It's highly unusual for a squirrel to purposely jump on a human. And it's even more unusual for said human to roll with it, without any shock or flinch, laughing while the squirrel does its thing. As the old lady said in When Harry Met Sally, "I'll have what [s]he's having!"Via Mashable Read the rest

Jim Hightower is a longstanding, respected columnist distributed by Creators Syndicate -- but Creators refused to distribute his latest column, "Free the Free Press from Wall Street Plunderers," which warns about Wall Street vultures like Digital First Media and GateHouse Media buying up newspapers, including the Austin Statesman.The Austin Chronicle reports that Creators wouldn't distribute the column because it feared retribution from the Wall Street firms; Creators managing editor Simone Slykhous told the Chronicle that "We have more than 200 columnists and cartoonists, and our job is to make sure that our actions do not negatively impact them."Thankfully, the Texas Observer has run Hightower's column, the story of which is perhaps more persuasive on the risks that Hightower warns against than his column itself. The buyers are hedge-fund scavengers with names like Digital First and GateHouse. They know nothing about journalism and care less, for they’re ruthless Wall Street profiteers out to grab big bucks fast by slashing the journalistic and production staffs of each paper, voiding all employee benefits (from pensions to free coffee in the breakroom), shriveling the paper’s size and news content, selling the presses and other assets, tripling the price of their inferior product – then declaring bankruptcy, shutting down the paper, and auctioning off the bones before moving on to plunder another town’s paper.By 2014, America’s two largest media chains were not venerable publishers who believe that a newspaper’s mission includes a commitment to truth and a civic responsibility, but GateHouse and Digital First, whose managers believe that good journalism is measured by the personal profit they can squeeze from it. Read the rest

John Lewis & Partners is a well-known general department store in Great Britain. It’s the type of old-fashioned department store that, like the late and lamented B. Altman & Co. (which you can see recreated in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), carries everything from clothing to electric appliances. “Special” Christmas TV commercials and Christmas shows are a big big thing in English television, much bigger than here in the United States. It is often the season when extinct TV shows come alive for one new episode on one night.John Lewis’s Christmas commercial stars a big “get”: Elton John. It’s a musical tour through his life that mixes old and new footage, with de-aged Elton mixed with young Elton and old Elton.I liked it, but there’s been a lot of odd hate for it online. You decide. Either you’ll smile or you won’t. Read the rest

NASA's Voyager 2 space probe has officially left our solar system and entered interstellar space. Now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth, the spacecraft has crossed the boundary of the bubble-like heliosphere around the planets and is no longer touched by the plasma wind from our sun. Voyager 2's twin Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012 and continues to send back valuable scientific data via the Deep Space Network.From NASA:“I think we’re all happy and relieved that the Voyager probes have both operated long enough to make it past this milestone,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “This is what we've all been waiting for. Now we’re looking forward to what we’ll be able to learn from having both probes outside the heliopause.”Voyager 2 launched in 1977, 16 days before Voyager 1, and both have traveled well beyond their original destinations. The spacecraft were built to last five years and conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn. However, as the mission continued, additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible. As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to endow the Voyagers with greater capabilities than they possessed when they left Earth. Their two-planet mission became a four-planet mission. Their five-year lifespans have stretched to 41 years, making Voyager 2 NASA’s longest running mission.The Voyager story has impacted not only generations of current and future scientists and engineers, but also Earth's culture, including film, art and music. Read the rest

The latest installment of the Canadaland media criticism podcast (MP3) (previously) features an outstanding and nuanced discussion between host Jesse Brown and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen (previously), regarding the Trudeau government's plan to hand Canada's press a $600 million bailout, with large tranches of that money to be funneled to billionaire media barons who ran their businesses into the ground by loading them up with predatory debt while mass-firing their newsrooms and paying themselves millions in bonuses -- Brown and Rosen don't just discuss the merits and demerits of this proposal, but get into a fascinating debate/discussion about what a better version of this would look like. Read the rest

Say a prayer for Our Patron Saint of Taking Down the Current Administration by lighting one of artist Clare Winter's Robert Mueller devotional candles. You can get these rhinestone-embellished candles through Winter's online shop Devotional Democracy ($12) or in person at Cargo Inc in Portland, Oregon. (Rumor has it she is making Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) longevity candles next.) Read the rest

