Boing Boing

A new report from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority attributes the majority (51%-73%) of the prodigious 2010-2016 increase in San Francisco traffic congestion on Uber and Lyft; the rideshare companies dispute the finding and say that it's really down to increased Amazon Prime delivery vehicles and Lyft has offered to work with the city on "congestion pricing" whereby use of the public roads are taxed at the same rate for both the city's incredibly wealthy tech elite and struggling underclass, with the intention of limiting private vehicle use.The companies have agreed to a 3.5% tax on single-rider trips to fund public transit, which will only go into effect if it is ratified by ballot initiative in 2019.San Francisco's public transit is markedly over capacity; it's been years since I last got a seat on a BART train and I frequently have to wait for multiple trains to go by before I find a car with enough space to board.By contrast, the French city of Dunkirk made its public transit free and increased service levels and saw a massive decrease in private vehicle use and traffic congestion; riders have discovered a newfound socialibility with their neighbors that they find delightful.“In the stories that are told all the time, blanket statements are made,” says Joe Castiglione, the deputy director for technology, data, and analysis at the SFCTA. “That really ignores a lot of the reality of the situation: Not that these impacts are spread everywhere in space or time, but that, in fact, they are highly concentrated in space and time.”Castiglione and his colleagues will present the report to the city’s Board of Supervisors, its main legislative body, on Tuesday morning. Read the rest

Tech-sector workers have enormous market-power: companies find it easier to raise cash than to use it to hire qualified developers.Almost every business -- not just Big Tech -- is bidding on tech talent. People mock Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto, but when you're courting workers who have their pick of employers, offering a chance to do meaningful, ethical work is a huge differentiator that can mean the difference of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The poorly understood corollary of this is that whenever Google contemplates something evil, those same developers walk off the job, and those potential millions leave with them. Google's leadership knows this, and while it doesn't prevent them from doing evil, it does change the internal calculations when evil is on the table: when evil costs you something, it needs a much bigger upside before it is profitable enough to pursue. Every tech company has its own version of "don't be evil" (Facebook's is "bring the world closer together"). Even if the corporate leadership pays lip service to this motto, the all-important workforce sometimes takes it to heart.Ever since big tech's leaders attended a meeting at Trump tower with a newly elected fascist who wanted to deport huge slices of their workforce and use big data to create concentration camps, big tech's workforce has been up in arms, founding groups like the Tech Workers Coalition and connecting their work to the problems in the world around them.From Microsoft to Google to Salesforce to Amazon and beyond, the tech industry's workforce has become a pitiless and unstoppable force against big tech itself. Read the rest

114,659 of New York's public school students is homeless, bouncing from shelters to relatives' beds: homelessness is a predictor of poor academic performance for all the obvious reasons, including very long commutes to school (some students' families have ended up at shelters that are two boroughs away from their schools).It's the largest number and proportion of homeless students in the history of homelessness statistics for the New York school system.The "vast majority" of homeless students attend just 144 out of 1800 schools. In some schools, a third of the students are homeless. The New York school system employs one social worker for every 1,660 homeless students.New York's housing market has been blown up by the same housing speculators who created a national eviction epidemic, which is centered in New York City.District 10 in the Bronx served the most homeless children of any of the city’s 32 school districts last year. The district includes Kingsbridge International High School, where about 44 percent of students who attended the school over the last four years were homeless at one point.More homeless students typically means more tardiness or absentees because of the challenges to get to school. Last year, students living in shelter missed an average of about 30 days in the school year.Some students have to travel through two or more boroughs to reach school from their shelters; only about half of the city’s homeless families lived in a shelter in the same borough where their youngest child attended school last year. Read the rest

In the late 2000s, Jamaican authorities launched a crackdown on drug dealers, extraditing the country's most notorious crime-bosses to the USA; the power-vacuum was filled by telephone advance-fee fraud (419/Spanish Prisoner/etc) scammers who targeted American victims, bringing an estimated $300,000,000 to Montego Bay and its region, the epicenter of the scam.The crime syndicates that run the scams are in open war with one another; three of Jamaica's largest districts have been under a state of emergency since January, occupied by armed soldiers. The soldiers arbitrarily detain and brutalize young men, and have collaborated with law enforcement in schemes to rob the scammers and keep the money -- one group was convicted of stealing $5.6 million this way.Montego Bay has a storied history as a tourist destination and Jamaican tourist authorities continue to promote it as a tranquil holiday spot.One of the founding fathers of Jamaican lotto scamming exemplified the corruption. Kenrick Stephenson, otherwise known as Bebe, was facing several lawsuits for fraud while also serving as vice chair of the People’s National Party constituency in his home area of Granville. Bebe had a highly unusual lifestyle. Not only was he a lotto scammer-cum-politician – he was also openly gay in a country notorious for rampant homophobia. But he wielded the power to rearrange some of the country’s norms. He dressed femininely and threw wild drag parties, an unheard of thing to do in Jamaica. He was murdered in 2014 at the gates of his mansion in the upper-class area of Ironshore, in a suspected gang-related killing. Read the rest

