Boing Boing

Cheap Old Houses is one of my favorite Instagram accounts. The folks behind it scour real estate listings around the U.S. to find and showcase cool old homes being sold at ridiculously inexpensive prices, i.e. real estate pR0n. Sure, most of the houses are in places I'd never move to or they are "major fixers" but they're all under $100K. Well, it seems that the feed is becoming too popular, as evidenced by this PSA they released on Friday:Here are some examples of these cheap old homes:screenshot via Instagram(Super Punch) Read the rest

When I was in Berlin last month, I stopped into the offices of Netzpolitik (previously), the outstanding German digital rights activist group, where I recorded an interview for their podcast (MP3), talking about science fiction, utopianism, dystopianism, how we can change the world, and why my kid has so many names. Read the rest

Jimmy Kimmel can be kind of a dick. You may remember that he's had parents lie to their kids, saying that they stole and ate all their Halloween candy -- all caught on camera, of course. That gag's been running for a few years now. Well, he's got a new prank. This time he's got parents unplugging the TV when their kids are playing the video game Fortnite. As you'll see, like with the "missing" candy bit, the kids don't take too kindly to it. Read the rest

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke (previously) is leaving the cabinet at the end of the month.Zinke was one of Trump's most deplorable swamp-monsters: a man so loathed that even Scott Priutt couldn't stand him, and for good reason: this is the guy who handed a $300m government contract to fix power lines in hurricane-wracked Puerto Rico to a two-man shop run by old buddies; defrauded the taxpayer with bogus travel-expenses, removed endangered bears from the endangered species list, let oil companies drill in national parks and blanked out his whole calendar.It's not clear whether he was fired for being a gross liability, or quit ahead of the sinking of the Trump ship. Doubtless he will parachute into a sweet industry job to collect a payout from the corporations he benefited while suckling on the public's teat.Ryan Zinke: US interior secretary to leave administration [BBC] Read the rest

Mick Mulvaney (previously) is a terrible human being -- as Trump's head for the financial watchdog, he's gutted the agency and allowed crooked lenders and dirty banks to get away with ripping off Americans -- so he knows one when he sees one.Back when Mulvaney was running for a South Carolina Congressional seat in 2016, Mulvaney explained why he was supporting Trump: "Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being."Mulvaney has been named Trump's acting Chief of Staff, standing in for John Kelly. Mulvaney is far from the first person in the administration to openly criticize Trump before signing on for a job in his administration, but he is certainly one of the most high-ranking.During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump opponent Rick Perry called the future president’s campaign a “cancer on conservatism.” Perry now serves as President Trump’s Secretary of Energy. Before Kellyanne Conway became Trump’s 2016 campaign manager during the homestretch of the race, Conway had publicly criticized candidate Trump for refusing to release his tax returns and for his “vulgar” rhetoric. Conway currently serves as one of Trump’s most ardent defenders and as his White House counselor.Even if Mulvaney had never uttered a critical word about Trump, the chances he would last long in a chief of staff post would have likely been slim regardless. Two knowledgeable sources told The Daily Beast on Friday that Mulvaney has indicated in recent weeks that he definitely would not want the chief of staff position beyond a temporary, interim assignment. Read the rest

What the hell were they thinking? Luxury brand Prada is accused of selling $550 "blackface" figurines. They have charms in their Pradamalia line that are monkeys with dark faces and big red lips, i.e. blackface. The merchandise has now been removed for purchase, though the site still shows it. Thanks to #blackface @Prada, now you can take #sambo home with you for the holidays #StopRacism #StopBlackface #StopPrada pic.twitter.com/5t2cvosLIF— Chinyere Ezie (@lawyergrrl) December 13, 2018Here's Prada's response to the accusation:[1/2] #Prada Group abhors racist imagery. The Pradamalia are fantasy charms composed of elements of the Prada oeuvre. They are imaginary creatures not intended to have any reference to the real world and certainly not blackface.— PRADA (@Prada) December 14, 2018[2/] #Prada Group never had the intention of offending anyone and we abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery. In this interest we will withdraw the characters in question from display and circulation.— PRADA (@Prada) December 14, 2018On Friday morning, Gothamist's Jennifer Hsu got this video of the Prada store in NYC's SOHO district shuttering its blinds, as a way of hiding the offensive window display: screenshot via Gothamist/YouTube Read the rest

"From Morlocks to warlocks, nerds are passionate about a lot of things, but there's one thing they love above all else and that is correcting people*." So begins each intro to the CollegeHumor game show, "Um, Actually." Nimbly hosted by Mike Trapp, the rules for Um, Actually are simple. Mike reads a statement related to various fantasy and sci-fi universes and beloved nerd media (Lord of the Rings, Blade Runner, D&D, Dune, Warhammer, Harry Potter, anime, gaming, etc). The statement conceals a mistake. One of the three contestants buzzes in with their correction. And they must preface their correction with "Um, actually..." Many of the contestants on the show are familiar faces from Geek & Sundry, The Nerdist, CollegeHumor, and shows like Silicon Valley. When "Um, Actually" first showed up on YouTube a few years ago, as 6-12-minute shorts, I really enjoyed the 8 episodes they produced and thought it would make a fun full-length show. CollegeHumor obviously thought the same. They have launched a second season of full-length (24 minutes) episodes as part of their new Dropout.tv subscription comedy network. Here is one of the full-length episodes and several of the teasers from CollgeHumor's YouTube channel.The show also encourages its viewers to correct any of its mistakes, and as you might imagine, there are a lot of them @UmActuallyShow (some of which are read at the end of each episode).You can see all of the short YouTube segments for Season 2 here. Read the rest

