Boing Boing

Stop by and charge your phones @shmoocon! Courtesy of @NSAGov pic.twitter.com/yxIL8mohvi— Rob Joyce (@RGB_Lights) January 18, 2019Let me think about that... nope.(h/t Bob Lord) Read the rest

You've probably played with one of those toy cars that you drag back to wind up and then let go to let it zoom across the floor. In this video, Jared Owen uses 3D animation to clearly show how the mechanism works. This guy deserves a lot more subscribers than he has. Check out some of his other cool explainer videos: Read the rest

The Drone, currently in post-production, is a real movie about a killer drone. From the trailer description:A serial killer transfers his consciousness into a consumer drone right before he is killed, then flies off to terrorize newlyweds Rachel (ALEX ESSOE) and Chris (JOHN BROTHERTON). The couple must fight to stop the insidious device before it destroys them both.Director Jordan Rubin is a comedian, his prior film was Zombeavers, and The Drone is obviously a tongue-in-cheek tale. But I kinda wish it was straight-up splatterpunk sci-fi. Read the rest

Freedom, published in Harlem during the Cold War and McCarthy years, was Paul Robeson and Louis Burnham's radical black paper that "ppenly challenged racism, imperialism, colonialism, and political repression and advocated for civil rights, labor rights and world peace"; NYU's Freedom archive holds browsable (but not searchable, alas!) scans of issues with contributions from "W.E.B. Du Bois, Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry" and many others. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

A Japanese start-up built a microsatellite that was launched into orbit today. The satellite contains 400 tiny balls that can be released on demand and will burn brightly enough to be seen on Earth as they burn up in the atmosphere.From Channel NewsAsia:ALE Co. Ltd (Astro Live Experiences) says it is targeting "the whole world" with its products and plans to build a stockpile of shooting stars in space that can be delivered across the world.When its two satellites are in orbit, they can be used separately or in tandem, and will be programmed to eject the balls at the right location, speed and direction to put on a show for viewers on the ground.Tinkering with the ingredients in the balls should mean that it is possible to change the colors they glow, offering the possibility of a multi-colored flotilla of shooting stars.Each star is expected to shine for several seconds before being completely burned up - well before they fall low enough to pose any danger to anything on Earth.They would glow brightly enough to be seen even over the light-polluted metropolis of Tokyo, ALE says.From ALE:ALE is a Japan-based space entertainment startup that creates shooting stars on demand using microsatellites. Its mission is to contribute to scientific research through entertainment. It was founded in September 2011 by Lena Okajima, a serial entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Tokyo.Natural shooting stars occur when dust particles of several millimeters in size enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn due to plasma emission. Read the rest

Criminals are using stolen credit cards to buy Fortnite V-bucks, then selling the in-game currency for bitcoin at a discount on the dark web as a way to launder money. From The Independent:Discounted V-bucks are being sold in bulk on the dark web – a hidden section of the internet only accessible using specialist software – as well as in smaller quantities on the open web by advertising them on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.By posing as potential customers, Sixgill agents uncovered operations being conducted around the globe in Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic and English.“Criminals are executing carding fraud and getting money in and out of the Fortnite system with relative impunity,” Benjamin Preminger, a senior intelligence analyst at Sixgill, told The Independent. Read the rest

Amazon just sent me a text saying The Grand Tour Season 3 is now available. I'll be back in a few hours! Read the rest

In 2012, Facebook settled a class-action suit with parents who claimed that their kids were being tricked into spending real money on game items, thinking they were spending virtual in-game currency; the parents said that Facebook had structured its system to allow kids to use their parents' credit cards without the parents' intervention, unlike competitors like Google and Apple, who required password re-entries when a card was re-charged for in-game purchases.When the case was settled, the court records were sealed, but thanks to legal action from Reveal, they are now in the public domain, and they paint a picture of a company whose internal staff raised multiple red flags about kids using their parents' cards in this way, and whose concerns were brushed off in the name of profits.One very disturbing exchange has a Facebook employee referring to a child who had charged thousands of dollars on their parents' credit card as a "whale," a term the casino uses to refer to high-rollers who lose fortunes while gambling.Gillian: Would you refund this whale ticket? User is disputing ALL charges…Michael: What’s the users total lifetime spend?Gillian: It’s $6,545 – but card was just added on Sept. 2. They are disputing all of it I believe. That user looks underage as well. Well, maybe not under 13.Michael: Is the user writing in a parent, or is this user a 13ish year oldGillian: It’s a 13ish yr old. says its 15. looks a bit younger. she* not its. Read the rest