They're figuring out what we really want from a 21st Century deathbot: moves.When was the last time a human was seen in one of these videos? Perhaps in the next one we'll see a human crawling on all fours over ice, making loud engine noises between terrified whimpers, only for a perfectly stable bipedal robot to lunge in from off-screen and kick it. Then we'll know what has become of the fleshbags at Boston Dynamics. Read the rest

To make it clear that it's run by skateboarders for skateboarders, East Vancouver's Drive Skate Shop put a skateable sign in front of its store. The two-sided wood veneer "sandwich board" is not only skateable but looks great too. (Web Urbanist) Read the rest

Charles Phoenix's famous Cherpumple concept (stacked CHErry, PUMpkin, apPLE pies baked in a layer of cake) is being made into an epic parade float. Former Disney Art Directors Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily are crafting a 10-foot-tall Cherpumple wedge -- which Charles, the Ambassador of Americana himself, will be seated on -- for the Anaheim Halloween Parade on October 27. To see it for yourself, the fun starts at 6 PM in downtown Anaheim.Here's a peek:*"Cherry pie in white cake; a pumpkin pie in yellow cake, and apple pie in spice cake!"Charles Phoenix previously on BB Read the rest

Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, philanthropist, science fiction fan, and founder of Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture (formerly the Experience Museum Project), has died from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 65. "From technology to science to music to art, I’m inspired by those who’ve blurred the boundaries, who’ve looked at the possibilities, and said, “What if...? In my own work, I’ve tried to anticipate what’s coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people’s lives in a meaningful way." -- Paul AllenAllen's professional timeline is quite something:1953: Paul Allen is born January 21, 1953 in Seattle, Washington1968: While at Lakeside School, Paul meets Bill Gates. A friendship that would later produce one of the world’s most innovative companies, Microsoft.1969: Attends first rock concert, where he sees Jimi Hendrix at Seattle Center Coliseum1975: Founds Microsoft 1982: In September, Paul is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nearly eight months later, doctors said he had beaten the disease.1983: Officially resigns from Microsoft in March1986: Founds Vulcan Inc. in Seattle as an investment and project management firm with his sister, Jody Allen1988: Establishes The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation1988: Purchases the Portland Trail Blazers1988: Rescues Seattle Cinerama from demolition by purchasing and restoring the theater1990: The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation makes its first grant.1990: Becomes a billionaire at age 371995: Makes his single biggest investment to date by purchasing a 18.5% stake in Dreamworks1996: Purchases the St. Read the rest

More on the story of how Epson tricked its customers into installing a fake "update" to their printers so that they would stop accepting third-party and refilled ink cartridges: not only does this force Epson customers to pay more for ink, but it puts everyone on the internet at risk, by teaching people not to update their devices.If you were affected by this scam, please get in touch with your state, phone number, and whether you saved the original receipt and (better still!) packaging. Activist, author, and EFF member Cory Doctorow tells Motherboard that Epson customers in other states that were burned by the update should contact the organization. That feedback will then be used as the backbone for additional complaints to other state AGs."Inkjet printers are the trailblazers of terrible technology business-models, patient zero in an epidemic of insisting that we all arrange our affairs to benefit corporate shareholders, at our own expense,” Doctorow told me via email.Doctorow notes that not only is this kind of behavior sleazy, it undermines security by eroding consumer faith in the software update process. Especially given that some printers can be easily compromised and used as an attack vector into the rest of the home network.“By abusing the updating mechanism, Epson is poisoning the security well for all of us: when Epson teaches people not to update their devices, they put us all at risk from botnets, ransomware epidemics, denial of service, cyber-voyeurism and the million horrors of contemporary internet security,” Doctorow said. Read the rest

Fendi is taking a beating online after creating a pink scarf that resembles female genitalia, bush and all. The Italian luxury fashion brand took down their £750 vulva-like "Touch of Fur" shawl after the internet got wind of it (blue and red versions are still available). It get really real when you flip it over 😭 pic.twitter.com/eqfNVeoru0— Eartha Kitten (@ginandtectonica) October 13, 2018The Guardian humorously notes, it "makes you look like you’re being born."If you like the look of labia, are ok with wearing real fur, and have $990 to kill, this scarf is still available from online retailer Farfetch.Fendi’s £750 ‘vulva’ scarf makes wearers look like they’re being born Read the rest

There's nothing more fun than a prank that brings great laughter to its victims, and this is what Chance the Rapper does when he becomes an undercover Lyft driver for a day. He drives unsuspecting passengers around Chicago and chats with them about all sorts of things, including rappers. It takes a while, but these passengers finally realize who they're really talking to, and their reactions are priceless (especially the last woman, who comes after you think the video is over, so watch to the end). Chance pulls this stunt to bring attention to his charity, The New Chance Fund, which raises funds for art and literature enrichment in the Chicago public schools. Read the rest

In Japan, you don't have to drink your sake from a cup or a glass or even a bottle. If you're in the mood for a little imbibing on your walk home from work and don't want to worry about having to recycle a bottle or a can, or maybe you would just rather sip your booze from a straw, then these neat, one-serving cartons of sake are for you. Onigoroshi (Demon Slayer) is the brand I find in every convenience store I've ever entered in Japan. Shelved with the wine and other spirits are these cool cartons, 180 ml of 13-14% alcohol goodness with a straw. While picking up a couple mini cartons for research, I noticed a new one I'd never seen before. It's bigger, holding 270 ml of sake and touted as ureshii ookisa or Fun Size! I like the idea, just make sure you don't slip one into your child's lunchbox. Photos by: Thersa Matsuura Read the rest

One of the "most bullied" people in the world -- Melania Trump, of course -- gets the Randy Rainbow treatment in "Just Be Best." It's the best.(Hey! Randy Rainbow is on tour.) RR previously on BB Read the rest

This playful puppy has made it his mission to knock every shampoo and soap bottle into the tub – 11 bottles in all. His excitement is contagious. To see more of this guy, check out his Instagram page, little_leo_the_cavapoo. Read the rest

Over the next century, higher temperatures and an increased number of droughts will hit the global barley supply, pushing beer prices way up. University of East Anglia economist Dabo Guan and his colleagues developed multiple scenarios based on several climate and economic models. Nature:The researchers then simulated the effect of these droughts and heat waves on barley production by using software to model crop growth and yield on the basis of weather and other variables.They found that, globally, this extreme weather would reduce barley yield by between 3% and 17%. Some countries fared better than others: tropical areas such as Central and South America were hit badly, but crop yields actually increased in certain temperate areas, including northern China and the United States. Some areas of those countries saw yield increases of up to 90% — but this was not enough to offset the global decrease.Finally, Guan and his colleagues fed these changes in barley yield into an existing economic model that can account for changes in supply and demand in the global market. This enabled them to look at how reduced barley production would affect pricing and consumption of beer in countries, as well as trade between nations.In the worst-case scenario, the reduced barley supply worldwide would result in a 16% decrease in global beer consumption in the years of extreme-weather events. Prices would, on average, double...One goal of the research, Guan says, was to make tangible how "climate change will impact people’s lifestyle... Read the rest

Solderer writes, "Old-school humor Magazine The American Bystander was dropped by its printer, citing prurient content (i.e. humor). Publisher Michael Gerber describes the ongoing situation in terms that would doubtless please Benjamin 'Fart Proudly' Franklin."When the guy picked up, he was as nice as pie. "I gotta tell you," he said, "this magazine looks great. Really funny, too.""Thanks," I said. "We have some wonderful folks. New Yorker, SNL, Simpsons people.""I saw that," he said. "Unfortunately, we can't print it.""Why not? Is it the format?""No, our presses can do it, it's just — well, this is a family-owned business, and the family, they're really Christian, and... I don't think they'd approve."I was really surprised. You guys know what we print: hardly controversial stuff, especially to anybody who's ever read R. Crumb or The National Lampoon — or, for that matter, browsed the internet for fifteen minutes. "Wow, [name hidden to preserve the innocent]. That is the first time anyone's ever said that. Was there anything in particular in issue #5 that — ""No, no, it was nothing in particular," he said, audibly squirming. This wasn't any more fun for him than it was for me. "It's just...We have high school kids working here — I mean, I would print it. I thought it was great. It's just that the owners — if they found out, it would be my job." He paused, feeling lame. "The kids — "Good evening, fellow revolutionaries. [Michael Gerber/Patreon] Read the rest

Alex Little writes, "The Parkland kids created a rube goldberg machine that shows the predictable domino effect of responses from politicians and media after every school shooting."Kesha and her younger brother Sage teamed up with March for Our Lives activists to create “The Most Vicious Cycle,” a music video for the single, “Safe”, depicting the endless gun violence in America. To stop this cycle, we must vote for change on November 6. Read the rest

The Authors Alliance is a nonprofit that advocates for authors, libraries, readers and scholars (I'm on their advisory board); they've done a ton of great work, notably a tool for authors to claim their copyrights back from publishers, even when the original contract specified that the rights were signed away "in perpetuity."The latest Authors Alliance project is The Authors Alliance Guide to Understanding and Negotiating Book Publication Contracts, a free, open, indexed, searchable guide to contracts that explains standard clauses, gives tips on negotiating better deals, and helps with specific scenarios, like academic authors who want to ensure that their work can be used by scholars, researchers and educators.The fourth in our series of educational handbooks, the guide identifies clauses that frequently appear in publishing contracts, explains in plain language what these terms (and typical variations) mean, and presents strategies for negotiating “author-friendly” versions of these clauses. When authors have more information about copyright and publication options for their works, they are better able to make and keep their works available in the ways they want. Read the rest

Andy Thomas, the artist who creates wonderful paintings depicting historical presidents from each party hanging out, has updated The Republican Club to include Donald Trump. It was spotted on the White House wall during an interview with the president on CBS News. The artist, who lives in Missouri, United States, was "ecstatic" to discover his art displayed in the White House, he told Time. Republican congressman Darrell Issa reportedly gave it to the President."A lot of times gifts aren't really hung up, they're just pushed into a closet somewhere," Mr Thomas said.Shortly before Trump's election, I'd painted Trump into an earlier variant of Thomas's painting (below; and made a few other tweaks) in expectation of the big win. Folks were mad that I'd called it but such is life in the death of the Republic. Why don't you get grandpa a jigsaw puzzle or something [Amazon]. Read the rest

