The marvellous Jonathan Coulton (previously) is crowdfunding for his next album, Some Guys, "An album of 70s soft rock covers that sound exactly like the originals" (America, Stephen Bishop, Gilbert O'Sullivan, 10cc, Bread, Eagles and more) -- he's raised more than $100K already with 12 days to go (I just backed him). $10 gets you a digital download, $15 adds a CD, $25 gets you a signed CD, $30 gets you vinyl, $40 gets you signed vinyl, and it goes up from there. (via Judge John Hodgman) Read the rest

Rolling Stone published a lengthy, wide-ranging interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. There aren't any bombshells on the big stuff like Nazis on the platform, harassment, and disinformation, but there are a few fun bits like the following:What was your most memorable encounter with Zuckerberg?Well, there was a year when he was only eating what he was killing. He made goat for me for dinner. He killed the goat.In front of you?No. He killed it before. I guess he kills it. He kills it with a laser gun and then the knife. Then they send it to the butcher.A . . . laser gun?I don’t know. A stun gun. They stun it, and then he knifed it. Then they send it to a butcher. Evidently in Palo Alto there’s a rule or regulation that you can have six livestock on any lot of land, so he had six goats at the time. I go, “We’re eating the goat you killed?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Have you eaten goat before?” He’s like, “Yeah, I love it.” I’m like, “What else are we having?” “Salad.” I said, “Where is the goat?” “It’s in the oven.” Then we waited for about 30 minutes. He’s like, “I think it’s done now.” We go in the dining room. He puts the goat down. It was cold. That was memorable. I don’t know if it went back in the oven. I just ate my salad.And:Speaking of messiness, the right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer chained herself to your New York headquarters to protest her ban from Twitter for alleged hate speech. Read the rest

Last year, Google was rocked by a string of employee uprisings: first over selling AI tools to the Pentagon for use in drone development; then over the clandestine development of a censored Chinese search-product, the over the revelation that Android founder Andy Rubin was given a $90 million payoff to get rid of him after repeated sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations.Google's strategy for the world's tightest labor market has been to evince ethical principles as a means of enticing workers who want to do good in addition to doing well. Any technical employee at Google can walk out of their job and into an equivalent one at a Google competitor, so keeping its workforce happy has been key to its survival.That's why it's shocking to learn that even as Google's senior management were praising their workers for their engagement and organizing and promising to hear their grievances, the company was secretly asking Trump's National Labor Relations Board to reverse the Obama-era rule that allows workers to use their work email to organize to push back against their employers, and to restore the Bush-era rule that allows employers to discipline or fire workers who do so.Google claims that this was not lobbying, but rather, "a legal defense that we included as one of many possible defenses" in a case before the NLRB.If the Labor Board did what Google wanted, “it would have a huge chilling effect,” said Google employee activist Colin McMillen, one of tens of thousands around the world who participated in a November walkout following revelations about the company’s handling of alleged sexual misconduct. Read the rest

Roger Stone, the former Trump advisor arrested this morning and charged with obstructing justice and witness tampering, was released on a $250,000 bond after his preliminary hearing. Here's a shot of him leaving the federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Nixon fingers akimbo. [via] Read the rest

A fellow was recently busted at Toronto Pearson International Airport for allegedly attempting to "import" 5,000 live leeches in his luggage. Apparently an airport security beagles sniffed out the parasites. From National Geographic:The man claimed that the leeches in his possession were for personal use and that their waste water would enrich his orchids, (says André Lupert, manager of intelligence for the Wildlife Enforcement Directorate at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ontario Region.)To Lupert, that seems shaky. “This sort of leech quantity would suggest it was for commercialization,” he says, adding that the man could have been trying to find buyers for leech uses such as treating frostbite and helping with recovery from face lifts. Some people want leeches for naturopathic home use, believing that they relieve pain or can cleanse the body of “bad” blood. Without prescribed antibiotics, however, any such use carries risk of infections...When Canadian officials seized 5,000 leeches, they were immediately confronted with a problem: what to do with them? They didn’t want to kill the threatened animals—especially while the case remained under investigation. “Ultimately it’s up to the judge if he wants to view the leeches in person because they’re viewed as evidence,” Lupert says. Nor did the authorities want to be saddled with them long-term. These species aren’t endemic to Canada, so they shouldn’t be released into the wild, Lupert says...The Royal Ontario Museum agreed to accept 50 of the leeches, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History took 1,000, and authorities are still looking for homes for the rest. Read the rest