When teachers from the largest school district in America walked off the job this week, they were not campaigning for wages: rather, they were demanding smaller classes; more librarians, counselors, aides and special-ed teachers; and to rein in the Charter school movement, and that last demand is the key to understanding the whole thing.Charter schools were developed in the wake of the Brown v Board of Ed decision, which found that racially segregated public schools were illegal; charter schools let white supremecists skirt the decision by diverting public funds into private schools that could exclude Black children.Today, the charter school movement has evolved into a darling of billionaires and vast, illegal dark-money pools, working in alliance with racists and Christian Dominionists who want Biblical doctrine taught at public expense. Like the Reagan coalition, the fundamentalists supply the warm bodies, the billionaires supply the seed capital, and then the billionaires make out like bandits while the poor evangelical rank-and-file get screwed.But even if you want to send your kid to a public school, charter schools can make it impossible to make such a choice. Charter schools can cream off the kids with wealthy parents, high test scores and no special needs, sucking money out of the public system, which still has the same per-pupil funding that has to stretch farther to cover fixed costs (just because your students leave, it doesn't make your school cheaper to heat or maintain).The results is that schools end up raiding the per-pupil educational budget to cover fixed costs, leaving the public system with a disproportionate fraction of kids who need extra support, and less money per pupil to pay for it. Read the rest

Sascha Baron Cohen put on a funny disguise and went to a small town in the United States to tell the residents of a plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy. The townsfolk were excited by the prospect until they found out the plan involved the construction of an enormous mosque. When the townsfolk complained about terrorists, Cohen told them that the worshippers would be well protected from terrorist attacks against them. Read the rest

Holly, a Harvard seminarian and activist, invited Twitter users to DM her the dirty secrets of their industries, which she then anonymized and posted in a megathread with more than 600 parts (as of this writing); while many of them are mild or self-evident, many of them are the kind of sphincter-tightening or blood-boiling confessions that you always suspected might be true but hoped like hell were not.Some of them are also a little uplifting (library workers are reliably helpers with immigration paperwork, say, but also increasingly wracked by violence and the effects of unchecked poverty and the erosion of social services), and others are, well, just terrible:* Arkansas teachers beat the shit out of their students, especially disabled kids, kids with developmental delays, etc* Whether you get arrested in NYC is largely a function of whether the cop is eligible for overtime* Your always-on smart speaker is sending your private conversations to random, badly paid contractors* "Celibate" priests are getting laid like crazy* Starbucks' rulebook is full of gotchas that let managers discriminate against troublemakers, racialized people, and anyone else they dislike* Billion dollar battleships are built by stoned meth-freaks* Remote disconnect meters are crapgadgets built by low-bidders and they are prone to bursting into flames* Southern universities have a quiet understanding with racist old white alums that their donations will only to scholarships for white kids* Environmentally sound plastics are ignored so that big companies can shave pennies off their costsLots more, too. Read the rest

Launched as a NYC skateshop in 1994, streetwear brand Supreme has become a religion for hypbeasts (and the flippers who serve them). Now, a private collector is auctioning off their collection of every single Supreme skate deck ever made, many of which are emblazoned with graphics from esteemed contemporary artists. The lot of 248 skateboard decks along with the Louis Vuitton Boite skateboard trunk with tool kit, trucks, wheels and shoulder strap is expected to bring around $1 million but I bet it goes for much more. From Sotheby's:Supreme started producing their own skateboards in 1998 and have collaborated with many well-known brands over the last 20 years - most famously with Louis Vuitton. Supreme is also known for their artist collaborations, featuring the likes of George Condo, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, KAWS, Marilyn Minter, Nate Lowman, and Takashi Murakami, among others."Own the Entire Supreme Skateboard Collection, Now Open for Bidding" (Sotheby's, thanks Lux Sparks-Pescovitz!)Decks by Marilyn Minter and Jeff Koons and Louis Vuitton Boite skateboard trunk with accessories: Read the rest

Here's an incredible collection of digitized historical LPs you can listen to online. A lot of them remind me of podcast episodes, like this record about "big-lie-technique" master Senator Joseph R.McCarthy. This is a browser's treat. Read the rest

In the early 1990s, the burgeoning black metal scene in Norway was plagued with jealousy, violence, arson, and eventually murder. Lords of Chaos, named after Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind's excellent non-fiction book, is a new film coming to theaters February 8 that tells the story of those loud, weird, dark times. Jonas Åkerlund directs and the cast includes Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Jack Kilmer, Sky Ferreira, and Valter Skarsgård. Read the rest

