Boing Boing

Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf says Trump's days in the White House are numbered. In a blistering Twitter thread, Rothkopf makes the case that any high-quality people Trump had supporting him have either fled or are getting ready to, and now that the House is under control of Democrats, Trump's inner circle of bottom-of-the-barrel crooks and buffoons won't be able to protect him from his sordid history of sleazy dealings and self-destructive narcissism.Thread by @djrothkopf: "No one knows the skeletons in Donald Trump's closet better than Donald Trump. No one knows the crimes he has committed, aided or abetted so […]"By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Seeing as ratings are the most important metric tracked by the executive branch of the US government, NBC's jump after booting Megyn "Black Face is Cool" Kelly should mean a lot.From the Daily Beast:According to just-released weekly Nielsen averages—figures provided to The Daily Beast by a media outlet that is not connected to NBC or its parent company, Comcast—the week after Kelly’s October 26 departure and the abrupt demise of Megyn Kelly Today, total viewership for Today’s third hour actually increased by 5 percent—from 2,522,000 during Kelly’s final week on the air to 2,649,000 during the week beginning Oct. 29.Significantly, this post-Kelly ratings spike occurred despite a slight falloff in total viewers (a decrease from 3,832,000 to 3,747,000) experienced week-over-week by Today’s 8 a.m. block, the lead-in to the third hour of the four-hour Today franchise.Even more revealing, the target demographic groups most desired by daytime television advertisers—women 18-49 and women 25-54—also enjoyed immediate upticks in the aftermath of Kelly’s exit. Women 18-49 increased by 10 percent (from 336,000 to 371,000), while women 25-54 spiked by 6 percent (from 465,000 to 495,000).“That absolutely comes as no surprise at all,” television news analyst Andrew Tyndall told The Daily Beast. “She was a speed bump placed right in the middle of a four-hour block of programming—dismantling the sense of teamwork on that set and the flow that will get you all the way through from the hard news at 7 a.m. to the light talk through 11 o’clock.” Read the rest

I've always felt a spiritual connection with grizzly bears. They're slow, chunky and have an overwhelming affection for peanut butter--just like I do. From time to time, I'm fortunate enough to spot one, or at least the signs of one's passing, while we're in Alberta. But, as they generally don't want anything to do with people, being able to spend a prolonged amount of time with one is an incredible treat. It's a treat that I had the opportunity to partake in earlier today. Around 30 minutes outside of Bozeman, Montana, we saw the first sign for it: Montana Grizzly Encounter. I wasn't into it at first: captive bears aren't cool. I checked out their website as we drove. Rescue bears. Rescue bears are very cool. Five minutes later we were pulling into the Montana Grizzly Encounter. Sixteen bucks for two adults and a score of steps later, we were in. MGE was founded in 2004 and has been giving homes to bears rescued from cruel captivity ever since. Five of the six bears that MGE shelters were rescued from inhumane situations from all across the United States. Their sixth bear, Bella, was an orphan discovered in Alaska. On her own, she wouldn't have stood a chance. At the sanctuary, she's living the best life that she possibly can. You won't find any bars or cages at MGE. The bears have a temperature controlled enclosure that they can enter or exit as they please. There's a large area for the bears to do bear things in outside of the public eye. Read the rest

Remember the cartoons of your youth? There's a good reason. Nothing sparks the imagination like well-done animation. And whether you need a logo in motion or just want to bring your own imagination to life, CrazyTalk Animator 3 Pro is the tool that can take you there.Easy enough for casual users but with all the functionality of a professional animation studio, its only limit is your creativity. The versatile interface lets you customize and set into motion any of CTA3's character templates, or import any image or logo and apply the bone rig editor to animate it. Vast motion libraries give you a shortcut to nearly any action, keyed to human or animal physiology. Packed with facial animations, auto-audio lip-sync and even the ability to turn text to speech, CTA3 will put the story in your hands, whether it's a presentation or full-fledged cartoon creation.Find out how easy it is with CrazyTalk Animator 3 Pro for Windows, on sale now at a discounted $79. Read the rest

This vintage-style map of the USA puts the titles of songs that mention place names onto their corresponding geographical spot. So, for example, the Beasties Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is placed right on top of Brooklyn. Some of our favourite song choices are the ones which require you to think a little harder about connections, such as Space Oddity (David Bowie) which signposts Cape Canaveral, After the Gold Rush (Neil Young) which references Sutter’s Mill, and Homecoming (Kanye West) which is placed near the rapper’s home town of Chicago.You can get the map for £30 (~$39) at UK-based studio Dorothy. They also have a world song map (also £30/~$39) and a special edition world song map (£35/~$45). Head to Spotify to see the accompanying playlist.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Denis Vrain-Lucas was an undistinguished forger until he met gullible collector Michel Chasles. Through the 1860s Lucas sold Chasles thousands of phony letters by everyone from Plato to Louis the 14th, earning thousands of francs and touching off a firestorm among confused scholars. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the career of the world's most prolific forger.We'll also count Queen Elizabeth's eggs and puzzle over a destroyed car.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Habitot Children's Museum in Berkeley, California is making an unusually generous offer to the families of homeless kids. They are providing them with the opportunity to celebrate their child's birthday at their facility for free. Their free birthday party offer includes all the standards: decor, pizza, juice, cake, and even goodie bags for the guests. Plus, they gift the birthday child something special. Now, I'm not sure the age limit for the eligible children but, according to their site, the museum serves infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Want to learn more? Email the museum's Family Programs Manager at familyprograms@habitot.org. Also, if you have the means, please consider donating to Habitot so they can keep the magic going. photo by Yoshika Mcalister Read the rest

