In 1942, Horst Rosenthal was sent to the Vichy concentration camp Gurs, where he drew a comic-book that survived him: Mickey au Camp de Gurs, it tells the story of Mickey Mouse being snatched from the street and sent to Gurs, and features a tour of Gurs that uses a brave face of humor to cope with enormous suffering.Two more of Rosenthal's comics from Gurs survive; Rosenthal did not. He was sent to Auschwitz and killed on arrival.Alister Wedderburn, a researcher at the Australian National University's department of International Relations, has documented Rosenthal's story in a new paper in Millennium: Journal of International Studies entitled Cartooning the Camp: Aesthetic Interruption and the Limits of Political Possibility (Sci-Hub mirror).This is the cover of one of the most extraordinary texts I am aware of: Mickey au Camp de Gurs, a comic strip drawn by Horst Rosenthal in 1942. Rosenthal drew it while a detainee in Gurs, a concentration camp in Vichy France. 1/n pic.twitter.com/emJR6zVWXy— Alister Wedderburn (@ali_wedderburn) October 1, 2018(Thanks, Xeni!) Read the rest

First, Disney announced that all its salaried workers would get a raise to $15/hour (with more raises to come); then Bernie Sanders announced legislation named after Jeff Bezos that would send companies an invoice for any food, housing or other subsidy their sub-starvation-wage employees received.Now, Amazon has announced a $15 minimum wage for all its salaried employees, representing a major victory for Fight For $15, a labor justice movement that has demanded a $15 national minimum wage, and than has taken up related struggles, like fighting sexual harassment in the workplace and helping with unionization drives.However, Amazon's most notoriously abused and underpaid staff aren't employees: they're third-party contractors who face wage-theft and brutal working conditions.These workers won't benefit unless Amazon institutes a policy on contractors and subcontractors -- or unless Fight For 15 is successful in winning a national minimum wage.Update: Ars Technica reports that the policy will apply to temps; it's not clear whether that covers contractors and subcontractors. Read the rest

That persistent ringing in your ears after a long night at the club or a marathon concert? It's not just an annoyance. It's a warning. Tinnitus is no joke, and long exposure to sound levels over 85 decibels can permanently damage your ears. But if you really love the music, make sure you can listen as long as possible with EarDial: The Invisible Smart Earplugs for Live Music.Made of transparent, hypoallergenic silicone, EarDial plugs won't stand out like other colored earplugs, thereby eliminating the stigma of being "that" guy or gal at the club. And that's not all they eliminate: The high-fidelity noise filter blocks out dangerous frequencies without sacrificing sound quality. The companion phone app measures the volume wherever you are, letting you know how long you can safely party with or without the EarDials. They store safely in a durable aluminum case, and you'll get an extra dose of good vibes knowing you're not the only one protected. For every purchase, EarDial donates 5% of profits to charities that support those suffering from hearing loss. Get the EarDial Invisible Smart Earplugs now for a 39% discount of $19.99. Read the rest

It meant to do that. The Wikipedia article for In The Air Tonight is good.The Solid State Logic 4000 mixing board had a "reverse talk-back" circuit (labeled on the board as "Listen Mic"). Normal "talkback" is a button that the mixing engineer has to press in order to talk to the recording musicians (the recording and the mixing parts of a studio are, otherwise, completely sonically isolated). Reverse talkback is a circuit (also button-activated) for the engineer to listen to musicians in the studio. In order to compensate for sound level differences—people can be close to the reverse talkback microphone or far off—this circuit has a compressor on it, which minimizes the differences between loud and soft sounds. While recording "Intruder" for his ex-bandmate Peter Gabriel's third solo album, at some point Collins started playing the drums while the reverse talkback was activated. Engineer Hugh Padgham was amazed at the sound achieved. Overnight, they rewired the board so that the reverse talkback could be recorded in a more formal manner. Later models of the SSL 4000 allowed the listen mic to be recorded with the touch of a button.[9]When recording engineer Padgham was brought in to help develop Collins' demos that would become Face Value they recreated the "Intruder" sound using the reverse talkback microphone as well as heavily compressed and gated ambient mics. Padgham continued working with Genesis for Abacab later in 1981 and the same technique (generally referred to as gated reverb) was used, and the powerful drum sound has become synonymous with later Genesis projects and Collins' solo career ever since. Read the rest

A Toy Story-lovin' dad connected two toddlers, his son Hamm and his niece Audrey, to make this cute and clever Slinky Dog costume. Tucker Bohman, aka @ToyStoryDad, enlisted the help of his wife to get the babies' costume together for Disneyland's Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.He writes:When we decided to go to Mickey’s Halloween Party at @Disneyland as Toy Story characters I knew immediately that I wanted the babies to be Slinky Dog! It took several months of brainstorming and planning to bring my vision to life. Thanks to all of the family who helped us figure out how to pull it off! 🙌🏻(Popsugar) Read the rest

This song was deemed too peppy to be included on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' 1999 album Echo, though it was recorded at that time. Rolling Stone:“Echo is supposedly his dark album,” says An American Treasure producer Ryan Ulyate. “‘Gainesville’ is this guy who is looking back on this early life with some nostalgia for a simpler time. I love the song. It’s just great, but I can see how it didn’t necessarily fit the vibe of Echo.”"Gainesville" is included in the band's new box set (which includes "studio outtakes, demos, alternative takes, live cuts and songs that deserved a bigger following"), An American Treasure ($149.99). (Rolling Stone) Read the rest

