City Hall Loop was one of the terminus stations for the first subway line to be built under New York City. Opened to the public in 1904, it was beautiful, featuring brass chandeliers, glass tiling and sky lighting to fill it with a warm glow during the day. Unfortunately, the station was closed to the public back in 1945. Happily, it's still possible and totally legal to catch a glimpse of this wonder from a bygone architectural era. All it takes is a little patience and a ticket to ride the MTA. Image: by Rhododendrites - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Read the rest

David Irvine (AKA gnarledbranch) sent us a selection of photos of his delightful Halloween ornaments painted on salvaged lightbulbs. Read the rest

Racists, emboldened by the policies of populist far-right leaning governments, seem to be everywhere these days. They're having rallies, breaking up families at borders and beating folks in the streets. Happily, time is a wheel: as our lives our lessened by the emergence of fresh bigoted bullshit, we're also gifted with what I hope is the incredibly painful passing of those who made it their life's work to spew hate and kindle chaos.From The New York Times:Robert Faurisson, a former literature professor turned anti-Semitic propagandist whose denial of the Holocaust earned him multiple prosecutions, died on Sunday at his home in Vichy, France. He was 89.Mr. Faurisson was regarded as a father figure by contemporary French exponents of Holocaust denial, the extremist fringe in a country with a long tradition of anti-Semitism. Contemporary far-right figures like the propagandist Alain Soral and Dieudonné, who calls himself a humorist, have followed in his footsteps, but none have had the long-range tenacity of Mr. Faurisson.At least in death, he might finally be able to contribute to something useful--fertilizing palm trees to provide observant Jews with shelter from the elements during Sukkot, for example.While things feel as permissive as hell here in North America, the French weren't willing to put up with Faurisson's holocaust denying nonsense. According to The New York Times, he became the first person in France to be convicted for saying that the Holocaust, a crime against humanity, never happened. More recently, the prick was fined 10,000 euros by the French courts for "propounding 'negationism'" in interviews published on the internet."Good riddance. Read the rest

San Francisco's housing crisis is also (of course) a homelessness crisis, and homelessness crises beget public defecation crises -- and San Francisco has a serious public defecation crisis.The city spends $65 million/year cleaning up the streets, a figure that is so high because of the quantities of feces, urine, and dirty needles that find their way onto San Francisco's streets. And despite the $65 million, San Francisco's streets are very, very dirty.People poop. Even if there isn't a toilet for them to poop in, they still poop. Where there are no toilets, there is still poop.Pit Stops are toilets provided for homeless people to use, complete with secure needle disposal boxes. They get used a lot: 50,000 flushes in August across 24 toilets, which cost the city $3.1 million/year (mostly labor -- the toilets are kept clean and sanitary). The $3.1 million seems like a lot, until you realize it's less than 5 percent of what the city is (under)spending to clean up the poop that doesn't get into the toilets. And neighborhoods with Pit Stops have a lot less public poop. People poop, and they prefer to poop in toilets.Writing in Mission Local, Joe Eskenazi calls for a "Marshall plan for toilets": " Rather than solely heed the reductive call for more power-washers and more money literally going down the drain, this city should take the intuitive step: To prevent filth on the streets, provide toilets. To prevent needles underfoot, provide deposit boxes."Whenever the problems of homelessness come up, someone is always there to say, "You can't solve this problem by throwing money at it." It's true! Read the rest

When the EU voted for mandatory copyright censorship of the internet in September, Italy had a different government; the ensuing Italian elections empowered a new government, who oppose the filters.Once states totalling 35% of the EU's population oppose the new Copyright Directive, they can form a "blocking minority" and kill it or cause it to be substantially refactored. With the Italians opposing the Directive because of its draconian new internet rules (rules introduced at the last moment, which have been hugely controversial), the reputed opponents of the Directive have now crossed the 35% threshold, thanks to Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Belgium and Hungary.Unfortunately, the opponents of Article 11 (the "link tax") and Article 13 (the copyright filters) are not united on their opposition -- they have different ideas about what they would like to see done with these provisions. If they pull together, that could be the end of these provisions.If you're a European this form will let you contact your MEP quickly and painlessly and let them know how you feel about the proposals.That’s where matters stand now: a growing set of countries who think copyright filters and link taxes go too far, but no agreement yet on rejecting or fixing them.The trilogues are not a process designed to resolve such large rifts when both the EU states and the parliament are so deeply divided.What happens now depends entirely on how the members states decide to go forward: and how hard they push for real reform of Articles 13 and 11. Read the rest

Megyn Kelly is stumped as to why wearing blackface makeup for Halloween is offensive. "When I was a kid, it was ok," she said on NBC News this morning. Sitting with Kelly, Jenna Bush Hager, NBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff and Melissa Rivers tried to explain. “If you think it’s offensive, it probably is,” Rivers said. But it was a real head-scratcher for Kelly, who just couldn't understand why you can't wear blackface if you can run around with an axe on Halloween. Megyn Kelly wonders what the big deal is about blackface pic.twitter.com/07yvYDuAYe— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) October 23, 2018Via Vice Read the rest

