Your supervisor would like to speak with you today at 10:53am. Good thing you have a great tasting sandwich to deal with that unreasonable feedback.

"Privacy Not Included" is Mozilla's Christmas shopping (anti)-guide to toys and gadgets that spy on you and/or make stupid security blunders, rated by relative "creepiness," from the Nintendo Switch (a little creepy) to the Fredi Baby monitor (very creepy!).Mozilla's reviews include a detailed rationale for each ranking, including whether the product includes encryption, whether it forces a default password change, how easy to understand the documentation is, whether it shares your data for "unexpected reasons," whether it has known security vulnerabilities, whether it has parental controls and more.The reviews also explain what might go wrong with each product (some of these are a little unconvincing, like an insecure sous vide wand that could overcook your food). Mozilla rightly acknowledges that a survey of 70 products shouldn’t be seen as any sort of definitive buying guide. There are thousands of internet-connected presents waiting to be gifted this year, all of them offering a wide range of privacy controls. But that’s not the point.“The number of products is a drop in the bucket,” says Boyd. “We’re trying to drive a conversation where manufacturers can see that consumers care about this information. We’re trying to give people essentially a way to look at any product and what to look for, what questions to ask.”Shop Safe This Holiday Season [Mozilla]Mozilla Makes a Naughty List of Gifts That Aren't Secure [Brian Barrett/Wired] Read the rest

Alex Jones, starved of attention since he was no-platformed by Big Tech, has launched a desperate bid for notoriety, releasing an unhinged (even by Jones's standards) statement blaming the credit-card skimming malware his online store was serving on "a zero-day hack probably carried out by leftist stay behind networks hiding inside US intelligence agencies" (he also blamed it on "big tech, the communist Chinese, and the Democratic party" "globalist forces, "the corporate press, Antifa and rogue intelligence operatives").Jones claims that none of the suckers who buy his rebadged Gwyneth Paltrow quack remedies were affected by the malware.De Groot spotted the malware infection on the Infowars online store using a powerful malware scanner that he built a few years back and which is specialized in detecting vulnerabilities and infections in online stores built on top of the Magento e-commerce platform."I have not detected any other malware on this site in the past 3.5 years," de Groot told ZDNet in an interview today. "The first detection was on 2018/11/12 21:37:07 UTC. It was added in the previous 24h," de Groot said, referring to today's discovery of the malicious JavaScript code.The malware that de Groot found was hidden inside a modified block of Google Analytics code.Card skimming malware removed from Infowars online store [Catalin Cimpanu/Zdnet] Read the rest

Melania Trump publicly called for the firing of an official in her husband's administration late Tuesday, flexing her political muscle and giving the distinct impression that no-one is really in charge right now.“It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House,” Melania Trump’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement in response to a question about reports the first lady had sought [Mira] Ricardel’s removal.Like a dollar store Isabella Peron, the First Lady is taking control in the absense of any discernible competence or authority in the men circling a moribund presidency. Now, as Trump enters the back end of his first term in office, determined to shake up his team at the senior ranks and facing a Democratic-run House, Kelly’s grasp has been exposed as flimsier than ever. With the president mangling an overseas trip and infighting among White House staff nearing Civil War-like levels, the chief of staff appears to be more of a bystander to the chaos than a manager of it. No one, at this juncture, is particularly surprised. America does everything better, even the political omnishambles. In Melania's defense, Richardel (a former Boeing executive and John Bolton crony) seems an inappropriate person to leave anywhere near power or policymaking.Eat the figs, Donald. Read the rest

One of my all-time favorite tee-shirts is available again: the HTTPSTER by Christopher DeCaro ($25). The hypertext-transfer-protocol antithetic hipster shirt for nerds, geeks and unicorns. Read the rest

Tyler Barriss, a serial hoaxer whose SWATting calls to 911 we've covered before, is off to jail. He'll serve at least 20 years, according to his plea deal, but won't be sentenced until January.A California man has admitted making a hoax call that ultimately led police to fatally shoot a Kansas man following a dispute between online gamers over $1.50 bet in a Call of Duty WWII video game.Twenty-six-year-old Tyler R. Barriss pleaded guilty to making a false report resulting in a death, cyberstalking and conspiracy related to the deadly swatting case in the Kansas. The deal with prosecutors will send him to prison for at least 20 years, if the judge accepts it. He had previously pleaded not guilty in Kansas.28-year-old Wichita, Kansas father of two, Andrew Finch, was killed by local police in 2017 after Barriss apparently took a $1.50 in-game bet to call them on him. Vile as he is, Barriss is just a trigger: the bomb is police enthusiasm for deadly violence on the slightest pretext. Prosecutors refused to charge Justin Rapp, the cop who actually killed Finch, though his department faces a lawsuit from his family. Read the rest

If you're a Disney-Pixar superfan, this $2500 is a solid investment. A fan from Colorado recreated the Pizza Planet pickup from Toy Story (which has also made several cameos in other Disney-Pixar films) and now has to sell his sweet, sweet banana yellow ride. His loss, your gain.The truck runs and handles a bit rough. Its very hard to part with, but it needs to go. Looking for $2500. Make me an offer, but please don't insult me. Lots of my own work went into the exterior.You know you want it: 1983 Toyota Pickup (Pizza Planet) - $2500 (Highlands Ranch)(Geekologie)images via screenshot and Craigslist Read the rest

