The first season of American Gods was great. Ian McShane! Ricky Whittle! Gillian Anderson! Orlando Jones as Mr. Nancy? Perfection.And then, after the season wrapped up, shit went down. Show runners left. So did Gillian Anderson. Chaos ensued. The production finally managed to get their act together and BOOM, the trailer for Season 2 was released, promising us more dark whimsy than we deserve.Believe and you will be rewarded, a gift from the Gods. Take a sneak peek at the opening of the first episode of #AmericanGods Season 2. #Believe #Youarewelcome pic.twitter.com/ajc9v67ax7— American Gods Amazon (@GodsOnAmazon) December 30, 2018This new scene released by Amazon, however... isn't great. Maybe it's the fact that we're seeing it out of context. It's a wee bit of story in the middle of a much greater epic. But it feels a little bit off: there's no tension here. The level of creepy that Crispin Glover usually delivers isn't there. It's a quick clip, but damn, does it drag. If Amazon and Starz were looking to whip up excitement in the show's fan base, this seems like a really strange clip to release into the wild.I'm hoping I'm wrong. I hope that, knowing all the behind-the-scenes drama, I'm reading into trouble that isn't there. But man, I'm kinda worried about the quality of Season 2 now. Read the rest

Patrick Ball and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) (previously) use careful, rigorous statistical models to fill in the large blank spots left behind by acts of genocide, bringing their analysis to war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation proceedings, and other reckonings with gross human rights abuses.Katia Savchuk's Pacific Standard profile of HRDAG delves into both the work and its effects, showing how a small group of smart mathematicians can do what governments won't do and the press generally can't do (at least, not well): count the dead and tell their stories, in the face of concerted efforts to wipe away both the dead and the facts of their killings.One of the most moving stories from HRDAG's work is their 2018 project to uncover hidden mass graves using machine learning, giving local activists the ammunition they needed to demand investigations from their governments.At least 37,000 people have vanished in Mexico since 2007, according to a Mexican government database, after officials there declared a "war on drugs." Officials have discovered the remains of some 2,000 people in more than 1,000 clandestine graves. But where are the missing bodies, the unmapped graves?"It's hard to remember that the blank spots in the map are because you just don't have any data," Ball says. "Why don't we have any reports from those places? The answer is the people who do the reporting risk getting killed."Last year, Ball decided to fill in the blanks. With colleagues from Data Cívica, a non-profit, and the Human Rights Program at Ibero-American University, both in Mexico City, he developed a machine-learning model to predict the location of hidden graves. Read the rest

From the Library Journal's Infodocket: "A Curated Collection of Recently Published or Updated Data-Rich Reports Available on the Web", from climate cost breakdowns to Nielsen's top nonalcoholic beverages (sparkling water is very much on-trend) and much, much more. (Thanks, Gary!) (Image: Meg Stewart, CC-BY) Read the rest

Ronald Reagan may be sainted by the right, but 2018 was the year conservatives broke with his slavish, simpleminded adherence to the Chicago School antitrust theory that says that governments should only regulate monopolies when they give rise to higher consumer prices -- it's also the year the right realized that extreme market concentration in the tech sector could lead to a future in which conspiracy theorists, Nazis, "white identity enthusiasts," and crank misogynists might find themselves with nowhere to talk and be heard by others.Now, to be fair to the right, it wasn't that long ago that Democrats were also cheerleading for Chicago-style antitrust (they were also singing Ronald Reagan's praises) (ffs); but the party's left has put the focus on competitive markets again, and not a minute too soon.Today, American politicians on both sides of the aisle say they want trustbusting to go back into the US government's arsenal. Matt Stoller has a bunch of practical advice for how they can proceed: direct the DOJ to enforce the Sherman Act; pass laws blocking anticompetitive mergers; use select committees to investigate and expose rigged markets from Amazon's predatory private labels to collusion in the meatpacking industry to seed company and airline and rail monopolies, as well as wage-rigging and the explosive growth of noncompetes in every sector. And of course, Congress could start breaking up the giants, from Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google to the airlines, phone companies and ISPs.To begin, Congress could make mergers much harder to complete. Read the rest

This is the first day in 20 years for new works entering the American public domain, and to celebrate, Itch.io is hosting a 1923 public domain game jam, with prizes for best analog game, digital game, adaptation of a 9123 work, remix from multiple sources, deep cut, and visuals; judged by a group of archive, game and copyright nerds (including me!) -- here's a list of 1,000+ works that enter the public domain today to get you started! Read the rest

I hate to yuck you out before the holidays …… and I really love Japan …… but this is just gross.It’s a Japanese delicacy called “Katsu ika odori-don.”The squid is deceased when the dish is served. A little soy sauce and he appears to return to life; in other words, a zombie.Yuki, one of my friends in Japan, assures me that "dancing sashimi" such as this is delicious, and one of the reasons food is eaten this way is to ensure its freshness. Varieties including shrimp and octopus, in addition to squid. But if I saw this in a restaurant, I would run screaming out the door.And here it is with lobster.And this is the one that will give you nightmares! Read the rest

Happy nuke year, everyone! Man, the Trump administration's recklessness really makes people feel like they can just say whatever they want with no consequences. Apparently, Donald Trump's penchant for reckless tweets is contagious, and has spread to United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), which is part of the Department of Defense. “#TimesSquare tradition rings in the #NewYear by dropping the big ball...if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger,” tweeted US Strategic Command. Yes, StratCom.Hashtag “#Deterrence #Assurance #CombatReadyForce #PeaceIsOurProfession.” Watch the funny video. It's hilarious.#TimesSquare tradition rings in the #NewYear by dropping the big ball...if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger.Watch to the end! @AFGlobalStrike @Whiteman_AFB #Deterrence #Assurance #CombatReadyForce #PeaceIsOurProfession... pic.twitter.com/Aw6vzzTONg— US Strategic Command (@US_Stratcom) December 31, 2018The military men who have the power to launch nuclear weapons at the command of a Potemkin President's tweeted impulse are making jokes about dropping nukes for New Year's, just because they can.I'm sure Putin thinks it's all hilarious.PHOTO, TOP: Slim Pickens rides the bomb in Stanley Kubrick's classic film, Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Read the rest

Here's who is getting rich off Trump's immigrant detention camps.A new Daily Beast investigation reveals new details about just how lucrative the business of detaining immigrant asylum-seekers in the United States has become. “In 2018 alone, for-profit immigration detention was a nearly $1 billion industry underwritten by taxpayers and beset by problems that include suicide, minimal oversight, and what immigration advocates say uncomfortably resembles slave labor,” write the Beast's Spencer Ackerman and Adam Rawnsley.Excerpt from '$800 Million in Taxpayer Money Went to Private Prisons Where Migrants Work for Pennies' --Being in the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor offense, and immigration detention is technically a civil matter, not a criminal process. But the reality looks much different. The Daily Beast reported last month that as of Oct. 20, ICE was detaining an average of 44,631 people every day, an all-time high. Now ICE has told The Daily Beast that its latest detention numbers are even higher: 44,892 people as of Dec. 8. Its budget request for the current fiscal year anticipates detaining 52,000 people daily.Expanding the number of immigrants rounded up into jails isn’t just policy; it’s big business. Yesica’s employer and jailer, the private prisons giant GEO Group, expects its earnings to grow to $2.3 billion this year. Like other private prison companies, it made large donations to President Trump’s campaign and inaugural. Pinning down the size and scope of the immigration prison industry is obscured by government secrecy. But the Daily Beast combed through ICE budget submissions and other public records to compile as comprehensive a list as possible of what for-profit prisons charge taxpayers to lock up a growing population, and how many people those facilities detain on average. Read the rest

People like this guy waving his gun at a driverless Waymo van in Arizona are attacking self-driving vehicles with rocks, knives, and *their own cars*, sending a message to tech companies like Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet (Google's parent company). That message is, please go experiment with artificial intelligence in somebody else’s neighborhood.In the video above, a pissed off guy in Chandler, Arizona waves his gun at a passing Waymo van. He got in trouble for it, but man, I can empathize. By the way, the image was captured by surveillance cameras on the Waymo van, provided to the police, and sort of proving the dude's point.There have been accidents in the area involving the autonomous vans. The New York Times reports on the tire-slashing of a driverless vehicle that once happily roamed the streets of Chandler, which isn't far from Phoenix. There have been 21 violent attacks on driverless cars there in the last few years.Waymo started testing self-driving vehicles in Chandler in 2016. Waymo did not ask the human residents if they were cool with it. They're not cool with it.Excerpt from the NYT report: In ways large and small, the city has had an early look at public misgivings over the rise of artificial intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything from safety to possible job losses.Some people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. Read the rest

A man with knife made a bomb threat at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam today, and was 'overpowered' and arrested by Dutch police. Departures and Arrivals in the airport's hall 3 were evacuated, but have since reopened. Here's what happened. Man threatens with a bomb in Departure hall 3 at Schiphol. Currently Departure hall 3 is being evacuated. More information will follow as soon as possible. https://t.co/DDQJuZa9Zn— Schiphol (@Schiphol) December 31, 2018Amsterdam Schiphol Airport hall 3 was evacuated earlier, when the bomb threat occurred. It has since reopened.@Schiphol any updates on Departures 3 being closed off..? pic.twitter.com/uJn81I6AbV— Shola (@piousonn) December 31, 2018Departures and Arrivals 3 were evacuated due to a bomb threat. The police (@Marechaussee) arrested the suspect. Departures and Arrivals 3 are now being opened again for operation.— Schiphol (@Schiphol) December 31, 2018From International Flight Network news:Departure area 3 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport was evacuated on Monday evening following a bomb threat.The airport confirmed that a “man threatens with a bomb in departure hall 3” and that the area was closed off.A short time later, it was confirmed that the man, who was reportedly armed with a knife, was arrested by the Royal Military Police.Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is the third busiest airport in Europe and serves as the main hub for Dutch flag-carrier KLM.More tweets from the time of the incident, below. @Marechaussee is the official Twitter account of the Dutch police force.Man dreigt met bom in vertrekpassage 3 op Schiphol. Read the rest

This baby set a hospital weight record at birth. Of course it happened in Texas. Mother and child are reported by CNN to be healthy.CNN reports on the ginormous human baby born in Arlington, Texas, weighing in at nearly 15 pounds. Read the rest

Billy Joe White, the owner of Red Rose Tattoo in Zanesville, Ohio is taking a stand against hate. Red Rose Tattoos has an open door policy to anyone who chose to adorn their flesh with swastikas, white power symbols and other racist bullshit: visit the shop and you'll receive a beautiful piece of body art to cover up your hateful ink, for no charge. It's a small, important gesture that can change the lives of formerly hateful folks in a powerful way. Read the rest

A broadcast of the 2009 crime drama The Shinjuku Incident cost an Iranian TV chief his job last week, reports the BBC. He forgot to censor a sex scene featuring star Jackie Chan.Iranian media said the "immoral" scene was aired by Kish TV in "total violation of Irib's regulations".Physical contact between men and women is not permitted on screen in Iran.Censors are also said to be required to remove men and women exchanging "tender words or jokes", unveiled women, close-ups of women's faces and exposed necklines, as well as negative portrayals of police and bearded men.I only have more questions after reading this. Read the rest

San Diego and Tijuana are practically a single city, separated by a border, which Donald Trump wants to close, claiming that "The most important way to stop gangs, drugs, human trafficking and massive crime is at our Southern Border."White supremacist Tucker Carlson, who grew up near the San Diego/Tijuana border-crossing at San Ysidro, blames immigration for making America "poorer and dirtier and more divided."San Diego is America's safest large city.And it's not an exception: other safer-than-average US cities include the border towns of El Paso, San Antonio, and Phoenix.Reality has such a left-wing bias.San Diego is poised to end 2018 with 1.9 murders per 100,000 residents, compared to 23.1 per 100,000 in Indianapolis and 51.7 per 100,000 in Baltimore. That means a resident of Indianapolis is 12 times more likely to be murdered, a resident of Baltimore 27 times.If the border crisis is real, wouldn’t the crime rate in San Diego reflect that? If illegal immigration is the existential threat that President Trump and conservative Republicans say it is, wouldn’t there be evidence in San Diego? Wouldn’t MS-13 gang members and drug traffickers be shooting people in downtown San Diego? Slashing hard working citizens in San Ysidro? Terrorizing the streets of La Jolla?Opinion: If There’s a Crisis on The Border, Why Is San Diego So Safe? [Chris Jennewein/Times of San Diego](via Mitch Wagner)(Image: CBP) Read the rest

Lots of folks celebrate Christmas by stashing their presents under the same reusable plastic and aluminum wire Christmas tree every winter: it's a thoughtful, cost-efficient way to cut down on the amount of post holiday garbage that winds up in wood chippers or the local dump every year. However, a lot of people still like to kick it old school with a cut-from-its-roots-and-left-to-slowly-die-in-a-pot-of-water conifer. They smell and look amazing...for a while. Once the presents have been unwrapped and the tree begins to brown, out the door it goes. Upwards of 30 million Americans wind up tossing out these Yuletide corpses every year. Happily, it looks like a scientist has sorted out a the means for making better use of these discarded trees once folks are finished getting their holly-jolly on with them.The process involves breaking down a chemical called lignocellulose in needles of dead pine trees into a useful substance that could be used to make paint or artificial sweeteners and other wicked useful products.From Futurism:Lignocellulose is ugly. No, really. Its chemical structure makes it difficult to use for biomass energy, and it serves little industrial purpose. Sheffield PhD student Cynthia Kartey’s work has focused on examining ways to make use of this material, and now she may be on to something.Using heat and glycerol, Kartey was able to break down the pine needles into two components, one of which was made mostly of materials like glucose, acetic acid and phenol. All three have uses in other industries — glucose is used to make food sweeteners, phenol is used in products like mouthwash, and acetic acid for making adhesives, vinegar, and even paint. Read the rest

The End of Trust is the first-ever nonfiction issue of McSweeney's, co-edited by McSweeney's editors and the staff of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; on December 11, we held a sold-out launch event in San Francisco with EFF executive director Cindy Cohn, science fiction writer and EFF alumna Annalee Newitz, and me.Lisa Rein recorded the event for Mondo 2000, producing a partial transcript, an audio recording (MP3) and a video.Cindy Cohn: “The first reason is that there’s a fundamental constitutional question at the centerpiece regarding how we are going to interact with our technology, that can make all the other questions easier. The second reason is that all of the direct actions that you might want to take in order to exercise your self-governance and have your voice heard, requires some kind of legal protection, right? And when we talk about “direct action,” the reason that you can do direct action and not end up with a very long jail sentence is because, in the United States, compared to other places around the world, is because the Constitution says you can. All the hackers who EFF represents, who tell us all the things about the security problems and the surveillance – if we don’t get the law right, they’re not going to be able to do that. So, I often say that about EFF that we’re kind of the plumbers of freedom. We’re trying to get the obstacles out of the way, so that all the other things you can do to exercise your rights in the digital world can really flow freely. Read the rest

In 2009, Microsoft produced a video imagining the world of 2019. They did well with the software aspects of touchscreen interfaces and machine vision, but overshot the runway on bezel-less devices and the general ubiquity of touchscreens themselves. There's a touchscreen coffee mug! All the depicted applications (such as flexible high-FPS color e-ink) are shown without a batteries or other power sources. This is a mandatory omission in all such future fantasies.The clip is a general reminder of how predictable developments in basic consumer technology were over this time period. Microsoft was on solid ground exaggerating what were already, in 2009, obvious and entrenched trends, and then imagining what the rich would be doing with touchscreens on everything. Consider that a 2009 iMac is virtually identical, from the front, to a 2018 model. The evolution is in the details: thinness, high-DPI panels, faster hardware, software refinement, and so on. Still no touchscreen Macs, mind you...Yet everything has changed with how we use this technology, and Microsoft didn't imagine any of that. Check out the Harry Potter newspaper: they went for blandly positive business headlines. This safe bet (also constrained by having to avoid controvertial predictions) turns out to be the most ironically inaccurate prognostication of them all. But it's not as if they're going to show all their wealthy business travelers weeping before their crypto investments, glumly cycling through the same algorithm-selected tweets again and again, or explaining on YouTube that racial slurs are just gamer talk. Microsoft wasn't thinking of the "beige basement" crowd, after all. Read the rest

Every year, Jennifer Jenkins and Jamie Boyle from the Duke Center for the Public Domain compile a "Public Domain Day" list (previously) that highlights the works that are not entering the public domain in America, thanks to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which hit the pause button on Americans' ability to freely use their artistic treasures for two decades -- a list that also included the notable works entering the public domain in more sensible countries of the Anglophere, like Canada and the UK, where copyright "only" lasted for 50 years after the author's death.But this year, it's different.This is the year that America unpauses its public domain; it's also the year that Canadian PM Justin Trudeau capitulated to Donald Trump and retroactively extended copyright on works in Canada for an extra 20 years, ripping works out of Canada's public domain, making new works based on them into illegal art (more proof that good hair and good pecs don't qualify you to be a good leader -- see also: V. Putin -- not even when paired with high-flying, cheap rhetoric).Even as Canada's public domain has radically contracted, America's has, for the first, time, opened.So this year's American Public Domain Day List is, for the first time in 20 years, not a work melancholy alternate history, but rather a celebration of works that Americans are newly given access to without restriction or payment, for free re-use and adaptation, in the spirit of such classics as Snow White, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, All You Need is Love, and more (More than 1,000 in all, summarized in this handy spreadsheet -- thanks Gary!). Read the rest

Just when you thought that the Chinese government's extensive surveillance of the country's citizens couldn't get any creepier or more intrusive, Xi Jingping slyly raises an eyebrow and asks the west to hold his Tsingtao: From The Epoch Times:In China’s latest quest to build an all-seeing surveillance state, schools have become part of the state’s monitoring apparatus.Students at more than 10 schools in Guizhou Province, one of China’s poorest provinces, and the neighboring Guangxi region are now required to wear “intelligent uniforms,” which are embedded with electronic chips that track their movements.The uniforms allow school officials, teachers, and parents to keep track of the exact times that students leave or enter the school, Lin Zongwu, principal of the No. 11 School of Renhuai in Guizhou Province, told the state-run newspaper Global Times on Dec. 20.If students skip school without permission, an alarm will be triggered.If students try to game the system by swapping uniforms, an alarm also will sound, as facial-recognition equipment stationed at the school entrance can match a student’s face with the chip embedded in the uniform.Each of the "intelligent uniforms" contain two tracking chips which, according to the company that makes them, can withstand temperatures of up to 150 degrees Celsius and at least 500 runs through a washing machine -- so much for accidentally destroying the hardware. In addition to keeping track of the whereabouts of the kids that wear them for every moment of their school day, the uniforms' chip set can also tell when a child is nodding off during the school day and be used to make cashless purchases of school lunches and other educational necessities. Read the rest

Detective Deirdre Mengedoht was killed when a truck crashed into her police cruiser on Christmas Eve. Some local news outlets experienced difficulties covering the story. Read the rest

DeVotchKa's latest album, This Night Falls Forever, has been on near constant rotation in our home since I picked it up a few weeks ago. As usual, the band's music is heartrendingly beautiful. Straight Shot is the first track on the album and the one that, for me at least, has been the band's biggest ear worm this time around. Read the rest

Apparently, this story popped up back in 2015, but it's so cool that it's still worth reading about now: the city of Portland, Oregon has water pipes buried underneath of it that not only carry clean drinking water to the locals, but also generate hydroelectric power at the same time!From Fast Company:In Portland, one of the city's main pipelines now uses Lucid's pipes to make power that's sent into the grid. Though the system can't generate enough energy for an entire city, the pipes can power individual buildings like a school or library, or help offset a city's total energy bill. Unlike wind or solar power, the system can generate electricity at any time of day, regardless of weather, since the pipes always have water flowing through them.The pipes can't generate power in every location; they only work in places where water is naturally flowing downward with gravity (if water is being pumped, the system would waste energy). But they have another feature that can be used anywhere: The pipes have sensors that can monitor water, something that utilities couldn't do in the past.Providing power to partially operate water treatment and pump facilities during the day and then juice up streetlights at night: what's not to love about that? Read the rest

2018 has been a dangerous year for those who bring us the news: according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 129 journalists were killed this year. For the first time in history, the United States has been listed as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to ply their trade. The President of the United States has been calling the media industry an "enemy of the people" for the past two years. Many of his acolytes have bought into his bullshit: news rooms have come under assault by gunmen. Bomb threats against TV stations have been made on a number of occasions. Nicaragua's government has hamstrung the nation's independent press. Jamal Khashoggi of The Washington Post was strangled and sawed to pieces by Saudi operatives. President Trump pretty much shrugged his shoulders and got on with his life. The hate and distrust showered on those working to cast light on the dark secrets that our governments would rather not be known are a budding fascist's wet dream. And now, many of the nation's newspapers of record have suffered a cyberattack.From The Los Angeles Times:A cyberattack that appears to have originated from outside the United States caused major printing and delivery disruptions at several newspapers across the country on Saturday including the Los Angeles Times, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.The attack led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of The Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and several other major newspapers that operate on a shared production platform. Read the rest

Scratch creator Mitchel Resnick -- head of the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindgergarten Group -- writes, "Until now, Scratch has been developed by my research group at the MIT Media Lab. In the coming year, the Scratch Team will be moving out of MIT into a separate nonprofit organization (the Scratch Foundation). We’re looking to hire a new Executive Director to help build this organization and develop strategies to sustain Scratch as a free, creative platform."At this important stage in its growth, the Scratch Foundation is looking to hire a creative and entrepreneurial Executive Director to lead the organization into the future. Reporting to the Scratch Foundation’s Board of Directors, the Executive Director will work collaboratively with others on the Scratch team to build the Scratch Foundation into a well-run, sustainable organization capable of realizing its ambitious vision, mission, and goals. The Executive Director will also work closely with the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, which will continue to pursue educational research and innovation related to Scratch.The Executive Director will be a proven organizational leader with experience building and managing through a period of growth. This individual will be responsible for execution of the overall strategy and ensuring that all staff, operations, and systems are working in support of the overall mission. The ideal candidate will inspire continued growth in fundraising, stakeholder engagement, and brand awareness. With a deep belief in the power of creativity and a genuine commitment to the values of Scratch, the Executive Director will also support, sustain, and grow a creative, caring, collaborative work environment that attracts and retains a motivated, diverse, mission-driven staff. Read the rest

President Barack Obama released his annual list of favorite books, movies, and songs on his Facebook page yesterday. Remember when we had an intellectually and culturally curious president who did things like reading books? It seems so long ago...From Facebook: As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books, movies, and music that I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors, artists, and storytellers – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list - I hope you enjoy reading, watching, and listening.Here’s a reminder of the books that I read this year that appeared on earlier lists:Becoming by Michelle Obama (obviously my favorite!)An American Marriage by Tayari JonesAmericanah by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieThe Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith PayneEducated by Tara WestoverFactfulness by Hans RoslingFutureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex WagnerA Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’oA House for Mr Biswas by V.S. NaipaulHow Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel ZiblattIn the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch LandrieuLong Walk to Freedom by Nelson MandelaThe New Geography of Jobs by Enrico MorettiThe Return by Hisham MatarThings Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeWarlight by Michael OndaatjeWhy Liberalism Failed by Patrick DeneenThe World As It Is by Ben RhodesHere are my other favorite books of 2018:American Prison by Shane BauerArthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond ArsenaultAsymmetry by Lisa HallidayFeel Free by Zadie SmithFlorida by Lauren GroffFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Read the rest

Just now, I tried to recall what I had for lunch the other day. I had to wrestle with it for a few moments before I was able to pin a chicken chimichanga at Espi & T's to the mat for a ten-count. I don't remember the face of the the woman who broke my heart while I was in my early 20s nor what happened to the boxes of the comic books I used to own. But my head absolutely refuses to let go of the theme song to The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin -- a cartoon that I watched MAYBE twice in my life. It's been slowly driving me insane for the past few days.Share in my pain. Read the rest

Teslas now have built-in "whoopie cushions" thanks to a new firmware update. The vehicles can now make farting noises on demand or by use of a turn signal with what they're cheekily calling, "Emissions Testing Mode." Jalopnik reports there are seven flatulence sounds to choose from -- "Not a Fart, Short Shorts Rapper, Falcon Heavy, Ludicrous Fart, Neurastink, Boring Fart, and what seems to be a fart randomizer."There are two other bizarre Easter eggs in this update: Romance Mode and Pole Position. The former provides a virtual fireplace and the latter is a retro-modern version of the old school racing video game. Hopped in my @Tesla this morning and was delighted to find “romance mode” and a drop-down list of juicy, on demand fart noises, that can be triggered with a wheel click or turn signal.The best keeps getting better.Thanks @elonmusk and team! pic.twitter.com/L6HGX8w2cs— Kevin Pereira (@Attack) December 19, 2018Jalopnik: Tesla Introduces 'Romance Mode' and On-Demand Fart Noises Because Tesla Is About Making the World Better(Geekologie)screenshot via RM Videos/YouTube Read the rest

This director's commentary of the bizarre Kevin Spacey video that heralded his being charged with felony indecent assault and battery this week doesn't explain what in the hell Spacey was thinking when he filmed it. It is, however, an absolute improvement over having to listen to the cornered megalomaniac blather in that tired, far from endearing Frank Underwood drawl. Thanks to James Urbaniak (AKA Skip Sullivan) for bringing us all a little holiday cheer. Read the rest

Between September and December, I collaborated with science fiction writer and Renaissance historian Ada Palmer and science historian Adrian Johns on a series of interdisciplinary seminars on "Censorship and Information Control" with a rotating crew of academics and practitioners from several fields.Thanks to generous Kickstarter backers, we were able to pay for professional videography and ADA-compliant subtitling for the whole series, and there are now five of the seminars online for your viewing pleasure (podcasts, including an edited highlight series, are still to come).I'm so pleased with how these turned out. Every one of these seminars was a delight, as fascinating experts from disciplines that rarely interact with one another engaged in dialog about the history, present and future of censorship and information control, with discussions ranging over privacy, totalitarianism, human liberty, the limits of tolerance, and more -- we even had a theater troupe from the UK come and perform bawdy, banned plays from the Interregnum (these included someone getting waterboarded with a gallon of milk!). Read the rest

John Picerne is a hereditary one-percenter whose contribution to his family legacy of "real estate development" was to spend millions on lobbying, which landed him millions more in government loans earmarked for taking over the maintenance of 26,000 units of on-base military housing in 13 locations, with the repayment of the loans coming straight out of enlisted personnel's paychecks.Despite all that public largesse, Picerne's company, Corvias Group, did not live up to its promises: instead, it let the houses to rot, filling up with vermin and toxic mold, in buildings so ramshackle that soldiers' children have had their bedroom ceilings collapse on them while they slept. Critical infrastructure -- like pedestrian overpasses to help kids cross busy roads safely -- were never built.All along, Corvias's profits soared, with Picerne's payday heading toward the billion-dollar mark -- even as they scaled back maintenance. Meanwhile Picerne has bought a 100-acre Irish estate with two mansions, a Palm Beach mansion, a six-bedroom neo-Georgian in Providence, a second Rhode Island home at the beach, and a luxury yacht, and had them redecorated by the Kardashian's celebrity designer, whose flourishes include exotic taxidermy (an alligator wrestling with a snake), custom marble black-and-white floors, and other tasteful elements for the discerning looter capitalist.Picerne's fixer is Senator Jack Reed [D-RI], who is now the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.Thousands of military families have signed petitions begging to have their homes brought up to a decent, livable standard -- meanwhile, some have become disabled by the poor air quality and other hazards in their Corvias homes. Read the rest

This week, on the same day, I had not one but two friends tell me about designer Sonia Harris' "swearing patterns." Of course, I instantly became a fan. Her hidden-in-plain-sight patterns are subversive yet perfectly understated. For example, this t-shirt's design appears to be a fancy mandala at first glance. But look closer and you'll see the words "Insufferable Wanker" cleverly incorporated into the pattern. (Ms. Harris, you get me.)She got started drawing the patterns (using an iOS app called Amaziograph) while she was going through treatment for breast cancer, writing that swearing is a meditation for her:Despite my desire to create and soothe myself with art, I was also very angry at the bad luck of having spent decades dealing with pain from endometriosis only to get breast cancer just as I thought there was an end to it. The disgusting effects of the treatment, the frightening and painful experiences kept on coming... Hence my patterns contained a lot of profanity. I wanted to swear and I needed to swear. If I could have, I’d have been shouting those profanities from the rooftops! But I had no strength to raise my voice or even stomp around, so that left my drawings. I could write down an exclamation of disgust, carefully and lovingly so that seeing it gave me strength, reminded me that I have a voice and I am still alive. Seeing the repetition of my words and patterns calmed me, the inherent beauty of them made me feel in harmony with life again and able to rest. Read the rest

There's a not-to-be missed profile in High Country News on Diné heavy metal bands on and around the Navajo Nation in Arizona, with incredible photos by Clarke Tolton, who also directed the video above.Snip:On the drive through the Navajo Nation, twirling the radio dial yields country station after country station. The genre warbles about the American Dream, life’s struggles paying off, and frustration, loss and regret. Scan long enough though, and you might stumble upon Laydi Rayne’s weekly metal show on KSHI out of Zuni, New Mexico. It’s one of the only shows in the area that caters to the genre, which is popular on the nation.Metalheads on the nation have long been making the style their own through “rez metal,” short for reservation metal. Bands record in abandoned houses, and host shows in backyards and empty parking lots. The musicians have embraced ingenuity and teamwork to create a scene reflective of their identities. And now, a generation of Diné youth who grew up listening to metal are shaping the scene themselves.The heavy metal genre was born in 1980s England, but has translated easily to the Navajo Nation, said Jerold Cecil, band manager of I Don’t Konform. “Metal is disenchantment with everything,” said Cecil, a Navajo citizen. “Establishment, society, the frustrations you have in your life, socio-economic problems, family problems, not being provided the resources or the opportunities that most people are given everyday, just because you’re on the rez.”Cecil jokes that the only difference between rez metal bands and other metal groups is that even if they’re not getting paid, rez metal bands will drive five hours or more to a show. Read the rest

Paul Peralta, the general manager of the Portland Doubletree where Jermaine Massey, 34, was racially harassed, apologized today.In a statement released on Friday, Peralta said, “we sincerely apologize to Mr. Massey for his treatment this past weekend, and deeply regret the experience he endured,” and added, “It was unacceptable and contrary to our values, beliefs and how we seek to treat all people who visit our hotel.”You can read more about what happened to Jermaine Massey at the Portland Doubletree in this previous Boing Boing post.Peralta wrote that the hotel will ask a third party to “conduct a full investigation into the incident — reviewing our internal processes, protocols and trainings to ensure we are creating and maintaining a safe space for everyone.”Doubletree is part of Hilton Worldwide, and the Portland Doubletree is independently owned and operated, Hilton told the New York Times. A spokeswoman said Hilton had “zero tolerance” for racism, and is working with the Portland hotel management.From the New York Times:On the afternoon of Dec. 22, Mr. Massey checked into the Doubletree hotel, then went out to dinner and to a Travis Scott concert before returning around 11 p.m., he says in the videos.He saw that he had missed a call from his mother and called her back from his cellphone in a secluded spot in the lobby. After a few minutes of discussing what he described as a private “family matter” with her, a security guard, who is white and has not been publicly identified beyond his name plate, which read “Earl,” walked up to Mr. Read the rest

If the government shutdown extends beyond New Year's Day, Donald Trump's political tantrum will close the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo in Washington, DC, among many other sites important to Americans. After January 1, the museum network will be forced to close all its doors along the National Mall and at the National Zoo. The closures would go into effect on January 2, and continue until lawmakers reach a deal to fund the government.This is just one of many ways people are feeling the shutdown, writes Dave Jamieson of the Huffington Post: Because the museums have so far remained open, many people assumed the Smithsonian Institution was among the roughly three-quarters of government functions that Congress had already appropriated money for before the partial shutdown began on Dec. 22. But Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas explained that it had been running on last year’s funds to get through the week between Christmas and New Year’s ― typically one of the busiest times of the year. The Smithsonian Institution receives its federal dollars through the Interior Department, which is among the unfunded agencies.“We used prior-year funding, and we can’t continue to do that,” St. Thomas said. “I think it was a great service to tourists, but on Jan. 2 and beyond we will be closed” until a deal is reached.Affected institutions would include the American History Museum, the Air and Space Museum, the African American Museum and the Portrait Gallery, as well as more than a dozen others. Read the rest

Hollywood would have you believe that if you lived during medieval times and didn't have the good fortune to be born into a noble family, you were forced to survive by eating thin soup, gruel and the occasional rabbit. In this video, the good folks at Modern History TV set the record straight. Read the rest

In a year-in-review post, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday he is “proud of the progress we've made.” Yes, he really is that deluded.I wonder what would have to happen for Zuckerberg to _not_ be proud of Facebook's record on privacy and trust? https://t.co/ebCQIbE1hL— Anil Dash 🥭 (@anildash) December 28, 2018Zuckerberg said some of Facebook's problems with misinformation and protecting users’ personal data will take years to solve. “We've fundamentally altered our DNA to focus more on preventing harm in all our services, and we've systematically shifted a large portion of our company to work on preventing harm,” he wrote.Zuck claims Facebook now has 30,000 workers focused on safety, or roughly one Facebook safety employee per every 75,600 monthly active users.“Mark Zuckerberg used the word 'progress' six times in his year-end self-assessment,” notes Ryan Mac. “That's one way of looking at Facebook's 2018.”From Ryan's Buzzfeed post:Though much of what Zuckerberg wrote on Friday is not new — it is mostly rehashed from previous talking points — the Facebook chief’s note underscored the notion that Facebook will never be perfect. Zuckerberg acknowledges that election interference and harmful speech “can never be fully solved”“That doesn't mean we'll catch every bad actor or piece of bad content, or that people won't find more examples of past mistakes before we improved our systems,” he notes.As if to prove his point, one of the final scandals the company faced in 2018? An admission on Wednesday from one of its early investors, Reid Hoffman, who said he financed a misinformation campaign in the during the 2017 special election for an Alabama Senate seat. Read the rest

Nearly 800,000 people are hurting financially because of the government shutdown, according to NBC: 420,000 federal employees must continue to work without a paycheck until the shutdown ends, and another 380,000 are simply furloughed, or sent home without pay (and will, hopefully, be reimbursed after the Trumpian mess over the ridiculous wall is sorted out). So how does the government advise these out-of-paycheck employees? The solution is simple: "Consult with your personal attorney." (Yeah, right.) "Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with personal legal advice. If you need legal advice to assist you in any response to creditors, landlords or the like, consult with your personal attorney..." says the Office of Personnel Management, which acts as the federal government's human resources agency.Or better yet, do some work for your landlord, such as painting or carpentry, in exchange for rent. (Even though not everyone has a landlord, and not everyone is able to perform manual labor.) Just ask your landlord like this:"I will keep in touch with you to keep you informed about my income status and I would like to discuss with you the possibility of trading my services to perform maintenance (e.g. painting, carpentry work) in exchange for partial rent payments."In a tweet posted yesterday, the OPM offered advice and template letters that out-of-paycheck employees could use when asking their landlords for some (temporarily) free rent and understanding.Feds, here are sample letters you may use as a guide when working with your creditors during this furlough. Read the rest

The Trump administration is advising people who work for the federal government, who are not getting paid due to Trump's stupid government shutdown tantrum, to literally *barter with their landlords* and offer to paint or do labor in exchange for partial rent. Yes, really.Feds, here are sample letters you may use as a guide when working with your creditors during this furlough. If you need legal advice please consult with your personal attorney. https://t.co/t6h6OzALsS— OPM (@USOPM) December 27, 2018OPM is the federal agency that oversees federal workers. Their advice for the 800,000 furloughed workers who are on day 7 with no pay: Try bartering for your rent. The link in the tweet above provides sample letters in *.doc form (super insecure!) that furloughed workers are advised to mail to their landlords, if they can't make their rent payments. One of these sample letter templates suggests barting handyman services in exchange for rent money. "I would like to discuss with you the possibility of trading my services to perform maintenance (e.g. painting, carpentry work) in exchange for partial rent payments," the letter states.No word on whether trading sex or other illicit services is off the table, because honestly, we all gotta sleep somewhere right? The letter also asks landlords if they would consider reducing rent because of the government shutdown. OPM also tells furloughed workers to "consult with your personal attorney" if they need legal advice when dealing with creditors. More at CBS News.[IMAGE: Two men with children, being evicted, stand with their possessions on the sidewalk, circa 1910, on the Lower East Side of New York City. Read the rest

Over at Cool Tools, Kevin Kelly reviews over 40 YouTube video channels by makers, experimenters, and explainers. It's a great list. I'm subscribing to all the ones I haven't already subscribed to.I have descending into the YouTube click hole. Forget TV, movies, Netflix; I spend most of my discretionary media time watching YouTube tutorials. I go to them whenever I need to learn anything, and in particular when I need to make or repair anything. Nothing appears missing in the YouTubeverse. The most obscure esoteric subject, item, skill, technique, problem will have five videos dedicated to it. At least one will be good. Against this very uneven quality of the average random YouTube episode, I have discover a good shelfful of dependable high-quality YouTube channels dispensing amazing information on a regular basis. Below are the YouTube channels I currently subscribe and return to often. They are informational, rather than entertaining, and they are biased to makers and do-ers. I have divided them into four groups: Experimenters, Makers, Explainers, and Nichers -- esoteric interests that probably won’t appeal to many. Don’t take the categories too seriously; there is much overlap. I emphasize that these are the channels I personally subscribe to, and so reflect my interests, and do not include such obvious other maker-type channels like food, cooking, travel, makeup simply because those are not my interests. But I for sure have missed some great channels. So in the comments please tell me what channels you subscribe to. To be most useful, state what they are about, and why you think they should be included. Read the rest

In 2002, a mysterious man is arrested for illegally occupying a hotel room: he says his name is Ed Stone, and that he was kidnapped by aliens from the same hotel room in 1931 and has just been returned to Earth, not having aged a day; the aliens have told him that Earth will be destroyed in 12 years and that before then, the entire human race has to put itself in a giant box (presumably for transport to somewhere else, though Ed is a little shaky on the details), and to help Ed with this task, the aliens have given him a ring that makes anyone who touches it fill with overwhelming good feelings for him and a desire to help him.So begins science fiction grand master Damon Knight's great, underappreciated 1992 novel Why Do Birds, which I re-read in a single sitting yesterday after discovering a mint first-edition hardcover at the dangerously fantastic Iliad Books near my home in Burbank.Knight was one of the field's great pioneers: the founder of the Science Fiction Writers of America, husband to the incredible sf author Kate Wilhelm, co-founder of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop, mentor to hundreds of writers (including me!), and author of innumerable short stories, novels and teleplays, including the classic Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" (spoiler: it's a cookbook!).He was an absurdist of the first order, a gifted author whose economy and humor rival the likes of Kurt Vonnegut. Why Do Birds was his penultimate novel, and I haven't rad it in more than 20 years, but I have never forgotten key details (there's a great scene straight out of The Space Merchants where marketing executives for The Cube Project discuss how they will float rumors that poor people will not be allowed in The Cube, in order to spark a mass movement demanding entry into the giant box -- and then there's the scene where they figure out the rate at which humanity will be reproducing itself as it is marshalled into great loading docks for suspended animation and insertion into The Cube). Read the rest

While mass-shootings are the most visible and spectacular consequence of America's love affair with guns, the person most likely to shoot you is you (either accidentally or deliberately), with a loved one or a friend (again, either accidentally or deliberately) close behind.Suicide is an impulsive act. Half of suicide survivors report planning their deaths for less than ten minutes. States like Connecticut that have passed background check laws for handguns have seen precipitous drops in firearm suicides, and states with more lax gun laws experience higher gun mortality of all types. States that have repealed background checks for handguns saw increases in firearm suicides.The most gun-suicidal populations are older white men and veterans. Guns are only used in a small minority of suicide attempts, but half of all successful suicides are firearm suicides.On Wednesday, the National Rifle Association tweeted its long-standing position that "gun control laws are not the answer. If we want to prevent more horrific acts of violence our leaders need to stop demonizing the men and women of the @NRA and find solutions that will save lives."Gun deaths in US reach highest level in nearly 40 years, CDC data reveal [Jacqueline Howard/CNN](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Will Houp/CNN) Read the rest

This pet recovery collar stops my dog from licking where I do not want, and has caused zero damage or calamity to my home.My Great Pyrenees has some pretty massive surgery scheduled. Insanely, he got a skin infection about two weeks before his Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy is scheduled, on the 23rd of December. Pet stores were closed and for 2 days I did all I could to keep him from licking at his skin, while I waited for my vet to open and for a real cone to be available.From duct taping towels around his neck to fashioning cones from cardboard to sleeping on a hardwood floor next to him, I was desperate to see his skin condition clear up and for this dog's surgery to be on track. He has two knees that need bionic replacement, and we gotta get started. The poor guy is just miserable.My vet put him on two types of antibiotics, but my brother brought me this ZenCone Soft Cone. Thank god for the cone! The dog can not lick or chew at himself, the cone doesn't get in the way a stiff plastic one does, and I can leave the dog alone for 15-20 minutes without worry. He has tried to remove it, but due to its soft nature, he can not really find purchase to pull it over his head.He can pull a duct-taped towel roll off in about 2 seconds flat.My buddy can still open doors with the cone on. Read the rest

Filmmakers turned a writing prompt from Reddit user WaFromWa into a stellar short film whose premise includes Santa as a deadly, covert super-assassin. Superb! (via JWZ) Read the rest

In 2013, San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy Luis Ortiz took the decision to arrest a group of seventh grade girls -- 12 and 13 year olds -- because they wouldn't speak when he demanded to know who among them had been the aggressors and who had been the victims in a series of bullying incidents; Ortiz's rationale for these arrests was that the girls were "unresponsive and disrespectful" and that by arresting them, he could "prove a point," that he wasn't "playing around" and this would "make [them] mature a lot faster," by teaching them that the law was indifferent to "who [was] at fault, who did what" because "it [was] the same, same ticket, same pair of handcuffs."The parents of the children who had been the victims of the bullying sued.They won.The county of San Bernardino appealed.They lost. (9th Circuit Court of Appeals: "Deputy Ortiz faced a room of seven seated, mostly quiet middle school girls, and only generalized allegations of fighting and conflict amongst them. Even accounting for what Deputy Ortiz perceived to be nonresponsiveness to his questioning, the full-scale arrests of all seven students, without further inquiry, was both excessively intrusive in light of the girls’ young ages and not reasonably related to the school’s expressed need.")Rather than ask the Supreme Court to hear the case, the county has now settled with the children, and will pay $390,000 in compensation to them. As Tim Cushing notes: "The county's decision to fight the district court's ruling doesn't reflect well on it or its legal representation. Read the rest

Classic games, computers and gaming consoles are a source of joy for those who came of age when the titles and hardware were cutting edge commodities. Few things can transport you back to your youth faster than playing with what made you happy back in the day. For some people, playing with the games of yore includes tinkering to make something new and wonderful. From Kotaku:Modder Kaze Emanuar has taken the 2D level design of that older game and crammed it into the engine of Super Mario 64. Judging from the video that announced the mod, this allows the player to do all the leaping, hopping, and air flipping that a modern Mario can do while still enjoying the “classic” feel of the levels. Read the rest

Macaulay Culkin's middle name is currently "Carson." But, starting in 2019, it will be "Macaulay Culkin," as in Macaulay 'Macaulay Culkin' Culkin.The Home Alone actor has been polling his fans on what his new middle name should be. The other choices were "Shark Week," "Kieran" (his younger brother's name), "TheMcRibisBack," and "Publicity Stunt." Ultimately his fans went with the meta choice of his own first and last name.On Christmas day he made the big announcement. Merry Christmas to me, from all of you! My new middle name has been chosen. You voted and the winner is clear. In 2019 my new legal name will be:Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin. It has a nice ring to it (if you like my name).#MerryChristmas— Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) December 25, 2018Keep it quirky, Culkin!Recently: 38-year-old Macaulay Culkin is Home Alone again in this fun adRelated: Did you know that the black-and-white gangster film ("Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!') in Home Alone was created for specifically for the movie? It's not a vintage flick at all!My entire childhood, I thought the old timey movie that Kevin watches in Home Alone (Angels With Filthy Souls) was actually an old movie.— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) December 25, 2018(COS) Read the rest

It hasn't been a good year for Apple. The company's had to confirm that they've been throttling speeds of older iPhones to maintain battery efficiency. They were caught throttling their latest MacBook Pros to well below their advertised base processor speeds in order to deal with the thermal demands of the chipset inside of them. iOS 11 was buggy as all get out. Worst of all, the keyboards that are baked into almost all of the laptop computers sold by Apple over the past few years are so delicate that dust or a crumb getting beneath a key cap could be cause for costly repair. The problem was such that a class action lawsuit over it was launched and Apple, caught up in a PR nightmare, was forced to start offering free repairs for their faulty input devices to all comers. The release of the company's latest crop of iPad Pro tablets, unfortunately, seems to have fallen into line with this new quality control status quo.A few days ago, The Verge contacted Apple over the online rumors, later reinforced with hands-on demonstrations, that the new iPad Pro was so thin that it proved hilariously easy to bend. Some owners of the tablet also complained that the tablet came to them ever-so-slightly warped, right out of the box. The Verge's Chris Welch was among the victims of the industrial design tomfoolery. He reported that he could personally vouch for the issue: ...my 11-inch iPad Pro showed a bit of a curve after two weeks. Read the rest

Remember earlier this week when Trump asked a child over the phone, "Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it's marginal, right?"? Who could forget?!Well, the parents of seven-year-old Collman Lloyd of Lexington, South Carolina (a girl -- it had been reported the child was a boy) filmed her talking with the President:And, the AP reports that Collman had never heard the word "marginal" before.Collman had called the NORAD Tracks Santa program Monday night to check on Santa’s journey delivering toys. In an interview with the Post and Courier of Charleston, she said the scientist who answered the NORAD phone asked her if she would like to speak to the president.Six minutes later, Trump was on the line. “Are you still a believer in Santa?” Trump asked. When she responded, “Yes, sir,” the president added, “Because at 7, that’s marginal, right?”Collman didn’t know what “marginal” meant and simply answered, “Yes, sir.” Trump closed by saying, “Well, you just enjoy yourself.”(VICE) Read the rest

This is quite the feat. Twitter user @pilotviruet's mom crocheted her a playable Monopoly game blanket. Color me impressed!hello, please look at this giant blanket my mom crocheted for me!!! pic.twitter.com/TTRQwJAmnZ— pilot! (@pilotviruet) December 27, 2018 Read the rest

Since it turned out the glitter bomb bait box was a hoax, I've finally accepted that nothing online is real. But this sure does look like a video of a porch pirate getting his ass ran down and beaten, complete with comical running back and forth, all set to the Benny Hill theme tune. Read the rest