For just £2 you could own this remote-controlled boat sculpture that was once featured at Banksy's Dismaland. That is, if you guess its weight correctly. Banksy has donated the coin-op artwork to go into a raffle to benefit Choose Love, a store where you can buy gifts for refugees. An entry into the raffle is a £2 donation.Here are the rules: Your guess should be to the nearest gram (for example a guess of about 5 kilos could be 4800g). You can even specify milligrams if you're feeling confident. Closest guess wins the boat (the wooden plinth is not included in the weight guessing).Competition closes 8pm GMT December 22nd 2018. At which time the boat will be weighed by specialist students from Kings College London. The winner will be notified by email. In the event of more than one correct guess the winner will be drawn by lot.Guesses not limited per person. All money donated goes directly to supporting refugees and displaced people. The organisers reserve the right to small print etc.Need a clue? The boat is constructed from a shop bought fibre glass hull customised with quick-cast resin figures which are foam filled and hand spray painted. Although the prize includes battery pack, that is not currently in the boat.Boat dimensions: 90cm x 38cm x 42cm.Enter here.(Cool Hunting) Read the rest

Kodi is a pretty clingy cat. So, his human companion Sho Ko set up a camera to record the little critter while he was out. Turns out Kodi spends most of his day anxiously pacing by the front door making distressing meows waiting for him to come home. YouTube commenters have suggested that Sho Ko turn on talk radio to soothe the needy cat's nerves. (digg) Read the rest

Ugly Christmas sweaters are out. In 2018, ugly Christmas dresses and, yes, sneakers are in. The latter are serious road running shoes: Brooks' Ugly Sweater Levitate 2 ($150). Well, as serious as jingle bells, candy-cane-striped laces, and a festive knit pattern can be.(Popsugar) Read the rest

That massive data breach that hit hotel group Marriott? Now there are clues the hackers behind it were working for a Chinese government intelligence gathering operation.Let's refresh on how bad the hack disclosed just last week ago really was. 500 million people were affected.Unauthorized access to the Starwood network since 2014 … For approximately 327M of these guests, the info includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number.Today, sources familiar with the breach detailed what they know to Reuters: Marriott said last week that a hack that began four years ago had exposed the records of up to 500 million customers in its Starwood hotels reservation system.Private investigators looking into the breach have found hacking tools, techniques and procedures previously used in attacks attributed to Chinese hackers, said three sources who were not authorized to discuss the company’s private probe into the attack.That suggests that Chinese hackers may have been behind a campaign designed to collect information for use in Beijing’s espionage efforts and not for financial gain, two of the sources said.While China has emerged as the lead suspect in the case, the sources cautioned it was possible somebody else was behind the hack because other parties had access to the same hacking tools, some of which have previously been posted online.Identifying the culprit is further complicated by the fact that investigators suspect multiple hacking groups may have simultaneously been inside Starwood’s computer networks since 2014, said one of the sources. Read the rest

Tchiya Amet says Neil DeGrasse Tyson raped her in the 1980s. As his star rose, no one believed her. Three additional women, one for the first time, now say Neil sexually harassed them. This isn't looking good for the popular science entertainment personality.Allegations against Neil DeGrasse Tyson were previously detailed on this website, patheos.com. Now there's reporting from Azeen Ghorayshi for BuzzFeed News:With three women now making allegations on the record, the Patheos article spread far and wide, prompting Fox Broadcasting Company, which produces the show, and National Geographic, which airs it, to announce an official investigation. A spokesperson for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where Tyson has led the Hayden Planetarium for over 20 years, said that it has never received a complaint about him, but was also looking into the allegations. On Saturday, Tyson released a 1,600-word statement on Facebook, confirming many of the details of Watson’s and Allers’ allegations, and apologizing for what he deemed clumsy displays of affection that had been misunderstood.He also responded to Amet’s rape allegations, his only public acknowledgment of the claims in the four years since Amet first blogged about them. He said they had been friends in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, and had been “intimate” on a few occasions. But he denied raping her. Noting her “odd” interests in New Age healing, he suggested she had a “false memory.” (Watson, Allers, and Amet have disputed much of Tyson’s statement. Read the rest

Genius.“How to save your hair in the winter.” Original art by IMGURian shenanigansen.(via, Photograph: Shutterstock) Read the rest

