An annual tradition (MP3)! Poesy is now 10 -- nearly 11! -- and this year, she's decided to offer us a detailed makeup tutorial, with some bonus horseback riding advice. There's even a musical number! Read the rest

A seasonal Russian animation from 1966. Directed by Vladimir Degtyarev, it's 10 minutes long and you won't need subtitles 'cause there ain't no dialogue. [via Metafilter] Read the rest

An unidentified local news station celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of couple "Max and Geraldine Bailey" during a "Birthdays & Anniversaries" segment, except that they showed a picture of actor Mickey Rourke and Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose instead. Twitter user @KatlynNoelle88 caught the prank on camera:WHO DID THIS?!?! 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/DW3tTMbtDs— Katlyn (@KatlynNoelle88) December 21, 2018That photo of Rourke and Rose was taken at a boxing match in Los Angeles earlier this month and garnered reactions like these: No, these are not two retired school teachers waiting for their grandkids dance recital to begin while their husbands find parking.This is Mickey Rourke and Axl Rose at a boxing match in LA over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/1cooQ4Fed9— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) December 11, 2018Mickey Rourke and Axl Rose look Katie Hopkins and Mama Fratelli from the Goonies pic.twitter.com/UIWuNDTem4— Jesse Cooper (@JesseRCooper) December 13, 2018Mickey Rourke and Axl Rose look like your Aunt and Uncle from Texas just showed up for Christmas dinner. pic.twitter.com/ShtwKiHSAU— VisuallyBetter (@Isuckatpicking) December 11, 2018(Consequence of Sound)screenshot via KatlynNoelle88 Read the rest

Political rabble-rouser and anti-Trump activist Claude Taylor wants to make sure that we don't forget the fact that the Saudi government, likely ordered by the crown prince, brutally tortured, murdered, and dismembered a U.S. resident and Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. To that end, he has made street sign-styled bumper stickers that you can place over existing street signs to turn any road in America into Khashoggi Way. You can get one of your own, for free, by following the instructions below.Thanks to Claude, in his Mad Doc Pac "Rat Truck," Jared and Ivanka's street in DC is now Khashoggi Way. Claude tweets:I’m back from today’s delivery of #KhashoggiWay. I went to Jared. Or close. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Jared Kushner assisted in the coverup of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. #complicit @KarenAttiahIf you want to support Taylor's resistance projects, he has a Mad Dog Pac account on ShareBlue.[Images via Claude Taylor's Twitter feed] Read the rest

Artist Sara Sandoval must have practiced a long time to be able to scribble out a portrait like this of Eminem on name tags. It looks like random at first but then she puts them all together and voila! Hello, my name is... Slim Shady! Her latest portrait, done similarly, is of Post Malone done on priority mail stickers (Post on post, get it?):These remind me of those "draw by grid" puzzles.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

In 2017, Reality Winner, a 25-year-old Air Force veteran and intelligence contractor was arrested for leaking confirmation of 2016 Russian election meddling to The Intercept; Winner seems to have been motivated by the same outrage that had animated Ed Snowden four years earlier: watching her bosses lie about matters of national interest.Winner is a principled, brilliant patriot who was facing a long prison sentence when she pleaded guilty and got a five-year term, the longest ever term for an offense of the sort Winner was accused of committing.In the months since Winner's sentence, her alleged leak has been vindicated again and again, as members of Trump's inner circle have pleaded guilty, or been convicted, of acting as unregistered foreign agents, of secretly arranging Russian payouts, of lying to US law enforcement and Congress. But these swamp creatures aren't drawing five-year sentences like young Ms Winner. Instead, they're getting wrist-slaps (George Papadopoulos got 14 days and sought early release after 12).Winner's mother, Billie Winner-Davis, has written an impassioned editorial for The Intercept, describing the ways that Reality Winner is suffering for the crime of telling us something we desperately needed to know, and railing against the impunity of the men who committed the crimes she disclosed.You can sign a petition to free Winner here.Winner can receive letters and money for her commissary account, as well as books (only books sent direct by Amazon, due to prison rules):REALITY WINNER 22056-021FMC CARSWELL FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTERPO BOX 27137FORT WORTH, TX 76127 Then Manafort. Read the rest

For two decades, adolescent smoking has been on the decline, but thanks to vaping products like Juul (which has 75% of the market), teen smoking just jumped by levels not seen for 43 years.Almost all the kids who vape are vaping nicotine: a toxic and highly addictive substance (source: smoker for 17 years, ex-smoker for 18 years). Juul's income growth over the past year? 800%.Nearly all of the increase comes from an increase in vaping nicotine, and my skepticism about this disappeared when I looked up revenue figures for Juul, the top seller of vaping devices and pods. I knew that the Juul fad had practically taken over American high schools recently, but it turns out that Juul reported a monster revenue increase of nearly 800 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from $107 million to $942 million), and they control about 75 percent of the market. That’s enough all by itself to account for a huge single-year increase in vaping.The Juul Fad Is Far Bigger Than I Ever Would Have Guessed [Kevin Drum/Mother Jones](via JWZ) Read the rest