We are in serious bad sci-fi movie territory here.Ambrosia is a start-up offering "young blood" to people who are not "young." This blood is supposed to make you all awesome again! Like before your blood got all old! Only problem being the scientists who conducted the study say it is dangerous.Apparently, folks are lining up to get injected with the blood of the young.Business Insider:Does young blood hold the keys to a long and healthy life? Startup founder and and Stanford Medical graduate Jesse Karmazin believes it might, so he launched a startup called Ambrosia Medical that fills older people's veins with fresh blood from young donors.But researchers who study the procedure say it poses major risks for patients, including an elevated risk of developing several serious conditions later in life, such as graft-versus-host disease, which can occur when transfused blood cells attack the patient's own cells, and transfusion-associated lung injury.Irina and Michael Conboy, two University of California at Berkeley researchers who've published research on young blood transfusions in mice, called Ambrosia's plans "dangerous.""They quite likely could inflict bodily harm," Irina Conboy told Business Insider.The Conboys' concern stems from an awareness of what happens in the body when it receives foreign blood from a donor."It is well known in the medical community — and this is also the reason we don't do transfusions frequently — that in 50% of patients there are very bad side effects. You are being infused with somebody else's blood and it doesn't match," Conboy said. Read the rest

Until last spring, everyone wanted to see the new European Copyright Directive pass; then German MEP Axel Voss took over as rapporteur and revived the most extreme, controversial versions of two proposals that had been sidelined long before as the Directive had progressed towards completion.After all, this is the first refresh on EU copyright since 2001, and so the Directive is mostly a laundry list of overdue, uncontroversial technical tweaks with many stakeholders; the last thing anyone wanted was a spoiler in the midst.Anyone, that is, except for German newspaper families (who loved Article 11, who could charge Big Tech for the privilege of sending readers to their sites) and the largest record labels (who had long dreamed of Article 13, which would force the platforms to implement filters to check everything users posted, and block anything that resembled a known copyrighted work, or anything someone claimed was a known copyrighted work).These were the clauses that Voss reinserted, and in so doing, triggered a firestorm of opposition to the Directive from all sides: more than four million Europeans publicly opposed it, along with leading copyright and technical experts—and also the notional beneficiaries of the rules, from journalists to the largest movie studios, TV channels and sports leagues in Europe.Voss has found himself increasingly isolated in his defense of the Directive, just him and the record labels against the rest of the world.And now it's just Voss.The record labels have joined the movie studios in denouncing the working version of Article 13, and calling for the impossible: a rollback of the tiny, largely ornamental changes made in order to give the Directive a hope of passing (they were complaining about Monday's version of the Directive, but the version that leaked yesterday doesn't fix any of their problems). Read the rest

Yoni Appelbaum's longread in The Atlantic on the case for impeaching Trump draws on heterodox interpretations of the Clinton and Johnson impeachments, as well as the Nixon impeachment, to argue that despite (or even because of) the Senate's near-certain inaction on impeachment, there are real benefits to impeaching Trump, which is looking very likely if accusations of suborning perjury before Congress are true.Appelbaum argues that history's verdict on the Clinton and Johnson impeachments -- that they were divisive, partisan exercises that did more harm than good -- is misguided. Rather than viewing impeachment as a denergous constitution-undermining exercise that weakens the institution of the presidency, Appelbaum says that the framers wouldn't have put impeachment into the Constitution if it wasn't part of the normal functioning of a Constitutional democracy, a check on an otherwise imperial presidency (and incidentally, he argues that the presidency has grown increasingly imperial and is overdue for a good trimming).In addition to making a case that impeachment is itself a reasonable action under some circumstances, Appelbaum makes the fairly easy case that we are living through those circumstances right now, reciting a greatest hits of Trump's many qualifying sins.Then he gets to the interesting part: we know that the Senate isn't going to do anything about a successful impeachment of Trump by the Democrats in Congress, so what's the point? According to Appelbaum, history teaches us that impeaching a president has five major benefits even if they are not removed from office: it changes the way that the press covers the issue, switching from letting the president set a fearmongering agenda to piecing together a coherent narrative of the president's unfitness; it sidelines the president's agenda and forces them to focus on the impeachment; it moves away from the piecemeal Congressional committee investigations of individual scandals and puts the focus on the big picture of how they all fit together; it channels public and governmental anger with the government into a peaceful and lawful system of redressing grievances, forestalling potential political violence; and it permanently damages the impeached president's political prospects, putting them under a cloud for the rest of their political lives. Read the rest

Unvaccinated children exposed to the measles are catching and spreading the highly contagious disease in Washington's Clark County, JUST LIKE YOU WOULD EXPECT.The Oregonian:A measles outbreak in southwestern Washington state has grown to 16 confirmed cases, and most of the children affected are unimmunized against the disease, officials said Thursday.A Clark County Public Health release says officials have been tracking the outbreak since Jan. 1. Of the 16 confirmed cases, 13 of the cases are children under the age of 11, officials say.Only two of the children have an unverified immunization status; the other 14 are unimmunized, officials say.Clark County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the state, with more than 22 percent of public school students having not completed their vaccinations, The Oregonian reports, citing state records.Contagious patients have visited schools and medical facilities, as well as the Portland International Airport and retailers including the Northeast Portland Costco and Ikea stores.Officials say the disease is highly contagious and can cause fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and rash."Measles can be dangerous, especially for babies and young children. In rare cases, it can be deadly," a Washington State Department of Health fact sheet says. Read the rest