https://drawmaton.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/45118351_358662618238424_3396031426926215168_n.mp4Robert Sabuda (previously) writes, "It has long been a dream of the Leonardo da Vinci Robot Society to bring one of the Renaissance Master’s creations back to life. 2019 is the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death and the Society has chosen to honor his memory and celebrate his life through one of his best known inventions - the Robot Knight. This robot is an early proto-computer android whose read-only programmable memory allowed it to perform many actions. And it was also rumored that the robot’s arm could also perform an extremely complex task…draw a picture!""The Society has hired me to unlock the secrets of da Vinci’s robotic arm. The final result, in the form of a kit, is now available to you as da Vinci’s Drawmaton. Made only of wood and a few pieces of metal, this ancestor of the programmable computer, is capable of reading 1kb of analog memory via wooden “petalos” which, to da Vinci, resembled the petals of flowers. The programming “petalos” are easily switched out so the Drawmaton can draw an endless variety of single line images. A few turns of the hand knob completes a full rotation of the programming “petalos” and the drawing is complete. You can insert your own drawing tool into the robot’s hand, place any paper into the draw area, turn the knob and the drawing is revealed.Program your own images to create custom “petalos” which will draw your own masterpieces!"Sabuda is an eminent mechanical engineer who created some of my favorite pop-up books. Read the rest

Anand Giridharadas was a former McKinsey consultant turned "thought leader," invited to the stages of the best "ideas festivals" and to TED (twice), the author of some very good and successful books, and as a kind of capstone to this career, he was named a fellow to the Aspen Institute, an elite corps of entrepreneurs who are given institutional support and advice as they formulate "win-win" solutions to the world's greatest problems, harnessing the power of markets to lift people out of poverty and oppression.But the deeper Giridharadas got into this new role, the more uncomfortable he became with it. On the night he was to give a valedictory address to an audience of business leaders, finance leaders, and other members of the ruling class, he abandoned the "Aspen consensus" and instead give a scorching and excoriating talk about the structural failure of "win-win" as a way of thinking about the world's problems.Giridharadas's point was that the business elites who were gathered to "give back" and "solve the big problems" were some of the most egregious contributors to those problems. They had looted the world's treasuries, shut down businesses and shipped jobs to low-wage, low-regulation free trade zones, gutted public services and replaced them with low-bidder private sector contractors, and had done so while formulating and promulgating the philosophy that business leaders' individual judgment about the provision of public services were always to be preferred to those policies set by democratically elected politicians.The speech was -- obviously -- divisive. Read the rest

Last year, Princeton researchers revealed a powerful new ad-blocking technique: perceptual ad-blocking uses a machine-learning model trained on images of pages with the ads identified to make predictions about which page elements are ads to block and which parts are not.However, a new paper from a group of Stanford and CISPA Helmholtz Center researchers reveals a powerful machine learning countermeasure that, they say, will permanently tilt the advantage toward advertisers and away from ad-blockers. The team revealed a set of eight techniques to generate adversarial examples of slightly modified ads that completely flummoxed the perceptual ad-blocker's model: from overlaying a transparent image to modifying a few pixels in the logo used to demarcate an ad. What's more, the team showed that they could cause the perceptual blocker's model to erroneously identify a page's actual content as an ad and block it, while leaving the ads unblocked.The team says that these techniques will always outrace the ability of perceptual blocking models to detect them, suggesting that perceptual blocking may be a dead letter.We note that detection of adversarial examples [27, 47]—a simpler problem in principle but also one far from solved [14]— may not be applicable to ad-blockers. Indeed, ad-blockers face both adversarial false-positives and false-negatives, so merely detecting a perturbation does not help in decision-making. This challenging threat model also applies in part to ad-blockers based on non-visual cues, e.g., ML-based ad-blockers that use similar features as filter lists [11, 29, 36]. None of these have yet been evaluated against adaptive adversaries. Read the rest

