Boing Boing

Being told that you've been injured in such a way that you'll never walk again must be absolutely horrific. Such a loss of mobility would mean not only a great loss of one's options in life, but also having to worry about the peripheral effects that the loss of mobility could have on your health, such as a loss of bone density or the weakening of your cardiovascular system. For those who have to pay for their own healthcare, it could mean bankruptcy. I wouldn't even want to consider the sort of stress it would place on an individual's psyche, not to mention the emotional toll it would have on their loved ones. However, a breakthrough in treating spinal cord injuries made by the University of Louisville could, one day, make paralysis a thing of the past. From The Verge:Thomas and Jeff Marquis, who was paralyzed after a mountain biking accident, can now independently walk again after participating in a study at the University of Louisville that was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Thomas’ balance is still off and she needs a walker, but she can walk a hundred yards across grass. She also gained muscle and lost the nerve pain in her foot that has persisted since her accident. Another unnamed person with a spinal cord injury can now independently step across the ground with help from a trainer, according to a similar study at the Mayo Clinic that was also published today in the journal Nature Medicine. Read the rest

Rather than wait for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's hearing on Thursday, Trump has already made up his mind. "This is a con game being played by the democrats...The democrats are playing a con game. C-O-N. A con game."And the accusers can't be telling the truth, because, first of all, Kavanaugh "is a high quality person." But also, the second accuser "has nothing" because "she admits that she was drunk."Trump also defends Kavanaugh by saying, "She said she was totally inebriated and she was all messed up."The hearing on Thursday won't really be a hearing, at least not for those who whose minds are as shuttered as Trump's. Read the rest

Space is the Place is a remixable Glitch app that generates a full-screen starfield with a "morph" control to make it more or less psychedelic: hold your clicker down and move it back and forth for fabulous results. There's something weird about the optical effects used, a video-era flare that's unusually appealing, like the early-1980s Doctor Who intro Read the rest

Ted Cruz and his wife Heidi had just taken a seat at a Washington restaurant last night when a group of protestors began chanting, "We believe survivors." Moments later the couple had a change of heart and left the restaurant. Cruz uttered the hollow words, "God bless you," as he pushed past the crowd. Almost as hollow as the standard "You're in our thoughts and prayers," after a mass shooting.BREAKING. Activists just chased @TedCruz out of a fancy Washington DC restaurant, chanting “We Believe Survivors!”Cruz has been friends with creep Kavanaugh for 20 years. Now Cruz is on judiciary committee hearing his testimony. Fascists not welcome! #CancelKavanugh pic.twitter.com/7mx6Tc32za— Smash Racism DC (@SmashRacismDC) September 25, 2018Sexual assault survivor questioned Cruz during disruption at fancy Washington DC restaurant. Cruz ignores her. #CancelKavanaugh pic.twitter.com/bbtQ8TqE4H— Smash Racism DC (@SmashRacismDC) September 25, 2018After the couple left, the restaurant asked the protestors to leave the premises.Via USA Today Read the rest

Bill Cosby was sentenced today to 3 to 10 years in state prison for sexual assault. He will also be placed on the sex offenders' registry and placed under a lifetime counseling regime. He declined to make a statement when a judge gave him the opportunity at the courthouse in Norristown, PA.Earlier in the day, the judge had already declared the disgraced entertainer a "sexually violent predator" in this morning's sentencing hearing.Prosecutors had asked for between five to 10 years in prison, with the defense asking for house arrest. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home, his conviction coming amid a whirlwind of revelations about celebrity sex pests.UPDATE: Here's the impact statement from Andrea Constand, his victim in the case.To truly understand the impact that sexual assault has had on my life, you have to understand the person that I was before it happened.At the time of the assault, I was 30 years old, and a fit, confident athlete. I was strong, and skilled, with great reflexes, agility and speed. When I graduated from high school in Toronto, I was one of the top three female high school basketball players in Canada. Dozens of American colleges lined up to offer me basketball scholarships, and I chose the University of Arizona.For four years, I was a shooting guard on the women's basketball team, scoring up to 30 points a game. It was an amazing time in my life, and I learned a lot, developed a circle of really good friends, many of them teammates, and traveled around the US to compete. Read the rest

These simple to inflate Air Chairs add a lot of fun to family trips.This summer we took the Vanagon from San Francisco to Vancouver. There were a lot of great adventures, but my daughter and niece playing around in Air Chairs was pretty hilarious.Simple to inflate, and awfully comfortable to lounge on, the kids took to wearing them around like giant bumper-costumes. Several meals were served to ½ kid ½ chair creatures in the Washingtonian woods.The chairs easily support adults. The material is strong enough they do not have a problem with punctures from the ground. Keep the chairs, and kids, away from the campfire tho.My favorite part of these chairs is how easy they are to pack and store. I am close to letting my giant, heavy duty, folding camp chairs stay home on a few trips.CleverMade QuikFill Outdoor AirChair: Lightweight Recliner Style Inflatable Lounge Chair via Amazon Read the rest