Hundreds of yellow vest protesters marched in Dublin yesterday; like the French gilets jaunes who inspired them, the Irish yellow vests marched for a wide variety of causes, with no unified set of demands: the 2008 banker bailout (arguably the worst in the world since the Irish government has explicitly warned the banks it wouldn't guarantee their reckless loans, but still paid them off when the bubble burst); the continuing and ghastly revelations of scandals in the Church (including the forced-labor camps that unwed mothers were condemned to, and the scandal that the of storage tanks contained secret mass graves filled with the remains of infants); the spiraling costs of housing in Ireland; and the heel-dragging by the Irish government on legalizing marijuana.Collectively, this could be called "anti-corruption." Occupy had a semi-serious rallying cry: "Stuff is fucked up and shit." The everybody knows feeling, that our states are held captive by oligarchs, that oligarchs see us as "surplus population," that wealth means impunity.When Occupy fizzled, many people said that the momentum had broken. But that's not how change works. Change is a scalloped growth curve:Each event -- Occupy, the Women's March, the Ferguson uprising, the Muslim Ban, family separation -- excites a massive public response, and then most of the new people who the event has incited go back to their lives, but some people remain committed activists, energized by the glimpse of a new possibility. Even the ones who went home are primed to go out again, excited by the possibilities they've glimpsed. Read the rest

All the hubbub about Stephen Miller's sprayed-on hair made me wonder if he'd consider having his head painted like the bald gentleman did in this circa 1960 British Pathé video.(Josh Jefferson) Read the rest

Miley Cyrus has changed up the lyrics to the 1953 Christmas classic "Santa Baby" to give them a more feminist spin in this Tonight Show skit with Jimmy Fallon and Mark Ronson. No fur, cars, diamonds or stocks for her, she's looking for equal pay, consent, and an end to mansplaining. Read the rest

Ever lost music, contacts or priceless pictures during an iPhone upgrade? We'd pay for iMazing 2 just to avoid the hassle of going through that ever again. But the trusty app does more than just store your data. It lets you access them on any device and store them however you need.This all-purpose data manager makes it easy to access anything you need, no matter what device you're on. Transfer images or video from Mac to PC (without going through iCloud or iTunes). Move your contacts from iPhone to a laptop. Listen to voicemails or memos on any device, anywhere - all with an app that's easy to use, enabling you to transfer files either wirelessly or by USB. Best of all, a Universal License lets you shuffle freely on an unlimited number of iOS devices and up to two PC or Mac computers.Right now, iMazing 2: Universal License for Mac & Windows is $19.99. Read the rest

"Dookie" stars in what was described previously here as "the greatest viral ad in TV history": that being the one for the Squatty Potty, a lavatorial aid that should require no reintroduction. The adorable, weird, cloying, slightly nasty unicorn character can now be yours for $15 at Amazon, but the site warns that it's not likely to arrive before Christmas. (The Squatty Potty itself will, though, if you order it today) Read the rest

Last week, Kansas state senators Dinah Sykes and Barbara Bollier and state representative Stephanie Clayton announced they were no longer going to serve as Republicans and would instead serve as Democrats; they were joined by former state rep Joy Koesten who served as a Republican until getting primaried by a far-right candidate who will take her seat in 2019.Despite the election of a Democratic governor, the GOP still dominates Kansas politics, which means that these women will be sitting with the weaker side in the legislature, making this hard to square with any accusations of raw power-seeking.Instead, as the women explained to Slate, the choice came as a result of a number of factors: the party's hard-line, complete with "purity tests," that excludes input from anyone who identifies as moderate; the "overwhelming" influence of the "hardcore, fervent religious right" and "outside money"; and the decision to scrap a bipartisan education funding rule (badly needed in Kansas, where Republican leadership has starved the school system to the brink of failure) in order to punish the incoming Democratic governor. Koesten: I had an amazing group of colleagues, all who identify as moderate Republicans. And I felt I was abandoning them. But there is a hard-right element in the party that is incredibly destructive. The hardcore, fervent religious right—and the outside money—is so overpowering. You want to stay and fight the good fight, but I finally decided I can’t fight from the inside.Sykes: Kansans, I think in general, are common-sense [people]. Read the rest

Ask any maker: The key to Raspberry Pi's popularity is its versatility. The mini-computer can help kids learn basic coding, but it's also a gateway to everything from retro gaming to a full Internet of Things upgrade for your home. If you're not sure where to start, the Complete Raspberry Pi Course Bundle is the easiest way to kick those gates open.This three-course bundle starts with a boot camp that gives beginners the chance to play top classics from Nintendo, Sega and more on their own custom gaming system, crafted top to bottom with Raspberry Pi. From there, users can learn their way around Python, GPIO pins, the Pi camera module and other crucial tools to build increasingly complex systems. There's even a focus on home automation, teaching how to pair Raspberry Pi with Alexa to voice-control virtually any device.That's 10 hours of content, resources, and lessons in the Complete Raspberry Pi Course Bundle, currently on sale at $19. Read the rest