Facebook's changes to content display algorithms met with “the fierce devotion in France to local and regional identity,” and the so-called yellow jacket protests in France exploded.“What’s happening right now in France isn’t happening in a vacuum,” reports Buzzfeed. This is real Sourcerer's Apprentice stuff. Social media is the real global political story. Nobody wants to admit it, because doing so always sounds like it invalidates the concerns of the often legitimately angry. But it is. It is. https://t.co/QABuXPu1fp— Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) December 5, 2018Excerpt:The Yellow Jackets movement — named for the protesters’ brightly colored safety vests — is a beast born almost entirely from Facebook. And it’s only getting more popular. Recent polls indicate the majority of France now supports the protesters. The Yellow Jackets communicate almost entirely on small, decentralized Facebook pages. They coordinate via memes and viral videos. Whatever gets shared the most becomes part of their platform.Due to the way algorithm changes made earlier this year interacted with the fierce devotion in France to local and regional identity, the country is now facing some of the worst riots in many years — and in Paris, the worst in half a century.This isn’t the first time real-life violence has followed a viral Facebook storm and it certainly won’t be the last. Much has already been written about the anti-Muslim Facebook riots in Myanmar and Sri Lanka and the WhatsApp lynchings in Brazil and India. Well, the same process is happening in Europe now, on a massive scale. Read the rest

The downfall of Milo is delicious. The flaming Trumpster fire lasted just one day on the crowdfunding platform Patreon before getting banned. No-platforming works. The Mercers want their money back from Milo, he's utterly broke at more than a million dollars in debt, and now he's shunned from internet platforms where he hoped to fundraise for himself. This is great. Hi there, thanks for the tweet. Milo Yiannopoulos was removed from Patreon as we don't allow association with or supporting hate groups on Patreon. For more info, please see our Community Guidelines. https://t.co/L7737I1ENi— Patreon (@Patreon) December 5, 2018Excerpt from VOX:Former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to fund a “magnificent 2019 comeback” on the crowdfunding platform Patreon, only to be banned after one day. Yiannopoulos’ Patreon campaign, whose banner image is seen above, garnered around 250 patrons pledging an unknown amount of money before being kicked off the service.“Milo Yiannopoulos was removed from Patreon as we don’t allow association with or supporting hate groups on Patreon,” the company said in a tweet. Leaked emails have linked Yiannopoulos to white supremacists, and a 2016 video showed him singing karaoke in a bar while audience members, including white nationalist Richard Spencer, gave Nazi salutes. Read the rest

For the past couple of years, the United States has been investigating allegations that Huawei shipped American-made products to Iran. The why of the matter is that having Iran get their mitts on US goods is a violation of the trade sanctions that the United States government imposed on the middle eastern nation. The Justice Department Investigation into Huawei was kept quiet until The Wall Street Journal broke the news on it this past April. From the looks of things, investigators must have come up with some pretty solid dirt as Canadian law enforcement officials arrested one of Huawei's highest ranking officers, earlier this week:From The Globe and Mail:Canada has arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies who is facing extradition to the United States on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran.Wanzhou Meng, who is also the deputy chair of Huawei’s board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Vancouver at the request of U.S. authorities.“Wanzhou Meng was arrested in Vancouver on December 1. She is sought for extradition by the United States, and a bail hearing has been set for Friday,” Justice department Ian McLeod said in a statement to The Globe and Mail. “As there is a publication ban in effect, we cannot provide any further detail at this time. The ban was sought by Ms. Meng.Ms. Meng, a rising star at Shenzhen-based Huawei, now the world’s second-largest maker of telecommunications equipment. Reuters reported in 2013 that Ms. Read the rest

In 1998 I profiled artist/inventor Chuck Hoberman for Wired (read it here). It was a fun article to write because Chuck is brilliant, and very nice. You have probably seen two of his most famous expanding/transforming/unfolding creations, the Hoberman Sphere and the Hoberman Switch Pitch. Recently, Wired made this video profile of Chuck. A video is a better way than an article to understand what he does. Read the rest

Russia is back on its Ukraine bullshit again: last week, the Russian navy boarded and seized a Ukrainian gunboat and a tugboat taking the crews of the vessels prisoner, at least for the time being. NATO is sitting on their hands, just like they did when Putin sent mercenaries and unflagged Russian special forces operators into Ukraine to wrest control of the Crimea peninsula back in 2014. There's a lot of finger wagging and tut-tutting, sure. Trump said that he was calling off his chat with Putin last week as a result of the Russian military's aquatic clusterfuck...but then he met with him anyway.After four years of putting up with Russian occupation of a chunk of their territory, Ukraine knows better than to leave sorting it out to diplomacy: the seizure of the nation's vessels could well be Putin's way of gauging the west's reaction to a larger action--one that could lead to a large-scale assault on Ukrainian turf. In response to Putin's dry run, Ukraine has called up its citizen reservists, declared martial law in some parts of the country, and has been toying with the idea of refusing entry to any Russian male of fighting age. Oh, and they've asked Canada to renew the assistance that they've been giving them for the past few years.From The CBC:Canada is being asked to renew its military training mission to Ukraine — a proposal that's taking on a whole new level of urgency as border tension ramps up with Russia. Read the rest