Perdue has recalled 60,000 pounds of chicken nuggets due to the presence of "wood" in them. The 22 ounce packages of frozen “PERDUE SimplySmart ORGANICS BREADED CHICKEN BREAST NUGGETS GLUTEN FREE” with “Best By: Date 10/25/19” and UPC Bar Code “72745-80656” represented on the label were produced October 25, 2018. Here's a guide to finding delicious wood nuggets. Read the rest

We got one of these gadgets from The Lakeside Collection and it broke on the first use. It turns out the screw neck is made of the cheapest plastic known to man and is doomed to failure upon contact with anything harder than snow, such as ice, wipers, mirrors, roofracks, antennas, and so on. Worse, for the few minutes it was working, it was conspicuously less effective than a brush. So I'm going to just get a decent, big-ass brush. I'm going to give the Hopkins Snowbroom [Amazon] a try because it's slightly more expensive than everything else, looks sturdy, has great reviews, and because I don't want to be the type of person who ends up buying three different snow-removing gadgets. Read the rest

Want a career in web design? It's true that these days, most anyone can throw up a page or two. But for true workhorse web design, you'll sometimes need to match the platform to the project. Enter the Complete Front-End Developer Bundle, an educational grand tour around the best tools for the web.For beginners, the package includes a bare-bones introduction to those old reliables, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. With the fundamentals in place, anyone will be able to pick up valuable creative tips in lessons about Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CC, both of which are essential for providing visual distinction to any site. For designers brushing up on the latest, the bundle includes in-depth tutorials on newer tools like Bootstrap 4 and React, and even an overview of app design through Sketch 3.All in all, it's over 65 hours of training and resources, geared to turn the most casual coder into a working web designer. The Complete Front-End Developer Bundle is now $41 for lifetime access. Read the rest

Seeing a slight resurgence online this week, perhaps due to issues related to the government shutdown, is the viral term "Yikes!" I humbly propose that this shopworn exclamation be replaced for the duration of 2019 with"Blimey!" This perfectly British alternative honors the derailed madness of Brexit and even comes with an optional intensifier — Cor Blimey! — though Americans would be advised to use it sparingly. Read the rest

Cash Cars in Kansas City will take very little cash for very crappy vehicles. They are sold AS-IS, and yet Desmound Logan here must still explain to customers that when you pay $3,000 for a Tahoe, you can take it on an extended test drive but you are not getting a warrantee. "When you come to us, we are your last motherfuckin resort," says Logan.In the following video, Logan presents a Cash Cars KC "You figure out what's wrong with it" special.NSFW language throughout, y'all. Read the rest

It's a very expensive wee gadget, the Teenage Engineering OP-1 [Amazon link; a used one from eBay is much cheaper]! Yuri Wong is an expert with its sampling and sequencing tools, and this video he uploaded is a fascinating illustration of how powerful and approachable they are.Download the mp3: https://gum.co/imadude [Logic Project download link below] I'm a fan of Tropic Thunder, especially Robert Downey's character of Kirk Lazarus and his brilliant line, "I'm a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude." Thought I'd play around with my Teenage Engineering OP-1 and see what comes out. I'm making the Logic Project for the full track downloadable. Here it is: https://gum.co/IurBZ Have a play around with the project, and if you feel like uploading anything from it, just credit my YouTube channel, thanks. Read the rest

At last night's "I Am The Highway: A Tribute to Chris Cornell" concert in Los Angeles, Miley Cyrus belted out Temple of the Dog's "Say Hello 2 Heaven" backed up by Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam and Josh Freese and Brendan O'Brien. By all accounts, Cyrus's surprisingly fierce performance was a highlight of an incredible and emotional evening.(via Billboard) View this post on Instagram Say Hello to Heaven... had a heavenly experience with you tonight, Chris. We felt you and heard you.... your words and spirit filled the room.... there was an overwhelming feeling of so much love... we miss you deeply ... tonight was an honor.... #chriscornelltribute A post shared by Miley Cyrus (@mileycyrus) on Jan 17, 2019 at 1:38am PST Read the rest

On Monday, we reported that for the first time, a plant seed had germinated on the moon, an early experiment to test whether food could someday be grown on the moon to feed residents of a lunar base. The cotton sprout was inside a canister on China's Chang’e 4 lander that touched down on the far side of the moon earlier this month. Now, word that the first lunar plant has died. The little seedling froze to death during the lunar night. From GBTimes:Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside the 1-litre-capacity canister had reached -52 degrees Celsius and the experiment had ended.According to Liu, the experiment did not carry a battery and could not continue environmental control during the lunar nighttime. The lack of battery was possibly due to mass constraints for the mission and the lander's own power demands..."Although it is a biological payload for popularising science, it laid a foundation and technological support for our next step, that is, to build a lunar base for living," (Chongqing University professor and designer of the experiment) Xie (Genxin) said.Previously:• China launching lunar spacecraft to test growing plants on the dark side of the Moon• First images from China's probe that just landed on the dark side of the moon Read the rest