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not guarantee Americans "equal" education (which would require similar per-student funding in both rich and poor neighborhoods), merely "adequate" education.Even that adequacy standard has weakened over the years, as right-wing governments have systematically gutted education budgets, and in 20 states, the state supreme court will not hear challenges to education cuts that argue that these cuts undermine an "adequate" education.Now, a suit in Rhode Island is asking the state court to rule that underfunded education is unconstitutional because it denies pupils the opportunity to be sufficiently well-educated to be citizens in a democracy, something the framers of the Constitution were very explicit about. The case just filed in Rhode Island seeks to avoid that trap by doing something completely new. It focuses on the civics knowledge and skills that our democratic form of government demands of citizens – a topic with deep historical roots. My recent research demonstrated that our founders intended public education to be a core aspect of the “republican form of government” that our federal Constitution demands.Our republican form of government began as an experiment in the idea that everyday citizens could govern themselves. But our founders – people like George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – emphasized that public education was necessary for those governments to work. In legislation that would dictate how the western territory would be divided up and later become states, Congress in the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 mandated that each township reserve a central lot for public schools and that the states use their public resources to “forever encourage” those schools. Read the rest

Frustratingly, this video has no data about the identity of the incredible genius featured therein. Who is she? This girl's transformation to... from r/Damnthatsinteresting Read the rest

In 1948, Costa Rica weathered a civil war, and in 1949, they abolished their military. Since then, Costa Rica has emerged as the Central American success story, more politically stable and richer than its neighbors.In a research paper, researchers from the Universidad de Costa Rica Observatorio de Desarrollo deploy "synthetic control estimates" to try to see how much of Costa Rica's growth can be attributed to eliminating military spending: they find that between 1950-2010, annual growth increased from 1.42% to 2.28%, leading to a doubling in per-capita GDP every 30 years instead of every 39, and that this freed up capital for national spending on development goals that have provided long-run advantages to the country and its people.Some confounding factors to note: Costa Rica received a lot of US aid during the "dirty wars" where the CIA was bent on overthrowing democratically elected socialist governments in the region. Much like West Berlin, Costa Rica was meant to serve as a beacon of the benefits of "free market" systems, and to attain this showroom status, the US government spent lavishly to show how great things were under small government. Also: while Costa Rica doesn't have an army, it has had rural police forces that wore paramilitary uniforms, carried automatic weapons, slept in barracks, etc -- think "National Guard on high alert." This isn't an army per se, but it's also not what we think of when we think of "police."This article estimates the causal long-term developmental effects of Costa Rica’s constitutional abolishment of its army in 1949 after the 1948 civil war. Read the rest

George HW Bush was a mass murderer and a war criminal and now he is dead.In some ways, Bush I was fated to be a terrible person. His family fortune sprang from his father's willingness to cozy up to Hitler and sell him the steel he needed to re-arm Nazi Germany. As a young man, Bush I distinguished himself by desecrating indigenous graves.But it was when Bush I's national political career took off in earnest, first as Reagan's VP and then as a presidential hopeful and finally as a one-term, failed president that he began to performatively inflict cruelty upon innocents, lying to the American people, victimizing people both retail and wholesale, all in the service of shaking off his media image as a "wimp."Matt Taibbi (previously) is in characteristically fine form in tracing the path to dishonor pursued by George Herbert Walker Bush, the petty, spiteful campaigns he waged after being stung by mockery in the panels of Doonesbury (reminding us on the way of the enormous political power Garry Trudeau has quietly wielded down through the years, including the infliction of much-deserved psychic trauma on Trumplethinskin himself). Multiple sources, including George W Bush, have stated that Jeb Bush was so enraged by the toll this mockery took on "Poppy" that he vowed to go to New York City and kick Garry Trudeau's ass.But Bush I's pricked ego didn't stop at stewing over Garry Trudeau. He and his team entrapped a young Black man into trying to sell crack in front of the White House, merely so he could go on TV and complain about the crack epidemic getting so bad that someone had been arrested for selling crack outside of the White House. Read the rest

Daniel Willingham, a University of Virginia psychologist who wrote "The Reading Mind," says that the most common question he receives these days is the following: “Is it cheating if I listen to an audiobook for my book club?” In a New York Times essay, Willingham parses the benefits and drawbacks of both formats. Which one is better? Of course personally preference and convenience matter, but Willingham argues that generally right now when it comes to listening or reading a book, there is "equivalence for easy texts and an advantage to print for hard ones." For example, audio books provide prosody, the intonation, tone, and rhythm of the words. Sometimes, hearing those cues helps us understand the material. But not always. From the NYT:For example, one study compared how well students learned about a scientific subject from a 22-minute podcast versus a printed article. Although students spent equivalent time with each format, on a written quiz two days later the readers scored 81 percent and the listeners 59 percent.What happened? Note that the subject matter was difficult, and the goal wasn’t pleasure but learning. Both factors make us read differently. When we focus, we slow down. We reread the hard bits. We stop and think. Each is easier with print than with a podcast.Print also supports readers through difficult content via signals to organization like paragraphs and headings, conventions missing from audio. Experiments show readers actually take longer to read the first sentence of a paragraph because they know it probably contains the foundational idea for what’s to come. Read the rest