Some of you may be old enough to remember these most excellent MADtv parodies of Rankin/Bass stop-motion kids' movies, and some of you need a pop culture elder like myself to point you to them. Either way, I think they're brilliant and hope they'll make you laugh as hard as I did when I first saw them. They're definitely not for little eyes though!This first one is called "Raging Rudolph" (1995) and it's an ultra-violent, Scorsese-esque takeoff of the perennial favorite, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964):After the success of the first one, MADtv came out with "Reinfather" a year or two later which, as you guessed, spoofs The Godfather:In 1999, they aired "A Pack of Gifts Now," a take on Apocalypse Now. A bit of trivia on this one, Patton Oswalt pitched this skit when he was a writer at MADtv. They produced it a year after he left:Now, all three of these were created by Corky Quakenbush of Space Bass Films. If you liked them, you'll be happy to know he made more in the spirit of the MADtv ones. On this later one for Larry the Cable Guy, Quakenbush writes, "This is the cleaned up for television version. Jinno was tasked with digitally removing all the bloodshed we meticulously animated as well as us having to edit out 30 seconds of the senseless massacring of every virtually unarmed character from the original Rudolph special prior to rocket bombing Santa's castle..." That's Blake Shelton in the intro:There's more... Read the rest

Remove.bg, a new free web app released by developer Benjamin Groessing on Monday, keeps popping up in my feeds so I thought I'd try it out. With one click, it removes the background of a photo using AI:Today I'm launching https://t.co/PX30RBnfSm – a tool to automatically remove the background of any image (with a person in it) 🚀Built with python, ruby & deep learning with @davidfankhauser - AMA— Benjamin Groessing (@begroe) December 17, 2018To test it out, I chose this photo cribbed from Aliexpress:Remove.bg spit this out in less than 10 seconds:Not bad. I suspect that the app read that pipe as "fingers." Anyone care to take this image and set her in an exotic locale by giving her a nice new background? Read the rest

Cassandra Khaw's shockingly good 3-page short story Monologue by an unnamed mage, recorded at the brink of the end takes a genre and an archetype and distills from them a perfect moment that embodies and exceeds both.Uncanny Magazine:That they dragged us back, bound in brambles and bronze, that they made us choose between being separated or being part of the vanguard against the apocalypse, all that is of no importance. That we laughed at their ultimatum, that we said yes, that we held hands as they told us we probably wouldn’t come back, that is what matters.What matters is that I love you and that I will always love you, and I won’t let them have you, even if I have to husk myself of all that I am and splinter the universe again. You’re mine and I am yours, and what are gods to people who have seen the continents fold up like paper planes? Read the rest

In Helena, Montana's North Hills, a man was setting up for (legal) target practice on public land when another gentleman shot at him (and missed) several times. The man confronted the shooter who reportedly told him he was “not wearing orange and (he) thought he was Bigfoot." As if it would be ok to shoot a Sasquatch!Curiously, the man who dodged the bullets didn't report the matter to police until the next day. According to the police, he "didn’t think it was necessary" but then decided that the shooter needed a lesson in gun safety.From the Independent Record:(Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo) Dutton noted that despite a desire not to pursue charges, the allegations are serious and could warrant a charge of attempted negligent homicide. Deputies did check the area and no vehicle matching the description was found, he said. Read the rest

While I'm sure the new Apple Handsome Anthony will get all the headlines, I'm most excited for the fancy tetra-fusion Hole. And I don't care that it isn't portable yet. Read the rest

Deborah Smith, walking near the coast at Bude in Cornwall, captured a big chunk of cliff toppling onto the beach below. The coastguard had warned locals it was soon to give way, but only she was lucky enough to capture the moment it went. Read the rest

In October 2017, Syracuse cops arrested Torrence Jackson with a small amount of marijuana and accused him of hiding drugs in his rectum (the officers say they saw him shift in his seat and concluded that he'd put drugs up his butt). They took him to St Joseph's Hospital where he was nonconsensually X-rayed; when that revealed no drugs, officers told doctors to force sedation on Jackson and then put a tube and camera up his rectum.Two doctors refused to perform the procedure, but eventually Jackson was drugged unconscious and anally violated.No drugs were found.After Jackson was released, St Joseph's hospital billed him $4,595.12 for the procedures.Syracuse's mayor Ben Walsh, and police chief refused to comment on the incident. Syracuse City Court Judge Rory McMahon, who issued the warrant, also refused to comment, citing a seal on the case.Jackson says he will not pay the bill. St Joseph's has threatened to send collection agents against him. Keller, the lawyer, defended his client’s resistance to the procedure.“Good for him,” he said. “If somebody was going to do surgery on me without any evidence, I would be upset, too.”Jackson said he woke up, not sure what had happened. “I felt tampered with,” he said.Jackson was released from jail the following day. There was blood in his underwear, he said. He went to the emergency room at Community General Hospital.There, he said, an emergency room examined him and told him what happened: Someone had probed his colon. Read the rest