Government procurement data reveals that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Agency have each spent tens of thousands of dollars on products from Houston's Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC, which specializes in fake streetlight housings designed to conceal surveillance cameras.Since June, the DEA has spent $22,000 with Cowboy; ICE's total is about $28K. Neither the government agencies nor Cowboy Streetlight Concealments will reveal where or how the hidden camera housings were used.The DEA is currently advertising for competitive bids for "concealments made to house network PTZ [Pan-Tilt-Zoom] camera, cellular modem, cellular compression device." In the absence of a competitive bid, it will award the contract to Oregon's Obsidian Integration LLC; Obsidian recently provided concealed cameras to the Jersey City PD.The DEA also uses traffic barrels and digital speed displays to to conceal its covert cameras.Christie Crawford, who owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, a Houston police officer, said she was not at liberty to discuss the company’s federal contracts in detail.“We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures,” Crawford told Quartz. “Basically, there’s businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that’s what we do. They specify what’s best for them, and we make it. And that’s about all I can probably say.”However, she added: “I can tell you this—things are always being watched. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement has a reason to set up surveillance, there’s great technology out there to do it.”The DEA and ICE are hiding surveillance cameras in streetlights [Justin Rohrlich & Dave Gershgorn/Quartz](Image: Cowboy Concealments; twistedrhye, Cryteria, CC-BY) Read the rest

Apple has long understood that hardware products that last a long time result in falling unit sales, as customers opt to keep their old machines instead of buying the latest models; that's part of why the company led the charge that killed every single Right to Repair bill introduced last year -- less repairs leads to more "recycling," which is Applespeak for dropping used units into giant shredders without harvesting any usable parts first.Every year, refurbishers rescue thousands of used Apple products from the e-waste streams, and every year, Apple finds new ways to frustrate their efforts.The latest wrinkle: Apple has gotten Amazon to agree to ban the sale of refurbished Apple products except those that come from Apple directly.Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and coauthor of The End of Ownership, told me in an email that this decision is a dangerous infringement of ownership rights.“Wow. This is a very troubling development,” he said. “Given Amazon’s dominance as an online retail marketplace, its decision to disregard the first sale rights of resellers will significantly limit consumer choice. The fact that this move was demanded by Apple makes it even more problematic. What we see here are the world’s two most valuable companies engaging in a coordinated assault on the lawful resale of consumer devices.”The United States Supreme Court has ruled that people who legally own a product may legally resell it, and federal law protects that right under something known as the “first sale doctrine,” which says that copyright holders give up their copyright to individual copies of a work once it is sold: “the first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. Read the rest

The Yokohama Board of Education has posted scans of six fantastic catalogs from Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks, dating from the early 1900s. The illustrated catalogs are superb, with minimal words: just beautiful colored drawings depicting the burst-pattern from each rocket.(via Kottke) Read the rest

Most of America's 9,000 7-Eleven stores are owned by franchisees, many of them immigrants; the owners' contracts with 7-Eleven corporate allows the company to pull their franchises if they violate US law.The current CEO of 7-Eleven is Joe DePinto, a West Point grad who got the job in 2005 and has spent his tenure slowly tightening the screw on franchisees, demanding business practices that return more profit to corporate HQ at the expense of the independent operators. As the franchisees have felt the sting, they've fought back, suing the company over DePinto's policies.DePinto has become legendary for his dirty tricks campaign to get rid of his least-favored franchisees, from hiring private eyes to making secret recordings. Now the franchisees allege that DePinto has started snitching on his own franchisees to ICE, directing government immigration raids against 7-Eleven stores. If these franchise owners are found to have illegally hired undocumented immigrants, DePinto can cancel their franchise agreements and kick them out of the business and take over their stores.The evidence is circumstantial and 7-Eleven denies it, but ICE's raids on 7-Eleven stores have targeted owners who have made trouble for the company.When Carter Anderson paused and asked if anyone had questions, Serge Haitayan took a microphone. He owns a 7-Eleven on a highway lined by grape farms in Fresno, Calif. Last year he joined Sandhu in the lawsuit alleging 7-Eleven was wrongly treating them like employees. On July 16 of this year, three federal agents walked into the little store he’s operated for 28 years, giving him three days to produce employee records dating back a year. Read the rest

With my wife's gig in north central Alberta spinning down for another year and the cold charging hard at us like a bull moose in rut, it's once again time for us to head south. This year, thanks to the two weeks it took me to replace a lost passport, we started off later than we would have liked. ***We left Calgary late in the day. No matter how much lead up we have, there always seems to be a few last things to do. Saying goodbye. Picking up snacks for the road. Double checking our rig's engine, air bags, air brakes, tires and all else. Even after receiving my passport last Friday, we waited until today--Wednesday. The weather was too coarse to risk in the rig. We aimed at Lethbridge as a first night target. Not far, but out of Calgary and within reach of the border early tomorrow morning. As the dusk settled in, we noted that our headlights were not up to the task of leading us. The bulbs would need to be replaced. But not tonight. We made for Claresholm: a highway pass-through town on the road south. By the time we pulled off for the evening, it had already hit -10. We lurked through town, the size of a semi truck with our Jeep in tow, searching for a dark corner of asphalt to call ours for the night. On with the generator. On with the furnace to warm our dog and our bones. Read the rest