"I'm not a narcissist... just trying this mirror thing... testing the camera... seeing how well it works... doooooo... applehead."(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

These people are pretty bad at recognizing different languages. And so am I. Bonus facts I happened to find on Ethnologue, a fascinating directory of languages: Apparently there are more than 7,000 living languages in the world. Half the world's population speaks one of the top 23 most-used languages, with the top five being Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, and Hindi. One-third of the 7,000 languages are endangered, "that is, loss of all individuals who continue to identify the language as being related to their identity." Read the rest

In Taylor, Texas an 11-year-old girl helpfully unwrapped her four-year-old brother's Sonic fast food burger and found what she thought was a piece of candy inside. Fortunately, she asked her parents before popping into her mouth. They took the "candy" to the police who determined it was actually an Ecstasy pill. Insert your own "happy meal" joke here. From KXAN:Officers took the restaurant's manager, Tanisha Dancer, into custody for a felony theft warrant from Guadalupe County. When she got to the Williamson County Jail, police said a female correctional officer searched Dancer and found three ecstasy pills hidden in her clothing...Taylor police said they notified the Texas Department of Health, the restaurant's local owner and corporate Sonic. Police said the Sonic director of operations told them that they have now fired Dancer. Two other employees were also arrested -- one for marijuana possession and the other for outstanding warrants. Read the rest

Last week, students at Atlantic Community High School in Delray Beach, Florida were delighted by a new snack offering in the vending machine. Unfortunately, it wasn't immediately clear how to select this limited time item for purchase.(WPTV) Read the rest

Smart guy. Has 6-year-old triplets. Knows a shitshow when he smells one. Nick Ayers, who is currently Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff, will NOT become the next Next White House Chief of Staff. NEWS — Pence Chief of Staff Nick Ayers Won’t Be Next White House Staff Chief -- Sources https://t.co/MFh95DTwBJ— Michael C. Bender (@MichaelCBender) December 9, 2018Nick Ayers, the leading candidate to replace John Kelly as chief of staff, won’t take the job, I’m told. He and Trump could not agree to terms. Trump pushed Ayers to commit to 2 years, but he declined, citing young kids & desire to move back to GA. Unclear who will take the job.— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) December 9, 2018Ayers was Donald Trump's first choice as a candidate to replace outgoing chief of staff John Kelly. He also tweeted the news himself. Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause. 🇺🇸 #Georgia— Nick Ayers (@nick_ayers) December 9, 2018He has triplets, and that is the reason given for why Ayers will not be taking the job, a White House official told the Wall Street Journal, and later CNN and other outlets, on Sunday. WSJ:It was unclear on Sunday who would succeed John Kelly, Mr. Trump’s current chief of staff, who is leaving the job this month. Read the rest

Writing in New York Magazine, Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith draws on Hubert Horan's outstanding series on the underlying economics of Uber to describe why the company's IPO will be a terrible bet for the investors who buy into it.It's only been a year since Softbank offered to buy out shareholders on a valuation of $48B (and had more takers than they were prepared to buy from!); and now Uber is hoping to float on a valuation of $120B, asking suckers to pay more than double what the company's top execs were willing to sell their shares for a year ago.Uber claims it's a tech company and can benefit from the economics of scale that tech companies enjoy. But it's not. It's "a taxi company with an app attached." Uber's spent billions of its investors' cash subsidizing rides in a largely successful bid to kill local taxi companies, but even if every other cab company goes out of business, Uber won't be able to jack up the prices, because starting another Uber to compete with it just isn't that hard.Uber has disadvantages of scale. Beyond a certain critical threshold, adding drivers to Uber's pool of employees (who it claims are not employees) just lowers everyone's wages, and individual drivers spend much more maintaining their cars than yellow cab companies do maintaining their fleets.Uber's data-richness doesn't confer much of an advantage, either: no amount of data will change the fact that commuters mostly go in one direction in the morning and the other direction at night, leaving drivers with empty cars half the time (it's even worse with airport runs). Read the rest

Spoonflower's gorgeous selection of Haunted Mansion patterns can be printed on demand on wallpaper, giftwrap, or fabric: from the green strips of the maids' uniforms to the purple and black stripes of the butler's vests, to motifs picked up from the characters and decor (tightrope walker girl's floral print, hitchhiking ghosts, Leota's seance room), the variety is amazing. (via Disney's Haunted Mansion) Read the rest

