Boing Boing

Phrenology (the fake science of predicting personality from the shape of your cranial bones) is like Freddy Kruger, an unkillable demon who rises from the grave every time some desperate huckster decides they need to make a few extra bucks. The latest example? "Faception," a machine learning company in Tel Aviv, Israel, whose "proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology" profiles people, "revealing their personality based only on their facial image."They claim this ML system can guess whether you are a "Extrovert, a person with High IQ, Professional Poker Player or a threats (sic)."They pitch this as a technology for use in "smart cities" where the "dangerous world" (including "terrorists and other criminals") can be identified even if they are "unknown to the authorities" by a machine learning oracle that will convict you of being a threat based solely on an image of your face. What if it was possible to know whether an anonymous individual is a potential terrorist, an aggressive person, or a potential criminal? Better yet, what if that information could be obtained and used in real-time, when it matters the most?​Faception offers a breakthrough computer-vision and machine learning technology that goes beyond Biometrics. Our solution analyzes a person’s facial image and automatically reveals his personality, enabling security companies/agencies to more efficiently detect, focus and apprehend potential terrorists or criminals before they have the opportunity to do harm.​Our solution is easy to deploy with minimum integration work and can installed on the client hardware, the system can integrate with an existing face recognition platform and support operational hierarchy and reporting modules. Read the rest

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s be grateful for the short memories of the tabloids, which gleefully forget what they’ve previously written the moment it’s inconvenient for them.Prince Harry’s wife “Meghan Meets Diana’s Secret Daughter!” screams the cover of this week’s Globe, describing how Sarah, allegedly “conceived in a bizarre fertility test before Prince Charles and Diana wed,” met with the latest addition to the Royal Family on the last day of her recent visit to New Zealand.Yes, this is the same love child who was murdered by Prince Charles on the Greek isle of Crete in May 2016, according to a report the following month in -- where else? -- the Globe.Fortunately the demise of Diana’s mystery child has not curtailed her globe-trotting, and she turned up in the antipodes to warn Meghan: “Beware! Charles is a killer!” Though clearly not a very good one, if Diana’s daughter Sarah is still alive two years after Charles definitively killed her.The Globe explains her earlier demise as “a ruse to save her life!”Such a shame that the Pulitzer Prize for fiction has already been awarded this year.George Clooney’s wife of four years “Amal Takes The Twins!” proclaims the National Enquirer cover, reporting that the couple’s "$520 million divorce explodes!” The Globe goes old school with its headline “Bossy Wife Drives Clooney Loony!” and claims “He wants out after she bans sausage, cigars, snoring and cussing.”Unsurprisingly, neither party has actually filed for divorce, let alone cited “sausages” as grounds for the split. Read the rest

Five and a half years ago, Edward Snowden put his life on the line, gave up his country, and went into exile, just to reveal that he had been part of a widespread, illegal mass-surveillance program within the US government -- an illegal enterprise that the most senior spies in the nation had routinely lied about (including lying to Congress), and that had distorted the internet, suborning the titans of surveillance capitalism and pressing them into service as part of a program of national surveillance unlike any the world has ever seen.Now, Ars Technica's Sean Gallagher takes a very deep dive into the consequences of Snowden's works, talking to his allies, his critics, and his fans to get a sense of how we're thinking about Snowden's disclosures a half-decade later.A couple things are clear from the piece: the Snowden revelations changed the debate, making the issue of mass internet surveillance into something that has infused every other online policy discussion since; another is that the Snowden's critics are still insistent that even though the surveillance Snowden revealed was unequivocally illegal, and even though the spy agencies had been illegally concealing their illegal surveillance, and even though Snowden had exhausted every conceivable avenue for getting the NSA to confront its own illegality, despite all that, Snowden's critics are still sure that he didn't have to go public, and that he could have done it all differently (none of them seem to have a coherent theory of why Snowden would risk so much and sacrifice so much if there was something else he could have done). Read the rest

Julian Oliver ("Critical Engineer, artist, immigrant and educator. Shoots arrows, eats plants") has found a novel and by all appearances very satisfying way to safely erase the data from old hard drives: 50lb Longbow, two arrows at 15 yards. (via JWZ)Hitachi HDD: Z7K320-250 / 250GB / SATA 3.0Gb/s. Data erasure method: 50lb Longbow, two arrows at 15 yards. pic.twitter.com/raNVkfilqO— Julian Oliver (@julian0liver) July 3, 2017 Read the rest

Sphero makes great RC style toys that teach kids programming. R2D2 is now available for $40.R2-D2 App-Enabled Droid via Amazon Read the rest

The XOXO festival (previously) is one of the best events I've ever attended; and this year's was the biggest, most inclusive one yet, but one of the things that makes XOXO so special is the cap on attendance, which means most of us can't attend; that's why it's such good news that the organizers have begin posting videos from all the presentations for your delectation. (via Kottke) Read the rest

