Boing Boing

Trump's vaunted 60 Minutes interview was a ratings flop, just as analytics show articles sourced to it were flops and the fact that this post about it being a flop will also be a flop. According to the A.P., the president’s 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night reached 11.7 million viewers, just over half as many as Daniels pulled for her own blockbuster 60 Minutes interview back in March. Around 22 million viewers tuned in then to watch Daniels discuss her alleged 2006 affair with the president. That interview got the program’s highest ratings since a 2008 interview with Barack and Michelle Obama. Trump’s episode also flopped in comparison to his 60 Minutes interview in 2016, which drew 20 million viewers.Everyone knows what he is; he's a marker, not a man. It doesn't require journalistic elaboration anymore. The tweets are quite enough. Read the rest

Prince George’s County Police Officer Ryan Macklin was charged with rape after a woman was attacked during a traffic stop last week. Macklin is listed as a two-time patrol officer of the month at the department's website.During the traffic stop, Macklin reportedly forced the woman to perform a sex act while they were sitting in her car in a nearby parking lot.Police say Macklin was “on-duty, in uniform, and driving a marked police cruiser at the time.”Investigators are not sure why Macklin targeted this woman, but believe there may be other victims. Read the rest

If you're not pissed off at the assassination of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, you should be. As a permanent resident of the United States, Khashoggi should be protected by the U.S. Government, just like any United States citizen. But, instead of pouring pressure on Saudi Arabia to bring the perpetrators of Khashoggi's slaughter to justice, there's nothing but the flapping of gums over "rogue killers." Money, as always, is being put ahead of the sanctity of human life and the rule of law. Khashoggi's murder is also an attack on the freedom of the press. His brave, unwavering reports on corruption and human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia made him a target for the Saudi royal family and the nation's intelligence apparatus. He was killed for telling the truth. We can't force our governments to take action over Khashoggi's murder. But we can make our outrage known to those responsible for doing business with Saudi Arabia. The Future Investment Initiative (FII) is a conference being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 23rd. Rich people will talk about rich people things to make themselves even more rich. The event is the work of Public Investment fund--one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. The PIF is a mechanism by which our aforementioned invest in things that only rich people can afford to spend their money on in order to be even more rich. The FII's October 23rd event is an orgy of money-grubbing elitists talking about how to secure further funding, build assets, and control even more of the world's wealth than the ultra-rich already do. Read the rest

I'm writing this on a flight to Chicago. By the time I return to Canada on Thursday, the sale and use of cannabis, in many circumstances, will be cool, from coast to coast to coast. This does not excite me: I'm not a cannabis enthusiast. Your mileage, however, may vary. If you're a Canadian who enjoys the use of weed in its many forms or love the idea of visiting my often-frozen nation so that you can partake in a legal left-handed cigarette, you should know that the laws surrounding where and when you can use marijuana varies from province to province. The same goes for who can sell it. Fortunately, The New York Times has taken it upon itself to give its readers the scuttlebutt on all of these issues and more:From The New York Times:On legalization day, only fresh or dried flower, seeds, plants and oil will be available. Legal marijuana will have lower levels of THC, the chemical that brings on the buzz, than most products now on the black market.The law will not allow cannabis-infused edibles and concentrates until next year. So those craving pot-infused gummy bears, baked goods, barbecue sauce and drinks will have to wait to buy them legally.It is unclear whether cannabis creams and cosmetics will ever be approved.The Times goes on to talk about the fuzziness of what cannabis will cost from province to province, how much of it is legal to own, the limits placed upon growing your own, and the age required to make buying it OK. Read the rest

Indicating in your will that you want to leave some money to a charity that reflects the values you were passionate about is a fine gesture. Living a life of frugality so that you can leave a ridiculous amount of money to charity once you're gone: that's next level philanthropy. Chow Yun-fat, the bad ass star of such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hard Boiled is very into this latter, hardcore-level of giving. Despite the wealth that his career in film has brought him, the 63-year old icon has spent years in Hong Kong, one of the world's most expensive cities, enjoying a simple life on around $100 U.S. dollars per month. Thanks to this monk-like level of frugality, it's estimated that when he passes, Chow will be leaving behind close to $714 million to charity.From Shanghaist: Chow’s wife, Jasmine Tan, says that her husband manages to live so frugally in one of the world’s most expensive cities by frequenting street food stalls and rarely buying new things, according to an Oriental Daily report from last week. For example, for 17 years, Chow stuck with his trusty Nokia flip phone, only recently purchasing a new smartphone when his old device finally stopped working.The 63-year-old Chow is often seen riding public transportation where he rocks a simple wardrobe — a shirt costing him 98 yuan ($14) and sandals costing another 15 yuan ($2). When asked why he likes to shop at discount shops despite his tremendous net worth, Chow replies, “I don’t wear clothes for other people. Read the rest

