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Bargain shoe chain Payless recently took over a Santa Monica retail shop and turned it into Palessi, a luxury store selling their bargain shoes. Then they invited influencers to the store's grand opening to punk them. Shoes and boots that normally retail for $19.99 to $39.99 were presented as designer shoes. Adweek:Party goers, having no idea they were looking at discount staples from the mall scene, said they’d pay hundreds of dollars for the stylish shoes, praising the look, materials and workmanship. Top offer: $640, which translates to an 1,800 percent markup, and Palessi sold about $3,000 worth of product in the first few hours of the stunt.Payless, or “Palessi,” did ring up those purchases but didn’t keep the money. Influencers got their cash back, along with free shoes. Their reactions caught in the short- and longer-form ads—those shocked “gotcha” moments—are fairly priceless.Head over to Adweek (login required) to watch the video of the unsuspecting influencers gushing over the "designer" shoes and then watch the videos as a couple of them learn they've been fooled.screenshot via Adweek Read the rest

You'll need to be handy with CSS to make use of it, but NES.css offers boxes, buttons, containers, forms, speech balloons, icons and more to make your web projects looks like 8-bit games. It's by @bc_rikko. Read the rest

Are you actually running those errands or are they running you? Whether it's for that big work project or just your everyday life, you need an organization system that doesn't take up more time in entry than it's saving in implementation. Enter the 2DO Task Manager.Using 2Do's Quick Entry option, you'll be able to see all your tasks in color-coded lists within minutes. You can sort them by date range, location and more with an exhaustive set of tags, and schedule each item with a simple drag-and-drop. You can even set reminders when you're within range of a location-specific task on your list. And with support for Dropbox, Reminders and more, you can check in and stay on target no matter which device you're on.See why this is the one that racked up 4.8 stars on hundreds of Mac App Store reviews. Pick up a lifetime license to the 2Do Task Manager for $29.99 - a holiday drop off the already sale-priced $39.99. Read the rest

A restorative art project that teaches girls how to create a nose with mortuary waxTo show that mortuary science is a field for anyone, reps from the Mid-America College of Funeral Services in Jeffersonville, Indiana spent a day with local Girl Scouts. The event was presented as part of Spark, an event series that "allows girls to meet women working in STEM fields."News and Tribune:Teachers and students from the college answered the Girl Scouts' questions about restorative art and gave them a quick tour of a reconstruction lab, where they learned about the embalming process and uses for various tools. The kids also received a crash course on how to sculpt body parts such as noses with mortuary wax, which is often used in funeral services to return bodies to a natural appearance...Gohmann encourages more women and young people to enter STEM fields such as mortuary science, and she wants them to understand what funeral services involve to remove its stigma."In the past, you think of funeral directors being dour old men, and it's not," she said. "We're young women. We're grandmothers. We're mothers."Screenshot via News and Tribune Read the rest

Cat lovers who celebrate Christmas, your tree prayers may have been answered. Argos, a UK retailer is selling six-foot-tall "half parasol trees" with the description, "Keep your perfectly placed baubles, bows and bells out of reach of curious, crawling kids or your cats' playful paws."That means no more of these kinds of shenanigans (dangit):Argos' half trees cost £33.33 (about $43) and their flocked half trees cost £37.50 ($48).(Ladbible) Read the rest

Jewish a cappella group Six13 spun their own adaptation of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in their delightful "Bohemian Chanukah.":Is this the eighth nightWe light with family?Recall with great prideOur escape from Greek tyranny?Kindle the lightsRemember the MaccabeesHow did those five boysLead us to victory?Thanks, Jake! Read the rest

Six4three sucks at redaction: its court filing in its lawsuit against Facebook (previously) was redacted by drawing black rectangles over the text, which can still be copied and pasted to read it. This is a stupid mistake that most people stopped making a decade ago.The unredacted text reveals that in 2012 Facebook planned to market access to its Graph API for $250,000; it also provided access to the API to Nissan and Royal Bank of Canada (these two were previously known to have accessed the API) as well as Chrysler/Fiat, Lyft, Airbnb, and Netflix (these are revealed through the botched redaction). Six4Three lawyer David Godkin has not responded to Ars’ request for comment. But he did file an 18-page document on February 9, 2017, that lambasted the deals with these companies.“In each of these cases, Facebook seems to base its decision to grant or deny these companies an unfair competitive advantage based on its ability to extract payment or other valuable consideration,” he wrote in the redacted portions of the 2017 filing.In a footnote on the final page, he concluded:“Buyers who would not meet the arbitrary minimum requirements set by Facebook were shut out of the market, as was the case with Plaintiff, since it could not afford to spend $250,000 per year on unrelated advertising expenses with Facebook. Plaintiff’s annual advertising budget was far lower than this arbitrary minimum.”Facebook pondered, for a time, selling access to user data [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica] Read the rest