From Thinkgeek, the $150 Fallout 76 Pip-Boy 2000 Construction Kit, a full-sized, wearable replica of the Pip-Boy 2000 Mark VI, in a vegan leather case, with a "completely in-world instruction manual." (via Wonderlandblog) Read the rest

Andrew Salomone writes, "I work as a preparator for The George Eastman Museum at the Kodak founder's historic estate in Rochester, NY. It's the world's oldest photography museum and has an extensive collection of early photographic and moving image objects, like zoetropes. The house itself is a local landmark and has put on an annual gingerbread house display for decades. This year, a couple of my colleagues and I decided to make a gingerbread house zoetrope and then wrote a tutorial about it. Read the rest

UK Digital Minister Margot James has vowed to crack down on "exploitative algorithms" used by airlines that deliberately split up families' seat assignments if they did not pay for pre-assigned seats; James says that the airlines used these algorithms to coerce families into paying for pre-assigned seating.According to James, the algorithms did not distribute seat-assignments randomly -- rather, they ensured that people with the same surname were seated apart from one another. The practice is most commonly ascribed to Ryanair -- an airline notorious for abusing, coercing and deceiving passengers -- but has been observed with other airlines as well.As The Independent reported earlier this year, splitting up passengers could hinder safe and rapid evacuations, according to a report produced by the Royal Aeronautical Society Flight Operations Group (FOG).Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent MindsThe report, entitled Emergency Evacuation of Commercial Passenger Aeroplanes, emphasised the importance of family members being seated together in an emergency.It lists “Passenger seat allocation” as one its 17 recommendations to improve aircraft evacuations: “Operators should not charge for family members to sit together. Airlines face crack down on use of ‘exploitative’ algorithm that splits up families on flights [Helen Coffey/Independent](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Matthew Hurst, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

The Sackler Family (previously) are a family of self-styled philanthropist billionaires who have been largely successful in their campaign to whitewash their family name by giving away a few percentage points off the profits they earned from deliberately creating the opioid epidemic by tricking and bribing doctors to overprescribe Oxycontin, falsely claiming that it was not addictive, and promoting the idea that any doctor who left a patient feeling pain was engaged in malpractice.Destroying America was only the beginning for the Sacklers: even as their family business, Purdue Pharma, was admitting to its wrongdoing, they were engaged in exactly the same kind of deliberate corporate murder in new markets like Brazil -- and then attacking public education with a ideologically motivated PR campaign aimed at replacing public schools with charter schools.But the noose is tightening on the Sacklers: as the family dissolves into a bickering mess, they are facing mass litigation and criminal investigations all around the world.The Guardian's Joanna Walters rounds up a good cross-section of the legal troubles descending on the Sacklers, who are on the receiving end of legal threats from cities, states, class actions, and more.A spokesman for John Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, declined to comment. Prosecutors for the southern and eastern federal districts of New York state did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the northern district of New York said the Department of Justice does not confirm, deny or comment on the existence of any investigation. Read the rest

Prepare to be impressed: While it doesn't actually play music, this 2,798-piece miniature LEGO model of a concert grand piano does have 25 independently working keys, a removable keyboard, and a height-adjustable bench. It also has a working damper and pedal, a self-playing mode, a working piano lid, and more. LEGO master SleepyCow engineered it to contribute to LEGO Ideas in the hopes that it will be voted in to be mass produced as a retail kit. He writes:Ever since I started learning music, I have always wanted to build a piano out of LEGO bricks. I have also been asked many times by my students about the inner-workings of a piano. I think this will be a great set to teach students about piano mechanics. I've seen many people do it in different ways, but I decided to make my own version, as well as try to make it as similar to a real piano as possible with correct proportions.Vote for it here.(The Awesomer, Mike Shouts) Read the rest

Seth Kaufman sends his video for "Godot the Musical," saying: "It is, I venture, the funkiest promotional book video ever made. The script appears in my new book Metaphysical Graffiti: Rock 'n' Roll & the Meaning of Life. So I decided to shoot it as a video. It recasts Vladimir and Estragon as hype-men waiting for 'The Master G' to come and rap." Read the rest

When Toronto attorney Charles Vance Millar died in 1926, he left behind a mischievous will that promised a fortune to the woman who gave birth to the most children in the next 10 years. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the Great Stork Derby and the hope and controversy it brought to Toronto's largest families during the Great Depression.We'll also visit some Portuguese bats and puzzle over a suspicious work crew.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The patterns that emerge from plywood once it's sanded to a sphere are beautiful, but it all comes down to step 1: get the maths, the measuring and the cuts exactly right. Step 0 is, of course, "own a lot of expensive shop equipment." [via]Previously: Gray's Shapes. Read the rest

The announcement of Diablo: Immortal was met by howling dismay. That the ultimate PC nerd action RPG would end up looking like a reskin of the mobile-industry monogame is illustrative of changing times, though it's hard to care much when the anger at corporate greed seems inseparable from the other hatreds. But this funny video makes the basic point rather well: Diablo was always about loot, and in 2018, the loot isn't going to be on someone else's marketplace. Read the rest