A couple of days ago Teen Vogue published an article about "resistance, rebellion, and revolution" (see Cory's post about it). Today, Teen Vogue has another excellent article along the same lines. It's written by Kim Kelly and is called General Strikes, Explained. With the Trump Shutdown threatening to disrupt functioning society, it's a good time to read this.A general strike is a labor action in which a significant amount of workers from a number of different industries who comprise a majority of the total labor force within a particular city, region, or country come together to take collective action. Organized strikes are generally called by labor union leadership, but they impact more than just those in the union. For example, imagine the scenario if thousands in your town or city — no matter what their job was or whether or not they were in a union — got together and decided to go on strike to protest police brutality, as happened in Oakland, California, in 2011, after Iraq veteran Scott Olsen was critically wounded by local police when they stormed the Occupy Oakland encampment. The community declared a daylong general strike that ultimately saw thousands of people shut down the Port of Oakland (which was more of a symbolic protest, but still it got the job done).Image: MicroOne/Shutterstock Read the rest

The Tattered Cover is one of the nation's great independent bookstores, ranking with New York's Strand, Portland's Powell's, and Salt Lake City's Weller Books; now in an open letter, the store has "broken up" with Amazon division Audible, the largest player in the audiobook market, citing the company's mandatory DRM, proprietary formats, algorithmic opacity, and diversion of local book sales into the pockets of distant investors in a massive, uncaring corporation.The Tattered Cover cites the amazing Libro.fm as the DRM-free alternative that works with bookstores, rather than against them. I'm a very happy Libro.fm user!Don’t get me wrong, you’re impressive. I can buy almost anything from you guys. At first you were really into books, but then you took on the world, and it seems like that has worked out well for you. But over the years I’ve found myself wanting something more personal, like a local bookstore, instead of, say, a global mall. I mean, you have algorithms, Audible. Algorithms. I realize that is all fancy and technical, but you give me book recommendations based on a mathematics equation. Libro.fm provides recommendations from real, independent booksellers. Human beings.And I couldn’t shake the fact that by buying from you, I’d be lining the pockets of a handful of wealthy people and stockholders who have, at the bottom line, no interest in supporting the community I live in. Where are they? Do they even read audiobooks? With Libro.fm, I’m able to buy audiobooks through my local bookstore. I’m supporting the business owned by people I actually know and care about. Read the rest

Here's another fine development in sleep science today! A new study shows that young adults, like babies, sleep better when rocked. University of Geneva neuroscientist Laurence Bayer and colleagues built a gently rocking bed and used EEG to monitor adults' brain activity as they slept. From Science News:Study participants fell asleep faster while being rocked, the researchers found. In a stationary bed, people took an average of 16.7 minutes to reach a light stage of non-REM sleep called N2. But when rocked, the young adults hit this sleep stage after an average of 10 minutes. Rocked people also spent more time in a deep non-REM stage of sleep called N3, and had fewer wake-ups. And rocking boosted the number of sleep spindles — fast bursts of brain activity that mark good sleep.Before people fell asleep, they learned pairs of words, and then were given a memory test the next morning. After a night of rocking, people were better at remembering the words, an improvement that suggested higher quality sleep."Whole-Night Continuous Rocking Entrains Spontaneous Neural Oscillations with Benefits for Sleep and Memory" (Current Biology) Read the rest

Two dung beetles engage in a fierce battle over a treasured ball of dung, which is their source of food. Off-camera, an amused human narrator provides colorful commentary. Read the rest

Katarina Barley, the German Minister of Justice, is set to receive this petition, now signed by more than 4.5 million Europeans, opposing the include of mandatory copyright filters (AKA Article 13) in the new EU Copyright Directive. The petition is the second largest in internet history (after this one) and looks set to surpass it. The Copyright Directive negotiations collapsed last week due to hard-liners in the French delegation, and there are persistent rumours that the German and French negotiators are still trying (and failing) to find common ground. So it's really important that Europeans sign this petition, to show the German ministers that they have the backing of the European people! Tell your friends! Read the rest

Failure to vaccinate can cause death. Maybe not killing your own child, tho it is not unlikely, the awful decision to not vaccinate puts at risk all the people who for good reasons can not get the shot.Snohomish County rocks.MyNorthWest:“It’s like taking a pail of gasoline and throwing a lighted match into it. I have some concerns that this is going to get worse before it gets better,” said Clark County Public Health Director Alan Melnick.Melnick said there are now 25 confirmed measles cases and 12 suspected cases in Clark County. The majority are kids younger than 10.At least 21 people with the disease never got the MMR vaccine. The other four cases are unverified.“What people don’t realize about measles is how contagious it is,” said Lawrence Neville, PeaceHealth Southwest Chief Medical Officer. “It’s spread by airborne droplets and that’s why the very air can be infectious for up to two hours later after someone infected with measles is in that vicinity.”Miranda Smith said she’s frustrated by the outbreak. She has three young kids.“It’s their lives on the line, honestly. If they’re not vaccinated and something like this happens, then what am I going to do to save them?” she said.Washington State Department of Health statistics show Clark County has the sixth lowest immunization rate in the state.“I’d hardly be surprised if we see more cases that are outside of Clark County,” Melnicksaid.The CDC’s immunization recommendation is 90 percent. Read the rest

