Boing Boing

Reddit user marc_urzz posted this photo of the fantastic sink in his step-uncle's bathroom. A little web searching then led me to the tenor horn urinals below. It would also be fun to use a trumpet as a shower head! What instrument would make a good toilet? Read the rest

Today I learned that using cannabis can lower a fella's sperm count: those looking to partake in parenthood should take note. But that's not the only thing that cannabis can do to your swimmers. According to scientists from Duke University, using marijuana can cause genetic changes to sperm cells--something that could have far-reaching consequences for any baby a dude might father.From The Verge:For a study published today in the journal Epigenetics, scientists at Duke University compared the sperm of two groups of rats: those who had been given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, and those who had not. Then they compared the sperm of 24 human men who smoked marijuana weekly versus a control group who used marijuana no more than 10 times in their life and not at all in the past half-year. In both cases — rats and humans — marijuana changed how genes work in sperm cells.In both rats and humans, the cannabis affected many different genes involved in two different pathways. (Think of pathways as another set of instructions, this time for regulating various bodily functions.) One is important for organs to reach full size, and one plays a role in cancer and suppressing tumors. Before anyone loses their shit, this doesn't mean that any kid you conceive while THC is coursing through your body will be more likely to get cancer. A lot more research needs to be conducted before any firm conclusions can be drawn. As The Verge points out, there were no laboratory controls on how much THC was consumed by the test subjects. Read the rest

Fizz Buzz is the word-game in which players in a circle count from 1 up, substituting multiples of three with "fizz" and multiples of five with "buzz" ("1, 2, Fizz, 4, Buzz, Fizz, 7, 8, Fizz, Buzz, 11, Fizz, 13, 14, Fizz Buzz, 16, 17, Fizz, 19, Buzz, Fizz, 22, 23, Fizz, Buzz, 26, Fizz, 28, 29, Fizz Buzz, 31, 32, Fizz, 34, Buzz, Fizz, ...").Evil Fizz Buzz is Jason Gorman's exercise that uses Fizz Buzz to teach continuous integration and test-driven development, played with five or more software developers.The players divide into five groups, each tasked with a different component of writing a program to output correct Fizz Buzz sequences:1. Generate a list of integers from 1-1002. Numbers that are divisible by 3, replace with "Fizz"3. Numbers that are divisible by 5, replace with "Buzz"4. Numbers that are divisibele by 3 & 5, replace with "FizzBuzz"5. Output this list as a single comma-delimited stringTeams can whiteboard and discuss together, but teams can only contribute code related to their task, checking it into a source control repository. That's when it gets interesting:Once you have a working (green) build on a skeleton solution (i.e., one that compiles and runs at least one dummy test), the build must not go red. This is an exercise on delivering as a team WITHOUT BREAKING THE BUILD. OK? If the build goes red again, the exercise is over. The team has 1 hour to deliver a working solution they can demonstrate to the "customer"Lots of people asking about Evil FizzBuzz. Read the rest

When bots finally accounted for half the traffic on the internet, Media Experts speculated that algorithms would start identifying bots as a better advertising target than humans. Max Read points out that fear of "Inversion" is now quaint. Now everything is so fake online that no-one trusts numbers at all.In the future, when I look back from the high-tech gamer jail in which President PewDiePie will have imprisoned me, I will remember 2018 as the year the internet passed the Inversion, not in some strict numerical sense, since bots already outnumber humans online more years than not, but in the perceptual sense. Everything that once seemed definitively and unquestionably real now seems slightly fake; everything that once seemed slightly fake now has the power and presence of the real. The “fakeness” of the post-Inversion internet is less a calculable falsehood and more a particular quality of experience — the uncanny sense that what you encounter online is not “real” but is also undeniably not “fake,” and indeed may be both at once, or in succession, as you turn it over in your head. Read the rest

Retired Cambridge professor Peter Smith has distilled his experience in teaching philosophers and mathematicians about formal logic into a free, frequently updated (last updated: 2017) study guide to logic, constructed to be easily accessible, with quick-start guides for different kinds of learners, written on the assumption of very little education in either maths or philosophy.It is perhaps worth pausing to ask whether you, as a budding philosopher,reallydowant or need to pursue your logical studies much further if you havealready worked through a book like mine or Paul Teller’s or Nick Smith’s. Farbe it from me to put people off doing more logic: perish the thought! But formany philosophical purposes, you might well survive by just reading this:Eric Steinhart,More Precisely: The Math You Need to Do Philosophy*(Broadview 2009) The author writes: ‘The topics presented . . . include:basic set theory; relations and functions; machines; probability; formal semantics; utilitarianism; and infinity. The chapters on sets, relations, andfunctions provide you with all you need to know to apply set theory in anybranch of philosophy. The chapter of machines includes finite state machines, networks of machines, the game of life, and Turing machines. Thechapter on formal semantics includes both extensional semantics, Kripkean possible worlds semantics, and Lewisian counterpart theory. The chapter onprobability covers basic probability, conditional probability, Bayes theorem,and various applications of Bayes theorem in philosophy. The chapter onutilitarianism covers act utilitarianism, applications involving utility andprobability (expected utility), and applications involving possible worldsand utility. Read the rest