Polish educator Janusz Korczak set out to remake the world just as it was falling apart. In the 1930s his Warsaw orphanage was an enlightened society run by the children themselves, but he struggled to keep that ideal alive as Europe descended into darkness. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the children's champion and his sacrifices for the orphans he loved.We'll also visit an incoherent space station and puzzle over why one woman needs two cars.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!Image: By Jolanta Dyr - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

Prior to 1976, the FDA did not regulate medical implants, and so shoddy and even deadly devices proliferated, inserted into Americans' body.When the FDA finally decided to regulate implants, they were reluctant to subject the devices already in the field to regulation -- after all, these were already in peoples' bodies. So they enacted rule 501(k), which grandfathered in any devices in the market, and any devices that were "substantially similar" to those devices.This is a loophole that eventually grew to consume the rule. Since 1976, medical implant makers like Johnson and Johnson have worked in a stepwise fashion: in 1977, make a device and argue that it's "similar" to a 1976 device. Then in 78, you make another device and argue that it's similar to the device you got approved in 1977. Flash forward to 2018, and practically all medical implants are approved through this process.Releasing the companies from regulatory oversight did not go well. From "metal on metal" joints that released deadly cobalt into patients' bloodstreams and dissolved their surrounding tissues into metal-studded slurry to vaginal mesh implants that caused incredible, life-threatening harm and could never be removed; to "Essure," a permanent female sterilization tool that also causes life-threatening harm, tens of thousands of Americans have been permanently disabled or killed by their medical implants, their lives turned upside-down, subjected to medical bankruptcy, collapsing marriages, even homelessness and loss of their children.But the FDA has not stepped up, and the companies routinely refuse to withdraw their products even when confronted with stories from injured and dying implantees. Read the rest

Digital or analog, there's a path of least resistance for any project. Finding that path is what the Agile methodology is all about, which is why proficiency in it is a must for any project management position - and the paycheck that comes with it. And the quickest path to learning Agile? The Agile Project Management Mastery Bundle.In these eight online courses, you'll get a thorough introduction to Agile and its ground-level project framework, Scrum. With copious examples, you'll find out how to break any job down into manageable tasks, and how to tackle them with precision. By the end of the bundle, you'll have used the Agile-friendly Jira software to tackle a real-world project of your own and be ready to join - or head up - any Agile-using team.The MSRP for all these resources is $1592, but you can get lifetime access to the Agile Project Management Mastery Bundle for $29 - a 98% discount off the cost of the individual courses. Read the rest

Topping the Electronic Frontier Foundation's don't-buy for Christmas list: Facebook's Portal in-home spycams, followed closely by Alexa/Google Home and other "home hubs"; Verizon's "AppFlash" spyware-equipped phones; and even the Elf on the Shelf gets a look in (normalizes surveillance!).There are many, many more products that we could talk about here: smart toys, baby monitors, fitness trackers and more. Overall, there are a few things to think about when you’re looking at buying a smart gift but trying to balance privacy.Consider carefully what features a product has, and what that means in terms of data collection. Anything with a microphone, for example, can record what you’re saying—and may record something you don’t expect it do, as was the case for one Amazon Echo owner this May. Opting for a smart vacuum also means letting a company like iRobot, maker of the Roomba, map out your house.Second, use your settings. A new smart device will probably have a lot of sharing options on by default, and set-up is a good time to go through the settings and figure out what you actually want to be exposing to companies and others.Finally, it’s always good to take a spin through a product’s privacy policy and attempt to understand what data it collects on you and how that information gets shared with others—that is, if a company has taken the advice of EFF and other privacy groups and bothered to write a policy that a normal person can understand. Mozilla, in a privacy-focused gift guide of its own, determined many tech products have policies that are at a college reading level or higher. Read the rest

A Lamborghini here, a Lamborghini there, sooner or later it starts to add up.A former pastor at the megachurch founded by “prosperity gospel” superstar Joel Osteen is having a hard time defending his purchase of a $200,000 Lamborghini for his wife Aventer Gray, to celebrate their anniversary. This Houston Chronicle article detailing John Gray's lavish taste in wedding anniversary gifts is funny, until you remember how people who are poor give their money to these churches and make these guys rich:At Lakewood Church, pastor Joel Osteen proclaims, "It's God's will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty." Osteen, who lives in a $10.5 million mansion in River Oaks, practices what he preaches. Apparently. so does his former associate pastor, John Gray.While the traditional theme for an eight-year wedding anniversary present is pottery, on Sunday, Gray took it to a whole new level, gifting his wife, Aventer Gray, a $200,000 Lamborghini Urus.Mr. and Mrs. Gray were roasted on social media after they posted boast videos about the ultra-luxury Lamborghini Urus, which travels zero-to-62-mph in 3.6 seconds. The good pastor posted a video to Instagram capturing the the moment he handed The Missus keys to the bow-wrapped SUV.Aventer Gray posted this defense of her husband's purchase of new car on Instagram, and it's full of silliness. View this post on Instagram MY HUBBY IS A HARD-WORKER, HE WORKED HIS WHOLE LIFE AND HE SAVED TO BLESS HIS WIFE!!! REALJOHNGRAY AUTHOR X 2 SILENT ENDORSEMENTS (YOU KNOW BECAUSE EVERYONE DOESN’T HAVE TO BRAG ABOUT WHO THEY ARE SIGNED TO) 6 TV SHOWS MOVIE PRODUCER SONG WRITER TOURS Gives away cars, full houses of furniture, coats off his back... Read the rest

This is my new favorite holiday video, forever.The wonderful series of “Starrkeisha” videos you'll find on Random Structure TV are the creations of YouTuber and incredibly talented performer Cameron J Henderson.If you dig that, here's SANTA'S STOMP TEAM, as a VR180 Experience. [via @yesauntiecris] Read the rest

Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi are Jogjakarta, Indonesia-based musicians melding the ancient, traditional sounds of their region with a very contemporary mode of heavy experimentalism. The duo, known as Senyawa, have just released a new album, Sujud, on the always-compelling Sublime Frequencies label, distributed by Forced Exposure. This is music that is best enjoyed at night, in the darkness, where the expansive, transgenre magick can wash over and through you. Listen below. From Sublime Frequencies:The basic theme of the record can be summed up with one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word, Tanah, which translates to "soil-ground-land-earth". Shabara's vocals are an expressive force, conjuring spirits from the soil with a deep humility and respect for the land and their existence in the universe. Suryadi has built a new guitar for these tracks and pushes the Senyawa sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes - providing Shabara the perfect context to explore his whispering poetry and jagged, sharp-as-a-kris animistic powers.Sujud by Senyawa Read the rest

Firefighters rescued a 29-year-old California gentleman who was stuck for two days in the grease vent of a shuttered Chinese restaurant. Fortunately, the owner of a nearby business heard him yelling. According to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, the fellow has been "less than truthful about his true intentions." From NPR:"He's all cleaned up and rehydrated," said (Sgt. Ray) Kelly, noting that it must have taken hours to rid the man of the "horrible smell.""We know sometimes suspects try to break into businesses to steal copper wire and plumbing and recycling for money. This appears to be something along those lines, but not every solution is jail," Kelly said, adding that a police report has been filed and that "he may be charged at a later time.""But we decided to be a little compassionate. We figured he's been through enough and it is in the holiday spirit," Kelly said.#DEVELOPING “Had he not been found today, we could be having a whole different conversation.” First responder says it was no joke for the man stuck in a restaurant grease vent. One more day, and he might not have made it. Instead he was rescued...with cuts and bruises. #ABC7now pic.twitter.com/bMNfdAcitc— Laura Anthony (@LauraAnthony7) December 12, 2018 Read the rest

K-Swiss and esports organization Immortals is releasing sneakers designed for playing videogames. Bloomberg reports that the "performance" version of the sneaker, called the Grandmaster, "will include the ability to quickly kick the shoes off hands-free. That should help provide comfort during long matches."(via NextDraft) Read the rest

Michael Nielsen was a Fulbright Scholar who got his Ph.D. in Physics at 24. He was already tenured when he decided just three years later to shift his attention to helping democratize Science. He’s published three books, most recently Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. Currently, he’s a Research Fellow at YC Research in San Francisco. Michael’s a friend of mine, so I was happy to discover a new article by him in The Atlantic, authored with Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe. I decided to ask him why they’d done the research they describe, and what it meant. --KarlYou and Patrick Coliison recently published a piece in The Atlantic called Science is Getting Less Bang for its Buck. What's wrong with science? Aren't we continuing to make new discoveries?Patrick and I had been struck by two facts: (1) over the past hundred years, the amount humanity has spent on science has increased dramatically, much much faster than inflation; and (2) it didn't seem that we were getting really big breakthrough insights much (if any) faster than before.At some level that seems okay: science remains an amazing driver of human progress. But on the other hand, if you need to keep spending more and more money and effort on something, it's worth enquiring about what’s causing the cost to go up. And, talking to individual scientists, they're often quite disgruntled with how science is organized.So is the cliche about scientists chasing grant money and academic positions accurate, then? Read the rest

Facebook has notified 6.8 million users that, due to a bug, the company allowed its third-party developers to access all the users' photos, including those marked as private.Facebook says that the bug was active for two weeks in September, but it is only notifying users of this now (you can check if your photos were exposed here).The GDPR requires Facebook to notify users of breaches within 72 hours. Facebook waited three months. They say this doesn't violate the GDPR.Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect earlier this year, gives companies 72 hours to notify the authorities of a breach. It’s been well over 72 days since Facebook first spotted the Photos API issue.That doesn’t necessarily mean the company skirted the rules, though. Facebook argues that it needed that time to investigate whether the incident qualified as a breach under GDPR in the first place, and that it told the appropriate authorities within 72 hours of making that determination. Similarly, Facebook says it took so long to notify affected users because it needed time to identify and contact developers, and to build a “meaningful way” to notify users that they’d failed to protect their data. Given the number of times Facebook has had to do so this year, you’d think they’d have it down by now. Facebook Exposed 6.8 Million Users' Photos to Cap Off a Terrible 2018 [Brian Barrett/Wired](Image: JD Lasica, Cryteria CC-BY) Read the rest