In an attempt to blend English with Maori, Coca-Cola stamps a brilliant blooper onto one of their New Zealand vending machines: "Kia Ora, Mate!" Translation: "Hello, death!""Kia ora" is commonly translated as "hello" in Maori, while "mate" can be used as "buddy" in English. But in Maori, "mate" is not the kind of buddy you want to have – it's a word that is associated with "death."When the languages don't mix well. pic.twitter.com/3piZIoptAE— Waikato Reo (@waikatoreo) October 14, 2018What makes this so ironic is how on the mark the message really is. According to The Guardian:New Zealand has one of the highest rates of obesity in the developed world with one in three adult New Zealanders classified as obese.According to statistics New Zealand 50% of Māori adults are obese, as well as 18% of Māori children.Image: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Read the rest

The Wannacry ransomware epidemic was especially virulent, thanks to its core: a weaponized vulnerability in Windows that the NSA had discovered and deliberately kept a secret so that they could use it to attack their adversaries.Despite the incredible havoc Wannacry wreaked around the world, it made a pittance for its wielders: they walked away with a mere $140,000 in $300 payouts for unlocking the systems that were hijacked by a self-spreading superweapon in the hands of dum-dums.Among the most prominent ransomware victims were NHS facilities, including hospitals, across the UK. All told, the epidemic cost the cash-starved health system £92m (£19 in lost output, £73m in IT expenses in the aftermath). We talk a lot about cyberwarfare being asymmetrical in that the attackers can use comparatively little resources and get very large effects, but it is also asymmetrical in that attackers eke out pretty small gains from their attacks, while costing their victims much larger sums.Following the attack, the NHS has pledged to bite the bullet and upgrade all of its systems to Windows 10 after it was found that the service's outdated, and unpatched Windows XP and Windows 7 systems were largely to blame. It has also so far spent £60m to bolster its security defences since WannaCry stuck, and said it plans to spend a further £150m more over the next three years.The NHS has increased infrastructure investment of £60m this year to the most vulnerable services, such as major trauma centres and ambulance services, and UK gov has committed £150m to upgrade NHS technology systems over the next three years. Read the rest

BBC Studios Production is completing a new feature documentary, David Bowie: The First Five Years, to air next year. Its the third in director Francis Whately's trilogy that has included "David Bowie: Five Years" (2013) and "David Bowie: The Last Five Years" (2017). The film will cover the Bowie's formative years as an artist, starting in 1966 up until the birth of Ziggy Stardust. According to the BBC, the 90-minute doc "traces his interest in everything from Holst to Pinky and Perky, from Anthony Newley to Tibetan Buddhism, and how he used all these influences to create not only Ziggy Stardust, but the material for his entire career." The film also unearths a report, deep from the BBC Archives, following a BBC audition on Tuesday 2 November 1965 of a band called David Bowie and the Lower Third. Their audition material included Chim-Chim-Cheree as well as an original number called Baby That’s A Promise. The BBC’s ‘Talent Selection Group’ describe him as having “quite a different sound”, but also “no personality”, “not particularly exciting” and “will not improve with practice”. The BBC later appears to have changed its mind...Contributors include Bowie’s first cousin and lifelong-friend Kristina Amadeus and former girlfriend and muse Hermione Farthingale - both of whom have never before been filmed talking about him; the late Lindsay Kemp in his last filmed interview, lifelong friend and producer Tony Visconti, former girlfriend and friend Dana Gillespie, lifelong friends Geoff MacCormak and George Underwood, Bowie's producer Mike Vernon, Bowie's early producer Tony Hatch, and Woody Woodmansey, the last remaining Spider from Mars. Read the rest

Shitty math kills: shitty math "proved" that being selfish produced optimal outcomes and torched the planet; shitty math rains hellfire missiles down on innocents; in the 1960s, shitty math drove the "hamlet pacification program," producing 90,000 pages a month in data about the endless hail of bombs the US dropped on Vietnam.The Spirit of 68 -- a wave of rebellions and uprisings around the world -- rallied around a rejection of shitty math and the first stirrings of a digital counterculture, based around seizing the means of computation.Today, AI's shitty math is in some ways just more of the same, but it brings something new to the table: a deep bias for herding humans into behaving the same way, forever, and to behave as much like each other as is possible.Dan McQuillan's piece on "AI dissidence" rehearses many of the well-known failings of AI and the well-publicized tech-worker resistance to weaponizing AI to unleash further harms, but then it gets into some pretty interesting new territory: asking what a "counterculture of AI" would look like.He proposes that it will be "ludic" (playful), "playfully serious" (like the Situationists), and "fun, yet anti-fascist."It's a fun idea to play with, one I'm going to sit with for a while. I think that McQuillan dismisses the "ethical AI" movement way too blithely; organizations like AI Now are led by people who are whip-smart, deeply ethical, and every bit as skeptical of capitalism and Big Tech any you might hope. Read the rest