Got someone you need bumped off for the holidays? Better start baking.The Real Santa was directed by Robert O'Twomney who was inspired to create the short by a thread he started on reddit's r/WritingPrompts.He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He can bypass any security system in the world and escape. Santa sounds like the world’s most deadly assassin, if the kid can meet his price.Thanks, Marcia! Read the rest

The New York Times has published an investigation into infamous American mass shootings and found that a significant proportion of mass shooters go on credit-card fueled spending sprees prior to their acts of terror, and that these shooters worry (needlessly, as it turns out) that their unusual credit-card spending will be flagged by financial institutions, resulting in their cards being frozen.Even if you don't own one or more guns, the historic, incredible wealth of the NRA tells you something about the profitability of the industry -- and hence the high price of the bulk-killing weapons that mass-murderers prefer. This presents a problem for law-abiding hoarders of high-powered, high-speed, high-capacity firearms, who may lack the funds to amass the arsenal of their dreams. But mass killers, who plan on dying in a hail of bullets after they have done their work, can sidestep this problem thanks to the American dream of easy subprime credit, as the high interest rates and fees associated with the cards you can get on short notice pose no hardship to the intestate estates of notorious killers.Anyone who's ever used their cards in unusual ways knows all about the hair-trigger fraud-detection systems used by banks: I can say from recent experience that even if you call your bank and tell them, "I'm about to do all my annual charitable giving, so please expect a bunch of unusual transactions ranging from $100 to $3000, all to registered charities," that you will still have to call the fraud department and get your card unfrozen half a dozen times. Read the rest

Another child has died in the custody of U.S. immigration officials. Felipe Alonzo-Gomez was taken to a hospital in New Mexico on Monday and released after treatment for a cold and fever. He was given antibiotics and ibuprofen. He was brought back to the hospital Monday night and died a few hours later. This is the second Guatemalan child to die in U.S. custody in December. Jakelin Caal, a 7-year-old girl died earlier this month.Merry fucking Christmas.CBP: 8-year-old Guatemalan child apprehended by CBP dies Christmas Day (Kelsie Blazier/ABC15.com) (Photo: CBPPhotos/Flickr) Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the plot of Billy Dare, in "Octo-Danger" goes strangely astray.

Magnetic tape maestro Randall Taylor, aka Amulets, takes an old Mannheim Steamroller Christmas cassette in a totally different direction... a totally different dimension. Just when you thought you were going to listen to some sweet christmas music it turns into a weird 7 minute ambient drone rework that no one wants to hear at your family/work/friendmas/holiday party! Give the gift of your obscure musical taste and Mannheim Steamroll your loved ones today!GEAR USED:- Custom Tape Loops- Tascam Porta 02- Library of Congress Tape Player- Memorex Walkman- Behringer Micromix- AC Noises AMA- Strymon Blue Sky Support and follow Amulets on Patreon.Previously: "Spectacular 'Ambient Walkman Symphony' and other tape-loop, circuit bent performances" Read the rest

I don't know if there's a special term for videos that have had their audio swapped but Marci Robin has got it dialed in. She's taken snippets of popular movies and music videos and set them to new music. The results are impressive.... but it’s also pretty great with Starship’s “We Built This City.” pic.twitter.com/ja5dhGNVcx— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 24, 2018Just FYI, I put The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” over @ladygaga’s “Bad Romance” video and I’m very pleased with the results. pic.twitter.com/lmwil8teEf— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 23, 2018Oh — and Heart’s “Barracuda” over Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video. pic.twitter.com/XoWXlMGeq4— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 23, 2018Please enjoy Christopher Walken dancing to both @tmbg’s “Birdhouse in Your Soul”... pic.twitter.com/twsF2f5iWi— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 23, 2018OK fine, here’s another. I replaced Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It” with Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Let’s see if they notice. pic.twitter.com/I7kDwyvqxe— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 23, 2018OK, folks, got a few more for you tonight, starting with this one because it’s @Ceejness’s favorite and it’s his birthday: “Mocking Bird” over the dance scene in Ex Machina. EX MACHINGBIRD??? pic.twitter.com/ZFQrow3vxX— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 24, 2018Uh... @barrymanilow’s “Copacabana” over @vanillaice’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rap? pic.twitter.com/xZPA1Cr64K— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 23, 2018Behold: @peeweeherman dancing to @JamiroquaiHQ’s “Virtual Insanity.” pic.twitter.com/Jypbsg004A— Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) December 23, 2018And here’s @MIAuniverse’s “Paper Planes” in Guys & Dolls, because obviously. Read the rest

