Boing Boing

This Weiman Stainless Steel Cleaner and Polish really works.The contractors installing my new stainless steel kitchen appliances left greasy black fingerprints all over them, but I can't complain too much because my own follies were worse. I tried several different stainless cleaning products and the first one to actually work was the Weiman.Spray it on! The fluid is oddly blue-ish, and it leaves the surfaces clean and new looking -- because they are! I mistakenly poured bong water down the front of my stove, which left a gross, sticky and smelly residue. The Weiman also cleaned that.Weiman Stainless Steel Cleaner and Polish - Streak-Free Shine for Refrigerators, Dishwasher, Sinks, Range Hoods and BBQ grills - 22 fl. oz. via Amazon Read the rest

Last century, the Muzak company created custom mixes of soft music for locations ranging from doctor's office waiting rooms and restaurants to barber shops and, yes, elevators. Muzak were self-proclaimed "specialists in the physiological and psychological applications of music." Two decades before Brian Eno riffed on this environmental music concept with his phenomenal "Music for Airports" (below), Muzak provided music for airplanes in the form of reel-to-reel mix tapes played on United Airlines flights. Above is one such collection. Fly the friendly skies. Read the rest

My friend and Cool Tools parter, Kevin Kelly, just turned 68. Happy Birthday, Kevin! To celebrate, he posted 68 pieces of advice. Kevin is one of the wisest people I know, and when he gives advice, I never dismiss it lightly. Here are the first 10:Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.Don’t trust all-purpose glue.Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.Read the other 58 here. Read the rest

Bleach injections and tanning beds as treatments. The false link between 5G and COVID-19. This onslaught of bullshit claims and quackery around COVID-19 is an "infodemic," as the World Health Organization says. In the science journal Nature, University of Alberta law professor Timothy Caulfield, the Canada research chair in health law and policy, explains why "all scientists — not just a few of us — must stand up for quality information." From Nature:There is some evidence that alternative treatments and placebo effects can relieve distress — a common justification for tolerating unproven alternative treatments. But it’s inappropriate to deceive people (even for their benefit) with magical thinking, and it is inappropriate for scientists to let such misinformation go unremarked.Second, more researchers should become active participants in the public fight against misinformation. Those pushing unproven ideas use the language of real science — a phenomenon I call ‘scienceploitation’ — to legitimize their products. It is, alas, all too effective. Homeopathy and energy therapies, proponents argue, depend on quantum physics. Colonic hydrotherapy is justified using phrases borrowed from microbiome studies. And the language of stem-cell research is used to promote a spray claiming to have immune-boosting properties.We need physicists, microbiologists, immunologists, gastroenterologists and all scientists from relevant disciplines to provide simple and shareable content explaining why this hijacking of real research is inaccurate and scientifically dishonest."Pseudoscience and COVID-19 — we’ve had enough already" (Nature) Read the rest

Our brains are wired so that when a situation is framed as something bad, it's "stickier" in our minds than if it's presented in a positive light. If you see a glass as half empty, it's really really hard to start thinking about it as half-full. That was very beneficial to our evolutionary ancestors but not so much today, although politicians and marketers take advantage of this all the time to manipulate us. UC Davis behavioral scientist Alison Ledgerwood studies the power of framing, and how we can learn to see the bright side of things. Read the rest

It's almost impossible to understand how rich Jeff Bezos is. This mind-blowing visualization not only helps you grok his immense wealth, it also makes it clear that the country is owned by a tiny elite. Read the rest

35 years ago the band X released their final album with the original lineup. (They put out a couple of albums after that but they don't count because they didn't include guitarist Billy Zoom.)This month they released a new album called Alphabetland. The music is as good as ever. They just posted a video for one of my favorite songs on the album, "Water & Wine."Image: YouTube Read the rest

“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you," Andy Warhol said.A collection of Warhol's Polaroid photos and snapshots are up for auction at Christie's to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation’s emergency relief fund for artists. The body of work is title "Better Days." Read the rest