LaGuardia is closed and PHL and Newark are facing major delays because there aren't enough TSA workers willing to work without pay to keep them open. I'm supposed to be flying from Burbank to Oakland today for the Grand Reopening of the Public Domain at the Internet Archive and I'm getting really nervous. Read the rest

The keyboard is one of the most universally loved instruments, and it's relatively easy to learn. So why do so many kids hate their piano lessons? It's likely they weren't being taught Pianoforall, an innovative yet simple method that lets students discover what's great about music right away.Taught by pianist and therapist Robin Hall, this ten-hour online course doesn't waste time getting your hands on the keys. In the first lesson, you'll dive into the simple chords that form the backbone of the rhythm-style piano. That means you'll be able to play hits by Billy Joel, Norah Jones and more almost from the get-go - and although it won't feel like drilling, that's exactly what it is. With those fundamentals in place, you'll move on to blues, ragtime and eventually improvisational jazz, learning more complex chords and inversions along the way. Stick to it, and you'll be playing by ear and reading music with plenty of practice - but seemingly no effort.Right now, you can get Pianoforall: The New Way To Learn Piano & Keyboard for a reduced price of $10.99. Read the rest

Jeff Lemire can do weird-spooky (see, e.g., his Twilight Zonish graphic novel Underwater Welder) and he can do gripping (see his amazing, post-apocalyptic Sweet Tooth), but in his newest graphic novel from Image Comics, Gideon Falls, he shows that he can do spooky-verging-on-terrifying, with a tale of supernatural mystery that combines avant-garde graphic treatments with outstanding writing to create a genuine tale of terror.Gideon Falls braids together multiple points of view -- a priest newly arrived in a smalltown parish, whose predecessor is presumed dead; a vision-haunted mental patient who is on the verge of being reinstitutionalized because he can't stop picking up trash and piecing it together, looking for elusive patterns; a psychiatrist, a sherriff, others -- to piece together a fragmentary, nightmarish tale of an ancient evil, the Black Barn, which appears in visions and also sometimes in real life, possessing those who see it, driving them to murder, making them vanish.Lemire builds up the mythology of the Black Barn with the virtuosity of David Lynch fleshing out the mysteries of Twin Peaks, but because this is comics, and because Lemire is working with the amazing artists Andrea Sorrentino and Dave Stewart, the visions of the supernatural in Gideon Falls are spectacular and transporting, creating a sense of frightening, off-kilter dimensions that's straight out of a fever dream.As you might expect, the first volume ends on a cliffhanger, because fuck us, that's why, and I can't wait for the next collection.Gideon Falls Volume 1: The Black Barn [Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino and Dave Stewart/Image] Read the rest

This funny video lampoons the guy in your circle who always, for some reason, has a knife and a pretext to display it. Read the rest

Roger Stone Jr., the Republican political trickster and former advisor to Donald Trump, was arrested early this morning in Fort Lauderdale on seven charges related to the Mueller probe.Stone, 66, was charged with one count of obstruction, five counts of giving false statements, and one count of witness tampering. The indictment, unsealed after his arrest, details contacts between Stone and Wikileaks ("Organization 1") during Trump's run for office.In response to the later investigation into alleged collusion, the indictment claims,STONE took steps to obstruct these investigations. Among other steps to obstruct the investigations, STONE: a. Made multiple false statements to HPSCI about his interactions regarding Organization 1, and falsely denied possessing records that contained evidence of these interactions ; and b. Attempted to persuade a witness to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent information from the investigations. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating collusion between Trump's campaign and the Russian government. Wikileaks published Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. Stone, who has denied working with Wikileaks, is due to make an appearance 11 a.m. Friday in federal court. Read the rest

Has Trump shopped for groceries ever in his life?

Sculptor Jud Turner (previously) sez, "My childhood friend recently commissioned me to a pair of traditional Chinese Fu Dogs, which symbolize protection. He's of Chinese descent, recently bought a house in the suburbs, and said 'I want my kids to know more about their heritage, and I want to scare my neighbors!' Done and done." Read the rest

US Senator from the state of Colorado Michael Bennet explains why the government shutdown, President Trump and Ted Cruz are all full of shit. Read the rest

Following recommendations set out in Thomas Piketty's landmark Capital in the 21st Century, would-be Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has proposed a 2% annual tax on household wealth over $50,000,000, with an additional 1% annual tax on household wealth over $1,000,000,000, which would bring in $1.9-$2.75 trillion over the first decade (about 1% of US GDP).The tax would pay for an upgrade to the IRS that would allow it to audit the 75,000 households who are subject to it, and it's backstopped by a 40% exit tax on the wealth over $50 million of any US citizen who abandons their citizenship to escape it. The tax also includes a revamp of the tax code to close loopholes and expands international reporting regimes to isolate and frustrate tax-havens. The plan -- which is similar to tax regimes in Spain and Norway -- has been endorsed by Thomas Piketty. By itself, a wealth tax would begin to curb concentration of assets in U.S. society. The redistributive possibilities are also numerous. Cory Booker’s baby bonds proposal, to give every newborn a $1,000 low-risk savings account, with periodic additional payments, that they can tap as adults, would cost an estimated $82 billion per year, less than one-third of the Warren plan. Sherrod Brown’s child allowance bill, a universal cash payout that would cut the child poverty rate in half, would cost about $108 billion a year, not even half of Warren’s proposal. Kamala Harris’ LIFT Act, a massive series of tax cuts for middle-class families, has a $2 trillion price tag over a decade, again less than the Warren wealth tax. Read the rest