If Schrodinger’s cat could read he’d feel right at home with this week’s tabloids.Quantum superposition and tabloid supposition seem interchangeable in the way that this week’s tabloid tales might be alive with truth or dead wrong, at one and the same time.The long-lost Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 has been “Found In Cambodian Jungle!” screams the front page of the National Enquirer, which offers a satellite image of the plane’s wreckage. At the same time, the blurry and indistinct photo appears to show some sort of unidentified objects amid trees, which could equally be the remnants of abandoned housing, or the wreckage of any number of drug-runners’ planes that may have crashed, or planes shot down amid Cambodian hostilities during the Vietnam War.As a discerning tabloid reader, Schrodinger’s cat might conclude that the wreckage of MH370 had been found after four years, and that its wreckage had also not been found. Schrodinger’s feline might find the same paradox with the Enquirer story that actor Kevin Spacey has been “hiding from the law” for the past year to avoid being hit by any further allegations of sexual harassment or assault – as if Spacey's absence from the public eye would stop police from filing criminal charges or prevent any alleged victims from filing a civil suit.The fact is that for the past year paparazzi have failed to photograph Spacey, which in the tabloid world means he’s “been in hiding.” But wait! “The Enquirer has found him!” crows the tabloid. Read the rest

The disgraced former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign was boasting about a Russia business deal after the election, a newly unearthed letter reveals.“George Papadopoulos allegedly told a confidant in 2016 that he was pursuing a business deal in Russia that would result 'in large financial gains' for him and Trump,” reports The Atlantic's rockstar reporter Natasha Bertrand. The House Intel Committee and FBI are now investigating.Excerpt:George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his interactions with a Russia-linked professor in 2016, went to jail on Monday after fighting, and failing, to delay the start of his two-week prison sentence. But a letter now being investigated by the House Intelligence Committee and the FBI indicates that Papadopoulos is still in the crosshairs of investigators probing a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.The letter, obtained last week by The Atlantic, was sent to Democratic Representative Adam Schiff’s office on November 19 by an individual who claims to have been close to Papadopoulos in late 2016 and early 2017. The letter was brought to the attention of Schiff and House Intelligence Committee staff, according to an aide who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The letter was also obtained by federal authorities, who are taking its claims “very seriously,” said two U.S. officials who also requested anonymity due to the sensitivities of the probe.The statement makes a series of explosive but uncorroborated claims about Papadopoulos’s alleged coordination with Russians in the weeks following Trump’s election in November 2016, including that Papadopoulos said he was “doing a business deal with Russians which would result in large financial gains for himself and Mr. Read the rest

When something goes wrong with a product you own or a service you pay for, it's reasonable to expect quick, effective customer service from the company responsible for whatever it is that's giving you trouble. More and more companies are turning to online services to allow their customers to vent: line yourself up for a chat with one of the company's reps, detail the issues you're having and, hopefully, you'll get the help you need.Unfortunately, along with being given assistance, you can also expect to be surveilled as part of your online exchange. Many companies have set their customer service reps to see what you're typing before you click "send" on your message to them.From Gizmodo:Next time you’re chatting with a customer service agent online, be warned that the person on the other side of your conversation might see what you’re typing in real time. A reader sent us the following transcript from a conversation he had with a mattress company after the agent responded to a message he hadn’t sent yet. Something similar recently happened to HmmDaily’s Tom Scocca. He got a detailed answer from an agent one second after he hit send. Googling led Scocca to a live chat service that offers a feature it calls “real-time typing view” to allow agents to have their “answers prepared before the customer submits his questions.” Another live chat service, which lists McDonalds, Ikea, and Paypal as its customers, calls the same feature “message sneak peek,” saying it will allow you to “see what the visitor is typing in before they send it over.” Salesforce Live Agent also offers “sneak peak.” I mean sure, having reps see what you're typing before you've fired off a message allows for a faster response--you'll be able to get on with your life a lot faster thanks to sneak peeking than without it. Read the rest

Dell released a statement on Wednesday that says the computer giant reset passwords for all accounts on the Dell.com online electronics store on Nov. 14. That was a full 5 days after they discovered and reportedly thwarted hackers who were trying to steal customer data.Not the kind of news you want leading up to the holiday electronics shopping season.Dell did not tell its customers about the attack when it forced the password resets 5 days after the attack, according to reports. The only data the hackers attempted to access, according to Dell today, was customer names, email addresses and scrambled passwords.From Reuters:Dell said in a statement that on Nov. 9 the company detected and stopped hackers who had breached its network and were attempting to steal customer data. Investigators found no evidence that the hackers succeeded, but have not ruled out the possibility that they did steal some data, the company said.They only sought customer names, email addresses and scrambled passwords, Dell said.The breach occurred as companies come under increasing scrutiny from regulators worldwide to provide quick and accurate disclosure of customer data theft. The European Union implemented strict new privacy regulations in May that punish violators with fines of up to 20 million euros ($23 million), or 4 percent of global revenue, whichever is higher.Dell determined that there were no regulatory or legal requirements that it disclose the incident, but decided to come forward “with customer trust in mind,” according to the source. Read the rest