Getting all your data to flow through the Tor network can be tricky -- the desktop Tor Browser only tunnels your web-traffic through the privacy-protecting service, and the mobile apps can be tricky and uncertain.But the independent pro-privacy UK mobile carrier Brass Horn Communications (founded by Gareth Llewelyn of OnionDSL, founded in response to the UK's passage of yet more mass-surveillance laws in 2016) now offers a data-only SIM that blocks any unencrypted data that leaks out of your phone, ensuring that only encrypted data makes it to the internet.(Boing Boing's servers in Toronto run a high-capacity Tor exit node). The new SIM card, which is still in a beta testing stage, takes that idea mobile. It requires some setup; users need to create a new access point name on their device—essentially so the device can connect to the new network—but Brass Horn provides some instructions to do this. The SIM also requires Orbot to be installed and running on the device itself, and it currently only works in the UK (Llewelyn provided Motherboard with one of the SIM cards for testing purposes; Motherboard confirmed that the SIM does transfer data).This SIM Card Forces all of Your Mobile Data Through Tor [Joseph Cox/Motherboard] Read the rest

Tokyo-based art collective Chim↑Pom has opened a two-week pop-up restaurant that serves up the last meals once requested by real death row inmates. For example, before being executed by firing squad in 1977, Utah double murderer Gary Mark Gilmore ate a burger, a hard-boiled egg, and mashed potatoes, and drank three shots of whiskey. Here is Chim↑Pom's version of Gilmore's pre-execution eats:甘い香りが漂う店内で、巨大なチョコレートの塊を舐め続ける女のコを見ながら、ハンバーガーにかぶりつき、バーボンを嗜んできました。#にんげんレストラン pic.twitter.com/CHzYxA6Zk4— sequi@ya (@se_qui_ay) October 22, 2018The Ningen ("Human") Restaurant is located in Kabukicho, Tokyo's red-light district, and is open until October 28 (2 PM to 9 PM).にんげんレストラン、サクッとぐるっとしただけだけどすごい楽しかった。誰かがどっかしら四六時中何かしらやってる渋滞に巻き込まれる快感。 pic.twitter.com/wsbKn6hWhp— チャパタイさん (@norima___k) October 22, 2018にんげんレストラン行って来た。ジェームズ・ポール・ジェニーガンのラストミール食べたけど、バンズ美味しかったなぁ。せきゆかさん、あと10kgを切ってた。黙々とチョコ食べ続けるの、エロかった。 pic.twitter.com/RBIgQ9pvg6— kazumin08 (@kazumin197608) October 22, 2018(Spoon & Tamago) Read the rest

Microplastics -- the tiny pieces of plastic debris littering our planet -- has been found in human poop, surprising nobody. The pilot study included 8 people from seven countries in Europe plus Japan. While the study was obviously very small, the researchers did discover waste plastic such as that from food wrappers and synthetic clothing in feces from all the participants. According to lead researcher Dr. Philipp Schwabl of the University of Vienna, the study was too small to draw any huge conclusions but it does confirm what sadly was inevitable. From Laura Parker's feature in National Geographic:“I’d say microplastics in poop are not surprising,” says Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of Toronto, who studies the effects of microplastics on fish. “For me, it shows we are eating our waste—mismanagement has come back to us on our dinner plates. And yes, we need to study how it may affect humans.”Every year, an average of eight million tons of plastic waste, most of it single-use varieties, flows into the world’s oceans from coastal regions. There, sunlight and wave action break these waterborne plastics down into bits the size of grains of rice. Fibers from synthetic clothes such as polyester and acrylic make their way into freshwater systems via washing machines. You can see this in action with a fleece jacket; just scratching the arm of the jacket can shed invisible fibers. As a result, tiny plastic fragments and fibers have now spread all over the planet. They're in deep sea trenches and in the air we breathe. Read the rest

America has some of the weakest anti-pregnancy-discrimination rules in the world (the federal statute says that companies only have to give pregnant people lighter duties if they make similar accommodations for those "similar in their ability or inability to work); and this has produced an epidemic of workplace miscarriages among women who have frequently begged their supervisors for lighter duties, even presenting doctor's written notes with their pleas.Warehousing and logistics companies are among the worst offenders: Verizon/Nike/Disney contractor New Breed Logistics (a division of the $12 billion XPO Logistics) -- one worker quit New Breed/XPO after her supervisor told her she should have an abortion if she didn't feel she could perform her usual duties during her pregnancy.Other egregious offenders include grocery stores like Albertons (which demoted a woman who was forced to work until she miscarried). The New York Times reports on documented incidents of supervisors requiring pregnant women to work until they miscarried in "a hospital, a post office, an airport, a grocery store, a prison, a fire department, a restaurant, a pharmaceutical company and several hotels."Legal movement to protect pregnant women from workplace conditions that induce miscarriages has been stalled by "anti-regulation" Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. The intransigence to protect the pregnancies of willing mothers is especially terrible given the brutal stance of the right on abortion: on the one hand, women who want babies are not allowed to keep them, while women who became pregnant by accident, or through rape, or whose health is threatened by their pregnancies are required to give birth to babies they don't want or can't safely deliver. Read the rest

If you're a citizen of South Korea, you're expected to obey the laws of that country even when you aren't in the country. That means any South Korean citizen who smokes perfectly legal pot in Canada could return home and receive a five year prison sentence.From Korea Times:Yoon Se-jin, head of the Narcotics Crime Investigation Division at Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency, warned earlier this week that smoking pot is treated as a serious offense here and Korean smokers, subject to the laws of their country, could face up to five years in prison."Weed smokers will be punished according to the Korean law, even if they did so in countries where smoking marijuana is legal. There won't be an exception," he said.Image: Shutterstock Read the rest