Outrun, the classic racer that blew players' minds with its huge colorful sprites, is getting an ususual port: to the monochrome vectorbeam world of the vintage Vectrex console.Creator Chris Parsons:A little "demo" I put together today to warm up my coding skills as I get back to developing my second full Vectrex game. I put the Pole Position overlay on at the end as it comes out clearer without it when filming. Check out my Vectrex home brew games on here and at www.vectorrepublic.co.uk He's gotten the Ferrari, the tarmac and some roadside palms going, but it's missing other vehicles and curves: "Now, should I try to add some game in there???" Read the rest

I use an Acer 25-inch monitor with my Macbook Pro and like it a lot. This 21-inch model (920 x 1080) is a highly rated sub-100 dollar model, and is perfect for people who want a large monitor for their Raspberry Pi, perhaps to play retro-games. Read the rest

A Denver man is in critical condition after trying to play hero by rescuing a dropped cell phone from a trash chute.22-year old Scott Walsh was trying to rescue a female friend's phone when he fell fifteen feet down a first-floor trash chute and became trapped. The compactor began to move with Walsh stuck inside. Rescue workers had to disassemble the compactor in order to extricate Walsh.The compactor broke both of Walsh’s legs, cracked his skull on both sides and ruptured arteries in his neck, his friend Liz DiSalvo said. He’s been heavily sedated but is expected to survive, she said.The condition of the phone is unknown.Denver man in critical condition after being crushed by trash compactor in downtown apartment (Elsie Shmelzer/Denver Post)Image: mccarport.com Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal [paywall] just published a major expose revealing "several previously unreported instances in which Mr. Trump intervened directly to suppress stories about his alleged sexual encounters with women." The Wall Street Journal interviewed "three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents." Trump has lied on several previous occasions about the payoffs, saying he played no role in them.The article reports that Trump met with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and the two struck a deal to pay hush money to women who wanted to publicize their alleged sexual affairs with Trump.Less than a year later, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pecker to quash the story of a former Playboy model who said they’d had an affair. Mr. Pecker’s company soon paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal, to keep her from speaking publicly about it. Mr. Trump later thanked Mr. Pecker for the assistance.The Wall Street Journal obtained an audio recording of a conversation between Trump and his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, which reveals Trump's sense of loyalty towards people who go out of their way to help him:As Mr. Cohen explained his plans, Mr. Trump spoke over him: “So, what are we gonna pay… One-fifty?” Mr. Trump asked. Mr. Cohen paused and replied, “Yes.”Mr. Cohen said he would be getting “all the stuff,” meaning the other files on Mr. Trump he had been seeking. They discussed the uncertainty about what might become of the files if Mr. Read the rest

Today would have been Carl Sagan's 84th birthday. I wish he were here. Watch the above, climb aboard your Ship of the Imagination, and make the future. View this post on Instagram My dear wonderful dad would be 84 today. I find that very hard to imagine. I spend a lot of time wondering what he would be like as an old man. I wish I could know that version of him. Just as I wish I could know the version of him pictured here, young and full of promise. I miss all the versions of him. The ones I knew and the ones I didn’t. Thank you to everyone who knew him and everyone who didn’t who still misses him, who still reads his work, who still thinks of him. It means a lot. #carlsaganday A post shared by Sasha Sagan (@sashasagan) on Nov 9, 2018 at 7:12am PST We're celebrating #CarlSagan's birthday by sharing his "lost lecture", the talk he gave at his 60th birthday symposium @Cornell @CornellCAS. Today is the perfect day to celebrate the #CarlSagan vision, which inspired @CSInst https://t.co/lxvgKQEvL5— Carl Sagan Institute (@CSInst) November 9, 2018Astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, communicator, father, friend, and our co-founder.Here's to the man who inspired us to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish our pale blue dot. #CarlSaganDay pic.twitter.com/ZwrcnGPHgD— Planetary Society (@exploreplanets) November 9, 2018 Read the rest

NASA's Juno spacecraft took this glamour shot of Jupiter on October 29, 2018, from about 4,400 miles (7,000) kilometers above the planet's clouds. From NASA:A multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image... Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval.Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and to process into image products at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam. Read the rest

Researchers have spent decades exploring methods to 3D print organs for transplant but progress is slow due to the complex structure of, say, a kidney or pancreas. Precise Bio, a startup founded by scientists from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, claim that the first real success will come from 3D-printed corneas. They've already conducted animal studies and are building a roadmap toward human trials. From IEEE Spectrum:Corneas could be the first mainstream application of bioprinting, (Precise Bio CEO Aryeh) Batt says, in part because they have a layered structure that’s a good match for the technology. Each layer consists of different types of cells and fibers, which the printer could lay down in sequence, and these layers don’t contain blood vessels or nerves. What’s more, putting a new kind of transplant in the eye is inherently safer than implanting one deep in the body, since physicians could easily check for signs of trouble and could remove the tissue if anything seemed wrong. There’s certainly a need for more corneas in the world, says Kevin Corcoran, president and CEO of the Eye Bank Association of America. In 2017, his members supplied nearly 51,000 transplantable corneas to patients in the United States, and also sent more than 26,000 abroad. Internationally, “there is a tremendous amount of unmet demand,” he says. “It’s estimated that 10 million people suffer from corneal blindness globally, primarily because they lack access to effective and affordable treatment.”Part of Precise Bio’s proprietary approach is its printer, which uses a technique called laser-induced forward transfer to propel droplets of bioinks onto a surface. Read the rest