A video of Baltimore-based rapper and producer HAZMATCAZ impersonating Siri is making the rounds, and for good reason -- it's uncanny!Listen:So last night I met the human form of Siri😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/x3nC4XNile— єяıṅ (@Erinie_DaBest) December 22, 2018And for those of you who think it's faked, here's a video of her explaining her (no longer) hidden talent:🤦🏻‍♀️😂 pic.twitter.com/QHvGnqpgCV— ✨✨✨CAZ✨✨✨ (@HAZMATCAZZ) December 22, 2018 Read the rest

Donald Trump, answering a phone call about Santa Claus from a child, 7, on Christmas Eve: "Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it's marginal, right?"Trump sat in front of a roaring fireplace with his wife Melania.Donald Trump, answering phone call from 7-year-old on Christmas Eve: "Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it's marginal, right?" pic.twitter.com/VHexvFSbQ1— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 25, 2018America, you are welcome.Reuters:Every Christmas Eve, the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado, claims to track Santa Claus’ flight across the globe, a tradition dating to 1955, when a department store printed the phone number of a NORAD colonel in a Christmas newspaper ad by mistake.This year, though, the NORAD calls came at a precarious time for the president, who is mired in crises, from a government shutdown that has affected a quarter of federal agencies and departments to a stock market selloff amid Trump’s public criticisms of the Federal Reserve.The NORAD calls were the first time Trump has been seen in public since the shutdown began. NORAD said on Friday it would continue the tradition in the event of a shutdown, adding in a tweet that military personnel would be supported by 1,500 volunteers. Read the rest

The New York City Council voted to rename streets after hip-hop artists Christopher Wallace (aka the Notorious BIG) and the Wu-Tang Clan and folk musician/activist Woodie Guthrie. If Mayor Bill de Blasio gives his final approval, a block in Brooklyn where Notorious B.I.G. was raised will be called Christopher Wallace Way, Staten Island will have a Wu-Tang Clan District, and part of Coney Island's Mermaid Avenue will be renamed Woody Guthrie Way to celebrate his 1940s home. From Rolling Stone:Cultural advocate LeRoy McCarthy spearheaded the efforts to rename the streets after the legendary hip-hop acts. “I’m happy that NYC officials are finally giving the city’s indigenous ‘Hip Hop’ music the respect and recognition that it deserves. It took a long time and lots of hard work to advance the Christopher Wallace Way & Wu-Tang Clan District street co-naming, but ya know what, Hip Hop Don’t Stop,” McCarthy told Gothamist.Additionally, Woody Guthrie Way located at Coney Island’s Mermaid Avenue between West 35th and West 36th marks the section of Brooklyn where the folk legend lived in the early 1940s. Read the rest

A Cincinnati gentleman, running from a police officer who spotted him shoplifting from Walmart, accidentally ran right to the rear entrance of the nearby police station. According to police, "(Jeremy) Roberts made what can only be described as a tactical error and ran directly to the rear of the Cincinnati Police Department ... District 3 station, which is located just south of Walmart... and where he was 'greeted by numerous officers.'"(WCPO, thanks Charles Pescovitz!) Read the rest

In 1976, German experimental group Can, pioneers of the krautrock sound, released "Silent Night" as a 7" single. Fröhliche Weihnachten! Read the rest

John Eldredge of St. Petersburg, Florida writes in a Facebook Marketplace listing that he made this lifesize Santa in Carbonite for a sci-fi Christmas party. But the party's over and Santa must go. $200. Light settings are adjustable to flash at different speeds or not at all. Made with wood, clothes and a lot of hot glue! It's basically a craft and not a precision model, but looks cool. Side panels are made with cosplay foam. Unit is pretty light and stands about 6.5 ft. tall.photo via John Eldredge/Facebook(Nerdcore) Read the rest

The Boston Globe is reporting Kevin Spacey has been charged with felony indecent assault and battery of a teenage boy. The alleged incident, which took place in a Nantucket, MA bar in 2016 was brought to law enforcement's attention by the boy's mother, Heather Unruh, a former news anchor for WCVB in Boston. From the Globe: In Nov. 2017, during an emotional news conference, Unruh publicly accused Spacey of sexually assaulting her son.Unruh said that in July 2016 her then 18-year-old son was at The Club Car, where the actor was among the late-night crowd in the dimly lit restaurant. Her son was mesmerized by Spacey and told him he was old enough to drink, Unruh said previously.Unruh said Spacey purchased alcohol for her son until he was drunk and then stuck his hand inside the man’s pants and grabbed his genitals. During the encounter, Unruh said, her son tried to shift his body away from Spacey but was “only momentarily successful.” The actor urged her son to accompany him to an after-hours party to drink more, she said.Unruh said her son fled the restaurant when Spacey excused himself to use the bathroom and a woman urged the youth to run. He sprinted to his grandmother’s house and told his sister what happened, Unruh said. The siblings then called Unruh, who traveled to Nantucket in the morning, she said.Shortly after the charges were revealed, Spacey posted a bizarre video on his official YouTube channel, seemingly in character as Frank Underwood from House of Cards. Read the rest

In 2009, Obama signed an executive order requiring the administrative branch to embrace the broadest, most liberal approach to the Freedom of Information Act, reversing John Ashcroft's 2001 memo that instructed government agencies to turn over as little information to the public as possible.At the time, I published a column in Make magazine lauding the decision: John Ashcroft, then Attorney General, issued a directive to governmentagencies on October 12, 2001 that gutted FOIA. Under the new directive,agencies were advised to deny all FOIA requests, unless there was a"sound legal basis" for complying with them. Prior to this, agencies haddefaulted to honoring *all* FOIA requests, unless there was some"foreseeable harm" that could come from them. Effectively Ashcroft'smemo changed FOIA policy to, "We'll honor your FOIA request -- after youwin a lawsuit against us."So it was a grand and exciting day for activists of all descriptionwhen, on January 21, 2009, Barack Obama issued a memo *reversing* thispolicy, directing government agencies to "adopt a presumption in favorof disclosure" -- that is, to change the government's default positionon revealing what it doing from "None of your business" to "Pull up aseat and let me tell you all about it.:"Make: magazine was founded on the principle that, "if you can't open it,you don't own it," the stirring opening lines to Mr Jalopy's infamousMaker's Manifesto. This is even more true of governments than it is ofgadgets. Governments do their business on our behalf, with our money, inour country. Read the rest

An annual tradition (MP3)! Poesy is now 10 -- nearly 11! -- and this year, she's decided to offer us a detailed makeup tutorial, with some bonus horseback riding advice. There's even a musical number! Read the rest

A seasonal Russian animation from 1966. Directed by Vladimir Degtyarev, it's 10 minutes long and you won't need subtitles 'cause there ain't no dialogue. [via Metafilter] Read the rest

An unidentified local news station celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of couple "Max and Geraldine Bailey" during a "Birthdays & Anniversaries" segment, except that they showed a picture of actor Mickey Rourke and Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose instead. Twitter user @KatlynNoelle88 caught the prank on camera:WHO DID THIS?!?! 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/DW3tTMbtDs— Katlyn (@KatlynNoelle88) December 21, 2018That photo of Rourke and Rose was taken at a boxing match in Los Angeles earlier this month and garnered reactions like these: No, these are not two retired school teachers waiting for their grandkids dance recital to begin while their husbands find parking.This is Mickey Rourke and Axl Rose at a boxing match in LA over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/1cooQ4Fed9— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) December 11, 2018Mickey Rourke and Axl Rose look Katie Hopkins and Mama Fratelli from the Goonies pic.twitter.com/UIWuNDTem4— Jesse Cooper (@JesseRCooper) December 13, 2018Mickey Rourke and Axl Rose look like your Aunt and Uncle from Texas just showed up for Christmas dinner. pic.twitter.com/ShtwKiHSAU— VisuallyBetter (@Isuckatpicking) December 11, 2018(Consequence of Sound)screenshot via KatlynNoelle88 Read the rest

Political rabble-rouser and anti-Trump activist Claude Taylor wants to make sure that we don't forget the fact that the Saudi government, likely ordered by the crown prince, brutally tortured, murdered, and dismembered a U.S. resident and Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. To that end, he has made street sign-styled bumper stickers that you can place over existing street signs to turn any road in America into Khashoggi Way. You can get one of your own, for free, by following the instructions below.Thanks to Claude, in his Mad Doc Pac "Rat Truck," Jared and Ivanka's street in DC is now Khashoggi Way. Claude tweets:I’m back from today’s delivery of #KhashoggiWay. I went to Jared. Or close. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Jared Kushner assisted in the coverup of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. #complicit @KarenAttiahIf you want to support Taylor's resistance projects, he has a Mad Dog Pac account on ShareBlue.[Images via Claude Taylor's Twitter feed] Read the rest

Artist Sara Sandoval must have practiced a long time to be able to scribble out a portrait like this of Eminem on name tags. It looks like random at first but then she puts them all together and voila! Hello, my name is... Slim Shady! Her latest portrait, done similarly, is of Post Malone done on priority mail stickers (Post on post, get it?):These remind me of those "draw by grid" puzzles.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

In 2017, Reality Winner, a 25-year-old Air Force veteran and intelligence contractor was arrested for leaking confirmation of 2016 Russian election meddling to The Intercept; Winner seems to have been motivated by the same outrage that had animated Ed Snowden four years earlier: watching her bosses lie about matters of national interest.Winner is a principled, brilliant patriot who was facing a long prison sentence when she pleaded guilty and got a five-year term, the longest ever term for an offense of the sort Winner was accused of committing.In the months since Winner's sentence, her alleged leak has been vindicated again and again, as members of Trump's inner circle have pleaded guilty, or been convicted, of acting as unregistered foreign agents, of secretly arranging Russian payouts, of lying to US law enforcement and Congress. But these swamp creatures aren't drawing five-year sentences like young Ms Winner. Instead, they're getting wrist-slaps (George Papadopoulos got 14 days and sought early release after 12).Winner's mother, Billie Winner-Davis, has written an impassioned editorial for The Intercept, describing the ways that Reality Winner is suffering for the crime of telling us something we desperately needed to know, and railing against the impunity of the men who committed the crimes she disclosed.You can sign a petition to free Winner here.Winner can receive letters and money for her commissary account, as well as books (only books sent direct by Amazon, due to prison rules):REALITY WINNER 22056-021FMC CARSWELL FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTERPO BOX 27137FORT WORTH, TX 76127 Then Manafort. Read the rest

