Keiichi Matsuda created 2016's Hyper-Reality, an amazing, dystopian video about the future of augmented reality; now Matsuda is back with Merger, that plays darkly into the idea that corporations are a form of Slow AI that view humans as inconvenient gut-flora, a truth shot through our collective fears. Merger is a new film about the future of work, from cult director/designer Keiichi Matsuda (HYPER-REALITY). Set against the backdrop of AI-run corporations, a woman finds herself caught between virtual and physical reality, human and machine. As she fights for her economic survival, she finds herself immersed in the cult of productivity, in search of the ultimate interface. This short film documents her last 4 minutes on earth.(Thanks, Paul Di Filippo!) Read the rest

A cotton seed has germinated on the moon. The sprout is inside a canister on China's Chang’e 4 lander that touched down on the far side of the moon earlier this month. From The Guardian:Plants have been grown previously on the International Space Station, but this is the first time a seed has sprouted on the moon. The ability to grow plants in space is seen as crucial for long-term space missions and establishing human outposts elsewhere in the solar system, such as Mars.Harvesting food in space, ideally using locally extracted water, would mean astronauts could survive for far longer without returning to Earth for supplies...Scientists from Chongqing University, who designed the “mini lunar biosphere” experiment, sent an 18cm bucket-like container holding air, water and soil.Inside are cotton, arabidopsis – a small, flowering plant of the mustard family – and potato seeds, as well as fruit-fly eggs and yeast.Images sent back by the probe show a cotton plant has grown well, but so far none of the other plants had sprouted, the university said.Imaging the marketing opportunity for a cannabis company to sell space weed!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

The glasses Applebee's uses to serve large beers and small beers look very different. But in this video you'll see they are almost equally capacious.When asked on Twitter about the revealing video, Applebee's replied thusly:This guy has gotta leave some room at the top for some foam!— Applebee's (@Applebees) January 14, 2019 Read the rest

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars rantathon channel have been turfed out of virtually every major platform due to his love of violent rhetoric, racial hatred and general bigotry. Welcome to Roku, Alex!Roku may have given itself a brand safety issue. The streaming service has added Infowars, the live show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as a channel. Jones was in the news on Jan. 11 for losing a legal battle to Sandy Hook shooting victims’ families, forcing his company to turn over documents.On Jan. 14, Roku users tweeted their concerns at the company. One tweet from @DanielMadison78 asked, “Hey @Roku, what’s with you adding Infowars to your platform?” In a now-deleted tweet, Roku’s support account replied with a link to the channel.Roku is built-in to many television sets nowadays—for people who don't like racist conspiracy theories, it has just become a nearly perfect wedding of convenience and very unexpected consequences. As indicated in the below screengrab, they absolutely do not give a shit. It's off to Apple TV or Amazon Fire [Amazon link] for me. Does anyone know which is the service least likely to a) sell my every move and b) Milkshake Duck itself six months from now? Read the rest

Namibian-German artist Max Siedentopf created "Toto Forever," an installation that plays the song "Africa" on repeat in the middle of southern Africa's Namib Desert. From the BBC News:Mr Siedentopf tells the BBC it is set to play forever, with solar batteries "to keep Toto going for all eternity...""[I] wanted to pay the song the ultimate homage and physically exhibit 'Africa' in Africa," explains the 27-year-old artist."Some [Namibians] love it and some say it's probably the worst sound installation ever. I think that's a great compliment."(via Fark) Read the rest

My most recent essay film, Visual Disturbances, premiered in the open access journal [in]Transition yesterday. This open access journal features peer reviewed academic video essays and showcases a wide variety of film and media analysis. Visual Disturbances uses some cutting-edge eye tracking visualizations to explore how film audiences both perceive and mis-perceive movies. A few readers may remember my 2007 Disney mashup, A Fair(y) Use Tale. That film, in its own small way, helped open up the video essay genre by sampling commercial films for educational purposes.Visual Disturbances is a very different kind of film but relies on the precedent set by A Fair(y) Use Tale and the diligent work of scholars, attorneys, archivists, and activists to bring Fair Use into the 21st century. For Visual Disturbances, I should give a very special shout out to attorney and UC Irvine Professor Jack Lerner. His students at UC Irvine’s Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic reviewed the film and wrote a valuable opinion letter regarding its Fair Use status. That letter ultimately helped procure an Errors and Omission insurance policy that helps protect the film from frivolous copyright shake downs.Visual Disturbances uses 187 unlicensed clips (down from the 385 clips used in A Fair(y) Use Tale!) from commercial films to explore how audiences watch a movie. Cinema suffers from a basic problem telling a story: the medium captures too much visual information from reality. Thus, early on, Hollywood filmmakers developed a series of tactics for subtly focusing audience attention on key narrative details. Read the rest