Lorna Doom, badass bassist of influential Los Angeles punk band the Germs, died yesterday. Formed in 1976, the Germs -- Doom, Darby Crash, Pat Smear, and Don Bolles in the classic line-up -- were at the center of the early Hollywood punk scene that spawned Black Flag, X, Fear, the Go-Go's, and so many seminal acts. From the Los Angeles Times:Born Teresa Ryan, Doom became an icon of the U.S. punk explosion despite having to learn her instrument after already joining the band. Along with her high school friend Belinda Carlisle, who would become lead singer of the Go-Go’s, the bassist was part of the posse of Hollywood punks who sparked a West Coast music movement.Doom’s death at age 61 was confirmed by her longtime friend and former Germs bandmate Don Bolles. A cause of death was not immediately available...Germs' primal first album, “G.I.,” set the tone for the U.S. hardcore punk movement. The debut release by the fledgling indie label Slash, which was founded by the punk fanzine of the same name, the 1978 album felt zapped onto turntables from a way messier, more uncontrolled galaxy...Slash Records also released the soundtrack to the Penelope Spheeris documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization,” which documented the Germs and other bands in performance. When the film became an unlikely indie hit, Doom’s work served as inspiration to countless female punks itching to break through the genre’s male-dominated glass ceiling.yesterday i lost a part of me, my best friend in high school and partner in crime in the early punk scene, #LornaDoom or Teresa passed away.... Read the rest

Trump received 10 personal updates from Michael Cohen and encouraged a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin. “Make it happen,” Trump said of the Putin meeting.

Scammers are so petty.In a bizarre statement today, Donald Trump “grounds” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from flying on government aircraft for a planned but not publicly disclosed to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan and conduct America's foreign business abroad.Disclosing this is a violation of national security, and stupid. Some 800,000 federal workers are without pay, and with each passing day, the shutdown -- we're on day 27-- threatens America's economy and the safety of every American. On this same day, Melania Trump flew on government aircraft to Florida, to their privately owned Mar a Lago resort. She's there alone with their child.The cost of this Air Force flight to taxpayers was over $35,0000, reports Quartz. Why'd Melania do that today? No reason, huh.EXEC1F - #MelaniaForceOne climbing out from Joint Base Andrews🇺🇸 US Air ForceC-32A 98-0001 https://t.co/BlmOXELhxJ pic.twitter.com/kgGWuEiiGV— CivMilAir ✈ (@CivMilAir) January 17, 2019.@SpeakerPelosi cannot use military plane to war zone and NATO that speakers are entitled to (for security since 9/11 because she is in line of succession) but Melania Trump flew tonight to Maralago on same type of military 757 from JBA. Alone.— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) January 18, 2019ABC News reported at 642pm Eastern that the first lady had arrived in Florida, and headed to the president's Mar a Lago club with their son Barron Trump:The first lady’s office did not respond to ABC's request for further comment.Nothing more need be said.Just reported on @MSNBC: Melania Trump flew to Florida today on a government plane, a law enforcement source confirms to NBC News, just after Trump prevented Nancy Pelosi from using a government plane to visit troops in Afghanistan. Read the rest

Once-iconic American retailer Sears (owned by Sears Holdings Corporation) will not die a bankruptcy liquidation death after all. Chairman Eddie Lampert today won a bankruptcy auction to purchase the company's assets, after presenting an upped offer of $5.2 billion, Sears said Thursday.Creditors oppose the deal.Reuters:Sears picked Lampert’s hedge fund ESL Investments Inc as the winner at a bankruptcy court-supervised auction after his latest bid topped an earlier $5 billion proposal following weeks of talks.The deal would keep open more than 400 stores, preserve up to 45,000 jobs and ESL would acquire substantially all of the company, including its “Go Forward Stores” on a going-concern basis, Sears said.“We are pleased to have reached a deal that would provide a path for Sears to emerge from the chapter 11 process,” the restructuring committee of Sears’ board of directors said in a statement.The sale still has to be approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge, and that's not happening during the ongoing U.S. government shutdown, now on its 27th day. A hearing to consider the deal is set for February 1. If approved, the transaction is expected to close on or about Feb. 8, Sears says.Previously on Boing Boing: • Sears chairman Eddie Lampert submits new $5 billion bid to save doomed retailer• RIP Sears.• Sears expected to liquidate as last-minute buyout failsPHOTO: The storefront of a Sears, Roebuck and Co. store is seen in El Paso, Texas, circa 1940. Photographer unknown. Read the rest