On Monday 12 members of Nevada Republican candidate for Governor Adam Laxalt's family published an op-ed denouncing his credentials, his record, and his connection to Nevada.Via the Reno Gazette:...All of these shortcomings come down to a lack of real, authentic connection to our state, and a failure to understand what is important to real Nevadans. We are a state driven by a modern economy and a diverse population, and we take deep pride in our rich, complicated history. Nevadans value their independence and their ability to share in the beauties of our wild state, while still respecting each other’s autonomy. If Adam is elected governor, these values will be put in danger. Public lands will become less accessible for hunters and fishers and backpackers. Adam’s positions on health care and reproductive rights would limit how Nevadans care for their bodies, or be free from government interference in relationships as sacred and personal as marriage. Adam wants to repeal hundreds of millions of dollars of education funding, even though he knows full well that Nevada is ranked 49th in the nation for pre-K-12 education.If he responds to this column at all, it will probably be to say that he hardly knows the people writing this column. And in many ways that would be true. We never had a chance to get to know him, really — he spent his life in Washington, D.C., while we lived in Northern Nevada and grew up in public schools and on public lands. Read the rest

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has called on the outdoor industry to join him in backing politicians who believe in preserving public lands; his company has now backed Montana Democratic Senate incumbent Jon Tester (facing a Trumpian challenge from Republican Matt Rosendale, who espouses the cultlike belief that the Constitution bans the federal government from owning land, a belief that was spread by Cliven Bundy and a group of racist Mormon extremists) and Nevada Democratic Congressional incumbent Jacky Rosen with a 97 percent approval rating from the League of Conservation Voters. Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario says the outdoor industry should lead a political movement as well-organized and effective as the NRA, but aimed at protecting public lands. Both conservative and liberal voters disapprove of Trump's record on public lands, making it a rare bipartisan issue. With the momentum of the past two years, this almost seems an inevitable step for Patagonia. The company’s current CEO, Rose Marcario, has said she’d like to see the outdoor industry become a political force like the NRA. “We cannot give up an inch of protected land on our watch,” Marcario told Streep. “Not an inch.” That campaign kicked off most publicly when Patagonia forced a decision on the governor of Utah: either come out against President Trump’s plan to shrink Bears Ears National Monument, or Patagonia, REI, and the North Face would use their clout to move the Outdoor Retailer show and the $45 million it bestowed on the state’s economy each year.Now the show’s home is Denver. Read the rest

While watching this 46-minute compilation video by YouTuber Rhodri Marsden, try to count how many times Bob Ross "beats the devil out" of his paintbrush. I lost count of the "whackings" five minutes in. Also, take note of the guest painters cleaning their brushes on Ross' show, Joy of Painting.(Geekologie) Read the rest

NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Program released this astonishing aerial photo of a rectangular iceberg in Antarctica. Located on the Larsen C ice shelf, the curious iceberg is likely one mile or so across. From the BBC News:Such objects are not unknown, however, and even have a name - tabular icebergs.These are flat and long and form by splitting away from the edges of ice shelves.Kelly Brunt, a glaciologist with Nasa and the University of Maryland, said the process of formation was a bit like a fingernail growing too long and cracking off at the end.They were often geometrically-shaped as a result, she said."What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square," she added. Read the rest

Can't help but love GearHumans' astronaut suit hoodie ($45.99). The image is a 3D-photo print of the spacesuit that Neil Armstrong wore in 1969 during his Apollo 11 moon mission. It ships with his last name on it unless you specify otherwise.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

In the mid-1990s, Nintendo released Satellaview, a satellite modem for Nintendo's Super Famicom (SNES) only available in Japan. Just for kicks, Bertrand Fan hacked an SNES and Satellaview to run Slack. Bertrand has an intimate knowledge of Slack because he's one of the engineers building that platform. From Bert:If you can beam satellite signals to a SNES, you can probably run Slack on it...Most SNES games are closed systems. When you play a game like Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus, an educational game about dinosaurs with asthma that teaches you how to use an inhaler, the content is fixed on the cartridge.But the game that comes with the Satellaview, BS-X: The Story of The Town Whose Name Was Stolen (BS-X それは名前を盗まれた街の物語), is different. It looks like a lot of Japanese RPGs but has one key difference: it can receive content beamed from the sky and that content gets integrated into the game....Using a tool called SatellaWave, you can generate your own Satellaview Broadcast binary files.Slack on a SNES (Bert.org) Read the rest

Nearly a year after the New York Times reported that five women had accused Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct, his longtime friend Sarah Silverman told Howard Stern Monday that C.K. used to masturbate in front of her. The difference? She gave him full consent to do so.Indiewire: “I know I’m going to regret saying this,” Silverman said. “I’ve known Louis forever, I’m not making excuses for him, so please don’t take this that way. We are peers. We are equals. When we were kids, and he asked if he could masturbate in front of me, sometimes I’d go, ‘Fuck yeah I want to see that!’… It’s not analogous to the other women that are talking about what he did to them. He could offer me nothing. We were only just friends. Sometimes, yeah, I wanted to see it, it was amazing. Sometimes I would say, ‘Fucking no, gross,’ and we got pizza.”Silverman said these encounters happened when the two comedians were younger and “letting our freak flags fly.” The comedian shared another story in which the two would strip naked in C.K.’s apartment building and throw their clothes out the window onto the street and proceed to go down the elevator naked to retrieve them. Silverman was clear these were consensual moments between the two and were not comparable to the experiences of the women who accused C.K. of sexual harassment.The overall point Silverman was making hinged on how C.K. initially failed to realize the inappropriate predicament he was putting younger comics in by asking to masturbate in front of him once he became well-known and more powerful within the comedy world. Read the rest