Laurie Penny (previously) got sent on the 2018 CoinsBank Blockchain Cruise -- a four-day cruise filled with "starry-eyed techno-utopians and sketchy-ass crypto-grifters" who solved the fact that there almost no women signed up using the "free market": they paid teen sex workers from Ukraine to ship out with them.Penny is a superb writer, a master of empathizing with terrible people (that is, understanding where they're coming from) without sympathizing with them (forgiving them for their terribleness) -- it's a rare skill, the sort of thing that makes her essay collection Bitch Doctrine so essential.She set sail on the cruise at an odd moment in the cryptocurrency bubble: with crypto valuations way, way down, cryptocurrency is getting harder and harder to sell as anything but a ponzi scheme. The "investors" on the trip are often very newly wealthy, and they are furiously engaged in attempts to convince one another to "invest" in new schemes that will shift the wealth that cryptos sucked out of the masses into fewer and fewer hands.The grifters and true believers that Penny met onboard (sometimes the same people are both!) split their time from using Telegram to procure the services of sex workers and shouting at each other about block sizes. Penny gets right into the psyches and the compartmentalization that powers the whole scene.On most ideological bandwagons, there is usually a distinction between grifters and true believers. The grifters are in it for the fame and the money and will say any old bollocks to get either. Read the rest

From the weekly series The Bureau. Brought to you this week by the U.S. House of Representatives and InjectoCortex, Proud provider of INF-based Brain Transistors for Elected Officials (IBTEOs) since public disclosure of their existence in 1952.

Most HD television sets have a motion smoothing setting to reduce blur, but if it is applied to movies, it makes the movies look like a soap opera. It’s very annoying. Here’s Tom Cruise, pleading with people not to use motion smoothing while watching movies on TV.I’m taking a quick break from filming to tell you the best way to watch Mission: Impossible Fallout (or any movie you love) at home. pic.twitter.com/oW2eTm1IUA— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 4, 2018 Here’s a bit more about motion smoothing: Read the rest

Scotch Tear-by-Hand Tape costs a bit more than regular packing tape, but the convenience of not having to tear the tape (and your fingers) with a dispenser is more than worth the additional expense. It's very easy to tear this tape, but it seems as strong as ordinary packing tape. Read the rest

Gourski & Appel reduce an idea to phenomena, and a genre to its fundamentals: Against our fast-moving world, in which media content is often reduced, Jonas and I let inspiration guide us to create a seven and a half minutes long sample project in a docks setting surrounded by abandoned industry. We’re glad about each viewer who appreciates our creation! ● Everything you're about to hear is visualized in this video. ● No additional sounds were used to produce this track. ● Best experienced with stereo headphones or hifi speakers. ● This project was made for the purpose of making art. ● No objects were damaged while recording. Read the rest

Our washing machine chatters and shakes so much that sometimes I think it's going to break apart. (In fact, I hear it shaking right now.) I adjust the feet frequently (why do they make it so hard to turn the feet to raise and lower them?), but it doesn't do a lot of good. Help could be on the way in the form of this brace that mounts on the bottom or top of the washer and uses active vibration control to reduce shaking. The video is impressive, as is the price: $50 on Kickstarter. Read the rest

Peter writes, "ThingsCon, our Berlin-based non-profit for a more responsible IoT, launches a trustmark for IoT - the Trustable Technology Mark. Cory gave some input to it a while back already, and finally it's launch day: We want to highlight the best work in IoT, the best/most respectful of users' rights, privacy and security. It's an entirely non-profit effort to elevate the debate in this odd space that's full of crap; I think you might like it."How does the trustmark work?The Trustable Technology Mark evaluates 5 dimensions that are essential to establish the trustworthiness of a connected device. The application consists of a self-assessment questionnaire followed by a review by experts from the ThingsCon network.Privacy & Data PracticesIs it designed using state of the art data practices, and respectful of user rights?TransparencyIs it made clear to users what the device does and how data might be used?SecurityIs it designed and built using state of the art security practices and safeguards?StabilityHow robust is the device and how long of a life cycle can a consumer reasonably expect?OpennessHow open are both the device and the manufacturer‘s processes? Is open data used or generated?Trustable Tech Read the rest

Cavalier King Charles Spaniels die of heart disease. I wanted to help Zuul lose some weight.Having one big dog and one little dog has made doggie weight management more of a challenge than ever before. In general, I've usually had two or more similar sized dogs. The Great Pyrenees is supposed to be 100+ pounds larger than his bossy best pal, Z.First I switched off calorie-rich snacks to carrots. Zuul will eat all the carrots I give her and keep on begging for more. Her poops will turn into piles of masticated carrot if I let her. She got no smaller.Then I reduced her food from the meager 1/3 cup she got each meat to 1/4 cup. She was just not satisfied at al! The tiny monster would steal from the Great Pyrenees. One chunk of Nemo's kibble is a massive amount of food for her, and he doesn't mind sharing with her. She got no thinner.I walked her more, but the caloric burn of an extra mile or two didn't help.I switched her over to this Nutro weight management food and increased her per-meal volume back up to 1/3rd a cup. She stopped being as starved all the time. Baby carrots help her get full, but no so many she is crapping out undigested carrot.Giving carrots to a Great Pyrenees turns their slobber orange, and then their fur orange anywhere they lick. Give white dogs the white 'heriloom' carrots or whatever they are. You'll thank me! Read the rest