A couple of times a year, Apple plops out a report detailing all of the user data requests made by government and law enforcement agencies from around the world. In the latest bi-annual report, it looks like information requests have increased since the last reporting period.From Engadget:According to the report, which covers the first half of this year, Apple received 32,342 demands for user data from governments -- up 9 percent from the previous period -- spanning access to 163,823 devices. Germany made the most requests (42 percent), the majority of which were due to "stolen devices investigations," issuing 13,704 requests for data on 26,160 devices.The US was in second place with 4,570 requests for 14,911 devices. More than half of these requests (2,397) were for users' basic account information or content, revealed Apple. The US also asked for 918 financial identifiers -- which cover suspected fraudulent credit, debit, or gift card transactions -- attributing them to iTunes gift card fraud. It used to be that the report was only offered as a dense, boring PDF. But Apple, in an attempt to boost their corporate transparency, has made their report numbers available to peruse via an interactive website that can be searched by country and the month that the user data was requested.According to Engadget, Apple's report doesn't include the number of FISA requests made, as there is a legally binding six-month delay required on reportage of such requests.If you're an Apple hardware or services user, it's worth taking a quick jaunt over to the company's transparency website to see what kind of user information your government has been trying to get their hands on. Read the rest

Whether you like it or not, Christmas is a holiday that is nearly impossible to hide from. It's an in-your-face holiday for at least three months out of the year, with Christmas marketing, sales and decorations appearing in malls and other public spaces as early as October. But this wasn't always the case. Here's a fascinating short video explaining the 22-year ban on Christmas enacted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659. Back then the Puritans despised Christmas, which was associated with debauchery, according to the video. Christmas encouraged people to drink "copious amounts of alcohol," riot in the streets, gorge on food (gasp!), and was the catalyst of rowdiness and sinful behavior. In other words, Christmas, back then, was not considered to be family friendly. "But in the end," the narrator states, "we can partially thank commercialization for sustaining the domestic brand of Christmas we have today." Yippee? Read the rest

Bryan Adams has followed up on his earlier advocacy for a new Canadian copyright deal that benefits artists with a submission to the Canadian Heritage Committee's copyright consultation that argues against longer copyright terms, saying that these enrich large "intermediaries" (entities that sit between artists and their audiences, like record labels and collecting societies) and not artists.Instead of longer terms (which just mean that intermediaries get to milk creators' works for longer periods), Adams favours shortening the reversion term: this is the term after which an artist can demand to have their copyrights restored to them, even if their contracts say that they have signed away the copyright forever. In the US, the reversion term is 35 years and it's proved a boon to artists, especially those who were defrauded of their copyrights -- I'm told that George Clinton just successfully used this to reclaim the rights to Atomic Dog.Here's Adams's submission; Michael Geist's commentary is also very good:Adams raises two key concerns. First, he notes that copyright term extension provides little or no benefit to creators, who will have died decades before the extended protection kicks in. Indeed, as I stated to the Industry committee during my appearance, there is no evidence that creators today drop creative activities due to a perceived lack of incentive that comes from protection that runs for 50 years after their death rather than 70 years.Second, Adams rightly distinguishes between creators and intermediaries, which presumably include music labels, publishers, distributors, and copyright collectives. Read the rest

Kano dropped the price on its Raspberry Pi based Kano Computer. At this price, it's cheaper than buying the components individually (A Raspberry Pi 3, case, speaker and amp, cables, microSD card, wireless keyboard/trackpad). The built-in Linux-based operating system and bundled software (which teaches kids how to code) is excellent. This would be a great last minute gift. Read the rest

Kamil Rocki was inspired by the 2016 paper from Google Deepmind researchers explaining how they used machine learning to develop a system that could play Breakout on the Atari 2600 with superhuman proficiency.But Rocki wanted to develop a more general approach to machine-learning game-playing, one that could play more sophisticated games than Breakout, with less preprocessing and other time-consuming steps.This led him on a quest to find a games platform with a lot of available games, that ran on simple enough processors that he could emulate a lot of them, very quickly, on modern computing hardware.And so the Gameboy Supercomputer was born, running at over a billion FPS. He's successfully used it to develop machine learning systems that can beat Pac-Man and Mario Land.Rocki finishes his writeup with a roadmap for further work from the Open AI community.This is an excellent example of the way that flexibility in copyright -- including the freedom to rip old games and play them in emulators -- will be key to producing better machine learning systems. In order to make learning more efficient, you could imagine trying to transfer some knowledge from simpler games. This is what remains unsolved right now and is a hot research topic. A recently published challenge by OpenAI tried to measure just that: 1. There is no obvious score 2. If no action is performed it takes 60 minutes to end the game (58 minutes left in the animation).Could you try the exact same approach as in the Atari 2600 paper? Read the rest