Looking for a career in music behind the boards, either as a music producer or DJ? It's a good bet that you're going to be working with Ableton Live. Each new iteration of this powerful workstation gives the user more tools to create, and it's just as well suited for the task of meticulous track production as it is in front of a screaming crowd. With enough imagination, the possibilities are nearly endless - and you'll learn them all with the new Ableton Music Production Mastery Bundle.Even if you're unfamiliar with any production software, these 7 courses should have you creating tunes straight out of the box. The first courses walk you through the interface and what hardware you'll need, then move quickly to the specifics of recording and producing in your own home studio. You'll get familiar with Ableton's many effect racks, learn tricks of the DJ trade from James Patrick, and even create your own fully functioning instruments with MaxForLive.Aside from the software itself, it's all you need for your home studio, and it's on sale: The Ableton Music Production Mastery Bundle is currently priced at $29. Read the rest

Here's a White House photo of Donald Trump with 1000 hamburgers—or "hamberders", as he put it this morning— in the State Dining Room of the White House. God bless America! Read the rest

A popular mobile game available on the Play store is an "ad fraud platform", say researchers at a media intelligence company. Word Link was approved by Google and had since been downloaded 50m times, becoming a “major source of fraudulent traffic”.Tess Bennett and Andrew Birmingham:“The Google Play Store, although dealing with far greater volumes of app submissions and users than the Apple App Store, is clearly not doing enough to combat this with adequately strict approval and diligent review processes,” the report states.“Our hope is that this detailed review of Word Link and Worzzle will result in the removal and re-assessment of these apps by Google, and spur a wider review of Google’s policies that dictate what apps are allowed onto their store for their users’ consumption.”Google appears to be getting fed here at both ends. A strong incentive not to deal with the problem. Read the rest

I was surprised to learn today that I've never posted the video of a duck being gently vacuumed. Read the rest

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal with the European Union finally comes before parliament for a vote today. The deal is expected to fall short, leaving Britain with several more difficult choices, but the margin of May's defeat will be a strong influence on which way it goes. No-one really knows what will happen, but there's some agreement on the margin-of-defeat issue.╔══════════════════╦══════════════════════════╗║ Margin of Defeat ║ Possible Outcomes ║╠══════════════════╬══════════════════════════╣║ May wins ║ Frankenbrexit ║╠══════════════════╬══════════════════════════╣║ 50 votes or less ║ EU offers concessions ║║ ║ Quick 2nd vote ║╠══════════════════╬══════════════════════════╣║ 50-100 votes ║ More negotiations ║║ ║ Late 2nd vote ║╠══════════════════╬══════════════════════════╣║ 100+ votes ║ No deal Brexit ║║ ║ Soft Brexit ║║ ║ General election ║║ ║ 2nd Referendum ║║ ║ Vote of No Confidence ║║ ║ Backbench rebellion ║║ ║ Currency collapse ║║ ║ Zombie horrorcaust ║║ ║ Global Thermonuclear War ║╚══════════════════╩══════════════════════════╝ Read the rest

Clemson's national championship football team went to the White House on Monday where President Donald Trump hosted them for winning the title. Trump had a bunch of burgers ready for them: Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King.“Here’s a video I shot of President Trump showing off his 300 hamburgers.” Hunter Walker, White House Correspondent, Yahoo News.It's quite something.Here’s a video I shot of President Trump showing off his 300 hamburgers. pic.twitter.com/P06S6I5w07— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 14, 2019I should note that, at one point tonight, President Trump said he bought 300 hamburgers. Later, he claimed he bought 1,000 hamburgers.— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 15, 2019Trump introduced Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin at the Clemson football event by saying, “He’d never be able to make the team that I can tell you.”— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 14, 2019Trump says he got Wendys, McDonalds, and Burger King. He described it as “everything I like that you like.”— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 14, 2019Trump just came out and declared: “I want to be the agent of that tall, handsome quarterback.”— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 14, 2019I just filed this Pool Report after the president presented a giant spread from @Wendys @McDonalds @BurgerKing and @dominos pic.twitter.com/Byv8fDvicO— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 14, 2019 Read the rest

On The View's Monday episode, Women's March co-founder Tamika Mallory refused to condemn anti-semitic comments made by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Controversy about the March's leadership has been swirling for months, including a deep dive by Tablet Magazine on alleged anti-semitic comments made during the early meetings that led to 2017's historic march. Mallory has appeared alongside Farrakhan at Nation of Islam events and has referred to him as the GOAT (greatest of all time). Another March co-founder, Linda Sarsour, has faced similar criticism.View co-host Meghan McCain asked Mallory, who appeared alongside March co-founder Bob Bland, to condemn Farrakhan's comments, including "I’m not anti-Semite, I’m anti-termite.” The blowback from the controversy has led several local chapters to cancel their planned marches, citing difficulties in raising funds, along with concerns over what was "coming out of national." A new group, March On, is planning separate events.(Photo: Mark Dixon/Wikimedia Commons) Read the rest

She was living her best life.A Texas Walmart has banned a woman from their store for doing something we've all done at one time or another - riding around the parking lot in a mobility scooter while drinking wine from a Pringles can. Employees at the Wichita Falls Walmart said the woman had been riding around the parking lot for several hours, starting around 6:30 AM. Police responded to the call, locating the woman at a nearby restaurant and informing her that she had been banned from the store. The good news is there are two other Walmarts in Wichita Falls for this American hero to ride around. Important question: Which flavor Pringles pairs best with which wine? Salt & Vinegar with Sauvignon? (Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

Noted racist congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) may finally face consequences for being an open white supremacist and anti-Semite. Who knew there would ever be a line this guy could cross? He's gotten away with it forever.House Republican leaders are reportedly trying to remove Steve King from the Judiciary Committee and his other panel assignments on Monday night, after his latest pro-white supremacy remarks.King is an ally of Donald Trump on the racist border wall, an idea which King has touted for longer than Trump. King has been saying awful things about immigrants and anyone who isn't white forever. As recently as last November, “top Iowa Republicans like Senator Charles E. Grassley endorsed Mr. King for re-election even after a House Republican denounced him as a white supremacist,” the NYT reports.In an interview with The Times published last Thursday, King said this: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”Guess that was kind of offensive.Trip Gabriel and Jonathan Martin at the NYT:House Republican leaders will try to remove Representative Steve King of Iowa from the powerful Judiciary Committee and his other panel assignments on Monday night as the party officials scrambled to appear tough on racism and contain damage from comments Mr. King made to The New York Times questioning why white supremacy is considered offensive.Mr. King’s own party leadership moved against him throughout the day, with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, suggesting Mr. King find “another line of work” and Senator Mitt Romney saying he should quit. Read the rest

Another World: Survival is a low-res adaptation of Eric Chahi's classic 16-bit game. Though it's broken down to the essentials to "fit" on the Pico-8 fantasy console, it so perfectly implements the original's combat mechanics and aesthetic that I can't stop playing. Read the rest

Every year, visitors to Rome's famed Trevi Fountain toss in more than $1.7 million in coins. Historically, the Catholic charity Caritas has taken that money to help poor people. Now though, Rome mayor Virginia Raggi wants the cash for repairs to the city's infrastructure. From the BBC News:We did not foresee this outcome," Caritas director Father Benoni Ambarus told Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference. "I still hope it will not be final."The newspaper ran a scathing article on the move in its Saturday edition, headlined "Money taken from the poorest".City councillors have approved the change and it is due to take place in April.Above, the classic Trevi Fountain scene from Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), featuring Anita Ekberg. Read the rest

The IRS is shut down, along with much of the rest of the federal government, but unattended servers running on autopilot are sensing that no progress has been made on taxpayers' attempts to clarify disputed and overdue bills, and so they are initiating asset seizure proceedings. Even if this turn of events is sufficient to terrorize you into paying a disputed bill, there's no one at the IRS to accept your payment -- and of course, if you maintain that the bill isn't correct, there's no one to discuss it with.The almost Kafka-esque situation, in which the IRS methodically moves forward with cash seizures and taxpayers struggle to find anyone available to stop them, is one of the more unique consequences of the government shutdown, which on Saturday became the largest in American history. The shutdown has hurt small businesses more directly through the halting of Small Business Administration loans. But potentially being whacked in tax disputes, seemingly without recourse, adds a twinge of unfairness into the mix.Shuttered IRS Is Sending Automated Warnings of Asset Seizures, With Nobody to Call to Stop Them [David Dayen/The Intercept] Read the rest

The Solton Ketron Programmer 24 is a 1985 sample-based synthesizer described as "The Italo Disco machine". They used to be on eBay, but good luck finding one nowawadays for much less than $2,000.Hungry Like The Wolf is Duran Duran's breakthrough hit, which reached #3 in the US in 1982. The above video is a remix of Hungry Like The Wolf performed on a Solton Ketron Programmer 24. Jump to 3:20 if you don't want to watch it being programmed.Following is some more Programmer 24 action and a link to its dry, ripped samples. Musicians in the audience will purchase this sample pack and further reimagine the 1980s as if Giorgio Moroder was personally responsible for all of it. Read the rest

Electronic Grenade's "'Computer' Mouse" project fits a fully functional computer into a fully functional, 3D printed mouse; the computer is a Raspberry Pi Zero W, with a teeeny leeetle flip out keyboard and a tiny little itsy bitsy flip-out screen. (via Motherboard) Read the rest

Once I started using self-adjusting wire strippers I never went back to the other kind of wire strippers. These a pleasure to use. One squeeze of the handle the insulation is perfectly stripped from a wire of any gage. Use code MZ8XXXSZ for $5 discount. Read the rest

Old Digital Cameras is a collection of, well, old digital cameras. Models go back to 1996; pictured here is Leica's 2006 digital M3, which was obsolete within months and is now worth about a tenth of the film original.Feel free to contact me if you wish :- To part with your old model and give it a second life in my collection and this web site,- Add or modify any information, or add your own comment about a model,- Upload a user manual or a driver. Read the rest

Although many national parks are still open during the longest government shutdown in US history, there is no one around to clean the increasingly filthy bathrooms. Except, perhaps, for one man, Dan Little, who found the bathroom at Mt. Hood National Forest Sno-Park in Oregon to be so disgusting, he cleaned it himself. He then sent a $28 bill to Trump. That's the spirit!Of course, with Trump's disgraceful reputation of not paying his employees for their work, it's highly doubtful Mr. Little will get a pat on the back from the president, let alone a paycheck. This is just one of the many reasons I love my husband, Dan. He visited Mt. Hood National Forest Sno-Park, and like many national parks across the country, found it a mess due to the partial government shutdown. He cleaned the bathrooms—and sent the bill to President Trump. pic.twitter.com/GvGSZAkoSQ— Governor Kate Brown (@OregonGovBrown) January 11, 2019Via MashableImage: S.Schön/Pexels Read the rest

The European Parliament is meeting this week, and the committee that will decide the future of the controversial new Copyright Directive will meet next, and depending on what they do, it might be the end of the road for the internet as we know it.The new Copyright Directive contains two deal-breaking clauses: the first, Article 11, gives news sites the power to charge (or refused to offer) a license fee for anyone who wants to link to their stories and include more than a single word from the story to accompany the link. Open access news sites can't opt out of this regime, putting the whole idea of public-interest, open-access news in jeopardy.The second clause, Article 13, requires platforms to check all their users' posts against a crowdsourced database that is meant to list all the copyrighted works that may not be distributed online. Anyone can put anything in the database without penalty for falsely claiming copyright, and the filters will overblock millions of users' posts either by falsely identifying them as a match, or because software can't tell fair use from copyright infringement.Worst of all, both of these measures will cost hundreds of millions of euros to comply with, and that will put every European alternative to American Big Tech out of business (some versions propose exempting companies with less than 10m euros/year in revenue, but that only means that earning your 10,000,001st euro will trigger hundreds of millions of euros in compliance costs).The next step in this process is called the "trilogue," when the representatives of European member-states negotiate with the EU. Read the rest

I don't usually pay much attention to gymnastics, but this routine by 21-year-old UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi is mind blowing. Via Uproxx:Katelyn Ohashi is about to become a household name. The 21-year-old UCLA gymnast wowed spectators with an absolutely flawless routine at the Anaheim Arena over the weekend, which subsequently went viral when the UCLA Gymnastics ‏Twitter account tweeted video after her performance. Gymnastics ‏Twitter account tweeted video after her performance. “A 10 isn’t enough for this floor routine by Katelyn Ohashi,” the tweet correctly expressed. A 🔟 isn't enough for this floor routine by @katelyn_ohashi. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/pqUzl7AlUA— UCLA Gymnastics (@uclagymnastics) January 13, 2019 Read the rest

If you played poker with Steve Albini -- esteemed guitarist for Big Black, Rapeman, and Shellac, recording engineer for Nirvana, Pixies, and PJ Harvey -- he would take all your money. I was surprised to learn that last year Albini won gold in the World Series of Poker. Above, a short documentary about Albini's poker prowess.(Poker Central via Uncrate) Read the rest

Looks like Hulu is going to beat Netflix to market with their Fyre Festival documentary.Two documentaries on a festival that didn't happen. I was not one-documentary interested, but Mark is making popcorn.Hollywood Reporter:Fyre Fraud, a documentary chronicling the lead-up and aftermath of 2017’s disastrous Fyre Festival, is airing on Hulu.Hulu dropped the documentary, produced and distributed by The Cinemart, Hulu, Billboard and Mic, Monday morning, with no advance notice. Netflix’s competing documentary, Fyre, comes out Jan. 18.The 96-minute Hulu doc features an exclusive, extensive post-festival interview with 25-year-old entrepreneur and Fyre Festival mastermind Billy McFarland, who is serving a six-year prison term after pleading guilty to wire fraud charges. By turns repentant and defensive, he seldom takes direct responsibility for allegedly defrauding investors out of more than $26 million, nor does he admit wrongdoing. Read the rest

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the release of David Bowie's mid-70s masterpiece, Low, the first album of his so-called Berlin Trilogy (later joined by "Heroes" and Lodger). Working with the increasingly experimental Brian Eno, this album was a dramatic departure for Bowie and much has been made over the music, the strange (and strangely inspiring) milieu of the West Berlin recording studio up against the Berlin wall, Bowie's continuing battles with the coke monster, the highly experimental nature of the sessions, and the studio use of Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. To celebrate this happy day, and some of the strangeness around this record, here is a hilarious animated piece done in 2014 by The Brothers McLeod. The McLeod piece is actually an animation for a radio bit done by UK comedian Adam Buxton. It is a loving lampoon of Bowie, Eno, and long-time Bowie collaborator and co-producer, Tony Visconti, in the studio recording "Warszawa," one of the more haunting and inscrutable tracks on the album. You can hear Buxton's original here (though most of it ended up in the McLeod Bros animation).This video mini-doc, done several years ago by the Polish culture portal, Cultural.pl, retraces the train trip that Bowie took through Poland, with a stop-over in Warsaw, that inspired the song. On their website, you can read more about the trip, the song, and the Polish folk tune (Helokanie) that inspired some of the vocalization on the track.Below is Bowie performing Warszawa in Tokyo, Japan on Dec 12, 1978. Read the rest

Second Chance is a smartphone app developed by University of Washington engineers to detect an opioid overdose. The researchers tested the app at a public supervised injection facility in Vancouver, Canada with encouraging results. From Science News:Second Chance, described online January 9 in Science Translational Medicine, converts a smartphone’s speaker and microphone into a sonar system that works within about a meter of a user’s body. When the app is running, the phone continuously emits sound waves at frequencies too high to hear, which bounce off a user’s chest. Tracking when these echoes reach the phone allows the app to detect two possible signs of an impending overdose: slow breathing or no breathing at all...For real-world use, the researchers envision the app notifying a user if it detects breathing problems and sending for help only if the user doesn’t respond to that notification, says study coauthor and computer scientist Shyam Gollakota. The scientists still need to ensure that this setup could reliably alert emergency contacts or medical personnel in time to resuscitate a person. Read the rest

When outraged googlers walked off the job last year to protest the company's practice of secretly paying off serial sexual assaulters and harassers, while denying employees the right to sue over harassment through arbitration clauses in their contracts, Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised revise Google employment contracts to remove mandatory arbitration for individual sexual harassment claims.Binding arbitration is parallel justice system run by and for big corporations, who use mandatory arbitration clauses to deny the right to sue to employees, contractors, partners and parts of their supply chain. Tech workers have formed a kind of vanguard in labor struggles: even in a tightening labor market, techies are far and away the most in-demand, undersupplied workers, and that gives them power over their employers (no engineers, no Google).Enter a new group called Googlers for Ending Forced Arbitration, who want to see all forced arbitration clauses removed, for all causes: they want workers to be able to sue individually or in class action for any wrongdoing, not just sexual harassment.The group wants to eliminate forced arbitration in all companies and all sectors, and to require all employment contract arbitration clauses to be voluntary, to permit class actions, and to allow employees to speak freely about their grievances with their employers.The group launches its campaign tomorrow; you can read about it here.Tomorrow on Tuesday, January 15th, we will launch a social media campaign that shares our collective experiences and knowledge with the world. From 9am — 6pm EST, we will share facts about forced arbitration, particularly about its impact on tech workers, every hour on the hour via Twitter (@endforcedarb). Read the rest

"People complain a lot about the space that I take up", says Lutenist Elizabeth Kenny[Kenny] explains how and why the theorbo was developed in the 17th century, what it was used for, and what it's like to carry it around on the train. More fabulous videos of ancient and obscure instruments await at the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment YouTube channel. Read the rest

The "impossible screw" will "drive you nuts." It appears to turn only clockwise -- even when you turn it around. It's a small project you can do in your home shop even if you don't have a milling machine or lathe. A hacksaw and a file will do. It also makes a nice last minute present. Read the rest

Vinod Khosla is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who chose to define his legacy through a spectacular legal battle to block access to the public part of a beach area he owns in California.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, whose openly progressive positions (especially a proposal to tax rich people's incomes at 70% after the first $10,000,000 a year) have shocked conservatives into an all-consuming hysteria. Moreover, she's very good at Twitter.Political analyst Anand Giridharadas remarked, this weekend, that the right's condescension and sneering at "AOC" threatened to expose its parochial instincts:"If you think a freshman congresswoman who actually connects with people and actually understands new technology is the problem with America," Giridharadas wrote, "it may be that you are the problem with America."Vinod Khosla, however, doubled down on the condescension."That is assuming she understands basic economics, actual humans and technology. I doubt if any of those are true."This would be an unremarkable sentiment if its author had 22 followers and an 8-digit number in their Twitter handle. But in this case it's one of America's richest men. It's so wrong at each turn it only illustrates the hapless self-regard for which The New York Times mocked him as the "beach villain" this generation deserves—and an obvious proxy for the Valley's broader culture.That is assuming she understands basic economicsOcasio-Cortez holds a degree in Economics from Boston University and worked 18 hours a day to fend off a bank's attempt to foreclose on her family home. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Twitter ninja, whose Twitter interactions far outstrip any establishment Democrat (including powerhouses like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama) as well as media outlets from CNN to the New York Times. Yeah, she trails Trump, but he tweets three times as much as she does and also gets a baseline of attention thanks to the presidency. Naked Capitalism's Jerri-Lynn Scofield reveals ACO's secret: "She’s preaching popular, common sense, underexpressed messages. But honestly, would a new member of Congress be so dominating the national conversation, if other Democrats were either less clueless or less beholden to their donors?" Read the rest

LA teachers are on strike today, fighting against privatization, standardized tests, giant classes, and clawbacks of in-class teachers' aides.The LA Unified School District -- whose billionaire superintendent was installed thanks to oceans of dark money fronted by the charter school lobby -- will respond by spending its $1.86 billion reserve on high-priced scabs.Unlike last year's wave of #RedForEd teachers' strikes, LA teachers are striking against Democratic party operative and donors, who are part of the bipartisan move to privatize schools and gut public-sector unions.The teachers will find natural allies in the parents: every parent knows the misery of trying to find somewhere to live near a "good school," and the way that new job opportunities and other reasons to move have to be weighed against the possibility that your kid will land in an underperforming, underfunded school. And even the winners in this game are losers: the "good schools" inevitably close their funding gaps with endless rounds of "fundraising" from parents.And the alternatives are worse: publicly funded charter schools are beloved of evil billionaires, crooks and religious kooks, but they're really bad for kids.Last year's wave of teachers' strikes never really ended: the LA teachers' strike is an example to working people everywhere, who've witnessed wage-stagnation, hyperinflation in housing and college costs, and the rise and rise of the super-rich. Change is a scalloped growth curve: attention peaks, then drops off, but to a higher level than before. The next peak is higher, the next baseline is higher, too. Read the rest

On this 1966 LP, British actor Roddy McDowall -- later known for playing Dr. Cornelius and Caesar in the original Planet of the Apes films -- delivers a wonderful reading of HP Lovecraft's classic short story "The Outsider." First published in Weird Tales in 1926, this nightmarish gothic-inspired tale is arguably one of Lovecraft's finest pieces of psychological horror.The B-side is a reading of Lovecraft's "The Hound" (1922) featuring the very first mention of the infamous Necronomicon:(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Maximum Rocknroll, the seminal punk print 'zine launched in 1982, is ceasing publication of its paper edition. This truly marks the end of an era in punk culture and underground media. According to today's announcement, MRR will continue its weekly radio show, post record reviews online, continue its archiving effort, and launch other new projects that will keep the unbreakable Maximum Rocknroll spirit alive. From MRR:Maximum Rocknroll began as a radio show in 1977. For the founders of Maximum Rocknroll, the driving impulse behind the radio show was simple: an unabashed, uncompromising love of punk rock. In 1982, buoyed by burgeoning DIY punk and hardcore scenes all over the world, the founders of the show — Tim Yohannan & the gang — launched Maximum Rocknroll as a print fanzine. That first issue drew a line in the sand between the so-called punks who mimicked society’s worst attributes — the “apolitical, anti-historical, and anti-intellectual,” the ignorant, racist, and violent — and MRR’s principled dedication to promoting a true alternative to the doldrums of the mainstream. That dedication included anti-corporate ideals, avowedly leftist politics, and relentless enthusiasm for DIY punk and hardcore bands and scenes from every inhabited continent of the globe. Over the next several decades, what started as a do-it-yourself labor of love among a handful of friends and fellow travelers has extended to include literally thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of readers. Today, forty-two years after that first radio show, there have been well over 1600 episodes of MRR radio and 400 issues of Maximum Rocknroll fanzine — not to mention some show spaces, record stores, and distros started along the way — all capturing the mood and sound of international DIY punk rock: wild, ebullient, irreverent, and oppositional. Read the rest

Bob Einstein will be sorely missed. Read the rest

Hannu Rajaniemi is the Finnish-Scottish mathematician and science fiction writer whose debut, 2012's Quantum Thief was widely celebrated; now, in Summerland, Rajaniemi delivers new kind of supernatural historical spy procedural, set in a 1938 where the afterlife has been discovered, colonized and militarized.Rachel White is a spy who is trying to help the British Empire prevail in the global military/political chaos prompted by the Spanish Civil War and the rise of a Soviet Union led by The Presence, an uploaded group intelligence that has subsumed the nation's best thinkers to produce a transhuman mind capable of incredible leaps of reasoning. As a proxy war rages in Spain, both the British and the Soviets are roiled when the exiled Josef Stalin emerges to lead a new faction in the Civil War.White learns of this even as she is being internally exiled within her spy agency for blowing the whistle on a double-agent, whose protection goes all the way to the top.Formally, Summerland is really excellent: Rajaniemi has mastered the mechanics of spy-thrillers, with double-triple-crosses, tradecraft and skullduggery for days; the setting, too, is pitch-perfect, a noirish, grim late-thirties Europe filled with period touches and gracenotes.Add to this a marvelously imaginative, beautifully worked out supernatural element: Summerland -- the place where souls go when their bodies die -- has become a second front in every war and every political struggle, as the dead and the living haunt one another and as society slips into existential malaise at the thought of perpetual rule by the immortal souls of the elites who have gone on to the afterlife. Read the rest

Chinese internet users can't type the numbers "1984" into social media, but Chinese bookstores freely sell copies of Orwell's novels, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as other books whose titles are banned on social media.In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the inner Party members are allowed to read the literature that is banned for consumption by proles and outer Party members, and the same is true in China: the Politburo treats books as the purview of intellectual elites, who are on the one hand able to circumvent these bans while traveling abroad, and, on the other hand, are more invested in the system and viewed as less likely to be subverted by Orwell's anti-authoritarian message.This kind of double-standard is shot through Chinese censorship policy (and, as Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom write in The Atlantic, through western society, too: think of how kids are banned from movies that depict nudity, but there are no age-limits on touring museums where the same nudity is on display). The Party understands that keeping elites in line requires a lighter touch, but they treat the masses as a kind of herd that is subject to epidemics of unrest. The inconsistencies in Chinese censorship aren't the result of incoherence so much as they are a form of class warfare, where internet-bases proles are strictly limited, while the elites enjoy much more freedom of access and thought.Western commentators often give the impression that Chinese censorship is more comprehensive than it really is due, in part, to a veritable obsession with the government’s handling of the so-called “three Ts” of Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. Read the rest

As EFF's Eva Galperin notes, Nicole Kobie's story about resisting surveillance by taping over your webcam "proves that once more, the best and most straightforward tech reporting is being done by Teen Vogue."However, there are others who could be watching through your webcam, and the stories of compromised cameras are genuinely terrifying: hackers taunting people and spying on women at home, blackmailing teens into sharing nude photos, and schools even keeping watch on their students. "This is a pretty invasive, targeted form of malware, but the consequences can be super embarrassing," said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology.Such attacks require your computer to be tunneled into by hackers, creating a backdoor called a Remote Access Tool (RAT) — sort of like if someone added an unlocked window to your house that you didn't know was there. There are also cases that allege computer repair staff taking control of cameras when you get a device serviced.Don't panic; this type of attack remains rare, notes Wheeler. "One or two instances of RATs and teenagers being hacked for video through their webcams creates a lot of media clicks and hysteria, but the truth is that you should be much more concerned about your personal data than your webcam or your phone’s front-facing camera (which no one covers with a sticker)."Wave Goodbye to the FBI: Why You Should Cover Your Webcam [Nicole Kobie/Teen Vogue](via Eva Galperin) Read the rest

Professionalization isn't perfect: historically, professional societies "were structured around hierarchies of gender and race and laypeople were expected to obey expert judgment without even asking questions."But professionals were also organized around ethics of service and morals, with professional standards that required practitioners to use their expertise to further the public good.Decades of neoliberal marketization has flattened out these service-based ethics, turning every kind of professional into just another kind of business with customers who expect "customer service," and "value for money." When teachers have "students," they are meant to teach those students the truth. But once teachers have "customers," they are expected to teach the things that deliver "satisfaction" -- Young Earth Creationism, eugenics, Lost Cause historical revisionism, and so on. The same goes for doctors and patients (when customers satisfaction trumps health, doctors are tempted to overprescribe antibiotics and engage in other unsavory conduct), librarians and patrons, lawyers and clients, and all the other relationships that have historically been defined beyond mere market-based customer/vendor relationships.(For years, I've been dismayed by the rise of "CEOs" and other corporate titles in the nonprofit sector.)We live in a complex, technological society, where navigating the everyday (deciding what to eat, how to configure your devices, how to help your kids navigate social media, and what to do when you get sick, etc) requires that you seek out experts to guide you through. Even the smartest and most diligent among us cannot hope to master all these subjects.So we have to use rules of thumb to decide which experts we'll trust, even as we strive to be as well-informed as possible (if I got cancer, I'd certainly read up on my illness, but I'd ultimately have to take advice from an oncologist). Read the rest

In many ways, Richard Grenell was the perfect pick for Trump's ambassador to Germany: a longtime Fox News pundit and John Bolton protege whose vanity and narcissism cause him to lash out constantly (and undiplomatically) at the nation he's meant to be charming, and whose thin-skinned insecurity sends him into spirals of misery and approval-seeking a the first hint of criticism.Since arriving, Grenell has isolated himself from German politics, leaders and people, advocating regime change in Germany (and violating the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relationships in the process) and devoting his energies to getting face-time on Fox News (the only way to get out-of-sight, out-of-mind Trump to pay attention to you) rather than seeking to influence German politics to coincide with US interests.The only German political bloc that Grenell has time for (and vice-versa) are the neo-Nazi AfD (he's fond of posing for selfies with AfD leadership) and the xenophobic Christian Social Union. A deeply reported profile in Speigel paints a picture of an isolated, irrelevant figure who is only invited to functions when it would be impossible to exclude him, where he stands alone in a corner, looking awkward.They contrast Grenell with his predecessor, Obama pick Philip Murphy, who had to rent out the Olympic stadium for his farewell party, and who had immeasurable influence on German policy during his tenure.Grenell epitomizes Trumpian values: one part contempt for the reality-based community, one part naked racism, and two parts total administrative incompetence.Reading the profile, you get the impression of the kind of prepper who envisions himself riding out the end of the world while ruling over a kingdom of subservient concubines, toiling field-hands and stone-faced praetorian guards; but who actually ends up dying of lysteria in the first week after the disaster because he doesn't bother to wash his hands after taking a shit. Read the rest

Irene Posch and Ebru Kurbak's Embroidered Computer uses historic gold embroidery materials to create relays ("similar to early computers before the invention of semiconductors") that can do computational work according to simple programs; it's installed at the Angewandte Innovation Lab in Vienna. Read the rest

“The World’s Richest Man Caught Cheating!” screams a National Enquirer special edition devoting 11 lurid pages to Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and his alleged marriage-wrecking affair. You can loathe the tabloids for their flagrant disregard of facts, their rampant dishonesty, flights of fantasy and mean-spirited personal attacks, but one thing they undeniably do well is stalk celebrities.And while it’s highly debatable whether such intrusion into the deeply personal life of a private businessman is morally or journalistically acceptable, there is no denying that it was the impending publication of a special edition of the Enquirer revelations that prompted Bezos to issue a public statement confessing his marital split.“The cheating photos that ended his marriage,” promises the Enquirer cover. “Text sex and wild romps on his private jet! How he stole another mogul’s wife!” Just in case you’ve been living in a sensory depravation tank for the past week or been locked in a pitch-black bathroom for a month to win a $100,000 bet, Bezos and his novelist wife of 25 years MacKenzie have announced their separation after the Enquirer claimed that he has been cheating with TV reporter Lauren Sanchez, who happens to be married to one of Hollywood’s most powerful agents, Patrick Whitesell.The Enquirer boasts that it spent four months pursuing Bezos’s secret romantic trysts across America, traversing five states and 40,000 miles, and claims to have the photos to prove it. There’s Jeff and Lauren arriving in Los Angeles on October 18, 2018 after a “Miami getaway.” There they are boarding his private Gulfstream jet in Boston on October 29. Read the rest

(Neither Boing Boing nor I have received any compensation for this post: Libro.fm asked me to post this and I did so because I want to see them succeed -Cory)Libro.fm (previously) is an independent audiobook store that sells all the same audiobooks you can get on other platforms like Audible, Google Play, Apple, Downpour, etc, but unlike the industry leaders at Audible and Apple, they are DRM-free, and unlike all of their competition, they work with independent booksellers. When you sign up for a Libro.fm account, you can choose any one of 561 indie booksellers as your home bookstore -- the place where you go to get ideas about which books you want to listen to next (I chose Diesel, where I first encountered Libro.fm). Then, every time you buy an audiobook from Libro.fm, they give a commission to your home store, to reward them for being a showroom for the audiobooks you're listening to.Amazon doesn't just dominate the bookselling market, they also dominate audiobooks, through their DRM-mandatory Audible division, which controls some 90% of the market and engages in all kinds of sleazy tactics that squeeze performers, publishers and authors, while locking every customer into their proprietary ecosystem forever. Authors can't opt out of Amazon/Audible DRM, which is why none of my books are available there. This decision has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, but it's not a priciple I'm prepared to give in on (I will sacrifice short-term gain, even enough to pay off my house, to avoid the long-term pain of locking my audience into Amazon's ecosystem forever). Read the rest

In 2015, Stephen Harper's Tory government began enforcing a 1993 law that stripped expatriate citizens like me of our right to vote in Canada; last month, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government restored our voting rights.But it turns out that the Liberals' action was largely symbolic: yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada broke with precedent and eroded Parliament's control over elections administration, ruling that the government had violated our constitutional rights by taking away our right to vote.The Let Canadians Vote site has a pretty good FAQ on the issue.Canada will hold federal elections this year and expats are eligible to register to vote right now, but Elections Canada has not yet updated its site and still refuses to register us. Writing for the 5-2 majority, Chief Justice Richard Wagner called the right to vote a "core tenet" of Canadian democracy. Any limit, he said, would have to have "compelling" justification -- something the government had failed to offer."The vague and unsubstantiated electoral fairness objective that is purportedly served by denying voting rights to non-resident citizens simply because they have crossed an arbitrary five-year threshold does not withstand scrutiny," Wagner said. "There is little to justify the choice of five years as a threshold, or to show how it is tailored to respond to a specific problem."The impugned provisions of the Canada Elections Act had been on the book for decades but it was only under the Conservatives of then-prime minister Stephen Harper that Elections Canada began active enforcement. Read the rest

A union that represents agents for the U.S. Border Patrol deleted a 2012 page from their website that said building walls or fences along the U.S./Mexico border to stop desperate migrants would be “wasting taxpayer money.”VICE's Motherboard reports that the deleted web page was originally posted in 2012. It carried an argument against walls like the one Trump's pushing today, and said border barriers don’t tackle migration's root causes, and may encourage more migrants to enter the U.S. through visa overstay.The Wayback Machine archives at archive.org show the page was deleted after the union's president supported building a border wall with Donald Trump in the White House Briefing Room on January 3, 2019. Video of that stunt above.From Motherboard:That statement came from the official website of the NBPC’s “Media FAQ” page which argued at length against the policy of building border walls. The page, originally published in October 2012, was deleted on or after January 4, according to archives obtained through the Wayback Machine. This was the day after the press briefing, and four days before President Trump gave a prime-time television address arguing for Congress to spend $5.7 billion in order to build a larger wall along the US-Mexico border.“Walls and fences are temporary solutions that focus on the symptom (illegal immigration) rather than the problem (employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens),” the now-deleted page says.The Media FAQ page has not been replaced, and a link to the Media FAQ page has also been removed from the NBPC website. Read the rest

“Officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests”

Elon Musk's SpaceX let go 10% of its 6,000 person staff today. In May of last year, the company stated that it has had "many years" of continuing profitability and in recent weeks raised $273 million so far in a planned $500 million funding round."To continue delivering for our customers and to succeed in developing interplanetary spacecraft and a global space-based Internet, SpaceX must become a leaner company," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell wrote in an email to employees. "Either of these developments, even when attempted separately, have bankrupted other organizations. This means we must part ways with some talented and hardworking members of our team..."From the Los Angeles Times:SpaceX makes most of its money from commercial and national security satellite launches, as well as two NASA contracts, one a multibillion-dollar deal to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and the other up to $2.6 billion to develop a capsule that will deliver astronauts to the space station. The first launch of that capsule, without a crew, is planned for February.The Elon Musk-led company has even more ambitious — and expensive — plans. Musk has said SpaceX will conduct a “hopper test” of its Mars spaceship prototype as early as next month...SpaceX is offering a minimum of eight weeks’ pay and other benefits to laid-off workers, according to Shotwell’s email. Read the rest