One of the big problems I've had with taking long drives, anywhere, has been that I'm forced into unproductive time when I should be working. This isn't a problem when I'm going on vacation. But here's the thing: I seldom take a vacation. As I'm self-employed, there's no such thing as vacation pay in my world. When I stop writing, the money stops coming in. Working on the road is possible--all I have to do is tether my laptop to my iPhone and I'm in business. So long as I can keep my laptop, you know, in my lap. Maintaining a stable platform to work on while my wife wheels us across the continent has proven difficult. I've tried lap desks, balancing my computer on a backpack, you name it. My computer always slides around, making it damn near impossible to type. What's more, a neck injury that I sustained eons ago makes it painful for me to tilt my head down for any length of time. This combination of poor conditions has forced me, up until now, to twiddle my thumbs for hours at a time, working only once we've come to a stop for the day.However, I think that I may finally have figured it out.RAM Mounts makes a wide variety of mobile work solutions to keep nerd stuff in one place while you're driving along. Cops use RAM Mount gear in their cruisers to keep their laptop secure. Their in-vehicle smartphone and tablet stands are, arguably, among the best out there. Read the rest

A speeder! A cop! A high speed chase ending in a police cruiser catching on fire!Honestly, this video has everything. Read the rest

In her forthcoming memoir, Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama wrote that Trump's racist birther lies about her husband put her family in danger. "What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family's safety at risk. And for this I'd never forgive him."In his typically sleazy style, Trump responded not by responding to the facts, but by attacking President Obama with another lie:"I'll give you a little controversy back, I'll never forgive (President Barack Obama) for what he did to our US military. It was depleted, and I had to fix it. What he did to our military made this country very unsafe for you and you and you." Read the rest

Hearing about Northern California's Camp Fire – or any fire for that matter – is scary enough. But seeing what it's like to escape for your life by driving right through a massive fire so that you can't see anything in front of you is absolutely terrifying. The fire spread so quickly – "80 football fields per minute," says The Guardian – that some people barely escaped, while others have died.This video was taken by Brynn Parrott Chatfield, from the town of Paradise, which has been destroyed by the fire. The fire, which started Thursday morning around 6:30am, has burned over 20,000 acres so far, forcing "about 50,000 people to evacuate," according to The Guardian.Via The Guardian:As CNN points out, over 2,200 firefighters are currently battling the Camp Fire and they face a tough road ahead. The combination of dry conditions and high winds are making this a particularly difficult fire to fight.Multiple fatalities have been reported but it’s not yet clear how many people might be dead. The exact number of injuries is also unknown and authorities still don’t know what caused the blaze. Read the rest

If quantum computing becomes practical, it will be able to crack encrypted data in an instant. Forbes has created a good two-minute video that gives a high level overview of quantum computation.If you want to know more, Simon Singh's fantastic The Code Book gives a much more in-depth (yet still easy to understand) explanation of how quantum computing works. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Read the rest

In 1993, Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails composed music for the first station ID for MTV Japan created by the inimitable Shinya Tsukamoto, director of cyberpunk/horror films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Of course, Reznor later penned the below theme song for Tsukamoto's 2010 film "Tetsuo: The Bullet Man." (via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

What happens when you keep your television off for about two months? Sometimes, once you turn it back on, you'll find it has become home to an ant colony, at least for one guy who posted this video on reddit, showing a city of ants busying themselves behind his television screen. He asks the reddit world what he should do to get rid of them.One commenter suggested leaving the TV on with bright white light, which would supposedly encourage the ants to move to a darker place, while another commenter said he might try taking the television apart and cleaning it, but damaging the set would be a risk. Another said there was no other solution but to toss this TV and buy a new one.And why are there ants in the TV set? Maybe they are "raspberry crazy ants," which are drawn to electrical equipment. According to Wikipedia:Infestations of Nylanderia fulva in electrical equipment can cause short circuits, sometimes because the ants chew through insulation and wiring. Overheating, corrosion, and mechanical failures also result from accumulations of dead ants and nest detritus in electrical devices. If an ant is electrocuted, it can release an alarm pheromone in dying, which causes other ants to rush over and search for attackers. If a large enough number of ants collects, it may short out systems.It is unclear why colonies of Nylanderia fulva, like many species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment. They may sense the magnetic fields that surround wires conducting electric current, or they prefer the warmth produced by resistance to the currents in the wires. Read the rest