Takes a special kind of evil to pull off what longtime Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone and his pal Jerome Corsi did to Seth Rich's family. The “political provocateurs” and their paid assistants harassed the murdered man's mom and dad and surviving loved ones with conspiracy theories about his death, even though they knew it was all a lie.Newly released email shows the Russia truthers knew full well who supplied Wikileaks with the Clinton emails. They kept blaming a murdered staffer, even after his parents begged them to stop, reports Will Sommer at the Daily Beast:Stone became one of the first major figures in Trump’s orbit to suggest Rich was murdered over the emails, tweeting on August 10, 2016 that Rich had “ties to DNC heist.”In 2017, after Rich’s parents begged right-wing media personalities to stop pushing conspiracy theories about their son, Corsi put the blame for the email theft on Rich in a three-part InfoWars series.In his InfoWars posts and a series of YouTube videos, Corsi portrayed Rich as a disaffected supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who stole the emails to get revenge against the DNC and paid for it with his life. Corsi wrote Rich had clearly been “implicated in breaches of email systems.” The young staffer was, according to Corsi, the “likely perpetrator.”Corsi’s theory helped fuel conspiracists on the right who claim, without evidence, that Rich was murdered on the orders of Hillary Clinton. But emails from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia show that Corsi knew all along that it really was hackers who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Read the rest

You can preorder an Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass for $40.As Boing Boing pal Morpheus says, “Big Mouth Billy Bass, the legendary talking robotic centrarchidid, is now available with Amazon Alexa support. You can ask it for stock quotes or to order some more Ranch Doritos and blowgun darts!”The future is weird.From the Amazon blurb:• Everyone's favorite talking and singing fish is now programmed to respond to Alexa voice commands.• Pair big mouth Billy bass with your preferred device in the Echo family and let the fun begin.• Responds to Alexa voice commands• Lip syncs with Alexa spoken responses• Responds to inquiries about the weather, your commute, the news, random facts, and more• Reacts to timers, Notifications, and alarms• Dances to the beat with music.• This is a hilarious gift! Read the rest

From the weekly series The Bureau.

Magic lifts the spirits. Read the rest

It's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's annual Power Up! week, when donations to the charity are matched by a group of challenge donors, making every tax-deductible dollar you give count twice! I'm a contractor for EFF (my fees come out of a grant from the MIT Media Lab, where I'm a Research Associate), and I've been involved with the org for more than 15 years now, and I've never seen a nonprofit spend its money smarter to make more of a difference in the world. Read the rest

16 thousand people have watched this ambient yet vaguely sinister YouTube video alerting viewers to the existence of "illuminati pyramid" clocks. I recently found a 1984 Seiko original at a garage sale for $2—my new favorite toy!—and thought I'd share the ancient wisdom.Best of all, it preserves bacon much better than the late-2000s replica. I wish it would stop talking to me in my sleep about the Clintons, though.Photo: Selçuk Oral Read the rest

Jeffrey Martin (previously) writes, "I shot this gigapixel image last year in mid November. It's made of 8000 photos, shot with a fullframe SLR and a 600mm lens. It was shot from thetop of Prague's 'Orloj', the clock tower on Old Town Square, built in 1410.The tower had a scaffolding all over it at the time, going all the way uppast the top of the roof: a perfect platform for a high resolution 360ºphoto, if only I could get up there! I actually didn't even considertrying, as the answer to such questions is usually 'no'. My colleague, arather more enterprising Marketing guy, was able to smooth talk them intosaying 'yes'. Wow!After signing my life away to the construction company who was in charge ofthe construction site, I went up to the "top" of the tower - at least, thetop floor where tourists normally go when the place is not underconstruction. Then, stepping out of the window onto the scaffolding, anddescending another five floors on rickety ladders and boards sitting onpoles, hopefully bolted together with expertise. The whole thing swayedlightly in the wind. A rather terrifying experience, at least the firsttime. All the way to the top, above the spires of the tower, I attached myeight meter monopod to the scaffolding (with about 20 oversize zip ties, noless) and fired up my trusty camera robot, which would allow me to remotelymove and trigger the camera in preprogrammed positions. Read the rest

Jenny Odell is an artist and critic whose Bureau of Suspended Objects report on dropshipping (previously) was a fascinating dive into the weird, scammy world of crapgadgets and farcically poorly made fashion items sold through a network of "influencers" and turnkey ecommerce tool.Now, Odell has stumbled into a much weirder, much scammier, much murkier world, when she started investigating the parents of one of her Stanford students were receiving a steady stream of mysterious packages addressed to "Returns Department, Valley Fountain LLC."Odell's investigation revealed a bizarre network of shitty, overpriced off-brand gadgets sold through thousands of Amazon stores, as well as through a mostly empty "department store" right in the middle of Manhattan, as well as through a network of "book stores" that mostly sold crappy gadgets, whose proprietor kept on changing his name.This network is tied in with the religious cult that turned out to be the mysterious acquirers of Newsweek, whose subsequent shenanigans were revealed by Newsweek's own reporters, leading to police raids. This cult -- centered around Olivet University and an evangelical pastor named David Jang -- is also implicated in the International Business Times, as well as weird spam- and clickbait-mills.After Odell's extensive investigation, it's still not clear what, exactly, the fuck is going on with all these businesses, LLCs, storefronts, online storefronts, stock-art shoops, and other mysterious practices. What is clear is that someone is making a lot of money, somehow -- giant Manahattan department stores don't come cheap! Read the rest

It doesn't matter if you're an Onlie or a grup, these colorful textured plastic balls are fun to hold and squeeze. If moisture enters the small holes in the balls and results in black mold, they can be admired under a bell jar filled with an inert gas, preferably xenon. Read the rest

CCTV footage from a wave of after-hours robberies in Houston has birthed a viral sensation, thanks to the robbers' tactic of commando-crawling on the floor, which has led to them being dubbed the "inchworm bandits."It's possible they're doing this to avoid having their heights, gaits, and faces captured by security cameras, but it's also a fascinating piece of performance art.They’re almost certainly idiots, of course, because if they were any kind of geniuses they wouldn’t be robbing pizza places for a few hundred bucks a pop. And whatever else they are, they’re definitely crooks. But I don’t want to totally rule out the possibility that these guys knew exactly where the cameras were in the place they were robbing, and just decided to do a ninja crawl across the floor because they thought it’d be funny if it made the news.“Inchworm Bandits” Are Either Idiots or Comedy Geniuses [Kevin Underhill/Lowering the Bar] Read the rest

In 1982 the 8 bit world was rocked by the Commodore 64, or C64 home computer. For $60 you can relive the glory.Once the most popular home computer around, Commodore's C64 was an amazing follow-up to the Pet and the VIC-20. The games were fun, and there were a lot of them. I was an Apple ][ user for most of this time period, and I think Commodore users had more fun. The Amiga really kicked ass.Included are many games I'd love to go back and play again: Temple of Apshai, Impossible Mission, California Games, Boulder Dash. The list goes on, they've included 64 titles:64 built in games: Alleykat, Anarchy, The Arc of Yesod, Avenger, Battle Valley, Boulder Dash, Break Dance, California Games, Chip's Challenge, Coil Cop, Confuzion, Cosmic Causeway, Cyberdyne Warrior, Cybernoid, Cybernoid II, Deflektor, Destroyer, Everyone's a Wally, Firelord, Gateway to Apshai, Gribbly's Day Out, Heartland, Herobotix, Highway Encounter, Hunter's Moon, Hysteria, Impossible Mission, Impossible Mission II, IO, Jumpman, Jumpman 2, Mega-Apocalypse, Mission A.D., Monty on the Run, Netherworld, Nobby the Aardvark, Nodes of Yesod, Paradroid, Pitstop II, Ranarama, Robin of the Wood, Silicon Warrior, Skate Crazy, Skool Daze, Snare, Speedball, Speedball 2, Spindizzy, Street Sports Baseball, Street Sports Basketball, Street Sports Soccer, Summer Games II, Super Cycle, Sword of Fargoal, Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Thing on a Spring, Tower Toppler, Trailblazer, Uridium, West Bank, Who Dares Wins II, Winter Games, World Games, ZynapsHard to go too wrong for $60, but be forewarned the keyboard is decorative and typing has to be done via controller. Read the rest

A family of Armenian refugees have been sheltering in Bethel Church in The Hague for 27 days, avoiding a deportation order because officials are not legally permitted to interrupt a service -- and the church has been holding a nonstop, continuous service for the whole 27 days. The Tamrazyan family sought refuge in the Netherlands after the father's political activism led to death threats against him and his family. They were granted asylum, but this was struck down when the Dutch government appealed the asylum decision as part of a trend to attack immigration as a sop to far-right xenophobic elements in Dutch politics.The request to take in the Tamrazyans put the leadership of the church in an uncomfortable position because, as Hettema explains, no church should have to choose between respect for human dignity and respect for government. But in the end, he told his church community that he decided to welcome the family in order to stay true to “the openness and hospitality of the church.” Hettema says that the church doesn’t plan on ending the religious service any time soon, but he is hopeful the Minister of Migration, Mark Harbers, will use his “discretionary” powers to grant residency to the Tamrazyans, as he has done in the past for certain cases.A Dutch church has been conducting religious services for 27 days to protect a refugee family [Annabelle Timsit/Quartz](via Kottke) Read the rest