Forget Little Green Army Men in Yoga Poses; they're totally 2016; the contemporary Little Green Army Man is a mashup with the terracotta warriors: they're $41 from Hobbylink Japan. (via Super Punch) Read the rest

[I met John Serge at a reading over the weekend. He read his short story called "Lucian's Gift," and it reminded me of short stories I've read and loved by Richard Matheson, Fredric Brown, and Roald Dahl. I asked John if I could run his story on Boing Boing and he kindly consented. Enjoy! -- Mark]Lucian was born blind. In his six short years, he's seen neither the splendor nor the squalor of the world around him. Rather than lament her son's inherent darkness, his mother, Anca, a stout hearted Romanian woman, decided early on to treat little Lucian like a gifted child. His gift, as she puts it, is that his view of the world is free from the limitations of literal sight; he connects with and experiences things, people, places, events, in a more holistic, even spiritual manner. His perceptions have a clarity that just isn't possible when looking only through the eyes. As for Lucian, he's still too young to fully embrace his mother's point of view. All he knows is what he feels, not the least of which is her love.Anca and Lucian live alone in a tiny two-bedroom walk-up, the boy's father having graced Anca's life only long enough to help conceive their sightless son. Afraid to release him into the cruel, dispassionate realm of other children, Anca opted instead to keep him at home, adopting all at once the roles of mother, father, teacher, and friend.So when the austere gentleman from Social Services paid them a visit, Anca was understandably on edge. Read the rest

If you are a woman who struggles with the pain of recurring urinary tract infections, a new study suggests that drinking more water could help.Women who got recurring bladder infections (they're also called urinary tract infections, or UTIs) who added 1.5 liters of water to their daily intake over 12 months were 50% less likely to get another urinary tract infection than other women who drank less than that amount, according to a study published Monday in JAMA.The women in the study were of pre-menopausal age.From an accompanying editorial comment by Dr. Deborah Grady of the University of California, San Francisco, who serves as deputy editor for JAMA Internal Medicine:For decades, it has been said that increasing fluid intake could help prevent or cure urinary tract infections. In this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, a randomized clinical trial confirms that folk wisdom. Hooton and colleagues randomized women with 3 or more episodes of cystitis in the prior year to consume 1.5 L of water per day (three 0.5-L bottles) in addition to their usual intake, or to consume no additional water. The women who consumed additional water had an approximately 50% reduction in number of cystitis episodes in the year after randomization and were prescribed fewer antibiotics. We realize that this trial was not blinded, the primary outcome was self-reported, and it was sponsored by Danone Research, which sells the bottled water used in this study. However, the research question is important and the intervention was safe, easy, and effective (and it would be impossible to blind a trial in which drinking water is the intervention). Read the rest

When you pay 1,000 bucks for a thing, it'd be nice if it, you know, does what it's supposed to. In the case of a smartphone, that means taking calls, accessing the Internet, taking great photos, downloading apps--the usual. Arguably, none of these abilities baked into our pocket computers is as important as its being able to recharge its internal battery. If the battery don't work, all else don't work. Guess what? There are a number of reports that Apple's new iPhone XS and XS Max have batteries which, in many cases, don't work. Tech vlogger Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy has the goods on the issue, which he illustrates by using a multitude of new iPhones:These sorts of issues aren't unique to Apple's iOS devices (remember AntennaGate?) or Android hardware (the display falling off of my Blackberry a few years back was powerful fun). However, when folks are forking over a good chunk of their monthly income to pick up what they believe to be a premium device--and according to the reviews of the iPhone XS and XS Max they are very luxe in the functionality and feels department--it's a reasonable expectation that hardware works right out of the box. Sure, minor glitches are to be expected with a complicated piece of hardware like a smartphone. There's a lot going on inside of them. But something as basic and as important as it not being able to charge under certain circumstances is too huge a quirk to easily forgive. Read the rest

If you're a Disney-o-phile, say goodbye to the next few hours of your productivity, as you scroll through the thread and then share with your kids or your Disney fandom friends.IMGURian Rizzivision created an epic thread with lots of obsessive, tiny details that fans of Disney films may have missed. For instance, as shown above: “In 'The Little Mermaid,' when King Triton is introduced, you can see Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Kermit the Frog in the crowd, underwater.”Never noticed.Here's an example of how deep the detail goes: “In Cars 2 while in a pub in London there is a tapestry on the wall that is the DunBroch family tapestry from Brave, except they are portrayed as cars.” Yeah. Good stuff.The whole thread is embedded below.Details From Disney Movies Read the rest

Some people just like to watch the wool burn. A GIF excerpt from this 2016 macro video of steel wool in flames is making the viral rounds two years later. The original video is worth revisiting, so here it is... The guys at Macro Room created the video:We played with the steel wool burning reaction under our super macro lenses and the result is for you to enjoy!Their Instagram is great. Here's another video they did in August 2018, MACRO BULLETS. View this post on Instagram Shooting Macro BulletsA post shared by Macro Room (@macroroom) on Aug 3, 2018 at 2:43pm PDT View this post on Instagram the beauty is in the detailsA post shared by Macro Room (@macroroom) on Jun 21, 2017 at 9:54am PDT View this post on Instagram the beauty is in the detailsA post shared by Macro Room (@macroroom) on Jun 21, 2017 at 9:54am PDT [Source] Read the rest

There's a robot apocalypse coming, but it's likely not going to result in the loss of billions of human lives. Rather, it's our livelihoods that are at stake. For some vocations, signs of a paradigm shift are already here. The HRP-5P humanoid robot is designed to be a drywall-hanging machine. It's slow now, but it's capable. Sooner or later, it'll be fast enough and cheap enough to make skilled construction labor a thing of the past. My Grandfather, who spent the better part of his life building churches, homes and movie theaters, would have shit a brick were he alive to see this. Have no doubt, no matter what you do for a living, that similar appliances are on their way to make our daily toil a redundancy. Society's going to need to learn to adapt--fast. Read the rest

Enjoy this satisfying video of an engraving expert fashioning a hand-engraved hammer, without a forge. Uri Tuchman has a number of videos of his craft, but this one is extraordinary.10/10 would hit zombie ghouls in the head with this thing.From his description:In this video I am showing how I made a simple hand engraved hammer without a forge or fancy tools. For the Hammerhead I have used a 25mm by 25mm steel bar (1” x 1”) and cherry wood for the handle. Cherry is not ideal for hammer handles, but it is beautiful and this hammer will get very light abuse, ideally hickory or ash wood is used. To see how he make his gravers, check out his video on making an engraving starter kit, below.[via] Read the rest

A new trial will be held in a copyright dispute over Led Zeppelin's hit song 'Stairway to Heaven.' An earlier trial ruled in the band's favor, but an appeals court has now ruled the judge in that trial gave misleading information to jurors.Here's the background. Led Zeppelin was accused of copying the 1960s instrumental composition 'Taurus' by Randy Wolfe, in Led Zep's 1971 song 'Stairway To Heaven.'Here's 'Stairway':Here's 'Taurus':But wait! Here's a Johannes Sebastian Bach composition that sounds like Taurus, so everyone borrows from everyone and or this is a common chord progression, WAT.From Sky News:An earlier trial saw a federal court jury in Los Angeles find in favour of Led Zeppelin, but the US appeals court has since ruled that the judge in the original trial had given misleading instructions to jurors.The instructions were regarding copyright law, which was a vital part of the suit.The lawsuit was brought in 2015 by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for the late Randy Wolfe, who was guitarist of rock band Spirit and composed an instrumental called Taurus in 1967.Techdirt's Mike Masnick has a great analysis post here. If you want to understand this from a copyright and internet nerd perspective, check out his post:Here's an excerpt from Mike's post:So when it comes to copyright it's important to look at what is actually covered by the copyright, which goes way beyond "hey, do these songs sound similar?" Unfortunately, many courts have messed this up over the years, including a few that came up with a ridiculous "substantial similarity" test, rather than actually comparing the copyright-protected elements of the songs. Read the rest

It's been two years since I last sat down with Jason Klamm for his Comedy on Vinyl podcast (we were discussing Allan Sherman's My Son, The Nut); we were past due for a rematch.Jason asked me to come on one more time (MP3) to discuss the Disneyland Little Long Playing Record The Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion, which features the voice talents of a young Ron Howard (!!). As always, we ranged far and wide, discussing narrative and non-narrative artforms, the history of Disney and Disneyland, and my own personal relationship with the Haunted Mansion. Read the rest

The amazing, award-winning photographer and photography teacher Jonathan Worth (previously) is about to launch his next course: Depictions of Addiction, from Connected Academy, with internationally renowned photographers Nina Berman, Jeffrey Stockbridge and Graham Macindoe. The course is offered by Newcastle University (you can attend in person, or virtually) and features lectures on using photography to document addiction in respectful, illuminating ways, and features peer critiques of the photos you take as a way of helping you improve your own photos and storytelling. Read the rest

Lie detectors don't work: that's why they're not admissible as legal evidence and why it's illegal to subject private sector job-applicants to polygraph tests.But public employees aren't so lucky: the polygraph industry intensively lobbies people with hiring power in public sector to institute lie-detector screening; since the targets of this lobbying have all passed polygraphs themselves, they're inclined to think of them as useful tools for sorting the trustworthy from the untrustworthy.Wired used the Freedom of Information Act to request some pretty massive datasets of polygraph data from the public sector's hiring processes (discovering in the process that polygraph record-keeping is terrible) and analyzed the data, producing a disturbing account of people who are routinely, unfairly accused of grave crimes (bestiality, child porn possession), never tried or convicted, but nevertheless barred from employment. What's more, Wired shows that different polygraph officers are more prone to accusing their subjects of disqualifying crimes.Data obtained by WIRED showed vast differences in the outcomes of polygraph tests depending on the examiner each candidate faced. Consider another law enforcement agency that uses polygraphs in its employment process: the Washington State Patrol (WSP). Between late October 2011 and the end of April 2017, the WSP conducted 5,746 polygraph tests on potential recruits. This was the largest data set WIRED received, including copious data on both applicants and examiners. While one examiner failed less than 20 percent of candidates, others failed more than half the applicants they screened. And while two examiners disqualified just four people in more than 1,000 applicants for supposedly having sex with animals, one of their colleagues failed more than 10 times as many for bestiality—around one in 20 of all job seekers. Read the rest

As of 2019, publicly traded California corporations will have to have at least one woman board-member or face fines; the minimum number of woman board members climbs to two in 2020 (three for companies with boards of six or more people). A majority of companies in the S&P 500 have at least one woman on their boards, but only about a quarter have more than two, according to a study from PwC.California state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson told The Wall Street Journal last month when the legislation passed that "one-fourth of California's publicly traded companies still do not have a single woman on their board, despite numerous independent studies that show companies with women on their board are more profitable and productive.""With women comprising over half the population and making over 70% of purchasing decisions, their insight is critical to discussions and decisions that affect corporate culture, actions and profitability," she told the outlet. California has a new law: No more all-male boards [Julia Carpenter and Jackie Wattles/CNN Money](via /.) Read the rest

MC Frontalot (previously) is one of the OGs of nerdcore hiphop, bringing out huge crowds of fans for his music all over the world (I once caught him doing a show in North London at which a young man showed up in full Frontalot cosplay; I've also seen him perform for packed houses at Defcon).His work has always satirized the worst of the internet while celebrating its best and weirdest corners. But with Net Split or, the Fathomless Heartbreak of Online Itself (streaming now, on sale in December), Frontalot confronts the horror of the 2018 internet, from the opening track ("Internet Sucks") and all the way through, with tracks like "Memes are Stupid," "Never Read the Comments," and "Datin Profile."As always, Frontalot's jokes are always ha-ha-only-serious, part laugh and part howl, with funky beats and unmatchable delivery. Net Split or, the Fathomless Heartbreak of Online Itself [MC Frontalot/Bandcamp] Read the rest

The heroic age of text adventure games was dominated by Zork and Zorkalikes, many from the games studio Infocom; the text adventures' fortunes sagged when improvements in computer graphics lowered the average gamer's age, and then rose again when BBSes carved new spaces for text-based play.The legacy of those games is the "interactive fiction" artform, which is largely practiced by programming in "Inform," a highly idiosyncratic programming language whose principal maintainer, Graham Nelson, is a deep thinker on the intersection of computing and art, and whose delightful essay (the transcript of a speech) on the history of Inform is an utterly captivating meditation on the way that code can be literature, and the role that artistic and technical choices have in the literary form of software.One important characteristic of Inform is its ability to tolerate ambiguity in the categories it relies on: the edge-cases and corner-cases in seemingly obvious categories can quickly grow to eclipse the category itself (date, time, addresses, names, obscenity, gender, etc). This makes it especially good for storytelling and other forms of narrative art. Also fascinating is Nelson's professed embarrassment over the state of his source code, a mess that he blames for the closed source status of Inform (though there are lots of programmers who have this problem, Nelson is the one who has devoted his career to promoting code as a literary form intended to be consumed by other humans!).Nelson closes with the roadmap for improvements to Inform, which he would like see forming a backend for apps and websites, which is something I would find absolutely delightful. Read the rest

🦇 The dark spirits of the earth are trying to tell us something about the President. In a video that quickly went viral, this poor little bat appears to be confused as to how it ended up trapped inside a MAGA rally, in Tennessee.Watch the Secret Service guys try to shoo it away.The bat flew at my face. USSS and local police working to contain the bat now. pic.twitter.com/XluNCfQEgw— Marcus DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) October 1, 2018This is happening right now. A bat.. flying around the Trump rally in Tennessee. https://t.co/06iBBljgx9— Kristen Welker (@kwelkernbc) October 1, 2018There is a bat at the Trump rally. pic.twitter.com/HlNBgnEmlf— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 1, 2018Reliable sources say there is a bat loose in the Freedom Hall in Johnson City, Tenn, as the MAGA crowd assembles.— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 1, 2018 Read the rest

The Trump administration is currently detaining over 13,000 migrant children in facilities throughout the United States Approximately 1,600 of these children are being moved to a tent concentration camp in West Texas. The conditions are grim. New York Times reporter Caitlin Dickerson is among the few journalists who've been following the detained migrant children's story. They were separated from their families under Trump's policies. Hundreds of migrant kids are being shipped each week to a tent city in South Texas, where they won’t get schooling or have full access to lawyers. They’re moved at midnight with only a few hours notice so they don’t try to escape. https://t.co/FsXuZ8ycUi— Caitlin Dickerson (@itscaitlinhd) September 30, 2018Most of the kids are from Central America, and Guatemala specifically. The recent relocations have taken place “with little notice on late-night voyages” to the stark tent complex in West Texas, where the separated kids receive no schooling, have no contact with their parents, and have limited or no access to legal representation. Here’s a look at what’s happening:• Why are they being moved in the middle of the night and without notice?To avoid escape attempts.Migrant children are housed in what are known as unsecure facilities, meaning that doors are unlocked and they can technically leave at any time, though they are closely monitored and strongly discouraged from doing so. Several shelter workers explained that children who are on their way to the rapidly expanding tent city in Tornillo, Tex., are being woken up and moved in the middle of the night because they will be less likely to try to run away in the dark. Read the rest

'The White House’s mercury rollback is another reckless giveaway to the coal industry, and it will have major impacts on children’s health,' reports Rolling Stone magazine. “If trashing the health and welfare of unborn children will enrich his pals in the coal industry, Trump is happy to oblige,” writes Jeff Goodell in his profile of Donald Trump's “clownishly corrupt” Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, and the damage already done.Excerpt:On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the administration is planning to roll back mercury regulations on coal-fired power plants. Mercury, as most people know, is one of the most toxic substances on earth. It is potentially harmful to everyone, but pregnant women and children are by far the most vulnerable.How toxic is mercury? Consider this: In 1997, Dr. Karen Wetterhan, a researcher at Dartmouth College, accidentally spilled a single drop of dimethylmercury, a highly concentrated form often used in lab research, on her hand. She didn’t worry about it — she was wearing latex gloves. She washed the mercury off immediately and didn’t think about it again until five months later, when she began bumping into walls and slurring her words. Her doctors were not able to diagnose what was wrong, then she told them about the drop of mercury. They did a blood test: mercury poisoning. A few months later, Dr. Wetterhan was dead.Another great related piece in today's Rolling Stone, online: “Why Aren’t We Talking More About Trump’s Nihilism?”, Matt Taibbi asks. Read the rest