He's not mad, though. He's actually laughing.One of the wettest we've ever seen, from the standpoint of sweat.Previously: How embarrassing: UN General Assembly laughs at Trump's false claims Read the rest

Alaskan Justin Schneider, 34, will serve no time for picking up a woman in his car under false pretenses, driving her to a remote location, choking her until she lost consciousness, then masturbating on her. He will not be required to register as a sex offender.From KTVAAnchorage Assistant District Attorney Andrew Grannik said Wednesday that Schneider lost his job working for the federal government as a result of the case, a consequence he called a "life sentence." "I hope it doesn't happen," Grannik said. "That's the reason why I made the deal that I've made, because I have reasonable expectations that it will not happen. But I would like the gentleman to be on notice that that is his one pass -- it's not really a pass -- but given the conduct, one might consider that it is." When given the opportunity to speak, Schneider offered no apology or recognition of the potential long-term impacts the assault might have had on his victim but highlighted the positive effects the case has had on his own life. "I would just like to emphasize how grateful I am for this process," Schneider said. "It has given me a year to really work on myself and become a better person, and a better husband, and a better father, and I'm very eager to continue that journey."From the KTVA video segment: "According to court documents [the victim] told police she thought she was going to die, then awoke to find Schneider had masturbated on her.According to court documents, she told police Schneider said he was never going to kill her. Read the rest

We've got a lot of animals up here in Alberta, Canada. Bears, wolves, coyotes, raccoons and elk? We rock that. Goats and sheep? Yep. To make sure that you know the difference between those latter two, Parks Canada has put together a helpful video. Now you've got no mistake for ever thinking goats are sheep ever again. Read the rest

How low the United States has fallen. Read the rest

Rob Goldstone, the gentleman who set-up the meeting between Russian government agents and the Trump campaign, believes Mueller's interest in the meeting stems from Don Jr and other officials eagerness to accept help from a foreign power.Via NBC News:Asked if he had conveyed a "dirty offer" to the Trump team in brokering the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Goldstone said, "Yes. That is true.""That [dirt] didn't materialize," said Goldstone, but he believes the apparent willingness of campaign officials to accept dirt is what drew the scrutiny of congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller.Goldstone's account of the meeting, which he says he relayed in detail to Mueller's grand jury in March, is largely consistent with how it's been described by other participants. He says Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya talked in a meandering fashion about U.S. sanctions against Russians — and the financier who lobbied for those sanctions, Bill Browder — but didn't offer any information about Trump's foe in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton. He considered the Russian's presentation "complete and utter nonsense," he said.Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the candidate's son, Donald Trump Jr., came into the room anticipating — and very happy to accept — "opposition research" he believed was coming from the Russian government.Goldstone himself had promised as much, in an email to Trump Jr. saying the Russian had information that "would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father," and that it was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Read the rest

A research team from Imperial College London have published promising results of an experiment in which Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes -- responsible for the spread of malaria -- were genetically modified with a stable, gene-drive-based CRISPR modification that caused them to go extinct in the lab.Importantly, the experiment showed that the modified snip of the mosquitoes' genome was kept stable by the gene drive, neither reverting to a neutralized version that would allow the mosquitoes' population to rebound, nor mutating in a way that might threaten other players in the mosquitoes' ecosystem.The result raises important ethical questions about whether it would be safe and ethical to deliberately render a species extinct, even one as harmful to humans as Anopheles gambiae. Crisanti dismisses the notion gene drives could be used to easily create new biological weapons. While he acknowledges the concerns, which have been considered by numerous scientific organizations, Crisanti and others argue the potential benefits far outweigh the risks."I regard a mosquito that transmits malaria as a pathogen — and as a pathogen we have the right to eliminate it," Crisanti says. "We have eliminated viruses like smallpox. We are trying to eliminate polio. I don't see a big difference."The technology could also be used to target other disease-spreading insects, such as the species of mosquitoes that spread diseases including Zika and dengue. Gene drives could also be used to fight agricultural pests.Mosquitoes Genetically Modified To Crash Species That Spreads Malaria [Rob Stein/NPR]A CRISPR–Cas9 gene drive targeting doublesex causes complete population suppression in caged Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes [Kyros Kyrou, Andrew M Hammond, Roberto Galizi, Nace Kranjc, Austin Burt, Andrea K Beaghton, Tony Nolan & Andrea Crisanti/Nature Biotechnology] Read the rest

Machine learning image classifiers use context clues to help understand the contents of a room, for example, if they manage to identify a dining-room table with a high degree of confidence, that can help resolve ambiguity about other objects nearby, identifying them as chairs.The downside of this powerful approach is that it means machine learning classifiers can be confounded by confusing, out-of-context elements in a scene, as is demonstrated in The Elephant in the Room, a paper from a trio of Toronto-based computer science academics.The authors show that computer vision systems that are able to confidently identify a large number of items in a living-room scene (a man, a chair, a TV, a sofa, etc) become fatally confused when they add an elephant to the room. The presence of the unexpected item throws the classifiers into dire confusion: not only do they struggle to identify the elephant, they also struggle with everything else in the scene, including items they were able to confidently identify when the elephant was absent.It's a new wrinkle on the idea of adversarial examples, those minor, often human-imperceptible changes to inputs that can completely confuse machine-learning systems.Contextual Reasoning:It is not common for currentobject detectors to explicitly take into account context ona semantic level, meaning that interplay between objectcategories and their relative spatial layout (or possiblyadditional) relations) are encoded in the reasoning processof the network. Though many methods claim to incorporatecontextual reasoning, this is done more in a feature-wiselevel, meaning that global image information is encodedsomehow in each decision. Read the rest

Copyright markets are -- and always have been -- broken. People make art because they have to, and there's always a middle-man ready to take advantage of the oversupply of willing creators to grab our rights and pay us peanuts.That's why expanding the term or scope of copyright does little to help creators, especially less-well-known artists or those at the beginning of their careers. When you give a person with no bargaining power more rights, the bullies who've been grabbing the lion's share all along simply take the new rights, too. Merely expanding copyright is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money in the hopes that the bullies will leave them with enough to buy something to eat.But there's a better way! One of the best features of the US copyright system is "reversion": this allows creators to fill in a few forms and take back their copyrights after 35 years, even if they have entered into a "perpetual assignment of copyright" with a publisher, studio, label or other party.Creators at the start of their careers have no negotiating leverage, and most creative works have no commercial life after the first couple of years. Reversion allows the small minority of creators who have attained fame to take back the copyrights they were strong-armed into surrendering when they were unknowns, and it allows other, less-successful creators to take back their creations and distribute them in small, independent editions that give them new life.Canada is contemplating a sweeping set of copyright reforms; as in inevitable on these occasions, the process has been dominated by batshit proposals from giant corporations who've bilked some creators to front for them. Read the rest

Fan Bingbing is a Chinese megastar who has also appeared in western movies like "X-Men: Days of Future Past"; she has not been seen since June and the smart money has it that she was kidnapped by China's National Supervision Commission (NSC), an "anti-corruption" task force established in 2018, with a reputation for practicing "liuzhi" or "enforced disappearances."The NSC is the next step in Xi Jinping's longstanding practice of "disappearing" people he disapproves of, including anti-corruption activists and dissidents. Fan Bingbing is accused of tax-fraud.People held in luizhi detention are kept in secret locations and denied contact with family or legal counsel, and often emerge after giving widely disseminated forced confessions. It's not uncommon for people to die during luizhi custody.Under the new laws, these sweeping anti-corruption bodies have jurisdiction not only over China's roughly 90 million Communist Party members, but also over a potentially unlimited target group including nearly any government staff, managers at state-owned enterprises, and really anyone if they are deemed relevant to a case of Party concern.The crimes might include, as with Fan Bingbing, large scale tax evasion or tragically, as with Chen Yong, if you are only wanted in relation to another investigation.According to Liu Jianchao, head of the Zhejiang supervision commission, those swept up into Liuzhi are typically kept for 42.5 days before being transferred. Although someone can be kept for up to six months, a lot can happen in forty plus days of disappearance. Read the rest

As low interest rates and terrible bond yields have driven more everyday people into the stock market in the hopes of protecting their savings from inflation and building their pensions, the market has surged -- with the richest people on Earth surfing the wave.Bloomberg reports on UBS and Campden's annual survey of the rise of "family offices" created by the new class of super-rich (37% of family offices in the survey were created since 2010), some with as many as five offices dotted around the globe.These offices (about 5,000 of them thought to exist today) are intended to preserve hereditary, dynastic fortunes that ensure that the new breed of financial aristocrats retains its grip on power indefinitely.Family offices have proven to be a powerful accelerants for huge fortunes: from their modest beginnings of 0.3% returns in 2015, family offices returned 7% in 2016 and 15.5% in 2017.The pace of new family offices has accelerated especially within the past decade, driven by the rise of Asian wealth, with UBS estimating that a new billionaire is minted in China every two days. Asia is now home to a quarter of the people on Bloomberg’s ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, second only to North America.Of the 311 family offices that responded to the latest survey, 37 percent were created after 2010. The average assets held by respondents was $808 million and the average worth of the families was $1.1 billion. Just over 1 in 5 said they have two family office sites, while some have as many as five locations. Read the rest