Pro Office Calculator is obviously just a normal (Mac/Win/Lin) calculator, right? Wrong. I love this shit. (via Waxy) Read the rest

USA Today reports that a police station christmas tree garlanded with stereotypically black items and posted to social media resulted in demotions and suspensions.Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo noted that it was "racially insensitive" in a post on the department's Facebook page."As soon as it was realized what the display was, it was removed," Arradondo said. "I am ashamed and appalled by the behavior of those who would feel comfortable to act in such a manner that goes against our core department values of Trust, Accountability and Professional Service."Menthol ciggies and Old English, very clever. This seems to be a thing in Minnesota. HuffPo reports it's the fourth precinct to do something like it. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey promised to fire the officer responsible by the end of the day but backed down within hours. Funny how that happens. Read the rest

Damian Collins chairs the UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee; it was he who ordered the Parliamentary Serjeant at Arms to drag a visiting US tech executive named Ted Kramer out of his hotel to surrender his laptop to Parliament so they could see the internal Facebook documents that a US federal judge had ordered sealed.Kramer is CEO of Six4Three, a creepy US startup whose Facebook app helped you find pictures of your friends in bikinis; when the app was neutered by a change to Facebook's API, Six4Three sued Facebook and in the course of pre-trial discovery, they were given extensive internal documents from Facebook, which the judge in the case had ordered sealed. Somehow, Collins got wind of the fact that Kramer, his laptop, and the documents were all in London, and -- having been spurned by Mark Zuckerberg, who repeatedly refused demands to appear in Parliament -- saw his chance.Now, Collins has dumped a 250 page file, hosted on Parliament's servers, which includes the documents from Kramer's laptop and Collins's summary.The release comes despite a plea from Facebook to respect the US court order and not publish the documents.The documents are incredibly damning. They show Facebookers at the highest level -- up to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg -- conspiring to trick Android users about how much data was being gathered by an update to the Facebook app; to give certain companies "whitelisted" access to user data beyond the access the company had disclosed to its users; to explicitly productize "friends" data (that is, to allow the trick Cambridge Analytica pulled, when getting a user to grant permission to their own data also allowed a company to access their friends' data); to use the Onavo battery-monitor app to covertly gather data on which other apps users had installed; and anti-competitive targeting of partners' apps. Read the rest

The sushi-making scene is one of many standout scenes in Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. Now we can see how the sushi-making scene was made, thanks to this time lapse video of animators moving the sushi ingredients and the hands of the sushi chef. (The song in the background is "I Won't Hurt You" by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band).And here is how the scene looks in the movie:[via Kottke] Read the rest

Cops see themselves as a thin blue line, but the job is is turning into a scarlet letter.Nationwide, interest in becoming a police officer is down significantly. In Nashville, job applications dropped from 4,700 in 2010 to 1,900 last year. In Seattle, applications have declined by nearly 50 percent in a department where the starting salary is $79,000. ... Videos of police misconduct and fatal shootings have damaged the perception of American police officers but not irrevocably, said Antoinette Archer, director of human relations for the police department in Richmond Many people are “taken aback by the brutality, not by the profession,” she said. “If we can be inclusive” of women and people of color, “those individuals who can see a part of their fabric in the department will come forward. ... If the environment is not inclusive, you’re going to lose them.”Too many cops and too little crime. The invisible fist, it turns out, prefers "less cops" to "more crime," however hard some departments try to manufacture the latter.Archer is maybe concerned with recruitment standards falling to make up numbers, creating a vicious cycle with respect to the "white supremacists and outright psychos" policing problem. Read the rest

An Amazon warehouse in New Jersey sent 24 employees to the hospital after they were exposed to bear repellent fumes. Others were treated at the warehouse. The employees had trouble breathing and said their throats were burning. At least one of the workers is in critical condition.According to The Seattle Times, "bear repellant fell off a shelf and released fumes." Hundreds of workers are normally inside the building during work days, and it was unclear how many were exposed.Amazon confirmed that the accident dispersed strong fumes in the area of the facility. The incident is under investigation.Image: NPS photo Read the rest

Fortnite Battle Royale's Season 7 will feature Fortnite Creative, where players get Mark Zuckerberg's dream... their own private Island.Epic Games' Fortnite Battle Royale is a 100 player online virtual survival contest, where folks in inflatable llama costumes dance the funky chicken after eliminating similarly outrageously clad competitors. There is no blood, but there are a lot of thrown tomatoes.There has been a lot of discussion on the Fortnite Over 40 discord of things like tournaments for GenX, or Parent-Kid play-offs, or perhaps organizing aged gamer scrims and developing treacherous techniques to stop the insanely fast millenials. Perhaps this mode will let us all our dreams come true.Fortnite Creative appears to be the game mode answer to customizing an island and inviting your friends to it! I am sure Epic will deliver something fantastic, even if it takes a few iterations. That is their MO. The first pass will likely disappoint but show great promise. The third will be amazing.You must buy the Season 7 Battle Pass, however, if you want to try Creative mode. Due to Season 6's lackluster battle pass, chock full of crap that I did not want to earn (I still put in a few hours last weekend to grind out the 100 tiers,) I wasn't sure I would invest in Season 7. I will absolutely fork over the 950 v-bucks (approximately $10 USD) now.If you complete a Battle Pass, the rewards pay for the next season's pass. Somewhere around 1100 v-bucks were granted inside the 100 tier grind. Read the rest

Hokkaido is the northernmost of Japan's major islands. It's here that the practice of racing giant draft horses is being kept alive. The horses race against each other by dragging heavy sleds (weighing between 900 pounds and 2000 pounds). The horses are fed four times a day and race once every two weeks.Image: YouTube/Great Big Story Read the rest

When Trevor Noah brought The Daily Show to his South African home to celebrate what would have been Nelson Mandela's 100th birthday, he stopped by his childhood neighborhood to visit with his 91-year-old grandmother. Her memories of what it was like to live under apartheid is both shocking and heartbreaking. Read the rest

Coming up in part 3: "I'm looking for a gift for my aunt."Of course, no Mitchell & Webb sketch may be posted without including the increasingly relevant classic: Read the rest

Rudy Giuliani is having some Twitter trouble. It started last week with a covfefe-esque tweet. Nope. No idea.Then he tweeted this, which resulted in one of Twitter's greatest moments of 2018.Putting a period between any two letters on Twitter instantly creates a hyperlink. A hero who remains anonymous registered the G-20.in domain name and directed it to a webpage with a simple message. When Giuliani, who once served as a cybersecurity expert for the Trump administration, found out about the hyperlink, he apologized for his punctuation error and said he would be more careful in the future. Just kidding. He's blaming Twitter. Trump hires all the best people. He really does. Let's hope these text invaders are brought to justice.Please hurry, Mr. Mueller.(Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr) Read the rest

Rudy Giuliani fatfingered a tweet last week and inadvertently referenced a nonexistent URL (G-20.in); some clever wag registered the URL and stood up a static landing page that reads "Donald J. Trump is a traitor to our country."Now, Giuliani has taken to the intertubes again to upbraid Twitter (and Time Magazine!) for his stupid mistake, tweeting "Twitter allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message. The same thing-period no space-occurred later and it didn’t happen. Don’t tell me they are not committed cardcarrying anti-Trumpers. Time Magazine also may fit that description. FAIRNESS PLEASE."He's wrong, of course. Once again, Giuliani is Trump’s special adviser on cybersecurity and he doesn’t understand that the link was generated automatically. Or that the reason Helsinki.Either didn’t also turn into a link is that .either is not a valid domain name. But the most damning part of this story? Both tweets are (at least at the time of this posting) still up.Rudy Giuliani Doesn’t Seem to Know How the Internet Works [Adam K. Raymond/New York Magazine](via Waxy)(Image: Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the the home of the Smythes, of Chagrin Falls, USA, is selected as an additional Amazon HQ.

Long before Quora admitted to being breached and losing 100,000,000 million users' account data, it had disqualified itself from being used, by dint of its impulse to hoard knowledge and the likelihood that its limping business model would cause it to imminently implode.As Andy "Waxy" Baio writes, Quora has long distinguished itself by the extraordinary lengths it goes to to collect your personal information as a condition of accessing the site, and by the worst-of-breed policies it has in not allowing the Internet Archive to back up its data, or even APIs or backup/export tools (the company even deletes Quora topics that question these policies).Combine that with a quarter billion dollars in venture capital overhang and with their first dollar in revenue only coming in last year (and no earnings reports in sight), and the company stands a good chance of shutting down, or being bought and purged in some significant way -- taking all the material its users provided (and whose export the company blocked) with it.At some point, the investors who dumped a quarter billion dollars into it will want a return on that investment. Last year, founder Adam D’Angelo indicated they expect to eventually IPO. But market conditions, combined with the results of their ad platform, may force them in different directions — a pivot, merger, or acquisition are always a possibility.When Quora shuts down, and it will eventually shut down one day, all of that collected knowledge will be lost.Back in 2012, Adam D’Angelo wrote, “We hope to become an internet-scale Library of Alexandria.”As long as Quora keeps boarding up the exits, we may see it end the same way. Read the rest

In the Occult Defence Agency Budgeting Simulator, you are placed in charge of the budget for an organisation whose mission is "defending the United Kingdom from paranormal threats. Vampire covens, stray werewolves, pixie swarms, cultists with funny robes and impractical daggers, unlicensed hauntings, and more obscure matters" -- but you are British, and that means your boss is a government minister who insists that you make headline-grabbing "swingeing cuts" every year.As you twiddle the dials on payments for the staff Christmas party, pixie relations, the Graveyard Patrol, werewolf holding cells, national branch offices, the staff exorcist, and travel expenses, the minister checks in with you every year to micromanage your choices and also demand further cuts, even as you learn of werewolf outbreaks and rogue vampirism.Can you save Britain from Tories monsters?"Sacrifices must be made!"The minister, who was previously in charge of education, and before that, of health, and who is now heading occult affairs after the most recent cabinet reshuffle, having once again failed to unseat the prime minister, shakes your hand. His skin is damp and oddly yielding. You relax when you realize he doesn't mean human sacrifices. He just wants to reduce your organisation's budget, he explains. By twenty percent. Effective immediately.Your organisation is in charge of defending the United Kingdom from paranormal threats. Vampire covens, stray werewolves, pixie swarms, cultists with funny robes and impractical daggers, unlicensed hauntings, and more obscure matters. Also, to liaise with sister organisations as part of the EUROCC framework - except maybe not anymore, as no one can agree on whether EUROCC, which predates the EU, is affected by Brexit - and to render occult aid and advice to the government - as if they'd ever listen. Read the rest

Poor people were not the primary target of Obamacare; as a group, their care is more likely to be "non-compensated" (trips to the emergency room while classed as "indigent" and unable to pay), so insurance shouldn't make a big difference to them, right?Wrong.A recently updated study, The Effect of Health Insurance on Home Payment Delinquency: Evidence from ACA Marketplace Subsidies, from finance and business researchers affiliated with both academic business schools and several federal reserve banks, compares the rate of home payment delinquencies (mostly rent payments) among the poorest Americans who received Obamacare through Medicaid expansion with their counterparts in Red States that rejected the expansion and denied coverage to their poor citizens.The headline finding is that poor people with health-care are 25% less likely to miss rent payments than their uninsured counterparts. That finding is stable year-over-year, too.The authors argue that the cost of the Medicaid expansion can be offset with savings from evictions, which impose costs in excess of the costs of providing health care.But of course, those savings are a pittance compared to the national savings we'd realize by eliminating for-profit, private healthcare altogether and replacing it with a national universal healthcare system. Instead, low-income households may be the most sensitive to healthcare shocks. Her results counter the conventional wisdom that poor people put off healthcare spending; often, they can’t. The study points to an example from Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, which recounts the circumstances of poor renters across Milwaukee. “They had fallen behind [on rent] two months ago, when a neck X-ray and brain scan set Teddy back $507. Read the rest

In 2011, Europeans rose up over ACTA, the misleadingly named "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement," which created broad surveillance and censorship regimes for the internet. They were successful in large part thanks to the Polish activists who thronged the streets to reject the plan, which had been hatched and exported by the US Trade Representative.Now, Europe is in on the verge of an ever farther-reaching scheme to censor and surveil the internet: the new Copyright Directive, which limits who can link to (and criticise) the news and sets up crowdsourced databases of blacklisted content that anyone can add anything to, and which cannot thereafter be published online.The Poles aren't having any of it: a broad coalition of Poles from the left and the right have come together to oppose the new Directive, dubbing it "ACTA2," which should give you an idea of how they feel about the matter.There are now enough national governments opposed to the Directive to constitute a "blocking minority" that could stop it dead. Alas, the opposition is divided on whether to reform the offending parts of the Directive, or eliminate them outright (this division is why the Directive squeaked through the last vote, in September), and unless they can work together, the Directive still may proceed.A massive coalition of 15,000 Polish creators whose videos, photos and text are enjoyed by over 20,000,000 Poles have signed an open letter supporting the idea of a strong, creator-focused copyright and rejecting the new Copyright Directive as a direct path to censoring filters that will deprive them of their livelihoods. Read the rest

Sometimes, smaller is better - especially when it comes to technology. Doubly so when it comes to gear that will fit into that Christmas stocking. From high-powered flashlights to high-performance earbuds, we've got three deals on tech that anybody can use - and afford.Universal Waterproof Solar ChargerThis handy unit is perfect for the outdoorsy, but won't go unused by anyone who cares about the environment, their power bill, or both. Capable of charging up and storing a battery capacity of 5,000mAh, the Universal Waterproof Solar Charger can charge up an iPhone or Android from what it gathers just soaking up the sun - and it has dropped to its current price of $10.99 from the previous sale price of $13.99.UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlight: 2-PackIt's fitting that these durable flashlights come in a two-pack as they're equally dependable as a hiking flashlight or emergency roadside aid. With an adjustable zoom, three beam modes and an 800-meter range, these will be the gift your friends will thank you no matter how they use it. Originally priced at $100, the UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlight: 2-Pack is currently $14.99.Cresuer Touchwave True Wireless Bluetooth EarbudsNo wires and three hours of life on a single charge means no excuses for stopping that workout or jog. These buds pack CVC Noise Cancellation technology and one-touch, low-pressure controls into a minimalist, ergonomic design. Equipped with a wireless charging case that can juice up the earbuds up to four times on the go, the Cresuer Touchwave True Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds are $34.99 - down from the already sale-priced $44.99. Read the rest

The European Union is at risk of missing a historic opportunity to bring the right to repair into legislation for the first time.From Monday 10 December all EU member states will be called to vote on a package of regulations requiring manufacturers to make consumer and industrial products more repairable and energy-efficient in order to be approved in the EU single market.However, pressure from industry lobbying, especially in key countries with a big manufacturing sector like Germany, Italy and the UK, has severely reduced the repair provisions in the proposed legislation. The latest draft lacks ambition and significantly limits the potential to make repairing appliances easier for all.Luckily, all is not lost. We (The Restart Project) are urging everyone to support citizen-driven campaigning, which is proving fruitful in some of the key countries opposing the regulation. A German petition promoted by repair activists has created a real stir, garnering over 109,000 signatures and resulting in the Ministry of Environment releasing an action plan stating its full support for repair provisions. And in Italy, a petition demanding that the country stops blocking promising regulation has reached over 76,000 signatures and will be handed over to the Minister of Environment this week by community repair group Restarters Milano. But in the UK a similar petition has been overshadowed by Brexit negotiations. Meanwhile local community repair activists have come up with the Manchester Declaration, calling for more repairable products.Citizens want longer lasting and easier to repair products and they get frustrated when things break much earlier than they should. Read the rest

Romanian Artist Costin Ionita transformed a Lenin statue in Bucharest into this enormous writhing rose-headed hydra. The photo is sadly uncredited by the source, which has many more. Read the rest

Over the weekend it seemed like a solid trade agreement – putting the trade war on hold for 90 days – had been made between the United States and China. And then Trump couldn't resist Twitter, where, over a few posts, he warned that if the deal didn't happen, he was a "Tariff Man." Following his toxic tweets, the Dow Jones industrial fell 705 points, or nearly 3%. The Nasdaq fell 3.1%.The negotiations with China have already started. Unless extended, they will end 90 days from the date of our wonderful and very warm dinner with President Xi in Argentina. Bob Lighthizer will be working closely with Steve Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow, Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro.....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018......on seeing whether or not a REAL deal with China is actually possible. If it is, we will get it done. China is supposed to start buying Agricultural product and more immediately. President Xi and I want this deal to happen, and it probably will. But if not remember,......— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018....I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018According to The New York Times:Stocks fell on Tuesday, after President Trump sowed confusion over the status of a truce in the trade war between the United States and China, while the bond market, often considered a safe haven for investors, sent a stark warning about expectations for an economic slowdown. Read the rest

As you may have gathered from the headline, there's a new Captain Marvel trailer to be had. This time around, we're treated to a little more background on one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel comic book and cinematic universes. Also, Nick Fury fucking loves kitties. Read the rest

Coal can be dangerous to mine, is a finite resource, and has, over humanity's centuries of using it as a power source in one way or another, done unspeakable damage to our environment. The Sun's light, ocean tides and the wind? They're practically an infinite resource, can be turned into a power source relatively safely and, due to the infrastructure required to harness them, could be be responsible for tens of thousands of jobs. The coal industry and coal power stations should die: they've had their time. But the Trump administration and the rich loons that love it have a vested interest in coal: money. Wait, what? The coal industry is fiscally unsound? Well, shit...From Carbon Tracker:Two-fifths of the world’s coal power stations are already running at a loss, finds Carbon Tracker in a unique study released today which challenges the need for new coal generation and shows that it makes economic sense to close plants in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.**42% of global coal capacity is already unprofitable because of high fuel costs; by 2040 that could reach 72% as existing carbon pricing and air pollution regulations drive up costs while the price of onshore wind and solar power continues to fall; any future regulation would make coal power still more unprofitable. **It costs more to run 35% of coal power plants than to build new renewable generation; by 2030 building new renewables will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96% of today’s existing and planned coal plants. Read the rest

The most quotable movie of my lifetime, The Big Lebowski, has a fantastic 20th-anniversary commemorative set. The 20th-anniversary gift set includes a shawl collar sweater for your disc, a Big Lebowski bowling ball and bag, and tiny rug to tie your room together!The Big Lebowski20th Anniversary Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital via Amazon Read the rest

"Ryan ToysReview" is such a simple concept for a YouTube channel. A 7-year-old boy – Ryan – plays with his toys, commenting to the camera as he rolls trucks, squirts glue, pretends to fly airplanes, and whatever else kids do for fun at that age. And yet, he's raking in the bucks, making $22 million this past year, according to Forbes.These short, simple videos have made Ryan one of the most popular influencers online, with 17.3 million followers and a total of nearly 26 billion views since he (and his parents) launched his main channel, Ryan ToysReview, in March 2015. For Ryan, this means not only an endless stream of toys to play with but also a seemingly endless stream of money: He was this year’s highest-paid YouTube star, earning $22 million in the 12 months leading up to June 1, 2018, Forbes estimates.What's his secret? Why do so many young people watch his show? "Because I’m entertaining and I’m funny,” the confident little guy told NBC. Right to the point! Read the rest

Aol deliberately provided advertisers with the means to illegally track children and target advertising to them. It will pay a $5m fine, reports The New York Times. At Ars Technica, Jon Brodkin reports that it's the largest COPPA hit yet.Verizon has consistently fought government regulation of privacy in broadband networks. As owner of Oath, Verizon is forcing users of Yahoo services to waive their class-action rights and agree to resolve disputes through arbitration.The attorney general investigation "examined AOL's practices between October 2015 and February 2017," The New York Times reported. Verizon did not admit or deny the investigation's findings but told the Times, "We are pleased to see this matter resolved and remain wholly committed to protecting children's privacy online."It's like something from a creepy fable: a drooling, dangerous dog so obviously untrustworthy that to leave the children with it is tantamout to feeding it, yet we keep doing it. But if you you chain me, how will I guard your house? Read the rest

“If the Crown Prince went in front of a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes,” Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said after a closed-door Senate briefing with CIA Director Gina Haspel. In other words, Corker and his fellow Senators were convinced by the evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.In a rare instance of opposition against Trump, GOP senators are calling for an end to arms sales to the Saudis. From the Washington Post:In some of their strongest accusations to date, lawmakers said evidence presented by the U.S. spy agency overwhelmingly pointed to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the assassination.Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said while there was no smoking gun, there was a “smoking saw,” referring to the bone saw that investigators have said was used to dismember Khashoggi after he was killed by a team of agents from Saudi Arabia in that country’s consulate in Istanbul in October.Graham made clear that business as usual with the Saudis had come to end, and said the United States should come down on the government in Riyahd like “a ton of bricks,” adding that he could no longer support arms sales to the Saudis as long as Mohammed was in charge.Image: Defense Secretary James N. Mattis meets with Saudi Arabia's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., by Navy Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Kathryn E. Read the rest

Watch below. A triumphant Manhattan moment. I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me. I'm going to see it again and again and again and again and again. The most intense fight I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/TCXXO98ijp— Guy (@apiecebyguy) December 4, 2018 Read the rest

"It’s aggressively tangy, like Kool-Aid made from pine cones." That's how The Atlantic's Olga Khazan describes the smell of the men's body wash she used during a recent shower (it was her boyfriend's body wash; she'd run out of her own lavender-scented liquid soap). Curious as to why almost all men's fragrances have a similar smell, Khazan reached out to Ann Gottlieb, a scent designer for Axe, to find out what the deal is. In short, floral/fruity scents are stereotypically considered more feminine, and woodsy/minty smells are considered more masculine. (See video below.)In any fragrance, she explained, there are what are called top, middle, and bottom notes. The top notes diffuse right away and hit the nose first. The middle notes make up the majority of the fragrance and give it its character. The bottom notes are heavier and help the scent stay on the skin. “It all comes together in a magical concoction,” Gottlieb says.A scent relies on a perfumer expertly mixing 75 to 200 ingredients, most of them synthetic. In a women’s fragrance, there’s a large middle section filled with floral and fruity notes, and a bottom section that’s more vanilla-y. Men’s fragrances, meanwhile, are extremely “fresh” smelling, which is what gives men’s products that sharp bite. Men’s scents have notes of mint or “sea” or “fresh air” on top, followed by less prominent notes of leaves and flowers, all underpinned by woodsy bottom notes. According to Gottlieb, the most traditional male fragrances are in a category called fougère, after the French word for “fern.” They’re, well, kind of grassy. Read the rest

Samsung's latest phones have a "portrait" mode that cleverly fakes the look of a shot taken with a fancy lens on a full-frame sensor. But a picture they used as an example in an ad turns out to be a stock photo taken with a high-end DLSR. Moreover, the photographer, Dunja Djudjic, has a blog and is currently murdering Samsung.My first reaction was to burst out into laughter. Just look at the Photoshop job they did on my face and hair! I’ve always liked my natural hair color (even though it’s turning gray black and white), but I guess the creator of this franken-image prefers reddish tones. Except in the eyes though, where they removed all of the blood vessels.Whoever created this image, they also cut me out of the original background and pasted me onto a random photo of a park. I mean, the original photo was taken at f/2.0 if I remember well, and they needed the “before” and “after” – a photo with a sharp background, and another one where the almighty “portrait mode” blurred it out. So Samsung’s Photoshop master resolved it by using a different background.Huawei did exactly the same thing a while back. We wonder at the sheer stupidity of it, but I wonder if that's just confirmation bias, in that the stupid ones get caught.Just think of all the plagiarism that's going to be exposed virtually overnight when someone turns the AIs loose on the problem. But also the false charges of such, generated by the normal and natural lines of influence and fair use it will also reveal. Read the rest