Starting Sunday evening, Jan. 20, 2019, North and South America will have a chance at seeing 2019's only total lunar eclipse, from start to finish. Our Earth, Moon and Sun line up on Sunday night for the only total lunar eclipse of of the year. Catch it if you can.And especially because it's a “supermoon.” That's when the moon is closer to Earth, and therefore looks larger and more bright than it normally does. Weather in much of the United States during the eclipse is expected to make for challenging viewing conditions, but you never know. “This one is particularly good,” Rice University astrophysicist Patrick Hartigan tells the AP in this story. “It not only is a supermoon and it’s a total eclipse, but the total eclipse also lasts pretty long. It’s about an hour.”Excerpt:The whole eclipse starts Sunday night or early Monday, depending on location , and will take about three hours.It begins with the partial phase around 10:34 p.m. EST Sunday. That’s when Earth’s shadow will begin to nip at the moon. Totality — when Earth’s shadow completely blankets the moon — will last 62 minutes, beginning at 11:41 p.m. EST Sunday.If the skies are clear, the entire eclipse will be visible in North and South America, as well as Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and the French and Spanish coasts. The rest of Europe, as well as Africa, will have partial viewing before the moon sets.During totality, the moon will look red because of sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere. Read the rest

Two GOP congressmen met with noted white supremacist Chuck Johnson about “genetic testing and DNA,” then deny knowing he's a white supremacist. Holocaust denier and white supremacy troll Chuck Johnson, famous for lawsuit-worthy rumors he shit on the floor in public, met with Republican congressmen Andy Harris and Phil Roe on Wednesday in Capitol hill to discuss “DNA" and "genetics." Johnson is a eugenics proponent.In the photo above tweeted by Matt Fuller at HuffPost, Reps. Phil Roe of Tennessee, center, and Andy Harris of Maryland, right, walk with Chuck Johnson in the nation's capital. Reps. Roe and Harris are both medical doctors.Chuck once wrote that Muslims are “genetically different in their propensity for violence or rape," and writes that black people have a gene that makes them violent.He won't share details on his new "DNA" and "genetics" operation, including its name.Why are Republican members of congress meeting with this man, not even a week after publicly denouncing white supremacist remarks by congressman Steve King (R-IA)?Ben Collins of NBC News writes, “Chuck Johnson wouldn't comment on a FB post he shared that said African-Americans 'possessed a violence gene' or that 'Muslims are genetically different in their propensity for rape.'””Asking me to defend my views on Facebook is a little absurd,” he told NBC. Excerpt from Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny's report:Chuck Johnson met with Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Phil Roe of Tennessee on Thursday. After a Huffington Post reporter tweeted a photo of Johnson with the two congressmen, and the photo attracted media attention because of Johnson's far-right views, Roe released a statement saying he and Harris had met with Johnson because he was representing a company advocating for "increasing the number of sequenced genomes for research."Spokespersons for Harris and Roe both confirmed to NBC News that they had met with Johnson Thursday, and a spokesperson for Roe said they had discussed "DNA" and "genetics." Johnson and Harris would not identify the company when asked. Read the rest

Four words in a tiny font at the top of a page in Mueller's recent court filing reveal that Manafort kept at it with Kilimnik even *after* Manafort was charged with multiple felonies. It pays to read the fine print. Excerpt from Rosalind S. Helderman at the Washington Post:In a tiny font at the top of the 82nd page of a lengthy document filed in court this week by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is a key clue to his ongoing interest in Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman.The four words of unredacted text suggest that in February 2018 — four months after Manafort was first charged with crimes related to his work as a political consultant in Ukraine — he still appears to have been working on a peace initiative for Ukraine, a topic of intense interest to Russia.And it suggests he was doing so in concert with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian employee of his consulting firm who is alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence.The revelation, potentially inadvertent, comes as Manafort and Mueller’s legal team have been battling in court over whether Manafort lied to prosecutors after he pleaded guilty in September to conspiring against the United States with his Ukraine work and agreed to cooperate with the probe.Here's that “In a tiny font at the top of the 82nd page” section:On Tuesday, Robert Mueller’s team filed a 32-page declaration supporting their claim that Manafort lied to the court. This declaration included many additional pages of exhibits. Read the rest

The planned delegation included Pompeo and Mnuchin.White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says the Trump administration has canceled a planned trip to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. The announcement was made today, Thursday, the 27th day of Trump's partial government shutdown..@PressSec: “Out of consideration for the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay and to ensure his team can assist as needed, President Trump has canceled his Delegation’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.”— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 17, 2019"Out of consideration for the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay and to ensure his team can assist as needed, President Trump has canceled his Delegation's trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland," Sanders said in a statement.Trump had already canceled his participation in Davos. The delegation would have been led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and deputy chief of staff for policy coordination Chris Liddell.Earlier in the day, Trump's spokesmonster issued this statement, as an apparent petulant swipe at the Speaker of the House telling him to State of the Union somewhere else while he holds 800,000 Americans and their families hostage.President @realDonaldTrump’s letter to @SpeakerPelosi concerning her upcoming travel pic.twitter.com/TtBCvwp080— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) January 17, 2019At the World Economic Forum in Davos, @SecPompeo was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion with @jensstoltenberg and others: "The Future of the Transatlantic Alliance."— David Gura (@davidgura) January 18, 2019Trump has now canceled this trip as well. Read the rest