I destroy Apple Watches. It's not intentional. It just kinda happens. The first Apple Watch was a Series 1 piece of wrist candy. I loved how it kept reminders for me to take my medication, pay my bills, and all of the other things that my PTSD-addled brain refuses to keep track of on my wrist. I hated how slow it was to respond to requests and that it wasn't possible to hide apps that I never used from its interface. It died in a torrential downpour. Same thing for my second Apple watch. It was a Series 2. While it was a little bit faster and the OS was a tiny bit more agreeable, it was unable to avoid being smashed by a passerby at a street market in Costa Rica. From the impact, it looked like it had met with a single, focused impact, like the tip of a knife or another object that wouldn't be agreeable to have in my body. I'm sure that it's over reacting to say that my Apple Watch saved my life, but I think about this often. I am not made of money. I cannot afford to buy watch after watch (although that's kind of what I've ended up doing). Smartwatches provide me with a level of utility that makes my life a lot more manageable. It took some time, but I came to the conclusion that the best smartwatch for me was one that I could not kill. Enter the Garmin Tactix. Read the rest

Bruce Sterling's hour-long lecture to the Southern California Institute of Architecture is pretty good vintage Sterling: a seeming grab-bag of loosely related futuristic, ascerbic observations about climate change, Estonian e-residency, Kazakh new cities, monumental architecture, rotting Turinese palaces, Silicon Valley arrogance, AI, new-new urbanism, and so on -- which then all seems to pull together in an ineffable, somehow coherent finale that is both hopeful and bitter. Sterling discusses current situations that suggest issues that could be significant in thirty years, including:•China’s terraforming projects in the South China Sea, and the Belt and Road Initiative.•Astana, Kazakhstan, which Sterling describes as neither Fatehpur Sikri nor Brasília, nor the future, but a possibility.•Dubai as a technocratic autocracy that will not become a hegemon but an entrepôt of futurity•Sterling discusses Estonia’s e-residency initiative as an architectural problem that that will become common in the future, requiring off-shore pop-ups promoting Virtual Estonia, physical bank/embassy registration sites, a physical headquarters within Estonia, plus the physical structures required by virtual enterprises. •In Estonia’s capital Tallinn, Sterling discovered another architectural problem of the mid-21st century: abandoned, failed megastructures, located in sites that will probably be flodded, such as the Lenin Palace of Culture and Sports (Raine Karp and Riina Altmäe, 1980).•Seasteading, which Sterling dismisses as impractical.•Sterling also criticizes efforts of architects to design around the problem of climate-change flooding as “architectural solutionism”.•Sterling considers one result of rising sea levels will be a global proliferation of unregulated squatter districts like Christiania, in Copenhagen: “wet favelas” detached from municipal services. Read the rest

Lt. Thomas Murphy and Detective Sgt. Andrew Huber are named in a lawsuit against the city of Mountainside, New Jersey, which claims a large blue dildo was regularly whipped out to harass other employees. The city has a brilliant defense, though.Mountainside is asking a judge to throw out an explosive sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the borough by five male police officers and a female dispatcher, partly on the grounds that alleged misconduct in the department -- including repeated displays of a large dildo -- was directed at both men and women. The two attorneys for the plaintiffs are firing back, accusing Mountainside in their opposition brief of "presenting a frivolous argument that breaks new ground for absurd employment law defenses."Bear in mind that the video embedded above is something they're using to claim it isn't harassment. Dildo Cop sounds like a good idea for a bad comic book. Read the rest

A staff meeting at a bank in Nanning, southern China was interrupted when a 5-foot python fell from the ceiling. CCTV video below. From Yahoo!7:A snake catcher was called to retrieve the python, which will be sent to a local wildlife conservation centre.According to online reports, this is the second time a snake has slipped into this branch of the bank. Read the rest

The combination of Chinese anti-corruption reforms and currency controls has China's storied "middle class" (a nebulously defined category whose size and wealth are the subject of multiple, conflicting accounts) scrambling for ways to get their money out of the country and to establish bolt holes to escape to, should the situation suddenly worsen.One preferred investment in this group is real estate in western countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Partly as a function of the large pool of investors from China (combined with other offshore property speculators), property in the great western cities has reached unprecedented prices, unprecedented growth and unprecedented liquidity: if you bought a condo in Vancouver or Sydney, you would pay a fortune, the price would go up, and you could sell it on a couple days' notice. Property became an "asset class" like bonds or stocks, easy to liquidate, with the added bonus that an offshore property was somewhere you or your kids could live if you ever had to escape China in a hurry.As China's own property bubble has cooled off, more and more investors have flocked to offshore property speculation, making them easy pickings for scammers who vanish overnight with millions in cash, leaving Chinese investors and offshore builders high and dry. One such is Ausin China, which had "17 luxury offices" across China and disappeared with $49.6 million in cash from 200 Chinese investors, cratering 15 Australian construction projects.Chinese investors face perils beyond garden-variety scams: the Chinese government is increasingly ruthless in punishing people who evade currency controls, and cities around the world are limiting foreign ownership and requiring disclosure of the true beneficial owners of newly purchased properties, making it easy for the Chinese authorities to punish people who buy offshore. Read the rest