BGP is a notoriously insecure process by which routes for internet data are advertised and discovered by routers; its ubiquity and insecurity make it a prime suspect whenever it seems that national spy agencies might be diverting traffic.So when bad BGP routes caused traffic destined for Google to be briefly routed through China on Monday, there was widespread suspicion that Chinese state actors were experimenting with, or sending a message about, their capacity to surveil Google traffic.Now a Nigerian cable operator, Main One, has taken responsibility for the traffic diversion, claiming that it was the result of an accidental misconfiguration created during a network upgrade. Main One's upstream provider is China Telcom, and Main One's error caused Google traffic to be diverted to China Telcom's network for 74 minutes.Google has not commented extensively on the diversion except to acknowledge that it occurred. Reuters spoke to Tel Aviv University security researcher Yuval Shavitt an expert who said that the diversion might still have been deliberate -- Shavitt recently published a paper alleging that China military agencies have routinely engaged in BGP-based traffic hijacking.Glitches in border gateway protocol filters have caused multiple outages to date, including cases where traffic from U.S. internet and financial services firms was routed through Russia, China and Belarus.Yuval Shavitt, a network security researcher at Tel Aviv University, said it was possible that Monday’s issue was not an accident.“You can always claim that this is some kind of configuration error,” said Shavitt, who last month co-authored a paper alleging that the Chinese government had conducted a series of internet hijacks. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH little Donald uses his spunky imagination to come up with a nifty way to handle some tough midterms!

A suprisingly evenly-matched battle at the Hogle Zoo in Utah. At least one more confrontation is posted to YouTube featuring a young elephant there, named Zuri, who evidently has a geese problem. Read the rest

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was training for a career as a history teacher when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. She suspended her studies to enlist as a sniper in the Red Army, where she discovered a remarkable talent for shooting enemy soldiers. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the career of "Lady Death," the deadliest female sniper in history.We'll also learn where in the world futility.closet.podcast is and puzzle over Air Force One.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The Slow Mo Guys whacked some rainbow Jell-O (aka "jelly") through a tennis racket for their latest video. As they're known to do, they captured it all in its slo-mo glory using a Phantom v2640 high-speed camera.(Tastefully Offensive) Read the rest

Pam Cowburn from Article 19 sez, "Over 70 civil society groups have written to Mark Zuckerberg asking for Facebook to review its content removal processes and give all users the opportunity to appeal against content takedowns that they think have been made in error."Facebook remains far behind its competitors when it comes to affording its users due process. 1 We know from years of research and documentation that human content moderators, as well as machine learning algorithms, are prone to error, and that even low error rates can result in millions of silenced users when operating at massive scale. Yet Facebook users are only able to appeal content decisions in a limited set of circumstances, and it is impossible for users to know how pervasive erroneous content takedowns are without increased transparency on Facebook’s part. 2While we acknowledge that Facebook can and does shape its Community Standards according to its values, the company nevertheless has a responsibility to respect its users' expression to the best of its ability. Furthermore, civil society groups around the globe have criticized the way that Facebook’s Community Standards exhibit bias and are unevenly applied across different languages and cultural contexts. Offering a remedy mechanism, as well as more transparency, will go a long way toward supporting user expression. An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg: [Santa Clara Principles]ARTICLE 19 and 70+ civil society groups write to Mark Zuckerberg over content removal [Article 19] Read the rest

After Trump's tax-cuts and forgiveness program, Apple repatriated $260 billion it had stashed in offshore tax havens (or, more truthfully, had funneled through offshore tax-havens to buy onshore financial products that were notionally held offshore); this made Apple the leading beneficiary of the Trump tax forgiveness program.Apple used that money to continue its streak of record-setting stock buybacks, which which the company gooses its share price and allows investors to cash out, diverting money from worker compensation and R&D to financial engineering.Apple's stock-buybacks are so aggressive that they have lured in Berkshire Hathaway, famous for "patient investing" -- Apple CEO Tim Cook initially touted this as vindication that the company still had the confidence of "value investors," until Berkshire CEO Warren Buffet clarified that his stake in Apple was based on the expectation that the company would continue to use financial engineering to reward investors who brought nothing to the table except the ability to move share prices.Cook has since suggested that the buybacks will create public value because of the capital gains that Apple investors will pay when they cash out -- but of course, Trump's tax cuts offer massively preferential tax rates for people who earn money through capital gains, shifting the US tax burden onto waged workers who earn their money by making things that other people use.Just after the announcement in May 2018 that Buffett had purchased an additional 74 million Apple shares, interviewer David Rubenstein asked Apple CEO Tim Cook: “Are you pleased to have him as your shareholder?” Cook responded: “I’m overjoyed. Read the rest

This is for everyone who follows me on social media, or who has read my press criticism. All my former students. Fans of my blog, PressThink. Anyone who owns my book. Anyone who's heard me speak. It is a personal statement, from me to them. I have never asked you for anything. Except maybe to read this, or share that. I don't push products, or join campaigns. But today, after 32 years as an observer and critic of the press, I am breaking with that policy. Breaking it in half.Today I am asking you to do what I have done: join The Correspondent. If you have ever wondered what I would recommend to public-spirited people who want a better press, this is it. Go here, read about the site's founding principles, and if they move you become a member.I won't make a dime if you do. I am not getting paid to tell you this. I have no stake in the company. I am not an officer or an employee. I just believe in what they are doing, and I have tried to advise them on how to do it better.After the shock of the 2016 election, I felt I had to find something more useful to do than criticize the performance of the news media. (I do that, as well.) So I decided to work with The Correspondent on its membership campaign, which launches today. Now I am asking you to participate, for reasons I will explain. Read the rest