The American right spent generations lauding the "free enterprise" spirit of "cutting red tape," contrasting its private sector ethos with the stodgy, Stalinist ways of the USSR, where bureaucrats weaponize forms and other paperwork to oppress the citizenry.But anyone who's dealt with the US private sector knows how much big business loves its forms, from the clickthrough agreements that sign your life away every time you turn around to the waivers you have to sign to rent a car, check into a hotel, or enroll your kid in gymnastics class (I took my family for belated flu shots at CVS last night and the paperwork took more than 30 minutes).David Graeber's Utopia of Rules makes this point with savage force. So much of this fetishization of forms boils down to the libertarian love affair with the "contract" and the idea that the state's true legitimate purpose is enforcing contracts. The natural progression here is that if you have the bargaining power to force people to sign abusive contracts, then every time you do so, you are helping the market's invisible hand to sort the galty "job creators" from the "takers" and ensuring that the "takers" get their due in the form of shitty, confiscatory contracts. Note that taking steps to improve your bargaining position is only a valid course of action for the rich: if workers band together through collective bargaining, that is (for some reason) and illegitimate action that "distorts markets."(Remember when Wells Fargo forged 2,000,000 Americans' signatures to open fake accounts, then argued that the fine-print over those forged signatures that waived the right to sue for fraud was enforceable?)And no one loves abusive form-filling more than right-wing, "business friendly" governments, like the Trump administration, which made headlines recently by forcing a 5 year old Honduran girl to sign an English-language form waiving her asylum rights. Read the rest

Today marks the publication of the $100 Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana box-set, which contains a 700-page retrospective of the classic art of D&D, a reprint of the notoriously hard Tomb of Horrors module (designed by Gary Gygax to challenge the most overpowered characters), and frameable lithos.It's incredible. The book alone just consumed me for days, recalling the endless hours I spent poring over modules, rulebooks, supplements and the pages of Dragon magazine, losing myself in the visual art and the accompanying tables and narrative. Starting with Chainmail and moving all the way forward to the present moment, the retrospective of art, from pencil-sketches to 8-bit game art to line art to the covers of the classic rulebooks and novels. It's a visual history of one of the most seductive, captivating collections of art and design in US history, a set of works that lured a generation into a new narrative form. Combined with the other materials in the box, this thing is a gateway into another dimension.Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana box-set [Warhammer] Read the rest

My name is Kelsey Juliana and I’m suing the United States government for causing and accelerating the climate change crisis. I’m 22 years old and I’ve been a climate activist for more than half of my life. I know that young people like me, and others who have yet to be born, have a right to a safe climate system. The constitution guarantees all Americans the right to life, liberty, and property. But how is anyone supposed to live a life of freedom amid a climate crisis? My own government is violating my constitutional rights by its ongoing and deliberate actions that cause climate change and it’s not right. I, along with 20 other young people from around the country, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2015, called Juliana v. United States. We’re not asking for money. Instead, we’re asking the court to order the government to develop and implement a National Climate Recovery Plan based on the best available science. This plan should end the reign of fossil fuels and quickly decarbonize our atmosphere so that we can stabilize our climate system before it’s too late. The longer we go without climate recovery, the more we risk allowing our climate to spiral completely out of control. And the climate is spiraling out of control, no matter how many politicians claim we’re experiencing normal fluctuations or, worse, a “hoax.” All of the expert witnesses in our lawsuit say that we are currently—already—in the “danger zone” and an “emergency situation” with only 1°C of planetary heating. Read the rest

Facebook Inc said Monday it has removed 68 Facebook pages and 43 user accounts linked to a shady Brazilian marketing group, Raposo Fernandes Associados (RFA), for violating the social media network’s misrepresentation and spam policies. Both Facebook and its WhatsApp sister/subsidiary company are under fire for enabling similarly sketchy disinformation campaigns in Brazil that appear to be reaching their collective goal: electing Brazil's version of Donald Trump.There's coverage of today's Facebook news in Brazil's Folha.Facebook again does too little, too late. The damage Bolsonaro will do may only be matched with what Trump and Republicans in the U.S. intend to do.Reuters:The newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo said the group was the main network of support for far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro on the internet.Bolsonaro is expected to win a runoff on Sunday in Brazil’s most polarized election in a generation in which social media has become the main battleground between the candidates.Facebook said RFA created pages using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of clickbait intended to direct people to third-party websites.“Our decision to remove these pages was based on the behavior of these actors – including using fake accounts and repeatedly posting spam – rather than on the type of content they were posting,” Facebook said in a statement.And on the WhatsApp election disinformation debacle in Brazil:Facebook’s popular messaging service WhatsApp has also come under scrutiny in Brazil after leftist presidential contender Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party accused Bolsonaro’s supporters of using it for bulk messaging of misleading information during the campaign. Read the rest

Gina Haspel, the director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, is reported to be traveling to Turkey late Monday to assist in “an investigation” over the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.Multiple U.S. news agencies are reporting the news of Haspel's trip to Turkey, as government security agencies examine what role Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played in the case.NEW: CIA director Gina Haspel traveling to Turkey for Khashoggi investigation, from @Acosta, @ZCohenCNN and mehttps://t.co/hUED43M1Ry— Caroline Kelly (@caroline_mkelly) October 23, 2018New: CIA director flies to Turkey amid growing controversy over Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing. Update soon. https://t.co/lgaySbFw5m— Shane Harris (@shaneharris) October 22, 2018More at Reuters. Read the rest