Recent research suggests that our sense of smell evolved to help us find our way. Now, McGill University neuroscientist Louisa Dahmani and her colleagues support that idea, termed the "olfactory spatial hypothesis." From Science News:Scientists linked both skills to certain spots in the brain: The left orbitofrontal cortex and the right hippocampus were both bigger in the better smellers and better navigators. The left orbitofrontal cortex and the right hippocampus were both bigger in the better smellers and better navigators. While the orbitofrontal cortex has been tied to smelling, the hippocampus is known to be involved in both smelling and navigation. A separate group of 9 people who had damaged orbitofrontal cortices had more trouble with navigation and smell identification..."An intrinsic association between olfactory identification and spatial memory in humans" (Nature Communications) Read the rest

According to the explanation of the phrase "like a moth to the flame" at The Phrase Finder, "the word moth was used the the 17th century to mean someone who was apt to be tempted by something that would lead to their downfall." But why do moths have this fatal attraction anyway? National Geographic explains in the above video:The theory is that these primarily nocturnal insects have evolved to travel by the light of the moon and stars. This way of travel is called transverse orientation. An easy way to think about transverse orientation is to imagine a sailor travelling in the direction of the North Star. In theory, moths similarly follow the light source at a precise position and a precise angle to their bodies. This is how moths would navigate for millions of years … by the light of the moon. What moth evolution couldn’t account for was the proliferation of constant electric light in our modern world. When Thomas Edison patented the lightbulb on January 27, 1880 it was a bad day in moth history. These lightbulbs began to act as artificial moons, confusing moths and overwhelming their senses. Since moths are accustomed to orienting to distant light sources, they can be easily disoriented when a closer light source, like a porch lamp, comes into view. Read the rest

Before entering Ohio's Akron Fright Fest, a park of self-proclaimed "extreme haunted houses," people need to sign a waiver. The waiver lets them know that these are mature haunted houses with actors who might physically touch them, but never do they mention people getting pushed down for a simulated rape. However, in one of the "all ages" haunted houses, a man named Ryan Carr was pushed down by a masked actor, who then pretended to rape him. According to the Huffington Post, Carr explained how his girlfriend, Sarah Lelonek, tried to stop it:“She comes over and yells, ‘Stop! What are you doing? That’s my boyfriend,’” Carr recalled Lelonek saying. He then described the masked person’s response: “‘Not anymore, he’s mine now. I’m going to rape him,’ and then he started thrusting against me.” According to Huffington Post, there was another alleged incident at one of the park's non-waiver houses in which a 16-year-old boy was thrown onto a mattress. Again an employee performed a mock rape on the boy and told him to "squeal like a pig." A representatives from the park, Jeremy Caudill, says he was "shocked" and "appalled" and that the employees “who worked in the area where the incident allegedly occurred have been suspended” while they investigate. “Obviously, rape is a horrible act,” he said. “Even a mock rape scene has no place as part of any entertainment.”Image: 27707/Pixabay - CC0 Creative Commons Read the rest

OG riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre has launched a new t-shirt line with all the money going to Peace Sisters, a non-profit that helps pay school tuition for underprivileged young girls in the West African nation of Togo. The shirts feature the likes of Kim Gordon, Jill Soloway, Chuck D (all seen below), Patton Oswalt, W. Kamau Bell, and Carrie Brownstein. The money from each $40 t-shirt sends a girl to school for a year. Buy 'em at Tees 4 Togo.From Rolling Stone:Hanna devised the concept after meeting Peace Sisters founder Tina Kampor. A former teacher in Togo, Kampor immigrated to Pasadena 15 years ago, where she would become a full-time registered nurse. Still, she could not forget her students back home: “[Tina] grew up there and she just saw all these girls who weren’t able to go to school,” explains Hanna. “A lot of them are orphans, or very poor. Past the fifth grade in Togo, you have to pay for [education]. She saw all these girls dropping out in the sixth grade. So when she came to California she started sending money home, then opened it up for other people to help. She’s put 130 girls through school herself and supported members of her family at the same time. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and [said], ‘I want to be a part of this!'” Read the rest