Mexico's largest airline is trolling Americans and it's the best. h/t @Aeromexico pic.twitter.com/hPvqGnDZeF— Kevin Sieff (@ksieff) January 17, 2019I love visiting Mexico. Baja is amazing. The locals are incredibly friendly and helpful. Read the rest

Anti-Vaxxers magically deny science, cite debunked papers, and threaten all of our well being. Only the smartest people are anti-vaxxers, like President Trump.WHO:Vaccine hesitancy – the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines – threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease – it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved. Measles, for example, has seen a 30% increase in cases globally. The reasons for this rise are complex, and not all of these cases are due to vaccine hesitancy. However, some countries that were close to eliminating the disease have seen a resurgence. The reasons why people choose not to vaccinate are complex; a vaccines advisory group to WHO identified complacency, inconvenience in accessing vaccines, and lack of confidence are key reasons underlying hesitancy. Health workers, especially those in communities, remain the most trusted advisor and influencer of vaccination decisions, and they must be supported to provide trusted, credible information on vaccines. In 2019, WHO will ramp up work to eliminate cervical cancer worldwide by increasing coverage of the HPV vaccine, among other interventions. 2019 may also be the year when transmission of wild poliovirus is stopped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last year, less than 30 cases were reported in both countries. WHO and partners are committed to supporting these countries to vaccinate every last child to eradicate this crippling disease for good. Read the rest

"The truth of this shutdown is that it is not actually about a wall, it is not about the border, and it is certainly not about the well-being of everyday Americans. The truth is, this shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms. It is not normal to hold 800,000 workers’ paychecks hostage. It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want. It is not normal for public servants to run away and hide from the public that they serve. And it is certainly not normal to starve the people we serve for a proposal that is wildly unpopular among the American people." (via DC Tribune) Read the rest

Sho nuff!(via 10NEWS WTSP/facebook) Read the rest

I bought my Swingline Red Stapler on September 10, 2008 and it still makes me happy every time I look at it. Amazon has it on sale today for great price. Read the rest

As the about page says, "This website provides a beginner’s checklist for staying safe on the internet." It shows you how to use a password manager, create a strong device passcode, use two-factor authentication, set up a mobile carrier PIN, encrypt your devices, freeze Your credit, use 1.1.1.1 for DNS resolution, use a virtual private network, use a privacy-first web browser, use a privacy-first search engine, use a privacy-first email provider, review location, camera, and other sensitive device permissions, review and remove metadata attached to photos you share, review your social media privacy settings, use encrypted messaging apps when sharing sensitive information, and educate yourself about phishing attacks (because none of the above matters if you fall prey to phishing).Image: KenoKickit/Shutterstock Read the rest

Do not ever mess with a guy's dog. Read the rest

Peng Shepherd's The Book of M delivers the confusion and frustration of massive world change by playing on the strings of your heart.Magical realism certainly collides with prepper fantasy novel in The Book of M. People are losing their shadows and with them, their memories. As the world falls apart, folks with their shadows run in fear, while the shadowless run mad. Struggling to remember the world reconstructs it in the image of their flawed memory. The Book of M is the story of Maxine, having freshly lost her shadow, attempting to keep the memory of her husband Ory as-it-really-was, rather than change him into something he was not.Shepherd does an amazing job writing her main characters. Very unique in a dystopian novel is how these characters, governments, and pop-up societies behave a lot more as I imagine real people would in these situations.I bet most of those heroic prepper dudes all die of food poisoning anyway.Science and magic are pretty interchangeable in The Book of M, but I never felt pushed into "you just have to believe X" to make the story work. I was addicted and had a hard time putting the novel down.I was able to find The Book of M at my local library, via the Libby app.The Book of M: A Novel by Peng Shepherd via Amazon Read the rest

Henry Wu posts beautiful travel photos on Instagram. He and his friend, another Instagrammer named Zory were scammed out of $7500 by a person pretending to be Wendi Murdoch, ex-wife of Rubert Murdoch. "Wendi" (me@wendimurdoch.com) hired Henry and Zory to fly to Indonesia, and once they arrived, they were bilked multiple times by accomplices who demanded various photography fees. As things got increasingly weird and "Wendi's" assistants started becoming hostile, Henry and Zory slowly came to the realization that they'd been duped. Read the rest

Cartoonist Charis JB's webcomic reveals the deep ties between the "pick-up artist" movement and the alt-right. Read the rest