For two decades, adolescent smoking has been on the decline, but thanks to vaping products like Juul (which has 75% of the market), teen smoking just jumped by levels not seen for 43 years.Almost all the kids who vape are vaping nicotine: a toxic and highly addictive substance (source: smoker for 17 years, ex-smoker for 18 years). Juul's income growth over the past year? 800%.Nearly all of the increase comes from an increase in vaping nicotine, and my skepticism about this disappeared when I looked up revenue figures for Juul, the top seller of vaping devices and pods. I knew that the Juul fad had practically taken over American high schools recently, but it turns out that Juul reported a monster revenue increase of nearly 800 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from $107 million to $942 million), and they control about 75 percent of the market. That’s enough all by itself to account for a huge single-year increase in vaping.The Juul Fad Is Far Bigger Than I Ever Would Have Guessed [Kevin Drum/Mother Jones](via JWZ) Read the rest

Hundreds of yellow vest protesters marched in Dublin yesterday; like the French gilets jaunes who inspired them, the Irish yellow vests marched for a wide variety of causes, with no unified set of demands: the 2008 banker bailout (arguably the worst in the world since the Irish government has explicitly warned the banks it wouldn't guarantee their reckless loans, but still paid them off when the bubble burst); the continuing and ghastly revelations of scandals in the Church (including the forced-labor camps that unwed mothers were condemned to, and the scandal that the of storage tanks contained secret mass graves filled with the remains of infants); the spiraling costs of housing in Ireland; and the heel-dragging by the Irish government on legalizing marijuana.Collectively, this could be called "anti-corruption." Occupy had a semi-serious rallying cry: "Stuff is fucked up and shit." The everybody knows feeling, that our states are held captive by oligarchs, that oligarchs see us as "surplus population," that wealth means impunity.When Occupy fizzled, many people said that the momentum had broken. But that's not how change works. Change is a scalloped growth curve:Each event -- Occupy, the Women's March, the Ferguson uprising, the Muslim Ban, family separation -- excites a massive public response, and then most of the new people who the event has incited go back to their lives, but some people remain committed activists, energized by the glimpse of a new possibility. Even the ones who went home are primed to go out again, excited by the possibilities they've glimpsed. Read the rest

All the hubbub about Stephen Miller's sprayed-on hair made me wonder if he'd consider having his head painted like the bald gentleman did in this circa 1960 British Pathé video.(Josh Jefferson) Read the rest

Miley Cyrus has changed up the lyrics to the 1953 Christmas classic "Santa Baby" to give them a more feminist spin in this Tonight Show skit with Jimmy Fallon and Mark Ronson. No fur, cars, diamonds or stocks for her, she's looking for equal pay, consent, and an end to mansplaining. Read the rest

Ever lost music, contacts or priceless pictures during an iPhone upgrade? We'd pay for iMazing 2 just to avoid the hassle of going through that ever again. But the trusty app does more than just store your data. It lets you access them on any device and store them however you need.This all-purpose data manager makes it easy to access anything you need, no matter what device you're on. Transfer images or video from Mac to PC (without going through iCloud or iTunes). Move your contacts from iPhone to a laptop. Listen to voicemails or memos on any device, anywhere - all with an app that's easy to use, enabling you to transfer files either wirelessly or by USB. Best of all, a Universal License lets you shuffle freely on an unlimited number of iOS devices and up to two PC or Mac computers.Right now, iMazing 2: Universal License for Mac & Windows is $19.99. Read the rest

"Dookie" stars in what was described previously here as "the greatest viral ad in TV history": that being the one for the Squatty Potty, a lavatorial aid that should require no reintroduction. The adorable, weird, cloying, slightly nasty unicorn character can now be yours for $15 at Amazon, but the site warns that it's not likely to arrive before Christmas. (The Squatty Potty itself will, though, if you order it today) Read the rest

Last week, Kansas state senators Dinah Sykes and Barbara Bollier and state representative Stephanie Clayton announced they were no longer going to serve as Republicans and would instead serve as Democrats; they were joined by former state rep Joy Koesten who served as a Republican until getting primaried by a far-right candidate who will take her seat in 2019.Despite the election of a Democratic governor, the GOP still dominates Kansas politics, which means that these women will be sitting with the weaker side in the legislature, making this hard to square with any accusations of raw power-seeking.Instead, as the women explained to Slate, the choice came as a result of a number of factors: the party's hard-line, complete with "purity tests," that excludes input from anyone who identifies as moderate; the "overwhelming" influence of the "hardcore, fervent religious right" and "outside money"; and the decision to scrap a bipartisan education funding rule (badly needed in Kansas, where Republican leadership has starved the school system to the brink of failure) in order to punish the incoming Democratic governor. Koesten: I had an amazing group of colleagues, all who identify as moderate Republicans. And I felt I was abandoning them. But there is a hard-right element in the party that is incredibly destructive. The hardcore, fervent religious right—and the outside money—is so overpowering. You want to stay and fight the good fight, but I finally decided I can’t fight from the inside.Sykes: Kansans, I think in general, are common-sense [people]. Read the rest

Ask any maker: The key to Raspberry Pi's popularity is its versatility. The mini-computer can help kids learn basic coding, but it's also a gateway to everything from retro gaming to a full Internet of Things upgrade for your home. If you're not sure where to start, the Complete Raspberry Pi Course Bundle is the easiest way to kick those gates open.This three-course bundle starts with a boot camp that gives beginners the chance to play top classics from Nintendo, Sega and more on their own custom gaming system, crafted top to bottom with Raspberry Pi. From there, users can learn their way around Python, GPIO pins, the Pi camera module and other crucial tools to build increasingly complex systems. There's even a focus on home automation, teaching how to pair Raspberry Pi with Alexa to voice-control virtually any device.That's 10 hours of content, resources, and lessons in the Complete Raspberry Pi Course Bundle, currently on sale at $19. Read the rest

Some of you may be old enough to remember these most excellent MADtv parodies of Rankin/Bass stop-motion kids' movies, and some of you need a pop culture elder like myself to point you to them. Either way, I think they're brilliant and hope they'll make you laugh as hard as I did when I first saw them. They're definitely not for little eyes though!This first one is called "Raging Rudolph" (1995) and it's an ultra-violent, Scorsese-esque takeoff of the perennial favorite, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964):After the success of the first one, MADtv came out with "Reinfather" a year or two later which, as you guessed, spoofs The Godfather:In 1999, they aired "A Pack of Gifts Now," a take on Apocalypse Now. A bit of trivia on this one, Patton Oswalt pitched this skit when he was a writer at MADtv. They produced it a year after he left:Now, all three of these were created by Corky Quakenbush of Space Bass Films. If you liked them, you'll be happy to know he made more in the spirit of the MADtv ones. On this later one for Larry the Cable Guy, Quakenbush writes, "This is the cleaned up for television version. Jinno was tasked with digitally removing all the bloodshed we meticulously animated as well as us having to edit out 30 seconds of the senseless massacring of every virtually unarmed character from the original Rudolph special prior to rocket bombing Santa's castle..." That's Blake Shelton in the intro:There's more... Read the rest

Remove.bg, a new free web app released by developer Benjamin Groessing on Monday, keeps popping up in my feeds so I thought I'd try it out. With one click, it removes the background of a photo using AI:Today I'm launching https://t.co/PX30RBnfSm – a tool to automatically remove the background of any image (with a person in it) 🚀Built with python, ruby & deep learning with @davidfankhauser - AMA— Benjamin Groessing (@begroe) December 17, 2018To test it out, I chose this photo cribbed from Aliexpress:Remove.bg spit this out in less than 10 seconds:Not bad. I suspect that the app read that pipe as "fingers." Anyone care to take this image and set her in an exotic locale by giving her a nice new background? Read the rest

Cassandra Khaw's shockingly good 3-page short story Monologue by an unnamed mage, recorded at the brink of the end takes a genre and an archetype and distills from them a perfect moment that embodies and exceeds both.Uncanny Magazine:That they dragged us back, bound in brambles and bronze, that they made us choose between being separated or being part of the vanguard against the apocalypse, all that is of no importance. That we laughed at their ultimatum, that we said yes, that we held hands as they told us we probably wouldn’t come back, that is what matters.What matters is that I love you and that I will always love you, and I won’t let them have you, even if I have to husk myself of all that I am and splinter the universe again. You’re mine and I am yours, and what are gods to people who have seen the continents fold up like paper planes? Read the rest

In Helena, Montana's North Hills, a man was setting up for (legal) target practice on public land when another gentleman shot at him (and missed) several times. The man confronted the shooter who reportedly told him he was “not wearing orange and (he) thought he was Bigfoot." As if it would be ok to shoot a Sasquatch!Curiously, the man who dodged the bullets didn't report the matter to police until the next day. According to the police, he "didn’t think it was necessary" but then decided that the shooter needed a lesson in gun safety.From the Independent Record:(Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo) Dutton noted that despite a desire not to pursue charges, the allegations are serious and could warrant a charge of attempted negligent homicide. Deputies did check the area and no vehicle matching the description was found, he said. Read the rest

While I'm sure the new Apple Handsome Anthony will get all the headlines, I'm most excited for the fancy tetra-fusion Hole. And I don't care that it isn't portable yet. Read the rest

Deborah Smith, walking near the coast at Bude in Cornwall, captured a big chunk of cliff toppling onto the beach below. The coastguard had warned locals it was soon to give way, but only she was lucky enough to capture the moment it went. Read the rest

In October 2017, Syracuse cops arrested Torrence Jackson with a small amount of marijuana and accused him of hiding drugs in his rectum (the officers say they saw him shift in his seat and concluded that he'd put drugs up his butt). They took him to St Joseph's Hospital where he was nonconsensually X-rayed; when that revealed no drugs, officers told doctors to force sedation on Jackson and then put a tube and camera up his rectum.Two doctors refused to perform the procedure, but eventually Jackson was drugged unconscious and anally violated.No drugs were found.After Jackson was released, St Joseph's hospital billed him $4,595.12 for the procedures.Syracuse's mayor Ben Walsh, and police chief refused to comment on the incident. Syracuse City Court Judge Rory McMahon, who issued the warrant, also refused to comment, citing a seal on the case.Jackson says he will not pay the bill. St Joseph's has threatened to send collection agents against him. Keller, the lawyer, defended his client’s resistance to the procedure.“Good for him,” he said. “If somebody was going to do surgery on me without any evidence, I would be upset, too.”Jackson said he woke up, not sure what had happened. “I felt tampered with,” he said.Jackson was released from jail the following day. There was blood in his underwear, he said. He went to the emergency room at Community General Hospital.There, he said, an emergency room examined him and told him what happened: Someone had probed his colon. Read the rest

A couple of times a year, Apple plops out a report detailing all of the user data requests made by government and law enforcement agencies from around the world. In the latest bi-annual report, it looks like information requests have increased since the last reporting period.From Engadget:According to the report, which covers the first half of this year, Apple received 32,342 demands for user data from governments -- up 9 percent from the previous period -- spanning access to 163,823 devices. Germany made the most requests (42 percent), the majority of which were due to "stolen devices investigations," issuing 13,704 requests for data on 26,160 devices.The US was in second place with 4,570 requests for 14,911 devices. More than half of these requests (2,397) were for users' basic account information or content, revealed Apple. The US also asked for 918 financial identifiers -- which cover suspected fraudulent credit, debit, or gift card transactions -- attributing them to iTunes gift card fraud. It used to be that the report was only offered as a dense, boring PDF. But Apple, in an attempt to boost their corporate transparency, has made their report numbers available to peruse via an interactive website that can be searched by country and the month that the user data was requested.According to Engadget, Apple's report doesn't include the number of FISA requests made, as there is a legally binding six-month delay required on reportage of such requests.If you're an Apple hardware or services user, it's worth taking a quick jaunt over to the company's transparency website to see what kind of user information your government has been trying to get their hands on. Read the rest

Whether you like it or not, Christmas is a holiday that is nearly impossible to hide from. It's an in-your-face holiday for at least three months out of the year, with Christmas marketing, sales and decorations appearing in malls and other public spaces as early as October. But this wasn't always the case. Here's a fascinating short video explaining the 22-year ban on Christmas enacted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659. Back then the Puritans despised Christmas, which was associated with debauchery, according to the video. Christmas encouraged people to drink "copious amounts of alcohol," riot in the streets, gorge on food (gasp!), and was the catalyst of rowdiness and sinful behavior. In other words, Christmas, back then, was not considered to be family friendly. "But in the end," the narrator states, "we can partially thank commercialization for sustaining the domestic brand of Christmas we have today." Yippee? Read the rest

Bryan Adams has followed up on his earlier advocacy for a new Canadian copyright deal that benefits artists with a submission to the Canadian Heritage Committee's copyright consultation that argues against longer copyright terms, saying that these enrich large "intermediaries" (entities that sit between artists and their audiences, like record labels and collecting societies) and not artists.Instead of longer terms (which just mean that intermediaries get to milk creators' works for longer periods), Adams favours shortening the reversion term: this is the term after which an artist can demand to have their copyrights restored to them, even if their contracts say that they have signed away the copyright forever. In the US, the reversion term is 35 years and it's proved a boon to artists, especially those who were defrauded of their copyrights -- I'm told that George Clinton just successfully used this to reclaim the rights to Atomic Dog.Here's Adams's submission; Michael Geist's commentary is also very good:Adams raises two key concerns. First, he notes that copyright term extension provides little or no benefit to creators, who will have died decades before the extended protection kicks in. Indeed, as I stated to the Industry committee during my appearance, there is no evidence that creators today drop creative activities due to a perceived lack of incentive that comes from protection that runs for 50 years after their death rather than 70 years.Second, Adams rightly distinguishes between creators and intermediaries, which presumably include music labels, publishers, distributors, and copyright collectives. Read the rest

Kano dropped the price on its Raspberry Pi based Kano Computer. At this price, it's cheaper than buying the components individually (A Raspberry Pi 3, case, speaker and amp, cables, microSD card, wireless keyboard/trackpad). The built-in Linux-based operating system and bundled software (which teaches kids how to code) is excellent. This would be a great last minute gift. Read the rest

Kamil Rocki was inspired by the 2016 paper from Google Deepmind researchers explaining how they used machine learning to develop a system that could play Breakout on the Atari 2600 with superhuman proficiency.But Rocki wanted to develop a more general approach to machine-learning game-playing, one that could play more sophisticated games than Breakout, with less preprocessing and other time-consuming steps.This led him on a quest to find a games platform with a lot of available games, that ran on simple enough processors that he could emulate a lot of them, very quickly, on modern computing hardware.And so the Gameboy Supercomputer was born, running at over a billion FPS. He's successfully used it to develop machine learning systems that can beat Pac-Man and Mario Land.Rocki finishes his writeup with a roadmap for further work from the Open AI community.This is an excellent example of the way that flexibility in copyright -- including the freedom to rip old games and play them in emulators -- will be key to producing better machine learning systems. In order to make learning more efficient, you could imagine trying to transfer some knowledge from simpler games. This is what remains unsolved right now and is a hot research topic. A recently published challenge by OpenAI tried to measure just that: 1. There is no obvious score 2. If no action is performed it takes 60 minutes to end the game (58 minutes left in the animation).Could you try the exact same approach as in the Atari 2600 paper? Read the rest

Navigating the topic of death with a young child can be a difficult, traumatic experience for parents, especially if the topic is broached by the sudden loss of a loved one. Trying to explain death to a kid because they watched Santa Claus pass away right before their eyes? That's a higher level of awful.According to The Moscow Times, a group of kindergarteners from Siberia were celebrating the season with a Christmas party, attended by Santa or rather, one of the jolly old fellow's Eastern European iterations, Ded Moroz. A bit of background: Ded Moroz, which translates as Father Frost, was originally celebrated/feared in pre-slavic lore as a wizard or a snow demon, and over the centuries became a central figure in the region's celebrations of the New Year and Christmas. Anyway, back to the awful.As part of a school play, Ded Moroz, played by 67-year-old Valery Titenko, danced his way across the stage, until he didn't. Dressed in Ded Moroz's long red, fur-fringed coat, Titenko suffered a heart attack and fell to the ground. From the Moscow Times:The group of kids apparently thought that Titenko’s fatal collapse was part of his skit and began giggling. A woman dressed as a clown who was also part of the skit noticed Titenko’s fall and rushed to help him.Titenko was rushed to the hospital but died before he could get there.According to The Moscow Times, Titenko was aware of his poor health and had been feeling dreadful earlier in the day. Read the rest

Musician Isaac Schankler performed Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata by delaying the bass for one bar, and playing the melody one bar earlier than usual.[via Open Culture]Image source: By W.J. Baker (held the expired copyright on the photograph) - Library of Congress[1]Contrairement à une erreur fréquemment répandue le buste a été réalisé par Hugo Hagen, non pas à partir du masque mortuaire mais, comme de nombreux autres, d'après le masque réalisé en 1812 par Franz Klein pour un buste qu'il devait réaliser ensuite., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4698895 Read the rest

Cory published a writeup of my research showing Google offshoot Sidewalk Labs’ plan to build a surveilling city in Toronto involves a much, much larger chunk of land than publicly disclosed (in fact about 2,600 acres of prime Toronto waterfront!). It flushed out a response from the high-priced US PR firm Berlin Rosen, apparently acting on behalf of Sidewalk Labs:Hi there –I am reaching out about the above mentioned article. The image that accompanies the article is a picture of designated waterfront area with Quayside, specifically, highlighted. Sidewalk Toronto’s MIDP [Master Innovation Development Plan] will address Quayside only, it does not expand across the entire waterfront designated area as the article states.Can you please correct this within the article?Thanks so much in advance!MollyTo support her assertion that my findings are incorrect, Berlin Rosen's Molly Henderson sent along a misleading FAQ prepared by Waterfront Toronto to diffuse mounting concerns over the City of Toronto's Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP).To understand how the FAQ obscures the nature of the project, consider this sentence: "The only commitment at this time is to a process to create a plan for Quayside that will meet the objectives set out in the RFP [Request for Proposals]." On a first reading, this seems to imply that private city-within-a-city will be limited to Quayside, the 12-acre site that everyone has been talking about to date.But then, later, the FAQ leaves wiggle room regarding the true size of the slated area to be "developed": "Any ideas proposed more broadly than Quayside must be in service of achieving the shared goals of the project and be supported by a business case demonstrating the need for scale to achieve the objectives."Now, if you look at the map on page 42 of the Plan Development Agreement (PDA) struck between Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto, which is the focus of Cory’s Dec. Read the rest

Isao Machii is a Iaido master from Kawanishi, Hyōgo, Japan. His skills as a master swordsman have landed him a number of Guinness World Records: fastest tennis ball (820 km/h) cut by sword and "fastest 1,000 martial arts sword cuts" to name just two. His speed and accuracy with a katana is a thing of wonder. Put on display once again in this video, after watching two speeding baseballs whiz past him, he non-nonchalantly cuts a third ball in half, fired at him at 161 kilometers per hour. Amazing. Read the rest