Patrisha Organo (24) is a Philippine Airlines flight attendant. She was working on a flight on November 6 when she heard a baby crying, "a cry that will make you want to do anything to help," she wrote on Facebook. She asked the mother what the matter was and the mother told her that she'd run out of baby formula. Organo led the mother and baby into the galley and breastfed the baby. "I saw the relief on her mother’s eyes," she wrote. "I continued to feed the baby until she fell asleep. I escorted her back to her seat and just before I left, the mother sincerely thanked me."Image: Facebook Read the rest

In the 1980s, Pennsylvania-based Michele Mercure was composing music for theater, film, and TV animation. After a trip to the Netherlands, she became inspired by the German kosmiche music scene of Kluster, Tangerine Dream, and the like. But Mercure cut her own path into experimental electronic music, weaving her synthetic, rhythmic soundscapes with strange samples and cut-up vocalizations, resulting in tracks that move between abstract and ambient dreamscapes and mechanized intensity. For decades, Mercure's self-released cassettes (under the name Michelle Musser) moved through underground trading circles but many of those recordings will now reach a wider group of heads. Beside Herself is a gorgeous 19-track Michele Mercure retrospective released today by the esteemed curators at RVNG Intl. and Freedom To Spend labels. To celebrate the release, Mercure and Mary Haverstick created the wonderful "Electronumentary" above. Below, one of the album tracks. From RVNG:Mercure’s artistic path never ran through creative meccas New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then moving to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in her twenties, Mercure was already an adept musician when she encountered a local and lively theater scene, and was asked to score an unorthodox performance of Waiting for Godot. The experience was pivotal in marrying music and image for Mercure, and so she began making music for film, television, dance, and theater. It wasn’t until a long sojourn in Eindhoven, however, that she became transfixed by electronic music (ala Conrad Schnitzler, whom she would correspond with for years) that would inform her music to come. Read the rest

If you're bored with fugu, give feseekh a try. According to Great Big Story, "Feseekh, or fermented mullet fish, can cause poisoning or even death if not prepared properly."Image: YouTube Read the rest

For readers, Scribd has long been a fount of content, and it's only growing. With 40 million titles to choose from, this service has plenty to offer to its more than 750,000 subscribers.Whether you're into audiobooks, novels, nonfiction or magazines, Scribd is the only subscription service with access to titles from all "Big 5" global publishers. That's more than one million books from the classics to new releases, accessible on your browser or mobile app. The more you use it, the more Scribd stokes your curiosity with curated reading lists and personalized recommendations. Create your own virtual bookshelf, download your favorites - it's all there for bookworms to burrow into. Even if you plow through two books a day, you'd never get to the bottom of Scribd's deep well of content.Various options are available, but there are discounts on a 1-year subscription to Scribd ($85) or 6 months ($45). Give it a spin and start reading today. Read the rest

Leave it to Texas to have high school varsity teams dedicated to barbecuing. Here's a story about how some students at a high school in northern Texas are learning to compete with meat. WFAA reports:Horticulture teacher Tommy Copeland helped start his team at [Ennis High School] after discovering an annual state tournament in Burnet where over 100 schools compete...At Ennis High, the barbecue team is like a Texas hybrid of metal shop and home economics. The students fabricate and weld their own cooker together then use it to compete.Copeland and other vocational teachers assist the students in learning how to be pitmasters. Teachers or instructors aren’t allowed to help students during cook-offs, and they’re judged on best beef brisket, pork ribs, ½ chicken, best beans, dessert, best pit, most school spirit, and best t-shirt....he only requirements to be on the barbecue team? Maintain a passing average and be a senior.However—that doesn’t stop Copeland from mentoring aspiring juniors who have interest in the team like Marshall Sladecek.Before Ennis’ home football game against Corsicana, he and some other juniors got some ‘ribs practice’ outside the stadium. “We all barbecue, why not take it to the competition level?” Sladecek said. “Every guy needs to know how to do it.”...“When these boys leave here, they are kings of their grills,” Copeland said. Read the rest

Vancouver indie rock band Said The Whale spent over 80 hours putting together the music video for their song "UnAmerican." Impressively, zero digital effects were used to stop-motion animate the 2,250 different photos. The band painstakingly did that all by hand. Wow! (Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

Emile Ratelband, a Netherlands media personality and motivational speaker, is 69 years old but believes he has the body of someone 20 years younger. To fix the perceived discrepancy, he has now brought forth a lawsuit to legally change his age. The Dutchman wants to be seen as younger to get better jobs and to have better luck connecting with ladies on Tinder. He compares his plight with being transgender. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf quotes him as saying, "You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age? Nowhere are you so discriminated against as with your age."And also, "When I'm 69, I'm limited. When I'm on tinder and it says 69, I don't get an answer. When I'm 49 with the face I have, I'll be in a luxurious position."The Dutchman describes himself as a "young god."In four weeks, a local court in Arnhem will make its decision on his case. If the court rules in his favor, the "young god" has said he'll give up his pension.BBC: Dutchman, 69, brings lawsuit to lower his age 20 yearsimage via 360Nobs.com Read the rest

I've just published a comprehensive explainer on Medium about the EU's new Copyright Directive, which was sabotaged at the last minute, when MEP Axel Voss snuck in the long-discredited ideas of automatically censoring anything a bot thinks infringes copyright and banning unpaid links to news articles.After a million Europeans signed a petition calling for a debate on the new proposals, a divided opposition failed to kill them. But hope is not lost: the new Italian government has changed position on the proposals and now the opposition constitutes a potential "blocking minority" that could kill the whole thing -- provided they could work together.The new Directive is now in the “trilogues” — closed-door negotiations between the E.U.’s Parliament and individual national governments. Normally, these are a formality that takes place out of public view. However, the current trilogue is both more contested and more public than any in the E.U.’s history.The European Court of Justice has ruled that Europeans are entitled to know what happens in these trilogue negotiations, and German Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda has pledged to publish the negotiating documents (and she’s kept her word).What’s more, the trilogues coincide with political changes in Italy, and the Italian government has withdrawn its support for Articles 11 and 13. This brings the proportion of Europeans who oppose these articles past the critical threshold of 35%, a theoretical “blocking minority” that could scuttle the entire proposal (assuming they can avoid the trap the opposition fell into last time: agreeing that these rules aren’t appropriate but disagreeing on what to do about it). Read the rest

The MIT Media Lab's Spatial Flux Project was created by Carson Smuts and Chrisoula Kapelonis to imagine and prototype soft inflatable robots that would be designed to operate in zero-gee, where there is no up or down and "we do not have to contend with architecture's greatest arch-nemesis, gravity."Their work is a set of shoes-on-a-snake weird pneumatic tentaclebots are brilliant and Gigeresque. In the City Science group, we explore the diversity of formal arrangements necessary to accommodate the spatial gradients of our lives—at work, rest, and play. We are in the process of developing a full-scale, multi-modal kinetic space (escPod); the moment the human body surrenders itself to space is our inspiration: sitting at a desk, lounging on a couch, or in a deep slumber. How do we define surface architecturally when our current gravity-based vocabulary was not born of zero gravity and will not suffice? What opportunities can this state of flux provide for architects when designing for the body? Architects are married to an XY (north/south) cartesian grid, with Z (gravity) being the main point of reference for many architectural elements. We would like to force ourselves to imagine these elements without an XYZ reference, rethinking our descriptions of them.Spatial Flux: Body and Architecture in Space [Carson Smuts and Chrisoula Kapelonis/MIT Media Lab](via JWZ) Read the rest

Proud Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran an insurgent campaign (working nights as a bartender in NYC with her campaigning clothes stashed in a paper bag behind the bar, changing after her shift and working the streets) that conquered New York, went national, and emboldened a "progressive caucus" of new Democratic legislators: now she's going to Congress to serve as the youngest woman ever elected to the lower house. Only one problem: she can't afford to rent a DC apartment for the three months between the election and her swearing-in, when she'll start drawing her Congressional salary. Read the rest

If you paid extra for Windows 10 "Pro," Microsoft had an unpleasant surprise for you: a misconfiguration in the company's license server resulted in the oldest Win 10 Pro installs (that is, those owned by Microsoft's earliest adopting customers) being downgraded to Windows 10 Home, with users' screens plastered with watermarks chiding them for not paying for their licenses (this went over great for everyone who was standing in front of an audience giving a presentation, apparently).After a period of initial confusion, Microsoft finally admitted something was broken. Read the rest

Canadian turnkey e-commerce giant Shopify has kicked its farthest-right customers off the service, banning made-in-Canada racists like the Proud Boys, but not wink-nudging white supremacists like Breitbart. Read the rest

Internet funnyperson Choire "Awl" Sicha (previously) has a new gig: New York Times advice columnist; Sicha is not fucking around either: "The only circumstance in which you can ask this woman out is if she sends you a literal ink-on-paper invitation to do so, like, in calligraphy and maybe with a seal stamped in wax, which would be awesome. (Also might mean she’s a vampire?) But, sure, you can totally ask her out if you don’t care about (1) her security about working with men in any capacity forever or (2) your career! Then have a blast, cannonball as many lives as possible on your way down the trash chute." (via Kottke) Read the rest

In 1918, there was plenty of speculation about 2018; in 2018, no one is talking about 2118. Bruce Sterling discusses the relationship of industrial design to science fiction; the New Aesthetic and Turinese architecture; and many other subjects with Benjamin Bratton. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

You're wheeling your haul out of Costco only to be accosted by the receipt-checker at the exit. You're fine, though, because you're not shoplifting anything. That slightly annoying feeling that the store assumes you're a criminal, it turns out, is tragically unwarranted, because those guys don't even care if you're shoplifting. In fact, the receipt-checkers are some kind of internal store Gestapo keeping tabs on the checkout cashiers.Writes one former employee: “Trust me, we’re not loss prevention, we have loss prevention in the store and that’s not us. We’re literally just trying to make sure our cashiers do the job right, and when we DO catch it, all the information gets stored. Who did it, what time, etc...and those cashiers get spoken to. This is not to benefit anyone but the member to improve the experience overall.” It's useful to remember that everything is not only worse than you think it is, but in ways you haven't yet considered. Read the rest

Perhaps strange things will yet again be afoot at the Circle K.From Comicbook.com:"Well, we're in pre-prep and are set to shoot in early 2019," Winter told The Hollywood Reporter. "So right now, all systems are go. My old line when Blockbuster was in business was that I'd never believe a film was a go until the video was at Blockbuster. But I don't know what to say anymore...Netflix?"Not long after the first official synopsis was released and Bill and Ted Face the Music looked like it was going to become a reality, Winter's co-star Keanu Reeves made some comments that chilled some of the heat fans were generating, essentially saying that the film was still looking for funding -- a consistent problem for years now. Shortly thereafter, Winter spoke at the Television Critics Association this week and told fans that despite Reeves's words of caution, the project is still moving forward a the same pace as it was.The threequel, which will see a middle-aged Bill Preston and Ted Logan trying to figure out why the future they were promised has still not happened."The fan response has been enormous. It helped us get the financing because there was an overwhelmingly positive response to the idea of us doing this," Winter said. "Even in the age of internet comment trolling, we haven't really encountered any pervasive negativity. The concerns that I've encountered are totally valid - don't screw up the tone of the first two, make it a real Bill & Ted movie. Read the rest

Who's the VC you most admire? Is it "super angel" investor Marc Andreessen, the 47-year-old billionaire behind over 40 successful startups? Or maybe it's Mary Meeker, the legendary VC who Forbes listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world in 2014.Whoever it is, TouchBase has got your investor worship covered with their new line of VC trading cards. They look like baseball cards -- stats and all -- but are much, much better.VCtradingcards.com is the leading online seller of TouchBase investor trading cards.We carry vintage and rare cards from the 1994 Sand Hill Road Series, the 2010 Gig Economy Series, the 1992 Private Equity Series, the 2015 Unicorn Series, and more.Some of our rarest VC cards include Don Valentine (Sequoia, investor in Atari), Mike Markkula (Angel, investor in Apple), and Jenny Lee (GGV, investor in AliBaba). You never know which cards you'll get in your packs.Many of the VCs featured have had multiple exits, but are on their way to more. This makes their cards highly collectible.And, if your favorite investor, or founder, isn't yet on a card, you can ask the company to print them on a future one.These are real. A VC Trading Cards five-pack is available for $59.99. Steep for ordinary folks, yes, but not Silicon Valley wheelers and dealers. Get'em while you can!Thanks, You! Read the rest

Julien's Auctions is running a large auction of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's stuff, including several pairs of his pajamas, board games, a pipe, and this sharp smoking jacket. Described as "a scarlet silk damask smoking jacket with shawl collar and self-tie belt closure," the high estimate is $5,000 but I bet it goes for much more. According to Julien's, "All proceeds of the sale will benefit the Hugh M. Hefner foundation in support of organizations that advocate for and defend civil rights, with special emphasis on first amendment rights and rational sex and drug policies since 1964."Hugh Hefner Bespoke Smoking Jacket (via Uncrate) Read the rest

Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles," the groundbreaking magickal 1990s comic series about a secret society fighting for our freedom in a world of high weirdness, will come to the small screen as part of the artist/writer's deal with Universal Cable Productions. From Variety:UCP is currently in production on Season 2 of “Happy!,” based on Morrison and Darick Robertson’s graphic novel of the same name. The Syfy series is executive produced by Morrison and Brian Taylor who also co-wrote the pilot. The series follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni), a corrupt ex-cop turned hit man whose life is changed by a relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named Happy (voice of Patton Oswalt).UCP, along with Amblin Television, is also working with Morrison, Taylor and David Wiener on adapting Aldous Huxley’s iconic dystopian novel “Brave New World.” Morrison serves as a writer and executive producer. Read the rest

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Trump's replacement for fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, thinks that if you're not Christian, you shouldn't be a federal judge. Judges should be "people of faith" and need to have a “biblical view of justice," and Whitaker would like to see a person's "world view," because if they have a secular world view, he'd be "very concerned with how they judge."Whitaker revealed his ignorance with these remarks during a 2014 conservative forum while vying for the Republican US Senate nomination in Iowa.The takeaway from this: According to the acting Attorney General of the United States, if you're open-minded, don't be a judge. Read the rest

This is just a glimpse of a photo Charlie Sorrel took of a new iPad Pro affixed, by no greater power than that of magnetism, to his fridge.I wouldn’t do this regularly. It’s far too scary, and the consequences dire, especially as a kitchen often has the hardest of all floor coverings — tiles — ready to smash the screen of your beautiful new 2018 iPad Pro. Read the rest