This marble run is at a playground called Monkey Town in the Netherlands. The creator says it has "4 tipping containers which can release up to 10,000 marbles in one go! If the biggest 2 containers (with 1000 and 10,000 marbles) are tipping at the same time, it creates a flood of 11,000 marbles!"Image: YouTube Read the rest

Once again, Comcast is repeating its annual tradition of hiking "broadcast TV" and "regional sports network" hidden fees at a rate far above inflation, typically raising them from $14.50 to $18.25/month, rise of about 25%. The majority of Comcast customers will see the increase on Jan 1, with remaining customers getting hit on a rolling basis as the year progresses. These fees are deceptively not listed in advertised Comcast rates and Comcast reserves the right to hike these prices even for accounts under contract.Comcast is also set to ratchet up prices on its $1.2 billion/year cable modem scam, in which customers pay many multiples of the purchase price to rent substandard, insecure modems as part of their cable package (Comcast also killed a FCC rule that would have forced them to allow us to buy our cable boxes rather than spending $200/year to rent an electricity-hungry, underpowered, insecure set-top box). The cable industry is the most hated in America and Comcast is the most hated company in America, and, incredibly, the rate at which people hate Comcast is increasing (people actually love their municipal, publicly owned ISPs, which Comcast is trying to eliminate).Comcast has abandoned rural customers to a life where access to networks -- and hence customers, suppliers, education, healthcare, and employment -- is third-rate and overpriced.Comcast's mom-and-pop competitors have called for antitrust enforcement against the company (weirdly, they are backed by Donald Trump in this call), without much action (so far). Comcast faced a class-action lawsuit over the TV and sports fees, but the company settled out of court in May. Read the rest

Prince's music videos are a lot more obscure than his catalog of 40 albums; he was ambivalent about the form and many of the videos he created were only released on VHS or interactive CD or as pop-up streams on his site; but recently Prince's estate released his whole video catalog in high-rez, prompting Prince superfan Anil Dash to write an appreciation that embeds the entire Prince video catalog.Now, the truth is, most of Prince's videos just aren't that great. Especially when considered in comparison to the sheer mind-boggling breadth of Prince's genius, or the groundbreaking video innovation of his pop contemporaries like Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Madonna, the fact that Prince has fewer truly extraordinary music videos is a stark contrast. But as with all things Prince, when he was doing his best, there was absolutely nobody better.Here, then, is a look at all of Prince's music videos, in chronological order. Most of these writeups began as an ongoing Twitter thread that I've been updating as the estate released new videos (Questlove said it was worthy of his NYU class!) but here I've updated and expanded all the information on each video.Every Single Video Prince Ever Made [Anil Dash] Read the rest

I really do not know how to feel about Fuller House, but Kimmy Gibbler rules.I never intentionally 'watched' Full House, but I have been under the influence while it played on my television. This has happened enough times for me to know exactly what is going on, even at a mere glimpse of a new Fuller House episode.Appears to me like the Fuller House team is having an absolute blast. Read the rest

On January 15th, Google will disappear all Youtube annotations, which have lots of structural problems (spammy, don't work well on mobile or big screens), but which have been a font of creative inspiration that spawned whole genres of interactive Youtube projects, from games to interactive films to branching narrative adventures to musical experiments, to collaborative art projects to deep context and annotation. XOXO co-founder Andy "Waxy" Baio has produced a roundup of some of the greatest examples of creative and inspirational Youtube annotations, along with some preliminary steps you can take to export annotations before they disappear down the memory hole.From the moment that YouTube announced Annotations in June 2008, they were already proposing its use for the creation of games and interactive stories. The blog post links to this simple Shell Game video from May 14, 2008 as an example, quite likely the first YouTube game ever made.Annotations were particularly well-suited for choice-based Choose Your Own Adventures, stringing together a collection of videos that let viewers decide the story.The first I remember was Tube Adventures, a simple Spanish choose-your-own-adventure video. Terminator Interactive Game, a simple FPS by a 12-year-old boy, showing just how accessible these games were to create.Stupid Mario Brothers took a live-action, and occasionally NSFW, approach to the Mario franchise, while Choose A Different Ending took a more gritty approach.YouTube creators Chad, Matt & Rob pushed the genre further with a series of five interactive adventures: The Time Machine. Read the rest

Did you know that Rusty Blazenhoff, who writes for us here at Boing Boing, has a wonderful newsletter called Rusty's Electric Dreams? You can subscribe to it here. The current issue of the newsletter (which is guest edited by Doctor Popular) has a link to a hand-soldering guide from NASA. The photos are excellent. Here's the (large) PDF. Read the rest

Last year the New York Times ran Nazi sympathizer sympathizer article titled, A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland ("He is the Nazi sympathizer next door, polite and low-key..."). To make well-deserved fun of the Times, IntrepidFox produced a pitch perfect Times video parody, "A Voice of Hate on America's Internet," that sympathizes with Internet trolls. Read the rest

"Why can't you respect science as much as Maury Povich does?" It seems like a reasonable question, but these are unreasonable times. An unreasonable man has been put in charge. He refuses to listen to scientists or anyone else for that matter. Our planet is trying to kill us for what we've done with it. He carries on, regardless. It's an amazing, terrible thing to watch. Trevor Noah's got it nailed down. It might be funny, but man, it's hard to laugh. Read the rest

Here's how to open a Master Lock: 1) Buy an iPad. 2) Remove the iPad's stiff plastic protective wrapper. 3) Throw away the iPad. 4) Follow Bosnian Bill's instructions for making a lockpicking rake from the plastic wrapper. Image: Bosnian Bill/YouTube Read the rest

Boy, oh boy, if this Helios console could talk, it would have some serious stories to tell. Not only did Led Zeppelin use it to record their now-classic hit "Stairway to Heaven," but many other musical artists have recorded on it too. Now, it will be sold to the highest bidder (it's expected to fetch six-figures) at Bonhams upcoming December 11 auction in London. This mixing desk is particularly unique because it's actually a hybrid of two recording consoles that were combined in 1996 by Elvis Costello and Squeeze's Chris Difford.Bonhams: They used part of the Island Records Basing Street Studio 2 Helios Console (1970-1974) and part of Alvin Lee's Helios console from Space Studios (1973-1979).The two consoles were combined in 1996 after Difford and Costello acquired both from storage in order to set up their own studio HeliosCentric Studios 'which would be for everyone to use - a chapel of music in a quiet spot.' They sought advice from the original creator of Helios, Dick Swettenham, and carefully amalgamated the pair to create what is arguably one of Swettenham's first, last, and largest project.The newly combined console was installed on a peaceful farm in Rye that became a haven for musical artists and has been in constant use ever since. Artists who have used the console in both their original and amalgamated guises include: Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Jeff Beck, Stephen Stills, Jimi Hendrix, Mott The Hoople, Cat Stevens, Free, KT Tunstall, Athlete, Paolo Nutini, Sia, Olly Murrs, Dido, Pet Shop Boys, Scouting For Girls, David Bowie, Paul Weller, Mud, Gary Barlow, Supergrass and Keane. Read the rest

Ten years of austerity in the UK have produced a definitive answer to the question: does austerity drive economic growth? (Spoiler: No)The past decade has seen the UK dead last in advanced economies for wage growth -- the weakest decade for employee pay since the 19th Century! -- while executive pay has grown and grown, with the average CEO:worker pay ratio topping 1:150 (it was 1:20 in the 1980s).A new report commissioned by the UK Labour Party (the largest Labour Party in Europe!) from Sheffield University Emeritus Professor of Accounting Prem Sikka proposes a slate of reforms to curb executive pay and the toxic behavior it drives, such as abusing workers and cutting back on customer service, service delivery, and quality.The proposals include: making executive compensation public and publishing stats on gender- and race-based gaps in executive pay; ending stock-based compensation (which has been shown to incentivise financial engineering and short-term thinking) in favour of all-cash executive compensation; giving customers (and other stakeholders, including employees) a vote on executive compensation packages; and making executive compensation subject to annual, binding shareholder votes.The measures would only apply to companies with more than 250 workers -- about 7,000 UK firms, who collectively employ more than 10 million workers in the UK.Labour has not promised to adopt all of Prof Sikka's recommendations.The report suggests employees and other stakeholders should have a say in setting boardroom pay in order to “exert pressure for better distribution of income and improved quality of service for consumers”. Read the rest

Classic anime hit Cowboy Bebop is to become a live-action show at Netflix, reports The Hollywood Reporter.The live-action take tells a jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Fay Valentine and Radical Ed, a rag-tag crew of bounty hunters on the run from their pasts as they hunt down the solar system's most dangerous criminals. The Netflix series arrives as a live-action feature take starring Keanu Reeves has been toiling in development at Fox for nearly a decade.Produced by one of UK broadcaster ITV's studios. No cast yet. Read the rest

Say hello to Knickers, a 6'4" 3000-pound steer too big for the slaughterhouse to slaughter. Knickers will get to live out its natural life.The AP reports:The black-and-white Holstein Friesian won social media fame and many proclamations of “Holy Cow!” after photos surfaced of the 194-centimeter (6-foot-4-inch) steer standing head and shoulders above a herd of brown cattle in Western Australia state. ... Instead of becoming steaks and burgers, 7-year-old Knickers will get to live out his life in Pearson’s fields in Lake Preston, southwest of Perth. Read the rest