They're coming for your health insurance, your guns, your Social Security, they're giving illegal immigrants free cars, and they love terrorists.“False, false, false, false, false, false, false,” says Daniel Dale of The Star, writing about Trump's midterms strategy of lying his damn fool ass off. Trump appears to be working to retain power by doubling down on a “well-worn tactic that helped him win the presidency in 2016: a blizzard of fear-mongering and lies, many of them about darker-skinned foreigners.”Trump is doing a rally with Ted Cruz in Houston. Tweets in this thread.— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 22, 2018Pres Trump calls the caravan of migrants heading for the US southern border, "an assault on our country." He says the caravan contains "some very bad people," but doesn't cite evidence. He tells his rally, "we need a wall built fast. We have to protect our borders.” pic.twitter.com/TvgjhtygWH— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) October 23, 2018Excerpt:Trump has been a serial liar about just about everything for his entire tenure in office, but he has rarely before deployed so many complete fabrications about so many important subjects at the same time.His most frequent and significant recent whoppers have centred on immigration, the issue about which his base has been most excited, and health care, the issue polls suggest is most important to the Democratic base.Trump escalated his immigration dishonesty on Monday morning. Seizing on a groundless claim from a host on his favourite Fox News morning show, he tweeted that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” to a caravan of Latino migrants that began in Honduras. Read the rest

Kevin M. Gill, a software engineer and data wrangler at NASA-JPL, created the fantastic video below "using still images taken by the Cassini spacecraft during it's flyby of Jupiter and while at Saturn."Shown is Io and Europa over Jupiter's Great Red Spot and then Titan as it passes over Saturn and it's edge-on rings," Gill wrote on Flickr.People seemed to like the Europa/Io/Titan gifs, so as an experiment I went and made a short video of them. The Voyage of the Moons.Image data via @CassiniSaturn https://t.co/8SLjERSRWc pic.twitter.com/kvznw9ck6J— Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill) October 22, 2018image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill Read the rest

Ever since I started using these nylon mesh zipper bags, my travel experience has improved. I have one bag for paper stuff and pens, one for medicine and first aid, one for tools and gear, one for cords and portable power, and one for snacks. When I get home I leave the bags in my suitcase, making packing much easier the next time I take a trip. The bags are see-through and very durable. The price is right, too: you get 8 bags for $9. Read the rest

Whether you are Instagram famous, or have just a moderately large following of 1,000 followers, This Is Not A Sushibar is a restaurant in Milan that gives you a discount, if not a free meal, depending on your Instagram stats.In other words, along with an Instagram post that includes @thisisnotasushibar and #thisisnotasushibar, "the more followers you have, the more you can eat without having to spend a cent," according to Oddity Central.Here's the breakdown:1,000–5,000 followers = 1 free sushi plate5,000–10,000 followers = 2 free plates10,000–50,000 followers = 4 free plates50,000–100,000 followers = 8 free plates100,000 followers = 1 free lunch or dinnerThis Is Not A Sushibar began its marketing gimmick on October 11, and it's not clear how long the restaurant plans to accept this form of "currency."Image: Pexels/CC0 License Read the rest

Quick! Get some of these sexist facial tissues while you still can. It took them 60 years but Kleenex is finally renaming their "Mansize" tissues after getting customer complaints. The facial-tissues-formerly-known-as-Mansize will now be branded "Extra Large."Parent company Kimberly-Clark "succumbed to growing public demand to change the name, despite not itself believing that the Mansize branding suggests or endorses gender inequality." Sam Smethers, chief executive at feminist campaign group, the Fawcett Society, praised the move, saying: "Rebranding mansized tissues is not to be sneezed at. Removing sexist branding such as this is just sensible 21st century marketing. But we still have a long way to go before using lazy stereotypes to sell products is a thing of the past."(DesignTaxi) Read the rest

The Saudi entourage who went to the embassy in Turkey to cut off journalist Jamal Khashoggi's fingers, inject him with a drug to silence him, and dismember him with a bone saw made four calls that day to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's office, according to Turkish media reports. The Crown Prince denies knowing anything about the gruesome torture/murder of Khashoggi, who was a US resident. Three of Khashoggi’s children are US citizens.From Global News:Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.The report by Yeni Safak on Monday said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed’s entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed’s office. It said another call went to the United States.Meanwhile, Marco Rubio says the real victim here is not Khashoggi, but Trump and other lawmakers owned by the House of Saud who now suffer from the discomfort of having everyone on the planet angry that they continue to treat Saudi Arabia with kid gloves.The #KhashoggiMurder was immoral. But it was also disrepectful to Trump & those of us who have supported the strategic alliance with the Saudi’s. Read the rest

In the market for a Ferris Wheel? Carousel? Scrambler? Go-kart Fleet? How about just a Chili Cheese Dispenser? The entire contents of the Heritage Square Amusement Park in Golden Colorado will be up for auction on October 25. It's cash-and-carry (certified or cashier’s check accepted) but "buyers of large pieces will have additional time for removal." Whew. I've got my eye on that Space Shuttle Ride from 1980 and maybe the 1963 Tilt A Whirl.Heritage Square Amusument Park Auction Brochure PDF (via Atlas Obscura) Read the rest

Allow notifications. Change your homepage to this website. Privacy notification. Age verification. Location verification. Subscribe to our newsletter. Chat with our bot. Disable your ad blocker. Did you find what you were looking for? Something went wrong -- please reload the page. Welcome to the World Wide Web of 2018!Every website in 2018 pic.twitter.com/Gm7jhfuuUO— Daryl Ginn (@darylginn) October 20, 2018 Read the rest