Everyone raised in my hometown learned to recite In Flanders Fields in school. Every year, as November 11th, Remembrance Day, drew near, we were taught about the First World War. We made poppies. We prepared for a concert to honor our veterans. Elderly men with often vacant, watery eyes would visit our classrooms and talk to us about their time overseas. Sometimes they cried. Other times, they laughed as they talked about long absent friends and their lost youth. As I grew older, I marched in my town's annual Remembrance Day parade: first as an cadet and later in a different uniform. Each year as we gathered at the armory after the parade had ended, there were fewer survivors of the First and Second World War there to greet us. Decades have passed since those days. The men and women who served their fellows and the future generations that would become of them have largely passed on. No matter where I am in the world, I take pause on November 11th, as many others do, to remember those that gave up their lives in the name of democracy and decency. I try to hold the millions that died from hate, xenophobia and greed. I give thanks that I am now too old and too broken to fight. I fear for those in uniform today that will see things that will never leave them and for those who deployed who will never come home.Amidst these meditations, I wonder over who will carry the torch of remembrance of wars and atrocities past, once those who survived them are no more. Read the rest

If you're planning on taking a salad to your Thanksgiving potluck this year, be wicked careful of what you throw into it: The Centers for Disease Control is currently warning everyone, frigging everywhere to avoid romaine lettuce as if eating it could dose you with E Coli... because there's a pretty decent chance that it will. According to the CDC's Twitter feed for the time being we none of us should be eating "...any romaine lettuce, including whole heads and hearts, chopped, organic and salad mixes with romaine" until they figure out what the source of E Coli is and how much of the romaine supply chain has been contaminated by it. For the complete lowdown on what the CDC knows so far, you'll want to check out their E coli alert page. For those unfamiliar with it, E coli (Escherichia coli,) bacteria can be found in the guts of healthy folks and many animals. It's fine, for the most part! Some strains of the bug, however, are not so fine. Should one of these strains of E coli get into our systems, typically via the ingestion of contaminated water or food, those stricken by the bug can suffer symptoms ranging fa quick bout of the trots to serious issues with symptoms including severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.So, maybe serve up a kale, iceberg or coleslaw salad this year, instead. It'll give everyone gathered around your table one more reason to be thankful.Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest

When I was 12 years old, a kid that I thought was my friend but turned out to only be into me for my Nintendo, tempted me to try a little something that he snuck out of his mother's liquor cabinet. We ingested it! We were so drunk! We were full of shit: we'd been eating powdered pina colada mix, trying to convince each other that we were, indeed, hammered. Anyway, booze isn't the problem for young folks that it once was. More times than not, of late, the first experience that young folks'll have with mind altering substances outside of spending too long inside drawing with a Sharpie will likely be with marijuana.From The Verge:This trend is not because teens are smoking cannabis more than ever. Rather, the change is because teens are smoking cigarettes and drinking less while the numbers for marijuana have held steady, according to Katherine M. Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and co-author of the new study, published this week in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The authors found this by analyzing 40 years of surveys from American high school seniors. For example, in 1995, three-fourths of seniors who used both marijuana and cigarettes had tried cigarettes first. By 2016, only 40 percent had tried cigarettes first. Today, less than half of teens try alcohol and cigarettes before trying cannabis. (The researchers didn’t look specifically at whether alcohol or tobacco came next.) Other studies have found that, in general, teens are doing fewer drugs than ever, except for marijuana. Read the rest

At some point, it happens to everyone: Your car breaks down. Your electricity fails at home. And if it happens at night, the first tool you need is your vision. There's a more reliable way to get it back than that nearly-dead penlight at the back of your junk drawer or glove compartment: The UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlight.When we say military grade, we're talking 500 lumens with an adjustable zoom that can provide illumination for up to a mile. The wide working voltage will ensure that it keeps a long charge on a single AA battery, so it's there when emergencies happen. The multiple modes (bright, lower bright and SOS) give it versatility, and it's durable enough to be taken along on any trail expedition.Don't wait for the next emergency. Pick up a 2-pack of the UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlight with storage case on sale for $14.99 - and take an additional 20% off this best-seller with the coupon code BFSAVE20. Read the rest

Patrick Costello (previously) writes, "My mom shares her recipe for cranberry orange bread with help from my dad. They have been married for fifty years and they are still crazy for each other. The full recipe is in the video description." Read the rest

Things are not looking good for Michael Avenatti. His ex-girlfriend Mareli Miniutti says he violently dragged her out of bed and called her a 'f--king bitch.'Mareli Miniutti, 24, is described as an “aspiring actress” by CNN. A Los Angeles judge today granted Miniutti a restraining order against celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, whom she claims physically and verbally assaulted her. Miniutti says she was in a relationship with Avenatti, who is 47, and that they lived together. She accuses him of hitting her face with pillows, shouting that she was an “ungrateful fu**ing bitch,” and dragging her across the floor.Avenatti was arrested last week by police in Los Angeles as a suspect of felony domestic violence, and released on bail the same day. He denies having been violent against “any woman,” “ever.” He has not been charged with a crime.CNN and other news organizations today confirm that Miniutti is the woman who is the alleged victim in last week's much-covered arrest. Avenatti would probably claim that he's the victim, but I digress.I also spoke with Mareli Miniutti’s husband, Michael Miniutti. He told me: "In Mareli's defense, she was never aggressive. She never put me in an aggressive state of mind or anything like that. She’s a very calm, well-mannered, respectful individual. Very polite. Classy woman."— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) November 20, 2018Excerpt from CNN:In a declaration filed as part of the request for a restraining order in Los Angeles Superior Court, Miniutti, 24, said she and Avenatti had been dating since October 2017 and living together since January of this year. Read the rest