In January 2018, researchers made a blockbuster announcement of seemingly unpatchable security bugs lurking in Intel processors; after a round of initial reassurances about the mitigations for these bugs, it became apparent that the reassurances were overblown, and active exploits were found in the field -- and then still-more bugs exploiting "speculative execution," started to pour out of the security research community.This week, the original Spectre/Meltdown team revealed seven more of these speculative execution attacks, discovered through a systematic exploration of the potential uses of data obtained by trickery from different parts of the CPU that can be attacked in this way. Some of these attacks cannot be mitigated by any of the known mitigation techniques.Processors rely on "speculative execution" for performance gains that compensate for a slowdown in gains from clockspeed, microlithography and other historic sources of processor improvement. Speculative execution uses statistical techniques to predict what instruction is likely to follow on from one received from the program, effectively guessing that if you run instruction X, the computer should start executing Y straightaway because that is likely to follow on. That guessing system is exploitable by attackers, who can use it to force processors into executing malicious code.In the new research, these Meltdown variants are joined by a new one using Intel's "Protection Keys for Userspace" (PKU). Protection keys introduced with Skylake allow an application to mark pieces of memory with a four-bit key. Applications set the processor to use a particular protection key, and, during that time, attempts to access memory that is labeled with a different key will generate an error. Read the rest

Mini Materials are 1:6 scale construction toys made from brick, wood, concrete and other real construction materials: everything from breeze blocks to Jersey barriers to pine pallets (marketed as drinks coasters!). (via Super Punch) Read the rest

In addition to destroying hundreds of homes and claiming human lives, the Woolsey Fire that began last Thursday burned 83% of federal park land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, per Cal Fire.So far, the fire has burned at least 435 homes, and blazed through some 96,314 acres. LAFD says the blaze is 35% contained.A considerable portion of that 96,314 acres was protected, wild, open space that is home to bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes, and innumerable other indigenous species of plants and living creatures.The destruction of so much land is a “stunning loss of a cherished open space area for Southern California,” writes David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times.The Santa Monica Mountains, which stretch from Hollywood Hills to Point Mugu in Ventura County, have long offered Southern Californians a respite from the city below with the range’s array of hiking trails, waterfalls and rock pools. And its sprawling ranch land has given Hollywood real-world ties to the frontier life it exhaustively depicted on screen.The Woolsey fire destroyed more than 400 structures but also took a deep toll on landmark areas of the mountain areas. Wildfires decimated the historic park tucked inside the Santa Monica Mountains a day earlier — taking with it markers of its proud past as a backdrop for television shows and movies such as “Planet of the Apes.”Flames consumed the set of the long-running TV series “MASH.” The same went for the Reagan Ranch, named after the former president and actor who used to own one of three parcels that comprise the 44-year-old park’s footprint along with Bob Hope and 20th Century Fox. Read the rest

Simply setting fire to her wedding dress wouldn't do for Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler. The newly divorced woman from outside San Antonio, Texas (shocker!) attached 20 pounds of Tannerite to the dress and created an explosive target. In front of family and friends, she shot the dress from 200 yards away, creating a fireball and explosion that was heard for miles. Santleben-Stiteler plans on selling her wedding ring. Sorry, demolition fans.Via Star-Telegram Read the rest

The good folks at Improv Everywhere made a couple of old phone booths in New York City a "little more useful" by converting them into co-working spaces.Watch how they break some people's brains:Improv Everywhere: Phone Booth Coworking Read the rest

The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, created these Damage Proxy Maps (DPMs) that show the areas in California that were probably damaged by the Woolsey and Camp Fires. From NASA JPL:The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, created these Damage Proxy Maps (DPMs) depicting areas in California likely damaged by the Woolsey and Camp Fires. They are derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).The pre-event images for the Woolsey Fire in Southern California (main image) were taken before the fire on Oct. 30, 2018 and the post-event image was acquired during the fire on Nov. 11, 2018. The map covers an area of 50 miles x 25 miles (80 km x 40 km), indicated with the big red polygon. Each pixel measures about 33 yards x 33 yards (30 m x 30 m). The color variation from yellow to red indicates increasingly more significant ground surface change.The pre-event images for the Camp Fire in Northern California (Figure 1) were taken on Nov. 4, 2018 and the post-event images were acquired during the fire on Nov. 10, 2018. The map covers an area of 55 miles x 48 miles (88 km x 77 km). As in the previous image, each pixel measures about 33 yards x 33 yards (30 m x 30 m). The color variation from yellow to red indicates increasingly more significant ground surface change. Read the rest