One of the most remarkable things about the Saudis' torture and execution of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and their attempted cover-up is the end-to-end full-spectrum incompetence of every aspect of it. They had a body double on hand to be seen on security camera leaving the embassy in Khashoggi's clothes, but he forgot the shoes, thereby making any footage useless.For weeks, the Saudi government had denied that it killed Khashoggi and said he walked out of the consulate after his Oct. 2 visit. The body double appeared to be an attempt to substantiate that denial, but the cover story fell apart, according to a diplomat familiar with the deliberations, because the video footage clearly reveals the body double’s flaws, mainly that he is wearing different shoes than Khashoggi wore when he entered the consulate.Note the layers of ineptitude: they apparently held off releasing footage because of the clothing discrepancies, according to Turkish sources, but they would have been caught anyway had they got the shoes right, because the guy doesn't look much like Jamal Khashoggi.A member of the 15-man team suspected in the death of Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was captured on surveillance cameras around Istanbul on the day the journalist was killed, a senior Turkish official has told CNN. CNN has obtained exclusive law enforcement surveillance footage, part of the Turkish government's investigation, that appears to show the man leaving the Saudi consulate by the back door, wearing Khashoggi's clothes, a fake beard, and glasses. Read the rest

The latest Humble Bundle features up to 26 DRM-free ebooks (including In Real Life, the graphic novel Jen Wang and I created) at prices ranging from $1 (for 8 titles) to $18 (for all 26), with all proceeds to the ACLU to benefit voting rights litigation and action.Eat, sleep, read, resist. Join Chronicle Books, Image Comics, Lonely Planet, Cory Doctorow, and other great publishers and creators in support of a more perfect union! Get a bundle of ebooks on volunteerism and positive resistance, a zombie survival guide, tons of comics – plus the exclusive debut of science fiction anthology RESIST! Every cent of your purchase will support the ACLU in their fight for voting rights, free speech, LGBTQ rights, and more. Irresistible? We think so.Pay what you want. All together, these comics and ebooks would cost over $358. Here at Humble Bundle, you choose the price and increase your contribution to upgrade your bundle! This bundle has a minimum $1 purchase.Read them anywhere. These books and comics are all available in PDF format; every title except In Real Life and American Presidents is available in ePUB format as well. Many are also in CBZ or MOBI too. Instructions and a list of recommended reading programs can be found here.Support charity. 100% of the proceeds go to the American Civil Liberties Union via the PayPal Giving Fund. Get the Vote Out [Humble Bundle] Read the rest

On November 1, select doctors will be able to prescribe a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under a new initiative. Physicians who are part of Montreal-based medical group Médecins francophones du Canada will be allowed to send patients -- up to 50 prescriptions a year -- to the MMFA for free. Entry is good for two adults and two children age 17 or under.Montreal Gazette:“There’s more and more scientific proof that art therapy is good for your physical health,” said Dr. Hélène Boyer, vice-president of Médecins francophones du Canada and the head of the family medicine group at the CLSC St-Louis-du-Parc. “It increases our level of cortisol and our level of serotonin. We secrete hormones when we visit a museum and these hormones are responsible for our well-being. People tend to think this is only good for mental-health issues. That it’s for people who’re depressed or who have psychological problems. But that’s not the case. It’s good for patients with diabetes, for patients in palliative care, for people with chronic illness. Since the ’80s we’ve been prescribing exercise for our patients because we know exercise increases exactly the same hormones. But when I have patients who’re over 80, it’s not obvious that I can prescribe exercise for them.”According to the museum, this one-year pilot project is the first of its kind in the world.image by Thomas Ledl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 Read the rest

People flock to Japan in the spring in hopes of catching the cherry blossom season, which, in full bloom, lasts only about a week. This usually happens in April (although a bit earlier or later depending on the region and climate of the year). But never has there been a widespread cherry blossom season in the fall – until now. Most likely because of Japan's recent two typhoons followed by warm weather, people have spotted cherry blossoms from "Kyushu, in western Japan, to Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands," according to Smithsonian. Hiroyuki Wada of the Flower Association of Japan tells NHK that the Yoshino cherry tree, which puts on a particularly lovely display of blossoms, buds in the summer, but hormones in the trees’ leaves stop the buds from opening until spring. This year, however, typhoons whipped the leaves from the cherry blossom trees, or otherwise exposed the trees to salt that caused their leaves to wither. The lack of hormones to keep the buds in check, coupled with warm temperatures that followed the storms, prompted the buds to blossom.“This has happened in the past,” Wada tells NHK, “but I don’t remember seeing anything on this scale.”Over the last 150 years, the season for cherry blossoms has been slowly moving its start time to an earlier date. "In Kyoto in 1850, for instance, the average bloom date was April 17. Today, the average date is around April 6." Unless, that is, it's an autumn blossom we're talking about. Read the rest

According to CNN, surveillance footage show one of the Saudi men suspected of murdering Jamal Khashoggi wearing the dead man's clothes and a fake beard while walking around Istanbul as a decoy. From CNN:A senior Turkish official told CNN that the video showed that Madani was brought to Istanbul to act as a body double."You don't need a body double for a rendition or an interrogation," the official said. "Our assessment has not changed since October 6. This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate..."Four hours earlier Madani had entered the consulate by the front door, alongside an alleged accomplice. Saudi's forensic medicine chief Salah al-Tubaiqi, another key suspect who was identified using facial recognition analysis together with CNN's timeline of events that day, was also present. The video appears to show Madani without a beard, wearing a blue and white checked shirt and dark blue trousers. When he exited the consulate dressed as Khashoggi, the video then appears to show him wearing the same dark pair of sneakers with white soles that he first arrived in prior to the journalist's death."Khashoggi's clothes were probably still warm when Madani put them on," the senior Turkish official told CNN. Read the rest