The Tokyoite who creates videos for the Nippon Wandering TV YouTube channel took a bike ride around Shibuya and shot video of the streets, then spliced in pre-pandemic video of the same area.Image: YouTube Read the rest

PBS Nature's "Spy in the Wild" series employs spy cameras outfitted with animatronic animal disguises to capture intimate imagery of wildlife. In this clip, a drone wearing a bumblebee costume infiltrates a swarm of monarch butterflies in the mountains of Mexico. Read the rest

Trolls: World Tour is a new animated kids' movie from Universal Studios. Despite the theaters being closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the film has somehow made more than $100m from streaming media views and other cash-ins such as fast food licensing deals. AMC Theaters, the market leader in the US, has banned Universal Studios from its screens in response. Universal is far from the only studio to move its blockbusters directly to TV during the pandemic, but it is the only one boasting about the results in public, hence AMC's public retaliation.AMC CEO Adam Aron announced the ban in a letter to Universal chairman Donna Langley on Tuesday, telling her that the decision was triggered by a quote NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell gave to the Wall Street Journal about the blockbuster digital success of "Trolls World Tour." ... Shell told the newspaper that the movie "exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability" of on-demand video. But it was Shell's next quote that really incensed AMC, which is controlled by China's Dalian Wanda Group and owns Odeon and UCI — Europe's biggest cinema operator. "As soon as theaters reopen," Shell added, "we expect to release movies on both formats."Sure looks like movie theaters are fucked. Read the rest

This is just too adorable for words. Kermit T. Frog, self-isolating in the swamp, sings his big hit, "The Rainbow Connection," while accompanying himself on banjo. Complete with him turning the camera on and off, a few sketchy chord and vocals moments. In other words: Star quarantine perfection.As one commenter put it: "Kermit isn't the hero we deserve, but he's the hero we need." Read the rest

Beloved Japanese fetish artist Namio Harukawa passed away last week. Harukawa’s gorgeously-rendered thick women were perpetually cast in positions of casual dominance, going about their day riding the subway or reading a book, la-dee-dah. Meanwhile, a helpless man was being smothered by their voluptuous buttocks or choking on a high heel. Whereas fellow big butt aficionado R. Crumb always positions himself at the center of his erotic narrative, the men in Harukawa's illustrations are inconsequential, their faces commonly obscured by ample butt cheeks.If there is a heaven, I have a pretty good idea of what Namio Harukawa’s looks like. Read the rest

A total rockstar in my Bay Area community has created an incredible program. A big shoutout to Sydney Gressel who started Frontline Foods, a nonprofit that raises funds for restaurants so they can feed the healthcare professionals on the COVID-19 frontlines. It allows struggling restaurants to stay afloat and gives the people tirelessly fighting COVID-19 healthy meals — a real win-win. In just a few short weeks, this fledgling organization has raised over $3M and is now serving food in 52 U.S. cities. Celebrities like Sting are endorsing Frontline, raising money for it on The Late Night Show with Jimmy Fallon, no less. And on Tuesday, she got love from the Ellen show, appearing remotely as a guest along with Frontline celeb volunteers Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone. Here's Sydney (who has also been working 14-hour shifts as an emergency pediatric nurse, btw) talking about how it all began:Isn't that terrific? Bravo, Sydney! Hey, you can help! There are all kinds of volunteer opportunities, or you can simply make a donation to Frontline Foods.image via Frontline Foods Read the rest

