Government procurement data reveals that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Agency have each spent tens of thousands of dollars on products from Houston's Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC, which specializes in fake streetlight housings designed to conceal surveillance cameras.Since June, the DEA has spent $22,000 with Cowboy; ICE's total is about $28K. Neither the government agencies nor Cowboy Streetlight Concealments will reveal where or how the hidden camera housings were used.The DEA is currently advertising for competitive bids for "concealments made to house network PTZ [Pan-Tilt-Zoom] camera, cellular modem, cellular compression device." In the absence of a competitive bid, it will award the contract to Oregon's Obsidian Integration LLC; Obsidian recently provided concealed cameras to the Jersey City PD.The DEA also uses traffic barrels and digital speed displays to to conceal its covert cameras.Christie Crawford, who owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, a Houston police officer, said she was not at liberty to discuss the company’s federal contracts in detail.“We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures,” Crawford told Quartz. “Basically, there’s businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that’s what we do. They specify what’s best for them, and we make it. And that’s about all I can probably say.”However, she added: “I can tell you this—things are always being watched. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement has a reason to set up surveillance, there’s great technology out there to do it.”The DEA and ICE are hiding surveillance cameras in streetlights [Justin Rohrlich & Dave Gershgorn/Quartz](Image: Cowboy Concealments; twistedrhye, Cryteria, CC-BY) Read the rest

Apple has long understood that hardware products that last a long time result in falling unit sales, as customers opt to keep their old machines instead of buying the latest models; that's part of why the company led the charge that killed every single Right to Repair bill introduced last year -- less repairs leads to more "recycling," which is Applespeak for dropping used units into giant shredders without harvesting any usable parts first.Every year, refurbishers rescue thousands of used Apple products from the e-waste streams, and every year, Apple finds new ways to frustrate their efforts.The latest wrinkle: Apple has gotten Amazon to agree to ban the sale of refurbished Apple products except those that come from Apple directly.Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and coauthor of The End of Ownership, told me in an email that this decision is a dangerous infringement of ownership rights.“Wow. This is a very troubling development,” he said. “Given Amazon’s dominance as an online retail marketplace, its decision to disregard the first sale rights of resellers will significantly limit consumer choice. The fact that this move was demanded by Apple makes it even more problematic. What we see here are the world’s two most valuable companies engaging in a coordinated assault on the lawful resale of consumer devices.”The United States Supreme Court has ruled that people who legally own a product may legally resell it, and federal law protects that right under something known as the “first sale doctrine,” which says that copyright holders give up their copyright to individual copies of a work once it is sold: “the first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. Read the rest

The Yokohama Board of Education has posted scans of six fantastic catalogs from Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks, dating from the early 1900s. The illustrated catalogs are superb, with minimal words: just beautiful colored drawings depicting the burst-pattern from each rocket.(via Kottke) Read the rest

Most of America's 9,000 7-Eleven stores are owned by franchisees, many of them immigrants; the owners' contracts with 7-Eleven corporate allows the company to pull their franchises if they violate US law.The current CEO of 7-Eleven is Joe DePinto, a West Point grad who got the job in 2005 and has spent his tenure slowly tightening the screw on franchisees, demanding business practices that return more profit to corporate HQ at the expense of the independent operators. As the franchisees have felt the sting, they've fought back, suing the company over DePinto's policies.DePinto has become legendary for his dirty tricks campaign to get rid of his least-favored franchisees, from hiring private eyes to making secret recordings. Now the franchisees allege that DePinto has started snitching on his own franchisees to ICE, directing government immigration raids against 7-Eleven stores. If these franchise owners are found to have illegally hired undocumented immigrants, DePinto can cancel their franchise agreements and kick them out of the business and take over their stores.The evidence is circumstantial and 7-Eleven denies it, but ICE's raids on 7-Eleven stores have targeted owners who have made trouble for the company.When Carter Anderson paused and asked if anyone had questions, Serge Haitayan took a microphone. He owns a 7-Eleven on a highway lined by grape farms in Fresno, Calif. Last year he joined Sandhu in the lawsuit alleging 7-Eleven was wrongly treating them like employees. On July 16 of this year, three federal agents walked into the little store he’s operated for 28 years, giving him three days to produce employee records dating back a year. Read the rest

With my wife's gig in north central Alberta spinning down for another year and the cold charging hard at us like a bull moose in rut, it's once again time for us to head south. This year, thanks to the two weeks it took me to replace a lost passport, we started off later than we would have liked. ***We left Calgary late in the day. No matter how much lead up we have, there always seems to be a few last things to do. Saying goodbye. Picking up snacks for the road. Double checking our rig's engine, air bags, air brakes, tires and all else. Even after receiving my passport last Friday, we waited until today--Wednesday. The weather was too coarse to risk in the rig. We aimed at Lethbridge as a first night target. Not far, but out of Calgary and within reach of the border early tomorrow morning. As the dusk settled in, we noted that our headlights were not up to the task of leading us. The bulbs would need to be replaced. But not tonight. We made for Claresholm: a highway pass-through town on the road south. By the time we pulled off for the evening, it had already hit -10. We lurked through town, the size of a semi truck with our Jeep in tow, searching for a dark corner of asphalt to call ours for the night. On with the generator. On with the furnace to warm our dog and our bones. Read the rest

Outrun, the classic racer that blew players' minds with its huge colorful sprites, is getting an ususual port: to the monochrome vectorbeam world of the vintage Vectrex console.Creator Chris Parsons:A little "demo" I put together today to warm up my coding skills as I get back to developing my second full Vectrex game. I put the Pole Position overlay on at the end as it comes out clearer without it when filming. Check out my Vectrex home brew games on here and at www.vectorrepublic.co.uk He's gotten the Ferrari, the tarmac and some roadside palms going, but it's missing other vehicles and curves: "Now, should I try to add some game in there???" Read the rest

I use an Acer 25-inch monitor with my Macbook Pro and like it a lot. This 21-inch model (920 x 1080) is a highly rated sub-100 dollar model, and is perfect for people who want a large monitor for their Raspberry Pi, perhaps to play retro-games. Read the rest

A Denver man is in critical condition after trying to play hero by rescuing a dropped cell phone from a trash chute.22-year old Scott Walsh was trying to rescue a female friend's phone when he fell fifteen feet down a first-floor trash chute and became trapped. The compactor began to move with Walsh stuck inside. Rescue workers had to disassemble the compactor in order to extricate Walsh.The compactor broke both of Walsh’s legs, cracked his skull on both sides and ruptured arteries in his neck, his friend Liz DiSalvo said. He’s been heavily sedated but is expected to survive, she said.The condition of the phone is unknown.Denver man in critical condition after being crushed by trash compactor in downtown apartment (Elsie Shmelzer/Denver Post)Image: mccarport.com Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal [paywall] just published a major expose revealing "several previously unreported instances in which Mr. Trump intervened directly to suppress stories about his alleged sexual encounters with women." The Wall Street Journal interviewed "three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents." Trump has lied on several previous occasions about the payoffs, saying he played no role in them.The article reports that Trump met with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and the two struck a deal to pay hush money to women who wanted to publicize their alleged sexual affairs with Trump.Less than a year later, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pecker to quash the story of a former Playboy model who said they’d had an affair. Mr. Pecker’s company soon paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal, to keep her from speaking publicly about it. Mr. Trump later thanked Mr. Pecker for the assistance.The Wall Street Journal obtained an audio recording of a conversation between Trump and his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, which reveals Trump's sense of loyalty towards people who go out of their way to help him:As Mr. Cohen explained his plans, Mr. Trump spoke over him: “So, what are we gonna pay… One-fifty?” Mr. Trump asked. Mr. Cohen paused and replied, “Yes.”Mr. Cohen said he would be getting “all the stuff,” meaning the other files on Mr. Trump he had been seeking. They discussed the uncertainty about what might become of the files if Mr. Read the rest

Today would have been Carl Sagan's 84th birthday. I wish he were here. Watch the above, climb aboard your Ship of the Imagination, and make the future. View this post on Instagram My dear wonderful dad would be 84 today. I find that very hard to imagine. I spend a lot of time wondering what he would be like as an old man. I wish I could know that version of him. Just as I wish I could know the version of him pictured here, young and full of promise. I miss all the versions of him. The ones I knew and the ones I didn’t. Thank you to everyone who knew him and everyone who didn’t who still misses him, who still reads his work, who still thinks of him. It means a lot. #carlsaganday A post shared by Sasha Sagan (@sashasagan) on Nov 9, 2018 at 7:12am PST We're celebrating #CarlSagan's birthday by sharing his "lost lecture", the talk he gave at his 60th birthday symposium @Cornell @CornellCAS. Today is the perfect day to celebrate the #CarlSagan vision, which inspired @CSInst https://t.co/lxvgKQEvL5— Carl Sagan Institute (@CSInst) November 9, 2018Astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, communicator, father, friend, and our co-founder.Here's to the man who inspired us to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish our pale blue dot. #CarlSaganDay pic.twitter.com/ZwrcnGPHgD— Planetary Society (@exploreplanets) November 9, 2018 Read the rest

NASA's Juno spacecraft took this glamour shot of Jupiter on October 29, 2018, from about 4,400 miles (7,000) kilometers above the planet's clouds. From NASA:A multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image... Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval.Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and to process into image products at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam. Read the rest

Researchers have spent decades exploring methods to 3D print organs for transplant but progress is slow due to the complex structure of, say, a kidney or pancreas. Precise Bio, a startup founded by scientists from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, claim that the first real success will come from 3D-printed corneas. They've already conducted animal studies and are building a roadmap toward human trials. From IEEE Spectrum:Corneas could be the first mainstream application of bioprinting, (Precise Bio CEO Aryeh) Batt says, in part because they have a layered structure that’s a good match for the technology. Each layer consists of different types of cells and fibers, which the printer could lay down in sequence, and these layers don’t contain blood vessels or nerves. What’s more, putting a new kind of transplant in the eye is inherently safer than implanting one deep in the body, since physicians could easily check for signs of trouble and could remove the tissue if anything seemed wrong. There’s certainly a need for more corneas in the world, says Kevin Corcoran, president and CEO of the Eye Bank Association of America. In 2017, his members supplied nearly 51,000 transplantable corneas to patients in the United States, and also sent more than 26,000 abroad. Internationally, “there is a tremendous amount of unmet demand,” he says. “It’s estimated that 10 million people suffer from corneal blindness globally, primarily because they lack access to effective and affordable treatment.”Part of Precise Bio’s proprietary approach is its printer, which uses a technique called laser-induced forward transfer to propel droplets of bioinks onto a surface. Read the rest

One of the big problems I've had with taking long drives, anywhere, has been that I'm forced into unproductive time when I should be working. This isn't a problem when I'm going on vacation. But here's the thing: I seldom take a vacation. As I'm self-employed, there's no such thing as vacation pay in my world. When I stop writing, the money stops coming in. Working on the road is possible--all I have to do is tether my laptop to my iPhone and I'm in business. So long as I can keep my laptop, you know, in my lap. Maintaining a stable platform to work on while my wife wheels us across the continent has proven difficult. I've tried lap desks, balancing my computer on a backpack, you name it. My computer always slides around, making it damn near impossible to type. What's more, a neck injury that I sustained eons ago makes it painful for me to tilt my head down for any length of time. This combination of poor conditions has forced me, up until now, to twiddle my thumbs for hours at a time, working only once we've come to a stop for the day.However, I think that I may finally have figured it out.RAM Mounts makes a wide variety of mobile work solutions to keep nerd stuff in one place while you're driving along. Cops use RAM Mount gear in their cruisers to keep their laptop secure. Their in-vehicle smartphone and tablet stands are, arguably, among the best out there. Read the rest

A speeder! A cop! A high speed chase ending in a police cruiser catching on fire!Honestly, this video has everything. Read the rest

In her forthcoming memoir, Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama wrote that Trump's racist birther lies about her husband put her family in danger. "What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family's safety at risk. And for this I'd never forgive him."In his typically sleazy style, Trump responded not by responding to the facts, but by attacking President Obama with another lie:"I'll give you a little controversy back, I'll never forgive (President Barack Obama) for what he did to our US military. It was depleted, and I had to fix it. What he did to our military made this country very unsafe for you and you and you." Read the rest

Hearing about Northern California's Camp Fire – or any fire for that matter – is scary enough. But seeing what it's like to escape for your life by driving right through a massive fire so that you can't see anything in front of you is absolutely terrifying. The fire spread so quickly – "80 football fields per minute," says The Guardian – that some people barely escaped, while others have died.This video was taken by Brynn Parrott Chatfield, from the town of Paradise, which has been destroyed by the fire. The fire, which started Thursday morning around 6:30am, has burned over 20,000 acres so far, forcing "about 50,000 people to evacuate," according to The Guardian.Via The Guardian:As CNN points out, over 2,200 firefighters are currently battling the Camp Fire and they face a tough road ahead. The combination of dry conditions and high winds are making this a particularly difficult fire to fight.Multiple fatalities have been reported but it’s not yet clear how many people might be dead. The exact number of injuries is also unknown and authorities still don’t know what caused the blaze. Read the rest

If quantum computing becomes practical, it will be able to crack encrypted data in an instant. Forbes has created a good two-minute video that gives a high level overview of quantum computation.If you want to know more, Simon Singh's fantastic The Code Book gives a much more in-depth (yet still easy to understand) explanation of how quantum computing works. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Read the rest

In 1993, Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails composed music for the first station ID for MTV Japan created by the inimitable Shinya Tsukamoto, director of cyberpunk/horror films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Of course, Reznor later penned the below theme song for Tsukamoto's 2010 film "Tetsuo: The Bullet Man." (via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

What happens when you keep your television off for about two months? Sometimes, once you turn it back on, you'll find it has become home to an ant colony, at least for one guy who posted this video on reddit, showing a city of ants busying themselves behind his television screen. He asks the reddit world what he should do to get rid of them.One commenter suggested leaving the TV on with bright white light, which would supposedly encourage the ants to move to a darker place, while another commenter said he might try taking the television apart and cleaning it, but damaging the set would be a risk. Another said there was no other solution but to toss this TV and buy a new one.And why are there ants in the TV set? Maybe they are "raspberry crazy ants," which are drawn to electrical equipment. According to Wikipedia:Infestations of Nylanderia fulva in electrical equipment can cause short circuits, sometimes because the ants chew through insulation and wiring. Overheating, corrosion, and mechanical failures also result from accumulations of dead ants and nest detritus in electrical devices. If an ant is electrocuted, it can release an alarm pheromone in dying, which causes other ants to rush over and search for attackers. If a large enough number of ants collects, it may short out systems.It is unclear why colonies of Nylanderia fulva, like many species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment. They may sense the magnetic fields that surround wires conducting electric current, or they prefer the warmth produced by resistance to the currents in the wires. Read the rest

Patrisha Organo (24) is a Philippine Airlines flight attendant. She was working on a flight on November 6 when she heard a baby crying, "a cry that will make you want to do anything to help," she wrote on Facebook. She asked the mother what the matter was and the mother told her that she'd run out of baby formula. Organo led the mother and baby into the galley and breastfed the baby. "I saw the relief on her mother’s eyes," she wrote. "I continued to feed the baby until she fell asleep. I escorted her back to her seat and just before I left, the mother sincerely thanked me."Image: Facebook Read the rest

In the 1980s, Pennsylvania-based Michele Mercure was composing music for theater, film, and TV animation. After a trip to the Netherlands, she became inspired by the German kosmiche music scene of Kluster, Tangerine Dream, and the like. But Mercure cut her own path into experimental electronic music, weaving her synthetic, rhythmic soundscapes with strange samples and cut-up vocalizations, resulting in tracks that move between abstract and ambient dreamscapes and mechanized intensity. For decades, Mercure's self-released cassettes (under the name Michelle Musser) moved through underground trading circles but many of those recordings will now reach a wider group of heads. Beside Herself is a gorgeous 19-track Michele Mercure retrospective released today by the esteemed curators at RVNG Intl. and Freedom To Spend labels. To celebrate the release, Mercure and Mary Haverstick created the wonderful "Electronumentary" above. Below, one of the album tracks. From RVNG:Mercure’s artistic path never ran through creative meccas New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then moving to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in her twenties, Mercure was already an adept musician when she encountered a local and lively theater scene, and was asked to score an unorthodox performance of Waiting for Godot. The experience was pivotal in marrying music and image for Mercure, and so she began making music for film, television, dance, and theater. It wasn’t until a long sojourn in Eindhoven, however, that she became transfixed by electronic music (ala Conrad Schnitzler, whom she would correspond with for years) that would inform her music to come. Read the rest

If you're bored with fugu, give feseekh a try. According to Great Big Story, "Feseekh, or fermented mullet fish, can cause poisoning or even death if not prepared properly."Image: YouTube Read the rest

For readers, Scribd has long been a fount of content, and it's only growing. With 40 million titles to choose from, this service has plenty to offer to its more than 750,000 subscribers.Whether you're into audiobooks, novels, nonfiction or magazines, Scribd is the only subscription service with access to titles from all "Big 5" global publishers. That's more than one million books from the classics to new releases, accessible on your browser or mobile app. The more you use it, the more Scribd stokes your curiosity with curated reading lists and personalized recommendations. Create your own virtual bookshelf, download your favorites - it's all there for bookworms to burrow into. Even if you plow through two books a day, you'd never get to the bottom of Scribd's deep well of content.Various options are available, but there are discounts on a 1-year subscription to Scribd ($85) or 6 months ($45). Give it a spin and start reading today. Read the rest

Leave it to Texas to have high school varsity teams dedicated to barbecuing. Here's a story about how some students at a high school in northern Texas are learning to compete with meat. WFAA reports:Horticulture teacher Tommy Copeland helped start his team at [Ennis High School] after discovering an annual state tournament in Burnet where over 100 schools compete...At Ennis High, the barbecue team is like a Texas hybrid of metal shop and home economics. The students fabricate and weld their own cooker together then use it to compete.Copeland and other vocational teachers assist the students in learning how to be pitmasters. Teachers or instructors aren’t allowed to help students during cook-offs, and they’re judged on best beef brisket, pork ribs, ½ chicken, best beans, dessert, best pit, most school spirit, and best t-shirt....he only requirements to be on the barbecue team? Maintain a passing average and be a senior.However—that doesn’t stop Copeland from mentoring aspiring juniors who have interest in the team like Marshall Sladecek.Before Ennis’ home football game against Corsicana, he and some other juniors got some ‘ribs practice’ outside the stadium. “We all barbecue, why not take it to the competition level?” Sladecek said. “Every guy needs to know how to do it.”...“When these boys leave here, they are kings of their grills,” Copeland said. Read the rest

Vancouver indie rock band Said The Whale spent over 80 hours putting together the music video for their song "UnAmerican." Impressively, zero digital effects were used to stop-motion animate the 2,250 different photos. The band painstakingly did that all by hand. Wow! (Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

Emile Ratelband, a Netherlands media personality and motivational speaker, is 69 years old but believes he has the body of someone 20 years younger. To fix the perceived discrepancy, he has now brought forth a lawsuit to legally change his age. The Dutchman wants to be seen as younger to get better jobs and to have better luck connecting with ladies on Tinder. He compares his plight with being transgender. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf quotes him as saying, "You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age? Nowhere are you so discriminated against as with your age."And also, "When I'm 69, I'm limited. When I'm on tinder and it says 69, I don't get an answer. When I'm 49 with the face I have, I'll be in a luxurious position."The Dutchman describes himself as a "young god."In four weeks, a local court in Arnhem will make its decision on his case. If the court rules in his favor, the "young god" has said he'll give up his pension.BBC: Dutchman, 69, brings lawsuit to lower his age 20 yearsimage via 360Nobs.com Read the rest

I've just published a comprehensive explainer on Medium about the EU's new Copyright Directive, which was sabotaged at the last minute, when MEP Axel Voss snuck in the long-discredited ideas of automatically censoring anything a bot thinks infringes copyright and banning unpaid links to news articles.After a million Europeans signed a petition calling for a debate on the new proposals, a divided opposition failed to kill them. But hope is not lost: the new Italian government has changed position on the proposals and now the opposition constitutes a potential "blocking minority" that could kill the whole thing -- provided they could work together.The new Directive is now in the “trilogues” — closed-door negotiations between the E.U.’s Parliament and individual national governments. Normally, these are a formality that takes place out of public view. However, the current trilogue is both more contested and more public than any in the E.U.’s history.The European Court of Justice has ruled that Europeans are entitled to know what happens in these trilogue negotiations, and German Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda has pledged to publish the negotiating documents (and she’s kept her word).What’s more, the trilogues coincide with political changes in Italy, and the Italian government has withdrawn its support for Articles 11 and 13. This brings the proportion of Europeans who oppose these articles past the critical threshold of 35%, a theoretical “blocking minority” that could scuttle the entire proposal (assuming they can avoid the trap the opposition fell into last time: agreeing that these rules aren’t appropriate but disagreeing on what to do about it). Read the rest

The MIT Media Lab's Spatial Flux Project was created by Carson Smuts and Chrisoula Kapelonis to imagine and prototype soft inflatable robots that would be designed to operate in zero-gee, where there is no up or down and "we do not have to contend with architecture's greatest arch-nemesis, gravity."Their work is a set of shoes-on-a-snake weird pneumatic tentaclebots are brilliant and Gigeresque. In the City Science group, we explore the diversity of formal arrangements necessary to accommodate the spatial gradients of our lives—at work, rest, and play. We are in the process of developing a full-scale, multi-modal kinetic space (escPod); the moment the human body surrenders itself to space is our inspiration: sitting at a desk, lounging on a couch, or in a deep slumber. How do we define surface architecturally when our current gravity-based vocabulary was not born of zero gravity and will not suffice? What opportunities can this state of flux provide for architects when designing for the body? Architects are married to an XY (north/south) cartesian grid, with Z (gravity) being the main point of reference for many architectural elements. We would like to force ourselves to imagine these elements without an XYZ reference, rethinking our descriptions of them.Spatial Flux: Body and Architecture in Space [Carson Smuts and Chrisoula Kapelonis/MIT Media Lab](via JWZ) Read the rest

Proud Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran an insurgent campaign (working nights as a bartender in NYC with her campaigning clothes stashed in a paper bag behind the bar, changing after her shift and working the streets) that conquered New York, went national, and emboldened a "progressive caucus" of new Democratic legislators: now she's going to Congress to serve as the youngest woman ever elected to the lower house. Only one problem: she can't afford to rent a DC apartment for the three months between the election and her swearing-in, when she'll start drawing her Congressional salary. Read the rest

If you paid extra for Windows 10 "Pro," Microsoft had an unpleasant surprise for you: a misconfiguration in the company's license server resulted in the oldest Win 10 Pro installs (that is, those owned by Microsoft's earliest adopting customers) being downgraded to Windows 10 Home, with users' screens plastered with watermarks chiding them for not paying for their licenses (this went over great for everyone who was standing in front of an audience giving a presentation, apparently).After a period of initial confusion, Microsoft finally admitted something was broken. Read the rest

Canadian turnkey e-commerce giant Shopify has kicked its farthest-right customers off the service, banning made-in-Canada racists like the Proud Boys, but not wink-nudging white supremacists like Breitbart. Read the rest

Internet funnyperson Choire "Awl" Sicha (previously) has a new gig: New York Times advice columnist; Sicha is not fucking around either: "The only circumstance in which you can ask this woman out is if she sends you a literal ink-on-paper invitation to do so, like, in calligraphy and maybe with a seal stamped in wax, which would be awesome. (Also might mean she’s a vampire?) But, sure, you can totally ask her out if you don’t care about (1) her security about working with men in any capacity forever or (2) your career! Then have a blast, cannonball as many lives as possible on your way down the trash chute." (via Kottke) Read the rest

In 1918, there was plenty of speculation about 2018; in 2018, no one is talking about 2118. Bruce Sterling discusses the relationship of industrial design to science fiction; the New Aesthetic and Turinese architecture; and many other subjects with Benjamin Bratton. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

You're wheeling your haul out of Costco only to be accosted by the receipt-checker at the exit. You're fine, though, because you're not shoplifting anything. That slightly annoying feeling that the store assumes you're a criminal, it turns out, is tragically unwarranted, because those guys don't even care if you're shoplifting. In fact, the receipt-checkers are some kind of internal store Gestapo keeping tabs on the checkout cashiers.Writes one former employee: “Trust me, we’re not loss prevention, we have loss prevention in the store and that’s not us. We’re literally just trying to make sure our cashiers do the job right, and when we DO catch it, all the information gets stored. Who did it, what time, etc...and those cashiers get spoken to. This is not to benefit anyone but the member to improve the experience overall.” It's useful to remember that everything is not only worse than you think it is, but in ways you haven't yet considered. Read the rest

Perhaps strange things will yet again be afoot at the Circle K.From Comicbook.com:"Well, we're in pre-prep and are set to shoot in early 2019," Winter told The Hollywood Reporter. "So right now, all systems are go. My old line when Blockbuster was in business was that I'd never believe a film was a go until the video was at Blockbuster. But I don't know what to say anymore...Netflix?"Not long after the first official synopsis was released and Bill and Ted Face the Music looked like it was going to become a reality, Winter's co-star Keanu Reeves made some comments that chilled some of the heat fans were generating, essentially saying that the film was still looking for funding -- a consistent problem for years now. Shortly thereafter, Winter spoke at the Television Critics Association this week and told fans that despite Reeves's words of caution, the project is still moving forward a the same pace as it was.The threequel, which will see a middle-aged Bill Preston and Ted Logan trying to figure out why the future they were promised has still not happened."The fan response has been enormous. It helped us get the financing because there was an overwhelmingly positive response to the idea of us doing this," Winter said. "Even in the age of internet comment trolling, we haven't really encountered any pervasive negativity. The concerns that I've encountered are totally valid - don't screw up the tone of the first two, make it a real Bill & Ted movie. Read the rest

Who's the VC you most admire? Is it "super angel" investor Marc Andreessen, the 47-year-old billionaire behind over 40 successful startups? Or maybe it's Mary Meeker, the legendary VC who Forbes listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world in 2014.Whoever it is, TouchBase has got your investor worship covered with their new line of VC trading cards. They look like baseball cards -- stats and all -- but are much, much better.VCtradingcards.com is the leading online seller of TouchBase investor trading cards.We carry vintage and rare cards from the 1994 Sand Hill Road Series, the 2010 Gig Economy Series, the 1992 Private Equity Series, the 2015 Unicorn Series, and more.Some of our rarest VC cards include Don Valentine (Sequoia, investor in Atari), Mike Markkula (Angel, investor in Apple), and Jenny Lee (GGV, investor in AliBaba). You never know which cards you'll get in your packs.Many of the VCs featured have had multiple exits, but are on their way to more. This makes their cards highly collectible.And, if your favorite investor, or founder, isn't yet on a card, you can ask the company to print them on a future one.These are real. A VC Trading Cards five-pack is available for $59.99. Steep for ordinary folks, yes, but not Silicon Valley wheelers and dealers. Get'em while you can!Thanks, You! Read the rest

Julien's Auctions is running a large auction of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's stuff, including several pairs of his pajamas, board games, a pipe, and this sharp smoking jacket. Described as "a scarlet silk damask smoking jacket with shawl collar and self-tie belt closure," the high estimate is $5,000 but I bet it goes for much more. According to Julien's, "All proceeds of the sale will benefit the Hugh M. Hefner foundation in support of organizations that advocate for and defend civil rights, with special emphasis on first amendment rights and rational sex and drug policies since 1964."Hugh Hefner Bespoke Smoking Jacket (via Uncrate) Read the rest

Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles," the groundbreaking magickal 1990s comic series about a secret society fighting for our freedom in a world of high weirdness, will come to the small screen as part of the artist/writer's deal with Universal Cable Productions. From Variety:UCP is currently in production on Season 2 of “Happy!,” based on Morrison and Darick Robertson’s graphic novel of the same name. The Syfy series is executive produced by Morrison and Brian Taylor who also co-wrote the pilot. The series follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni), a corrupt ex-cop turned hit man whose life is changed by a relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named Happy (voice of Patton Oswalt).UCP, along with Amblin Television, is also working with Morrison, Taylor and David Wiener on adapting Aldous Huxley’s iconic dystopian novel “Brave New World.” Morrison serves as a writer and executive producer. Read the rest

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Trump's replacement for fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, thinks that if you're not Christian, you shouldn't be a federal judge. Judges should be "people of faith" and need to have a “biblical view of justice," and Whitaker would like to see a person's "world view," because if they have a secular world view, he'd be "very concerned with how they judge."Whitaker revealed his ignorance with these remarks during a 2014 conservative forum while vying for the Republican US Senate nomination in Iowa.The takeaway from this: According to the acting Attorney General of the United States, if you're open-minded, don't be a judge. Read the rest

This is just a glimpse of a photo Charlie Sorrel took of a new iPad Pro affixed, by no greater power than that of magnetism, to his fridge.I wouldn’t do this regularly. It’s far too scary, and the consequences dire, especially as a kitchen often has the hardest of all floor coverings — tiles — ready to smash the screen of your beautiful new 2018 iPad Pro. Read the rest

I might be 12, but my brain went straight to the gutter when I saw this weird banana-filling gadget. This thing is marketed to kids, even though it seems rather inappropriate!So, this is how the $27 "Banana Surprise" works. You cut off the tip, just the tip. Then, you rest the fruit in the "Yumstation." Now, this is where the fun begins. You get out the tool and jam it into the end and then quickly pull out. And now, according to the directions, it's time to fill that hole with some sweet syrup, fruit puree, or cream. Surprise, you have an oozing, dripping piece of phallic fruit!It's just a banana. It's just a banana. It's just a banana.Related: The phallic pop-up egg-on-a-stick cooker gadget(Geekologie) Read the rest

The biggest single improvement to my sourdough baking hobby has been using a pre-heated dutch oven.Baking sourdough in a dutch oven works amazingly well. I'm seeing improved oven spring, ridiculous crusts, and better bread in general.I've been baking with sourdough since 2010 or so. The very first boule I baked came out of the oven perfect. I then spent years trying to figure out why I couldn't consistently repeat that loaf.First thing I blamed was proofing times. It took me a while to figure out the natural rhythm of the starter I made, and while I now know sort-of when and where this yeast is in its cycle. Working with your starter a lot is the only way I know around this. Until I figured it out, I made amazing sourdough waffles, pretzels, but the bread might be dense, or suffer from any other myriad ferment related problems. Pretzels and waffles don't need the yeast to rise much.For a while, I blamed my kneading of the bread. I tried the stand-up mixer, then I tried no-knead recipes. I found the Breadtopia method most right for my style of baking, but I ignored the dutch oven part of the recipe. I had baking stones and pizza steels and spray bottles of water to keep things damp -- what could a dutch oven do for me? View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Oct 7, 2018 at 11:03am PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Oct 8, 2018 at 12:03pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Oct 7, 2018 at 10:01am PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Oct 8, 2018 at 5:03pm PDT View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Oct 26, 2018 at 11:02am PDT I highly recommend using parchment paper to transport your proofed dough into the dutch oven. Read the rest

When Disney's Captain Marvel put out a PSA encouraging their fans to vote, they also, unwittingly, encouraged people to call a sex hotline.In their get-out the-vote ad, Captain Marvel lead Brie Larson is standing in a phone booth surrounded by Rock the Vote posters. "CAPTAIN MARVOTE IS A BAD PUN BUT NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE VOTE TOMORROW," she says in a tweet.CAPTAIN MARVOTE IS A BAD PUN BUT NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE VOTE TOMORROW pic.twitter.com/ZhXk5Qzkt5— Brie Larson (@brielarson) November 5, 2018But along with her encouraging words is a phone number displayed on the booth's telephone, a number which was obviously photoshopped by the folks on the Captain Marvel promotional team. Obvious because the number – 1-800-654-2192 – was an ABC number ("It used to appear in shows like The Suite Life of Zac and Cody, and if you called it, you got an automated message from the network," according to Daily Dot). And ABC is a subsidiary of Disney, who distributes Captain Marvel.Of course some Marvel fans were intrigued by the number and gave it a call, but rather than connecting to a superhero, they were greeted by a recording that says: “Welcome to America’s hottest talk line. Guys, hot ladies are waiting to talk to you—press 1 now. Ladies, to talk to interesting and exciting guys, free, press 2 to connect free now...." Either ABC is looking for new ways to turn a profit, or they dumped the number but forgot to delete it from their phone book. Read the rest

Chris Christie's not my first choice to watch being dragged naked and whimpering to the White House lectern and then chained to a ring on it, but beggars can't be choosers.Former Gov. Chris Christie is being considered to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general, according to a CBS News report that cited “two sources familiar with the matter.”Christie is among several candidates reportedly on the list of those being considered after Sessions, who had a tortured relationship with President Donald Trump, was forced out Wednesday as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. Read the rest

A Breaking Bad movie will start production this month in Duke City, New Mexico according to the New Mexico Film Office. The film, currently identified as "Greenbrier," "tracks the escape of a kidnapped man and his quest for freedom," according to the Albuquerque Journal:This is the first project for Vince Gilligan – who created “Breaking Bad” and co-created the spinoff, “Better Call Saul” – after signing a three-year deal with Sony Pictures Television in July...Details on which characters will be returning from the TV series to the film have not been released."Yes, there appears to be a movie version of 'Breaking Bad, but I honestly have not even read the script," Bryan Cranston said on The Dan Patrick Show. "I have not gotten the script, I have not read the script. So there's the question of whether or not we'll even see Walter White in this movie. Think about that one." Read the rest

"I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this," Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union Dominic Raab said, "but if you look at the UK and you look at how we trade in goods, we're particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing." [via James Felton]Raab hopes to find a "bespoke arrangement" which "recognizes the peculiar, frankly, geographic economic entity that is the United Kingdom."Islands, Dominic. They're called islands. Read the rest

Chain reaction artist Kaplamino used rubber bands to add fun surprises to his latest tilted table marble video. Read the rest

Sacha Baron Cohen became Borat for a day to ask Republican voters some questions, like "Who are the fake news people who say [Trump] is not a racist? I'm a racist and it's nice." Read the rest

Airline in-flight safety videos are now more creative than ever.First case in point: Taiwanese airline EVA Air is using interpretive dance in their safety video, over five long minutes of it. According to the airline's press release, it was choreographed by Bulareyaung Pagarlava, a member of Taiwan's indigenous Paiwan community. They describe the video as "a work of art that’s as captivating as it is informative." Sure.And, second, here's a brand new one from Air New Zealand. It's got a tune ("It's Kiwi (Safety)") that sounds an awful lot like RUN-DMC's "It's Tricky." Their version was filmed in several New Zealand locales with a cast of 600! It "stars well-known Kiwi actor Julian Dennison (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Deadpool2), local musicians Kings, Theia and Randa as well as talent from 30 community groups across the country."(Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

Trump fired Jeff Sessions the morning after the midterm elections and appointed lawyer Matthew Whitaker as acting United States Attorney General. Whitaker has a long history of sucking up to Trump and saying Mueller's Trump/Russia investigation must be stopped. Quartz has assembled a list of the times Whitaker has been critical of the investigation and of Mueller.Here are a few quotes from Whitaker's op-eds, tweets, and media appearances:“Hollow calls for independent prosecutors are just craven attempts to score cheap political points and serve the public in no measurable way.”“there is no criminal obstruction of justice charge to be had here [against Trump].” “I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced, it would [be a] recess appointment and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigations grinds to almost a halt.”"Note to Trump's lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller lynch mob"Worth a read. "Note to Trump's lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller lynch mob" https://t.co/a1YY9H94Ma via @phillydotcom— Matt Whitaker 🇺🇸 (@MattWhitaker46) August 7, 2017Image: Twitter Read the rest