I love the clothes from Volante Design ("Superhuman Streetwear"); their latest is the "Starfleet 2364" line of men's and women's jackets inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation uniforms.The jackets are made of heavy denim and are basically extremely well-styled/tailored biker jackets (like Volante's excellent Hacker jackets), partially or fully unzipping them and folding down their lapels takes them from "cosplay" to "cosplay adjacent" in an instant. They've got loads of interior and exterior pockets, and are double-stitched and come in "Command Red, Operations Gold, or Sciences Blue," sized 37 - 51, 55 (men), and 33 - 45 (women). They're made in New York City, retail for $315, and will ship by December 14th. Read the rest

Film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term "male gaze" to describe the "masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer": in a paper for the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Southwestern Law School professor John Tehranian applies Mulvey's idea to the complex and often nonsensical way that copyright determines who is an "author" of a work and thus entitled to control it, and shows how the notion of authorship reflects and amplifies the power imbalances already present in the world.Copyright law presumes the existence of an "author" in whom copyright can be vested, but the concept of an author is complicated, especially as media have become more bound up in the cooperation of multiple parties (photographers and subjects, actors and directors, etc). The actual rules of copyright tend to follow industry practices: that is, the industry arrives at a certain way of doing things, and then there's a dispute, and the courts usually look at how the industry is doing things, and declares that to be the law (or sometimes Congress enshrines into law the existing practices of industry). In industry, there are always power imbalances that reflect underlying social conditions: the person who owns a movie studio has more power than the actors they hire, the record label usually has more power than the musicians it records.So as courts were asked to develop a theory of authorship, they arrived at the idea that the "author" is the person who commits the work to some tangible medium: the photographer, not the model; and where there are complex processes involved in that tangible fixation, the "master mind" orchestrating the production becomes the author (the director, not the camera operator). Read the rest

Researchers at Melbourne, Australia's RMIT University devised these bizarre "third arm" chest-mounted"robots to experiment with what they call "playful eating." For science. Video below. From RMIT University's Exertion Games Lab:In this experience, all three arms (the person’s own two arms and the “third” arm, the robotic arm) are used for feeding oneself and the other person. The robotic arm (third arm) is attached to the body via a vest. We playfully subverted the functioning of the robotic arm so that its final movements (once it has picked up the food), i.e. whether to feed the wearer or the partner, are guided by the facial expressions of the dining partner...Mapping of the partner’s “more positive” facial expression to the feeding of food to the partner (via the wearer’s third arm) we hoped would elicit joy, laughter, and a sense of sharing based on the knowledge of feeding one another that is associated with positive emotions, however, this could also result in the perception of a loss of agency over what one eats. Through to-and-fro ambiguous movements of the third arm in the air (when sensing a “neutral” facial expression of the dining partner), it gave an opportunity to the diners to express their reactions more vividly, as we know that facial expressions become a key element to engage with a partner while eating."Arm-A-Dine: Towards Understanding the Design of Playful Embodied Eating Experiences" (PDF)More at IEEE Spectrum: "Feed Your Friends With Autonomous Chest-Mounted Robot Arms" Read the rest

The Intercept has published slides from Partnership for America’s Health Care Future -- a lobbying group representing the for-profit health-care sector -- detailing the organization's plan to kill Medicare for All.The slides and the accompanying reporting paint a picture of party establishment figures who have cycled into the lobbying industry -- former staffers for Obama and both Bill and Hillary Clinton -- and are now guns for hire, taking for-profit health industry money to try to scuttle the idea of extending universal health care to everyone in America.The effort to reframe the debate has two prongs: a set of messages crafted for elite DC policymakers and another set aimed at heading off the mounting public approval for Medicare for All, now supported by 70% of Americans including a majority of registered Republicans.As you might expect, given the stiff opposition, the Partnership's playbook hints at some pretty dirty tricks.In one planning document circulated over the summer, the Partnership suggested a series of messages to wean Americans away from supporting single payer. The talking points emphasize that the current system provides “world-class care,” and that any move away from the Affordable Care Act would be “ripping apart our current system.”The strategy exploits familiar themes that have long been used by business groups against new government health care programs, calling for allies to say lines such as “bureaucrats in DC have no understanding of a person’s medical situation and will be making decisions about your health care instead of doctors.”The Partnership plans to form a speakers bureau of former Democratic elected officials who can leverage the media to make the case that expanding Medicare is bad politics and policy. Read the rest