After the whole damn planet declared its disgust with China's lifting the ban on using tiger bones and rhino horn in medicine, the Chinese government has decided to back peddle on its declaration: using the exotic, endangered animals bits and pieces will remain off limits to the world of eastern medicine. From The New York Times:Making a rare concession, the State Council, China’s cabinet, said that it had decided to postpone an order made last month to undo a 25-year ban on the trade.“The Chinese government has not changed its stance on wildlife protection and will not ease the crackdown on illegal trafficking and trade of rhinos, tigers and their byproducts,” Ding Xuedong, a top official with the council, said in remarks published in the state-run news media on Monday.I'm having a hard time believing that anything to do with any government would be good news this year, but here we are. It is worth noting, however, that the Chinese ban on slapping bones and horn into medicine isn't permanent. It could be rescinded at any point in the future. However, as The New York Times points out, China's working hard to sort out a greater share of respect on the world stage. Not murdering rare animals for their bits and pieces? That's an easy win.Now if we could just get them to knock off the shit they're pulling with Muslims in their nation, we'll be getting somewhere. Image by Soumyajit Nandy - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Read the rest

In news that will not surprise anyone who is Black, Latinx, Jewish, Muslim, queer, or a member of any other group targeted by hateful idiots, hate crimes in America are way up under Trump. Says who? FBI.The Federal Bureau of Investigations just released its 2017 Hate Crime Report. In Donald Trump's first year as President of the United States, FBI reports a record high, with thousands more hate crimes than the year prior.2013• 5,928 hate crimes2014•5,462 hate crimes2015•5,818 hate crimes2016•6,063 hate crimes2017•8,437 hate crimes.Here's an excerpt from the top of the FBI's report:Victims of Hate Crime IncidentsThere were 7,106 single-bias incidents involving 8,493 victims. A percent distribution of victims by bias type shows that 59.6 percent of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias; 20.6 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias; 15.8 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias; 1.9 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ disability bias; 1.6 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ gender identity bias; and 0.6 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ gender bias. (Due to rounding, percentage breakdowns may not add to 100.0 percent.)Sixty-nine (69) multiple-bias hate crime incidents involved 335 victims.Offenses by Crime CategoryOf the 5,084 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in 2017, 44.9 percent were for intimidation, 34.3 percent were for simple assault, and 19.5 percent were for aggravated assault. Twenty-three rapes, 15 murders, and 1 offense of human trafficking—commercial sex acts were reported as hate crimes. Read the rest

Jemel Roberson was working as an armed security guard at Manny's Blue Room Bar in the Chicago suburb of Robbins early Sunday morning when he asked a group of intoxicated men to leave the bar. The men came back to the bar and one with a gun began shooting. The 26-year-old security guard fired back and caught one of the men outside of the bar. He had the suspect down on the ground at gunpoint when two Midlothian police officers responding to 911 calls arrived on the scene. One of the officers shot and killed Roberson. "He had somebody on the ground with his knee in back, with his gun in his back like, 'Don’t move,'" witness Adam Harris said.Soon after, witnesses said, an officer responding to the scene fired at Roberson — killing him."Everybody was screaming out, 'Security!' He was a security guard," Harris said. "And they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him."The Cook County medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide and both officers have been placed on administrative leave. Roberson was studying to be a police officer. The NRA has yet to comment.Federal lawsuit filed against Midlothian in fatal shooting of bar security guard (Sam Charles & Mitch Dudek/Chicago Sun-Times) (Photo: WGN-TV) Read the rest

Just shy of three months ago, Amber Guyger, then a Dallas police officer, burst into her 26-year-old neighbor's home and shot him.Botham Shem Jean was murdered in his home, unarmed--a threat to no one. Guyger's bullshit excuse: she was confused and thought that the apartment that she'd broken into was her own and that Jean was an intruder.Cool, cool, cool. Who hasn't broken into their own home, found it to be decorated completely differently and contained their neighbor? That crap could happen to anyone.At the time of the murder, Dallas District Attorney Faith Johnson was accused of giving Guyger, who has since been shit-canned by the Dallas Police, preferential treatment. Guyger was let off without a murder charge against her. But here's the thing: Johnson's no longer Dallas' DA. In January of 2019, she'll be replaced by Dallas' freshly-minted District Attorney John Creuzot. For Guyger, the worm could be about to turn so fast that it breaks its own frigging neck.From The Root:Creuzot, a former judge who retired from the bench in 2012, told NBC that anything less than a murder charge for Guyger deviates from Dallas County precedent.“I don’t know any police reports. I don’t know any forensic reports, but based on what I have seen, manslaughter is an inappropriate charge, based on the circumstances as I understand them,” he said. “Once I get in there and I get everything in front of me and it appears the most appropriate charge is murder, then that’s the charge we will go forward with. Read the rest

I'm a big fan of Moment's lens system for Android and iOS smartphones. The company is staffed by folks who are just as passionate about mobile photography as I am. More importantly, they seem to understand that having to buy entirely new lenses every time you land a new handset is twelve different kinds of Bullshit. With Moment's second generation lens system, all you need to do when you invest in a new smartphone is plunk down some new cash for a new photo case and you're in business. Their business model makes me feel comfortable with fielding the relatively steep cost of their high quality smartphone accessory lenses and other kit.Today, Moment announced that they're releasing a new 58mm telephoto lens. If you're using it with a single lens smartphone like the Google Pixel 3, it'll provide you with 2X optical zoom. Have a dual camera lensed phone like my iPhone 7 Plus? You can expect 4X optical telephoto zoom. That means better photos of far away subjects, portraits and landscapes without having to deal with the pixilation that comes from using digital zoom. Having this option makes me feel much less obligated, in many cases, to bring along an actual camera with me. I've got one on the way to me and can't wait to try it out. I'm curious to see how it performs versus the last incarnation of their tele lens. I'll post a review with a few choice shots of the lens in action just as soon as I can. Read the rest

This is an amazing case of being in the right place at the right time. An 11-year-old boy runs to pick up a kite that had just been dropped from a third floor balcony after it had gotten stuck up there. As the boy bends down to pick up the kite, the boy who had freed the kite falls off the balcony, only to have his fall broken by his friend's crouching body. Neither boy was hurt. It was all caught on a CCTV camera.Via LiveLeak Read the rest

During the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel's crew manages a sub-2 second pitstop. (via Next Draft) Read the rest

On Sunday in Pusad, Maharashtra, India, an 11-year-old boy climbed to the third floor of a building to retrieve a stuck kite. He tossed the kite down but then slipped. Fortunately, his buddy was in the right place at the right time. Watch:(LiveLeak/Newsflare) Read the rest

Orcasound is a citizen science project (and app) enabling you to listen to livestreams of audio from underwater microphones off Washington’s San Juan Island. Mostly, you'll hear ships moving through Haro Strait and other boats in the area. But if you listen long enough, you might be treated to some whale song. From Atlas Obscura:(Lead researcher Scott) Viers developed OrcaSound because he saw an opportunity for engaged citizens to help fill gaps in the study of orcas. The whales have long been well-observed in the summertime, when the weather cooperates and the cetaceans are more accessible to scientists and the Coast Guard, who observe them by boat. But questions have lingered about their lives during other times of the year. Now, in any season, listeners can notify scientific authorities to alert them to the presence of whales, so they can rush out like first responders to collect important data. The orcas have been facing a food crisis in recent years, so their fecal matter can help scientists get a sense of what they’re managing to eat, and what their stress levels are like. Having citizens on the line is also an exercise in preparing for the worst, like an oil spill. In such a case, there will be multiple (ear) witnesses to attest to where the whales were at the time.Orcasound: Listen for whales Read the rest

A 28-year-old gentleman in Gulfport, MS crashed his pickup truck into a courthouse in order to report that someone had stolen his drug paraphernalia. After his truck smashed into the courthouse's glass wall, however, he had a change of heart, slipped out of his truck's passenger window, and took off. Keith Rio Cavalier, who had been driving under the influence, was later caught and arrested. He admitted that at the time, he thought intentionally crashing his car into the courthouse was a good way to contact the police. Fortunately for the people of Gulfport, Cavalier is, at least for now, is sitting in the Harrison County jail. Via WLOXImage: Gulfport Police Department Read the rest

In the 18th and 19th centuries, mudlarks were people who sifted through the mud on the banks of the River Thames to find things of value. Ted Sandling keeps the dream alive. He compiled his curious collection in a book, London in Fragments: A Mudlark's Treasures, and you can also follow his finds on Instagram. If you're inspired to dig yourself, new laws require mudlarkers (and metal detector users) to apply for a permit first and then report any treasures you uncover to the authorities. View this post on Instagram A couple of days ago I found this spoon, standing straight up in the gravel like a very small and shapely monolith. There was a symbolic significance to its position, as if it had been placed with deliberate purpose, probably to do with britishness, and tea. I picked it up (how could one not?) and brought it home for someone who is six and a half years old and likes spoons. The reverse tells all manner of stories to those who can decode the hallmarks (I can’t, but I know a google who can). It’s silver plate, made by James Deakin & Sons in the late nineteenth century and has what sophisticates know as ‘rather a lot of dings’ in the bowl. Also, for some ceremonial reason, most of the silver has come unplated. It’s their Sidney Silver brand, so called because it was made at the Sidney Works on Sidney Street, quite possibly by a man named Sidney. Read the rest

Smithfield is a Chinese-owned pork producer based in the USA that exports a lot of pork back to China; when Trump touched off a trade-war with China, he committed to compensating US-based companies that faced retaliatory sanctions at the Chinese border.You see where this is going, right?The US government is buying $240,000 worth of pork from Smithfield to compensate it for its lost Chinese sales. Smithfield's Chinese shareholders will get US tax-dollars from Donald J Trump. #MAGAThe Agriculture Department said last month that Smithfield qualified for the bailout money, noting that the agency would be purchasing only goods produced in the United States. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a farmer and member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has expressed alarm that a Chinese-owned firm could benefit from bailout money intended to help American farmers survive a trade war with China.The timing of Wednesday’s announcement raised some eyebrows."It is highly suspicious that this announcement came a day after the midterm elections," said Tony Corbo, senior lobbyist at Food and Water Watch, which tracks federal agriculture programs. "Congress needs to exercise oversight of this program. This is an example of corporate welfare at its worst."Chinese-owned pork producer is getting U.S. bailout money to protect it from China's tariffs [Jeff Stein/Washington Post] Read the rest

Few things can fuck an RV up worse than a frozen water system. Grey, black and potable water tanks, water pumps and the delicate tubing that run through the undercarriage and into the living area of a motorhome don't do well when exposed to subzero temperatures. Some RVs, like ours, come with blowers that force warm air from the furnace into the undercarriage. Others, like our old rig, have systems that draw power from the chassis battery to keep the tanks heated and the liquid inside of them, well, liquid. We started our first day headed south at -4° Celsius. We assumed that we'd be able to make it to Lethbridge, Alberta, a few hours south of Calgary. The overnight temperature would dip to -10° there. Fading headlights and the encroaching dark forced to a halt, short of our goal, in Claresholm. There, the overnight temperature dipped to -17°. We knew that we could weather the weather in Lethbridge. Claresholm, cold as it was, would have been a test we weren't prepared to sit for. Fortunately, we were able to find a hotel. Even more fortunate was the fact that we'd winterized our RV well before the first cold. Our tanks were drained dry. Our lines were wetted with anti-freeze. For the first three days of our trip south, we traveled without any water, save what we brought with us in bottles. We used it to flush our toilet, brush our teeth, make coffee and wash. On the end of the third night, we felt it warm enough to risk de-winterizing the RV. Read the rest

Amazon has selected New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters. They're re-branding the area of Crystal City in Arlington, VA as "National Landing." Here's the official announcement at Amazon's corporate press center.The company says it will invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs across the two new headquarters. The New York project alone will net Amazon $1.5 billion in incentives from the government. Amazon is also opening a "new Operations center of Excellence" in Nashville, Tennessee, promising 5,000 new jobs there.Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, "We are excited to build new headquarters in New York City and Northern Virginia. These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue inventing for customers for years to come.”And let’s please remember what @amazon got for FREE - BIG BIG DATAEvery one of those cities vying for a shot at HQ2 went to great lengths to provide Amazon with information they demanded about their demographics etc... Now Amazon has loads of intel & those cities have NUTHIN https://t.co/u58gXE2wWU— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) November 13, 2018Amazon selects New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters https://t.co/VRGeYdpoBy— Amazon News (@amazonnews) November 13, 2018why is Amazon getting $1.5 billion from the government to open an office in NEW YORK https://t.co/gMxP6ukelE— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) November 13, 2018Breaking News: It's official: Amazon will open new offices in New York and Virginia. It means thousands of new jobs, but they may come at a high cost to locals. Read the rest

I have a lot of trouble reading anything longer than a tweet, these days, so I wrapped duct tape around my head and monitor to force myself to get through Emily Petsko's tips for overcoming reader's block.2. TRY A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES ...Compared to a 300-page novel, short stories won’t seem like such an insurmountable task. Ginni Chen, Barnes and Noble’s “Literary Lady,” suggests trying a collection of stories written by different authors. That way, you’ll have the chance to figure out which styles and subjects you enjoy most. In an advice column addressed to someone with reader’s block, Chen recommended the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Nonrequired Reading collection. And if you want to start really small, there’s an app called Serial Box that will send you 150-character stories as push notifications.Other good ones include "4. READ PAGE 69 BEFORE COMMITTING TO A BOOK." and "7. THROW ALL YOUR GADGETS IN A LAKE."Photo: Shutterstock. Read the rest

There's a Seinfeld-themed hardcore metal band from New York City (of course) called Grindfeld.Born out of a mutual love of Death Metal, comical observations, coffee and Hardcore, Grindfeld is a project built on the existential dread hidden just under the surface of daily life. Yes, they're real and they've got "5 Songs About Nothing." The first is a loud little ditty called "The Contest":The other four songs -- The Soup Nazi, The Limousine, The Bizarro Jerry, and The Letter -- are available from their $5 digital album. They also have merch.(Stereogum) Read the rest

CNN is suing President Donald Trump and various White House aides over the administration's ban on chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta.CNN's lawsuit alleges that Acosta and CNN's First and Fifth amendment rights are being violated by the ban. Named in CNN's lawsuit against the White House are Donald Trump, John Kelly, Sarah Sanders, Bill Shine, Joseph Clancy, and the Secret Service officer who took Acosta's hard pass away. "While the suit is specific to CNN and Acosta, this could have happened to anyone," the network said today. "If left unchallenged, the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers our elected officials."The lawsuit seeks the immediate restoration of Acosta's access to the White House.CNN sues President Trump and top White House aides for barring Jim Acostahttps://t.co/5GsAmQOZDF— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 13, 2018Bulletin: @CNN is filing a lawsuit against President Trump and several of his aides, seeking the immediate restoration of Jim @Acosta's access to the White House. https://t.co/nE022jiYPw— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 13, 2018From CNN, which reports the suit is being filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday morning:Both CNN and Acosta are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. There are six defendants: Trump, chief of staff John Kelly, press secretary Sarah Sanders, deputy chief of staff for communications Bill Shine, Secret Service director Joseph Clancy, and the Secret Service officer who took Acosta's hard pass away last Wednesday. The officer is identified as John Doe in the suit, pending his identification. Read the rest

Baraboo High School's class of 2019 threw Nazi salutes for a staged photo at their junior prom this year. The photographer, named as Peter Gust, apparently removed it from his website and complained of the "malevolent behavior" of those spreading and criticizing it, but that did not stop it going viral.Though the Wisconsin school district claims to be taking action, it appears not to be merely a one-off stunt: since the photo was publicized, current and former students claim that the school has a culture of racism and bigotry openly enabled by indifferent teachers and administrators. Jules Suzdaltsev is collecting the reports on Twitter."Nearly all of the stories echo the same basic theme: the community as a whole has a lot of casual & jokey racism, homophobia, and transphobia that is accepted as a part of life," writes Suzdaltsev. "The school (and other schools in the area) do little to nothing to address these issues."One teen poses with the OK sign, as often appropriated by white supremacists under the fig leaf of "trolling", while others smile without participating. One unsmiling lad raises his fist instead, a traditionally socialist gesture also adopted by the black power movement. One, named as Jordan Blue, conspiciously stands aside and frowns at the camera and is emerging as the photo's folk hero. After trying to remove the photo from his site (it's still available at the original URL) the photographer posted the following about "malevolent behavior on the part of some in society", and calling for civility. Read the rest

