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Jair Bolsonaro -- Brazil's authoritarian, "sexist, racist and homophobic" presidential candidate -- was supposed to have the election sewn up, with the Brazilian left in retreat. But now, with the first-round vote a week away, Bolsonaro is losing ground to the leftist Fernando Haddad, formerly mayor of Sao Paolo, with a runoff virtually guaranteed for Oct 28.While Bolsonaro has the support of Brazil's wealthy elite and powerful media-barons, he is monumentally unpopular among working people, women, and young people, who have filled the streets with mass anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations. Bolsonaro, who has close ties to the remnants of the military junta that once ruled Brazil, has mooted imposing martial law on the country if he loses the election.The state of Brazilian politics is incredibly complicated. This long, but very readable summary in The Nation does a very good job of laying out the current state of play and its historic context.In living memory, Brazil has lived under a military rule that supported the interests of economic elites, who suppressed their opposition with torture, murder, surveillance, arbitrary detention, and the full suite of horrors that can only be called "fascist." Bolsonaro hearkens wistfully to those days as a golden age for Brazil. He is still leading in the polls, but the latest gains for his opposition are a rare ray of hope in a country whose national politics have slid towards authoritarian rule in service to the one percent.Bolsonaro enjoys widespread support among police and the military. His vice-presidential candidate, Gen Hamilton Mourão, unnerved Brazilians recently when he said in a situation of “anarchy”, a president could declare an “auto-coup”. Read the rest

Good news from the U.S. Supreme Court! It decided not to weigh in on the fight over Martin's Beach in California. Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley billionaire, bought land surrounding the popular beach, intermittently closed the only access route to the public, and has fought a long, losing battle over his "property rights" since. In California, beaches are public up to the high tide line—and established paths to them come with legal baggage, even when they run over your land.“The most conservative and divided Supreme Court in my lifetime confirmed that even a billionaire, who refuses to acknowledge that the law applies to him, and retains the most expensive attorneys he can find, cannot create a private beach,” said attorney Joe Cotchett of Burlingame, who represents the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit group that has won lower cases forcing Khosla to keep the beach open.“Beaches are public in California, and the immensely wealthy must comply with the Coastal Act just like everyone else.”Attorneys for Khosla said Khosla will now seek a permit from the Coastal Commission, which surfers and environmental groups, and the commission itself, said was required under the law, to close the gate to the beach, something he had not done. ... The beach, used by families back to the 1920s, is flanked on both sides by steep cliffs and is only accessible by boat or by a road that runs through 89 acres Khosla bought in 2008 from a local family. The case has gained national attention. Read the rest

In 1989, the Chinese government slaughtered pro-democracy student activists whose commitment to justice swept the nation; now they're facing a new student uprising, one comprised of ardent Communist youth whose state-mandated education in the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao have prompted them to stand up for oppressed workers who labor in the for-profit factories that have flourished since the Deng reforms.President Xi has pursued a program of increased, unchecked personal power and a movement away from Chinese media; as part of this, Chinese curriculum has pursued a new emphasis on Communist literature. The Communist students staged mass, illegal demonstrations in Huizhou in sympathy with a wildcat workers' strike, bearing portraits of Mao, singing socialist anthems, and chanting "You are the backbone of the working class! We share your honor and your disgrace!"On August 24, police cracked down on the students, arresting 50 organizers in raids as they sang "The Internationale" in Chinese. Some organizers remain in prison, accused of being secret agents of foreign powers.Communist student movements are springing up all over China, and local police are cracking down on their leaders.The dispute in Huizhou began in July, after Jasic Technology, a manufacturer of welding equipment, prevented its workers from forming an independent union. China allows labor organizing only under the auspices of the official, party-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions.The workers said managers had seized control of their branch of the official union. Complaining of being underpaid and treated like slaves, they began to organize a petition before the police intervened and detained several of them. Read the rest

In 1960, my friend Frank Drake launched Project Ozma, the first modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Frank used the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (image above) in Green Bank, West Virginia to listen for interstellar radio transmissions that might be a signature of ETs. Nearly 60 years and countless scans later, we still haven't heard anything. Why? Space is big. Massive. In a 2010 paper, the SETI Institute's Jill Tarter and her colleagues described their ongoing calculations of a “cosmic haystack" where we're searching for an extraterrestrial needle. "If you build a mathematical model, the amount of searching that we've done in 50 years (as of 2008) is equivalent to scooping one 8-ounce glass out of the Earth's ocean, looking and seeing if you caught a fish," Tarter told NPR. "No, no fish in that glass? Well, I don't think you're going to conclude that there are no fish in the ocean. You just haven't searched very well yet. That's where we are."Now, Penn State astronomer Jason Wright and colleagues have refined the "cosmic haystack" model to include additional factors involving likely frequencies and bandwidth along with the latest large SETI searches. Even still, they "conclude that the fraction of it searched to date is also very small: similar to the ratio of the volume of a large hot tub or small swimming pool to that of the Earth's ocean."From Science News:Converting the volume to liters for the sake of analogy, the researchers concluded that SETI has covered the equivalent of 7,700 liters out of 1.335 billion trillion liters of water in Earth’s oceans. Read the rest

I don't know why this water balloon doesn't get torn to shreds by this weed whacker, but the shapes it makes when the fast moving filaments hits it are spellbinding. Read the rest

A new report summarizing three years of from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the TSA calls out the agency for its "toxic leadership culture, misconduct, mismanagement, whistleblower retaliation and obstruction," citing these as the reason for the agency's 20% annual attrition rates.The report was a long time coming, faced many hurdles and featured many lowlights, like the 2016 testimony of Office of the Chief Risk Officer program manager Mark Livingston, who described working for the TSA as like "Lord of the Flies; you either attack or be attacked."The committee was forced to subpoena the documents in 2017. However, many were still held back, and those that were turned over were heavily redacted with little-to-no justification. DHS and TSA continue to refuse to provide the full scope of unredacted documents, the report said.The report also detailed multiple instances of TSA senior leadership conducting themselves inappropriately. One executive pursued a relationship with a subordinate, then admitted to purposely misleading investigators. Though OPR recommended dismissal, he agreed to a settlement including a 14-day suspension and demotion, but no loss of pay.Another executive was convicted of driving while intoxicated, and attempted to claim falsely to police that she wasn’t operating the vehicle, but a member of TSA’s Aviation Security Advisory Committee was. Again, OPR recommended dismissal, but the executive settled for a 14-day suspension.A third executive got away with sexually harassing employees, and making racially offensive remarks for seven years before finally being dismissed.Report blasts TSA leadership for ‘toxic culture,’ blames it for high attrition, poor morale [David Thornton/Federal News Radio](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Do you need to void the contents of your stomach quickly? Watch this conversation between televangelists Kenneth Copeland (reported net worth $300 million) and Jesse Duplantis (reported net worth $50 million), in which they explain that they reason men of God require private jets is because they can't stand up and have a conversation with God on a commercial plane. Also, in "this dope filled world," you're likely to find yourself in "a long tube filled with demons." Kenneth Copeland also owns a $260,000 Maserati. I'll bet he and God had some great talks in that. Read the rest

Senator Bernie Sanders released a video on Twitter today that shows how similar Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and pussy-grabbing Trump are when defending themselves against sexual assault allegations."When faced with allegations of sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh took a page from Donald Trump's playbook," Sanders tweets.When faced with allegations of sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh took a page from Donald Trump's playbook. pic.twitter.com/jdDIYmOgtx— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 1, 2018Via The Hill Read the rest

The HP Spectre Folio is a laptop made of leather. As in: you cannot remove the leather, because the leather is part of the case.It's a premium ultraportable 2-in-1 with HP's Tilt Pen and 4G LTE. A 4K display option will be available, but not at launch. Prices start at $1,299. The "product exterior and outer keyboard is 100% genuine full grain leather as of 9/18/18" but it looks like corrected-grain to me, with no imperfections and a lot of homogenization. The proof will be in the patina: what will it look like after a few months of daily use? Read the rest

The Lord of the Rings and Kim Dotcom put New Zealand on the map for wealthy tech moguls seeking a safe space to hole up when disaster strikes. The Trump presidency kicked the bolt-hole craze to levels where Kiwi lawmakers had to put the brakes on the trend among the ultra-wealthy.New Zealand's isolation, lack of global enemies, lovely climate, and perks for luring tech workers have sealed its reputation in the Bay Area. Via Bloomberg:The Investor Plus Visa, which requires a minimum investment of NZD$10 million ($6.7 million) over three years, attracted 17 U.S. applicants in fiscal 2017, after President Donald Trump’s election. Previously, it averaged six applicants a year.More than 10 Americans from the West Coast have bought multimillion-dollar properties in the Queenstown region in the past two years, said Mark Harris, managing director of the local Sotheby’s real estate office.In August, partly in response to Americans gobbling up swaths of prime real estate, New Zealand’s government banned foreigners from buying homes, with the restrictions set to take effect in coming months.Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, ignited an uproar when he was granted citizenship after spending just 12 days in the country, prompting allegations that New Zealand’s passport was for sale. Thiel, 50, owns a $13.8 million home on 477 acres (193 hectares) in the lakeside town of Wanaka, with views of snow-capped mountains, and purchased another property in Queenstown, outfitted with a safe room.Hats off to the lovely illustrations by Steph Davidson that accompany the piece. Read the rest

Miami artist Brian Reedy creates pop-culture block prints that he sells on Etsy; his store is full of amazing handmade linoblock rice-paper prints, at $20 each, like "A Trip To The Moon," "The USS Enterprise," "Darth Vader Samurai," "Star Wars Still Life," and a superb set of Universal Monster prints: "The Creature From the Black Lagoon," "Frankenstein's Monster," "The Mummy," "Dracula," and "The Wolfman."A Trip To The MoonThe USS EnterpriseDarth Vader SamuraiStar Wars Still LifeThe Creature From the Black LagoonFrankenstein's MonsterThe MummyDraculaThe Wolfman(via Gameraboy) Read the rest