Whoa.I do not know who this woman is, or how she got to be so insanely wrong about everything. Anytime someone claims to know who the chosen one is the universe takes it in the nuggets.Harry Potter might be the only time "the chosen" one has actually worked out.All kidding aside, we're doomed. The voice of the commentator just agreeing along and "Uh huh"ing the predictions of doom and promises of curses turns the dial on this one to 11. Read the rest

I've heard lots of good things about the highly rated Panda Planner, but the $25+ price has kept me from buying it. Amazon has the gray one on sale for $13.64 today, so I ordered it. It's a hardbound 5 x 8 journal style planner with three months of scheduling, including undated monthly, weekly, and daily sections, as well as sections designed to reinforce positive habits. Read the rest

Pumpkin carving time is upon us.One of the hardest things I've ever done was carve a pumpkin underwater, while scuba diving. I used my dive knife and that just sucked. When I'm carving a pumpkin at home I have this awesome set of tools...For $20 you get stainless steel saws, pokers, scrapers, scoops. All manners of pumpkin carving implement come in rigid, totally useable and reliable form. Unlike the flimsy tools that come in drugstore impulse-buy pumpkin carving sets, these have lasted me years.I also learned that using a template makes carving a pumpkin a whole hell of a lot easier. There seem to be limitless templates, available free, on the internet.Professional Pumpkin Carving Kit – Heavy Duty Stainless Steel Tools with Carrying Case (8 piece set) via Amazon Read the rest

At a Rose Garden press conference announcing the new U.S. trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, President Trump was particularly nasty with ABC News’s Cecilia Vega. “She’s shocked I picked her, she’s in a state of shock,” Trump said.“I’m not, thank you, Mr. President,” Vega replied.“That’s OK. I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” Trump said.“I’m sorry?” Vega said.“No, go ahead,” Trump said.Way to read the temperature of the country right now, asshole.(Image: DonkeyHotey/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0) Read the rest

Judges on Seattle's municipal court have agreed to clear misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions from the era before weed was legal in their state.Via KOMO:Judges in Seattle have agreed to clear past misdemeanor convictions for pot possession that were prosecuted before marijuana was legalized in Washington state. Read the rest

Art is often most powerful when it makes you feel uncomfortable and Seattle-based artist John Criscitello has got that sentiment dialed in. He shared his latest work -- a set of oh-so-wrong-they're-right throw pillow covers with images of Brett Kavanaugh's 1982 calendar -- on Facebook with the chipper message, "Great for your Beach House !"Criscitello's "Beach Week" pillow covers are available on Redbubble in five sizes, starting at $24.98 each.Thanks, Ben! Read the rest

Jair Bolsonaro -- Brazil's authoritarian, "sexist, racist and homophobic" presidential candidate -- was supposed to have the election sewn up, with the Brazilian left in retreat. But now, with the first-round vote a week away, Bolsonaro is losing ground to the leftist Fernando Haddad, formerly mayor of Sao Paolo, with a runoff virtually guaranteed for Oct 28.While Bolsonaro has the support of Brazil's wealthy elite and powerful media-barons, he is monumentally unpopular among working people, women, and young people, who have filled the streets with mass anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations. Bolsonaro, who has close ties to the remnants of the military junta that once ruled Brazil, has mooted imposing martial law on the country if he loses the election.The state of Brazilian politics is incredibly complicated. This long, but very readable summary in The Nation does a very good job of laying out the current state of play and its historic context.In living memory, Brazil has lived under a military rule that supported the interests of economic elites, who suppressed their opposition with torture, murder, surveillance, arbitrary detention, and the full suite of horrors that can only be called "fascist." Bolsonaro hearkens wistfully to those days as a golden age for Brazil. He is still leading in the polls, but the latest gains for his opposition are a rare ray of hope in a country whose national politics have slid towards authoritarian rule in service to the one percent.Bolsonaro enjoys widespread support among police and the military. His vice-presidential candidate, Gen Hamilton Mourão, unnerved Brazilians recently when he said in a situation of “anarchy”, a president could declare an “auto-coup”. Read the rest

Good news from the U.S. Supreme Court! It decided not to weigh in on the fight over Martin's Beach in California. Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley billionaire, bought land surrounding the popular beach, intermittently closed the only access route to the public, and has fought a long, losing battle over his "property rights" since. In California, beaches are public up to the high tide line—and established paths to them come with legal baggage, even when they run over your land.“The most conservative and divided Supreme Court in my lifetime confirmed that even a billionaire, who refuses to acknowledge that the law applies to him, and retains the most expensive attorneys he can find, cannot create a private beach,” said attorney Joe Cotchett of Burlingame, who represents the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit group that has won lower cases forcing Khosla to keep the beach open.“Beaches are public in California, and the immensely wealthy must comply with the Coastal Act just like everyone else.”Attorneys for Khosla said Khosla will now seek a permit from the Coastal Commission, which surfers and environmental groups, and the commission itself, said was required under the law, to close the gate to the beach, something he had not done. ... The beach, used by families back to the 1920s, is flanked on both sides by steep cliffs and is only accessible by boat or by a road that runs through 89 acres Khosla bought in 2008 from a local family. The case has gained national attention. Read the rest