SPOILERS: Yes, it's obviously the back yard of a standard post-war British house. It's actor Michael Rapaport doing a voice-over on this video of Wilfred, a divinely-inbred Chinchilla Persian from England. Read the rest

HR1, the first bill that the new Democratic House of Representatives will vote on, is omnibus legislation that takes on some of the most pervasive scourges of representative democracy: vote suppression, oligarchic campaign financing and gerrymandering.Under HR1's provisions, electoral districting will be taken away from state legislatures and handed to independent commissions (this is very popular with the American public and similar ballot initiatives just sailed into law in Colorado, Missouri and Michigan). HR1 provides for automatic voter registration and reestablishes provisions from the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court neutered in 2013 (though as Yves notes at Naked Capitalism, "If they actually cared about voter turnout they would push election day registration which, unlike automatic registration, has been shown to increase turnout by around 5%").HR1 also overturns Citizens United (previously), the 2010 Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited, oligarchic campaign spending, including hundreds of millions in "dark money" funneled into Super-PACs.HR1 doesn't stop there: it also closes a loophole that exempts presidents from conflict of interest rules (a loophole that Trump has enthusiastically exploited).It's not clear how the bill will fare; Senate Republicans are likely to be divided on it, and the provisions that override the Supreme Court are unlikely to find a hospitable reception in the current court.But as a stake in the ground, it's a pretty impressive outing: forcing GOP politicians to vote in favor of dark money, gerrymandering, and allowing for presidential conflict-of-interest will give the Democrats a lot to campaign on in 2020. Read the rest

The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna started a program in 2012 that opened its doors for "remarkable creative individuals" to select pieces from their massive historical collection to present in an exhibition. Filmmaker Wes Anderson and his partner Juman Malouf are the most recent curators in this program. So, for the last two years, they have been putting together their offbeat Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures. Artnet describes the exhibit as "a totally quirky presentation of affectionate misfits":Perhaps the duo’s penchant for the collection’s oddball items also stems from their own awareness of being outsiders in a prestigious establishment replete with trained art historians, curators, and conservators.One senior curator said that some of museum staff were skeptical of the project at first. “We would get an email from Wes asking, ‘Do you have a list of green objects? Could you send us a list of everything you have that is yellow?’ Our data system does not have these categories.”Because of this, the curators and conservators had to manually search their storage, an often painstaking process due climate controls and the condition checks needed, neither of which Anderson or Malouf were aware of.The extra labor required was taxing, but the duo’s alternative criteria had a welcome side effect: It leveled the usual hierarchies. Several staff members said it resulted in new revelations. They just had to “learn to unlearn” their ways of working. The exhibit opened November 6 and will be on view through April 28, 2019. Read the rest

In 1975, Noam Chomsky and Jean Paiget held a historic debate about the nature of human cognition; Chomsky held that babies are born with a bunch of in-built rules and instincts that help them build up the knowledge that they need to navigate the world; Piaget argued that babies are effectively blank slates that acquire knowledge from experiencing the world (including the knowledge that there is a thing called "experience" and "the world").For most of AI's history, Chomsky's approach prevailed: computer scientists painstakingly tried to equip computers with a baseline of knowledge about the relationships between things in the world, hoping that computers would some day build up from this base to construct complex, powerful reasoning systems.The current machine learning revolution can be traced to a jettisoning of this approach in favor of a Piaget-style blank slate, where layers of neural nets are trained on massive corpuses of data (sometimes labeled by hand, but often completely blank) and use equally massive computation to make sense of the data, creating their own understanding of the world.Piaget-style deep learning has taken AI a long way in a short time, but it's hitting a wall. It's not just the weird and vastly entertaining local optima that these systems get stuck in: it's the huge corpuses of data needed to train them and the inability of machine learning to generalize one model to bootstrap another and another. The fall-off the rate of progress in machine learning, combined with the excitement that ML's recent gains provoked, has breathed new life into the Chomskyian approach to ML, and computer scientists all over the world are trying to create "common sense" corpuses of knowledge that they can imbue machine learning systems with before they are exposed to training data. Read the rest

Tim Wu (previously) is a legal scholar best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality" -- his next book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (previously) challenges the accepted wisdom about today's digital monopolists, which is that they grew so big because of some underlying truth about online business ("first-mover advantage," "network effects," "globalism," etc). Instead, Wu argues that the reason we got digital monopolies is that we stopped enforcing anti-monopoly rules against digital companies (and then against all kinds of companies).In a new excerpt from "The Curse of Bigness" published today on Wired, Wu fleshes out this argument in more depth, with a fast-moving history of how regulators were lulled into a belief in the especially competitive markets in technology because of the quick rise and fall of companies like AOL, leading to a hands-off approach to regulating the tech markets that allowed for the rise and rise of companies like Google and Facebook.I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book -- it's obvious that while these special theories of tech's intrinsic competitiveness were key to lulling regulators to sleep during the 2000s and 2010s, the theories also dovetailed with a modern economic orthodoxy from the University of Chicago that held that unless companies were raising prices, there was no reason to limit their actions.Unfortunately, antitrust law failed to notice that the 1990s were over. Instead, for a decade and counting, it gave the major tech players a pass—even when confronting fairly obvious dangers and anticompetitive mergers. Read the rest

