You may remember Ace of Cups, the all-female band who once opened for Jimi Hendrix but whose musical careers got sidelined by motherhood. I wrote about the group in January after seeing a short KQED documentary about them. At that time, four out of five of the original band members, now septuagenarians, were cutting their first album. That 20+ track album, which features collaborations with Bob Weir, Peter Coyote, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Taj Mahal and others, debuts on November 9, 2018 through High Moon Records.

So much for Tesla. AK-47 not included!

Brought to you by Nail_Sunny, the Russian nail art chain behind "teeth nails," comes "feet nails."They're equally as creepy:https://www.instagram.com/p/BmtVpjInq39/?taken-by=nail_sunny(Mashable)

Use code EGKA3EHO to get this 349-piece box of rotary tools for Dremels (or my new favorite, the $15 Wen 2307). It's got everything you need to gouge, mar, and otherwise fuck-up the surface of any part you are working on.

“There's information about political advertising—including the choices about how to target ads to you instead of someone else—that's not in Facebook's Ad Archive,” says ProPublica's Jeremy Merrill. “It can only be exposed if you participate in this project with ProPublica, ABC and our other awesome partners.” (more…)

For many of us, the Cliven Bundy story started when a fringey rancher got a bunch of his militia pals to flex their white privilege by threatening to shoot federal law enforcement officers who'd demanded that Bundy stop stealing public land and grazing; then Bundy's loathsome offspring led a terrorist takeover of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. (more…)

Hurricane Lane is the greatest weather threat to Hawaii in decades, say storm experts. (more…)

The British government, veering toward a "no deal" exit from the European Union, has published "practical and proportionate" advice for citizens in the event of this taking place. The BBC posted excerpts.

Mozilla's annual fellowships fund 10-12 months' of work by people who "put individuals in control of their personal data," "help connect the unconnected," "keep artificial intelligence accountable," and "make scientific research more open." This year's fellows are a particularly impressive lot. (via Four Short Links)

From a DW News Story (with the help of Google Translate): "The general manager of a food company in Zhangpu County, Fujian Province, put cooked potatoes in a urinal, stirred them up, and ordered the staff to eat them. She said that every 25 years, the supervisors will be trained in the public toilets, and everyone should eat together."Image: YouTube screengrab

Oh, brands. Will you never learn. P&G is trying to give itself a Millennial Cool makeover by grabbing the intellectual property rights to the internet-origin expression 'WTF.' The only possible response to this, of course, is: WTF? (more…)

Denish Kishorchandra Parekh (24) may have been inebriated when he urinated on a 50-year-old Japanese passenger while they were on a flight from Chicago to Tokyo. According to Newsweek, the gentleman is alleged to have consumed "at least" four glasses of champagne and a cup of sake before getting up to evacuate the contents of his distended bladder on his fellow passenger seated two row behind him. Parekh, who was arrested when the plane landed at Narita International Airport, now says he doesn't remember a thing, which is something people who do bad things often say as a way to avoid taking responsibility.Image: Yamaguchi Yoshiaki/Wikipedia / Shutterstock/oleskalashnik

Fans of Minecraft who found that it had already gotten too fancy and complicated by 2010 should check out Craft, a clone by Michael Fogleman. It's pared down to the very basics, written in fast-as-hell C, has online multiplayer, and is available free of charge on Windows and Mac. It's the perfect computer Lego set. Now, if he'd *fzz* just add *boom*

Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, who have starred in four movies together, have teamed up again to star in Destination Wedding, which opens in theatres tomorrow. In this ET interview the pair can't stop talking about their "raging" mutual crush on one another.Image: YouTube screengrab

Gnat sent in a tip about The Hit Points, who use "bluegrass instruments used to make beautiful music from classic video games (Street Fighter, Legend of Zelda, Mario Brothers, etc.)" I'm inordinately fond of their cover of Super Mario's "Athletic Theme" (compare withe the Mario and Zelda Big Band version)

Wickr, a private, secure messaging company, has teamed up with Psiphon (previously), a spinout from Citizen Lab (previously) to allow its users to communicate even when they are behind national firewalls. (more…)

This $30 AnvFlik wireless Nintendo Switch controller has improved my game play experience. (more…)

David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer and a 'friend' of Donald Trump, has been granted immunity from prosecution. The Wall Street Journal:

Zeynep Tufekci (previously) leads Tech Review's politics issue with the best overview of the forces that have combined to make the internet so hospitable to totalitarians and racist pigs. (more…)