Navigating the topic of death with a young child can be a difficult, traumatic experience for parents, especially if the topic is broached by the sudden loss of a loved one. Trying to explain death to a kid because they watched Santa Claus pass away right before their eyes? That's a higher level of awful.According to The Moscow Times, a group of kindergarteners from Siberia were celebrating the season with a Christmas party, attended by Santa or rather, one of the jolly old fellow's Eastern European iterations, Ded Moroz. A bit of background: Ded Moroz, which translates as Father Frost, was originally celebrated/feared in pre-slavic lore as a wizard or a snow demon, and over the centuries became a central figure in the region's celebrations of the New Year and Christmas. Anyway, back to the awful.As part of a school play, Ded Moroz, played by 67-year-old Valery Titenko, danced his way across the stage, until he didn't. Dressed in Ded Moroz's long red, fur-fringed coat, Titenko suffered a heart attack and fell to the ground. From the Moscow Times:The group of kids apparently thought that Titenko’s fatal collapse was part of his skit and began giggling. A woman dressed as a clown who was also part of the skit noticed Titenko’s fall and rushed to help him.Titenko was rushed to the hospital but died before he could get there.According to The Moscow Times, Titenko was aware of his poor health and had been feeling dreadful earlier in the day. Read the rest

Musician Isaac Schankler performed Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata by delaying the bass for one bar, and playing the melody one bar earlier than usual.[via Open Culture]Image source: By W.J. Baker (held the expired copyright on the photograph) - Library of Congress[1]Contrairement à une erreur fréquemment répandue le buste a été réalisé par Hugo Hagen, non pas à partir du masque mortuaire mais, comme de nombreux autres, d'après le masque réalisé en 1812 par Franz Klein pour un buste qu'il devait réaliser ensuite., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4698895 Read the rest

Cory published a writeup of my research showing Google offshoot Sidewalk Labs’ plan to build a surveilling city in Toronto involves a much, much larger chunk of land than publicly disclosed (in fact about 2,600 acres of prime Toronto waterfront!). It flushed out a response from the high-priced US PR firm Berlin Rosen, apparently acting on behalf of Sidewalk Labs:Hi there –I am reaching out about the above mentioned article. The image that accompanies the article is a picture of designated waterfront area with Quayside, specifically, highlighted. Sidewalk Toronto’s MIDP [Master Innovation Development Plan] will address Quayside only, it does not expand across the entire waterfront designated area as the article states.Can you please correct this within the article?Thanks so much in advance!MollyTo support her assertion that my findings are incorrect, Berlin Rosen's Molly Henderson sent along a misleading FAQ prepared by Waterfront Toronto to diffuse mounting concerns over the City of Toronto's Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP).To understand how the FAQ obscures the nature of the project, consider this sentence: "The only commitment at this time is to a process to create a plan for Quayside that will meet the objectives set out in the RFP [Request for Proposals]." On a first reading, this seems to imply that private city-within-a-city will be limited to Quayside, the 12-acre site that everyone has been talking about to date.But then, later, the FAQ leaves wiggle room regarding the true size of the slated area to be "developed": "Any ideas proposed more broadly than Quayside must be in service of achieving the shared goals of the project and be supported by a business case demonstrating the need for scale to achieve the objectives."Now, if you look at the map on page 42 of the Plan Development Agreement (PDA) struck between Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto, which is the focus of Cory’s Dec. Read the rest

Isao Machii is a Iaido master from Kawanishi, Hyōgo, Japan. His skills as a master swordsman have landed him a number of Guinness World Records: fastest tennis ball (820 km/h) cut by sword and "fastest 1,000 martial arts sword cuts" to name just two. His speed and accuracy with a katana is a thing of wonder. Put on display once again in this video, after watching two speeding baseballs whiz past him, he non-nonchalantly cuts a third ball in half, fired at him at 161 kilometers per hour. Amazing. Read the rest

This guy likes to make ants bite him and wasps sting him so he can post his reactions on YouTube. In his latest video, he makes a Costa Rican Executioner Wasp sting him on his forearm. It's hard to know for sure how much he is hamming it up for the camera, but he makes quite a show of the pain. He says it hurt as much as the Tarantula Hawk's sting and the Bullet Ant's bite.Image: YouTube Read the rest

WARNING: This video is not for the squeamish. Do not watch if blood and cyst guts make you woozy.But for the rest of you who get a kick out of pimple popping videos, this one is the motherlode. The cyst had nestled itself in this patient's neck for 20 years, and apparently, no one else wanted to touch the golf-ball sized nugget. But Dr. Mudgil, a dermatologist in New York, came to the rescue. Eureka! Read the rest

A gentleman wanted beer, but didn't feel he should have to pay for it, so he climbed over a tall fence to get it. Imagine his outrage when his pants got stuck on the fence, leaving him hanging upside down.Image: Youtube Read the rest

When French President (and ex-investment banker) Macron decided to cut taxes for the super-rich and make up the shortfall by taxing diesel fuel (widespread in poor rural areas) but not private jet fuel, he put the already-precarious French treasury into an even more precarious state.Thanks to those choices, the streets of France have erupted into sustained, relentless "gilets jaunes" protests, and French cops have accumulated 23,000,000 hours of overtime policing the protests, but have not been paid for any of it (see above, re: starved treasury).Activists within police unions are now threatening to go out on strike, joining the yellow vest protesters; others are calling for work-to-rule slowdown actions. They are particularly incensed that Macron has proposed to balance his budget by cutting $70.8m from the national police budget.The government is offering a one-off bonus of around $342 to each officer deployed to face the gilets jaunes protests, totaling around $37.7 million. But this may not be enough to placate a force that claims to have been overworked and underpaid for years—unpaid overtime, for example, totals around $313 million nationwide, Le Monde reported.Secretary of State Laurent Nuñez told the RMC radio station Wednesday he would work on a payment schedule to address the government’s debts, though he warned that the exact details remain under discussion with the unions.France Protests: Police Threaten to Join Protesters, Demand Better Pay and Conditions [David Brennan/Newsweek](Image: Rog01) Read the rest

Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade had it out with Sarah Huckabee Sanders this morning after Sanders defended Trump's decision to pull the US out of Syria. Agreeing with co-host Steve Doocy, Sanders said that pulling out of Syria was always Trump's plan. “Anybody that says they’re surprised by this has simply been living under a rock.” "Sarah, he is giving Russia a big win," Kilmeade argued. "Vladimir Putin praised him. He also is doing exactly what he criticized President Obama for doing. He said President Obama is the founder of ISIS. He just refounded ISIS because they got 30,000 men there and they are already striking back with our would-be evacuation. The president is really on the griddle with this."Although it looked like Kilmeade, clearly agitated, had more to say on the matter, his co-hosts shut it down real fast with a "Alright Sarah, we wish you a very merry Christmas!" Read the rest

China does not pay for Trump's tariffs. US companies that import goods from China pay them. To make matters worse, US taxpayers are now having to pay angry US farmers more money than the tariffs are supposedly taking in. The Council on Foreign Relations concludes, "By launching a trade war with China, therefore, the president has simultaneously raised taxes on U.S. companies and lost the government money.Image: Council on Foreign Relations Read the rest

This list of terrible things Facebook did in 2018 (not including the terrible things it did without getting caught) makes it clear that Facebook is a garbage company.March 29BuzzFeed News published an internal memo from Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth in which one of Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants calls any effort to connect the world a “de facto good.” “Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies,” he wrote in June 2016. “Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools... And still we connect people.” The note caused a backlash externally in light of troubling events, including Facebook’s role in abetting genocide in Myanmar and its role in broadcasting a spate of suicides and murders on its livestreaming tool. In a statement, Zuckerberg disputed the idea that Bosworth was speaking for the company and said, “We've never believed the ends justify the means.” In response to the story, Bosworth tweeted (and later deleted), “I don’t agree with the post today and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.”Lol Mark, remember Cambridge Analytica and when 2 million people left Facebook. What a year it's been. pic.twitter.com/g7yXy0P4dp— The Guardian (@guardian) December 19, 2018Image collage created from photos by JD Lasica (Attribution 2.0 Generic, CC BY 2.0) and Shutterstock/Mr.anaked Read the rest

I wish I could wear running shoes, but I shouldn't. When I was a teenager, I tore all of the ligaments in my right ankle. Six weeks of physiotherapy and now, close to 20 years later, I'm still walking around on wobbly scar tissue. My ankle loves to roll out from under me, for any excuse at all. So, for extra support while I'm out strutting around, I wear combat boots. They tend to last longer than comparably priced hiking books and, depending on the boot, can be gussied up for special occasions. The downside to wearing combat boots is that even the lightest among them can still be pretty heavy. Enter GORUCK's MACV-1. They call it a "Jungle Rucking Boot," but it's not at all dissimilar to the lightweight duty boots from companies like Magnum or 511 Tactical that I used to wear to work. Available in black or coyote brown, they ride just above the ankle and, at 14 ounces each, are one of the lightest pairs of boots I've ever lashed to my footies. Despite their light weight, they seem, so far, to be well made. The majority of the boot is made using full grain leather, which comes out of the box already holding a shine. It didn't take me long to wear the shine down to nothing, but it's the thought that counts. The rest of the MACV-1 is comprised of 1000D Cordura and, for extra ankle support, a strip of 2" nylon webbing that runs down the back and side of each boot. Read the rest

The Green New Deal -- championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Dems -- is one of the most popular Democratic policies in living memory, supported by 81% of registered voters (including 64% of Republicans and 57% of "conservative Republicans"), so of course the Democratic establishment is trying to kill it.Instead of striking the proposed Green New Deal Select Committee in the House, they will reconvene the Select Committee on Climate Change instead, chaired by six-termer Kathy Castor (D-FL), who has said that she does not support the call for a "No Fossil Fuel Money pledge," which would bar participation by elected officials who took fossil fuel industry money in climate change work.Castor said she believed that a bar on participation from Reps who had been funded by oil and coal companies could violate the First Amendment (she later said her response had been "inartful"). Castor said she didn't think she'd received oil and coal money but wasn't sure. She has received $73,000 from coal and oil companies and their PACs. She said she "wasn't sure" if she herself would take the pledge.When asked whether her climate committee would tackle on the kind of large-scale economic reforms that the IPCC has warned are necessary for the survival of our species, Castor said that was "not going to be our sole focus."It's not clear whether Ocasio-Cortez will be tapped to serve on the climate committee. Neither she nor the other freshman Dems who ran insurgent campaigns calling for a Green New Deal were contacted by House Dem leaders in advance of this announcement. Read the rest

Long the province of manly mens' colognes and deodorants, the fashion for smokey, woodsy scents has come to the perfume aisle.Log Cabin Perfumes, as I have taken to calling the growing category of scents that evoke a cold snap all year round, are fairly new to the market. A decade ago, only a few niche fragrances prominently featured notes like Scotch pine, birch tar, gunpowder, palo santo and wood smoke. In 2009, Serge Lutens released Fille en Aiguilles, a cult hit that smells like a Christmas tree farm, and slowly the hibernal trend began to trickle through the indie perfume world. Now, the demand for wearable wintry mixes has exploded.All these fancy Eaus with their camphor notes and sage fundamentals, yet no mention of the Demeter Fragrance Library's Bonfire Cologne.Photo: California National Guard Read the rest

Police in Opp, Alabama, blame Satan for a recent spate of killings in the rural area. The Associated Press quotes a statement posted to the department's facebook page:THIS PAST SUNDAY, A YOUNG MAN WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN KINSTON. MONDAY NIGHT, A MOTHER WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN NORTHERN COVINGTON COUNTY. THERE HAVE BEEN FIVE MURDERS IN COVINGTON COUNTY IN 2018. THESE MURDERS HAVE BEEN DONE BY OUR YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE WE HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM GOD AND EMBRACED SATAN. WE MAY HAVE NOT MEANT TO DO SO BUT, WE HAVE. IT IS TIME TO ASK FOR GOD’S HELP TO STOP THIS. IT IS TIME TO BE PARENTS AND RAISE OUR CHILDREN, NOT HAVE THEM RAISE US. IT IS TIME TO FULLY SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT AND STAND BY THE OFFICERS AND DEPUTIES THAT ARE FAR TOO OFTEN HAVING TO WALK INTO THESE DANGEROUS SITUATIONS AND CLEAN UP THE MESS. FRIENDS, IT IS TIME TO STAND UP AND BE RESPONSIBLE, GROWN UP LEADERS IN OUR COMMUNITY. BOTTOM LINE, THERE ARE SHEEP; THERE ARE WOLVES AND THERE ARE SHEEP DOGS. WHICH GROUP DO YOU BELONG TO ?Wolves, sheepdogs and the separation of church and state. Read the rest

Nope, ankle scarves are not the latest thing to come out of Italy or Germany or wherever. I was skeptical when I came across this Country Living article that declared them a "trend," as the image is clearly Photoshopped. So, I started digging. First I went to its source, an Italian website called Lercio. Then I clicked to Lercio's source, a German site called Der Postillon and that's when I knew my suspicions were true. Ankle scarves are fake news parading around on English sites as a real trend. And that's when I came across this article on Lifehacker. Its author, Nick Douglas, breaks it down for us:That’s because there is no ankle scarf trend. I’m not saying that there’s really only one person who once wore tiny scarves on their ankles. I’m saying that the photo comes from this joke article on the German satire site Der Postillon.See, Der Postillon published a joke article that teens in Berlin are wearing scarves around their ankles, to stay warm while wearing fashionably short pants. Then the Italian satire site Lercio syndicated that article. Lercio isn’t pretending to be real any more than Der Postillon is; the front page includes stories about a hermit hiding inside his mailbox, and the pope fighting over parking spots for the Popemobile.When a blogger for the American site BestProducts.com—not a satire site—picked up the ankle scarf story, she either failed to notice that it was satire, or decided that it would make a better story if she didn’t mention that part. Read the rest

The mad dog's sick of being chained out in the yard. He'll be leaving officially early next year, but the announcement comes a day after Trump personally decided, on an apparent whim, to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria.Mr Trump tweeted that General Mattis "was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations". He did not name a successor, but said one would be appointed shortly. Read the rest

After watching a CCC presentation that claimed that the MQA audiophile format has "stealth DRM," I decided to investigate, and I'm pretty sure MQA is not DRM.But MQA is proprietary in several important ways that audiophiles should consider before they invest in the tech. Its overlapping patents, combined with extreme secrecy about the terms on which the format is licensed, mean that you have to trust in the long-term good decisions of the manufacturer in order to ensure that you'll always be able to buy a device that can play back the music you're buying -- and because the spec and the contracts for implementing it are a secret, it's hard to get good data to evaluate whether your trust is well-placed.The MQA story is a good lesson in the toxic rainbow of locked technology: the way that overlapping patents, trademarks, license agreements, copyrights, trade secrets, and DRM can make it legally precarious to exercise the freedoms that good software should come with: the freedom to run programs, to study them, to improve them, and to share your improvements.So the upshot is that MQA is patented, involves copyrighted code, terms of service, and trade secrets, but (probably) not DRM. That means that your ability to enjoy the MQA music you buy is completely at the mercy of the company, which could change the format at some later date and enjoin manufacturers from continuing to support the music you've purchased.Your decision to trust the company can't be informed by transparency in its licensing terms, either: maybe the company has promised its licensors that it would never force them to orphan your music -- and maybe it hasn't. Read the rest