Designers Assia Quetin and Catherine Denoyelle created this ingenious sticky note desk accessory inspired by the beloved abstract artist Piet Mondrian. "Monde Riant" is €13.75 from PA Design.Of course it reminds me of pastry chef Caitlin Freeman's wonderful Mondrian Cake below. (Recipe in Freeman's book Modern Art Desserts.) Read the rest

“Take that, Petsmart, with your overly expensive cat toys!”Watch this very funny cat/DIY video from IMGURian YouWillAllReferToMeByTheNameBetty, a masterpiece.Putting the left over ikea boxes to good use Read the rest

With three cats, I was refilling their water bowl a lot, and often forgetting. Years ago I bought a gravity waterer and it is a huge relief, for me and the cats. I have the 1-gallon version (Amazon also has 0.5-gallon and 4-gallon models) and when it's about 2/3 empty I refill it. If you have a dog or cat, you will probably like one of these. Read the rest

I don't know what this veterinary hospital at Colorado State University does to incite such glee, but this dog, Endo, is jumping really high with excitement. Like above-the-counter high, causing the receptionist to break out in laughter. And the dog doesn't quit, with 45 good jumps in a row. Via AP/YouTube Read the rest

As part of its social credit system, China deployed an app that lets you see if a "deadbeat debtor" is within a 500-meter radius of you. From The Standard:The app name translates to “map of deadbeat debtors”, and can be accessed via WeChat, China’s most popular instant-messaging platform. The idea is that it will allow people to “whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.”The Hebei-based app is one part of this tracking system, but this social credit scoring is already having an impact in China. According to China Daily, more than 6,000 people who failed to pay their taxes on time or misbehaved on public transport were barred from taking planes or trains in and out of China between June 2018 and January 2019. Image: China Daily Read the rest

Joei Henney, 65, of Strinestown, Pennsylvania has an alligator as his registered emotional support animal. According to Henney, the 5-foot alligator, named Wally, helps Henney manage his depression. Apparently, the reptile is very generous with his hugs. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:A man who answered an e-mail from a reporter about Wally from the web site Service Dog Registration of America said, "Our therapist would never approve a client to have an alligator as an emotional support animal. "Henney’s doctor did.“My doctor wanted to put me on depression medicine, and I hate taking medicine. I had Wally, and when I came home and was around him, it was all OK," he said. “My doctor knew about Wally and figured it works, so why not?”Wally, Henney cautioned, is still a wild animal, one that could tear his arm off now, and do worse later...“He has never tried to bite no one,” Henney said. “I don’t push him on to people. I tell people to respect him, not fear him. He will not hurt you.”images: Joie Henney/Facebook Read the rest

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is puzzled as to why 800,000 furloughed federal workers need to visit food banks to keep their families from starving, when they can simply get a loan.From Reuters:Asked about their struggles, Ross told CNBC: “I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why.”“The banks and the credit unions should be making credit available to them,” he said, noting that the government would give federal employees back pay. “There really is not a good excuse why there really should be a liquidity crisis.”Wilbur Ross is has a net worth of around $700 million, according to Forbes. Before becoming Trump's Commerce Secretary, Ross was co-chair of the Bank of Cyprus, which is a laundromat for dirty Russian money. From The Dallas News:The country of Cyprus has a long history as a laundromat for dirty money, particularly from Russia. Cyprus is referenced 530,937 times in the Panama Papers, and the Bank of Cyprus, the country's largest bank, is referenced 4,657 times. And the cast of characters linked to the bank and President Donald Trump is troubling. Read the rest

Pringles are my favorite chip. In this Bon Appétit video, chef Claire Saffitz attempts to make them herself. Even if she nailed the form and the flavor, I don't think her technique would scale in my household. Admittedly, once I pop, I can't stop. Read the rest

Despite showing its age, John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids continues to be a consuming post-apocalyptic tale.A hit since its 1951 publication, I first read John Wyndham's landmark story of a post-apocalyptic England sometime in the mid 1980s. This was the very first book I found at Santa Monica's A Change of Hobbit, one of my earliest science fiction reads. I had not thought of it in years and couldn't recall having re-read it.I would say I had a hard time putting the book down, but other things have kept me exhausted. I did eagerly look forward to opening it every chance I got and could be found taking every spare moment away from life's daily catastrophes to read til I was done. I love it when books do that for me.Wyndham's tale is one of England after a cosmic event blinds 99% of humanity. With humanity sightless, a semi-sentient plant challenges man for the role of apex predator! Naturally, humanity is more its own enemy than the plants.I was impressed with how believable the world building and set-up was for what, in 1951, was such an outlandish tale. I know various folks accused Wyndham of borrowing heavily from others, but this story inspired a LOT of subsequent fiction. The triffids are wonderfully thought out.The early 1950s gender and race relations come thru pretty strong in the book. Reading this now, living in a time where it seems 27% or so of the United States seems to want to go back to this, was kind of disturbing. Read the rest

Jack Berberette's Dots RPG project creates free, CC-licensed shapefiles for RPG dice with Braille faces (you can order readymades from Shapeways); they're part of a larger project to produce accessible RPG materials of all kinds for people with visual disabilities. (via the-a-r-t-i-s-t) Read the rest

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Michael Dell was asked about Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's wildly popular proposal to tax income over $10,000,000 at 70%, but before he could answer ("I’m not supportive...And I do not think it will help the growth of the US economy") the audience erupted into laughter, according to CNN. MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson (previously), a co-panelist, was more bullish: "There’s actually a lot of economics that it's not necessarily going to hurt growth and I think we have to examine it more closely." (Image: AOC) Read the rest

Move over Wikileaks. A new leak site, Distributed Denial of Secrets (Tor), co-founded by "transparency activist" Emma Best, says they will leak hundreds of thousands of emails tomorrow, according to The Daily Beast. And many of them will be from Russia.“Stuff from politicians, journalists, bankers, folks in oligarch and religious circles, nationalists, separatists, terrorists operating in Ukraine,” said Best, a national-security journalist and transparency activist. “Hundreds of thousands of emails, Skype and Facebook messages, along with lots of docs.”Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoS, is a volunteer effort that launched last month. Its objective is to provide researchers and journalists with a central repository where they can find the terabytes of hacked and leaked documents that are appearing on the internet with growing regularity. The site is a kind of academic library or a museum for leak scholars, housing such diverse artifacts as the files North Korea stole from Sony in 2014, and a leak from the Special State Protection Service of Azerbaijan.The site’s Russia section already includes a leak from Russia’s Ministry of the Interior, portions of which detailed the deployment of Russian troops to Ukraine at a time when the Kremlin was denying a military presence there. Though some material from that leak was published in 2014, about half of it wasn’t, and WikiLeaks reportedly rejected a request to host the files two years later, at a time when Julian Assange was focused on exposing Democratic Party documents passed to WikiLeaks by Kremlin hackers.You can find more details on their Twitter account @DDoSecrets. Read the rest

Aria Code is WNYC Radio's captivating podcast that deconstructs famous arias. Believe me, even if you don't know anything about opera, or think you "don't like it," Aria Code is a fascinating way in. This week, they delve into Mozart's Queen of the Night, "the rage-fest" from The Magic Flute. This is a special episode for me because this aria was included on the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials attached to the Voyager I and II space probes launched in 1977. The Golden Record tells a story of our planet expressed in sounds, images, and science: Earth’s greatest music from myriad peoples and eras, from Bach to Blind Willie Johnson to Chuck Berry, Benin percussion to Solomon Island panpipes to, yes, Mozart's The Magic Flute. Two years ago, my friends Timothy Daly, Lawrence Azerrad, and I released the Voyager Golden Record on vinyl for the first time as a lavish box set. Our project's resonance with the public, and the Grammy that we were honored to receive for it, are really a testament to the majesty of the original record. It's a stunning compilation that stands the test of time (and space).Science and philosophy writer Timothy Ferris was the producer of the original Voyager Record. I was delighted to hear him on this episode of Aria Code explaining why the "Queen of the Night" made the cut and is now hurling through interstellar space."Mozart is an interesting composer from a mathematical standpoint," Tim says. "That is, you can find mathematical relationships rather easily in his music. Read the rest

Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith reviews Joanthan Tepper and Denise Hearn's The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition, in which Tepper (who does research that is sold to asset managers) condemns capitalism's current state while rejecting Thomas Piketty (who says that capitalism inevitably elevates the already-rich, not the people who create wealth by doing useful things) and Karl Marx.Like Piketty, though, Tepper seeks to rescue capitalism, rather than jettison it. Piketty prescribes a global wealth tax to erode inequality and make it possible for governments to create evidence-based, pluralistic policies that benefit the many, not the few, while Tepper jumps straight to those policies: specifically, Tepper wants to reinvigorate antitrust and break up monopolies and oligopolies, and ban anti-competitive behavior.This is an increasingly mainstream position, but, based on Smith's review, it's safe to say that Tepper makes it very well: from his vantage-point as a researcher serving the highest fliers of the finance industry, he is well-positioned to document the sleazy deals that monopolists make to carve up markets rather than compete in them, and the way that we all suffer as a result.Tepper catalogs the 29 worst rigged markets (while noting that there are many others), from ISPs to online services to milk to funeral homes to dialysis to eyeglasses to airlines to tax-prep to health insurance to agriculture to the media. And, contra Peter Thiel and the Chicago School, Tepper explains in fine detail how monopolies create disefficiencies of scale, performing worse than smaller companies, and retaining their position not by doing best in the market, but by rigging the market to crush new entrants. Read the rest

See if you can guess how you would die if you walked up this completely innocuous staircase. Read the rest

Peak indifference is the moment at which a far-off problem becomes so obvious that the number of people alarmed about it begins to grow of its own accord; a new Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication survey finds that 46% of Americans believe that they are living through adverse effects from climate change right now (up 9% in a year) and 72% of Americans say climate change is '"extremely," "very," or "somewhat" important to them personally' (the highest figure ever recorded); 57% acknowledge the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change (also the highest level ever).After peak indifference, the activist's job changes: once people start self-converting to believers because they are experiencing undeniable negative consequences of inaction, the next job is to convince people who know there's a problem that it's not too late to do something about it. After peak indifference, you have to fight nihilism. (via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

The "Amen Break" is a six-second drum sample from a 1969 song called "Amen, Brother" by a band called The Winstons. Over time it became used in over 3,000 songs.From Great Big Story: What do Skrillex, David Bowie, Salt-N-Pepa and basically every drum and bass track have in common? They've all used the Amen break, a four-bar drum solo that has become the most sampled loop in music history. Recorded in 1969, the six second sample originates from the song “Amen, Brother” by The Winstons, a funk and soul group from Washington, D.C. For many years, the solo was buried deep in musical archives—that is until hip-hop pioneer Lou Flores, aka “Breakbeat Lou,” featured it on his compilation, “The Ultimate Breaks and Beats.” Once producers caught wind of the solo, it took off, going on to change music forever.Image: Great Big Story/YouTube Read the rest

This kid is a star in the making. Feng E, from Taiwan, has been strumming ukulele for six years, but that doesn't seem like enough time to reach this level of playing. He's got it all – talent, charisma, and that look that only rock stars have – and in the above video he nails Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Here he is at 10 years old in November 2017 on Asia's Got Talent – as amazing back then as he is now:And on The Ellen Show last September at 11 years old: Read the rest

The latest Secret Service challenge coin (previously) commemorates Trump's shutdown (which has nearly 1,000,000 people going without pay, and has undermined everything from air travel to the ability of poor people to eat and pay rent), bearing the legends "Essential Personnel" and "Don't Worry, You'll Get Backpay." Perhaps SS agents can pay their rent by flogging the coins on Ebay, where the rarest of SS challenge coins fetch up to $500. 6,000 Secret Service employees are working without pay around the world and another 1,222 have been furloughed. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Scott Alexander continues to delight with his works of short, sharp science fiction (previously): this time, it's "Sort by Controversial," a teachnolovecraftian story of training a machine learning system to recognize (and then produce) "controversial" stories by exploiting Reddit's "sort by controversial" feature to obtain training data.Alexander's mcguffin is something called "Shiri's Scissor," a machine learning system that produces polarizing statements whose deceptive obvious rightness (or, alternately, wrongness) pits people against one another so violently that once you've been scissored, your peace is forever fractured.It's a lovely tale in the tradition of Lexicon and Snow Crash, turning on the use of algorithms to locate "spells" whose utterances destroy our ability to think clearly -- and as such, it's a wonderful metaphor for the engagement-maximized political climate we find ourselves imprisoned by.Shiri’s English wasn’t great, so I thought this was a communication problem. I corrected her. The program was spitting out obviously false statements. She stuck to her guns. I still thought she was confused. I walked her through the meanings of the English words “true” and “false”. She looked offended. I tried to confirm. She thought this abysmal programming decision, this plan of combining every bad design technique together and making it impossible to ever fix, was the right way to build our codebase? She said it was. Worse, she was confused I didn’t think so. She thought this was more or less what we were already doing; it wasn’t. She thought that moving away from this would take a total rewrite and make the code much worse. Read the rest

When your return your unwanted Amazon purchases, they end up with discounters who sell them by the palletload at pennies on the dollar, and millions of "reverse supply chain" specialists bid on these pallets of miscellania, sort the usable from the useless, repackage it, and make it available for sale again.The largest of these companies is Liquidity Services/liquidation.com, with 3.35 million registered users. Some of these are bargain hunters, but others are resellers hope to pan gold from the river of rejected trash and put it back on sale.Predictably, there's a get-rich-quick cult that has sprung up around liquidation resellers, with a whole supply chain (geddit?) of hustlers who will sell you lessons on how to achieve financial independence through canny liquidation arbitrage.Alexis Madrigal finds lyricism in the liquidations, with the found poetry of a manifest for one of these palettes ("hiking crampons, shimmer fabric paint, a High Visibility Thermal Winter Trapper Hat, a Mr. Ellie Pooh Natural White Paper List Pad, a St. Patrick’s Pot O’ Gold Cupcake Decorating Kit, a Spoontiques Golf Thermometer, a Feliz Cumpleanos Candle Packaged Balloon, and five Caterpillar Hoodies for Pets") which he describes, beautifully, as "a core sample drilled through the digital crust of platform capitalism."A level-headed Flint, Michigan, liquidation reseller named Walter Blake Knoblock offered a more realistic assessment in a live video he posted last year. He proffered five rules for Amazon pallets. The first? “Don’t expect it all to be good.” “ Don’t get discouraged if you’re halfway through your pallet and it’s all trash,” he said. Read the rest

Though Facebook's lobbying associations spent the whole debate over the EU Copyright Directive arguing (correctly) that algorithmic filters to catch copyright infringement would end up blocking mountains of legitimate speech (while still letting through mountains of infringement), Facebook secretly told the EU Commission that it used filters all the time, had utmost confidence in them, and couldn't see any problems with their use.In particular, Facebook endorsed Audible Magic's audio filters. Audible Magic also secretly lobbied the EU to mandate the use of its products, like a private prison company lobbying for harsher sentences. Its lobbying materials were an Orwellian masterpiece of doublespeak and deception. Part of the entertainment industry's narrative about the Copyright Directive has been accusations that Big Tech was spending a fortune to lobby against regulation. And while there was an ocean of dark money spent over the Directive, it was mostly spent by proponents of the Directive, and far from objecting to being thrown in the copyright filter briar patch, Big Tech was secretly not all that upset with the idea that the EU would force every small competitor to shut down, leaving a wide open field for American companies to dominate the internet forever.The Facebook lobbying docs were uncovered by Corporate Europe Observatory, the same investigators who unravelled the lobbying spending over the Directive; they were then analysed and reported out by Laura Kayali for Politico.Referring to content protected by copyright, Facebook also told the Commission in April 2015 that “every content uploaded by users is filtered through Audible Magic software before actual upload. Read the rest

In a competitive business landscape, employers need to know that their management hires are going to produce results. And if there's one way to show that, it's with a certification in Lean Six Sigma, the logic-driven methodology that gets project managers and their team from point A to point B quickly, cleanly and under budget. If you're not up on the program, there's an easy way to learn: The Lean Six Sigma Project Manager Certification Bundle.The bundle is chock full of insights that any manager should value, prospective or practicing. Not only will you learn the focused project management principles of Lean Six Sigma, but you'll also have a bedrock of fundamentals that help you plan before that project is even at step one. A course on Lean Management gives an overarching view of what makes successful businesses tick, and a boot camp in Minitab software shows you how to utilize data analytics to improve your approach and spot trends. At completion, you'll receive a certificate that shows any prospective employers that you're ready to put the Lean Six Sigma system to good use.Don't waste time, though: Right now, the Lean Six Sigma Project Manager Certification Bundle is available now for $69. Read the rest

[Editor's note: I was utterly taken with the gorgeous photos in the new edition of Core Memory, photographer Mark Richards and writer John Alderman's lavish survey of the vintage computing hardware in Silicon Valley's gem, the Computer History Museum; below is senior curator Dag Spicer's introduction to the book, along with some photos, which the publisher was kind enough to supply -Cory]What computers mean to us depends largely on what we bring to them. Our expectations, our past experience, the dreams and myths that surround them, their physical characteristics—all these aspects resonate on multiple, often overlapping levels. One level is aesthetic. Many nonspecialists in the computer arts enjoy these machines for their visual appeal and curiosity. Nearly everyone, regardless of technical background, can appreciate the intricacies of a computer’s mechanical design, its rows of switches and blinking lights, its often ungainly proportions, and the personal con- nection they feel when they recognize the first computer they used. A second level is important for specialists. People trained in computer science or electrical engineering bring the additional dimension of how these objects illuminate abstract principles of computer architecture and the ideas immanent in their design—ideas that give us insight into the minds of their designers and the challenges they faced. A third level is the historical trajectory of these objects: how they were financed and why, what problems they were trying to solve, and the mistakes made and dead ends encountered by their designers. We learn a lot by understanding these human elements and how they shaped historical and technical factors into stable artifacts, in turn stitching together the fabric of today’s information-based society. Read the rest

Trump:As the Shutdown was going on, Nancy Pelosi asked me to give the State of the Union Address. I agreed. She then changed her mind because of the Shutdown, suggesting a later date. This is her prerogative - I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over. I am not looking for an.... ...alternative venue for the SOTU Address because there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber. I look forward to giving a “great” State of the Union Address in the near future!I believe the word for this in conservative circles is "cucked." Mr. President, I hope by saying “near future” you mean you will support the House-passed package to #EndTheShutdown that the Senate will vote on tomorrow. Please accept this proposal so we can re-open government, repay our federal workers and then negotiate our differences. https://t.co/57KMATZZTO— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) January 24, 2019 Read the rest

The finished piece he makes is such a delight, but so is watching it come together from spare scraps of wood. A crappy stopmotion of my woodworkingShared on IMGUR by IMGUrian Basil123, who thought it was “crappy.” No way! We'll be the judge of that, and it ain't. Read the rest

Bada bing, bada banned. China has blocked Bing, Microsoft's search engine, tonight.Bing.com is not accessible inside China, per reports throughout the country. Microsoft says ‘we’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps.’The FT's @YuanfenYang reports that Bing was blocked throughout China following a government order. She cites two sources familiar with the matter.“This kind of DNS corruption is usually the very literal way in which the Chinese govt tells foreign tech companies to 'go home',” tweeted Yuan Yang.This kind of DNS corruption is usually the very literal way in which the Chinese govt tells foreign tech companies to "go home" https://t.co/CPQyO8vmkD— Yuan Yang (@YuanfenYang) January 23, 2019From her report in the Financial Times:On Wednesday, mainland Chinese users wrote on social media that their attempts to access Bing’s China site, cn.bing.com, were failing. Cn.bing.com is still accessible from outside of China. Microsoft said that it was investigating the situation.Two sources familiar with the government order confirmed that Bing had been blocked. One of the sources explained that China Unicom, one of China’s major state-owned telecoms companies, had confirmed the government had ordered a block on Bing.Attempts to access cn.bing.com resulted in a connection error. The connection error was caused by an inability for the Chinese nameservers — address books that match up website names to their digital locations — to correctly retrieve the IP address of Bing’s China platform. This form of nameserver corruption has been often used by the Chinese government to block platforms. Read the rest

There are trace elements of facts in many of this week’s tabloids stories, but that hasn’t stopped the rags’ alchemists from spinning gold out of these barely-detectable sub-atomic particles.George Clooney and wife Amal have purchased an estate on the Italian isle of Sardinia, but because she’s there with their twins and George is away, the National Enquirer cover story proclaims: “Clooney Divorce Explodes – Amal Moves Out!” She has reportedly “fled their marital home in England” and “furious George has begged Amal to come back." Except Clooney isn’t in England. He has been working in Los Angeles, as the most cursory investigation would have told the Enquirer. But if Amal is in Sardinia and George isn’t there, they must be getting divorced. Right?"Glenn Miller Death Plane Found!” reports the Globe. Well, not exactly. The unidentified wreckage of a WWII-era plane was found off the south coast of England. So the Globe figures this must be the big band leader’s plane, because no other planes went down in the sea during WWII, did they?Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton is the target of terrorists as “ISIS Plants Poison in Kate’s Grocery Store,” claims the Globe. Or at least, a post on an extremist website suggested that someone should poison her groceries, which means it’s as good as happened.Jennifer Aniston is adopting a baby girl from a Mexican orphanage, the Globe reports under the happy headline: “Jen Aniston’s Mom At Last!" Apparently she has made a donation to a Mexican orphanage, so it stands to reason she must be taking one of the kids home. Read the rest

I've really been enjoying the new 'MythBusters Jr', Adam Savage's new science exploration show featuring... kids. Really smart awesome talented kids. Adam Savage will be Tweeting live during tonight's two premiere episodes, and they start airing an hour early (at 8 pm ET) for parents with wee ones.Watch it on Science Channel through your cable/satellite provider, or SCIGO, their online streaming service.I’ll be Tweeting LIVE tonight — including some BTS photos — during our TWO premieres of #MythBustersJr on @ScienceChannel! Tune in this evening at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET! pic.twitter.com/hJBHBJQPgO— Adam Savage (@donttrythis) January 23, 2019One of the episodes tonight is 'Demolition Dominoes.'BELOW: Here's an app for the episode, and a video clip preview: Can a single domino start a chain reaction that can crush a CAR? And is it possible to remove the solitary bottom block from a late-game Jenga tower without toppling it? Find out on #MythBustersJr: Demolition Dominos, premiering Wednesday at 8p on @ScienceChannel. pic.twitter.com/BueR1BreEv— MythBusters (@MythBusters) January 21, 2019This small-scale test bodes well! Well, the small-scale test bodes well. But can a domino crush a CAR? Tune in to #MythBustersJr: Demolition Dominoes TONIGHT at 8p on @ScienceChannel. pic.twitter.com/NFxFIsPAUF— MythBusters (@MythBusters) January 23, 2019Here's another show scene, with Adam helping his co-host Elijah test his concept of using bungee to remove the last Jenga piece. Can you remove the the solitary bottom block from a late-game Jenga tower without toppling it? Read the rest