D'Arreion Toles just wanted to go home. But Hilary Brooke Mueller, apparently fresh out the air-fluff cycle of the dryer, didn't want him in the building where she too lived.“Do you live here?”“I’ve already answered that question,” Mr. Toles, 24, replies as he continues to try to get in. “Excuse me.”But the woman, Hilary Brooke Mueller, refused to move as she continued to ask Mr. Toles what unit he lived in and to see his key fob. When he declined to tell her, she remained in his path.“If you want to come into my building —” she begins to say in the video.“It’s not your building, you’re not the owner,” Mr. Toles says, getting past her. “Excuse me.”Toles posted his video of the encounter to his Facebook page. Mueller's yelp when he finally slips past her -- "are you kidding me?" -- is really something. Pure incomprehending outrage that he walked into the building without her permission. Her employer, a real estate firm named Tribeca-STL, released a statement saying that it was a minority-owned company and that it had fired her after viewing the video. Read the rest

Mr. Resistor is director Mark Gustafson's electrifying stop motion animation from 1994. Original soundtrack by Francesco de Donatis. Read the rest

As usual, John Oliver does a great job of explaining the circumstances surrounding the likely murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident and Washington Post columnist who was last seen entering the Saudi Arabia embassy in Istanbul last week. Turkish authorities have identified 15 Saudi men as persons of interest only hours before Khashoggi went missing. Several of them were caught on camera arriving in Istanbul. A Turkish official told the New York Times Saudi agents had dismembered his body with a bone saw they brought for the purpose... Saudi officials have scrambled to explain all the suspicious activity surrounding his disappearance with the Saudis' own channel, al Arabia, claiming that the 15 people who turned up in Istanbul were just tourists, which is clearly bullshit given that flight logs showed that most of the men arrived on a private charter plane at 3:13 a.m. and that all of them departed the same day they arrived, which is a pretty weird vacation isn't it. I want to see Istanbul but only for a few hours mostly at night and it need to bring a bone saw. Read the rest

Research from the California Department of Food and Agriculture has shown that many vitamin and herbal supplements carry a payload of undeclared, and unapproved, drugs.No wonder that magnesium make me feel so cheerful.Via Science Alert:A new analysis of 10 years of FDA records reveals that from 2007 to 2016, almost 750 dietary supplements were found to be contaminated with secret doses of totally unregulated drugs, including prescription medicines, banned and unapproved chemicals, and designer steroids.Over 20 percent of these offending products contained more than one unapproved drug ingredient, and numerous contained a cocktail of clandestine chemicals – in two cases, as many as six unlisted ingredients.For a US$35 billion industry patronised by about half of American adults, it's possible this data could be just the tip of the iceberg, too."The drug ingredients in these dietary supplements have the potential to cause serious adverse health effects owing to accidental misuse, overuse, or interaction with other medications, underlying health conditions, or other pharmaceuticals within the supplement," researchers from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, explain in their paper.Given that supplement use is associated with some 23, 000 ER visits and 2,000 hospitalisations in the US each year, it's clear we're looking at a big problem here, but what's even more shocking than the brazen selling of these illicit additives is how tame and toothless the FDA's official actions were. Read the rest

My Great Pyrenees, Nemo, loves sleeping on this pet bed so much I got him two.Nemo could not have been comfortable sleeping on my tiled floors, or the hardwood, but he hates sleeping on the bed with me. My father kept asking me why I didn't get him a bed and I kept thinking Nemo'd ignore a mattress, but I gave it a shot...Lo and behold! Nemo loves laying around on his doggie bed. I got tired of dragging the one around the house for him, so I got a second for his other favorite place to snooze. Great Pyrenees lay around a lot. The foam is soft. The cover unzips for washing. Nemo weighs in at 125lbs and the mattress is a good size for him. The dog is happier and gets up and down a bit easier.Furhaven Pet Dog Bed Deluxe Orthopedic Mattress Pet Bed for Dogs & Cats Styles via Amazon Read the rest

Alert the media. President Donald Trump has lied again.Senator Elizabeth Warren brought the genetic receipts. Trump denied making a statement that he did, in fact, make -- despite knowing there is documentation to the contrary. A lot of things are at play here. Eugenics. Racism. The controversial science of direct to consumer DNA testing. The long history of white people claiming Native American ancestry for weird reasons. A story in tweets.By the way, @realDonaldTrump: Remember saying on 7/5 that you’d give $1M to a charity of my choice if my DNA showed Native American ancestry? I remember – and here's the verdict. Please send the check to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center: https://t.co/I6YQ9hf7Tv pic.twitter.com/J4gBamaeeo— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) October 15, 2018Trump denies that he ever said he’d donate $1 million to charity if she took a DNA test and it showed she had Native American ancestry. The quote: “I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian”— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) October 15, 2018Trump was just asked about his $1-M pledge on WH lawn: “i never said that” https://t.co/eiaVZiBm8A— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) October 15, 2018DOCUMENT: Read the results of Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test https://t.co/wcypGPCcxr— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) October 15, 2018FWIW there’s a very complicated history of the use of DNA testing to determine the boundaries of Native American identity— Quinta 🎃 Jurecic (@qjurecic) October 15, 2018Trump denies offering to pay $1 million to the charity of Elizabeth Warren’s choice if she proved her Native American heritage. Read the rest

Former Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge got involved in a shady UFO conspiracy business, where for a few hundred bucks, people who are afraid of aliens could learn "the truth" that “they” (the government) do not want you to know. The project is on track to lose $37 million this year, if we're reading their latest SEC filing correctly. Bummer, Tom. We found this story in a deep-dive piece today by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, who describes how he's been following Tom DeLonge, the ex-Blink 182 singer, as his "aliens" jig evolved throughout the years. DeLonge will apparently be losing a lot of money in what is at best a highly speculative project involving extraterrestrial life, and at worst, a scam.Great headline, not gonna spoil it, you should click it, and read the whole thing.The setup: A rich rock star buys into the idea that aliens are out there, and bad things will happen:In other words, the evil government is covering all kinds of mysterious alien stuff up for its own nefarious purposes. And interested personages were invited to help the good guys. For a few hundred bucks, people could get a piece of an "A+ investment offering" from To the Stars, to assist its efforts to pull back the veil from the government cover-up and bring brilliant new technologies—such as beamed energy propulsion—into public view.Yep. Anyway, here's the money stuff. A recent SEC filing shows that this aliens protection racket scheme is losing tons of money. Read the rest

70% of global emissions come from 100 companies: Koch Industries' annual carbon emissions bill is 24 million tons.Just like Exxon (who spent years and millions denying the climate change their own research told them was happening), Peter Thiel knows climate change is real, but he plans on Seasteading his way through it with a handpicked gang of Galt-fetishists. Billionaire-backed dark money outfits like American Solutions spend lavishly to punish any Republican lawmaker who diverges from the party line on climate change. The Trump administration admits that climate change is real, but they present it as an investment opportunity: sea-wall construction, sure, but also immigration detention centers for climate refugees, pharma for pandemics, and so. Many. Mercenary. Armies. Even today, after literally decades of radical libertarian billionaires fostering disbelief in climate change and skepticism about the government, three out of five Americans believe climate change affects their local community. That number climbs to two-thirds on the coasts. Even the Trump administration now admits that climate change is real, but their response to it is dead-eyed acceptance. If popular support actually influenced public policy, there would have been more decisive action from the U.S. government years ago. But the fossil-fuel industry's interests are too well-insulated by the mountains of cash that have been converted into lobbyists, industry-shilling Republicans and Democrats, and misinformation. To them, the rest of the world is just kindling.Billionaires Are the Leading Cause of Climate Change [Luke Darby/GQ] Read the rest

Gareth Branwyn has a fun tutorial on Make: about how to convert Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars into combat vehicles for the tabletop game, Gaslands.In Gaslands, you put together a racing crew using die cast toy cars (Hot Wheels, Matchbox, etc) that you have modified to create combat cars. Then, using special dice and movement templates, you take turns racing through a scenario while fighting off other players’ cars using weapons and various dastardly deeds that you pay for in points as you outfit your crew. In many game scenarios, you have 50 points (called “Cans”) to spend on your cars and their weapons and special abilities.The game has a very basic but evocative backstory where the rich and powerful have left Earth and become Martians, abandoning a dying Earth and most of its population to fend for itself. For entertainment, the Martians host an anything-goes vehicular combat reality game show, called Gaslands, back on Earth. The show is televised, and hugely popular, on Mars. Winners of each game show season earn a one-way ticket to Mars, and an escape from the miseries of Earth.One of the most compelling things about Gaslands is that you spend around $13 for the rule book and then you have to basically build the rest of the game yourself. There are templates and markers in the back of the book to print out and mount, terrain and buildings to build, and most fun of all, you get to convert and Mad Max-ify toy cars. Read the rest

I paid 99 cents so I could show you what the Who Paid 99 Cents? website looks like when you pay 99 cents. It reveals a list of people who paid 99 cents to see who else did. I'm the 334th person to pay 99 cents. Some enterprising people are entering ads instead of their names.Business Insider interviewed the creator, Pasquale D'Silva:When asked simply, "Why?" D'Silva said, "We pretty much build anything that makes us laugh at Thinko."As for why anyone would pay 99 cents to see who else has done the same, D'Silva said he wasn't sure who would actually do it but that it's something simple that makes people laugh."People are paying because it gives them something funny they can talk about," D'Silva said. "I think people like the feeling of making other people laugh too. It's just good energy. Especially given that it's at their expense." Read the rest

I love mandelbrot youtube, where the most important thing is how many iterations is in your deep, hard zoom.Here's "Mandelbrot zoom to 10E+1116 with deep zoom into minibrot - 75,000,000 iterations":Or how about some "Mandelbrot deep zoom to 10E+2431 at 60 fps - Needle Julia evolution - 30,000,000 iterations." Very satisfying:Granted, that's not quite as many iterations as some. Here Eddy Fry offers a staggering 538 trillion iterations, but to be honest I'm not all that impressed with the hardness of his zoom:Here's a "lucky zoom" with 7.777*10^777 | 777,777 iterations:It is amazing what folks find hidden in the set. The "Pinwheel of Infinity" is a striking example of the uncannyiness of fractals:....and, from Fractal Universe, the "hardest Mandelbrot Zoom Ever":You can make your own with Mandelbrot Explorer. Image: SeryZone Read the rest

Star Citizen is a game hovering on the margins of vaporware, its scope bloated by a $150m+ crowdfunding haul, creator Chris Roberts' lack of creative discipline, and an enabling fanbase. One of the many whimsical additions bolted onto the perm-alpha release is face-tracking: what you do on camera is reflected on-screen in the facial expressions of your character. It's very Star Citizen: a technical tour de force light years ahead of what other devs are doing, but immediately and overwhelmingly unpleasant. Sleep tight! Read the rest

Avogadro's Number is 6.022140857 × 10. That's how many atoms are in 12 grams of carbon-12. One mole of anything has one Avogadro's Number of elementary particles in it. In this video, the Action Lab Man repeats the words "Avogadro's Number," quadrupling the audio track each time until he reaches 6.022140857 × 10. Each time he utters the words, he includes an interesting fact about the in-progress number. For example 256 is the "Unplayable/unbeatable level in Pac-Man due to an 8-bit integer overflow." And 68,719,476,736 is the "Number of animals eaten by humans each year." He ends the video by describing what would happen if you gathered together a mole of moles, as found in Randall Munroe's great book, What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Read the rest

It's by Little Big and it's called Skibidi. They're still trying so very hard, after all this time.Join the #skibidichallenge - just film how you dance the skibidi-dance, put the #skibidichallenge hashtag and post it on your YouTube and Instagram. Read the rest

There is a kind of caterpillar in England's Lake District that has evolved to feed exclusively on the seed pods of a plant called the touch-me-not. Unfortunately for the caterpillar, the seed pods explode, without warning, to disperse their seeds. In this BBC video by David Attenborough you'll see a number of caterpillars having their feast interrupted when it explodes in their face. [Video]Image: BBC Read the rest

Facebook will not provide fraud protection for victims of its latest data breach, details of which were announced in a Friday news dump. It set up a page where you can check if your Facebook account was breached.One analyst told the BBC the decision was "unconscionable" ... For the most severely impacted users - a group of around 14 million, Facebook said - the stolen data included "username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches".Typically, companies affected by large data breaches - such as Target, in 2013 - provide access to credit protection agencies and other methods to lower the risk of identity theft. Other hacked companies, such as on the Playstation Network, and credit monitoring agency Equifax, offered similar solutions.A Facebook spokeswoman told the BBC it would not be taking this step "at this time". Users would instead be directed to the website's help section.They're done caring. If you're still using Facebook, you're done caring too. Read the rest

Armed with the knowledge that comes from damned dear experience, you go back in time and correct the terrible wrongs of your life. Old loves could be mended. Lost chances would be taken. It's something that most of us have dreamed of at one point in our lives or another.While dwelling on such things might be a balm against the pain of wistful regrets, it is, as 50-year-old Brent Allen Drees of Wichita, Kansas discovered, an absolutely terrible idea when applied to bank robbery.After spending 46 months in prison for bank robbery, Drees, having repaid his debt to society, was ready to leave the clink behind and start a new life. His time behind bars at an end, he celebrated his new-found freedom... by robbing a bank he'd already robbed back in 2011. From the Wichita Eagle:Drees allegedly robbed the Conway Bank at 121 E. Kellogg on Tuesday, giving the teller a note saying, “Give me $3,000 and you won’t get hurt,” a criminal affidavit states.He was arrested Thursday afternoon in connection to the robbery after a Crime Stoppers tip led investigators to an area on the south side of Wichita, police Officer Paul Cruz said in a release.Drees was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody in July 2017, prison records show. He had served a 46-month sentence for bank robbery, McAllister’s release said.Drees was dinged for robbing the E. Kellogg branch of Conway Bank back in 2011. It was his first conviction for bank robbery. Read the rest

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens is a book that I've revisited many times over the years. Each time that I do, it feels like I'm spending time with an old friend: nothing much has changed since the last time that we saw each other, but I enjoy the book's presence in my life, nonetheless. The first trailer for Amazon's Good Omens doesn't give me those feels. That's not a bad thing. The mini-series, staring Michael Sheen and David Tennant as Aziraphale and Crowley, feels vital and expansive compared to the cozy confines of the novel I've enjoyed so often over the past few decades. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the production interprets the work. And hey, if it sucks, I still have the wonderful written iteration to fall back on. Read the rest

Robbo sez, "As a Canadian in my later years I benefit from my monthly Canada Pension Plan payments. As a Canadian and a human being I am disgusted that CPP holds stock in Geo Group and CoreCivic, companies who operate for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centres. As MP Charlie Angus (NDP) sez: 'Quite frankly, if they’re going to be investing in private prisons, weapons manufacturers and tobacco companies, why aren’t they investing in narco gangs?' They better clean this shit up - and fast."The increase in Geo Group shares was from the 12,000 shares held a year previous, according to August 2017 filings. During the same period, the pension fund grew its investment in America’s second biggest private prison company, CoreCivic, to 73,700 shares from 33,000 shares, worth around $1.7m.Canadian justice and democracy advocates also questioned the ethics of acquiring and growing the holdings. About 70% of the immigrants the US government detains are held in facilities run by CoreCivic or GEO Group, according to 2017 statistics obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center.Catherine Latimer, the head of the John Howard Society of Canada, a penal and justice reform advocacy group, said: “Our experience, with the research we’ve done on private prisons, indicates it’s not the type of social investment we would like to see Canada support.”'Deeply concerning': Canada pension fund invests in US immigration detention firms [Max Siegelbaum/The Guardian](Image: Shane Bauer/Mother Jones) Read the rest