Matthew Plummer Fernandez's Every Mickey is a 3D printable STL file consisting of "Every model of Mickey Mouse found online, compiled as one." Plummer Fernandez instantiated this one at 50.688 x 23.858 x 49.376 cm and enhanced it with acrylic paint. (via Waxy) Read the rest

The brilliant Polish artist Jakub "Mr Werewolf" Rozalski (previously) scores another hit with Rudolph's Revenge ("Now you know why they call him 'the red nosed'"). If you like this stuff, you can get more: Rozalski was the principal artist on the board game Scythe. (via Geeks Are Sexy) Read the rest

This late 1890s Lumière film of Paris is amazing. The image is clear and the motion is smooth. Sound was added, which makes the film come alive (I wish they would have colorized it, too). No cars in sight - just horse-drawn carriages, pedestrians, and the rare bicycle (why not more bikes?). People are dressed in elaborate outfits - how long did it take them to dress up in the morning? The horse-drawn fire trucks at 3:35 are a highlight. Read the rest

Sarah Gailey (who wrote a brilliant, wrenching short story about empathy and self-driving cars) has just published a new story about wearable computers in a series in The Atlantic edited by Ian Bogost (previously).Gailey's story, "An Augmented Reality," starts with an unhappy pharmaceutical rep late to see a doctor, and proceeds into some very technologically fascinating speculation that has all the hallmarks of Gailey's work: empathy, complexified by algorithms.Denise was already late, even before her augmented-reality glasses decided to perform another endless system update. Updating… Updating…She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of her car. She could not afford to be late for her first appointment of the day. Being late meant being rushed, and a rushed pitch would almost always turn into a failed pitch. She’d been emphatically reminded of that at her last performance review. She’d also been reminded that she needed to fail a lot less, if she wanted to keep her job.An Augmented Reality [Sarah Gailey/The Atlantic] Read the rest

Russel Walks' astounding and vast collection of unofficial, retro-styled Star Wars propaganda posters are also available in postcard form. Read the rest

The journalists whom Facebook recruited to check the spread of policitized disinformation campaigns have called for an end to the program because Facebook has consistently ignored their recommendations, especially when they conflicted with the desires of big spending advertisers -- the factcheckers even accuse Facebook of ignoring warnings about the disinformation campaign that led to the genocidal attacks on the Royhinga in Myanmar.The factcheckers are especially galled that Facebook paid a dirty, GOP-affiliated PR firm to spread a false and anti-Semetic conspiracy theory that claimed that the company's critics were stooges for George Soros, paid to reduce the company's stock value so that Soros could cash in on a short-sell position.Binkowski, who left Snopes earlier this year and now runs her own factchecking site, which does not partner with Facebook, said the Facebook-Snopes partnership quickly became counterproductive. During early conversations with Facebook, Binkowski said she tried to raise concerns about misuse of the platform abroad, such as the explosion of hate speech and misinformation during the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and other violent propaganda.“I was bringing up Myanmar over and over and over,” she said. “They were absolutely resistant.”Binkowski, who previously reported on immigration and refugees, said Facebook largely ignored her: “I strongly believe that they are spreading fake news on behalf of hostile foreign powers and authoritarian governments as part of their business model.”Kim LaCapria recently left Snopes as a content manager and factchecker partly due to her frustrations with the Facebook arrangement. She said it quickly seemed clear that Facebook wanted the “appearance of trying to prevent damage without actually doing anything” and that she was particularly upset to learn that Facebook was paying Snopes: “That felt really gross … Facebook has one mission and factchecking websites should have a completely different mission.”'They don't care': Facebook factchecking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties [Sam Levin/The Guardian](Image: AK Rockefeller, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Amazon filed a patent application for a doorbell camera that scans the faces of passers by and compares them with a database of suspicious persons. If a match is made the camera calls the cops.From ACLU:The ACLU’s test is consistent with academic research demonstrating that face surveillance technology is less accurate for darker skinned faces and women. These systems threaten to further entangle people with law enforcement, ripping families apart and increasing the likelihood of racially biased police violence. In addition, this technology puts activists and protesters in danger when exercising their First Amendment rights.Despite the risks to civil liberties and racial justice, Amazon has chosen to ignore questions from members of Congress and calls from consumers, civil rights groups, and its own employees and shareholders to take responsibility for the consequences of its technology on communities where it is deployed.This patent application also suggests that Amazon has no plans to stop at identifying people based on their faces. The company anticipates targeting an arsenal of other biometrics, including fingerprints, skin-texture analysis, DNA, palm-vein analysis, hand geometry, iris recognition, odor/scent recognition, and even behavioral characteristics, like typing rhythm, gait, and voice recognition. Read the rest

Most everyone's losing sleep over what'll happen to our species and the rest of life on earth as human-driven climate change rips our planet a new one. Capitalists? Not so much: some are too busy hustling to ensure that other capitalists pay for the fiscal hurt that the Earth's bid to evict us all is putting on their bottom lines.From The Calgary Herald:In a letter addressed to Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. dated Nov. 15, Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton said the town’s taxpayers “are paying 100 per cent of the costs” associated with climate change events such as “drought, flooding, and extreme weather.”He’s asking CNRL to pay in to “the costs of climate change being experienced by Whistler,” including the municipalities’ “$1.4 million investment in community wildfire protection activities” for 2018.“As a town with a population of less than 15,000 people, this is a significant cost to bear along with costs associated with impacts to winter and summer sports tourism,” he said in the letter.Sure, Whistler only has a population of less that 15,000 people, but the majority of them are filthy rich--you have to be to live there. I have a feeling that the town does okay on property taxes, especially since the one thing that Whistler has more of than mountains and rich people are Whistler's insidiously expensive hotel and resort properties.Whistler's not the only town in Canada looking for oil producers to pay up for putting their municipalities in the red. Read the rest