Argentine hacker [Roni Bandini] modded a 1998 Furby so that it responds to stimulus by rattling off a random quote from Jorge Luis Borges. He calls it "Borgy."[Roni] hacked the Furby to replace the speaker with a more powerful one, and built a base to hold the larger speaker and a switch which can activate Borgy. He also used an Arduino Nano and a Sparkfun MP3 player shield loaded with the samples of Borges.When the Furby speaks, it shares some wisdom from Borges. It’s a simple, but a surprisingly effective hack that could be very useful for someone seeking inspiration. Or, as Borges himself once said: “Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.”Furby Plus Borges Equals Borgy [Richard Baguley/Hackaday] Read the rest

Every year, DJ Riko drops a longform "mixmas" of Christmas mashups; this year's mix is out (MP3 link), featuring everyone from Run DMC to Harry Belafonte to Eels (here's how to get all 16 installments in the series!). Read the rest

It's the 20th anniversary of Anchorhead, Michael Gentry's seminal horror text adventure; to commemorate the occasion, Ryan Veeder and Jenni Polodna worked with 84 developers to create Cragne Manor, a tribute, whose puzzles are ingenious, frustrating and amazing.Each of the developers was given one room to create, without any knowledge of the others developers' rooms, making "each location ... a different author's take on a tribute to Anchorhead, or an original work of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, or a deconstruction of cosmic horror, or a gonzo parody of cosmic horror, or a parody of some other thing, or a portrait of life in Vermont, or a pure experiment in writing with Inform 7, or something else entirely. There are tons of puzzles. The puzzles get very weird."Early reviews are very positive: Zarf updates says "It's glorious. It's a mess. It's a glorious mess... It's a grand collection of vignettes by the biggest collective of IF authors ever gathered in one fictional Vermont town. It's a demonstration of varied styles, varied approaches to puzzle design, and varied takes on the idea of 'Lovecraftian/Anchorheadian game'. It's creepy and funny and gross and poetic."Emily Short writes: "I can tell you already that if you like parser IF, you want to play this. It’s sometimes scary, sometimes disgusting, sometimes funny, sometimes weird, and sometimes all of those at once — but I’ll let you find the horse for yourself. And somehow all that surreal adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts."Your name is Naomi Cragne. Read the rest

Binding arbitration agreements were formalized in 1925, allowing two corporate entities of roughly equal size to resolve their disputes outside of a court, saving both parties a lot of money, but since then, the primary use of arbitration is to force employees, customers, patients and other comparatively weak parties to surrender their right to sue (or join class actions) as a condition of going to work, seeking care, or simply shopping.Instead, people who have been crammed into binding arbitration "agreements" are forced to argue their cases one at a time in a privatized courtroom, where the "judge" is often a contractor for the corporation whose conduct gave rise to the complaint.A notorious example of this is the gig economy, where employees are turned into "contractors" through a legal fiction and then deprived of their right to join class action suits over unfair treatment thanks to the arbitration clauses in the farcically long license agreement they click through when they sign up (Uber drivers can technically opt out within 30 days, but they'd have to read thousands of words of impenetrable legalese to discover this). As is so often the case, Uber is the granddaddy of the worst practices of the gig economy. When the company went to the court to argue that its employees weren't employees, it defended its binding arbitration, saying that the company would of course pay for the arbitration fees in the states that required it.12,501 Uber drivers took the company at its word and filed arbitration claims in California. Read the rest

Peter Leigh, known as the Nostalgia Nerd on his YouTube channel, has a cool new hardcover book out called The Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech: Computers, Consoles and Games, which is exactly what it says it is - photos and descriptions of gear from the 1970s-1990s. Here are a few spreads from the book to give you an idea of what's in it and how the material is presented: Read the rest

Sometimes I blog about something and it goes nowhere, much like this girl's domino:Sometimes I blog about something and it continues to weave its way to the many corners of the internet, much like this:But, sometimes I blog about something and it starts a chain reaction that looks more like this (I looked for a domino video that featured fireworks and confetti but came up short):viaIn other words, it goes viral. Now, on November 11, I blogged about Tim Klein's "puzzle montages" and I believe it's the most-viral post I've written in my over-seven-year professional blogging career. While I don't have the exact numbers, I have been watching it quickly spread across the planet and I feel certain that it is. Today, I thought it would be fun to pull back the curtain a little to show you what "going viral" looks like from "backstage." [TL;DR version (and, warning, this post IS entirely TOO LONG): The post I wrote about Tim Klein's puzzle montages went nuts! Media outlets from around the globe picked up the story (digital, print, TV), some linked back to Boing Boing, some didn't. Tim got TONS of fan mail, all of his art sold, and now he's being offered gallery shows. Well... he and I talked and we plan to take it to the next level together (note: we didn't know each other before all of this). We first want to build a community of people who love puzzle mashups. Want to learn more? Read the rest