Adam Rutherford's amazing book A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is on shelves in the USA now; debunking the absurd claims made by genetics testing companies -- claims about your distant relationship to ancient kings or the percentage of your genes that came from Vikings.Rutherford's quest to debunk the highly profitable "genetic astrology" industry has some staunch allies, including the wonderful Sense About Science people (previously), including Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at UCL and Prof Mark Thomas.Rutherford's book is a really clear -- and often very funny! -- explanation of what genomics is useful for: analyzing whole populations and species and discovering what is and isn't a heritable trait, adding nuance to the stories of heredity and evolution, and debunking old eugenic idiocies like "noble blood" and the idea that human beings can be divided into "races."If you want to get a sense of just how terrible these old ideas are, check out this week's podcast of Rob Newman's "Total Eclipse of Descartes," a standup routine in which Newman explains how junk eugenic science and old scientific frauds have been used to make education into a toxic mess. A warning about the accuracy of the tests was made by the Sense About Science campaign group, which said "such histories are either so general as to be personally meaningless or they are just speculation from thin evidence."The warning was backed by a number of leading genetics experts. Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at UCL said: “On a long trudge through history – two parents, four great-grandparents, and so on – very soon everyone runs out of ancestors and has to share them. Read the rest

François Chollet's "Notes to Myself on Software Engineering" is posed as reminders from Chollet to himself, but they're a really wonderful list of extremely sensible advice on how collaborative projects work, how to be a good collaborator, how to build things for other people to use, and how to collaborate with future engineers and builders who will some day want to hook things up to the thing you're making.For example: "Code is also a means of communication across a team, a way to describe to others the solution to a problem. Readable code is not a nice-to-have, it is a fundamental part of what writing code is about;" and "Users are focused on their own specific use case, and you must counter this with a holistic and principled vision of the whole project. Often, the right answer is to extend an existing feature."I'm especially taken with his thoughts on APIs, like "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. Don’t increase the cognitive load of common use cases for the sake of niche use cases, even minimally."Then there's the section on having a good and worthy career in technology: "When making any choice with long-term repercussions, place your values above short-term self-interest and passing emotions — such as greed or fear. Know what your values are, and let them guide you." That is very good advice.Notes to Myself on Software Engineering [François Chollet/Medium](via Four Short Links) Read the rest

A metaphor for social media, courtesy of /u/imjustkidding on Reddit: "My breakfast sausages begged for their lives this morning. Listen to their cries for mercy." Read the rest

Hank Green (previously) is one half of the famous and much-loved Vlog Brothers; while his brother John Green (previously) is well-known for his novels, Hank hasn't ventured into fiction -- until now. His debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a deceptively romp-y novel about mysterious samurai alien robot statues appearing all at once, everywhere that has hidden and absolutely remarkable depths.

Earth, Mars and now Titan form an exclusive club among the solar system's celestial bodies: dust storms.Titan is an intriguing world – in a way quite similar to Earth. In fact, it is the only moon of the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere and the only celestial body other than our planet where stable bodies of surface liquid are known to still exist. There is one big difference though: while on Earth such rivers, lakes and seas are filled with water, on Titan it is primarily methane and ethane that flows through these liquid reservoirs. In this unique methane cycle, the hydrocarbon molecules evaporate, condense into clouds and rain back onto the ground. Read the rest

Dan Kopf charts the epic rise and fall of the name "Heather".A Quartz analysis of US baby-name data that goes back to 1880 finds that no name in history has become so popular and then flamed out quite like Heather. At its peak in 1975, more than 24,000 girls were named Heather, making it the US’s third most popular girls name, after Jennifer and Amy. In 2017, it was the 1,129th most popular name, given to only 219 girls born that year. Read the rest

Song parodist and comedian Randy Rainbow really knows how to make lemonade from our lemon of a government. His latest song, titled "Kavanaugh," is set to the tune of Camelot from the eponymous musical and it slams on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge (cough*serial rapist*cough) Brett Kavanaugh.Because when they go low, we go Lerner and Loewe.Randy Rainbow previously on BB Read the rest