In California, the GOP scores below "no party preference" in voter registration, but much of the state's elites -- business leaders, prosecutors, judges -- have remained Republican, even as the party has moved away from overt support of unlimited capitalism supported by quiet racism and misogyny to overt racism and misogyny as a smokescreen for quiet support of unlimited capitalism.The latest casualty: California Chief Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, a lifelong Republican, who had previously objected to Jeff Sessions' terror campaign against immigrants but who finally quit over the appointment of the rapist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.Cantil-Sakauye also cited Trump's assaults on the judicial branch as reasons for leaving the party.“I’ve been thinking about it for some time,” Cantil-Sakauye said, adding that she talked it over with her husband and friends. Their consensus, she said, was that “you didn’t leave the party. The party left you."Chief justice of the California Supreme Court leaves the Republican Party, citing Kavanaugh [Dan Morain/Calmatters] Read the rest

From a distance, it's hard to understand the nuance of the mass "gilets jaunes" protests that rocked France; with one in five French people identifying as a yellow vest and more vests marching in Basra, Baghdad and Alberta (and with Egypt's autocrats pre-emptive cracking down on the sale of yellow vests ahead of elections), it's clearly a complicated and fast-spreading phenomenon.The complexity stems in part from the leaderless nature of the group; participants claim they have no formal membership structure and no formal policy-setting mechanism. They're like Anonymous: an "ensemble" (to use anthropologist Gabriella Coleman's very useful frame). You become a yellow vest by putting on a yellow vest. An action is a yellow vest action if people in yellow vests do it. (This leads to tortured phrasing, as in Caroline Haskins's excellent Motherboard piece, where each yellow vest action is attributed to "certain Yellow Vest protestors" -- this will be familiar to anyone who followed Anonymous.)So while the original yellow vest protests kicked off over a proposed fuel tax, the actual views of individual yellow vesters are hugely variable. There are factions that want cheap petrol, and factions that want subsidies for a green new deal that will let them get off petrol all together.But what unites them -- and other yellow jackets around the world -- is rage at oligarchic policies, whether these are aimed at fighting climate change or addressing other problems. French President Emmanuel Macron decided to fight climate change in France by taxing the poor, while transferring masses of wealth to the billionaires who are responsible for the climate crisis, slashing inheritance taxes and weakening labour protections. Read the rest

In an article published Wednesday, Fast Company revealed that logoed fruits and vegetables are a hot trend with tech companies, beating out the usual swag like stress balls or notebooks. Serial artrepreneur Danielle Baskin (who you may remember from the Your Boss app or Drone Sweaters) is behind this trend. It all started in 2015 after being asked to bring some avocados to a barbecue celebrating the sale of a friend's startup. She thought it would be funny to put the startup's logo on the avocados as a joke. They were a big hit. In 2017, she started BrandedFruit.com and orders have been coming in steadily ever since.She has now made branded fruit for everyone from Pizza Hut to Heroku to AT&T. Baskin has also had personal requests: One man ordered several avocados for a wedding proposal. Orders are as small as 10 pieces of fruit that will be centerpieces at an event to 500 pieces that will be handed to out to guests. Each fruit costs, on average, $5 to make. That’s not cheap in the world of swag, which is known for churning out products at rock-bottom prices, like $1 T-shirts or 50¢ tote bags. But it is reasonable to larger companies. “Large companies seem to have enormous budgets for swag,” she says. “I sometimes think I should increase my prices, but I also think it is crazy to spend more than $5 on a piece of fruit.”Since the article published, Baskin's phone and inbox has been full of requests for branded fruit from around the globe. Read the rest

Hungary's far-right, xenophobic government rose to power by exploiting racism and economic anxiety, just like Trump -- and just like Trump, they've pursued an agenda that uses performative racist cruelty to distract people while they enact policies that make the rich much richer, at everyone else's expense.The latest of these policies is the so-called "slave labour law," which allows employers to force workers to work up to 400 hours of overtime per year, and to defer payment for this overtime by three years.Police gassed protesters outside the parliament where this bill was being voted on, but even so, the speaker of the house wasn't able to reach the podium and had to call the vote from the floor. The Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban won the vote, and the slave labour law is proceeding, as is another measure to replace the courts with "administrative judges," appointed by the president's justice minister, and operating without judicial oversight, for many proceedings.In Hungary, the law previously allowed for companies to demand a maximum of 250 hours of overtime in a given year.But for someone who works eight-hour days, the new amount of 400 hours is the equivalent of an hour of extra labour every day, an extra day's work every week, or 50 extra days each year.Mr Orban's government, however, argues that the labour reform will benefit workers as well as companies who need to fill a labour shortage."We have to remove bureaucratic rules so that those who want to work and earn more can do so," he said on Tuesday before the bill passed. Read the rest