This unlucky guy tried hang gliding in Switzerland. His instructor failed to attach him to the glider. Watch this video and prepare to wet your pants. Read the rest

Vegemite has enough salt to be conductive, and is viscous enough to draw distinct traces with on suitable medium (say, toast that has been cooked such that most of the water has evaporated, making it a good insulator), as Luke Weston has ably demonstrated. Read the rest

The Japanese are extremely proud of their pottery, which is among the finest in the world. And with the special place the Tea Ceremony holds in Japanese culture, tea cups are finely wrought. Many of them look more like not-so-chunky mugs than the European teacups we see. Those known as Karatsu Ware are among the most highly regarded.While they look like teacups, these “karatsu-yaki” are actually edible rice cakes. They are made by master confectioner Osamu Tsurumaru in the city of Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, Japan and are sold at Nakazato Tarouemon Tobo, a 400-year old pottery studio.The price is a shockingly low $2.60 per cup, all of which are painted by Tsurumaru himself in traditional designs. He also makes rice-cake saucers, which perhaps look more realistic than the teacups! A set of one cup and saucer will set you back 12 bucks, but imagine serving it to guests for desert.Via Asahi Shimbum/Photos by Mahito Kaai. Read the rest

Ground House, a hip burger joint in Irvine, CA, has just gamified eating fried foods with their Fry Roulette. There's a spinning wheel, six types of deep-fried potato products, and 12 different dipping centers.Buzzfeed shows how it works: Fry Roulette Exists And We Know You Want To Playscreenshot via Ground House IG Read the rest

When scooter companies like Bird started illegally deploying their gadgets in city streets, there was intense interest in both the street value of the components to be found within each of these VC-backed ewaste-in-waiting devices, and tactics for hotwiring them.Now, with hundreds of these scooters abandoned and rotting in impound lots, likely never to be recovered, maybe now is a good time to invest in a $30 scooter "conversion kit", which ships direct from China, and plugs-and-plays to convert one of these scooters to a "personal scooter," with all recovery and payment components permanently disabled.The subject of this conversion are scooters deployed by Bird, which are in actuality Xiaomi MIJIA M365 scooters with a few added electronics to connect to the Internet. The ‘conversion kit’ for a Bird scooter comes directly from China, costs $30, and is apparently a plug-and-play sort of deal. The hardest part is finding a screwdriver with the right security bits, but that again is a problem eBay is more than willing to solve.Right now, [humanbeing21] is in contact with a towing company that has well over a hundred Bird scooters on their lot, each accruing daily storage fees. Since these scooters only cost about $400 new, we’re probably well past the time when it makes sense for Bird to pay to get them out of storage. This means they’ll probably be heading for an auction where anyone can pick them up — all of them — for a hundred bucks or so. Read the rest

Combine a paperclip, tin foil, a cereal box, and a print out to make the Die Hard John McClane Air Duct Christmas Ornament. PS: Die Hard is a Christmas movie. (via Kottke) Read the rest

Andrew Smith is Trump's chief of the FTC Consumer Protection Bureau, in charge of investigating companies that abuse Americans -- but he can't, because he has previously provided services for over 100 of America's largest companies, including Facebook, a whack of payday lenders, Amazon, American Airlines, Amex, BoA, Capital One, Citigroup, John Deere, Equifax, Expedia, Experian, Glaxosmithkline, Goldman Sachs, Jpmorgan, Linkedin, Microsoft, Paypal, Redbubble, Twitter, Sotheby's, Transunion, Uber, Verizon, Visa, Disney and Wells Fargo.Smith is required to recuse himself from any proceeding involving these companies. Luckily, none of these companies are in any position to abuse or rip off Americans. Smith insists that there are many other companies he can go after, and he is thus in no way too compromised to have the job Donald Trump gave him.“Andrew Smith is literally not able to do his job,” Remington A. Gregg, counsel for civil justice and consumer rights at Public Citizen said. “He has ties to a vast universe of financial predators that are likely to break the law — and he won’t be able to enforce the law against them. We need someone who can.”One of these high-profile cases could involve Facebook. At an oversight hearing in November before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, FTC Chairman Joseph Simons said that Facebook is currently under investigation by the agency, but would not provide details. The company entered into a consent decree with the agency in 2011, and is subject to a fine if it is proven to have deceived users as to how their data and privacy is handled on the platform. Read the rest