Last year, 8th-grader and cartoonist Sasha Matthews discovered that the Scholastic Awards had a nasty rule buried in the fine print: all the childrens' work submitted for consideration became the property of Scholastic. This year, Scholastic fixed the rules, only taking a license to publish the entries. It's a big victory for the kids and a smart decision by the company.Nicole Brown reports:A 14-year-old Manhattan girl has learned firsthand the power of speaking up. Months after Sasha Matthews, of the Upper West Side, tweeted about the copyright policy of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the organization behind the national teen competition, which gets hundreds of thousands of submissions, announced new participation terms.Matthews, a cartoonist known for her “Everyday Superheroes” comic book that raises money for the American Civil Liberties Union, questioned why winners of the contest would have to grant the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Inc. the copyright to their work for two years. Read the rest

With 41 days until the midterm elections, today is the day to put your lawmaker on notice: vote for the Congressional Review Act, overturn the Trump FCC ban on Net Neutrality, and restore Net Neutrality to America. The Vote for Net Neutrality chatbot is here to help: tell it where you live, it'll tell you who's running in your district and put you in touch with them. If you -- like 87% of Americans -- want Net Neutrality, this is your chance. Read the rest

Donald Trump is super upset about the new accusations made against his Supreme Court pick Judge Brett Kavanaugh by the federal judge's onetime Yale classmate, Deborah Ramirez. The President is so super upset about these totally unfair claims against a self-professed longtime virgin that Trump himself just tweeted about the “false acquisitions.”Wait until he hears about the gang rape. Read the rest

What does a man with nothing to hide do? He runs off to a beach house in Delaware, and finds refuge amid piles of rumpled clothes and boxes of vintage Superman comics.Mark Judge has fled Washington DC to a windswept beach home, far away from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's memory or Michael Avenatti's new gang rape claims.Judge previously told the Senate committee he has no memory of the sexual assault incident alleged by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and said last week while that story broke that he does not want to speak publicly.An amazingly written and reported story about a guy we're gonna be hearing much more from soon. From Gabriel Pogrund, Caroll Leonnig, Aaron C. Davis, and Seung Min Kim at the Washington Post.Excerpt:A Washington Post reporter found Judge holed up Monday in a house in Bethany Beach, Del. “How’d you find me,” he asked. He declined to comment further.Barbara “Biz” Van Gelder, Judge’s attorney, said her client left town at her instruction because of an onslaught of criticism and press questions.“I told him to leave town. He is being hounded. He is a recovering alcoholic and is under unbelievable stress,” she said. “He needed for his own health to get out of this toxic environment and take care of himself.”Van Gelder said Judge waited to leave town until after the hearing date and witnesses were announced, and was not avoiding a subpoena.George Hartmann, a spokesman for the Judiciary Committee, said Monday it had resolved all issues for Ford’s testimony Thursday, including the Republicans’ insistence that female staff attorneys be allowed to question Kavanaugh and Ford at the hearing. Read the rest

Death pigeon is hovering.[Source]This is the kind of Patronus i'd want. Read the rest

Making a living as an Uber or Lyft driver can be tough. An over saturated market, having too few people in need of your services, paying to maintain your ride and the high cost of gas can all take a serious bite out of a driver's bottom line.From Gizmodo:Earnings for gig economy workers in the transportation sector—think drivers for Uber, Lyft, or Postmates— plummeted by 53 percent, according to research from the JPMorgan Chase Institute.The study looked at banking data from 39 million Chase customers between 2013 and 2018. It found 530 percent growth in the number of people engaged in a form of gig work (0.3 percent to 1.6 percent of customers), with transportation supplying the bulk of that growth.In terms of dollar amounts, Chase found that transportation gig workers’ monthly earnings decreased from $1,535 on average to just $762, as of March of this year. Transportation gig workers were also more likely to be unemployed in the traditional sense and to derive their earnings from multiple platforms.According to Gizmodo, Uber and Lyft were pissed at the study's findings, as it makes them look like a bad deal. Fair enough: pointing out that drivers stand to make less money than the gig once paid and that they could wind up on the dole doesn't do anything good to their business. That said, not all is doom and gloom within the gig economy. According to the same study, those that make a little extra cheddar from leasing out their apartments with services like Airbnb are currently enjoying 69% gains to their bottom line. Read the rest

Attorney Michael Avenatti told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that his client, whom he describes as a “witness and a victim,” is going to come forward within the next 48 hours with new allegations against Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.Avenatti describes his client as a "witness and victim" and says she will make her allegations public within the next 48 hours. pic.twitter.com/RLscXvFE9y— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) September 25, 2018Just before the television interview, host Rachel Maddow read from what appears to be a list of questions drafted by Avenatti for witnesses of a claimed gang rape oragnized by Kavanaugh and his longtime friend and alleged drinking buddy Mark Judge.The Supreme Court nominee is apparently going to be accused by Avenatti of participating in gang rape.My e-mail of moments ago with Mike Davis, Chief Counsel for Nominations for U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. We demand that this process be thorough, open and fair, which is what the American public deserves. It must not be rushed and evidence/witnesses must not be hidden. pic.twitter.com/11XLZJBTtY— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 24, 2018Kavanaugh's third accuser has received multiple government clearances, including a “secret” clearance, said Avenatti. This fact was repeated a few times, presumably to emphasize the woman's credibility.Avenatti told Rachel Maddow that “Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were joined at the hip” in their high school days.Michael Avenatti on why Mark Judge is relevant to the Kavanaugh case pic.twitter.com/lDByu7GUb7— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) September 25, 2018"I'm confident that those facts and circumstances are going to be disqualifying for Brett Kavanaugh," he said tonight. Read the rest

Watch the full interview with Kavanaugh below. Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh has now been credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault. He gave Fox News an “emotional” and “intimate” interview, says Fox News, with his wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh seated beside him as the traditional long-suffering female prop. The content of the interview was creepy, weird, and reveals a lot about how the administration will likely retaliate against Christine Blasey Ford and others who accuse Kavanaugh of serious sexual misconduct.WATCH:“The truth is I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone, in high school or otherwise,” Kavanaugh says on Fox News Channel’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum.” “I want a fair process where I can defend my integrity,” the federal judge says, “I know I’m telling the truth, I know my lifelong record and I’m not going to let false accusations drive me out of this process. I have faith in God and I have faith in the fairness of the American people.”“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh wrote today in an unprecedented letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). “The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last-minute character assassination will not succeed.”From the Washington Post's coverage of the widely-viewed Fox News Kavanaugh sitdown:In his letter, Kavanaugh said that those who are alleged to have witnessed the two events say either that they have no recollection, or that they simply did not happen. Read the rest

Game of Thrones fans will have a chance to walk through Winterfell. HBO has announced plans to convert several of their filming sets located in Northern Ireland into tourist attractions, as the show ends its historic run in 2019. The planned Game of Thrones Legacy attractions in Northern Ireland will be “on a scale and scope bigger than anything the public has ever seen,” HBO said, promising fans the first opportunity to set foot inside some of the series’ most iconic locations.Each site will feature the sets from the show as well as exhibits of “GOT” costumes, props, weapons, set decorations, art files, models, and other production materials. In addition, the premium cabler plans to install digital content and interactive materials to showcase VFX used in “Game of Thrones.”No word as to the availability of dire wolves in the gift shop.‘Game of Thrones’ Filming Locations in Northern Ireland to Open as Tourist Attractions [Todd Spangler/Variety][Photo: Flickr/CC BY 2.0] Read the rest

Gerrymander Jewelry: charms in the shape of America's most gerrymandered district; you don't have to live in Michigan's 14th, Texas's 35th or Ohio's first to rock one of these. (via Super Punch) Read the rest

What do you get when you cross Bob Ross with a post-apocalyptic world? Perhaps this clip, from the first episode of the upcoming six-episode web series, Post-Apocalypto, brought to you by rock duo Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass). The series, starting this Friday on YouTube, will promote Tenacious D's new and fourth studio album Post-Apocalypto, which will be released November 2.From Metro:A new episode will be released every Friday until the album’s debut – and viewers will be treated to new songs by the band as well animations drawn by Jack himself. According to the official synopsis, Post-Apocalypto ‘finds Tenacious D thrust into a world of complete and utter destruction following the drop of an atomic bomb’.For now, we have this sneak peek to enjoy. Read the rest

The horror... the horror.(via r/videos) Read the rest

Working as a technology journalist is a privilege that allows me to play with hardware that I could never afford to own. Last week, while I was in Montreal for the opening of Sennheiser's new Canadian office, for example, I was able to spend some quality time with the company's crazy $50,000 made-to-order HE 1 headphones. For a guy that reviews audio hardware for a living, it was a ridiculous treat. There are times that the privilege of doing what I do extends beyond all of the gear that I get to play with. Among the Sennheiser employees, audio nerds like me, and other folks attending the company's opening day bash was Dr. Andreas Sennheiser. Andreas, an electrical engineer by trade, has been co-CEO along with his brother Daniel of their family's 70-year-old audio company for the past five years. Here in North America, Sennheiser is mostly known for their professional audio products -- microphones and reference headphones for the rich and musically famous, and conference-call hardware for high falootin' boardrooms. In Europe, Asia and Africa, the German company's footprint in consumer audio is massive. They’re one of the oldest names in audiophile-grade headphones and an early, much-respected maker of audio hardware designed to augment virtual and augmented reality experiences. They make cool shit. Once the celebration was over and the caterers had absconded with the all of leftovers, Andreas was good enough to spend a few minutes with me, talking about his company, his family and the notion of legacy. Read the rest

During its 1970s heyday, the Concorde, the commercial supersonic plane that did NYC to London in under three hours, wasn't just a revolution in aerospace engineering; it was an icon of industrial design, set the bar in luxury travel, and, quite literally, embodied the jet-set lifestyle. Now, my friend qnd colleague Lawrence Azerrad, the creative director of the Grammy-winning Voyager Golden Record vinyl box set we released last year, has created a glorious art book about the Concorde and its scene in the sky. The book, Supersonic: The Design and Lifestyle of Concorde, overflows with historical and technical information and stunning photos of the plane, its marketing materials, and amenities designed by the likes of Andrée Putman, Raymon Loewy, and Sir Terence Conran who wrote this book's foreword. From CNN:Taking a branded item home was part of the experience. Anything that could be removed from the plane would be taken by passengers as a souvenir. Some of these items were particularly sought after, like those designed by Raymond Loewy, the father of industrial design who created cabin interiors for Air France."He used a very forward-thinking, futuristic approach for that time, down to the design of the seats, the headrests, the fabric and, probably more famously, the stainless steel flatware, which Andy Warhol would famously steal," said Azerrad. "There's a story where (Warhol) asked if the person sitting next to him was taking theirs, she said no and he took her set."Supersonic: The Design and Lifestyle of Concorde is a magnificent celebration of the history of our in-flight future. Read the rest

Former US Marine and well-known actor Al Matthews has passed away at the age of 75. His portrayal of Sgt. Apone in Aliens remains one of my favorite all-time military characters.Via Hollywood Reporter:Al Matthews, the real-life military man who portrayed the no-nonsense, cigar-chomping Sgt. Apone in the sci-fi horror classic Aliens, has died. He was 75.Matthews was found dead in his home in Alicante on Spain's Mediterranean coast Saturday at 10 p.m. by a neighbor, the Spanish international news agency EFE and the El Pais newspaper confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.Matthews also had bit parts in Rough Cut (1980), Ragtime (1981), Superman III (1983), The Fifth Element (1997) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).But it's his performance in James Cameron's 1986 sci-fi horror film that endeared him to audiences. Near the movie's beginning, the crew of the USS Sulaco awake from their deep sleep and Apone instantly reaches for his cigar and shouts instructions to the drowsy crew. Read the rest

Stuntwoman Alicia Vela-Bailey has performed all the hard stuff for tons of blockbusters, including Underworld: Awakening, Total Recall, Wonder Woman, Avatar, Interstellar, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Ender's Game, and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Here's a fascinating video where Vela-Bailey shows us, blow-by-blow, with diagrams laid over video replays, how she executed her stunts. She's awesome. Read the rest

Not particularly wonderful to write with, but awesome none-the-less, I had to have a BIC 4 color pen.Click.Click.Click.I spent most of second grade taking these pens apart, and putting them back together. Taking the color indicators and mixing them up, or making a pen with all black indicators, or all red, or all blue. You know, making a 4 color pen into a 1 color pen with 4x the ink... FUN!Maybe the first pen I ever coveted, the BIC 4 color remains a blast.BIC 4-Color Ballpoint Pen, Medium Point (1.0mm), Assorted Inks, 3-Count via Amazon Read the rest

From Great Big Story: "Whang-Od is the last remaining mambabatok—a tattoo artist in the Philippines using traditional hand-tap methods. At 101 years old, she is the last master of the thousand-year-old trade that first began as a way to honor warriors in battle. Using a hammer and thorns, Whang-Od taps coal ink into skin. Today, she is training her grandniece to carry on her legacy, keeping the family mamababatok tradition alive." Read the rest

Ports of America in Freeport, Texas donated 45 boxes of ripe bananas to the nearby Wayne Scott Unit prison. When the prison officers unloaded the boxes, they "discovered something not quite right.""One of the boxes felt different than the others," TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) said in a statement. "They snipped the straps, pulled free the box, and opened it up. Inside, under a bundle of bananas, he found another bundle! Inside that? What appeared to be a white powdery substance."They counted 540 packages of cocaine worth approximately $17,820,000. Now that's bananas!(UPI) Read the rest

After first claiming it was unable to do, Dallas P.D. has fired Amber Guyger, the officer who forced her way into a neighbor's apartment and killed him, supposedly under the impression that it was her home and that he was an intruder.Dallas Police Chief U. Reneé Hall terminated Police Officer Amber Guyger, #10702, during a hearing held September 24, 2018.An Internal Affairs investigation concluded that on September 9, 2018, Officer Guyger, #10702, engaged in adverse conduct when she was arrested for Manslaughter.Officer Guyger was terminated for her actions. She was hired in November 2013 and was assigned to the Southeast Patrol Division.Under civil service rules, Officer Guyger has the right to appeal her discipline.Guyger is trouble, but has received an alarming degree of special treatment since killing Botham Jean. Read the rest

Fortnite Season 6 is almost upon us! What the heck is going on, on the island...This weekend Epic introduced Nite Nite and Peekaboo, two insane looking clown skins straight out of my daughter's nightmares. I hadn't bought a skin for weeks, but instantly coughed up the cash for Peekaboo.Peekaboo is replacing Cuddle Team Leader as my go-to skin.Fortnite also teased Season 6 with an image of a headphone wearing llama, and the catch phrase "All great parties need a DJ." While the Week 10 secret load screen implies an Bizarro-Universe Fortnite for Season 6, this one promises some electronica -- unless Epic's idea of a DJ is more like Wolfman Jack. Read the rest

Jerry of Jerry Rig Everything bought an Apple iPhone Xs Max and proceeded to scratch, burn, and bend and bend the new iPhone Xs MAX to test its durability. Part of the fun of watching these videos is seeing a pristine piece of expensive and coveted equipment get destroyed. Read the rest

Humans at Sea has a short video with interviews of Navy personnel who spend a good deal of each year living in the close quarters of a submarine.The Navy's submarine force is unlike any other community in the military, a small, tight-knit group of approximately 20,000 active-duty and reserve Sailors who spend months at a time sailing deep below the waves. Between their secretive missions and their lack of contact with the outside world, the submarine community is often a mystery to those on the outside. Read the rest

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein expects to be fired today at the White House, according to reports, though Axios reports that he "verbally resigned" in a call with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.Axios:Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has verbally resigned to Chief of Staff John Kelly in anticipation of being fired by President Trump, according to a source with direct knowledge. Per a second source with direct knowledge: “He’s expecting to be fired,” so he plans to step down.The Hill:CNN, Bloomberg and The Washington Post quickly confirmed this report.NBC reported that Rosenstein was refusing to resign by his own volition, saying President Trump had to fire him. Rosenstein's departure follows a story in The New York Times reporting that he suggested secretly recording the President and discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Rosenstein supervised Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to influence Donald Trump's election campaign, to the president's constant annoyance. Aides reportedly tried to prevent Trump firing him in the immediate aftermath of the Times' report, lest it unleash yet more political chaos in the run up to November's mid-term congressional elections.What happens next? FiveThirtyEight speculates:There are several ways this could play out. One is that Trump might pressure Rosenstein’s replacement to curtail the Russia investigation. (Solicitor General Noel Francisco is next in line at the Justice Department.) Trump could tell Francisco, for example, to stop Mueller from pursuing any avenue of inquiry that involves Trump’s financial records or other sensitive topics, or he could order him to fire Mueller and either allow the investigation to continue with a replacement (or without a special counsel at all) or shut it down entirely. Read the rest

Maggi Carson and Juliusz Kossakowski directed "Punking Out," a terrific 1978 short documentary about the early punk scene at New York City's iconic CBGB nightclub, featuring The Ramones, The Dead Boys, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids. Read the rest

Hey, hey... the surviving Monkees -- Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork -- are putting out their first Christmas album next month. It's called Christmas Party and it features songs they've recorded with other groovy musical artists, including the vintage vocals of late Monkee Davy Jones.Rolling Stone:Christmas Party features new songs written by Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo (“What Would Santa Do”) and Andy Partridge of XTC (“Unwrap You At Christmas”). Novelist Michael Chabon and Schlesinger collaborated on “House of Broken Gingerbread,” while R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5 wrote the title track and play on a cover of Big Star’s “Jesus Christ.” Nesmith didn’t write any songs for the album, but he does sing lead on “The Christmas Song” and “Snowfall.” Other tracks on the album include “Wonderful Christmastime,” “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “Merry Christmas, Baby.”Christmas Party drops October 12th. Pre-order it at Rhino Records. (Don't worry. If you still play the LDB game during the holiday season, don't worry, there's NOT a recording of Little Drummer Boy to be found on this album.)Thanks, Josh!2nd image via Rhino Read the rest

It looks like any other Rubik's cube, but for the little mechanical squeaks it makes as he scrambles it. He puts it down on the table and watches it in silence for a while. Then it moves. Read the rest