Moog is finally releasing a new polyphonic analog synthesizer, its first polyphonic model since production stopped on the Memorymoog in 1985, and a direct descendant of the iconic-yet-monophonic Minimoog Voyager released in 2002. Above is the only image released so far of the new Moog One. It's priced at $6000 for the 8 voice model and $8,000 for the 16-voice model. From Sweetwater:Powered by a sound engine with the most advanced architecture ever conceived for a Moog synth, Moog One is available in 8- and 16-voice versions that can simultaneously articulate eight or 16 voices, depending on the configuration of your instrument. The Moog One tri-timbral architecture lets you easily assign, split, layer, and stack voices with up to 48 oscillators in Unison mode...Clad in a handcrafted ash cabinet, the Moog One aluminum front panel is fitted with 73 knobs and 144 buttons, welcoming hands-on interaction with all the sound-sculpting and performance controls. Extended on-screen functionality is accessed via More buttons (one for each module) that serve up additional parameters in the center-panel LCD to deliver the most intuitive and efficient synthesis experience possible.Via Moog Music, a couple fine uses of the prior Moog Polymoog Synthesizer released in 1975: Read the rest

New Zealand's Customs and Excise Act 2018 went into effect today. That means travelers who refuse to give their phone or laptop password to customs officials will be fined NZ$5000. In addition, their devices will be confiscated and forensically searched. Customs Minister Kris Faafoi said these digital strip searches are necessary because "A lot of the organised crime groups are becoming a lot more sophisticated in the ways they're trying to get things across the border. And if we do think they're up to that kind of business, then getting intelligence from smartphones and computers can be useful for a prosecution." But Thomas Beagle of Council for Civil Liberties pointed out that organized criminals are smart enough not to keep incriminating files on their devices. From Radio NZ:[Customs spokesperson Terry Brown] said the law struck the "delicate balance" between a person's right to privacy and Customs' law enforcement responsibilities."I personally have an e-device and it maintains all my records - banking data, et cetera, et cetera - so we understand the importance and significance of it."Council for Civil Liberties spokesperson Thomas Beagle said the law was an unjustified invasion of privacy."Nowadays we've got everything on our phones; we've got all our personal life, all our doctors' records, our emails, absolutely everything on it, and customs can take that and keep it."The new requirement for reasonable suspicion did not rein in the law at all, Mr Beagle said."They don't have to tell you what the cause of that suspicion is, there's no way to challenge it."Image: Belish/Shutterstock Read the rest

Donald Trump has wrung many concessions out of Justin Trudeau on the NAFTA renegotiation, but none is more nonsensical and potentially damaging than a 20 year copyright term extension that will bring copyright in line with the US's extreme copyright system, where copyright endures for the life of the author plus 70 years, meaning that nearly every work created in US history will disappear due to commercial irrelevance, rather than being made available for scholars and other users by libraries and other nonprofits.Canada, like most of the world, has had a life-plus-fifty term, which is why, every year, works enter the Canadian public domain, free for all to use. In America, by contrast, the term of copyright means that virtually nothing has entered the public domain in decades.The Trudeau concessions to Trump repeat the horrific mistakes of the US copyright system, including a retrospective term extension, meaning that already-published works (like "Art of the Deal") will get the extra term added onto their copyright. There's no coherent explanation for this: copyright on existing works can't incentivise the creation of those works. We don't need to give Donald Trump an extra 20 years of copyright over his existing books, because we know he had enough incentive to create those books (because he created them) and any additional incentive we give him will (sadly) not improve those books.Yet the major copyright change for Canada is the extension in the term of copyright beyond the international standard of life of the author plus 50 years to life of the author plus 70 years. Read the rest

PBS premieres Dark Money on Monday October 1. It's a sobering look at how the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC is trickling down to local politics. John S. Adams, a Montana-based reporter profiled in the film, says, "This is scary stuff, but I think this is the proving ground for the American experiment."Dark Money, a political thriller, examines one of the greatest present threats to American democracy: the influence of untraceable corporate money on our elections and elected officials. The film takes viewers to Montana—a frontline in the fight to preserve fair elections nationwide—to follow an intrepid local journalist working to expose the real-life impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Through this gripping story, Dark Money uncovers the shocking and vital truth of how American elections are bought and sold. Official Selection, 2018 Sundance Film Festival.• DARK MONEY (2018) | Official Trailer HD (YouTube / PBS Distribution) Read the rest

No, this isn't a movie about North Korea's Kim Jung-un, but rather, "Rocketman" singer Elton John. The film, which stars Welsh actor Taron Egerton as Elton John, comes out next summer. Here is its first trailer. Read the rest

Wouldn't it be great if John Oliver could question Brett Kavanaugh under oath? Even better, how about having Oliver on the Supreme Court? Oh well, at least we have 30 minutes of Oliver telling the truth about the lying, partisan, privileged, rage-drunken, boofing creep who will toss out Roe v. Wade next year and make ruinous decisions for the next 35 years or so. Read the rest

Science Fair opened in theaters this weekend. The National Geographic documentary received Sundance's "Festival Favorite Award" and I can see why. It follows the lives of nine brilliant and dedicated high school students from 78 countries, and I was rooting for every one of them to win. The International Science and Engineering Fair brings together 1,700 students from around the world, each of whom won a local award for their project, to compete for $4 million in prizes and recognition for being the best of the best.Co-director Cristina Costantini said, "Science Fair is a love letter to the subculture that saved me. As a dweeby kid growing up in a sports-obsessed high school in Wisconsin, the international science fair became my lifeboat. It validated my passion for science, taught me how to dedicate myself to a goal and set my life on a trajectory that would have otherwise been totally impossible. But most important, science fair is where I found my tribe."Here's a Q&A with directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster:Why did you make this film?From the beginning, Cristina’s own experience with science fair was our north star. As a two-time alumna of ISEF, she not only had firsthand insight into the scene, but with some distance she could also look back and see how it shaped her life. With that very personal perspective, we set out to make a movie about the science fair journey as she remembered it: one of the most stressful, exhilarating, sublime, terrible experiences a young person could go through. Read the rest

The British government has been immobilised by Brexit preparations: hundreds of millions of pounds paid by insurers to the government to rebuild from flooding are sitting idle in savings accounts because no one can spare the time to spend them; ministers won't schedule out-of-London meetings because being away during a key vote would endanger the whisper-thin Tory majority; UK workforce productivity has fallen off a cliff while workers struggle to make preparations for the uncertain future; the government is incapable of legislating because the whole calendar is filled with Brexit bills; junior ministers are barely showing up for work because they don't believe they'll have careers after Brexit; the NHS's overriding priority is Brexit preparation -- everything, from top to bottom, is crumbling.Indeed, the government’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs unit, which looks after flooding, is consumed by its Brexit workload. Many non-Brexit issues are being systematically pushed to the bottom of the pile while Michael Gove, the cabinet minister in charge of the department, focuses on making a success of the EU divorce he championed.Aside from the NHS, there’s little if any new money available for non-Brexit-related issues, and top civil servants are being assigned to work on Brexit either in their own departments or in the unit created especially for exiting the EU. Even the extra £20.5 billion promised to the NHS by 2024 could be attributed to Brexit: Campaigners had promised the cash injection as a dividend from leaving the EU. While delays to government plans are nothing new, policy drift has reached unprecedented levels, and lawmakers complain that progressive plans on everything from modernizing radiotherapy for cancer patients to tackling plastic waste are in stasis. Read the rest

Another Brett Kavanaugh classmate from Yale, Charles Ludington, has described the judge as a "belligerent and aggressive" drunk. Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University, will be speaking about Kavanaugh to the FBI today.In a statement he gave to The Washington Post, he says that the last time he socialized with Kavanaugh, he witnessed the aggressive judge overreact to a remark that displeased him by throwing his beer into the person's face. "On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man's face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail," Ludington said.In his hearing last week, Kavanaugh denied drinking heavily, which Ludington says is a lie. He told the Post, "“I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18 or even 21 year old should condemn a person for the rest of his life. However...if he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences."Via NBC NewsImage: by CSPAN - https://www.c-span.org/video/?181538-1/judicial-nominations, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

Somewhere in New Zealand, a seven-year-old boy had an idea to celebrate the spirit of the wolf. His mom shared it on Facebook. And over the course of just a few days, thousands of people, many desperate for something happy after a miserable week, joined the call to celebration.This is Wolfenoot.A holiday where we get presents and feast on roasted meat and cake for being kind to dogs? YES, PLEASE.I first heard of Woolfenoot when a friend shared author Jax Goss's Facebook post, and joined the enthusiastic chorus of people planning their Woolfenoot feasts. I reached out to Jax through Twitter to ask how her son created Wolfenoot. There's not a huge amount of background really. I have a very imaginative child who is always coming up with stuff like this. I've been posting the crazy awesome and weird things he says for as long as he's been saying things. ;) This one just exploded.I'm not sure where he got this from, to be honest. When I asked him, he said "from my brain". Hehe. Very helpful that. ;) But I am a writer, editor and publisher. I am also a folklore nerd, so he has grown up in a house with a lot of books and stories and fairytales. I have a masters in children's literature, so there are stacks of books in our house. He reads avidly - well above his age level. I think maybe just growing up among all that story has kinda seeped into his brain. Read the rest

Slab City is a curious community in the Sonoran Desert about 150 miles northeast of San Diego. Formerly a World War II Marine Corps base, it's now home to around 150 off-the-grid squatters and thousands of temporary campers and RV owners who wait out the winter months before continuing their journeys. The name comes from the concrete remnants of the military base. Author and architect Charlie Hailey and photographer Donovan Wylie documented the anarchic living and structural scene in their new book "Slab City: Dispatches from the Last Free Place." The pictures are a compelling and provocative view inside this not-so-temporary autonomous zone that embodies a curious kind of liberty for its diverse inhabitants. From an interview in Smithsonian:What were some of the more interesting dwellings that you saw?Wiley: [The dwellings] were all so autonomous and each had its own individuality, which in itself makes them interesting. The structures were people; they revealed the people and the place and were all very different and fascinating. [Being there] really made me question the idea of what being free is, and what it means in terms of American mythology, the desert, expansion and history.Hailey: The scale of construction ranged from a piece of cardboard on the ground placed within a creosote bush to these large telephone structures to pallet structures that were two stories tall. Each one expressed what that particular person wanted to make them, but then against restraint of what resources were there and what nature would allow. Read the rest

These senior citizens have a message for the young folks in America: "Don't vote."This country belongs to whomever shows up. And do you know who shows up for every election? Old people. But only 46% of people 18-34 years old voted in the last election.So the elderly have a disproportionate influence on our politics and our country. And a lot of them would like to keep it that way.Message heard loud and clear, and I'm not even that young.Are you registered to vote?(Daring Fireball) Read the rest

In 1991, Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (aka Moebius) and a team of animators created this gorgeous short pilot for a film called Starwatcher. According to this Wired feature that Mark wrote in 1994, "Starwatcher was slated to be the first feature-length animated movie to be made with 3-D computer graphics. But the film's producer died in a car accident, and shortly thereafter it was discovered that the French production company bankrolling the film was FF85 million (US$15 million) in debt. (Many suspected the car accident was no accident.)" Read the rest

Raising baby corals is a labor-intensive process that requires gathering the babies at the moment the corals spawn in the wild. Scientists compete with fish that feast on the babies, netting the gametes and planulae, then caring for them in a lab until they can be planted on the ocean floor.Via bioGraphic:Over the past two decades, Chamberland and other scientists throughout the Caribbean—many of them now associated with a research and conservation group called SECORE, which stands for Sexual Coral Reproduction—have stubbornly advanced the art and science of raising coral babies. Through trial and error, these researchers have learned to better predict the quiet, hidden phenomenon of coral spawning, to fertilize coral eggs in the lab, and to foster young corals until they’re ready to grow in the open sea, on a living reef.Newborn corals are, in their way, as high-maintenance and idiosyncratic as their human counterparts, and the process of raising and releasing them, formally known as “assisted recruitment,” is full of frustrations and disappointments. Thanks to some recent successes and to rising interest from conservationists, however, the job is becoming easier and cheaper. As coral scientist Raphael Ritson-Williams explains, corals are like the buildings of a city, supplying apartments and restaurants, so preserving these living structures allows a city of creatures to thrive:• How to Raise Baby Corals (YouTube / bioGraphic) Read the rest

When it comes to the relatively new world of 3D printing, the possibilities are limitless - so much so that it's hard to know where to begin. So here's a good start: The CAD & 3D Printing eBook Bundle By Make:. Since 2005, Make: Magazine has been the primary resource for that particularly techie group of artists and artisans known as Makers. This new eBook bundle distills the best tips from Makers worldwide into a library that will get you inspired from the moment you get that printer or CAD machine out of the box.Beginners guides will take you through your first fabrications, and you'll quickly move on tackle "best of" projects from the Make: archives and learn your way around time-saving modeling tools like Fusion 360.Whether your aim is art, commerce or both, the ideas in this library will take you there. Pick up The CAD & 3D Printing eBook Bundle By Make: on sale now for $19.99. Read the rest

Funko has introduced a new two-pack of Pop! figures, except that one doesn't exist. In a brilliant and hilarious move, Funko is selling a Pop! of Jan Brady (holding a rotary phone, no less) next to an empty space representing her imaginary beau, George Glass. The limited edition pair will be available at Funko's booth at New York Comic-Con, which happens October 4-7, 2018. It will also be available at Books A Million."But I do have a boyfriend..." Read the rest

Idiots in Cars is my new favorite subreddit. It's more focused on a specific form of amusing (from the comfort of home) motoring nightmare than the usual grab-bag of dashcam tedium and rekt road horror. But it's not so focused that you lose interest after the first few videos.Here's a good one:Here, the driver of a truck selects the wrong motorist to cut off and brake check:Instant karmaI have saved the best until last:This dickhead refused to just let his truck get towed. from r/IdiotsInCars Read the rest

The legendary Willie Nelson supported Texas Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke Saturday night by playing at his rally. In a song, Nelson urged rally-goers to "Vote'em Out.""If you don't like who's in there, vote 'em outThat's what Election Day's all about,The biggest gun we got is called the ballot boxIt sure is! Texas readers, are you registered to vote?Previously: After the debate, Beto O'Rourke air drummed to The Who at a Whataburger drive-thru Read the rest

Beach WeekFrom Boing Boing, the free encyclopediaBeach Week is a 2018 black comedy film written, produced, edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Stephen Root, Josh Brolin and J. K. Simmons with William Zabka as Jeff Flake. It was released in the United States on September 28, 2018, and in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2018.Beach WeekTheatrical release posterWritten and Directed byJoel CoenEthan CoenStarringGeorge ClooneyFrances McDormandTilda SwintonBrad PittRelease dateSeptember 30, 2018 (2018-09-12) (United States)Budget$420,000 Box office$50,375,838 LegerdemainRob BeschizzaBoing BoingPlotRepublican leader Mitch McConnell (Gary Oldman) has a difficult relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump (Stephen Root), whose incompetence and sheer vulgarity has made the party deeply unpopular. Looming midterm elections are expected to favor Democrats in a landslide, but the retirement of a Supreme Court justice presents a last opportunity for the GOP to remake America's political landscape for decades to come. The party leadership is concerned that their ideal nominee, Amy Barrett (Tilda Swinton), is too conservative to pass muster with a closely-divided Senate. So top GOP aide George (George Clooney) concocts a plan to nominate a stalking horse candidate, Brett Kavanaugh (Brad Pitt) who party chiefs know to have a dark and disqualifying past. Read the rest

The deeply missed Robin Williams will have some of his best work commemorated in a massive 22-disc box set called Robin Williams: Comic Genius. Produced by Time-Life, the set includes all five of Williams' HBO specials, his best talk and late-night show appearances, 11 episodes of Mork & Mindy, the 2018 HBO Documentary Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind and so much more. Seriously, there is a TON of material in this set. Complete details and ordering information are available on Time-Life's website. Here's the preview: Read the rest

The conservative Washington Times has issued a retraction and apology in today's edition to Aaron Rich, the brother of murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Aaron Rich sued the paper after it published an editorial this past March that suggested he had downloaded emails from DNC servers and turned them over to Wikileaks in exchange for money. The retraction and apology are part of a settlement, according to Rich's lawyer Michael Gottlieb.From The Washington Times: The Washington Times published an op-ed column titled, “More cover-up questions: The curious murder of Seth Rich poses questions that just won’t stay under the official rug,” by Adm. James Lyons (Ret.) (the “Column”), on March 1 online and on March 2 in its paper editions. The Column included statements about Aaron Rich, the brother of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, that we now believe to be false.One such statement was that: “Interestingly, it is well known in the intelligence circles that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron Rich, downloaded the DNC emails and was paid by Wikileaks for that information.” The Washington Times now does not have any basis to believe any part of that statement to be true, and The Washington Times retracts it in its entirety.The Column also stated: “Also, why hasn’t Aaron Rich been interviewed [by law enforcement], and where is he?” The Washington Times understands that law enforcement officials have interviewed Mr. Rich and that he has cooperated with their investigation. The Washington Times did not intend to imply that Mr. Read the rest

Ajit Pai called it "illegal." EFF called it "the strongest Net Neutrality measure in the country." The telecoms companies got their employees to demand that California Governor Jerry Brown veto it. Jerry Brown just signed it. Read the rest

Right up there with your Twitter feed and Mr. Coffee machine, our email inboxes are among the first things we check in the morning. And, no matter how diligent we are about managing them, there's always a mountain of clutter waiting for us when we start our day. We could all use some organizational help, and Mailstrom Pro might be the solution. Lifetime subscriptions are on sale for $59.99 today.Mailstrom is the email management app that identifies and organizes bundles of related mail, allowing you to easily sort, manage, and delete massive swathes of emails at a time. You can unblock unwanted senders and unsubscribe from old lists with a single click, and Mailstrom's lifetime subscription extends to up to 20 of your email accounts giving you plenty of coverage.A lifetime subscription to Mailstrom Pro normally retails for $999.75, but you can sign up today for $59.99. Read the rest

Stella McCartney profiles David Lynch in this moody piece on the joys of cinema and transcendental meditation. Via Nowness:Having both reflected and refracted the modern world—from the provincial eeriness of Blue Velvet to the urban grime of Mulholland Drive—Lynch's work has consistently probed the magical and often dreamlike qualities of film. The LA-based director puts it simply: "Cinema is its own language." For Lynch, watching film—waiting for the curtains to rise, before descending into another world—shares many qualities with the inward reflection of meditation. This is especially relevant at a time when the subject matter of many films dips anxiously into modern darkness. But, as Lynch points out, "the filmmaker doesn’t have to be suffering to show suffering."Throughout the film, an eclectic cast of cameos and creative talents make appearances (including McCartney herself) in order to highlight the benefits of transcendental meditation in addressing trauma and the epidemic of toxic stress. The collaboration was created in support of the works of the David Lynch Foundation, whose aim is to prevent these issues from further spreading.• David Lynch in "Curtain's Up", from Stella McCartney (YouTube / Nowness) Read the rest

Say what you will about the Trump era: it has ushered in a SNL renaissance. Between Baldwin's eerily good Trump and McKinnon's Sessions, Melissa McCarthy's Spicer and Bill Murray's Bannon, SNL is proving Garry Trudeau's point that satire isn't supposed to change minds, it's supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.Kavanaugh embodies "comfortable" which is why his decidedly uncomfortable performance before the Senate was so singular; Matt Damon's SNL cold open skewers Kavanaugh through-and-through. Read the rest

These aren't the stories I'd expect to hear from Hillary Clinton... they're a bit more revealing than she's ever shared before. Read the rest

That sure was an expensive 420 joke. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has agreed to pay $20 million and step down from his role as chairman of the board of the company he founded for three years, in a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The worst humiliation Elon Musk will have to face won't be the $20 million fine or the loss of his role as chairman. Elon Musk now has to have a boss.Hope they hire a good tweet editor for him, too.Musk didn't admit or deny that he misled investors under the civil fraud charge. Tesla was not charged with fraud.From Matthew Goldstein at the New York Times:The S.E.C. announced the deal two days after it sued Mr. Musk in federal court for fraud and misleading investors over his post on Twitter last month that he had “funding secured” for a buyout of the electric-car company at $420 a share.It is not clear why Mr. Musk changed his mind and agreed to settle but shares of Tesla have been hit hard since the S.E.C. filed the lawsuit. On Friday, the stock dropped about 13 percent.The deal will allow him to remain as chief executive officer.The terms are slightly tougher than those that two people briefed on the talks said Mr. Musk had rejected on Thursday, which called for a two-year bar on serving as chairman and a $10 million fine.Tesla, which is also settling, will pay a $20 million penalty. Read the rest

MIT Comparative Media Studies researcher/instructor Chris Peterson is an adrent supporter of the Math Prize for Girls, and as part of his work with the organization, he's learned about the way that STEM fields were once considered inherently feminine, while the higher-status humanities were dominated by men -- it's the subject of some outstanding feminist scholarship by Professor Maria Charles.Peterson tweeted a quote from Maria Charles's work on the subject in a discussion of the upcoming Math Prize for Girls, and then found that his Twitter account had been suspended, without any explanation (he was given a chance to appeal the suspension, but has been told he might have to wait for days to find out what Twitter thought he did wrong).Peterson thinks he tripped over Twitter's new ban on "dehumanizing speech," which is meant to improve the quality of Twitter discourse by prohibiting Tweets that attack whole groups of people (formerly, Twitter banned attacking individuals on the basis of things like race or gender or sexual preferences, but not generalized racism, sexism, homophobia, etc).Peterson's explanation seems plausible: although his tweet was a condemnation of sexism, it did discuss gender norms through a critical lens, and an overbusy Twitter moderator might well have mistaken its meaning. One of the great ironies of moderation -- etiher human or algorithmic -- is that criticism of bad speech often contains examples of bad speech that can trip up moderators (for example, a complaint about being the subject of a racial slur might repeat the slur). Read the rest

The UK Conservative Party's annual conference is about to kick off in Birmingham, and the Tories have distributed an app ahead of time to all attendees: senior ministers, government officials, members of the press, party members, and others.The app has a fatal design-flaw: anyone could login as any attendee, provided that you knew that person's email address. As Guardian columnist and Jacobin writer Dawn Foster explained in a tweet, you could effect this login "just with their email address, no emailed security links, and post comments as them."Once logged in, you could see the user's private mobile phone number, change that person's profile, and, as noted, post comments under their name (the app has been updated to close the vulnerability).Twitter users are speculating about which UK data-protection laws this violates and what sort of penalties the party may face as a result of the breach. More trenchantly, this undermines the Conservatives' signature technological promises, including its insistence that a post-Brexit Irish border can be solved with technology, and the plans to make EU citizens register their presence in the UK with an app.FFS, the Tory conference app allows you to login as other people and view their contact details just with their email address, no emailed security links, and post comments as them.— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) September 29, 2018 Read the rest

Kavanaugh didn't just DARVO his way through yesterday's hearing: his bluster, tears, rage, and blame-shifting also allowed him to dodge a remarkable number of questions raised by the senators.Ford, by contrast, answered virtually every question put to her.Vox went through the transcript and painstakingly logged whether each question raised was addressed. They confirmed the impression that Kavanaugh was dodging the questions and Ford wasn't, and produced an excellent interactive graphic that allows us to visualize the both witnesses' forthrightness and drill down on each question and statement. Read the rest

This NSFW film examines a fictional incel named Sam, starting with his agonizingly tense interaction with a young woman and reaching a disturbing culmination.Via the Vimeo blog:The term “incel” is short for “involuntarily celibate.” It was originally coined in the early ‘90s by a website created for people to share their experiences of sexual inactivity. Since then, “incel” has evolved into an internet subculture of men who unwillingly remain sexually inactive and often employ hateful ideas of misogyny and racism to justify their plight. Merizalde first became interested in the subject after the 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, California in which 22-year-old Elliot Rodger targeted a nearby college sorority, killing six people and injuring fourteen others before committing suicide. Rodger was posthumously heralded a hero among incel communities for these actions and according to Merizalde, the event was uniquely disturbing due to the ability to track “the trail of vlogs that [Rodger] left online leading up to the attack. His descent into violent, misogynistic beliefs with a plan for “retribution” was chronicled over time, which eventually culminated in a manifesto video.” Those interested in an in-depth and entertaining explainer about incels should check out the Contrapoints video on the topic:• INCEL (Vimeo / John Merizalde) Read the rest

Yesterday, at least 90,000,000 Facebook users were forced to log back into the service without any explanation; later, the company revealed that at least 50,000,000 of them had been hacked, but wouldn't say how.In a detailed anatomy of the hack based on an explanation provided by Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen, Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Jason Koebler provide insight into the mechanics of the breach. The vulnerability was in Facebook's somewhat esoteric "View as" feature. This feature allows Facebook users to assure themselves that the privacy settings they've chosen for their posts are working as intended. If you make a post that you want your parents to be able to see, but not your boss, "View as" will let you preview the post as if you were your boss, and then as if you were your parents, and confirm that you've got the confusing welter of Facebook privacy options right.The attackers were able to exploit a bug in this feature to capture "access tokens" when they used "View as." By viewing a post as your boss, they could trick the system into generating an "access token" that they could use to actually login to Facebook as your boss. These access tokens are used to spare users the inconvenience of being prompted to log in to Facebook every time an app or window tries to connect them to their Facebook data.Logging out of Facebook cancels outstanding access tokens, which is why Facebook logged 90,000,000 users out yesterday. Read the rest

When news broke yesterday that Facebook had suffered a breach affecting at least 50,000,000 users, Facebook users (understandably) began to widely share links to articles about the breach.The articles were so widely and quickly shared that they triggered Facebook's spam filters, which blocked the most popular stories about the breach, including an AP story and a Guardian story.There's no reason to think that Facebook intentionally suppressed embarrassing news about its own business. Rather, this is a cautionary tale about the consequences of content filtering on big platforms.Facebook's spam filter is concerned primarily with stopping spam, not with allowing through storm-of-the-century breaking news headlines that everyone wants to share. On a daily basis, Facebook gets millions of spams and (statistically) zero stories so salient that every Facebook user shares them at once. Any kind of sanity-check on a spam filter that allowed through things that appeared to be breaking news would represent a crack in Facebook's spam defenses that would let through much more spam than legitimate everywhere-at-once stories, because those stories almost never occur, while spam happens every second of every minute of every hour of every day.And yet, storm-of-the-century stories are incredibly important (by definition) and losing our ability to discuss them -- or having that ability compromised by having to wait hours for Facebook to discover, diagnose and repair the problem -- is a very high price to pay.It's a problem with the same underlying mechanics as the incident in which a man was sent an image of his mother's grave decorated with dancing cartoon characters and party balloons on the anniversary of her funeral. Read the rest

Marty Balin, co-founder in 1965 of the pioneering psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane, has died at age 76. Balin wrote or co-wrote nearly half of the tunes on the band's seminal 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow that was the de facto soundtrack for San Francisco's Summer of Love. From Rolling Stone:Born Martyn Jerel Buchwald, Balin was a struggling folk guitarist on the San Francisco scene when he formed a band with Paul Kantner after meeting the 12-string guitarist at a hootenanny. They met up with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady, drummer Skip Spence and singer Signe Toly Anderson and cut their 1966 debut LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. They developed a strong following around the budding San Francisco rock scene, but became nationwide superstars in 1967 when Anderson left the group and was replaced by Grace Slick. Read the rest

🐶: I want your treat.🐶: MY treat.Meet Molsom and Maple, two golden retrievers who have an Instagram account.Molson was born in January, 2018. Maple was born June 2018. Their IG bio lists them as “Professional wrestlers🏆.” View this post on Instagram Brodder I know I have a bully stick of my own butttt I really want yours😩😬 . . . . . .#goldies_world #molsongolden #maplethegolden #molsonandmaple #cutestdogever #goldenretriever #goldens_ofinstagram #cutestgoldenretriever #goldenretrievers #dogsofinstagram #molsoncanadian #molsonthegolden #goldroxgoldens #dogstagram #goldenstagram #dogiesofinstagram #goldensretrieversofinstagram #cutepuppies #puppylove #puppiesofinstagram #gloriousgoldens #woofwoof #goldenretriever_daily #retrieveroftheday #golden_feature #puppiesofig #goldensgleeA post shared by Molson & Maple (@molsonandmaple) on Jul 26, 2018 at 12:31pm PDT Video: Christa Hinn, Maple and Molsom's Momager, who you should follow on Instagram. Read the rest

Women-hating MRAs and Incels, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 Truthers, and snuff video fetishists on Reddit got harder to find today. An update of Reddit's “quarantine” policy was announced on Thursday, and by Friday new content disclaimers appeared a number of the sketchier “subreddits,” including four with over 100,000 subscribers each.“This is another step in how we’re thinking about enforcement on Reddit and how we can best incentivize positive behavior,” landoflobsters writes on the Reddit thread announcing the news.The quarantine affected an extremist Left group, R/FullCommunism, and grossout subreddits where you can find video, images, and audio of human beings dying. Here's an excerpt from the official post where Reddit announced the updated policy and a new implementation that wiped out access to a bunch of hate content:While Reddit has had a quarantine function for almost three years now, we have learned in the process. Today, we are updating our quarantining policy to reflect those learnings, including adding an appeals process where none existed before.On a platform as open and diverse as Reddit, there will sometimes be communities that, while not prohibited by the Content Policy, average redditors may nevertheless find highly offensive or upsetting. In other cases, communities may be dedicated to promoting hoaxes (yes we used that word) that warrant additional scrutiny, as there are some things that are either verifiable or falsifiable and not seriously up for debate (eg, the Holocaust did happen and the number of people who died is well documented). In these circumstances, Reddit administrators may apply a quarantine. Read the rest

The World's Most Beautiful Libraries is a lovely collection of some of the most awe-inspiring libraries ever built.Via the publisher:In this new photographic journey, Massimo Listri travels to some of the oldest and finest libraries to reveal their architectural, historical, and imaginative wonder. Through great wooden doors, up spiraling staircases, and along exquisite, shelf-lined corridors, he leads us through outstanding private, public, educational, and monastic libraries, dating as far back as 766. Between them, these medieval, classical, baroque, rococo, and 19th-century institutions hold some of the most precious records of human thought and deed, inscribed and printed in manuscripts, volumes, papyrus scrolls, and incunabula. In each, Listri’s poised images capture the library’s unique atmosphere, as much as their most prized holdings and design details.Check out his Instagram for just a few of the examples:The coffee table book isn't cheap, so maybe suggest it as an acquisition for your local library!• The World's Most Beautiful Libraries (via Taschen) Read the rest