On November 18, 1978, more than nine hundred members of the Peoples Temple, under the guidance of cult leader Rev. Jim Jones, killed themselves or were murdered in the jungles of Guyana. Five years before the mass suicide-murder though, Jones was a pillar of the San Francisco community, hobnobbing with government officials and other big-shots while leading his adoring congregation in religious, social, and political activism. It was during those sunny days that Jones and the Peoples Temple released "He's Able," a soulful gospel album featuring the congregation's choir, band, and of course their fearless leader. Rolling Stone's David Chiu shares the history of this private press LP that took on a whole new life after its creators' tragic deaths:In a way, the Temple choir and the band were a microcosm of the church: a group of performers of different races, age groups and social backgrounds who came together to advance progressive and social causes, such as helping the underprivileged. “These are voices that no longer are here,” says Leslie Wagner-Wilson, a former Temple choir member, of the album. “And they were singing because they had hope. They had a hope for a better world.”..Jim Jones himself appeared on the record, singing lead on the hymnal “Down From His Glory,” a reworking of the Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio.” (Listen below.) “He came in with a couple of his guards that were with him,” (music director James) Beam recalls of that particular session with Jones. “Everybody in the recording studio that worked there looked at this guy and went, ‘Whoa, what’s going on with this?’ He had his sunglasses on at 12 at night. Read the rest

If you are looking to improve your Fortnite performance this video tutorial may prove supremely helpful.I had not messed with my sensitivity settings in months. A quick tweak led to a few multi-kill games last night!I also enjoy the target practice carnival games that Epic has set up in Playground mode.Thanks, Reddit! Read the rest

The End of Trust (previously) is a special issue of McSweeney's, produced in collaboration with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on the themes of technology, privacy and surveillance: it's in stores today, and free to download under a Creative Commons license.The collection features writing by EFF’s team, including Executive Director Cindy Cohn, Education and Design Lead Soraya Okuda, Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass, Special Advisor Cory Doctorow, and board member Bruce Schneier.We also recruited some of our favorite thinkers on digital rights to contribute to the collection: anthropologist Gabriella Coleman contemplates anonymity; Edward Snowden explains blockchain; journalist Julia Angwin and Pioneer Award-winning artist Trevor Paglen discuss the intersections of their work; Pioneer Award winner Malkia Cyril discusses the historical surveillance of black bodies; and Ken Montenegro and Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying debate author and intelligence contractor Myke Cole on the question of whether there’s a way law enforcement can use surveillance responsibly. The End of Trust (McSweeney's 54) [EFF] Read the rest

Like the billions in public money destined for Amazon's benefit and that of the world's richest man, it's all perfectly legal.The two employees decided to the buy units just before the first press reports surfaced that Amazon was likely to choose Long Island City for its new headquarters, Mr. Aguayo said. The buyers now live in New Jersey and Queens, he added.While employees aren’t permitted to buy and sell stocks based on nonpublic information, several real estate lawyers said they were aware of no such prohibition for real-estate transactions.The WSJ reports no "reliable figures" on sales in the area since Amazon's announcement (and immediately before it, evidently) but it's explosive. One brokerage says it sold 150 condos in the last four days, 15 times its normal volume. Read the rest

Fantasy and science fiction author and political activist Steven Brust (previously) was this year's Guest of Honor at Philcon, an excellent Philadelphia-area science fiction (I have also had the privilege to be Philcon's GoH, and it's a great con); his guest of honor speech is entitled Truth as a Vehicle for Enhancing Fiction, Fiction as a Vehicle for Discovering Truth, and he's posted a transcript to his blog.It's a fascinating examination of how philosophy and fiction mesh, and particularly how "pulp" forms of fiction like fantasy and science fiction both convey philosophical ideas and benefit from their inclusion -- and how people who claim not to have a philosophy or to adhere to "isms" are in fact, espousing a philosophy.So now we turn it around, because yeah, we really can can discover truth, understand reality better, through fiction, and that’s how we create fiction that hits hard, that punches, that stays with us. But now the question is, what sort of truth do we find in our made-up worlds?I call a book successful insofar as people who read it are glad they did. But that’s only because I’ve learned that it’s easier to meet my standards if I set them low. In other words, “a good story well told,” as the saying goes, is worthwhile, but not all that challenging. We all know a story can do more than that. We’ve all read books that gave us new ideas to play with, or made us reconsider things we thought we knew. Read the rest

$5 from the $17 purchase price of each hand-painted Trumpturd squishy is directed to the charity of your choice, from among the ACLU, Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, or the Institute for Free Speech. (Thanks, Jared!) Read the rest

Trump's "Operation Faithful Patriot" was a $200,000,000 exercise in which 6,000 US troops were deployed within the USA, to the US/Mexico border, nominally to repel the migrant caravan of desperate, poor, terrified asylum seekers.At the time, many accused Trump of staging an election stunt to terrorize his base, part of the lies about Middle Eastern terrorists and MS13 gang-members amongst the refugee caravan. Trump supporters insisted that the president was merely fulfilling his duty to ensure the safety of America and Americans.However, Trump has now announced that the troops will be home by Christmas, right around the time the caravan is expected to arrive. The American people are $200 million poorer for it -- that's money we can ill afford, given the record-beating deficit the Trump administration is set to run, thanks to all the corporate welfare and one percenter tax-breaks he's handed out.In other words, the president spent millions in taxpayer dollars on a stunt that failed completely. Despite the withdrawal, Trump insisted on Sunday that the U.S. is basically under siege, tweeting “the U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it,” saying that the caravan “causing crime and big problems in Mexico” and directing the migrants, who we’re sure are checking social media right now to “Go home!”Administration Admits Border Deployment Was a $200 Million Election Stunt [Bess Levin/Vanity Fair] Read the rest

This fancy pigeon showed up on a Glendale, Arizona woman's back patio. She called in rescue organization Fallen Feathers who are now seeking the bird's owner. From AZFamily:"He was in her back patio and he kept coming up to the sliding back door and looking like he wanted to come in," said Kieran.She's convinced the pigeon is someone's pet and not wild. Read the rest

The population of England is said here to be the longest-running data series. The source is the Bank of England and other enterprises of the English state (the Doomsday Book!), but presented here by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.The Black Death was rough. Read the rest

Every year or so I buy another 5 pack of these Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens.I keep these in my travel bag. Unlike refillable fountain pens, of which I have far too many, these do not dry out if forgotten in the pocket of a jacket. They do not leak when airplane cabins pressurize. My hands stay clean and lack the telltale mark of ink on my middle finger that fountain pen travel usually engenders.They write just fine.Pilot V Pen (Varsity) Disposable Fountain Pens, Black Ink, Small Point Value Set of 5 via Amazon Read the rest

🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨 The Verge confirms that "Twitter redesigns iOS app to de-emphasize follower counts". Posted with the subheading "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been touting a redesign like this for months", the 400 word-long, anonymously sourced scoop confirms that the font on the following/followers line is now a bit smaller.Twitter has made follower counts appear less prominent on its iOS app by making the font size smaller in a new redesign effort, according to a Twitter spokesperson. The change comes after CEO Jack Dorsey repeatedly said that he wants to rethink how the company could prioritize “meaningful” conversations over numbers like retweets, likes, and follows."By decreasing the font sizes," adds reporter Makena Kelly, "users’ eyes aren’t drawn to the number nearly as much as when it’s larger."The meaningfulness UX revolution is screenshotted above.I can’t stop thinking about this blog post pic.twitter.com/CqwZXT9bv4— Andy Orin (@andyorin) November 20, 2018 Read the rest

There's the "Laser-Induced Plasma Effect" (one laser dislodges atmospheric electrons and spins up plasma; a second blows up the ionizing gas "to release an ear-splitting burst of sound energy"); there's the "Variable Kinetic System" that "fires 180 rounds of micro-­pulverized burning irritant (or stink bombs or inky liquid)" and there's the "Pre-Emplaced Electric Vehicle Stopper" ("emits high-voltage pulses that disrupt the vehicle’s engine").Rebecca Heilwei's roundup of the DoD's less-lethal weapons program is awfully willing to give the DoD and its private-sector contractors the benefit of the doubt, from the use of the term "nonlethal" (a propaganda term used to promote the unrealistic idea that these things won't kill people) to the uncritical repetition of the DoD and its contractors' description of the effects of these weapons (for example, the statement that the Pre-Emplaced Electric Vehicle Stopper "won’t electrocute the passengers" -- but will it stop their pacemakers? Trigger their implanted defibrillators? Short out their cochlear implants? Glitch out their artificial pancreases? Trigger seizures?).The story would be better served with a large helping of the approach of pioneering Wired cover-woman Limor "Lady Ada" Fried, whose Open Source Non-Lethal Weapons project is a critical investigation into how these weapons perform in the real world, under independent scrutiny.2. Carbon Nanotube ThermophoneInstead of a traditional loudspeaker’s array of cones, coils, and magnets, this lightweight projector pushes heat currents through cylinders of pure, finely twisted carbon. Rapidly warming and cooling these tubes creates noise, a technique that, the Defense Department hopes, could one day imbue tiny drones with the power to scream “Drop your weapons, enemy scum!”3. Read the rest

2018 was a big year for 16-year-old singer/songwriter Billie Eilish. Her rise to stardom can be measured in numbers. Last year at this time, she had 257,000 followers on Instagram and she now has 6.3 million. The most people she had performed in front of was just 500, and now that number's at 40,000. The jump to fame has had a price though and I think you'll be surprised at how tenderly she mourns the less-famous, more innocent "Billie" of just last year.On October 18th, 2017, after a busy day of promotional interviews in New York City, Billie Eilish met with Vanity Fair to discuss the 15-year-old’s breakthrough success. On October 18th, 2018, after a long day of pre-tour rehearsals, Billie spoke with VF again to answer the exact same questions and look back at a time capsule of her answers from last year. Read the rest