Chris Veltri, proprietor of San Francisco's legendary Groove Merchant record shop, posted this astounding artifact to his Instagram wunderkammer of outré culture paper ephemera @collagedropoutsf! It's a poster for a lecture by artificial intelligence pioneer Herbert Simon that took place at UC Berkeley in 1974. The speech was titled "How Man and Computers Understand Language." Far fucking out. Read the rest

Almost every time I visit Japan, I see black vans driving down the street with super loud megaphones blaring an angry rant. These vans are operated by people who are members of Japan's ultra nationalist movement. In this video, Asian Boss interviewed Shusuke Morigaki, leader of a group called Minzoku No Ishi Doumei (Alliance of the People's Will). He says he first became interested in ultra nationalism after reading about Adolf Hitler as a youngster. "I mean, yes, everybody hates him, but on the flip side he was loved by many people," he tells the interviewer. "People say, 'Don't love Hitler. Don't praise Hitler.' And if you praise him [it's taboo]. I think it's so wrong that people are educated that way."Image: Asian Boss Read the rest

Casey Johnston reports that the supposedly improved keyboards in new MacBook Pros still suffer the same old problems. Several users in the MacRumors keyboard thread suggested that the butterfly keyboards Apple has been pushing for two years now are a stepping stone to full touch-screen models; no keys, no mechanisms, no nooks and crannies, just a solid screen that displays virtual buttons. Others have wondered why Apple doesn’t just use Magic Keyboard keys in its computers; they are much more pleasant to use, quieter, and appear to not have the same crippling vulnerability to, uh, dust.I've sort of given up on them, to be honest. I need a new laptop and I think it's going to be a Thinkpad X1. I'm not enthusiastic about not having MacOS, but I am enthusiastic about typing without getting wirdly numbd fingrtips. Read the rest

Taylor Swift somehow managed to get out of her enclosure at Sacramento Zoo Sunday and led officials on a brief pursuit. Visitors were escorted away and Swift was soon recaptured.Vincent says staff used baffle boards and tables to gently guide the antelope to an off-exhibit holding area less than 15 minutes after it went missing. The zoo veterinarian found the animal had a few scrapes, but was otherwise healthy.Vincent says the calf was named after the singer because she was “very swiftly on her feet after birth.”More from the Sacramento Bee.The calf is an eastern bongo, an antelope species native to mountain forests in Kenya that is critically endangered by hunting as illegal logging reduces its habitat, according to the zoo. Only an estimated 200 eastern bongos still survive in the wild, officials say.The Sacramento Zoo said it has participated for more than 20 years in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Eastern Bongo Species Survival Plan, which coordinates management of the species. Read the rest

Medtronic (previously) is a notoriously insecure medical implant manufacturer whose devices have been repeatedly shown to be grossly insecure -- their pacemakers can be hacked before leaving the factory!To make things worse, the company is notably hostile to independent security research and repair.The latest twist in the saga: Medtronic has been the subject of an FDA security alert, which has prompted the company to finally disable its insecure software updating system (which let hackers push malicious updates to the hardware "wands" used to update pacemakers) for some models (after denying that this was a problem!).These wands will now have to be updated by USB.Two models, the Carelink 2090 and the Carelink Encore 2091, could have been tampered with by an attacker modifying their firmware and, in turn, change how the programmers configured the implants. Medtronic said that now not only does it believe those vulnerabilities would be locally exploitable, but could also be targeted by an attacker who was able to remotely access the device."Although the programmer uses a virtual private network (VPN) to establish an internet connection with the Medtronic [software distribution network] SDN, the vulnerability identified with this connection is that the programmers do not verify that they are still connected to the VPN prior to downloading updates," the FDA explained."To address this cybersecurity vulnerability and improve patient safety, on October 5, 2018, the FDA approved Medtronic's update to the Medtronic network that will intentionally block the currently existing programmer from accessing the Medtronic SDN."It's the real Heart Bleed: Medtronic locks out vulnerable pacemaker programmer kit [Shaun Nichols/The Register](via /. Read the rest

Felipe is a Portuguese game-developer who makes fun, crowdfunded minigames; he tweeted a tantalyzing video clip showing an idea for a Snake/Tetris mashup called "Snetris," and the response was so warm and excited that he's promised to develop a playable version!snetris (snake + tetris)#protober #gamedev #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/NEl0e4673o— nyune-BOO! 👻 (@nyunesu) October 6, 2018(via Kottke) Read the rest

I only wish that this was the real new Halloween film.It’s been 40 years since Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) survived a vicious attack from the crazy and zany Pee-wee Herman on Halloween night. But when Pee-wee escapes, will her family be safe from what is certainly to be his biggest Halloween adventure ever? Read the rest

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