Presently hovering between Halloween and Christmas, after watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and on the way to A Charlie Brown Christmas. I was seven years old when Charlie Brown’s sad tree was first shown on TV in 1965 — the same year my parents divorced. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, my memory of that period has vanished. I do recall watching Abbott and Costello in Jack and the Beanstalk one evening, and then being told after it ended that they were getting divorced. No recollection of anything after that for at least a year. Perhaps more.But, despite the neuron wipe, these two cartoons have remained firmly rooted in memory. They are a comfortable pillow, a respite (at this point in life) from late middle age and an instant connection to simple happiness.Everyone watches Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown Christmas. And everyone loves them. It’s not just the happiness they bring, but the melancholy undercurrent that invites remembrance. Every one of us can relate in some way to one of the animated children in those shows. Or to Snoopy. And he’s a dog.Something I recently read, the source of which has been forgotten only days later, put me on the track of other Peanuts TV shows from the 1960s. What? What? (Channeling Linus now.) Yes, my animated Peanuts began and ended with Pumpkin and Christmas (though I had been reading the comic strip since I could, well, read). There has been an enormous gaping hole in my existence — there were four more Peanuts specials on TV in the 1960s that I never saw. Read the rest

"Every child must be made aware."Directed by Flaming Lips madman mastermind Wayne Coyne and longtime Lips visual art/video collaborator George Salisbury. Read the rest

Scientists discovered and now described a previously unknown species of snake. Oddly though, they didn't collect this snake in the wild but rather found it inside the belly of another snake. The University of Texas at Arlington biologists have given the snack snake the official name of Cenaspis aenigma ("mysterious dinner snake.") From National Geographic:This species has unique features that separate it from its relatives, including the shape of the its skull, the covering of its hemipenis—its reproductive structure—and the scales under its tail.In 1976, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, palm-harvesters working deep in one of the region’s forests found a Central American coral snake—a vibrantly-colored species with neurotoxic venom. When researchers obtained it, they found that its last meal was another smaller serpent.This ten inch-long, male snake was something special, as it didn’t match any known species, so the specimen was preserved in a museum collection. The research team returned to the area at least a dozen more times over several decades, but never found a living representative of the odd snake species.More in the scientific paper: "Caudals and Calyces: The Curious Case of a Consumed Chiapan Colubroid" (Journal of Herpetology)(image: rendering of Cenaspis aenigma by Gabriel Ugueto) Read the rest

Any director would be hard pressed to top the magic of the original Men in Black movie. Surpassing its two sequels? That's very doable. If this first trailer for Men in Black: International is any indication, Director F. Gary Gray is off to a great start. Staring Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, the film is due for release in June, 2019. Read the rest

Watch these poor jewelry shop clerks come close to a heart attack as they leap over counters chasing down customers who are running off with jewelry – except they aren't. A viral prank in China, jewelry store "customers" try on expensive merch, then sprint towards the exit door. As the store employee chases after them, the prankster then casually stops in front of a display near the front door, as if that had always been their intention. Although not so nice, it's hard not to chuckle at how well the frantic employee transitions into an about face and casually walks away.How did this prank start? According to Oddity Central: The jewelry-stealing prank craze is believed to have been inspired by an Indonesian influencer’s shoplifting prank, which went viral in Asia last month. Harvinth Skin posted a video of himself trying out a pair of expensive sneakers at a sporting goods store and then pretending to run out wearing them, only to then sprint back, making it look like he was just trying them out. The shop assistant can be seen running after Skin, and then breathing a sigh of relief after realizing he never meant to make a run for it. Chinese pranksters just upped the stakes by essentially pulling off the same prank at jewelry stores.You can see the Indonesian shoplifting prank at the end of this video. Read the rest

On the latest Copy This podcast (MP3) (previously), the amazing Kirby "Everything is a Remix" Ferguson talks to Paul Keller about the new EU Copyright Directive, which will impose mandatory copyright filters on all online platforms, opening the door to rampant censorship and ensuring that only the biggest (American) tech companies will be able to afford to operate in the EU.Ferguson and Keller dig into the ways that this will especially hurt small and independent creators, including those outside of the EU (including Americans).While the battle over internet freedom is taking place in the EU, its sheer scale will have a real and harmful impact on creators here in the U.S who represent an increasingly important sector of our economy. Re:Create’s own research shows that the economic value of America’s New Creative Economy is a baseline of $6 billion, with nearly 15 million independent American creators earning revenue across every state – and that is a conservative estimate.Described as a “clear descendent” of the SOPA/PIPA censorship bills that went down in flames in the U.S. in 2012, the Copyright Directive will cause major new market barriers for American creators (see Patreon’s many concerns on behalf of creators here), depriving them of revenues and access to consumers, and will be especially harmful for small creators.Tune in to learn more about why creators in the U.S. should speak out to protect the free flow of information, creativity, speech and innovation between the continents. Read the rest