View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Nov 18, 2018 at 1:39pm PST Peanut butter and jelly on a warm pizza crust is pretty darn incredible.Hidden in the bowels of Disneyland's old Disneyland Hotel lies Goofy's Kitchen. This character dining experience is unremarkable in the world of character dining experiences, except for one amazing item found on the smorgasbord: Peanut Butter and Jelly Pizza.Years ago this amazing treat became a fabled delicacy for my daughter and I. We encountered PB&J pizza the very first time we went to Goofy's Kitchen, however later visits always found the pizza plate empty. While my darling kid had only enjoyed PB&J pizza once, the dish was imprinted on her as a magical-yet-unobtainable treat.I loved the pizza too! As a youth pb&j in my dad's proto-George Foreman Grill was highly regarded. Lightly toasted bread on the outside with packets of hot gooey peanut butter and jelly in the middle? Honestly, sometimes jelly wasn't required! As a young adult, toasted or microwaved peanut butter sandwiches were also a staple. View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Nov 18, 2018 at 1:25pm PST Last weekend we wanted a treat worth the calories. I couldn't remember exactly what the pizza looked like and after many years of joking, we checked the internet...Naturally, there is a forum!Goofy's Kitchen PB&J Pizza was so popular that Disney either did, or does, offer the recipe to plain folk like us! Read the rest

This is cute. To promote their new animated movie Ralph Breaks the Internet, John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman answered the internet's most-asked questions about themselves in the latest WIRED Autocomplete Interview video. Read the rest

On January 1st, 2019, Washington State will be rolling out some of the toughest gun laws in the United States. If you want to buy a semi automatic rifle in Washington next year, you'll have to be 21 years of age, instead of 18. You'll have to store that puppy safely, too: According to the Seattle Times, in some circumstances, gun owners will be criminally liable if an unauthorized individual uses their boom-stick to commit a crime. It's a move that should make everyone in the state feel just a little bit safer, what with all of the gun violence of late.Provided the cops are willing to enforce the new laws.From The Root:Republic, Washington, Police Chief Loren Culp, whose name makes him sound like a placeholder villain in a crime procedural, has announced that his police force, comprising all of him and his deputy, will not enforce the law when it goes into effect in January 2019.Culp has proposed an ordinance to his city council—supposedly based on the Second Amendment—essentially saying that gun regulation laws like Initiative 1639, the one in question, infringe on citizens’ constitutional right to bear arms and through the ordinance would be “hereby declared to be invalid in the City of Republic,” per the Times.In an interview with the Seattle Times, Culp made it clear that he thinks that having to be accountable for your firearm by reporting it stolen within five days of the theft is unreasonable bullshit. Making sure that folks under 21 years of age aren't allowed to bop around with a semi-automatic weapon? Read the rest

Chelsea G. Summers' beautiful article about a beatiful place recalls its ugly history: the murder of 91 "witches" in Vardø, Norway, part of a century-long persecution against which the Salem witch trials pale in comparison.There’s no easy way to describe Vardø’s extreme, compelling weirdness. It’s hard to believe that Vardø once held a population of 5,000 in the many buildings that squat on concrete haunches around the harbor. Vardø’s hotels once burst with rich Russians who traded rubles for cod. The wharf once slapped with the sounds of fish being beheaded, gutted, skinned, salted and dried. The harbor once rang with the sounds of ships — at first small with sails, then larger with motors, then metal monsters — coming and going. Just 70 years ago, sailors swaggered in and out of Vardø’s bars and shops; just 25 years ago, more than 350 Sri Lankans staffed the fish processing plants. Now Vardø is a fraction of its former size, and its ghosts seems to hug you close.Photo: Chelsea G. Summers Read the rest

In the Washington Post, Eli Saslow profiles Christopher Blair, a 46-year-old "liberal" hoaxter whose Facebook group, "America’s Last Line of Defense," is full of far-right hoaxes that he creates and then reveals, in order to humiliate the Trumpist "taters" who spread them; and Shirley Chapian, a 76-year-old retiree who believes and repeats all the racist hoaxes Saslow creates and will not disbelieve them, even when Saslow reveals the gag.Saslow's portraits are full of contradictions: Blair and his friends use the hoaxes to push Trump supporters into making racist statements that violate Facebook's Terms of Service and then get them kicked off (the same tactic the dictator of Cambodia uses to get opposition leaders kicked off the service), and they also get Macedonian hoax-sites shut down for plagiarizing their own hoaxes. But at the same time, they turn a real profit from allowing ads to run against their hoax stories, which are repeatedly labeled "satire" but whose satirical nature is lost on the right-wingers who repeat them.Chapian is also a complicated figure who once belonged to the National Organization for Women and campaigned for wage equality, but who is so willing and eager to repeat the racist hoaxes that Blair creates that it's obvious where her credibility springs from -- that is, which of her beliefs is being confirmed by Blair. But Chapian is also a tragic figure, someone whose bad decision to retire to Pahrump, NV has taken her far from the movie theaters she loves, and whose obsession with keeping up with all the bad news about the rise of Sharia law and the invading waves of immigrants has supplanted the needlepoint she once found such satisfaction in. Read the rest

Sausage brand Jimmy Dean is offering wrapping paper that smells like their product line as part of a promotional "recipe gift exchange." To get some of this sausage-scented wrapping paper, you just have to cook up a recipe using their sausage and submit it to their exchange. You can then pick the wrapping paper, or one of the other branded things they offer, as your gift. Then you can enjoy the magic of huffing the meaty-smelling presents under the tree. Or not.(Brandflakes) Read the rest

Werner Herzog is responsible for many strange, wonderful things. Everything he's involved in is kissed by a brutal beauty--even that first Jack Reacher movie, starring Tom Cruise. In this video from Future States, Mr. Herzog gives voice to the odyssey of a plastic bag: once loved and then discarded by its maker. For a video that runs just under 19 minutes, it runs through a full gauntlet of emotions, weirdness and existential questions. Read the rest

Enjoy this trippy kaleidoscopic ultra-HD short film posted by Michael Shainblum.I am proud to share my latest abstract mirror timelapse video “The Wormhole”. I knew after creating Mirror city I wanted to keep exploring the idea of kaleidoscopic imagery in timelapse. This time I wanted to expand upon the idea, creating scenes that feel like new worlds in alternate universes. I utilized camera techniques such as hyperlapse and aerial video to further showcase the surrealism in the video. Cities showcased in this video are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Dubai, Doha, Singapore, Shanghai. I really hope you enjoy the video! Read the rest

To show kids that she was just a nice person playing a wicked witch, Wizard of Oz actress Margaret Hamilton dropped by Mister Rogers' neighborhood in 1975. Hamilton, a former kindergarten teacher, talked with Rogers about how she dreamed of being a witch when she was a girl and was "thrilled" when the part was offered to her as an adult. "Sometimes, Mister Rogers, I'm a little unhappy because lots of children are quite scared by her and that always makes me feel a little sad."(Rusty's Electric Dreams) Read the rest

YouTube is (legally) hosting a full-HD copy of Hackers, the seminal 1995 movie introducing mainstream America to the world of amateur logging and hack-and-drag tree poaching in the old Yukon. Read the rest

Republican state AGs were in the majority...until this months election, when the majority flipped, with the most climate-denying AGs (in Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada) losing their jobs to Dems who ran on strong environmental platforms.The outgoing climate-deniers pioneered a strategy of coordinated lawsuits and legal action (such as amicus briefs) to hold back action on climate and liability for fossil-fuel companies. Now that Dems hold those offices, they could deploy the same tactics to grind the climate-wrecking looters' plans to a halt -- for example, Michigan's new Democratic AG Dana Nessel has vowed to shut down the Enbridge pipeline that carries Canada's planet-destroying, filthy tar-sands oil to US markets. In addition to the New York suit, which relies on a 1921 anti-fraud act aimed at curbing Wall Street excesses, and a suit by Rhode Island, which uses its anti-nuisance laws to hold 14 oil and gas companies liable for pollution, Massachusetts is using consumer protection laws to argue that the industry’s failure to alert the public to the long-term risks of its products amounted to false and unfair advertising.“One thing that’s really interesting in working with Democratic attorneys general across the country is that every office is a little bit different in how it’s structured, what powers they’ve been given, what their budgets are, what sort of authority they have,” Ulmer said. “When it comes to issue-specific questions, it truly is going to depend on the state.“But I can tell you a number of these candidates have talked about the importance of climate change, protecting the environment, protecting natural resources, making sure that the citizens of their states have clean water and really clean air and protecting the future during their campaigns. Read the rest

No one's ever satisfied with what they have. If you're given a piece of cake, chances are, you'd be happy with another helping. You've got a job, but you'd like a better one. You can enjoy the view from the valley, but the scenery would be better at the top of the mountain.Canada has legal cannabis. Now the cops are worried about Canadians making their own hash oil using dangerous methods.From the Kelowna Daily Courier:Alberta law enforcement officials say they are worried that the legalization of marijuana could lead to potentially explosive consequences for users taking a do-it-yourself approach to making cannabis derivatives at home.Just over a month ago, Canadians were given the right to purchase dried and fresh cannabis and unconcentrated forms of cannabis oil.It is likely to be another year before concentrates will be legalized."What's going to happen — and this is just my prediction — is that people are going to do a butane hash extraction at home and they're going to blow themselves up," said Sgt. Guy Pilon, clandestine lab co-ordinator with the Edmonton Police Service."We've had a number of those in the recent past. People blow themselves up trying to make this weed oil."According to Sgt. Pilon, in the days before dope was legalized in Canada, the Edmonton Police Service dealt with only a handful of homemade lab setups designed to extract oil hash oil, using butane. The oil extracted is wicked potent. Unfortunately, using butane to extract it is wicked dangerous: a single spark with butane in the air will ensure you have a bad day. Read the rest