Lost in the chaos of last week's news was the announcement of President Trump's Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. This is the first group of recipients from the Trump presidency and the list feels a little random; heavy on the posthumous, heavy on the athletes. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor. It honors those who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." This year's recipients are: -Miriam Adelson-Orrin Hatch-Alan Page-Elvis Presley-Babe Ruth-Antonin Scalia-Roger StaubachIf the first name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because Miriam Adelson is the wife of Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. The casino magnate and his wife donated $25 million dollars to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and have given nearly $130 million dollars to the GOP for this year's election cycle, which I'm sure had absolutely nothing to do with her selection. The award ceremony will be held on November 16th at the White House. Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth To Be Honored With Presidential Medal Of Freedom (Dino-Ray Ramos/Deadline)(Photo: Union20/Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

Kyrsten Sinema, the apparent winner in Arizona's Senate race, is the first Democrat to win that vote for decades. She will become the first woman to ever represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate. She is also the first openly bisexual person ever elected to the U.S. Senate. That's a lot of firsts.Sinema's win was called late in the day by Associated Press on Monday November 12. Election day was Tuesday, November 6. She gave a speech accepting the win around 830pm Eastern time. Here's a screengrab. Democrats now control 47 Senate seats. Republicans control 51. At least 2 races have not yet been called. Sinema, 42, faced a contentious race as a centrist Democrat candidate running against Republican Martha McSally. She will assume the seat being vacated by Jeff Flake.Here is Martha McSally's concession.Congrats to @kyrstensinema. I wish her success. I’m grateful to all those who supported me in this journey. I’m inspired by Arizonans’ spirit and our state’s best days are ahead of us. pic.twitter.com/tw0uKgi3oO— McSally For Senate (@MarthaMcSally) November 13, 2018From the New York Times:Ms. Sinema’s victory over Martha McSally, a Republican congresswoman and former Air Force pilot, marks the first Democratic triumph since 1976 in a battle for an open Senate seat in Arizona. Ms. Sinema takes the seat being vacated by Jeff Flake, a Republican who retired after publicly clashing with President Trump.Ms. Sinema’s victory guarantees the Democrats at least 47 Senate seats. Republicans control 51, with two still undecided: Florida, where there is a recount, and Mississippi, where there is a runoff. Read the rest

In what feels like the one billionth installment of We Can't Have Nice Things, some pervy asshole's been creeping on Fortnite-playing minors. Over the past few weeks, according to police from the Quebec, Canada area, a number of parents have stepped forward to complain that their kids were asked, in-game and via Instagram, to fire over nude photos of themselves. The payoff: ways and means of advancing their in-game prowess. Once the prick had their hands on the pics, the kid that sent them would be threatened: send more or the ones that the pederast already had would be plastered all over the internet.From The CBC:Four cases have been reported in the past few weeks, according to police.In three of those cases, minors were threatened, and in one, the victim sent personal photos to the cyber-predator.Sgt. Jean-Luc Tremblay with the Richelieu Saint-Laurent police said the predator, or predators, tried to infiltrate groups of friends by offering them a chance to advance their game in exchange for providing revealing photos.Police are working with school boards in the area to disseminate information about the sextortion.Being a kid is already difficult enough without having to endure this kind of horse shit. Parents need to be on their guard and kids need to be educated in how to avoid these greasy shits online. It's a mantra that too many people have had to type too many times.Hopefully, those responsible will have left enough digital breadcrumbs to be tracked down and dealt with--quickly. Read the rest

Eric Chien's got some nimble fingers, a shit-ton of showmanship, and a magic trick that'll blow your mind. The trick is so frigging good that Chien won a 2018 Fism Grand Prix award with it. Read the rest

If you eat yogurt, this yogurt maker will pay for itself in short order. It makes 7 six-ounce glass jars of yogurt in one batch and can set to ferment for up to 15 hours.Lately I've been making yogurt with half-and-half because it tastes incredible. Check the link below for the latest price. Read the rest

Ann Coulter's job is to write unpleasant tweets for the amusement of mean people not smart enough to think of clever insults on their own. In the last few days, Coulter has kept herself busy insulting doctors who save the lives of bullet wound victims. It all started with a tweet from the NRA chiding "self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane."Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. https://t.co/oCR3uiLtS7— NRA (@NRA) November 7, 2018Doctors were quick to point out that gun violence is very much in their lane:Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn’t just my lane. It’s my fucking highway. https://t.co/48S9UIFaV2— Judy Melinek M.D. (@drjudymelinek) November 9, 2018Shortly after, the increasingly-desperate-for-attention Coulter tweeted one of her standard false equivalencies:Emergency room doctors pull cue balls, vines & gummy bears out of human orifices every week. That doesn't make them experts on pool, horticulture or chewy candy. https://t.co/EdksEGDnCx— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 10, 2018Cathleen London, MD, made short work of Coulter's mean-spirited foolishness:We do examine assholes all day so it does make us an expert on them. You qualify https://t.co/yRQTZnGqQr— Cathleen London MD (@DrChaya) November 11, 2018Source image: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Ann Coulter, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest