The Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain was recently compromised by a hacker who spent 88,500 tokens (worth $500,000) then used a lot of computing power to roll back the blockchain so they could get the tokens back. The original tokens are now worthless because they belong to blocks that aren't part of the chain. Major cryptocurrency exchanges have halted trading of (ETC).From Ars Technica:Stated a different way, a rollback attack generates a new fork of the blockchain. This causes nodes to replace the original blockchain with the new one and makes it possible for attackers to reverse previously made transactions. Rollback attacks require control of a substantial fraction of the total hashpower devoted to generating the coin's blockchain for a period long enough to pull off the attack. Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto warned of the key limitation in his white paper introducing the digital coin.Coinbase paused movements of affected ETC funds to prevent any double spends from hitting its users. Meanwhile, the Kraken Exchange temporarily halted ETC deposits and withdrawals and plans to bring ETC funding back online once exchange officials believe it is safe to do so. ETC officials, for their part, have confirmed that double spends are affecting the currency, but they have yet to say more.Image: ethereumclassic.org Read the rest

In 1917, a munitions ship exploded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, devastating the city and shattering the lives of its citizens. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the events of the disaster, the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima, and the grim and heroic stories of its victims.We'll also consider the dangers of cactus plugging and puzzle over why a man would agree to be assassinated.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

It's been ten years since the people of Juneau, Alaska succumbed to conspiracy theories and voted to ruin their kids' teeth by removing fluoride from the drinking water, and it shows.A BMC Oral Health study by Jennifer Meyer (U Alaska), Vasileios Margaritis (Walden U) and Aaron Mendelsohn (Walden U) found that, on average, the families of unfluoridated kids of Juneau paid an extra $300 to have preventable cavities drilled and filled. Fluoride costs pennies. Those figures are based on the youngest children assessed in the study, aged under six years of age.Among those patients, kids who were exposed to fluoride in their tap water had on average 1.55 caries procedures annually – but this jumped to 2.52 procedures annually for the children in the suboptimal group.The effect was more subtle for age groups older than the 0 to Read the rest

Love Hultén makes beautiful game devices based on the Raspberry Pi and RertroPie. His latest design, which has a speckly textured finish, is called the Geoboi. Read the rest

My favorite part of Bewitched was always Bernard Fox's character Doctor Bombay. Read the rest

AT&T has added a "5Ge" symbol to several phones from Samsung and LG, misleading customers into thinking they have something special. There is no 5Ge network, it is LTE.The Verge reports:AT&T has updated three smartphones from Samsung and LG to make them show 5G connectivity logos, even though none of them are capable of connecting to 5G networks.Now, when the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active, LG V30, or LG V40 are connected to portions of AT&T’s LTE network that have received some speed-boosting updates, they’ll show an icon that says “5G E” instead of “LTE.”That “E” in the “5G” logo is supposed to tip you off that this isn’t real 5G — just some marketing nonsense. But there’s no way of knowing that just from looking at the logo. The “E” is smaller than the rest of the icon. And even if you do learn that “5G E” stands for “5G Evolution,” it isn’t immediately clear what that means. Read the rest

In the 1930s, the Works Public Administration commissioned a 1":100' wooden model of San Francisco; the final model is 38' x 42', with 6,000 removable city blocks spanning 158 pieces.After being exhibited in the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in 1939 and city hall from 1940-42, it was used as a city planning tool and then as a teaching aid at the Environmental Simulation Laboratory in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley.The whole model has not been on public display since 1942, but now SFMOMA and the San Francisco Public Library have commissioned high-resolution photographs of each piece, which are assembled into a virtual layout that has been transposed to Google Maps; it's part of the joint Public Knowledge: Take Part initiative.The condition of the model is generally good except for the downtown and south of market portions which need restoration - many blocks there have been removed and lost, probably from the time it was used and updated as a planning tool. The team that has made the model available again to the public are the principals of Public Knowledge: Take Part: Bik Van der Pol, Artists; Stella Lochman Project Manager; Tomoko Kanamitsu, Project Director; Deena Chalabi, Curatorial Lead; and Bay Area historian Gray Brechin, who for many years has championed the Model's preservation as a critical piece of Bay Area history during the New Deal. 1940 WPA San Francisco Model 42x38 ft Now Online [David Rumsey Historical Map Collection](via JWZ) Read the rest

Every ten years, the US government is constitutionally mandated to carry out a census: the first census, in 1790, only counted "the head of household and the number of free white males, other free persons and slaves in each household."Each census since then has changed the way people are counted, with racial categories expanding and contracting in response to the way people identified themselves: in 1880, the "Chinese" category was added, and then in 1890, it was joined by "Japanese," and ten years after that, "Asian" was broken down into "Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, Vietnamese, and Other Asian." Other "Asian" fluctuations include "Hindu," "Hawaiian," "Part Hawaiian," "Samoan," "Guamanian," "Other Pacific Islander" (and in 2000, Pacific Islanders finally got bureaucratically separated from Asia, to reflect their geographic separation).The categories for indigenous and Black people are no less interesting, as are the Latinx categories.It's all easy to explore thanks to an interactive site put together by the Pew Center.What Census Calls Us: A Historical Timeline [Pew Center](Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

What do you do if you're walking alone on a lonely dark street and a car starts chasing you? This man is minding his own business when a car stops alongside him. It's not clear what the passenger of the car says or does to make this guy scared, but he runs in the opposite direction. The car then chases him by driving in reverse, so the guy stops in his tracks, reverses his direction again while crossing the street diagonally. At this point another car comes by, and the man again changes his direction to run alongside it, making it impossible for the stalker to continue without making an obvious scene. This guy was both smart and lucky! Read the rest

The 2018 election included a Florida ballot initiative to restore felons' voting rights (with the exception of convicted murderers and sexual offenders): the 1.4 million Americans who will get their votes restored today as a consequence are the largest cohort of Americans to get access to the ballot since women's sufferage in 1920.The restoration of voting rights for felons is an important step in reversing the electoral suppression practiced by Republicans as part of their election-stealing tactics, which range from dark money spending to poll-taxes to gerrymandering and beyond. 97% of people who are indicted by a Federal grand jury plead guilty. That is not because US prosecutors are in possession of psychic powers that help them to solely indict guilty people: it's because the combination of inhumane prison conditions, resource-starved public defenders, farcically long prison sentences, and the proliferation of jailable offenses. If a prosecutor decides you're guilty, he'll get you indicted like a ham sandwich, charge you with a long list of felonies, threaten you with centuries of prison time in a medieval-torture-grade federal pen, stick you with an inattentive, underpaid public defender, and then offer you a plea deal (which your PD will endorse).The ability to plead innocent is a privilege, a function of the wealth of the accused. Whiteness is also correlated with wealth in America, and banning felons from voting is mostly a way of banning Black and brown people from voting.Florida's voting restoration ballot initiative was incredibly explicit: it restores votes today, without any need for further work from the legislature. Read the rest

If you require Nutella on demand, these 25-gram jars pocketable glass jars of the spreadable wonder substance will fit the bill. Amazon sells them in lots of 16 and 32. Read the rest

This lovely documentary shares a bit of the magic that stuntman and comedian Gary Morgan calls life.The Flying Morgans are Los Angeles' honest-to-goodness circus family. I was lucky enough to have lunch and do some holiday shopping with Gary, Susie and their daughter Bonnie just a few days before Christmas, and as always they filled my day with laughter and light.Gary is a bottomless well of energy and wit. His life is filled with song, dance, art and love. I am lucky to call him a friend. Read the rest

The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has been cloning giant redwoods from genetic material still living in their stumps, and planting them around the world.e360@Yale reports:Today, giant stumps of ancient redwoods dot the landscape from Oregon to northern California, reminders of the old-growth forest that used to stretch across the Pacific Northwest. Many arborists assumed these stumps were dead, but Milarch and his son, Jake, discovered living tissue growing from the trees’ roots, material known as baseless or stump sprouts. The Milarchs collected DNA from stumps of five giant coast redwoods, all larger than the largest tree living today. These included a giant sequoia known as General Sherman with a 25-foot diameter.They then used this genetic material to grow dozens of saplings, clones of the ancient trees, a process that takes approximately two-and-a-half-years. The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has already planted nearly 100 of these saplings in the Eden Project garden in Cornwall, England, a couple hundred in Oregon, and is organizing further groves of saplings in nine other countries.“These saplings have extraordinary potential to purify our air, water, and soil for generations to come,” Milarch said. “We hope [the San Francisco] ‘super grove,’ which has the capability to become an eternal forest, is allowed to grow unmolested by manmade or natural disasters and thus propagate forever.”(Thanks, John Stewart!) Read the rest

Go fuck yourself, Rochester.A TV meteorologist at an NBC affiliate in Rochester, New York was fired after being accused of using an on-air racial slur in reference to Martin Luther King Jr. However, WHEC chief meteorologist Jeremy Kappell says he simply "jumbled" his words during Friday's broadcast. A video posted to social media of Kappell's broadcast shows him apparently calling a park named for the slain civil rights leader "Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Park."WHEC general manager Richard Reingold wrote on the station's website that the station made a "staffing change" Sunday. In a rambling video, Kappell says is was a misunderstanding, a mispronunciation, "if it hurts you I sincerely apologize," and then criticizes his station.“What happened on Friday, to me, it’s a simple misunderstanding. If you watch me regularly, you know that I tend to contain a lot of information in my weathercast, which forces me to speak fast and unfortunately I spoke a little too fast when I was referencing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — so fast to the point where I jumbled a couple of words. Now in my mind, I knew I had mispronounced. But there was no malice."...I'm so disappointed that my career could end this way and extremely disappointed and the decisions made by my television station my expected a certain level of support from and I did not receive at all Not the recommended way to apologize, sure, but you can't say he didn't do him. Read the rest

Composer and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and three of his collaborators on the massively successful musical have saved a famed 100-year-old specialty theater bookstore in New York City from going out of business. Facing unaffordable rent in Times Square, the Drama Book Shop was on death's door even as it sought a new location. According to the New York Times, the city has committed to help identify a new location in Midtown Manhattan. From the New York Times:The new owners of the store are Mr. Miranda; Thomas Kail, the director of “Hamilton”; Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer; and James L. Nederlander, the president of the Nederlander Organization, which operates the theater in which the show’s Broadway production is running. They purchased the store from Rozanne Seelen, whose husband, Arthur Seelen, had bought it in 1958. (He died in 2000.) Ms. Seelen said she sold it for the cost of the remaining inventory, some rent support in the store’s final weeks, and a pledge to retain her as a consultant.“It’s the chronic problem — the rents were just too high, and I’m 84 years old — I just didn’t have the drive to find a new space and make another move,” she said. “Lin-Manuel and Tommy are my white knights...”“When I was in high school I would go to the old location and sit on the floor and read plays — I didn’t have the money to buy them,” Mr. Miranda said... Read the rest

When I was very little, my big brother brought me in to school for show-and-tell. In the lunchroom, a kid fired a rubber band that hit me right in the face. I still remember the welt. This fascinating video uses high-speed footage to explain the physics behind this age-old form of weaponry. It also reminded me of the traumatic experience that forever made me a conscientious objector to the rubber band wars. Read the rest

Art conservator Emily Macdonald-Korth was evaluationg a client's Jean-Michel Basquiat untitled painting from 1981 when she looked at the work under ultraviolet light to reveal any repairs or varnishing. From artnet News:“I start looking at this thing and I see these arrows,” Macdonald-Korth told artnet News. She flipped the lights back on to make sure she wasn’t imagining things and the arrows disappeared. She flipped the lights off again and there they were: two arrows drawn in what looked like black-light crayon, virtually identical to other arrows drawn visibly on the canvas with red and black oil sticks. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “He basically did a totally secret part of this painting.”In fact, this isn’t the first time Basquiat has been known to use fluorescent UV materials. In 2012, Sotheby’s London discovered that his painting Orange Sports Figure from 1982—done just months after the one Macdonald-Korth analyzed—contained an invisible-ink signature of the artist’s name in the bottom right corner. But he has never been known to include UV-specific imagery in his work. Read the rest

Robert Crosland, the high school teacher who fed a puppy to a turtle in front of young teenagers, was found not guilty of animal cruelty this week.Robert Crosland, the Preston Junior High School teacher, smiled as the verdict was read and afterward spoke publicly for the first time since the March ordeal.“I would just like to thank all of the support that I’ve received,” he said. “I’d like to thank this community for staying behind me. It’s really what got me through all of this.”Shane Reichert, an attorney representing Crosland, explained that what matters is not what people think about animals but what the law defines: "Regardless of whether it's a puppy, an elk, a deer, a coyote, a mouse or a rat, it doesn't matter in the eyes of the law. There is no distinction in the law between them and ... domestical animals." Thanking the jury, Reichert air quoted the word "puppy" to emphasize how meaningless it is in legal terms to distinguish them from the live vermin usually fed to reptiles.Also in the news this week is a Sheriff's deputy, Keenan Wallace, who shot a chihuahua to punish a man who refused to talk to him: Here's the video, which, be warned, shows the cop shooting a tiny, obviously harmless dog. The dog survived."An internal investigation conducted by the Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office found Wallace’s actions did not violate any policies or laws," of course, but they changed their minds and fired him after the media found out. Read the rest

In four days, federal employees will suffer their first missed paycheck since Trump's border wall shutdown; it's hard to say who will be worst hit: the employees who are furloughed will never see that money (but who may have been able to pick up some other work while they were off the job to cover their bills); or the "essential" federal employees who've had to show up for work every day without pay, but who will, someday, get a paycheck to cover their forced labor.In the latter group are 51,739 TSA "officers" (TSA screeners aren't cops, but they've adopted the "officer" honorific in a bid to secure flyers' obedience while they confiscate their apple-pie filling). Since the shut-down began, TSA officials have insisted that screeners were not staging "sick outs" (for example, to avoid daycare expenses by staying home with their kids) and that the extra waiting time that passengers were suffering through (53 minutes in Laguardia!) was the result of heavier than usual travel.But after Friday, TSA screeners will have to decide whether they want to stay on the job without pay, and it's a sure bet that lots of them will stay home, and there's not much the TSA can do about it. A TSA walkout would cripple the nation's businesses and strike directly at higher-income Americans (that is, the people who supported Trump as he used racist wall promises to secure the votes needed for a two-trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the wealthy).What happens next is anyone's guess. Read the rest

After 20 years of unprecedented lows, Canada's central bank is gradually raising rates; this, combined with strict rules on new loans, empty house taxes in overheated cities like Vancouver, and mandatory ownership disclosures (which keep money launderers out of the market) are depressing the Canadian housing market, and the prognosis is not good.Canada's economy is heavily dependent on construction (8% of the job market) and consumer spending, and both of these will fall as cheap capital evaporates and debt payments shoot up, potentially triggering a contraction spiral.Taken separately, each of the measures that are cooling the housing market are sensible and long, long overdue -- and it's the tardiness that is the problem. Time and again, Canadian politicians and regulators have kicked the can down the road on the unsustainable housing bubble, leading to a situation in which every possible outcome is impossibly terrible.The original sin was allowing Canada's cities to become speculative vehicles for global criminals looking to stash their capital outside of the states they'd helped loot into near-collapse. Then, to allow Canadians to bid against the looters, the banks loosened up lending rules, larding Canadians with unsustainable debt -- and driving up housing prices, attracting more offshore speculators, requiring even more cheap debt for the Canadians who actually lived in the cities (lather, rinse, repeat).The result is debt of every kind: policy debt, cash debt, city planning debt, and it's all coming due at once. Think of the interest rate hikes: the law of small numbers means that even modest rate hikes have huge effects on borrowers. Read the rest

The leap from a Wacom's Intuos (a ~$300 graphics tablet) to its Cintiq (a $1200 pen-sensitive display) was always too much for me to make: a big investment in a new way of working that I'm not sure I'd benefit from. The likelihood of me forking out receded further when the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil came along, offering better latency for less dough. That said, you don't get Creative Suite and you're stuck with Apple's cursor-less way of doing things—so I might well give the new $649 Cintiq 16 [Wacom] a try.The first "entry-level" Cintiq, it has a 1080-line 15.6-inch display with 8,192 pressure levels, and ditches the physical buttons and touch support found on the high-res Cintiq Pro models.Now, $649 is nothing to sneer at. But for students and working artists who use cheap knockoffs and are sick of fooling arund with them, it's useful ramp to the industry standard. Read the rest

As any successful company can tell you, it's all about the numbers. Compiling and using data quickly and effectively is key, and the best programs for doing just that share one programming language: Python. And if you want to master them all, the Complete Python Data Science Bundle is a good place to start.Set up for programmers of any level of experience, this 12-course package starts with an introduction to Python fundamentals, but branches out quickly. You'll learn to navigate Python's Pandas and NumPy libraries, then display and wrangle those numbers with platforms like Seaborn and Spark 2.x. At the deep end of the course, you'll even learn the same analytic and machine learning tools that drive AI engines such as Siri.All in all, it's enough knowledge to create any data infrastructure. Right now, the Complete Python Data Science Bundle is 96% off the MSRP for the individual courses at $37. Plus, you can take off an additional 19% off with code NEWYEAR2019. Read the rest

Hyundai developed a "walking car" and "unveiled" it at the CES trade show yesterday. As far as I can tell it's just a mockup video, but the idea is timely. Traditionally, only flimsy and obviously impractical spider-legged robots could handle rough terrain, while two- and four-legged ones were too unstable to get far. Will Boston Dynamics soon have serious competition? Add your thoughts in the comments, increasingly-useless waterlogged meatbags! Read the rest

@dyingmars, artist and author of the dark fantasy webcomic Aside, made the best "snowman" I've ever seen. We made a snowman today pic.twitter.com/r6gR0NKAnz— Zack Frost ❄ (@dyingmars) January 7, 2019 Read the rest

No one in America explains the importance of good network policy than Susan Crawford (previously), a one-woman good sense factory when it comes to Network Neutrality, municipal fiber, and reining in the excesses of the goddamned ISP industry. Her latest book is Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It, a timely and urgent look at how America is sacrificing its digital future, productivity, connectivity, social mobility, entrepreneurial growth, education, and every other public good, thanks to rapacious telcos, scumbag lobbyists, and negligent, cash-hungry politicians. Crawford and her publisher, Yale University Press, were kind enough to give us an excerpt (below) so you can get a sense of why you should be reading this.Fiber optic, as a category, is both old and new. The cables running under the oceans and among the major cities of the world began to be upgraded to fiber thirty years ago. And once a fiber optic cable is in the ground, it lasts for forty or fifty years; it is essentially future proof, because its information-carrying capacity can be almost infinitely upgraded without digging up the cable, merely by swapping out the electronics that encode and power the pulses of light that travel within its walls. Most people in non-fiber countries (including the United States) can’t even buy what in fibered countries counts as a standard, modern internet connection. About 11 million American households, out of 126 million total, are connected to last-mile fiber, and that service is usually available only at very high prices from a single unregulated provider. Read the rest

A gentleman was trapped in a Burger King restroom, forced to listen to the staff laugh at his plight. In compensation the local manager offered him 'meals for life' -- that's right, a lifetime supply of mediocre "whoppers" and some of the worst fries in fast food existence!For a few weeks all was well, then a REGIONAL manager revoked this fitting reward, and the gentleman has been offered no other recourse than to sue.We will be monitoring this case not at all.ABC reports:Curtis Brooner was locked in the bathroom for more than an hour at a restaurant in Wood Village last month.Brooner's attorney Michael Fuller told KATU that his client went to pull the door and it wouldn't open.Fuller said employees gave Brooner "a fly swatter to 'jimmy' the door open, which actually cut his hand."Court documents claim employees on the other side laughed at Brooner while he was stuck in the restroom.The Burger King manager offered Brooner free food for the rest of his life should he come into the restaurant, Fuller said.He said the restaurant did honor the deal for a few weeks, but then a regional manager reneged the offer."It's the principle," Fuller said. "The jury is going to enjoy it. There are funny elements of the case, but there is nothing funny about being locked in a dank bathroom for an hour."Brooner and his attorney are suing for about $9,000, or the cost of one burger meal a week until he turns 72. Read the rest

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me," and it analyzes how Big Tech has been able to "disrupt" incumbent industries, but has repurposed obscure technology regulations to prevent anyone from meting out the same treatment to their new digital monopolies.I cite the example of Uber and Lyft, which have gutted the (often corrupt and rentier-riddled) taxi industry, but which can't be similarly cannibalized my driver co-ops without risking legal retaliation through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.But imagine a disruptive app that disrupted the disrupters.Imagine if I could install a version of Ride (call it Meta-Uber) that knew about all the driver co-ops in the world. When I landed, I’d page a car with Uber or Lyft, but once a driver accepted the hail, my Meta-Uber app would signal the driver’s phone and ask, “Do you have a driver co-op app on your phone?” If the driver and I both had the co-op app, our apps would cancel the Uber reservation and re-book the trip with Meta-Uber.That way, we could piggyback on the installed base of Uber and Lyft cars, the billions they’ve poured into getting rideshare services legalized in cities around the world, the marketing billions they’ve spent making us all accustomed to the idea of rideshare services.This Meta-Uber service would allow for a graceful transition from the shareholder-owned rideshares to worker co-ops. When you needed a car, you’d get one, without having to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of no drivers because there are no passengers because there are no drivers. Read the rest

In the first injection in a human being of macromolecules whose primary structure was developed from a religious text a French 16 year old named Adrien Locatelli describes how he paid Vector Builder $1300 to transcode verses from the Bible and the Koran into macromolecules and then injected one verse into each leg (the Bible verse was written into the DNA of an adeno-associated virus and injected into his left thigh; the Koran verse was encoded into DNA but not merged with a virus and was then injected into his right thigh).The Bible verse caused mild, local inflammation. The Koran verse did not. Locatelli called his effort a "symbol of peace between religions and science." His only relevant experience is a one-week internship with Advanced Biosciences in Grenoble.UCLA biochemist Sri Kosuri -- a DNA data-storage specialist -- expressed dismay at Locatelli's "experiment," calling it "unfortunate" and adding that "2018 can’t end soon enough."Locatelli told his father about the experiment, but has not yet told his mother.Locatelli said he matched various characters in the Hebrew alphabet to the nucleotides in order to produce a strand of DNA that corresponded to the first few verses of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. In his preprint paper he said that a similar technique was used to match individual letters in Arabic to translate the Quran to genetic code.Locatelli said he used a technique known as recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) to write the Biblical genetic code into the DNA of a virus. Read the rest

After four years of Freedom of Information Act litigation, the ACLU has prevailed and forced the Customs and Border Patrol to release 1,000 pages' worth of training documents in which new agents learn when they can stop people and what they can do after they stop them.The documents are a window into the CBP's legal gamesmanship, in which the flimsiest of pretenses are spun into legal excuses to stop, search, question and detain people within 100 miles of the US border and in any city with an international airport.Counsel for CBP has cherry-picked legal precedents to produce a kafka-esque litany of excuses for stops, including being close to the border, being on a "known smuggling route," driving "inconsistent with local traffic patterns," being "from out of the area," having a covered cargo area; paying "undue attention to the agent's presence," avoiding "looking at the agent," slowing down on seeing the agent, being dirty, etc.The documents also shed light on CBP surveillance activities, though much of this section is redacted.Of particular interest are the revelations of the CPB's shadowy "city patrol," which does not target people who've made illegal border crossings.Also interesting is the CBP's belief that it can force any civilian to operate on its behalf on penalty of a $1,000 fine (previously the CBP has used this authority to force doctors to perform medically unnecessary rectal examinations, a practice now banned by the courts).The entire chapter on electronic surveillance has been redacted in the ELC, and the unredacted sections, as well as the PowerPoint presentations, paint a complicated portrait of scenarios in which surveillance technology, when used by CBP, would constitute a search. Read the rest

The state of Tennessee pays doctor-contractors by the case to review Medicare disability claims, leading to a situation in which doctors review four or more cases per hour -- and kick profoundly disabled and terminally ill people out of the program. Tennessee leads the nation in denied disability claims.Tennessee goes to great lengths to cover this up: they fired a whistleblower who raised alerts about problems in the program (and not just any whistleblower: Dr. John Mather was formerly chief medical officer for disability programs at the federal Social Security Administration before he retired and took up a side-gig as a Tennessee disability claims reviewer, only to have his contract renewal cancelled after he contacted the program's overseers with warnings about the process).Tennessee also cooks the numbers on denied disability claims: when calculating the time spent reviewing denied cases, they fold in the time spent by each specialist required to evaluate the claim, even if each of those specialists only spend a few minutes. They also tout a high degree of successful quality assurance spot-checks, without revealing that they overwhelmingly submit approved claims for double-checking, and don't typically double-check the denied claims.The doctors who check themselves into an office building and plow through disability claims can made a fortune, provided they work quickly: Dr. Kanika Chaudhuri has made $1.1m evaluating claims since 2013 ($192k in 2018); Jenaan Khaleeli (who reviews 4.5 cases/hour on average) made $209k in 2018 and $1.2m over five years (he denies nearly 80% of the cases he reviews); Dr. Read the rest

Baylor University political scientist Patrick Flavin's forthcoming study in Social Science Research finds that people in states with higher public goods spending (on "libraries, parks, highways, natural resources and police protection") report higher levels of happiness. It's not clear whether they are happier because they have better services, or whether people who choose to live in places where they don't have to pay for their neighbors' kids' education, parks, etc, are selfish, miserable fucks. In his study, published in the journal Social Science Research, Flavin analyzed data on respondents' self-reported levels of happiness for 1976-2006 from the General Social Survey, a representative sample of Americans that monitors social characteristics and attitudes of Americans and is a project of the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. Flavin also analyzed detailed government spending data for states from the U.S. Census Bureau for 1976-2006. Revenues to fund state public goods are raised from a combination of state taxes and transfers from the federal government to states, averaging 22.5 percent of total state revenues for that 30-year period."We can look at the city where people live, their neighborhoods, and see how public goods spending predicts happiness after taking other important factors, such as marital status, health, education and income, into account," Flavin said.He also found that public goods spending has broad benefits across income, education, gender and race/ethnicity lines."Compared to a lot of the other government spending, public goods tend to be less controversial between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, compared to poverty assistance or unemployment benefits, where there is definite disagreement between political parties," Flavin said. Read the rest

The New York Times weighs in on an Authors Guild survey that shows a "drastic 42% decline in authors' earnings over the past decade. John Scalzi offers some important perspective.Here's the summary:* Authors Guild: authors' incomes are way down, thanks to Amazon's monopolism, which is crushing indies and traditionally published authors alike; universities are relying on fair use and Google Books for coursepacks, and big tech overall is "devalu[ing] what we produce to lower their costs for content distribution."* New York Times: yeah, it's mostly Amazon.* Scalzi: This isn't a very good study. They surveyed 5,000-ish, self-selected authors (and the Science Fiction Writers of America didn't participate). Comparing the fortunes of authors today to Hemingway may not be very representative -- think instead of writers like John Brunner, who lived a writerly life that's pretty recognizable to writers today. Was there really ever a guilded age of writerly incomes, or just a bunch of survivor bias? My take: Amazon and the other monopolists are a huge problem. But big tech isn't uniformly culpable. Facebook and Twitter are certainly big social problems, but, they're not hurting authors. The idea of "devaluing what we produce" by letting people talk to each other for free is incoherent, intellectually bankrupt nonsense, ripped from the pages of "Home taping is killing music" and "Home cooking is killing restaurants."Also a problem: consolidation in publishing (we're down to five big publishers, and rumor has it that Simon and Shuster will be a subsidiary of Harper Collins within a year). Read the rest

Bill Gates has a long, complicated and showy relationship with malaria eradication, and in a new letter, he makes a case that mosquitoes are Earth's deadliest animals, outkilling even the murderous h. sap..Gates's jeremiad comes as the eradication of disease-transmitting mosquitoes is seemingly within our grasp.There are more than 2,500 species of mosquito, and mosquitoes are found in every region of the world except Antarctica. During the peak breeding seasons, they outnumber every other animal on Earth, except termites and ants. They were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths during the construction of the Panama Canal. And they affect population patterns on a grand scale: In many malarial zones, the disease drives people inland and away from the coast, where the climate is more welcoming to mosquitoes.Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year. Mosquitoes kill 50,000 times as many people, but if there’s a TV channel that features Mosquito Week, I haven’t heard about it.That’s why we’re having Mosquito Week on the Gates Notes.The Deadliest Animal in the World [Bill Gates/Gates Notes](via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

I have a stainless steel Contigo Autoseal Water Bottle but it's a bit too heavy for air travel. This plastic version is lighter and less expensive than the metal bottle. And it's really cheap as an add-on item. Read the rest

Bill Bailey, performing at the London Palladium, entertained the audience by playing major-key songs in a minor key, and vice versa. "Now some of the great national anthems are written in the major key," he said. "In fact most national anthems are in the major key -- celebratory, uplifting. I like to experiment with them and play them in a different key and the one I'm thinking of is the Star Spangled Banner -- the American national anthem, which i think -- appropriately now -- should be played in the minor key it. It takes on a totally different dynamic. Actually, it sounds a bit Russian." Read the rest

Previous studies into the effects of THC (the main psychoactive component of marijuana) have shown it to play a role in preventing symptoms of Alzheimer’s. But a new study published in Aging and Mechanisms of Disease, shows that THC goes even further by helping to get rid of amyloid-like proteins in the brain that kill nerve cells."Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimer's, we believe our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid beta accumulation in nerve cells," says Salk Professor David Schubert, the senior author of the paper.Here's an "explain like i'm five" infographic from the study: Read the rest

We repeat: nothing for the ineffective, immoral and costly 'border wall'. #TrumpShutdown pic.twitter.com/0MoSry6LOv— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) January 6, 2019Soon millions of American citizens will lose even more of the meager support our government shares. Read the rest

This black bear in Florida thought he'd pay a social visit to a family over the holidays. After lumbering onto the porch and knocking over some decorations for fun, he rang the doorbell. But the family was not amused. They got on the intercom and firmly repeated, "Bear, go away!" The unwanted guest finally got the message and went on his merry way. Read the rest

John Park conducted a video workshop on how to make a drum sequencer by putting black and white markings on a disc. When he spins the disk, a row of optical sensors trigger the different drum sounds. It could be used to sequence any sounds, visuals, or actions. Read the rest

The host of Life Where I'm From, a YouTube channel about life as a foreigner in Japan, visited a pop-up cafe with robot waiters that are remotely controlled by people with disabilities. The workers control the robots from their homes, and can speak with customers using a microphone.In December of 2018 I visited a temporary robot cafe, but it's not the type of Japanese robot cafe that comes to mind to most. Rather than a robotic show, this was a cafe where the robot waiters were in fact avatars for people with disabilities, who remotely controlled them from their homes.This cafe was part of an initiative by The Nippon Foundation, Ory Lab Inc., and ANA Holdings Inc. It allowed people with ALS and severe disabilities to be able to work and interact with the world. Read the rest

It's an unusual day in the Fox news sphere when one of their own busts Press Secretary Sarah Sanders for her alternative facts.Fox host Chris Wallace interviewed Sanders on Sunday, and when she claimed (at 9:46) that "nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally, and we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border..." Wallace abruptly cuts her off to set the facts straight. "I know the statistic, I didn't know if you were gonna use it but I studied up on this. Do you know where those 4,000 people come from, where they're captured? Airports. The State Department says there hasn't been any terrorist that they've found coming across the southern border," he says. Although cornered, she soldiers on, but Wallace doesn't let up. The child-caught-in-a-lie look on her face is priceless. Read the rest

In 1978, Mr. Rogers hosted a television show for adults called "Old Friends...New Friends" in which he interviewed interesting musicians, artists, athletes, teachers, and others "about their search for meaning in life." A clip of the show appeared in last year's documentary about Fred Rogers, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?." Above is that complete episode, titled "Inner Rhythms" and featuring classical pianist Lorin Hollander. There are 19 other episodes profiling the likes of composer Hoagy Carmichael, barrio teacher Nancy Acosta, comedian Milton Berle, and psychoanalyst Helen Ross. Read the rest

Sosena Gebre Eyesus by Sosena Gebre EyesusListen above to Sosena Gebre Eyesus's deeply spiritual and enchanting Ethiopian Orthodox hymns sung over the Begena, a ten string instrument also known as the Harp of David. Previously only on cassette, Eyesus's self-titled album is now available as a digital download or vinyl edition from the fine folks at Little Axe Records in Portland, Oregon. Since ancient times the Harp of David has been used as an aural balm, a soother of evil and disturbed spirits —its low, buzzing tones widely noted for their ability to sweetly refresh one’s soul. Said to have been brought to Ethiopia in biblical times by Menelik I, it has long been the central instrument used to accompany Ethiopian Orthodox hymns, which Eyesus plays here in an absolutely entrancing manner while softly singing songs of devotional reflection. Sosena Gebre Eyesus - self-titled (Little Axe)Below, "Orthodox Tewahedo - Begena Derdari Sosina Gebre Eyesus - Getachine Begergeme": Read the rest

I used to see/hear Porky say this 20x a day.I want this on my tombstone, but maybe higher res. Read the rest

As a kid in the '70s, watching the annual monarch butterfly migration in Californa was a thing to see. Not so much any more.From KTLA 5 in LA:Researchers with an environmental group have labeled as “disturbingly low” the number of western monarch butterflies that migrate along the California coast.A recent count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 30,000 butterflies, which it said is an 86 percent decline since 2017.By comparison, the group in 1981 counted more than 1 million western monarchs wintering in California, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.The Xerces Society conducts annual Thanksgiving and New Year’s counts and was not certain what caused the numbers to drop. It said there is no substantial evidence of a delayed migration and butterflies are not being reported in other parts of the country.A 2017 study by Washington State University researchers found the species likely will go extinct in the next few decades if nothing is done to save it.Scientists say the butterflies are threatened by pesticides, herbicides and destruction along their migratory route. They also have noted climate change impacts. Read the rest

r/megalophobia is a my new favorite subreddit, specializing in things that are very big and therefore very, very scary. Postings range from Lovecraftian monsters looming in the mist to zoom-out animations impressing upon the viewer the insignificance of Planet Earth and all human concerns. Currently popular are disturbing photoshops of large comets looming over the major cities they are about to destroy.Above is "War Machines," by Simon Stålenhag (previously). Read the rest

A kid got a wireless mini-microscope for Christmas and quickly located the best bugs in their yard: "Do you think anyone will watch a 2-minute long video?"The model they got is the Tsaagan Wifi 1080p at Amazon. The same ~$40 gadget is sold under a myriad of generic brands, including one at the Boing Boing Store. Read the rest

It should be no secret by now that thanks to Adobe's ubiquitous suite of design software, graphic designers do the bulk of their work in front of a computer screen. Why shouldn't they learn those tools of the trade the same way? If you're looking to kickstart a design career, the Graphic Design Certification School offers training and proof of your skills in one easy online package.In 41 hours and hundreds of engaging, interactive lessons, the school takes you through the three main centerpieces of Adobe's cloud-based graphic design software suite. Learn to manipulate and layer images with Photoshop. Create innovative logos and flowing text in Illustrator. Put it all together in an eye-catching InDesign document. Then, turn your well-earned Continuing Professional Development certificate into a rewarding career in the creative arm of any number of fields.If you needed a further excuse to take the plunge, lifetime access to the lessons and materials in the Graphic Design Certification School is on deep discount for $39 today. Plus, take an additional 19% off with code NEWYEAR2019 Read the rest

Joshua Bearman has long been one of my favorite journalists (he wrote the Wired story that was adapted as the movie Argo, and a profile of the super weird software mogul John McAfee). He's got a new, longform Wired story called "The Mad Scramble to Claim the World's Most Coveted Meteorite" and it's about the eccentric teams of people who look for meteorites in general, and a meteorite that landed in Peru in particular.Excerpt:On the far side of the bridge, they came to a battered border control outpost. Inside, Peruvian police were surprised. Farmer’s Spanish was still pretty good from his Army days, so he did the talking. He had a high-pitched American accent, but when Farmer said they came to find a meteorite, the police quickly understood and agreed to take them to the spot. They hustled the group into two SUVs and sped off for the crater. The police were friendly, which Farmer took to mean they knew there was money to be gleaned from the gringos. He made sure not to reveal that they were carrying $30,000 in cash. Having that kind of money could be dangerous in remote places.As they drove they got a sense of just how remote this area was. There was a reason Carancas could not be seen on Google Maps. The altiplano was a lawless frontier, the police said. “Watch out for the village people,” they added, warning of occasional instances of frontier justice. When the Aymara didn’t want to wait for the police, they’d been known to burn suspected criminals alive in the fields. Read the rest

When this curious contraption is switched on, an inner circle of white balls appears to be rolling inside the outer circle, but that's actually not the case at all. Below is a video explaining this circular motion illusion. Learn more about the mathematics behind it, specifically Copernicus’ Theorem, and the ingenious hypocycloid mechanical gear design by Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) over at The Kid Should See This. Read the rest