Boing Boing

Jamie Dimon is CEO of Jpmorgan Chase, the massive bank that settled a $13 billion mortgage fraud case with the DoJ in 2013 by committing more mortgage frauds to raise the cash; he has since taken the bank into some of the dirtiest business on Earth, from the loans that keep the Keystone XL pipeline viable to funding the private border prisons where Trump's Kids in Cages are being held, terrified and separated from their families.Dimon is an infamous money-over-people crook: when Elizabeth Warren caught his bank failing to comply with rules put in place after the 2008 crisis, he smirked at her and told her to "hit him" with fines because the bank could easily afford them, having after the massive profit-taking from their massive frauds.He's even floated the idea of a presidential run in 2020. Now, Dimon's smirk is turning to rage, as he finds himself dogged by protesters everywhere he goes: speeches, shareholder meetings, when he comes and goes from work. The activists call on him to divest from the bank's unethical business, which will not happen while Dimon is in command. But in the meantime, they are keeping these issues alive, afflicting the comfortable and ensuring that he does not have a moment's peace while he is profiting from others' misery and the destruction of the planet.Protesters have targeted Wall Street for years, but criticism at the annual conclave has shifted from the traditional corporate complaints about pay and risk-taking. The CEO is annoyed by the activism that now overshadows the event. Read the rest

According to Wells Fargo, a "computer glitch" caused the improper denial of 870 loan modification requests, which led to 545 foreclosures in which Wells Fargo customers lost their homes; the bank is now offering those former homeowners -- some of whom saw the breakup of their marriages as the result of the stress of foreclosure -- insultingly small sums, like $25,000.America is in the grips of a foreclosure epidemic on a scale never seen in this country; Donald Trump's Secretary of the Treasury was a pioneer in dirty mass-evictions based on fraudulent documents; ironically, people who live in high-foreclosure states were more likely to vote for Trump.Wells Fargo is America's biggest bank, and has committed a string of frauds affecting millions of Americans, leading to the collapse of small businesses, credit delinquencies, the "improper repossession" (that is, theft) of their customers' cars (including cars belonging to US military service members stationed overseas), and more. Then in September this year, nearly three years later, he got a letter from Wells Fargo. "Dear Jose Aguilar," it read, "We made a mistake… we're sorry." It said the decision on his loan modification was based "on a faulty calculation" and his loan "should have been" approved. "It's just like, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding me?' Like they destroyed my kids' life and my life, and now you want me to – 'We're sorry?'" Aguilar said. Wells Fargo now said that "calculation error" on loan modifications affected 870 customers over an eight year period, customers who either were denied loan modifications or "were not offered a modification in cases where they would have otherwise qualified." About 545 of those customers ultimately lost their homes to foreclosure. Read the rest

And I didn't even know Keith Richards was missing.The New York Times reports on the discovery of a mudlarker's body in the Thames mud, complete with thigh-high leather boots.Britons fishing or scavenging in the River Thames in central London are a rare sight these days. But in medieval times, the river was teeming with workers toiling along its banks. The 500-year-old skeleton of a man believed to be among them has been found buried in layers of river mud in southeast London, offering a glimpse of a bygone era.Perhaps most intriguing, what remained of his legs was discovered in a pair of thigh-high leather boots — unusual even for his time. Specialists say the man could have been a fisherman, a dock worker or a mudlark — a scavenger who hunted for objects of value by the river. Read the rest

First, take this quiz to see how good you are at distinguishing between real faces and fake ones made with generative adversarial networks (GANs). Then, read this article that teaches you how to spot the fakes. In a few years AI will be able to generate images that don't have recognizable tells. Read the rest

Mack (9) and John (13) have lived in Korea for about 4 years. They speak Korean fluently and with good accents, and now appear on television frequently. (In the video, a restaurant server who spoke with the boys said she was "shocked" by how well they spoke the language.) The boys' mother was also interviewed in the video. She said she wanted to move from the US to Asia with her husband and kids just for a change, and her husband (a computer programmer) found a job in Korea. They planned to stay for two years, but now love South Korea so much they want to stay. Image: Asian Boss/YouTube Read the rest

Stephen Colbert points out some of the comical Trump moments at Bush's funeral, from destroying the casual chatty mood between the Obamas and Clintons to the zoning out when everyone else is reading the Apostles' Creed. He also reminds us of Trump's great journey to meet with the Bush family the night before, in which he took a stretch limousine with his motorcade to travel across the street, 250 feet away. Colbert sums it up perfectly when he says, “Donald Trump is the only person in the world who can bring down a funeral.” Read the rest

Composer and producer Josiah Steinbrick -- who has worked with the likes of Devendra Banhart and Danger Mouse along with releasing his own music -- is also a rigorous record collector and curator of all varieties of outernational music, ancient and contemporary, and experimental/avant-garde sounds from around the globe. Through his Instagram feed, Josiah has turned me on to countless new artists, musical cultures, and sonic experiences. This week, ARP's Cult Cargo program on NTS Radio presented Josiah's mix of "pan-global contempo/archival selections from the past 12 months of vari-functional sculptural laments, hypno-pulses, and abstractions in HD." Far fucking out. Listen below.Playlist:TOMOKO SAUVAGE ClepsydraREX ILLUSIVII DreamKӢR Az Esam LozaDISCO VUMBI Jo-DocuromaAPICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL Morse Beat RoarFRANÇOIS BAYLE Toupie Dans Le CielPALTA, SPORTS Forårets SkørhedCHAM-PANG Tant Pis Pour Les Heures De SommeilPANAQUIRE / OSWALDO LARES QuitipláSSTINE JANVIN Zen GardenMADANG / RAGNAR JOHNSON Boma, KaeanSUBA Wayang 04WRONG WATER CottonKONRAD KRAFT Arc 12PHEW Sonic Morning = 音の朝RAMZI EvoraUWALMASSA Untitled 07NSRD Kādā Rītā (One Morning)NAM DI VILLAGE / LAURENT JEANNEAU Lantene (Moon) WomenARTURO RUIZ DEL POZO Tarka En BrukasNOZOMU MATSUMOTO ClimatotherapyNIAGARA Damasco Read the rest

This morning David and I were texting each other about the Brady Bunch, which we often do because we love the show and so does every member of our families. We got to talking about the episode where the Bradys star in a laundry soap commercial. David texted me a photo of the director of the commercial, a middle-age faux-hipster dressed in cartoonish psychedelic clothes.I got curious about who this actor was so I googled and learned his name was Paul Winchell (1922-2005). Boy, did he lead an interesting life! Here are some highlights (found on emmys.com):He got polio at the age of six. His legs atrophied but through weight training he was able to build the muscles to full strengthHe stuttered as a child. He learned ventriloquism as a way to get over his stuttering, and became an accomplished professional entertainer. He had his own variety show in 1950 and his wife on the show was played by Carol Burnett.He was the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. He also lent his voice talents to The Jetsons, Wacky Races, The Flintstones, and Yogi Bear.As an actor he appeared on The Lucy Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Perry Mason, The Brady Bunch, and Nanny and the Professor.In 1963 he invented an artificial heart, which was the prototype for the mechanical heart Robert K. Jarvik used in a successful transplant in the early 1980s.He held 30 patents for inventions including a fountain pen with a retractable tip, a flameless cigarette lighter, and an invisible garter belt. Read the rest

Trump can't make up his mind about his approval ratings, going from puffed up braggart last night to paranoid finger-pointer this morning.Last night he posted a boastful tweet that his approval rating, according to a poll by right-leaning Rasmussen, was at 50%, along with his back-patting message, "Working hard, thank you!" No matter that all of the other pollsters have his approval rating at a low 39%-43%, and that his "aggregate approval rating is around 42 percent, as of Wednesday," according to The Washington Post. And no matter that he boasted about how much he is admired on the same day that he attended former president George H.W. Bush's funeral. Working hard, thank you! pic.twitter.com/3SoWTkZjP6— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2018This this morning he did an about face, furious about his low approval rating, and blaming it all on the Mueller probe, calling it "presidential harrassment." Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen. It’s called Presidential Harassment!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2018When will the madness end?Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr Read the rest

David Lynch has directed many television commercials but this one from 1993 for Adidas, titled "The Wall," gives any surreal perfume commercials (including Lynch's own) a run for their money. (Get it? Run?) You can find a directory and clips of Lynch's other commercial, ad, and promo work here.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

In an open letter to the EU and European national officials who are negotiating the final form of the new Copyright Directive (by all accounts, a hot mess), some of the largest rightsholder groups and corporations in Europe -- sports leagues and movie studios -- have condemned the direction negotiations have gone in and asked to have their content removed from the scope of the Directive.The controversy is over Article 13 -- a rule requiring that online platforms never allow a user to display an unlicensed copyrighted work, not even for an eyeblink -- which was heavily promoted by the music industry and its lobbyists.The sports leagues and movie studios have broken with the record labels, arguing that the European courts have recently ruled that companies like Google might have more liability than Article 13 would heap upon them, and warning that passing Article 13 would give the Big Tech companies more power.So they're asking for all the negotiation on Article 13 since 2016 be torn up, and the process restarted -- something that's effectively impossible -- and that otherwise, movies and sports matches be exempted from Article 13's rules.That latter would be, if anything, even worse than Article 13 on its own: two conflicting liability regimes that only the very, very largest companies could navigate. Article 13 on its own is very likely to drive all the European competitors to US Big Tech out of business, but Article 13 in combination with the liability system promoted by the signatories of this letter would certainly leave US Big Tech as the only possible players in the online world. Read the rest

The Satanic Temple of Chicago has installed a stately and elegant statue at the Illinois Capitol between the Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah. Predictably, some people are pissed. Approximately 4.5 feet tall, the statue features a snake around an arm with the hand clutching an apple. The pedestal is emblazoned with the statement "Knowledge is the greatest gift." From CNN:"We feel it's a First Amendment issue, we have other displays there -- a Hanukkah menorah and Nativity scene," (Secretary of State's office spokesperson Dave) Drucker said. "If you have displays of one type you need to be consistent and allow everyone to do so, aside from hate speeches and other unacceptable things."The Satanic Temple says that its members are atheists who are often interested in community activism, according to the group's website."We do not promote a belief in a personal Satan," the website says. "To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions."The group says it embraces the "struggle for justice" and believes people should "strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures," according to its website. Read the rest

A teacher in Visalia, California, "forcibly cut a student's hair off" while singing the national anthem of the United States of America. College of the Sequoias police responded Wednesday to a University Preparatory High School classroom after reports of child endangerment involving a teacher and a "pair of scissors," said Police Chief Kevin Mizner. Science teacher Margaret Gieszinger, 52, of Exeter, was later arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment. Her bail was set at $100,000. The arrest followed two videos posted to social media on Wednesday showing a student sitting in a chair at the front of the classroom as the teacher cuts off portions of the student's hair. She then tosses the chunks of hair behind her. The video must be seen to be believed: a found-footage horror movie depicting her lurching, scissors whirling, at screaming children. She was arrested on suspicion of corporal injury to a child. There's more coverage here, with a different cut of the footage. Read the rest

We've talked before about how hard it is for folks driving for Lyft and Uber to break even. Things aren't so hot for cab drivers, either: as ridesharing becomes more prevalent by the day, those who own their own taxi or drive for someone else are finding it harder to make a living. The drop in revenue going into the pockets of New York City Taxi medallion owners has been so extreme that drivers have been forced to work 100-hour weeks just to stay out of the red. Others, feeling that their lives were ruined by mounting debt, out of desperation committed suicide. Today, New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission decided that they'd do something about it.From Gizmodo:Today, New York’s City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission approved measures to enact minimum pay requirements for app-based for-hire vehicles (FHV) like Uber, Lyft, and Juno. The new pay structure is set to take effect early in the new year.The $26.51 per hour gross pay floor (estimated to amount to $17.22 per hour, less expenses) comes after “growing evidence of declining driver pay” was confirmed by a labor study, commissioned by the TLC, which concluded that 85 percent of drivers in NYC were earning less than the local minimum wage of $15 an hour. The new requirements will increase the average driver’s take-home pay by an estimated $9,600 per year.Advocacy groups like the Independent Driver’s Guild and Amalgamated Transit Union have celebrated the change. “All workers deserve the protection of a fair, livable wage and we are proud to be setting the new bar for contractor workers’ rights in America,” Conigliaro, Jr., founder of IDG, wrote in a press statement. Read the rest

National Geographic compiled its list of the twenty coolest places on planet Earth in 2019. The top three: the small Japanese town of Setouchi, the continent of Antarctica, and the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Setouchi has the world's greatest small-town art scene and the coast looks like something from a movie about colonizing another worlds. Antarctica is the last place on Earth, a vast and unspoiled testament to nature's extremes. Pittsburgh has a giant Heinz ketchup bottle made of regular Heinz ketchup bottles. And it won World War II.Here is the entire “cool” list:1. Setouchi, Japan2. Antarctica3. Pittsburgh4. Corsica5. Cambodia6. San Miguel de Allende, Mexico7. West Yorkshire, England8. Hong Kong9. Zimbabwe10. Guyana11. Oslo, Norway12. Eritrea13. KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa14. Bhutan15. Dundee, Scotland16. Uganda17. Matera, Italy18 Indonesia19 Sibiu, Romania Read the rest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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