Earlier this month, European right-to-repair activists sounded the alarm, warning that the model right-to-repair legislation that had been proceeding through the EU legislative process had been hijacked by lobbyists who had gutted its core protections and were poised to make repairs even harder in the EU.But Europeans rallied, and now they seem to have the upper hand. Pressure groups like Germany's Schraube locker!? (Screwloose!?) have organised mass write-in campaigns and other ways of lobbying EU officials, to good effect. This week, they scored a victory over refrigerator design, securing an amendment to the EU's pending Eco Design and Energy Label Directives (where the right-to-repair rules are enshrined) that will require refrigerator manufacturers to design their appliances to be repairable with everyday tools, and to supply their customers with spare parts and manuals so they can keep their property in good working order.It could be a model for many kinds of devices, a return to the Maker Manifesto's call for "screws not glue" and "user-replaceable parts." At the vanguard of the movement are people from ex-Soviet states, where deprivation was the mother of innovation, so that thrifty, ingenious home repairs were the key to human thriving. This ethic is also key today, if we are to reduce our material consumption, carbon footprint, and complicity in the human rights abuses committed in the name of securing the conflict minerals in our devices. It was a good year for it because the EU had planned to vote on changes to its Eco Design and Energy Label Directives. Read the rest

In the year 2,000, Susan Potter, then 72, donated her body to medicine. After Potter died, scientists froze her corpse, sliced it into 27,000 slivers thinner than a human hair, photographed each slice, and created "the world’s most advanced virtual cadaver using the highest-quality imagery of an entire human body in existence." Not only is the virtual cadaver an incredible accomplishment but so is National Geographic's story about Potter and the lead researcher, Dr. Vic Spitzer Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Why? Because National Geographic followed this incredible story of the Visible Human Project for almost two decades, from before Potter died through the completion of the simulation. Watch the documentary above. From National Geographic:Are you interested in working with us before you die? (Spitzer) finally asked (Potter). Are you interested in giving us more than just your body—in giving us your personality and knowledge?Spitzer wanted to videotape her while she was living and record her talking about her life, her health, her medical history. Your pathology isn’t that interesting to the project, Spitzer told Potter. But if I could capture you talking to medical students, when they’re looking at slices of your body, you could tell them about your spine—why you didn’t want the surgery, what kind of pain the surgery caused, and what kind of life you led after the surgery. That would be fascinating.“They’ll see her body while they’re hearing her stories,” he explained, adding that video and audio of her would make her more real and introduce the element of emotion to students. Read the rest

In this BBC News clip, a child seems to materialize just behind the woman speaking. WTF. Unfortunately this isn't likely a fun glitch in our simulated reality but rather something with much more insidious potential. From WAXY:If you watch the woman’s face at the same time the boy appears, you can see her expression morph into a smile.This technique is known as a Morph Cut, a feature added to Adobe Premiere Pro in 2015, intended to smooth transitions in interview footage, removing unwanted pauses, stutters, and filler words (“like,” “um,” and “uh”) without hard splices and cuts.The results, when used appropriately in interview footage without a changing background, can be nearly seamless.It’s likely that BBC News used a morph cut in the clip above to tighten up the interview without changing its meaning. But it’s also ripe for abuse and fully capable of altering the meaning of an interview, and in many cases, undetectable.Another demonstration of the technology: Read the rest

Yesterday, the European Union's "trilogue" met for what was supposed to be the last negotiating session on the new Copyright Directive, including the universal filters for all user-generated content and a ban on links to news-sites without a paid license; as recently as last week, the proponents of the Directive were predicting an easy victory and a vote by December 19th, but yesterday's meeting ended in chaos, with a draft that everyone hates.The Directive wasn't always so controversial. Up until last spring -- when the German MEP Alex Voss took over as rapporteur -- the rules for linking to news had been expunged, and the rules for universal filters had been converted into a discussion of licensing terms between big entertainment companies and Big Tech.But since Voss crammed these proposals back into the Directive, there has been chaos, with massive spending and intense lobbying, mostly by the entertainment industry and its allies in the collecting societies.There's only one problem: the proposals are bonkers. The top scholars of the news media say that a right to control links will only cement the dominance of the legacy news media, while weakening the press overall. The world's most renowned technologists say that copyright filters are a stupid, dangerous, unworkable idea that is doomed to fail.So Voss had to come up with "compromises" that would allow him to convince fellow MEPs that things weren't that bad. For example, he expunged all mention of "filters" from the filter rule, but still made it impossible for companies to avoid filters. Read the rest

One story pegs Elvis Costello as the original impetus for The Pogues' Fairytale of New York. Another points to the band's manager. Either way, it took Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan two years to write the now-classic anti-Christmas Christmas song. The story behind it is an interesting one. This Polyphonic video tells it. (Nag on the Lake, Open Culture) Read the rest

Everybody's flown a paper airplane. But what if you could fly on a paper airplane? Until we invent shrink-ray technology, the PowerUp X FPV Video Paper Airplane Kit will have to do - but it's as fun as that sounds and more.The original version of this creative toy added drone tech to the old, reliable paper airplane, making a formerly throwaway toy into a gadget that will draw a crowd in any park. That's cool enough on its own, but the PowerUp X FPV kit lets you not only control your plane with a smartphone app but see what it sees in real time through a video feed. Assemble your own plane, attach the kit, then let it fly - even in windy conditions, thanks to the precise stabilization features. Add an auto-takeoff function, and you've got a paper airplane that rips all others to shreds.The PowerUp X FPV Video Paper Airplane Kit was sale priced at $119.99 but just took a price drop to $79.99 - a 42% discount. Pick one up today. Read the rest

Back in October, Sainsburys grocery chain launched two new questionably-flavored teas based on UK Christmas dinner favorites: Brussels sprouts and pigs in blankets. Metro:Yes, you can now drink meat or vegetable flavoured tea and we’re not quite sure what to think. In hopes of helping anyone looking for unusual gifts, Sainsbury’s decided to create a green tea which is made using actual Brussels sprouts, as well as a tea which features the smoky flavour of sausages, sage and rosemary.The supermarket says the tea will make the ultimate stocking filler for any foodie – especially as it’s only £1 for 20 teabags. Despite the name of the pigs in blankets flavour, it is suitable for vegans and is totally calorie free, and is apparently best enjoyed without milk.Hard pass.Image via MetroThanks, Veek! Read the rest

My home has a fireplace and before the oppressive smoke of wildfires ruined the joy of lighting it, I used to start a fire once in a while during the colder months. Firewood isn't readily available here in the Bay Area, so I would often have to resort to the use of firelogs since they were easily obtained in the barbeque section of my local grocery store. This lead to a conversation with a friend of mine who assured me, "There's no shame in the chemical flame." Well, KFC's latest promotional item, the 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog from Enviro-Log®, puts the shame back into the chemical flame. Yup, it's a chemically-engineered firelog that emits the scent of their fried chicken. Imbued with the unmistakable, mouth-watering aroma of Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe, the KFC 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog finally puts to rest the age-old dilemma, “How can I make this fire a hundred bajillion times better?” This one-of-a-kind firelog from Enviro-Log, a leading manufacturer of firelogs made of 100 percent recycled materials, is the result of countless hours of research and development, all done over the last couple of months since we had this idea. Pick up a firelog today, and you’ll be wondering how you were ever able to enjoy a fire that didn’t smell like fried chicken.This fried chicken firelog was available for $18.99 but has since sold out. Image via The Daily Meal(Geekologie, The Daily Meal) Read the rest

In January 2019, Peter Orosz plans to live broadcast his snowy trek across the Japanese island of Shikoku. He will also produce a printed field report.The story is that last year I walked 2,700 miles from one end of Japan to the other, and now I will go back to walk the most interesting 300 miles in the winter, then write and print a large format Field Report about it. You will also be able to follow it live on YouTube and Instagram.It costs $45 to support the expedition, for which you get a copy of the Field Report, an extra $20 will get your name in it as a Patron, and there’s also some cool hand-crafted stuff from my collaborators: a watercolor map, a book of essays on Japan by Alan Booth, an indigo-dyed towel. It’s shipping worldwide in Spring 2019. Read the rest

San Antonio artist Michael Esparza's oil paintings put Texas-based fast food restaurants in the center of bucolic landscapes. It's hard not to compare his work to Thomas Kinkade's but that's the point. (The main difference, imo, is that Esparza's pieces are actually palatable.)Texas Monthly:The idea for the series, which Esparza describes as “a little bit Bob Ross and a little bit Thomas Kinkade,” came to him 2012, just after he came back to Texas from a year of studying art in Italy. In Italy, nothing was built taller than a church, so it was a shock when Esparza returned to San Antonio, the size of roadside signs were particularly jarring. “I was just seeing how iconic they are, but also from the Italian perspective, how ridiculous they are. From that point of view, it’s like, ‘What are you doing, Texas? What’s going on with these big signs that you have on the side of the road?'” he says. “But the first thing I did when I got back from Italy was I went to Whataburger, and then right after that, I went to Bill Miller’s. I just needed a burger, and I needed a po’ boy. I was already full after Whataburger, but I didn’t care.” Esparza says he wants the paintings to evoke the sense of homecoming you feel when you see those signs after spending time in a place where they don’t exist—be it Italy or elsewhere. “They become your own little beacons for where you live,” he explains. Read the rest

Dr Nim is a plastic, gravity powered computer from the 1960s that plays the game, Nim, against a human player. Recently Michael Gardi made a 3D scale model of Dr Nim, which you can download and print on a 3D printer.The Amazing Dr. Nim is a toy invented by John Thomas Godfrey and manufactured by Education Science Research (E.S.R., Inc.) in the mid-1960s. It consists of a marble-powered plastic computer capable of playing the game of Nim. The machine selects its moves through the action of the marbles falling through the levers of the machine.The "game board" is a based on the mechanical Digi-Comp II digital computer (also a Godfrey creation). It has memory switches that hold bits of data. The unit is programmed by lobed levers that affect and are affected by marbles that are released from the top of the game. Three of the levers set the start position. The fourth lever is the 'equalizer' option; if set, the player can win if they play perfectly. The last lever is used to indicate who's turn it is, the human or Dr. Nim's.Game play is described in the manual that was bundled with the game and can be found here:The Amazing Dr. Nim ManualThere are many good online references for the game. The following video is especially informative and entertaining:The Unbeatable Game from the 60s: Dr NIMAnd this article speaks to the relevance of a game like Dr. Nim in today's digital world:Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Dr. Read the rest

Six ago I posted singer Dominique Pruitt's first music video, "To Win Your Love." Since then, she's released a number of country-inspired tunes and I like them all. Her latest is "High In The Valley." Read the rest

If you're traveling on Alaska Airlines on December 21, make sure to wear your holiday sweater. No doubt it's ugly, and wearing it will get you a free pass to board the plane early, in celebration of National Ugly Holiday Sweater DayVia MarketWatch:Back by popular demand, this is the second year Alaska Airlines and its employees have embraced National Ugly Holiday Sweater Day, hoping to bring joy to travelers during the busy holiday travel season. All guests are invited to join in the celebration and share their memories on Twitter by tagging their photos and videos using the hashtags: #UglySweaterDay and #iFlyAlaska.For those of you not familiar with ugly holiday sweaters, they're similar to ugly sweaters, but with a holiday theme. Here are some examples, most found on #uglysweater: View this post on Instagram Ugly sweater contest @salonatwarren. Cast your vote on Instagram or Facebook. #uglysweater #contest #voteA post shared by E.M -Guate-lombian 🇬🇹🇨🇴 (@ggrgp2) on Dec 13, 2018 at 10:42am PST View this post on Instagram Stardock's Ugly Sweater Chili Cookoff was a success! Congratulations to the winners who either looked ugly or cooked lovely. #Stardock #Stardockians #UglySweater #Chili #Cookoff #HaveFun #AtWorkA post shared by PC Games & Software Developer (@official.stardock) on Dec 13, 2018 at 10:35am PST View this post on Instagram Ho, ho, ho! It’s me Scotty Claus, welcome to the #12GaysofChristmas!! 🎅🏼🎄 - What IS the 12 Gays of Christmas you ask?? It’s a way for our virtual family to celebrate the holiday together! Read the rest

NZ$6800 in cash was mysteriously left on cars and toilets at a campground in New Zealand. The recipients of the gifts turned the money over to police, fearing it might be stolen/Image: StuffThanks, Roger! Read the rest

If you can't stand the thought of sitting through another superhero movie, All Is True looks like a fabulous alternative option. With a stellar cast that includes Dame Judy Dench, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Kenneth Branagh (who also directs the flick), All Is True is a story about the life of William Shakespeare, his family and hangers-on, after he steps back from his life as a writer. Read the rest

Stephen Keys, an actor who has appeared in many movies, including Soul Plane, was on a flight from Reno to Los Angeles last week. When he raised his armrest so he could get his seatbelt, his pinky got stuck in a hole under the armrest. According to a lawsuit he filed against American Airlines and SkyWest Airlines, "The spring mechanism embedded inside of this hole in the armrest applied intense pressure to plaintiff's finger, immediately inflicting injury, swelling and pain.""By this time, dozens of passengers became aware of Mr. Keys' perilous condition, causing his dire situation to become a humiliating public spectacle," the suit alleges. "By the end of it all, he remained entrapped in this nightmarish condition, suffering for nearly an hour."From NBC:Flight personnel and members of a fire department rescue team were unable to free Keys' finger, which was finally accomplished with the help of an airline mechanic who disassembled the armrest, the suit says.The injury to his finger left Keys unable to perform such previously routine tasks as driving and playing with his children, according to his complaint, which says he experienced weeks of intense pain and severe emotional distress. Read the rest

After Burning Man founder Larry Harvey died in April of this year, a special storytelling event was held in his honor a few months later at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. I attended "The Man With the Hat" event and can attest that it was a lovely, heartfelt evening. Of note, his brother Stewart and nephew Bryan shared their stories set to a backdrop of personal photos from Larry's childhood in Nebraska and from his early "bohemian scene" (pre-Burning Man) days in San Francisco. It was a delight to see them then, as it is now in this lovely video tribute of Larry that was created and gifted to the community by the Profiles in Dust group. Screenshot via YouTube Read the rest

A gentleman arriving from Guyana was caught at JFK Airport attempting to smuggle 70 live finches hidden inside hair rollers. He was sent home without his birds, which he was planning to enter in a high-stakes underground singing contest.From the New York Times:On Saturday, 70 live finches were discovered in the black duffel bag of a Guyanese citizen who, like the other smugglers, was believed to be bringing them to the United States to participate in underground singing contests. Gamblers set the birds against each other and place bets on their chirping skills.A winning male finch with a good pedigree and track record can sell for up to $10,000, according to a United States Fish and Wildlife Service investigation nicknamed Operation G-Bird.“They bet on how many times the finches will chirp in a minute, which finch chirps the most,” Anthony Bucci, a spokesman for United States Customs and Border Protection in New York, said on Wednesday. Image: United States Fish and Wildlife Service / US Customs and Border Protection Read the rest

The trend is to make distinctive logos all look the same by using bold san serif typefaces.😔 pic.twitter.com/MKMPuBfgv3— JoRoan Lazaro (@JoRoan) December 13, 2018EVERYBODY FALL IN LINE! pic.twitter.com/B9JU5nvpMu— OH no Type Co (@OHnoTypeCo) February 13, 2018 Read the rest

Cash came pouring out of an armored Brink's truck this morning in New Jersey, causing much excitement and chaos – including car crashes – on the morning drive. Apparently, the back door of the truck wasn't working properly and opened during the drive. According to NBC:Police said they received a call about 8:30 a.m. ET about an armored truck spilling cash along Route 3 West in East Rutherford.Several drivers got out of their cars and attempted to grab cash off the road, causing two separate motor vehicle crashes, police said. But at least one person tried to help the Brink's driver, who was seen on video posted to social media running through traffic trying to collect the scattering cash.Here's another video from someone who risks her life on the highway to grab (steal) some cash before taking off. Read the rest