The Koch-backed Mercatus Institute was humiliated last month when it published a scare story claiming that American couldn't afford the $32.6 trillion cost of universal health care for the next decade, a number that seems huge until you realize that the cost of privatized US health care over the same period will be $2 trillion higher. (more…)

The fabulous Lea Redmond of Leafcutter Designs (previously) has launched a brand new project. It's called Lively Matter and it's a 52-card activity deck to create grand adventures and experiences out of the ordinary.She writes:

Have you ever wanted to talk with the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the risks of talking in public about security issues, especially in connected Internet of Things devices? Today, you'll get your chance. (more…)

For more than 100 years, the animals on the Barnum's Animal Crackers' packaging were depicted in a circus cage. Now, thanks to a request from PETA, that has all changed. The animal rights organization asked Mondelez, Nabisco's parent company, to remove the bars in a letter sent in 2016, according to AP:

The Attorneys General of New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia have filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, asking it to reinstate the Network Neutrality rules killed by Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. (more…)

The abandoned Karl Lagerfeld Realdoll prototype known as Rodrigo Alves used the N-word on a British reality TV show and the broadcaster didn't even take him off the air. Here's the BBC on the alarming but very highly-rated return of a classic.

I've been keeping one of these mini umbrellas in my suitcase for years. It's so small and leight I don't notice that it is there until I need it. It weighs 7-ounces. It's under 7-inches long when closed. It opens to 34-inches in diameter. Amazon has it on sale today for $11.54.

Whether it's paying for burying dedicated power-lines for data-centers, winning below-cost sweetheart deals on electricity rates, or securing tax-breaks and incentives to set up shop, Amazon Web Services has proven time and again that it is the nation's best cost-shifter, enjoying billions in tax-funded gifts for operating data centers that employ almost no one and whose profits go straight to distant shareholders. (more…)

The New York Times interviewed Stephen Colbert on stage. Among other things, he describes his typical working day, and what goes into producing The Late Show. I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but what I've seen so far is really good.I had the privilege of being on the Colbert Report twice. Each time, Colbert came into the green room and spent about 20 minutes chatting with me. He was really nice. I also noticed that the crew adored him and had a great relationship with him.

Second Life is many things, but among them is an attempt to build a virtual world that works more like the web (where anyone can add a site or a page) than a finished product that can only be modified by the corporation that manufactured it. (more…)

Squirrel Monkey makes excellent videos that imagine what popular online sites and services would have looked like if they'd been around in the 1980s or 1990s. Squirrel Monkey uses actual vintage computer equipment in the videos, which look like 5th generation VHS cassette duplicates. Even though the videos are funny, they are also spot on. In this one, Squirrel Monkey shows us Uber in the 1980s. The final step involves printing a voucher on a very slow dot matrix printer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vu1ysp7QYkNewt Gingrich's 1995 Republican Revolution dismantled all the expert departmentsand bureaus that Congress depended on to make sense of the world, making lawmakers dependent on corporate lobbyists to advise them on everything from pollution to food safety to military technology to mass surveillance -- nearly 25 years later, Washington DC is a literal and figurative swamp, and only 18% of Americans say they trust Congress. (more…)

From one of my favorite blogs, Nag on the Lake, a post about how workers in Tokyo moved section of train line underground in the course of an evening in 2013.

Randy Rainbow is on point again. In his latest song, he asks Omarosa (who has a new book, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House), "Could you be the hero we've been waiting for?"

Venezuela's bolivar is worth less than the paper it is printed on. Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro has a solution. He has issued a new bolivar, called the "strong bolivar." How can you fail with plan as clever as that?From NPR:

A possible plea deal in the fraud case of Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen plea deal may come together as soon as today, NBC reports. (more…)

And if Bruce Dickinson wants more cowbell, we should probably give him more cowbell!Fortnite has added a new dance. I had to have it. Epic may want to organize these as part of the "Dad dance series" because my 11 year-old star player doesn't get the joke.Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!

A research team wrote about how they trained a machine-learning AI to generate images from text descriptions. When fed birds as its dataset, it got very good at painting birds...... But the more you feed it, the crazier it gets.More collected here, and you can try it yourself thanks to Chris Valenzuela's online implementation. Here are my efforts.

Zookeepers are tricking a new panda mom of twins into thinking she's got only one cub, so both will survive.In this BBC Earth clip, a new panda mother doesn't realize she's raising twins. According to the narrator, who is none other than David Attenborough, it's not unusual for pandas to birth multiples. What is unusual is for mama pandas to take care of more than one panda cub when she has. Normally, she'll abandon one (or more) of them so that the other will live. Attenborough says that it's thought that they don't have "sufficient milk or energy" to raise more than one, so they starve the unwanted cub(s).So, in an effort to keep both pandas alive, zookeepers are playing the old switcheroo on the twins' mom, Lee Lee. They've been switching out the (OMG-they're-so-adorable) cubs up to 10 times a day and, so far, Lee Lee is none the wiser.(Mashable)

Nikki Fried is a Florida Democrat running to be the state’s agriculture commissioner. Medical marijuana is legal in Florida, but when Fried said she'd be accepting be accepting campaign contributions from the medical marijuana industry, Wells Fargo terminated her account.From The Washington Post:At a news conference on Monday, Fried said that “Wells Fargo’s actions against my campaign are emblematic of what is wrong with our government and politics today," adding that she was “kicked out of a bank for voicing support of a law that is literally codified in the Florida constitution.”In a statement, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Bridget Braxton declined to comment on the specifics of Fried’s case but said that “it is Wells Fargo’s policy not to knowingly bank or provide services to marijuana businesses or for activities related to those businesses, based on federal laws under which the sale and use of marijuana is illegal even if state laws differ.” By phone, she clarified that “activities related to those businesses” would include donations, to politicians or any other account holders.Image: Rob Wilson/Shutterstock

Thanks to the members of a street art project, some bus shelter adverts for Facebook in London were improved by a good ol' fashioned culture jam.The Protest Stencil is taking credit for these subvertising efforts which altered Facebook's messaging to say, "Fake news is not our friend, it’s a great revenue source," and "Data misuse is not our friend, it’s our business model."They refer to their work as "honest Facebook ads," writing, "To facebook, you’re not a ‘friend’, you’re the product on sale." Preach it!https://www.instagram.com/p/BmgCAhknnv7/?taken-by=proteststencilhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BmbKDvQHRFP/?taken-by=proteststencil(Design You Trust)image via Protest Stencil

Cat's gonna be cats.This kitten doesn't know that there's a wedding. It's got its own schedule which includes chasing and riding on the bride's train.https://imgur.com/Tr4qppB

Josh, one of my inbox zine's readers, made this. He wrote, "For a very long time I’ve wanted to build a giant geodesic dome filled with fake grass in lower Manhattan. This August it happened."His piece is called dusk-space and it's an immersive synthetic environment meant to "recreate the experience of being in a remote country field at dusk." Here are some words about it from its statement (emphasis mine):

Holy crap! There's a toilet plunger that looks like a poop emoji on a stick. This smiling anthropomorphic plunger is the work of Squatty Potty, the folks who really know how to market toilet stools.Need it? (Don't kid yourself, you do.) It's available for ~$15.Previously: Poop-themed toys rule New York Toy FairThanks, Howie!

It's about damn time. Nick Lyon, Michigan's health director, has been ordered to stand trial on involuntary manslaughter charges after the deaths of two men were linked to an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in Flint. 90 cases of Legionnaire's were reported in Genesee County, resulting in 12 deaths. Flint still does not have clean drinking water.State official ordered to trial on Flint charges[WOOD-TV] Image by Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Shockingly good work by Banjo Guy Ollie.

Paul Hansmeier pleaded guilty to of wire fraud and money laundering today for his role in the Prenda Law copyright scam. Prenda uploaded porn movies to download sites, got the IP addresses of users accessing the files, then shook them down for settlements with the threat of exposing them to their families and the public through court action.

Evan Greer from Fight for the Future writes, "At this moment in history, it's just not okay for tech companies to support government agencies that are openly violating human rights. But while Salesforce's executives have been speaking out against US immigration policies, the company is maintaining a multimillion dollar contract with US Border Patrol. We just launched DropSalesforce.com, an open letter from tons of organizations threatening to boycott Salesforce (and Heroku) if they don't cancel the contract. We're also crowdfunding BART bus ads to run near Salesforce HQ in San Fransisco during their big yearly conference. Lots of big tech companies have contracts with ICE and Border Patrol. Salesforce could be the first domino to fall."

Hey you! I'm driving to the Playa this Thursday, and there's a small but significant chance that you'll be there too! If you're around, come and say hi! (more…)

Lightning cables typically fray at the ends. These cables have connecters at right-angles to the cable, which might reduce the wear and tear. The cables themselves are braided, too, for additional robustness. They are MFi Certified and on sale at Amazon for $13 for 2 if you use code AUKEYAL5.

The blackest of black pigments is a substance called Vantablack. It reflects almost no visible light, so anything painted with it looks like a 2D cutout of nothingness.British artist Anish Kapoor licensed the worldwide exclusive rights to use Vantablack in art, which makes him kind of an asshole, but we've already complained about him on Boing Boing and that's not the point of this post. The point is that Kapoor has n work of art at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal called Descent Into Limbo. It's an eight-foot deep pit and because Kapoor painted the interior of the pit with Vantablack, it looks like a two-dimensional black circle painted on the floor of the museum. You can guess what happened next. A 60 year old visitor (probably the kind of guy who can't pass by a "wet paint" sign without poking his finger at whatever the sign is referring to) ignored the warning signs and stepped into the hole, falling eight feet to the bottom of the pit. He was hospitalized, treated for minor injuries and released. https://youtu.be/LRSjuKibFMsImage: ANISH KAPOOR: OBRAS, PENSAMENTOS, EXPERIÊNCIAS YouTube Screengrab

Museum of Modern Art film curator La Frances Hui narrates this fascinating introduction to the genre of Kung Fu films:

https://youtu.be/ajGX7odA87kJames Mickens (previously) has a well-deserved reputation for being the information security world's funniest speaker, and if that were all he did, he would still be worth listening to. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQZjaosDToUThe Smarter Bridge is a project led by Mix3d, which makes robotic 3D printers that can sinter stainless steel structures and inch their way along the surfaces as they are completed. (more…)

Kay Longstaff said she sang songs to stay awake while floating and treading water 60 miles off the coast of Croatia. The 46-year-old British woman says she fell from the deck of Norwegian Star cruise ship on Saturday night. She was rescued 10 hours later by the Croatian coast guard. On Facebook, a Norwegian crew member wrote that Longstaff had "jumped" and had been "arguing with her fella the whole time."Image: Pjotr Mahhonin/Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osPL8b-nTegSurfsafe is a browser extension that compares all the images you load in your browser to images that appear on "trusted news sites," fact-checking services, and Snopes, and pops up a tool-tip warning when you hover over known hoax images with links to more information. (more…)

Zephyr Teachout (previously) is a netroots pioneer, a leading competition law scholar, and a progressive candidate for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General of New York State. (more…)

Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi was briefly called "Revenge of the Jedi." Apparently screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan had told Lucas that "Return of the Jedi" was a "weak title." In December 1982 though, Lucas went back to his original title but not before promotional posters had already been released, such as the one above that is currently up for auction at Sotheby's with an expected hammer price of 1,400 - 2,600 GBP ($1800 - $3200 USD).From Wikipedia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lFybhRxoVMLast night's Hugo Awards ceremony featured a significant first: Nora Jemisin became the first novelist in science fiction history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugos, once for each volume in her Broken Earth trilogy (the concluding volume, The Stone Sky, won last night's prize); in addition to the unprecedented honor, Jemisin had another first, with her acceptance speech, which may just be the best such speech in the field's history. (more…)

Music of Mind Control with Micah is a weekly radio program on WFMU that bills itself as an "exploration into the musical output of religious cults, new religious movements, and individuals of a spiritually inspired and divine nature." In between songs (most of which are very listenable) the host provides information about the different cults from around the world whose music is featured on the show.WFMU has good smartphone apps that let you listen to all of their different weekly shows.

PepsiCo is buying SodaStream for $3.2 billion.

https://youtu.be/cHo-ZJdxH_cWhen fire ants dig out a new nest underground, a small number are actually doing most of the work while the rest dilly-dally. Apparently this is actually an effective division of labor because it prevents the insects from getting in each other's way. Now, Georgia Tech researchers suggest this approach could be help future robot swarms be more efficient in cramped areas like collapsed buildings or construction sites. From Science News:

A woman insured by Anthem was paying $285 for a generic heart medication prescription. Recently, she was planning to go overseas for months and wanted to stock up on the medicine, but Anthem wouldn't give it to her because her previous prescription had not yet run out. So she went to Costco and bought the medicine. She was surprised that is cost only $40.A spokesperson for the company that Anthem uses to manage its prescription drug program had no explanation for the price difference, other than the fact that Costo sometimes offers generic drugs for a lower price. No shit, sherlock.From PBS:

In an "unprecedented" letter to the the laity, Pope Francis described priestly child abuse as an atrocity and the Catholic Church's protection of abusers as complicity.

A 12-person jury in Texas found Shafeeq Sheikh, a former physician at Baylor College of Medicine, guilty of raping a heavily sedated patient. The jury recommended that Sheikh receive no prison time, and state law compelled the judge to comply.From Fox News:

Andreas Wannerstedt, a motion graphics designer and animator from Sweden, has an Instagram account of delightful endlessly looping virtual kinetic machines. I instantly followed his account as soon as I saw them.

On Game Terrain Engineering, Jim Kelly posted this great tutorial on building a wall-mounted display for your lovingly-painted fantasy miniatures collection. The display, while looking quite elaborate and substantial, is little more than a cheap wooden picture frame, some foam board, and lots of time and hot glue. The Archdevil Moloch statue in the middle was 3D printed. That is, of course, optional.https://youtu.be/T0PTvqKX_NEMonths ago, well-known dungeon crafter, DM Scotty, posted some similar wall displays on Facebook that used a printed image on their back walls (relevant to the theme of the minis on display) and simpler shelving. Scotty's might be an overall better solution for displaying your minis in a less busy but still thematic way. Jim admits that the lighting/viewability of some of the miniatures on his dungeon-themed display is not the best. He’s considering adding LED lighting.I am definitely going to build some of these displays. With all of the time I’m putting into painting minis these days, I don’t want to hide my hard work away in cases when it could be enjoyed by others. I think this is a really fun way to do it. I can’t wait to plan out and create thematic frame-displays for my Frostgrave, Gaslands, Blood Bowl, and All Quiet on the Martian Front minis. For displaying years of collected Warhammer 40,000 armies? We’re going to need a bigger boat.BTW: The latest D&D game book, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, includes the exiled Archdevil Moloch in its bestiary, with great artwork, background, and stat block. Old school roleplayers will remember the gem-eyed Moloch statue being looted on the cover of the first AD&D Players Handbook. Mordenkainen’s bestiary also includes Eidolons, the undead spirits that get bound into statues, and even a stat block for Sacred Statue, the Moloch statue featured on that early D&D cover.

Kevin Spacey's once-illustrious movie career came to an end this weekend with the release of Billionaire Boys Club. The movie, filmed in 2015 before numerous accusations of sexual assault and misconduct were brought against Spacey, made less than $500 on its opening weekend. No, that's not a typo. Less than $500. There are yard sales that made more this weekend. Lemonade stands that did better. The guy who sells long-stemmed roses outside of your local nightclub probably did better than this movie. Released in only ten theaters across the entire country, Billionaire Boys Club had a bit of hype around it when first announced thanks to an ensemble cast of Hollywood up-and-comers including Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton, Emma Roberts, and Billie Lourd. But that all came crashing down when Spacey was revealed to be a predator. The Hollywood Reporter breaks down the math:

https://youtu.be/JjuqRmFPOAEJuly 29-August 2, 2020: even the (no-foolin' awesome) Prime Minister is getting in on the act!