Emergency rooms at for-profit hospitals are notorious price-gougers, where an ice-pack and a bandage can cost $5,000, and where no one will tell you how much your care is costing until months after the fact.In a funny, serious, link-studded satirical essay on McSweeney's (Welcome to Our Modern Hospital Where If You Want to Know a Price You Can Go Fuck Yourself), Alex Baia makes explicit the submerged subtext of these sleazy, crooked tactics: "Well, you can’t do much about that now. Except of course to go fuck yourself. Yes, ma’am, as a matter of fact, we do have a special room where you can go fuck yourself. Yes, it does cost money to use the room, and no I cannot tell you how much. Want a hint? It’s between $1 and $35,000 per minute. Will you be reserving the go fuck yourself room?"Honestly, there’s no telling what you’ll pay today. Maybe $700. Maybe $70,000. It’s a fun surprise! Maybe you’ll go to the ER for five minutes, get no treatment, then we’ll charge you $5,000 for an ice pack and a bandage. Then your insurance company will be like, “This is nuts. We’re not paying this.” Who knows how hard you’ll get screwed? You will, in three months.Fun story: This one time we charged two parents $18,000 for some baby formula. LOL! We pull that shit all the time. Don’t like it? Don’t bring a baby, asshole.Oh, I get it: you’re used to knowing a clear price for products and services. Read the rest

At the rate the world is shrinking, you don't need to be a globetrotter for a second language to be a useful skill. And if you're looking to learn that second language (or a third, or fourth), uTalk Language Education is the learning program that makes progression not only easy but fun.If you can't be among native speakers, there's not much of an immediate reward to rote memorization of words and phrases. That's why uTalk "gamifies" the process by folding the learning process into fun challenges and exercises. You can "level up" your fluency as you go along, getting verification on your pronunciation from native voice artists. Before long, you'll be picking up full sentences you can use in real-world conversations.What's more, uTalk offers this learning structure for more than 130 languages, loads more than most other language apps. You can choose up to six with a lifetime subscription to uTalk Language Education for $24.99 - a drop from the previous sale price of $29.99. Read the rest

In 2019, we'll move out of Ultra Violet and into Living Coral, according to the Pantone Color Institute. Their color experts have determined that their Color of the Year will be the "vibrant, yet mellow" PANTONE 16-1546. Here's what they have to say about this "life-affirming" shade:In reaction to the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life, we are seeking authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy. Sociable and spirited, the engaging nature of PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral welcomes and encourages lighthearted activity. Symbolizing our innate need for optimism and joyful pursuits, PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral embodies our desire for playful expression.Representing the fusion of modern life, PANTONE Living Coral is a nurturing color that appears in our natural surroundings and at the same time, displays a lively presence within social media.How do they come to pick their Color of Year? Well, they write that "the selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis" and that their color experts "comb the world looking for new color influences."Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely color, but the cynic in me is screaming, "But climate change is bleaching the coral reefs!"(After I wrote this up, I found this searing Slate article that agrees with me, "Pantone might as well have named it 'The Rare Coral That Has Not Yet Been Bleached, as It Inevitably Someday Will in This Increasingly Toxic Toilet Bowl We Call Earth.'")images via Pantone(It's Nice That) Read the rest

Special counsel Robert Mueller says Paul Manafort told ‘discernible lies,’ including about contacts with his longtime translator and fixer, Konstantin Kilimnik, an employee who is believed to have Russian intelligence ties. “Manafort told multiple discernible lies -- these were not instances of mere memory lapses,” Mueller’s prosecutors wrote.Here is the Mueller filing on Paul Manafort: [PDF LINK].In the document, filed today by the Special Counsel's office in federal court in Washington, Mueller says the former Trump campaign manager lied about:• Konstantin Kilimnik interactions• Kilimnik's participation in count two of superseding information• Wire transfer of funds to firm working for Manafort• Info that relates to another DOJ investigation (???)• Contact Manafort had with Trump admin officialsManafort is accused of lying to federal investigators (never a wise idea) when he told prosecutors he never tried to communicate to anyone in the Trump administration. But actually, the prosecutors say here, Manafort authorized someone to speak to an administration official on his behalf on May 26, 2018.Trump's response, and that of journalists and lawyers who know better below.Totally clears the President. Thank you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018CNN nutshell: 1) Cohen & Trump criminal activity accusation by SDNY.2) More connection between Russia & Trumpworld than was known.3) Continued investigation of WH in 2017 & 2018.4) And Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration. Which means they lied, too.— Karen DaltonBeninato (@kbeninato) December 7, 2018Mueller also says Manafort lied about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate who the FBI has said was connected to Russian intelligence. Read the rest

This year, I helped University of Chicago science fiction writer and renaissance scholar Ada Palmer and science historian Adrian Johns host a series of interdisciplinary seminars on "Censorship, Information Control, & Revolutions in Information Technology from the Printing Press to the Internet." Thanks to our generous Kickstarter backers, we were able to raise money to pay for high-quality videography and closed captioning to make the videos beautiful and accessible. The first session is now online, with more to follow soon (they'll be on the seminar's channel). Read the rest

Jury finds James Fields found guilty on all 10 charges, including first degree murder of Heather Heyer.Never forget: Trump said they were 'very fine people.'During the 2017 racist rally in Charlottesville, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, and killed two of the anti-racism demonstrators his vehicle slammed into. This is what a court ruled today, in finding Fields guilty on Friday of murdering one of those victims. Her name was Heather Heyer.BREAKING: James Fields found guilty on all 10 counts, including 1st-degree murder, for ramming car into a group of peaceful counter-protesters following Charlottesville white nationalist rally in 2017.— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 7, 2018From the Daily Beast:Fields, 21, an Ohio native, was charged with first-degree murder last year following the hit-and-run attack, which killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injured dozens other anti-racism protesters who ran counter to the “Unite the Right” rally. He was found guilty on that top charge.Fields was also found guilty on five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of failing to stop at an accident involving a death.All of this on top of the 30-count hate crime indictment brought against him by the Department of Justice.More here.James Fields’s fate is in the jury’s hands now, so let’s have a quick recap of the alt-right conspiracy theories and how this trial has exposed them all as desperate shams.— Emily G (@EmilyGorcenski) December 7, 2018James Fields has been found guilty on all counts, including first degree murder. Read the rest

Federal prosecutors in New York request a "substantial" prison sentence for Michael Cohen, who pled guilty to violating campaign finance laws. Sentencing guidelines suggest that could mean 46 to 63 months.The Southern District of New York's sentencing memo for the President's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen has been filed, and it is 30 pages long. READ IT HERE: [DOCUMENT LINK].Things are not looking bright for Michael Cohen, despite having cooperated with the federal investigation into Trump's activities. 'A substantial term of imprisonment is warranted,' writes the Southern District of New York.The guidelines from Michael Cohen's plea agreement call for a prison term of between 46 and 63 months.The real news right now is not about Cohen’s sentence. It is about the conclusion by federal prosecutors that Donald J. Trump has committed a serious felony.— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) December 7, 2018SDNY really not holding back here when it comes to Michael Cohen's sentence. pic.twitter.com/TWjS0EcwuY— Shawna Thomas (@Shawna) December 7, 2018This is new. Federal prosecutors have said for the first time in a court filing that Cohen committed campaign finance crimes "in coordination with and at the direction of" President Trump. pic.twitter.com/mOYvdMqHS7— Brad Heath (@bradheath) December 7, 2018Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have filed their sentencing memo on Michael Cohen.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) December 7, 2018MUELLER says he "does not take a position with respect to a particular sentence to be imposed" for Cohen, says he has gone to "significant lengths" to assist the special counsel probe. Read the rest

Though he was also shot by the suspect in last month's attack at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Ca., Sgt. Ron Helu was killed by friendly fire during the shootout."We believe that Sgt. Helus was clearly not the intended target of the CHP officer -- which further illustrates the extreme situation both men faced."According to the county's chief medical examiner, Helus' initial wounds were survivable, but the sixth bullet proved deadly when it struck his heart.Previously. Read the rest

King Size "Pro" Sharpies are my go-to Sharpie.Whenever I need to leave a message for a friend inside of a public restroom or cover up some light colored stitching on a black garment, I reach for a King Size Pro Sharpie! The familiar chisel tip, mated with a honking big cylinder that fits your grip like sidewalk-chalk or window-wax, smells like fresh street art.This set comes with two black, one red and one blue marker. I usually keep a black in my travel bag, and the other in my desk pen tray.There is no marker as trusted in the world of "I need to trust my marker" as a Sharpie.Sharpie Pro King Size Permanent Marker via Amazon Read the rest

The Facebook-fueled anti-government protests in Paris, which began three weeks ago, starting off with a protest against high fuel taxes, look like something out of an intense apocalyptic movie. I'd only read about the "yellow jacket" protests and riots – the worst in 50 years – but did not realize the extent of violence that has taken over the Champs Élysées and surrounding neighborhoods. According to the BBC, "Tourist sites in Paris are to close on Saturday amid fears of further street violence."Across France, 89,000 police officers will be on duty and armoured vehicles will be deployed in the capital, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced.Paris police have urged shops and restaurants on the Champs-Elysees to shut and some museums will also be closed.🇬🇧 Due to the demonstrations that will be taking place in #Paris, I will remain closed to the public on Saturday 8 December. ⚠ Tomorrow, a particularly long waiting time is anticipated for visitors planning to buy tickets on-the-spot.▶ Stay informed: https://t.co/7LsKivpsFK pic.twitter.com/sxj86CLep0— La tour Eiffel (@LaTourEiffel) December 6, 2018 Read the rest