America's first national sports spectacle took place in 1823, when the North and South sent their best horses for a single dramatic race that came to symbolize the regional tensions of a changing nation. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Great Match Race, which laid the foundations of modern American thoroughbred racing.We'll also ponder a parasite's contribution to culture and puzzle over a misinformed criminal.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The overwhelming clatter and presence of restaurant noise is thanks to the fashionable minimalism of modern decor. Kate Wagner (of McMansion Hell fame) writes that if you want a peaceful meal out, go somewhere with carpet and soft fittings.Restaurants are so loud because architects don’t design them to be quiet. Much of this shift in design boils down to changing conceptions of what makes a space seem upscale or luxurious, as well as evolving trends in food service. Right now, high-end surfaces connote luxury, such as the slate and wood of restaurants including The Osprey in Brooklyn or Atomix in Manhattan. ... The result is a loud space that renders speech unintelligible. Now that it’s so commonplace, the din of a loud restaurant is unavoidable. That’s bad for your health—and worse for the staff who works there. But it also degrades the thing that eating out is meant to culture: a shared social experience that rejuvenates, rather than harms, its participants. Read the rest

I thought I had seen it all but now there's this... the Digging Dog Butt Tissue Holder ($28). "Get laughs as you pull tissues from this diligently digging dog's behind."Oh, I will."Great way for a teacher, therapist, or salesperson to get smiles."Obviously.Surprise, it's just a square box of tissues under there! Read the rest

Ever wonder why, in this age of smartwatches and VR, we're still cluttering our desk with PC towers? If you need a home computer for the tasks, screen size and storage that a smartphone can't handle, the Ockel Sirius B Windows 10 32GB Pocket PC is here to save space, time and money.Simply put, it's a true PC for the portable age. Powered by an Intel processor, the Ockel Sirius B packs 4 GB of RAM, high-speed built-in WiFi and Bluetooth capability. Just plug in a monitor and input device and you're ready to go. And with a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, an HDMI port, Micro SD card slot and AUX in/out, you've got plenty of options. And thanks to the fanless design, it's silent operation makes it perfect for holiday travel. Bring some movies and games and you've got entertainment wherever you can find a screen.Originally $349, the Ockel Sirius B Windows 10 32GB Pocket PC is now more than 25% off at $249. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Republicans are doomsday asteroid skeptics.

"The Devil Next Door," A&E's six-part documentary series on the alleged abuses at the Word of Faith Fellowship Church in North Carolina was scheduled to premiere Tuesday night at 10:00 PM EST. But at the last minute, the network yanked the series from its schedule. A spokesperson from A&E said producers were working on additional reporting but did not set a future broadcast date. On Twitter, a lawyer for the church accused A&E of paying some of the participants in series. A&E has run into this problem before. In 2016, their documentary series "Escaping the KKK" was canceled before it aired after it was discovered producers had paid some of the participants. The Word of Faith Fellowship Church was the subject of an investigation by the Associated Press, who called the church a cult. It was founded in 1979 by Jane Whaley, a former math teacher who considers herself to be a prophet. Allegations of physical and emotional abuse have been made by dozens of former members. (via Washington Post)(Photo: WLOS) Read the rest

Seattle-based guerilla artist April Soetarman writes she was "working through some sad feelings" when she made and hung her first sign, "I anonymously put it up in on a chain link fence in a public park in Seattle, ran away, and didn’t think about it." The signs she installs are fashioned to look like ordinary public signs but express feelings rather than actual warnings. She furthers, "Turns out people took photos, it ended up taking off online, and all of a sudden I was seeing reblogs and remixes and posts on strangers’ social media. Nobody knew it was me saying these things, which was very freeing, and very encouraging."Two years and many, many signs later, she is making some of her signs, including her most popular one ("ATTENTION: YOU ARE WONDERFUL AND DESERVE EVERY HAPPINESS"), available for purchase through Kickstarter. Prices start at $34. (swissmiss) Read the rest

Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith has defeated Democrat Mike Espy in the Mississippi Senate race. This brings the Senate count to 53 (R) — 47 (D).Mississippi, Goddam. The state just elected an openly white supremacist supporter of Donald Trump who unapologetically cracked a lynching joke about her Black and Democratic opponent. From the Washington Post's backgrounder on why the race was so important:No candidate received 50 percent of the vote in Mississippi’s Nov. 6 special Senate election, sending the top two vote-getters to a Nov. 27 runoff. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R), a former state official, was appointed to this Senate seat after Thad Cochran (R) resigned in the spring. She faces Democrat Mike Espy, who was an agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton. Republicans have already captured 52 Senate seats in the next Congress. Despite a series of campaign setbacks – she’s faced criticism for a Nov. 11 joke about attending a public hanging – Hyde-Smith is favored to make it 53. She only received 42 percent of the vote on Nov. 6 but was challenged on the right by another Republican, state Sen. Chris McDaniel. The two combined for 58 percent of the vote, compared with 41 percent for Espy. Mississippi hasn't elected a Democratic senator since the 1980s. Sen. Roger Wicker (R) easily won reelection on Nov. 6 in the state’s other Senate race.FILE PHOTOS, REUTERS: U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy and U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) are seen in combination file photos, in Jackson, Mississippi.Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith prevails in Mississippi Senate race, despite ‘public hanging’ comment https://t.co/B4dcrBDdf3— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) November 28, 2018BREAKING: GOP US Sen. Read the rest