Last night Carla and I attended a screening for an upcoming National Geographic documentary called Science Fair, about the International Science and Engineering Fair. It's a terrific movie about smart young scientists from around the world. One thing I learned watching it is that students in Germany pay almost nothing to attend college. Here in the US, students graduate with a debt load that will hurt the quality of their life for decades. What is the US Department of Education doing about it? Actively making it worse, thanks to Betsy DeVos, who oversees the department.The Trump swamp is a veritable legion of cartoonishly evil supervillians, but the mustache-twirling cackler Betsy DeVos operates on a level that would make a 4chan troll blush. Married to the former CEO of Amway (which paid $56 million to settle a class action for "alleged fraud, racketeering, and operating as an illegal pyramid scheme," she is also sister of Erik Prince, founder of the murderous Blackwater mercenary firm.This billionaire griefer -- with fleets of private jets and yachts at her command -- has no teaching experience and refuses to visit troubled schools. Instead, she spends her time coming up with outrageous ways to make students' lives financially miserable and fraught with danger. And like the best robot, she doesn't crack a smile when her victims suffer.DeVos's latest lulz generator is a plan to get around a law that Congress passed in March that forbids federal funds from being used to buy guns for teachers. But DeVos is the kind who doesn't let the law get in her way, especially if it would spoil her plans to fill schools with deadly weapons. According to the New York Times, she's discovered a potential loophole:

The public myth of Steve Jobs' bullying arrogance concealed a private reality of cruelty, coldness and spite. His daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, exposes the "damning details" in her forthcoming book, Small Fry [Amazon]. But in a New York Times profile written by Nellie Bowles, Brennan-Jobs hopes all the same that others choose not to damn him.

Tony Hawk, amazingly nice guy and skateboard legend, discusses aging and kicks some ass. (more…)

Onavo (previously) was an Israeli startup that Facebook bought; the company has made a series of apps that masqueraded as utility software while gathering competitive intelligence that Facebook used to target its rivals by monitoring users' behavior. (more…)

California voting officials have certified an open source vote-counting package for use in the upcoming LA elections, in the first of a series of planned improvements to the County's voting system (other plans include improved absentee voting ballots). (more…)

For the past 8 years, Hong Kong has received the dubious honor of having the least affordable housing market in the world. The average house price is 20 times the median household income (Los Angeles and London are about 10 and New York is about 6). As a result, many families live in very tiny apartments (75 to 140 square feet). Those who can't afford a parking lot sized apartment can live in a cage inside a room filled with stacked cages.In this video, Johnny from Vox visits with cage dwellers and finds out how they live.Image: Vox screenshot

"We are in a Constitutional malestrom. Literally a crisis that we haven't seen since Watergate. We are in a Watergate moment. The White House increasingly is looking like a criminal enterprise." said US Senator Richard Blumenthal.In the video above, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) explains that President Trump can be indited, or even impeached, over his crimes. The Senator also discusses pending legislation to protect the special counsel's investigation.

Machines come to life and start killing people. Stephen King's cocaine fueled 1986 thriller Maximum Overdrive is still wonderful fun today. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvtxWSJbjGQSculptor Jud Turner (previously) has created a giant shiny metal firefly with the tail-light from a 1959 Cadillac, wired up to a clapper-style switch. It's called "MerKaBot" and it was created for Firefly Aerospace. (more…)

Dril has a book out collecting their tweets, drawings and other elements of the essential twitter experience.

When Verizon's life-threatening price-gouging was introduced in a sworn statement from the Santa Clara County Fire Department as part of 22 states' lawsuits against the FCC over its dismantling of Net Neutrality rules, Verizon's crisis communications team leapt into action. (more…)

Pudding's data-driven analysis of women's jeans pockets compares 32" waist jeans for men and women from a variety of brands and uses various common cellphones as a benchmark; the conclusion will not surprise you. (more…)

Former Air Force language specialist and intelligence contractor Reality Winner has been sentenced to 63 months in prison. (more…)

Simon Stålenhag's famous for his atmospheric paintings depicting alien technology lurking in the mists of Scandinavia. He's just put out an album of lo-fi ambient music, C:\Music\for\DOS, made with cheap vintage keyboards and legendary 1990s music-making app Impulse Tracker. That's a picture of his "studio" up top: "Oh, the computer to the right was just for playing Doom."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn7sdC8rKqM&feature=youtu.be&list=OLAK5uy_lWUHfM87_5svYbCsqeO-uxtc-6lTxWGFA

"Titties" is a stupid word. It's so stupid and gross that some millennials are replacing it with even more ridiculous words like "tiddies" or "titays." Brilliantly funny MEL Magazine editor Alana Hope Levinson explores how "The Extremely Online are destroying language — one tiddy (or tity) at a time." From MEL:

As a wise man once said, "It's funny cause it's true."(r/funny)

Last week, Aretha Franklin died at the age of 76 in her hometown of Detroit. On Tuesday, during a pregame moment of silence at Detroit's Comerica Park dedicated to her memory, a full rainbow appeared. https://twitter.com/tigers/status/1032041080760541184

Every Facebook user will be assigned a "trustworthiness score" derived from a mix of user complaints and secret metrics derived from spying on user activity on the system (Twitter has a comparable system). (more…)

As you might imagine, Spyfone is a company that offers to spy on other peoples' phones for you: its major market is parents and bosses who infect and surveil the phones their kids/minions use, peeking on their texts, emails, Facebook messages, passwords, photos, browsing history, etc. (more…)

If you've ever picked up a game controller, you've likely considered what it would be like to create your own video game. Even if you have zero animation or coding experience, you can create your own games with help from the School of Game Design, which offers a massive library of step-by-step training videos covering everything from the absolute basics to modeling and animation.Featuring over 120 hours of easy-to-follow training videos on all things game design, the School of Game design is loaded with resources to help you make advanced 2D and 3D games that you can publish anywhere. You'll foster skills in both coding and digital artistry and take your knowledge further with support from instructors and professionals toting over 16 years of game industry experience. Plus, you'll even get unlimited access to thousands of dollars in royalty-free game art and textures that you can use when making your own projects.With lifetime access to the School of Game Design, you can learn at your own pace and keep up with the latest industry advancements as you go. Lifetime memberships are on sale for $59 (over 90% off the usual price.

There’s a Japanese proverb I’m particularly fond of that states how foolish it is to try and predict the future. It goes: “Rainen no koto ieba, oni ga warau”, meaning if you talk about next year the ogre or devil (ogres or devils) will laugh. Depending on where you live in Japan, there are different versions of this saying. One even brings that future closer. “Asu no koto ieba oni ga warau”— if you talk about tomorrow the ogre/devil will laugh. Then there is the one that states it isn’t a laughing devil you’ll get but a snickering mouse. However you say it, I think the Japanese saying about having demons laughing at your folly when trying to guess the future is a little bit more ominous version of “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”. Photo: Thersa Matsuura

The ultimate crime, courtesy of the Whitest Kids U Know.

My American friends: I regret to inform you that your dream of declaring ding as duty-free swag when crossing back from Canada into the United States is oh, so very stillborn. From Newsweek:

When Lanny Davis announced the launch of the Michael Cohen Truth Fund campaign through GoFundMe, he should have been laughed off of television. Appearing on the Today Show, Davis said his client "needs help from the American people to tell the truth." At that moment, Lanny became less like a lawyer and more like a televangelist. "We can save this nation from the firey pits of hell with the truth that only our dear brother Michael can deliver! Pick up the phone now and give in the name of the Lord Almighty!" Oh, and the cost of that truth? $500,000. 1 in 3 campaigns on GoFundMe are to cover medical expenses. People desperately looking for money to cover a surgery, pay for chemo costs, get a wheelchair for their kid. Money can be raised via GoFundMe for virtually anything. But there's something especially revolting about using it to help the man who once famously said he take a bullet for the President whose shitty health care policies are what has driven a lot of those desperate people to GoFund Me in the first place. Less than 24 hours after its launch, the Michael Cohen Truth Fund has raised over $133,000. When I saw that amount, I was horrified. This is money that'll go to a man who purchased a $6.7 million dollar apartment FOUR months ago. A man who spent nearly a decade as Donald Trump's personal Ray Donovan. A man who didn't give a flying rat's ass about telling the truth until he realized he was looking at a lengthy prison sentence. But even though I was horrified, I kind of understood it. Our country has gone completely off the rails and we're all desperate to get rid of the conductor before he slams it into a wall or hands the keys over to his pal, Vlad. And that desperation can make people do funny things. Confession: I was one of the wildly optimistic fools who donated to Jill Stein's recount fiasco. So I understand the compulsion to throw coins into the Fountain of Bad Ideas. But not for Michael Cohen. Not for a man whose Holocaust-surviving father had to remind his son that he didn't survive just to have Donald Trump sully his name.We deserve to know everything Michael Cohen knows about the crimes Donald Trump and his family may have committed. But there's no way in hell the American people should have to pay in order for him to tell it. Don't give this asshole your money. He can sell another Birkin bag instead.[Photo: GoFundMe]

In Japan, Suntory has come out with a new beverage called All-Free All-Time, a clear, non-alcoholic drink that is purported to taste just like real beer. The bottles and commercials are pushing this as a drink to enjoy over lunch, at your office, during a meeting, or after you workout. I tried a swig. A nice hearty stout, it is not. Photo: Thersa Matsuura

Do you ever want to take a quick little note with real pen and paper, but hate carrying around big, medium, or even small-sized memo pads? Well, Mamimu Memo has got the stationary item for you. They make tiny, matchbook-sized memo pads that look just like real retro matchbooks. Not only adorable, but the detail is impressive as well. A closer look at the gritty surface you would normally use to strike a match, finds it is instead just quaintly colored edges. The real sweetness of these undersized memo pads is the nostalgic designs. Mamimu Memo boasts Japan Classic, World Classic, American Vintage, and European Vintage patterns. Even though they were 180 yen a piece, I couldn’t buy just one.Photos: Thersa Matsuura

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Sadly, for the people of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, once a Sandinista and a trusted emissary of change to his people, chose the latter. It’d be flippant, under most circumstances, to use a quote pulled from a comic book movie to describe the doings of an autocratic dictator, but the desperate, comic book villain death grip that Ortega has held onto the seat of the Nicaraguan presidency these past few years makes it feel right, somehow. Painting himself as a good fella that's simply trying to hold his country’s shit together, Ortega, the police elements loyal to his government, and the paramilitaries under his sway have been responsible for at least 450 deaths since this past April when peaceful protests broke out over the Nicaraguan government’s plans to reform the nation’s social security system. Under Ortega’s new scheme, the poorest people in a nation full of poor people would have been forced to pay more for their pensions while receiving less. The protests soon turned violent. Then, they turned deadly. Currently, Ortega, who claims that the violence in his nation has come to an end, is living behind barricades and armed guards. His people want him gone. The Financial Times has, hands-down, the best explanation on why this is, that I’ve run across:

Living in what’s essentially a tiny house on wheels, I love eBooks and eBook readers. They allow me to maintain a complete and growing library without the space and weight gains that owning shelves full of dead tree editions come with. I own over 2,000 eBooks. I review eBook readers and provide tips on using them for one of the other outlets that I write for.None of this prepared me for the news that Rakuten Kobo has paired with Walmart to sell eBooks and at least one of its lower-end ebook readers at Walmart.According to The Digital Reader, Walmart will be selling Kobo’s base model Aura reader and possibly some of the company’s other excellent E-Ink reading devices as well, in store and online. This, to me, makes a lot of sense. Given the issues that Walmart is having with Amazon drinking their fiscal milkshake these past few years, making a bit of space for eBook appliances seems like an easy way to attempt to take a bite out of a market that Amazon pretty much owns in North America—dedicated electronic reading devices. It makes sense for Kobo too: despite their making some really great hardware, they’ve been having a hell of a time making in-roads against Amazon’s Kindle eBook readers and the massive scope of content that Amazon provides. Having their gear in a national chain might help to move Kobo’s pieces a little further across the board.What I am surprised by, however, is that, in addition to Kobo’s eBook readers being available in-store, Walmart will also be selling gift certificates for particular book titles. I get that having eBooks on sale like this allows folks to buy a particular book for someone as a gift or an impulse buy. But it feels like a clunky delivery system for digital content that, if you own a Kobo or have the Kobo app on your smartphone or tablet, you could otherwise just buy with a single click. It feels like a waste of shelf space. Granted, you can buy gift cards for Amazon, or Apple gift certificates to snag iBooks with. But both of those are more about having the credit required to make any number or purchases at a later date. Giving space over to cards for individual digital book downloads feels half-baked by comparison. That said, given Walmart’s re-investment in online streaming as a path to financial salvation, I suppose that I shouldn’t be too surprised. These are the actions of a brick-and-mortar empire trying to survive in an increasingly digital world. Given the number of independent businesses that Walmart’s been responsible for shuttering over the years, I kind of feel like this is a great look for them.Image via Flickr, courtesy of Brave New Films

California's Net Neutrality bill just passed out of committee and is on its way to be voted on by the Assembly. If you are a California voter, please take a moment now to call your assemblymember and tell them to vote "yes" on SB 822. (more…)

One of my favorite filmmakers has always been Preston Sturges. I call him the Judd Apatow of the 1940s. He was Hollywood's first writer/director and his films are truly memorable (and entertaining) in a time when we all need a little more comedy in our lives. (more…)

Josh Klein became a TED talk sensation a number of years ago when he created a vending machine that taught crows how to exchange lost coins for peanuts. Now Josh has a new project based on his vending machine -- an "experimentation platform designed to autonomously train corvids (the family of birds crows belong to)." I asked him to write a bit about it. Here it is: