Adventures in New America is a full-cast serial drama from Night Vale Presents (previously), a piece of acerbic and engrossing afrofuturism in the form of a buddy comedy; Episode One (MP3) just dropped. The New York Times called it "sympatico with Boots Riley’s 'Sorry to Bother You' in its critique of entwined capitalist and racist structures, and the way it makes the horrific funny recalls the new era of social thriller being ushered in by the sketch show creator-turned auteur Jordan Peele." Read the rest

In 2013, members of the Greek Nazi movement "Golden Dawn" murdered the antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas on the streets of Athens, a murder that was covered up by members of the Greek police, known to be riddled with Golden Dawn infiltrators, and abetted by Members of Parliament from Golden Dawn.As the case works its way through the Greek courts, the University of London's "Forensic Architecture" group has been called in to make sense of a welter of evidence about the crime and the cover-up, deploying their system of using "architectural techniques and technologies to investigate cases of state violence and violations of human rights around the world."The result is a 37 minute video that Talos on Metafilter a masterpiece of analytic exposition and impressively recreates the events surrounding the murder based on available data sources -- it is. The Fyssas trial has the potential to bring down Golden Dawn, to bring its true nature as an organized crime group into the open, to eliminate it from the Greek Parliament and to trigger a purge of Nazi elements from the Greek police. It is nothing short of seismic.But even if you don't care about any of that, this video is remarkable, a stitching-together of disparate and flawed evidence sources in a way that uses the strengths of one to overlap and fix the weaknesses of the other, creating a coherent and devastating story that is as well-told as any crime drama. It is truly virtuoso work.Much of the original audio and video material was without an accurate timestamp, and it became apparent that attempts by the Greek police investigators to address this problem were insufficient. Read the rest

Drop by just about any health store and you'll hear raves about charcoal's curious and newfound properties as a sponge for the body's toxins. Turns out its beauty benefits are just as miraculous. The NUOVAWHITE Charcoal Teeth Whitening System uses charcoal as the active ingredient for a treatment that will visibly make your pearlies pearlier after just one go.NUOVAWHITE works with Blue LED Light technology and specially treated whitening charcoal to brighten your smile. And it doesn't just improve the looks: The treatments actually bolster and restore your existing tooth enamel in the process. It's the safest treatment around - FDA compliant, cruelty-free and even completely kosher.If all this sounds good enough to double up, then grab the NUOVAWHITE Charcoal Teeth Whitening System: 2-Pack for $27.99 Read the rest

Spinkter sez, "Hamilton, Texas's Marion Stanford's homemade political sign was meant to support the #MeToo movement and spur people to vote. But the accompanying visual spurred criticism -- and a visit from law enforcement."The cop called it "pornography" and said she could take it down voluntarily, permit the cops to confiscate it, or get arrested.The sign was painted in commemoration of the Republican Senate's affirmation of a serial rapist to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.“It is pornography, and you can’t display it,” Stanford recalled the police officer saying. She was given a few choices, she said: Take the sign down, refuse and get arrested, or let police confiscate it. She said she chose the last option.City officials denied threatening arrest.“It’s a political sign, and a citizen here placed a yard sign that featured a political animal taking an inappropriate position with a young child,” Pete Kampfer, Hamilton’s city manager, told the Dallas Morning News. “A police member visited the owner’s home, and the owner asked the officer to take the sign.”A Texas yard sign depicted a GOP elephant with its trunk up a girl’s skirt. Police seized it. [Kristine Phillips/Washington Post] Read the rest

I've just closed a new book deal: Tor Books will publish "Radicalized," which tells four stories of hope, conflict, technology and justice in the modern world and near future in March 2019; along with the book deal is a major audiobook deal with Macmillan Audio and a screen deal with Topic Studios (a sister company to The Intercept) for one of the tales, "Unauthorized Bread."I'll have lots more to say about this in the upcoming months! I just finished the last of the stories, "Masque of the Red Death" and I spent the week at the recording studio helping oversee a brilliant actor's recording of the audio for "Unauthorized Bread." Things are happening!Cory Doctorow closed a six-figure agreement with Tor’s Patrick Nielsen Hayden for four new novellas. Russell Galen at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency, who represented Doctorow, said the novellas will be published as a single print volume by Tor under “the overall title of Radicalized” and individually, in audio, by Macmillan Audio. Slated for a March 2019 release, the novellas will, Galen said, “provide a unique take on some of the most urgent and painful issues of our time.” The first novella in the collection, “Unauthorized Bread,” has been optioned for film by Topic Studios.Tor Nabs Quad by Doctorow [Publishers Weekly] Read the rest

The Democrats' newly unveiled "Internet Bill of Rights" enumerates ten rights that the party says it will enshrine in law, ranging from Net Neutrality to data portability to timely notification of breaches to opt-in for data collection, the right to see the data held on you by surveillance capitalists, rights to privacy and to be free from surveillance-driven discrimination, pro-competitive measures and so forth.The Bill was drafted by Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna, who has real bona fides as a progressive Democrat, unafraid to call out the party establishment.But as Kara Swisher points out in the New York Times, the devil is in the details: as statements of principle, the Internet Bill of Rights is an admirable document. Its implementation in law, however, will require enormous care to prevent both loopholes and overreach (see, for example, how a well-intentioned California anti-bot bill posed real free expression risks until it was called out and cleaned up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation).Below, I have reproduced the Bill in full.Set of Principles for an Internet Bill of RightsThe internet age and digital revolution have changed Americans’ way of life. As our lives and the U.S. economy are more tied to the internet, it is essential to provide Americans with basic protections online.You should have the right:(1) to have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies;(2) to opt-in consent to the collection of personal data by any party and to the sharing of personal data with a third party;(3) where context appropriate and with a fair process, to obtain, correct or delete personal data controlled by any company and to have those requests honored by third parties;(4) to have personal data secured and to be notified in a timely manner when a security breach or unauthorized access of personal data is discovered;(5) to move all personal data from one network to the next;(6) to access and use the internet without internet service providers blocking, throttling, engaging in paid prioritization or otherwise unfairly favoring content, applications, services or devices;(7) to internet service without the collection of data that is unnecessary for providing the requested service absent opt-in consent;(8) to have access to multiple viable, affordable internet platforms, services and providers with clear and transparent pricing;(9) not to be unfairly discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and(10) to have an entity that collects your personal data have reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy. Read the rest

The Library of Congress has published its latest digital strategy, laying out a bold plan to "exponentially grow" its collections through digital acquisitions; "maximize the use of content" by providing machine-readable rights data and using interoperable formats and better search; to support data-driven research with giant bulk-downloadable corpuses of materials and metadata; to improve its website; to syndicate Library assets to other websites; to crowdsource the acquisition of new materials; to experiment with new tools and techniques; and to preserve digital assets with the same assiduousness that the Library has shown with its physical collection for centuries.The LoC has a curiously outsized role in the digital era: because it contains the Copyright Office -- and because the Copyright Office is patient zero in the epidemic of terrible internet law that reaches into every corner of our lives -- the Library has become a political football, with Congress vying to put it under Congressional oversight (and in reach of heavily lobbied Committee chairs) and/or to tear out the Copyright Office.The new Librarian of Congress is the most freedom-friendly, internet-friendly, access-friendly leader in the Library's history, replacing unfit leaders who were brought down in grotesque corruption scandals. But her leadership has fallen short: the Copyright Office is still a creature of Big Content, and it has direct oversight over your ability to modify, repair, sell, and use all of your digital property.So this digital strategy is a very bright light, but it shines in a dark and menacing cave. Read the rest