The next installment in the SFinSF reading series features Kim Stanley Robinson, Howard Hendrix, and Cecelia Holland; it's this Sunday, Jan 20, doors at 6, event at 6:30, $10 (no one turned away for lack of funds), at the The American Bookbinders Museum (355 Clementina). Read the rest

Trump's base is not happy with their leader. His approval rating is down 18 percentage points among suburban men, down 13 points among white evangelicals, down 10 points among Republicans, and down 7 points among the usually intractable cohort of white men without a college degree. From NPR:"For the first time, we saw a fairly consistent pattern of having his base showing evidence of a cracking," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. "Don't know if that's temporary — tied to the government shutdown — or a broader problem the president is having."Photo of Trump's head used in photocollage by Gage Skidmore: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0). Sink by Shutterstock/Christian Delbert Read the rest

What professional comic Mike Huckabee lacks in creativity, comedic timing, and material, he more than makes up for in grossly mistaken self-assurance. Watch him force weak laughter and applause out of his audience of white seniors by repeating a joke in a vaguely threatening tone.Mike Huckabee thinking these "jokes" are worth laughing at is affirmative action for white conservatives in its purest form. He's like the painfully unfunny square comic in a scathing Lenny Bruce routine, with an undertone of fascism. Get the hook already. pic.twitter.com/znq6GfdzgB— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) January 16, 2019 Read the rest

America's major cellular carriers publish maps showing that virtually the entire state is well-covered, with solid signals and 5MB/s internet speeds, but Vermonters know that this is totally untrue.Knowing it and proving it are two different things: so Department of Public Service telecommunications infrastructure specialist Corey Chase, packed six cell-phones loaded with custom code developed by a Bulgarian programmer into a state-owned Prius and drove more than 6,000 miles around the state, "ground-truthing what every Vermonter with a cell phone knows: there are many, many places in the state where you simply can’t get a signal, not to mention the 5 megabits per second data download speeds the carriers were claiming."Now, armed with data, the state is hoping to get the FCC to spring some of its budget for subsidizing infrastructure improvements. However, the FCC is part of Trump's shutdown, and also run by a colossal asshole who used to be a Verizon exec, so it may be that all of Chase's good work will have to wait for regime change before Vermonters get relief. Only 656 days until the 2020 elections, folks!Vermont Public Radio has a handy-dandy interactive map of the real coverage Vermonters can expect from the carriers.The FCC uses those maps to determine what areas of the country qualify for grants to boost service to underserved areas. And by the cell companies' claims, most of Vermont gets a decent signal from at least one of the six providers.“The FCC has recognized this issue, and they’ve now opened an investigation into those maps that were submitted,” said Purvis. Read the rest

From 1961-1963 Richard Feynman -- one of the preeminent physicsts of his day -- taught an undergraduate class in physics at Cal Tech, a gig that was nominally well below his paygrade, and gave such a virtuoso performance that "They Feynman Lectures" have gone down in the annals of physics history as some of the best introductory material on physics in existence.Mariana Mazzucato is one of the leading market-sceptic economists of our age, whose instant-classic 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths upended the debate over the supposedly efficient and innovative private sector, showing how the signal innovations attributed to private business were simply recombinations of publicly funded basic research.Mazzucato is now a professor at University College London, with her own centre, the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), and, like Feynman, she's teaching an introductory course that is well below her paygrade, and she is brilliantThe course is called Rethinking Capitalism, and the IIPP has just posted a video of the introductory lecture, which is nothing short of a tour-de-force (the accompanying textbook also looks promising).I'm really looking forward to watching the rest of these as the semester goes on.(via Four Short Links) Read the rest

While it's true that the Pew Center found that most US Facebook users don't understand how they're being tracked and targeted, the more important fact is that the number of Americans who do understand this, hate it and are deleting their Facebook accounts because of it is growing fast.It's all about the direction of travel: we've gone from a place where virtually no Facebook users knew or cared about this to a mass movement that is growing like crazy. We're past the moment of peak indifference, and the number of people who resent and fear Facebook and want to see it destroyed only goes up from here, as new partisans self-radicalize after they, or people they love, are destroyed by Facebook's business-model.Remember, back in September, Pew also found that "44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they’ve deleted the app from their phone in the last year" and "26 percent of survey respondents say they deleted the app, while 42 percent have 'taken a break' for several weeks or more, and 54 percent have adjusted their privacy settings."As Casey Newton writes on The Verge: "the group of people who are both informed about how Facebook works and uncomfortable with it, while smaller than you might expect, is more than large enough to make a difference in Facebook’s future. Those 55.6 million Americans already represent a healthy constituency — one that, judging from declining Facebook usage, already appears to be voting."Don’t underestimate Americans’ knowledge of Facebook’s business model [Casey Newton/The Verge](Image: Robert Couse-Baker, CC-BY) Read the rest