In 1989, the Chinese government slaughtered pro-democracy student activists whose commitment to justice swept the nation; now they're facing a new student uprising, one comprised of ardent Communist youth whose state-mandated education in the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao have prompted them to stand up for oppressed workers who labor in the for-profit factories that have flourished since the Deng reforms.President Xi has pursued a program of increased, unchecked personal power and a movement away from Chinese media; as part of this, Chinese curriculum has pursued a new emphasis on Communist literature. The Communist students staged mass, illegal demonstrations in Huizhou in sympathy with a wildcat workers' strike, bearing portraits of Mao, singing socialist anthems, and chanting "You are the backbone of the working class! We share your honor and your disgrace!"On August 24, police cracked down on the students, arresting 50 organizers in raids as they sang "The Internationale" in Chinese. Some organizers remain in prison, accused of being secret agents of foreign powers.Communist student movements are springing up all over China, and local police are cracking down on their leaders.The dispute in Huizhou began in July, after Jasic Technology, a manufacturer of welding equipment, prevented its workers from forming an independent union. China allows labor organizing only under the auspices of the official, party-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions.The workers said managers had seized control of their branch of the official union. Complaining of being underpaid and treated like slaves, they began to organize a petition before the police intervened and detained several of them. Read the rest

In 1960, my friend Frank Drake launched Project Ozma, the first modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Frank used the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (image above) in Green Bank, West Virginia to listen for interstellar radio transmissions that might be a signature of ETs. Nearly 60 years and countless scans later, we still haven't heard anything. Why? Space is big. Massive. In a 2010 paper, the SETI Institute's Jill Tarter and her colleagues described their ongoing calculations of a “cosmic haystack" where we're searching for an extraterrestrial needle. "If you build a mathematical model, the amount of searching that we've done in 50 years (as of 2008) is equivalent to scooping one 8-ounce glass out of the Earth's ocean, looking and seeing if you caught a fish," Tarter told NPR. "No, no fish in that glass? Well, I don't think you're going to conclude that there are no fish in the ocean. You just haven't searched very well yet. That's where we are."Now, Penn State astronomer Jason Wright and colleagues have refined the "cosmic haystack" model to include additional factors involving likely frequencies and bandwidth along with the latest large SETI searches. Even still, they "conclude that the fraction of it searched to date is also very small: similar to the ratio of the volume of a large hot tub or small swimming pool to that of the Earth's ocean."From Science News:Converting the volume to liters for the sake of analogy, the researchers concluded that SETI has covered the equivalent of 7,700 liters out of 1.335 billion trillion liters of water in Earth’s oceans. Read the rest

I don't know why this water balloon doesn't get torn to shreds by this weed whacker, but the shapes it makes when the fast moving filaments hits it are spellbinding. Read the rest

A new report summarizing three years of from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the TSA calls out the agency for its "toxic leadership culture, misconduct, mismanagement, whistleblower retaliation and obstruction," citing these as the reason for the agency's 20% annual attrition rates.The report was a long time coming, faced many hurdles and featured many lowlights, like the 2016 testimony of Office of the Chief Risk Officer program manager Mark Livingston, who described working for the TSA as like "Lord of the Flies; you either attack or be attacked."The committee was forced to subpoena the documents in 2017. However, many were still held back, and those that were turned over were heavily redacted with little-to-no justification. DHS and TSA continue to refuse to provide the full scope of unredacted documents, the report said.The report also detailed multiple instances of TSA senior leadership conducting themselves inappropriately. One executive pursued a relationship with a subordinate, then admitted to purposely misleading investigators. Though OPR recommended dismissal, he agreed to a settlement including a 14-day suspension and demotion, but no loss of pay.Another executive was convicted of driving while intoxicated, and attempted to claim falsely to police that she wasn’t operating the vehicle, but a member of TSA’s Aviation Security Advisory Committee was. Again, OPR recommended dismissal, but the executive settled for a 14-day suspension.A third executive got away with sexually harassing employees, and making racially offensive remarks for seven years before finally being dismissed.Report blasts TSA leadership for ‘toxic culture,’ blames it for high attrition, poor morale [David Thornton/Federal News Radio](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Do you need to void the contents of your stomach quickly? Watch this conversation between televangelists Kenneth Copeland (reported net worth $300 million) and Jesse Duplantis (reported net worth $50 million), in which they explain that they reason men of God require private jets is because they can't stand up and have a conversation with God on a commercial plane. Also, in "this dope filled world," you're likely to find yourself in "a long tube filled with demons." Kenneth Copeland also owns a $260,000 Maserati. I'll bet he and God had some great talks in that. Read the rest

Senator Bernie Sanders released a video on Twitter today that shows how similar Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and pussy-grabbing Trump are when defending themselves against sexual assault allegations."When faced with allegations of sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh took a page from Donald Trump's playbook," Sanders tweets.When faced with allegations of sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh took a page from Donald Trump's playbook. pic.twitter.com/jdDIYmOgtx— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 1, 2018Via The Hill Read the rest