For the first time, we can hear the "sounds" of wind on Mars as captured by the scientific instruments on NASA's InSight robotic lander. From NASA:"Capturing this audio was an unplanned treat," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California...Two very sensitive sensors on the spacecraft detected these wind vibrations: an air pressure sensor inside the lander and a seismometer sitting on the lander's deck, awaiting deployment by InSight’s robotic arm. The two instruments recorded the wind noise in different ways. The air pressure sensor, part of the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem (APSS), which will collect meteorological data, recorded these air vibrations directly. The seismometer recorded lander vibrations caused by the wind moving over the spacecraft's solar panels, which are each 7 feet (2.2 meters) in diameter and stick out from the sides of the lander like a giant pair of ears.image: "One of two Mars InSight's 7-foot (2.2 meter) wide solar panels was imaged by the lander's Instrument Deployment Camera, which is fixed to the elbow of its robotic arm." (NASA/JPL-Caltech) Read the rest

I'm heading to San Francisco next week for a launch party on December 11th celebrating the release of The End of Trust, a collaboration between EFF and McSweeney's on internet surveillance and the future of the net; the event is at 7:30PM at Manny’s at 3092 16th Street (RSVP here), and I'll be on a panel with EFF exec director Cindy Cohn, moderated by the amazing Annalee Newitz! Read the rest

Joel Bonasera liked my novel Walkaway so much that he made a 3D-printable bookmark based on Will Stahle's amazing cover art! Read the rest

Back when Livejournal purged its NSFW fanficcers and other text-based purveyors of delightful smut, users flocked to Dreamwidth, a small, indie, smut-tolerant community run as much as a labor of love as it is as a business.Both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort -- an Austin-based company that has some Tumblr-like features -- have seen massive influxes of users fleeing Tumblr in advance of the December 17 deadline for purging the Tumblr of smut.Both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort have far fewer resources than Tumblr, and sometimes experience outages or slowdowns. But there are other practical considerations that endanger these indie "lifeboat services." For example, they are reliant on payment processors like Paypal, content distribution networks like Cloudflare, and top-level domain administrators, all of whom operate in extremely concentrated environments where just a few companies dominate, and all of whom have shown themselves to be liable to cutting off customers in the face of widespread complaint campaigns. The far right has largely suffered as a result of this concentration, as the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos find themselves broke and excluded from any platform where they might find a voice or financial backing. But the right has figured out that this is a double-edged sword: gangs of right-wing creeps are outing sex workers to Paypal and the IRS to get their sources of payments cut off and then get them audited and financially ruined.The fragility of a service like Pillowfort or Dreamwidth makes them especially vulnerable to this kind of attack: when tens or hundreds of thousands of people depend on one or two people to keep their community online and thriving, any disruption to those two peoples' lives can take out the whole community. Read the rest

Elowan is a "plant-robot hybrid" that uses its own bio-electromechanical signaling to drive itself around toward light sources. From an explanation by researcher Harpreet Sareen and his colleagues at the MIT Media Lab: In this experimental setup, electrodes are inserted into the regions of interest (stems and ground, leaf and ground). The weak signals are then amplified and sent to the robot to trigger movements to respective directions.Such symbiotic interplay with the artificial could be extended further with exogenous extensions that provide nutrition, growth frameworks, and new defense mechanisms.Elowan: A plant-robot hybrid Read the rest

Kano is a Raspberry Pi based computer system. It comes with everything you need besides an HDMI monitor. I love the keyboard with the included trackpad. At this sale price, it's probably cheaper than separately buying a Raspberry Pi, a microSD card, a case, a keyboard and pointer, a power supply, and cables. Plus, Kano's Linux OS is packed with fun goodies. Read the rest

Yesterday, recreational marijuana became legal in Michigan. To celebrate, Lansing's weekly paper, City Pulse, handed out free joints in front of the capital. Spreading joy with such a simple gesture is a fun thing to watch. Read the rest

Watching this 1987 video of two Radio Shacks (one with Madonna music in the background) makes it clear that 30 years can be a long, long time ago. Prancing Skiltaire (the person who uploaded this video) said, "This was shot in Garden Grove, CA and Buena Park Mall, CA. The person who recorded was an employee working with a regional manager who was inspecting under performing Radio Shacks they were going to renovate." I was fascinated for all 15 minutes of this spellbinding video.Be sure to check out Prancing Skiltaire's other amazing videos, like the Equicon Costume Presentation (1988):And the first Furry Convention! (1989): Read the rest