The Wood Database presents the hardest woods.10. Cebil9. Katalox8. Black Ironwood7. African Blackwood6. Camelthorn5. Verawood4. Snakewood3. Gidgee2. Lignum VitaeYou'll have to click through to find out what number 1 is! All perfect names for weaponry materials in a wood-themed RPG. And here's the softest woods, which is only lightly spoiled by pointing out that "nothing else comes close" to Balsa except Quipo, which is of similar softness to Balsa and "virtually unobtainable". Read the rest

The remote north Ontario city of Thunder Bay leads Canada in murders and hate crimes and features a local government mired in scandal, from a mayor who was charged with extortion to a police chief who went on trial for obstruction of justice.The city has two main populations: the largest group of Finnish-descended people outside of Finland, and indigenous First Nations people, who suffer routine and violent harassment, from verbal slurs to having missiles hurled at them from passing cars to allegations that white locals kidnap passed-out indigenous people who have drunk too much to defend themselves and throw them in the river to drown.The excellent podcast network Canadaland (previously) crowdfunded a special fund to pay for long-term, in-depth investigation of the corruption, racism and crime in Thunder Bay, hosted by Ryan McMahon, a First Nations reporter who spent his own boyhood in Thunder Bay.The first two episodes are live and they are riveting. As McMahon says in the first episode, he's not trying to solve a murder, he's trying to solve the city, to dig into the ugly conflict that is painfully evident and also routinely denied.Locals call it Murder Bay. It might be the most dangerous city for Indigenous youth in the world. But to others, it's their white nirvana. Host Ryan McMahon wants to know - not who killed all those kids, but what killed them. This is Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay [Canadaland] Read the rest

Isotopium is a "remote reality" game that challenges players to pilot real miniature tank-drones around a massive, super-detailed scale model of Pripyat, the Ukrainian ghost-town created by the meltdown of the nearby Chernobyl reactor. It was created by a self-funded Ukrainian games company called "Remote Games" as a prototype for a wider range of "remote reality" games. They are seeking a mere $5,000 to add some new tank-types (including ones that fire rounds at enemy tanks), new game-play modes, and some stretch goals like mobile versions, a second set depicting a miniature Mars site, and things like "mechanical barriers and traps."The team behind the game does not list much experience making or running this kind of game, so while they do have some very exciting sets and videos (and a free live demo), it's not clear whether they'll be able to actually operate the business if their crowdfunder achieves its goals. But on the other hand, they're not asking for much money: $10 gets you 120 minutes of gameplay, and the higher contributions include scrawling custom graffiti on the walls of miniature Pripyat ($100) and adding an advertising banner to the arena ($500).I'm a little skeptical of some of the claims about low video-latency they make, but the demo is very fun in any event!In setting up our project, we had to use a lot of modern technologies and solve some complex engineering problems. Before starting to design robots, we were wondering why no one had created anything similar yet. Read the rest

No matter what your business, Microsoft's slate of Office software is as essential as desks and chairs - so much so that most workers are expected to know their way around it before they even get in the door. Whether you need an introduction, a brush-up or a level-up to your knowledge of these tools, the Microsoft Office Mastery Bundle is one of the quickest ways to learn.With more than 80 hours of total training, these seven courses cover all the essentials. You'll create any document quicker and easier with an intermediate course on Word, and run through all the time-saving features of email management with Outlook. Classes on PowerPoint and SharePoint will teach you to put together a killer presentation and effectively collaborate with team members. And an exhaustive rundown on Excel unlocks all the secrets of the most popular spreadsheet platform, with a special focus on the PivotTable functionality.It's all included, and all on sale for $29. Get the Microsoft Office Mastery Lifetime Bundle in the Boing Boing Store today. Read the rest

The Making of "The Empire Strikes Back", the rare 1980 French TV movie documentary about the second film in the Star Wars trilogy, was considered lost until recently. Since clips surfaced a few years ago, it's been considered the "Holy Grail" for Star Wars fans. Directed by late director Michel Parbot, the hour-long film has now been found and posted on YouTube. Watch it while you can. Read the rest

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's annual letter to creators takes a strong position on Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive, which forces companies offering public communications platforms to maintain crowdsourced databases of copyrighted works that users are blocked from uploading.Wojcicki writes that "The proposal could force platforms, like YouTube, to allow only content from a small number of large companies. It would be too risky for platforms to host content from smaller original content creators, because the platforms would now be directly liable for that content."Article 13's final form is being hashed out now. You should write to your MEP about it, because it's not just Youtube that would no longer be able to accept your creative work for publication under this system -- it's all online platforms. Article 13 as written threatens to shut down the ability of millions of people -- from creators like you to everyday users -- to upload content to platforms like YouTube. And it threatens to block users in the EU from viewing content that is already live on the channels of creators everywhere. This includes YouTube’s incredible video library of educational content, such as language classes, physics tutorials and other how-to’s. This legislation poses a threat to both your livelihood and your ability to share your voice with the world. And, if implemented as proposed, Article 13 threatens hundreds of thousands of jobs, European creators, businesses, artists and everyone they employ. The proposal could force platforms, like YouTube, to allow only content from a small number of large companies. Read the rest

It's ironic that conservative casino owner Sheldon Adelson, who has made $30 billion by exploiting gambling addiction, contributes vast sums of money to fight marijuana legalization efforts. What a wacky guy!This latest video from Coffee Break looks into the efforts by the gambling industry to control the narrative about the disastrous impact of gambling on society. Casino owners formed a sham organization called the National Center for Responsible Gaming. The NCRG pays researchers to write reports that make gambling... er, "gaming" seem like a delightfully harmless pastime that only hurts 1% of people who blow their money in the rigged schemes found in casinos. And those 1%, according to the NCRG, are also drug addicts anyway, so they don't really count.Most people know that gambling is addictive and realize the National Center for Responsible Gaming's propaganda is bullshit. But ordinary people aren't the intended audience. The audience is the senators and congresspeople who receive hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign donations from Adelson and his ilk. These lawmakers also know the NCRG's reports are jokes, but they can use them as a defensive cover when it comes time to pay back the casino owners with the favors they expect in return for the donations.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Documents. Newspapers. Ancient tomes of forbidden knowledge. Golden tickets. Movies and television shows are full of such seemingly banal objects. But each and every one that you see on film has either been stored, cataloged and trotted out for a particular scene by a prop master, or made it's been made specifically for a project. This short film provides some insight into a man who's dedicated his life to the latter. Read the rest

A small coalition of folks who think vaccines are evil have managed to eliminate Arizona's vaccination education program. The parents were afraid their children may be forced learn that vaccines are a good thing.Via AZ Central:The state of Arizona has canceled a vaccine education program after receiving complaints from parents who don't immunize their school-age children.The pilot online course, modeled after programs in Oregon and Michigan, was created in response to the rising number of Arizona schoolchildren skipping school-required immunizations against diseases like measles, mumps and whooping cough because of their parents' beliefs.But some parents, who were worried the optional course was going to become mandatory, complained to the Governor's Regulatory Review Council, which reviews regulations to ensure they are necessary and do not adversely affect the public. The six-member council is appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey, with an ex-officio general counsel.Members of the council questioned the state health department about the course after receiving the public feedback about it, emails show. The state responded by canceling it.The complaints that ended the pilot program came from about 120 individuals and families, including 20 parents who said that they don't vaccinate their children, records show. Read the rest

During her concert in Biloxi, Mississippi Saturday night as part of the "Straight Up Paula! North American Tour 2018," Paula Abdul accidentally fell of the stage into the crowd of people. She had been encouraging the audience to clap along and didn't seem to notice how close she was to the edge of the stage. A concert-goer captured it on video, which ends when people scream.According to NBC News:One person who posted a short video of the fall on YouTube told People magazine that Abdul "did not seem hurt" and still finished the show "like a champ." It was not known if Abdul suffered any significant injuries.“She stated she was a dancer, and falls and drops she has gotten used to (it) over the years," the concert attendee told People. Read the rest

Federal agents busted eight people for attempting to smuggle 26 pounds of methamphetamine disguised as Aztec souvenir decorative calendars and souvenir statues. The suspects apparently tried to mail the goods from Garden Grove, California to Hawaii. (UPI via Daily Grail) Read the rest

This video is loaded with lots of fascinating techniques of high stakes disguise. There's light disguise, which uses glasses, caps, and facial hair, to hide in a crowd, says Jonna Mendez, the CIA's former Chief of Disguise. And there's advanced disguise, which is used to hide your identity in face-to-face encounters. And good disguise is more than just makeup and prostheses. It's about behavior, too. For instance, an American posing as a European can give themselves away by holding a cigarette the wrong way, resting while standing on one leg, or holding a fork in their right hand. Read the rest

Crochetverse's Stephanie Pokorny is putting all us moms to shame with the crocheted Halloween costumes she's made for her six-year-old son Jack. Recently her all-yarn Predator costume made the rounds and now she's back with this glow-in-the-freaking-dark Slimer costume. (You may remember when Jack was two, she made an adorable E.T. costume for him.)Here's a look at her son in the Predator costume:Action! Crochet Predator comes to life courtesy of one super scary 6 year old! (He pulled the hood down "extra to be super scary", end quote.) pic.twitter.com/42MPQuiWAH— Crochetverse (@crochetverse) September 30, 2018And here he is in the Slimer costume:Crochet Slimer costume ACTION! Fully crocheted by me at my son's request ♡ pic.twitter.com/o7emNTjnP8— Crochetverse (@crochetverse) October 15, 2018Also, get this, she freehand crochets her costumes. That means she doesn't use a pattern. If you know anything about crocheting, you'll appreciate what an incredible feat this is.See more of her creations here.(Geekologie) Read the rest

Police body-cams often seem designed to fail at just the right moment, but this plucky little fellow got a bit ahead of itself.Police in New York have been told to stop using some of their body-worn cameras after one of them exploded.On Saturday, a night officer noticed smoke coming out of their camera and took it off. It then exploded, the NYPD said in a statement.It ordered officers to stop using the Vievu LE-5 camera out of "an abundance of caution".Here's the product page for the Vievu LE-5.The supply contract, including service and evidence management software and servers, puts the per-unit cost at $2133. Two thousand, one hundred and thirty three American dollars. It looks like Vievu does a good job keeping them out of retail but you can pick up its models for about $400 on eBay. Read the rest