The HP Spectre Folio is a laptop made of leather. As in: you cannot remove the leather, because the leather is part of the case.It's a premium ultraportable 2-in-1 with HP's Tilt Pen and 4G LTE. A 4K display option will be available, but not at launch. Prices start at $1,299. The "product exterior and outer keyboard is 100% genuine full grain leather as of 9/18/18" but it looks like corrected-grain to me, with no imperfections and a lot of homogenization. The proof will be in the patina: what will it look like after a few months of daily use? Read the rest

The Lord of the Rings and Kim Dotcom put New Zealand on the map for wealthy tech moguls seeking a safe space to hole up when disaster strikes. The Trump presidency kicked the bolt-hole craze to levels where Kiwi lawmakers had to put the brakes on the trend among the ultra-wealthy.New Zealand's isolation, lack of global enemies, lovely climate, and perks for luring tech workers have sealed its reputation in the Bay Area. Via Bloomberg:The Investor Plus Visa, which requires a minimum investment of NZD$10 million ($6.7 million) over three years, attracted 17 U.S. applicants in fiscal 2017, after President Donald Trump’s election. Previously, it averaged six applicants a year.More than 10 Americans from the West Coast have bought multimillion-dollar properties in the Queenstown region in the past two years, said Mark Harris, managing director of the local Sotheby’s real estate office.In August, partly in response to Americans gobbling up swaths of prime real estate, New Zealand’s government banned foreigners from buying homes, with the restrictions set to take effect in coming months.Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, ignited an uproar when he was granted citizenship after spending just 12 days in the country, prompting allegations that New Zealand’s passport was for sale. Thiel, 50, owns a $13.8 million home on 477 acres (193 hectares) in the lakeside town of Wanaka, with views of snow-capped mountains, and purchased another property in Queenstown, outfitted with a safe room.Hats off to the lovely illustrations by Steph Davidson that accompany the piece. Read the rest

Miami artist Brian Reedy creates pop-culture block prints that he sells on Etsy; his store is full of amazing handmade linoblock rice-paper prints, at $20 each, like "A Trip To The Moon," "The USS Enterprise," "Darth Vader Samurai," "Star Wars Still Life," and a superb set of Universal Monster prints: "The Creature From the Black Lagoon," "Frankenstein's Monster," "The Mummy," "Dracula," and "The Wolfman."A Trip To The MoonThe USS EnterpriseDarth Vader SamuraiStar Wars Still LifeThe Creature From the Black LagoonFrankenstein's MonsterThe MummyDraculaThe Wolfman(via Gameraboy) Read the rest

Moog is finally releasing a new polyphonic analog synthesizer, its first polyphonic model since production stopped on the Memorymoog in 1985, and a direct descendant of the iconic-yet-monophonic Minimoog Voyager released in 2002. Above is the only image released so far of the new Moog One. It's priced at $6000 for the 8 voice model and $8,000 for the 16-voice model. From Sweetwater:Powered by a sound engine with the most advanced architecture ever conceived for a Moog synth, Moog One is available in 8- and 16-voice versions that can simultaneously articulate eight or 16 voices, depending on the configuration of your instrument. The Moog One tri-timbral architecture lets you easily assign, split, layer, and stack voices with up to 48 oscillators in Unison mode...Clad in a handcrafted ash cabinet, the Moog One aluminum front panel is fitted with 73 knobs and 144 buttons, welcoming hands-on interaction with all the sound-sculpting and performance controls. Extended on-screen functionality is accessed via More buttons (one for each module) that serve up additional parameters in the center-panel LCD to deliver the most intuitive and efficient synthesis experience possible.Via Moog Music, a couple fine uses of the prior Moog Polymoog Synthesizer released in 1975: Read the rest

New Zealand's Customs and Excise Act 2018 went into effect today. That means travelers who refuse to give their phone or laptop password to customs officials will be fined NZ$5000. In addition, their devices will be confiscated and forensically searched. Customs Minister Kris Faafoi said these digital strip searches are necessary because "A lot of the organised crime groups are becoming a lot more sophisticated in the ways they're trying to get things across the border. And if we do think they're up to that kind of business, then getting intelligence from smartphones and computers can be useful for a prosecution." But Thomas Beagle of Council for Civil Liberties pointed out that organized criminals are smart enough not to keep incriminating files on their devices. From Radio NZ:[Customs spokesperson Terry Brown] said the law struck the "delicate balance" between a person's right to privacy and Customs' law enforcement responsibilities."I personally have an e-device and it maintains all my records - banking data, et cetera, et cetera - so we understand the importance and significance of it."Council for Civil Liberties spokesperson Thomas Beagle said the law was an unjustified invasion of privacy."Nowadays we've got everything on our phones; we've got all our personal life, all our doctors' records, our emails, absolutely everything on it, and customs can take that and keep it."The new requirement for reasonable suspicion did not rein in the law at all, Mr Beagle said."They don't have to tell you what the cause of that suspicion is, there's no way to challenge it."Image: Belish/Shutterstock Read the rest

Donald Trump has wrung many concessions out of Justin Trudeau on the NAFTA renegotiation, but none is more nonsensical and potentially damaging than a 20 year copyright term extension that will bring copyright in line with the US's extreme copyright system, where copyright endures for the life of the author plus 70 years, meaning that nearly every work created in US history will disappear due to commercial irrelevance, rather than being made available for scholars and other users by libraries and other nonprofits.Canada, like most of the world, has had a life-plus-fifty term, which is why, every year, works enter the Canadian public domain, free for all to use. In America, by contrast, the term of copyright means that virtually nothing has entered the public domain in decades.The Trudeau concessions to Trump repeat the horrific mistakes of the US copyright system, including a retrospective term extension, meaning that already-published works (like "Art of the Deal") will get the extra term added onto their copyright. There's no coherent explanation for this: copyright on existing works can't incentivise the creation of those works. We don't need to give Donald Trump an extra 20 years of copyright over his existing books, because we know he had enough incentive to create those books (because he created them) and any additional incentive we give him will (sadly) not improve those books.Yet the major copyright change for Canada is the extension in the term of copyright beyond the international standard of life of the author plus 50 years to life of the author plus 70 years. Read the rest

PBS premieres Dark Money on Monday October 1. It's a sobering look at how the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC is trickling down to local politics. John S. Adams, a Montana-based reporter profiled in the film, says, "This is scary stuff, but I think this is the proving ground for the American experiment."Dark Money, a political thriller, examines one of the greatest present threats to American democracy: the influence of untraceable corporate money on our elections and elected officials. The film takes viewers to Montana—a frontline in the fight to preserve fair elections nationwide—to follow an intrepid local journalist working to expose the real-life impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Through this gripping story, Dark Money uncovers the shocking and vital truth of how American elections are bought and sold. Official Selection, 2018 Sundance Film Festival.• DARK MONEY (2018) | Official Trailer HD (YouTube / PBS Distribution) Read the rest

No, this isn't a movie about North Korea's Kim Jung-un, but rather, "Rocketman" singer Elton John. The film, which stars Welsh actor Taron Egerton as Elton John, comes out next summer. Here is its first trailer. Read the rest

Wouldn't it be great if John Oliver could question Brett Kavanaugh under oath? Even better, how about having Oliver on the Supreme Court? Oh well, at least we have 30 minutes of Oliver telling the truth about the lying, partisan, privileged, rage-drunken, boofing creep who will toss out Roe v. Wade next year and make ruinous decisions for the next 35 years or so. Read the rest

Science Fair opened in theaters this weekend. The National Geographic documentary received Sundance's "Festival Favorite Award" and I can see why. It follows the lives of nine brilliant and dedicated high school students from 78 countries, and I was rooting for every one of them to win. The International Science and Engineering Fair brings together 1,700 students from around the world, each of whom won a local award for their project, to compete for $4 million in prizes and recognition for being the best of the best.Co-director Cristina Costantini said, "Science Fair is a love letter to the subculture that saved me. As a dweeby kid growing up in a sports-obsessed high school in Wisconsin, the international science fair became my lifeboat. It validated my passion for science, taught me how to dedicate myself to a goal and set my life on a trajectory that would have otherwise been totally impossible. But most important, science fair is where I found my tribe."Here's a Q&A with directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster:Why did you make this film?From the beginning, Cristina’s own experience with science fair was our north star. As a two-time alumna of ISEF, she not only had firsthand insight into the scene, but with some distance she could also look back and see how it shaped her life. With that very personal perspective, we set out to make a movie about the science fair journey as she remembered it: one of the most stressful, exhilarating, sublime, terrible experiences a young person could go through. Read the rest

The British government has been immobilised by Brexit preparations: hundreds of millions of pounds paid by insurers to the government to rebuild from flooding are sitting idle in savings accounts because no one can spare the time to spend them; ministers won't schedule out-of-London meetings because being away during a key vote would endanger the whisper-thin Tory majority; UK workforce productivity has fallen off a cliff while workers struggle to make preparations for the uncertain future; the government is incapable of legislating because the whole calendar is filled with Brexit bills; junior ministers are barely showing up for work because they don't believe they'll have careers after Brexit; the NHS's overriding priority is Brexit preparation -- everything, from top to bottom, is crumbling.Indeed, the government’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs unit, which looks after flooding, is consumed by its Brexit workload. Many non-Brexit issues are being systematically pushed to the bottom of the pile while Michael Gove, the cabinet minister in charge of the department, focuses on making a success of the EU divorce he championed.Aside from the NHS, there’s little if any new money available for non-Brexit-related issues, and top civil servants are being assigned to work on Brexit either in their own departments or in the unit created especially for exiting the EU. Even the extra £20.5 billion promised to the NHS by 2024 could be attributed to Brexit: Campaigners had promised the cash injection as a dividend from leaving the EU. While delays to government plans are nothing new, policy drift has reached unprecedented levels, and lawmakers complain that progressive plans on everything from modernizing radiotherapy for cancer patients to tackling plastic waste are in stasis. Read the rest

Another Brett Kavanaugh classmate from Yale, Charles Ludington, has described the judge as a "belligerent and aggressive" drunk. Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University, will be speaking about Kavanaugh to the FBI today.In a statement he gave to The Washington Post, he says that the last time he socialized with Kavanaugh, he witnessed the aggressive judge overreact to a remark that displeased him by throwing his beer into the person's face. "On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man's face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail," Ludington said.In his hearing last week, Kavanaugh denied drinking heavily, which Ludington says is a lie. He told the Post, "“I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18 or even 21 year old should condemn a person for the rest of his life. However...if he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences."Via NBC NewsImage: by CSPAN - https://www.c-span.org/video/?181538-1/judicial-nominations, Public Domain, Link Read the rest