Climate change is why California is burning, and thousands of its citizens displaced, injured, or killed by the wildfires that spread with never-before-seen intensity. Says who?The just-released U.S. National Climate Assessment, which Donald Trump's own administration released, but which the president seems to believe is a work of fiction.The 2018 National Climate Assessment clearly links the rise of catastrophic wildfires with anthropogenic climate change. Just this month, 85 people died in the Northern California Camp Fire, which is finally 100% contained.That “firestorm” began on November 8, and raged with unprecedented speed, destroying nearly 14,000 homes and burning nearly 154,000 acres (62,000 hectares). That's a burn area roughly five times the size of the city of San Francisco.“There's questions about what's going to come back where that fire burned through,” John Abatzoglou, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Idaho, told the New York Times. “Is it not going to regenerate as a forest? Are we going to see more grassland and shrublands?”We may be witnessing the permanent deforestation of large swaths of indigenous forest in the Great West.From an interactive feature by @PopovichN and @KendraWrites at @nytimes:A warmer world makes for a more combustible country. That’s the conclusion in the most comprehensive assessment of the effects of climate change on the United States, released by the Trump administration just weeks after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.The report says the continued release of greenhouse gases from cars, factories and other sources will make fires more frequent, including very large fires that burn more than 12,400 acres. Read the rest

According to documents obtained by the Canadian Press, the Canadian government has been warning against investing in technology served up by state-owned companies as it's highly likely that the hardware could be used as a conduit for corporate espionage.From The Globe & Mail:The RCMP organized two workshops last March — one in Calgary, the other in Toronto — to raise awareness about threats to critical systems, including espionage and foreign interference, cyberattacks, terrorism and sabotage, newly disclosed documents show.Canadian Security Intelligence Service materials prepared for the workshops advise that “non-likeminded countries,” state-owned enterprises and affiliated companies are engaged in a global pursuit of technology and know-how driven by economic and military ambitions.The papers surrounding the RCMP and CSIS' warnings were heavily redacted: there's no mention of any specific countries that want to take a peek at what Canuck corporations have to offer. However, we've still got a good idea about some of what they were talking about. According to The Canadian Press, the document had a chunk of text in it pulled from a US government report that China and other competing countries have been swiping "hundreds of billions of dollars" worth of intellectual property every year. Additionally, back in 2016, CSIS warned Canadians that maybe allowing Huawei Technologies to have any part in the building of Canada's 5G telecommunications network might be a really bad idea. According to a number of intelligence sources, Huawei's ties to the Chinese government run deep.It's fun to be reminded that billion dollar concerns like tech and oil companies have just as much to worry about with phishing, sloppy security practices and other digital hazards as everyone else. Read the rest

Can one learn to look? According to street photography pioneer Henri Cartier-Bresson, the answer is, um, sex. (via PetaPixel) Read the rest

I can't believe this has to be said (again), but cyberpunk was meant as a warning, not a business plan.It turns out that you need very few identifiers to make a guess about who a person standing in front of a billboard is, especially when you can suck data out of their phones. Throw in data about how long you stand in front of a billboard and you've got metrics that advertisers can use to tune their campaigns. A year ago, researchers at Exodus Privacy identified dozens of trackers on smartphone apps that had collected massive amounts of information to better target advertising. Yale Privacy Lab replicated many of Exodus Privacy’s findings. Among the app researchers identified as having Cuebiq’s code signature was iHeartRadio, which is owned by Clear Channel.The iHeartRadio app isn’t the only one to include Cuebiq’s code, though it’s one of the most popular, with over 50 million downloads from Google Play alone. Because iHeartRadio contains code from Cuebiq’s software development kit (SDK), Cuebiq may be able to harvest user analytics, behavior, location, and other identifying information, which it could then resell to a partner.“The dirty work of crunching and providing the analytics is done by other companies they partner with, like Ubimo and Cuebiq. However, the iHeartRadio app, developed by another part of the same corporation, contains some of the same mobile app trackers these data launderers rely upon as a data source,” said O’Brien.IRL Ads Are Taking Scary Inspiration From Social Media [Yael Grauer/The New New](Image: St Martin's) Read the rest