifer Hensel were part of a group of Sandy Hook parents who sued human garbage person Alex Jones after he led a campaign of harassment, claiming Sandy Hook was a hoax. Read the rest

One of the many amazing things about Japan is their abundance of robots, from a robot-staffed hotel to robot waiters to robots that teach English to children. This cool robot, made by the sushi-robot company AUTEC, can make 2400 nigiri rice balls and 200 sushi rolls per hour. Via Mashable Read the rest

Paul and Annett built a self-sufficient, off-grid house in New South Wales with air conditioning and electrical appliances. They use just 25% of the solar energy that their rooftop solar voltaic system is capable of generating. The also have solar-heated water for showers, a biogas digester that turns waste food into combustible gas, and a composting toilet. They also have a 10,000 liter water tank, but Australia has been experiencing drought as of late, so they have to be conservative with their water use.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Aw! Cuddle Team Leader is cute and vicious.This pink badass is my number one favorite skin to load up and the one I rack up my most solo wins with. Usually, I wear little red riding hood's red cape and swing a squeaky pick-ax to boot.My kid will absolutely love this plushie, however, my Cavalier King Charles may decide to elim the doll.Fortnite Cuddle Team Leader Plush via Amazon Read the rest

Details are sketchy at this point, but The New York Times reports federal prosecutors in New York have charged attorney Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who represented Stormy Daniels, with attempting to force Nike to pay him $20 million by threatening to damage the company's reputation on his social media accounts.From The New York Times:In court documents filed Monday, prosecutors in the United States District for the Southern District of New York said that Avenatti and a client, a former A.A.U. basketball coach, said they had evidence that Nike employees had funneled money to recruits in exchange for their commitments to college teams sponsored by Nike and that they would release them in order to damage Nike’s reputation and market capitalization unless Nike paid them at least $22.5 million.Image: JStone/Shutterstock Read the rest

No longer representing Stormy Daniels or running for President, attorney Michael Avenatti will still be appearing in court.CNN:The Manhattan US Attorney's office said Monday that it is charging attorney Michael Avenatti "for attempting to extract more than $20 million in payments from a publicly traded company by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met." Read the rest

The drama club at New Jersey's North Bergen High School brought the classic sci-fi/horror story Alien to the stage for Alien: The Play. From Quartz:A student playing a xenomorph expertly creeped about on stage and in the audience in the style of the titular alien. The student wore a costume made from donated foam, a plastic skeleton from the clearance aisle, and other materials, Entertainment Weekly reported. Other characters were photographed wearing spacesuits. And the sets were reportedly crafted from donated and recycled items, including old egg-carton boxes to create a computer lab.A Reddit thread started by North Bergen High School student Justin Pierson, 17, who was part of the sound crew, said the play flows almost exactly like the film. But these students put together their production on a relatively shoestring budget."A US High School’s Crafty Production of “Alien” Is Going Viral" (Thanks, Mark Dery!) Read the rest

Erik Singer is a dialect coach who has appeared in a lot of Wired videos to talk about actors' accents in popular movies. In this video, he takes a fascinating look at the way actors have played US presidents. Read the rest

Last Saturday night both my 11-year old daughter and I really enjoyed DC's new Shazam!True to my memories of the Shazam/Captain Marvel of my youth, but much, much more fun, Shazam! delivered on the 2 or so hours of entertainment you expect from a movie.Unlike every other DC movie we've seen.I liked Wonder Woman, my kid fell asleep. The rest of the DC universe films have been such trash we shut them off after a few minutes. My kid would rather watch YouTube garbage. I would rather watch 1970s tv intos.NOT SO WITH THIS SHAZAM!Shazam! is a rollicking good time and the kid actors are wonderful. Faithe Herman as Darla, and Jack Dylan Glazer's Freddy were wonderful co-foster kids in the home with Billy Batson. Asher Angel's Billy Batson is significantly more mature than Zachary Levi's Captain Marvel, but they pull it off where it counts.They never use the name Captain Marvel even tho we all pretty much share a name with someone more well known. Read the rest

In a recent scientific study on overactive urinary bladder syndrome, researchers used the term "latchkey incontinence" to describe "the loss of urine that occurs when one arrives home and puts the key in the lock of one’s front door." From MEL Magazine:According to Jamin Brahmbhatt, a urologist in Florida, peeing is a much more complex dance between the mind and body than you might think. “The ability to control how you urinate requires a balance between the muscles and your nerves around your bladder and your urethra working in synch,” he explains. “Some of these functions happen automatically, and some require manual control by the muscles that you naturally control. So when urine is filling up inside your bladder, your bladder naturally expands. When you go to the bathroom, your sphincter around your urethra will relax and your bladder will start to squeeze. This process sounds simple, but it does require the muscles around your urethra, which we call your pelvic floor, to all work and synch.”He continues, “To keep your bladder healthy, I recommend my patients empty their bladder before they start having extreme ‘got-to-go’ feelings. There’s only so much the bladder can tolerate, and this process gets more complicated with the presence of a prostate, which naturally grows as men get older. All these processes can also be affected by diabetes, strokes, infections and many other medical problems.” Read the rest

Legendary singer Scott Walker, whose journey as a musician took him from blue-eyed soul to baroque pop to heady avant-garde experimentalism, has died at age 76. Walker counted the likes of Radiohead, Pulp, Julian Cope, and Sunn O))) as fans and collaborators. From an obituary released by Walker's record label 4AD:Noel Scott Engel (later known as Scott Walker) was born in 1943, the son of an Ohio geologist. He began his career as a session bassist, changing his name when he joined The Walker Brothers. The 1960s trio enjoyed a meteoric rise, especially in Britain, where hits like 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore’ attracted a following to rival that of The Beatles.But the superstar lifestyle and fame was not for Scott. As an only child, he had grown up in the kind of rich, slow solitude in which imagination could flourish, and he retreated from the limelight, returning as a solo artist to release a string of critically acclaimed albums, Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4. He disappeared until the late 1970’s, when The Walker Brothers re-joined for their last album together and then a solo album in the 80’s.Another long silence and Scott then re-emerged in the 90’s and onwards with lyric-driven works that deconstructed music into elemental soundscapes. Drawing on politics, war, plague, torture, and industrial harshness, Scott’s apocalyptic epics used silence as well as real-world effects and pared-back vocals to articulate the void. Sometimes gothic and eerie, often sweepingly cinematic, always strikingly visual, his works reached for the inexpressible, emerging from space as yearnings in texture and dissonance. Read the rest

From TMeeks01:This bit of ancient animation history was programmed in GW-Basic on a Mindset Computer.The "live" sets included full size props, such as the typewriter and schoolroom desk, and doll house furniture, such as the paintings and the easel. Overlays were accomplished by partially drawing the figures, rather than chromakeying the live shot, cutting away part of the character around a prop that was to be in the foreground.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

A British Airways flight from London City Airport headed off to Dusseldorf, in Germany. Unfortunately for those aboard, it landed safely in Edinburgh, Scotland due to a "mix up". That's 350 miles in completely the wrong direction.Officials say the pilot followed the flight plan for Edinburgh, and that air traffic control officials also were following the same flight plan and saw nothing amiss.They refueled the plane. Then they flew it to Dusseldorf. Read the rest

Tuesday morning at 10am ET the House Communications and Technology subcommittee will meet and vote on the Save the Internet Act – the best bill we have to restore net neutrality. As soon as the hearing begins you’ll be able to watch the livestream here:CONTACT CONGRESSUnfortunately telecom lobbyists are working overtime to convince committee lawmakers to add dangerous amendments that could completely gut the bill and leave gaping loopholes for Internet providers to block, throttle, and charge users new fees for access.To pass a clean bill with no bad amendments we need everyone to call their members of Congress and make sure they know the whole Internet is watching.If we get the bill out of committee without any bad amendments, then we have a solid shot of winning the next big vote on the House floor in the week of April 8. But if the bill gets gutted, we’re back to square one.Call your lawmakers ASAP and demand they vote for a clean bill to restore net neutrality. Read the rest

UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol) is a venerable, non-hierarchical networking protocol that was used as transport for early email and Usenet message boards; its intrinsic decentralization and its cooperative nature (UUCP hosts store and forward messages for one another) make it a kind of symbol of the early, decentralized robustness that characterized the early net and inspired so much optimism about a fundamentally distributed arrangement of peers rising up to replace the top-down phone companies and other centralized systems.As part of the decentralized web movement, UUCP has been rebooted by Dataforge, a Fort Worth, Texas-based "hybrid shell provider/tilde server" whose proprietor Wesley "praetor" Banderia uses his decades of Unix systems administration to keep the system running on a cluster of lovingly maintained vintage SGI machines with a Google Cloud VPS for backup.Dataforge's UUCP is encrypted by default using ssh (you could also adapt it to run over TLS) with GPG signing for the content layer. Banderia is seeking other hosts to peer with his system (the system has four peers at present). From the UUCP manifesto: "We are a dedicated group of artists, system operators, nerds, geeks, nostalgics of every walk of life who desire a fully decentralized internet in the vein of the UUCP networks of yore. In this way, we have revived the network protocol adding modern essentials such encryption, permissions, better integration with dedicated links. While also keeping it's virtues of transparency, ease of implementation and resiliency. We also return to a place of mutual respect and understanding, freedom for all people who utilize it. Read the rest

Kim Zetter reports that Taiwan tech giant Asus unwittingly installed backdoors on half a million of its own customers' computers after hackers compromised its software update servers.The researchers estimate half a million Windows machines received the malicious backdoor through the ASUS update server, although the attackers appear to have been targeting only about 600 of those systems. The malware searched for targeted systems through their unique MAC addresses. Once on a system, if it found one of these targeted addresses, the malware reached out to a command-and-control server the attackers operated, which then installed additional malware on those machines. Why hack the consumer when you can hack the manufacturer and get all the consumers for free? Alt headline: "Republic of Gamers Publicly Owned" Read the rest

Hans Henrik Honnens de Lichtenberg writes, "Here is a fine selection of books by the extraordinary man, William James Sidis. A January morning in 1910 hundreds of students and professors gathered in the great lecture hall at Harvard University. On stage steps up William James Sidis to present his research about the mathematics of the fourth dimension. William was just eleven years old. William James Sidis was a genius and he still has the highest IQ ever recorded, somewhere between 250 and 300."Let's leave aside the nonsense that is "IQ" for a moment and recall instead that Sidis lived a remarkable life, wrote beautifully, and was jailed under the Sedition Act of 1918 for his 1919 participation in a socialist May Day parade, was a WWI conscientious objector, and was threatened by his family with involuntary committal to an "insane asylum" for his politics.He created a constructed language called "Vendergood," wrote books of mathematics and history and public transit and social theory, and called himself a "peridromophile" (someone who's really into trains!). He also patented a leap-year-friendly perpetual rotary calendar.The Internet Archive also has a selection of Sidis's works.Download the free PDF e-books William James Sidis here. [Holy Books](Thanks, Hans Henrik!) Read the rest

More than a thousand passengers are being evacuated from a Viking cruise ship hit by 26-ft waves between Norway and Britain, with terrifying footage posted to YouTube from inside the lurching vessel. At least 470 people were rescued from the decks by helicopter, hauled one by one to nearby Molde. No-one is reported dead, but one is said to be critically injured.The maritime rescue service said the Viking Sky, with 1,373 passengers and crew on board, had sent out a mayday signal as it had been drifting toward land in the Norwegian Sea.The ship was carrying 915 passengers, of which "a large number" were from the United States and Britain, the rescue service said, although it declined to be more specific.Passengers were hoisted one-by-one from the deck of the vessel and airlifted to a village just north of Molde on Norway.An investigation was opened into why it even set sail.We’re waiting for evacuation by helicopter #VikingSky #Mayday pic.twitter.com/rqSYaWGi0k— Alexus Sheppard 🏳️‍🌈 (@alexus309) March 23, 2019 Read the rest

I haven't seen Best Editing-winner Bohemian Rhapsody, but I have seen a certain viral scene about five times. Is it fair to characterize the whole movie by an insanely jump-cutted scene of some guys being offered a record deal at a relaxing cafe? Here's the Oscar winner's acceptance speech edited in much the same way as the film. [via Reddit]Ambient Film Tracks:I just thought that the Oscars weren't edited quite as well as they could have been so I took what I learned from the film editing in Oscar winner Bohemian Rhapsody and attempted to improve this speech. Read the rest

Enjoy Louie Zong's sweet song, just perfect to start the week with. Zong used a 2006 app called Virtual Singer. Read the rest

In 1903, French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot decided he had discovered a new form of radiation. But the mysterious rays had some exceedingly odd properties, and scientists in other countries had trouble seeing them at all. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of N-rays, a cautionary tale of self-deception.We'll also recount another appalling marathon and puzzle over a worthless package.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Got a vision to put on film? The Film & Cinematography Mastery Bundle shows you how to put it there, with classes covering gear, lighting, production - even marketing.Even in this age of indie cinema, filmmaking can seem like an exclusive world for the chosen few. But with the right eye - and the right training - it can be more accessible than you think. In three courses spanning more than 7 hours of training and examples, you'll learn the basics of most aspects of the business, with a focus on that crucial time behind the camera. A class on production gives a primer on gear but also teaches techniques that will let you shoot great video with equipment you already have. The cinematography section brings expert-level tips about lighting and staging, and a comprehensive filmmaking course touches on how to write, cast, market and distribute your finished movie.Right now, you can pick up lifetime access to the Film & Cinematography Mastery Bundle for $29 - a 95% discount off the list price. Read the rest

Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg continue down the 1990s comic book speculation rabbit hole to discuss Wizard 17 from January 1993. In this issue:• Brutes and Babes: Bart Sears on Cover design including Hip Hop Family Tree, Street Angel, and X-Men: Grand Design• Valiant gets the spotlight• Fabian Nicieza writing and editing a lot of books• Tom Palmer's X-mas recommendations• Dave Sim passes the halfway point of Cerebus and reflects on Image, Wizard, self-publishing, the direct market, and Jack Kirby's revolutionary work at the dawn of the Marvel Universe• Roy Thomas adapts Francis Ford Copolla's Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps and Mike Mignola• Batman is sad• Wizard puts out a call for homemade fanzines!!!Subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe youtube page.Get your Cartoonist Kayfabe merchandise at our Spreadshop storefront. Read the rest

I've spent the last 11 years with a daughter who looks just like cartoon-Dora, relegating me to the role of Boots. Read the rest

If you're into tech at all, you should definitely consider unleashing your inner tinkerer on a Raspberry Pi board. If you're intimidated, don't be. It's a statistical probability that people half your age have created cooler things than you can imagine with the versatile kit. Not sure where to start? The Complete Raspberry Pi 3B+ Starter Kit & Course Bundle is a good bet.Put together with the curious newbie in mind, this package includes the essentials: A Raspberry Pi 3B+ board, plus TF card and 37 sensor modules. What you do with it from there is virtually limitless, but the three online courses give you some good jumping off points. The first lesson lets you build a retro gaming system from scratch, and from there you can explore how your kit can interact with Amazon Alexa to voice-control nearly anything in your house.It's a ton of hacks for STEM's new favorite resource, currently on sale for nearly 70% off the list price. Pick up the Complete Raspberry Pi 3B+ Starter Kit & Course Bundle for $139.99 today. Read the rest

I've had a fabulous weekend at Chicago's C2E2 festival as part of my Radicalized book-tour, and now I'm heading to San Francisco for an appearance on Monday night at Berkeley Arts & Letters at 7:30PM with Richard Kadrey. Then it's on to The Revolutionary Reads series at Ft Vancouver (outside of Portland, OR), and then the Seattle Public Library and finally a weekend of events at Wondercon in Anaheim. Come on out! (Image: Nikola Danaylov, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Chelsea Manning -- whistleblower, torture survivor, hero -- is back behind bars for refusing to testify before a grand jury about her whistleblowing activity; for 16 days, she has been held in solitary confinement in a cell for 22 hours/day, not able to speak to others, denied access to the law library, and prohibited from having reading materials.Here is a statement from Chelsea Resists!, Chelsea Manning’s Support Committee.“We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to during her incarceration at William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center.“Since her arrival at Truesdale on March 8th, Chelsea has been placed in administrative segregation[1], or ‘adseg,’ a term designed to sound less cruel than “solitary confinement.” However, Chelsea has been kept in her cell for 22 hours a day. This treatment qualifies as Solitary Confinement[2].“Chelsea can’t be out of her cell while any other prisoners are out, so she cannot talk to other people, or visit the law library, and has no access to books or reading material. She has not been outside for 16 days. She is permitted to make phone calls and move about outside her cell between 1 and 3 a.m.. “As today is Day 16, Chelsea is now in “Prolonged Solitary,” as defined by Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture:[3] “I have defined prolonged solitary confinement as any period in excess of 15 days. This definition reflects the fact that most of the scientific literature shows that, after 15 days, certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible. Read the rest

Last week, Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania plead guilty to US wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering charges, admitting that he had stolen $99m from Facebook and $23m from Google between 2013 and 2015.Rimasauskas's grift was pretty bold. He merely sent Google and Facebook invoices for items they hadn't purchased and that he hadn't provided, which the companies paid anyway. The invoices were accompanied by "forged invoices, contracts, and letters that falsely appeared to have been executed and signed by executives and agents of the Victim Companies, and which bore false corporate stamps embossed with the Victim Companies’ names, to be submitted to banks in support of the large volume of funds that were fraudulently transmitted via wire transfer." He also spoofed emails that appeared to come from corporate execs.Apparently, no one checked first to see if these corresponded to invoices/POs that had been issued within the companies.Rimasauskas was pretending to be the giant Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc, and had registered a company in Latvia with the same name.He's agreed to forfeit about $50m. It's not clear what's happened to the other $73m, but Rimasauskas was a prolific and baroque money-launderer who squirreled cash away in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia. Google has said that "We detected this fraud and promptly alerted the authorities. We recouped the funds and we're pleased this matter is resolved."Rimasauskas will be sentenced on July 29. He faces up to 30 years."As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. Read the rest

"Just a pair of hands -- and a whole lot of clever imagination."(via Juxtapoz on Instagram) Read the rest

Last week's NYC book launch for Radicalized took the form of a fantastic conversation with the journalist Julia Angwin; the Strand folks were kind enough to video it and they've posted it to Youtube. Julia is incredibly smart and a wonderful interviewer, and we had some great Q&A as well. Read the rest

Today marksed the largest street protests ever in the history of internet freedom struggles, with more than 100,000 Europeans participating in mass demonstrations across the region -- more than 50 cities participated in Germany alone! From Netpolitik's early summary (English robotranslation): "In Berlin, the demonstration was about half an hour, if you waited along the way from the beginning to the end. We have experienced many network protests in Berlin. That was bigger today than any before, even counting the big data retention protests or ACTA."There has never been a better time to pledge to vote against MEPs who support the Directive and then contact your MEP to let them know. The final debate is Monday at 0900h CET, with the vote scheduled for 1200h CET. Read the rest

This morning, CBC's flagship weekend programme Day Six aired its latest episode (MP3), a conversation between host Brent Bambury, me, and Tim Maughan, the author of an outstanding debut novel called Infinite Detail. (Image: Jason Vermes/CBC)It's often said that sci-fi's role is to project the future, but Doctorow is skeptical of that perspective."What we're doing is kidding ourselves that we're projecting a future; I think that at best, we're reflecting the present," he told Bambury."As an activist, I have to think that the future is not predictable. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to get out of bed. The future changes based on what we do." Read the rest