Andy Beshear, the governer of Kentucky, apologized yesterday to Tupac Shakur, a resident of the state he had falsely suggested was a “bad apple” benefits claimant. Beshear assumed Shakur's name was a fabrication borrowed from the long-dead East Harlem rapper, and shamed him at a press conference where he complained about people exploiting the system. But Shakur is in fact a real person from Lexington, and he still hasn't gotten his unemployment check.Tupac Malik Shakur, 46, goes by Malik. He lives in Lexington and worked as a cook at Alfalfa’s and Lynagh’s in Lexington before they closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19.On March 13, the first day he could, he applied for unemployment insurance. On March 17, he got his monetary determination letter. He has been waiting on his unemployment money ever since.“I’ve been struggling for like the last month trying to figure out how to pay the bills,” Shakur said. Beshear says he phoned him to apologize in person, and will make sure Shakur gets his benefits. Read the rest

A simple but ingenious invention from Japan has rona written all over it, but they should leave them there permanently. Also, add them to the doors of every public toilet in the world.A machine translation of the article credits Koji Ohara, the owner of a convenience store, and Kinoyu, a car parts manufacturer in Nagoya, as coming up with and implementing the idea. Read the rest

Soon after the sheltering-in-place orders started being issued, this wonderful song (and video) from Donald Fagan's 1982 Grammy-nominated solo album Nightfly began popping into my head. All these weeks later, it hasn't left. "We've got provisions and lots of beerThe key word is survival on the new frontier"Indeed, except we don't have lots of beer and we're having a hard time laying in the provisions. Where's the 50s fallout shelter when we need it? Image: YouTube Read the rest

NASA published this animation showing a little black hole (150m solar masses) whirling around a large black hole (18bn solar masses), punching through its accretion disc like an energetic puppy doing donuts through a bead curtain. Two massive black holes are locked in a dance at the center of the OJ 287 galaxy. The larger black hole is surrounded by disk of gas; it is also orbited by a smaller black hole that collides with the disk, producing a flare brighter than 1 trillion stars. But because the system's complex physics affects the smaller black hole's orbit, the flares occur irregularly. Scientists used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to detect one of these bright flashes on July 31, 2019, confirming that they can now anticipate the timing of these flares to within four hours using a detailed model of the system. Read the rest

I've never had to knock on wood, but after watching this, it makes me wonder if I could. Read the rest

Maybe you’re frustrated about work. Maybe the kids have you climbing the walls. Or maybe the fact there’s a worldwide pandemic trapping you inside your home has you a little off your game.In these scary, off-kilter times, anxiety in some form can be found on almost everyone’s doorstep. There’s no shame in admitting you could use a little help calming your mind and soothing daily concerns that can get any of us wound up.Unplug Meditation is the world’s first drop-in meditation studio, offers relaxation and meditation guidance 24/7/365 to more than 250,000 online students in their full-service app. No matter what method works best for centering your thoughts and quieting the outside noise, Unplug’s library includes over 700 guided meditation sessions available, all tailored to virtually any situation. From mindfulness exercises to guided imagery, soundbaths, hypnosis, breathwork, and more, the expansive offerings from Unplug’s stable of experts are vast. Custom playlists and programs can be built around your specific issue, from destressing and work satisfaction to facilitating better sleep. And with sessions as short as one minute or as long as an hour, you can schedule accordingly to receive just the right level of emotional healing to satisfy your need.Sessions that include daily positive quotes and 10-minute inspiration meditations can even be delivered right into your email box every day.Unplug’s expert instructors conduct their courses from actual meditation studios in Los Angeles, giving each the authentic focus and experience of attending a real-life class.With over 2,600 reviews in the Apple App Store, Unplug holds an astoundingly high 4.9 Read the rest

Very cool and normal.

“We believe that the Blacks and the Jews are taking over America, and it’s our job to take America back for the White race,” Patton testified at trial, describing his beliefs while carrying out the crime — beliefs he said he no longer held.Banjo CEO Damien Patton has admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth. But until today, the extent of his activity had not yet been reported, in part because of multiple spellings of his name used over the years.At Medium.com's One Zero, a report claims that Patton, CEO of a Softbank-backed surveillance technology firm, has in the past identified as a Nazi, and was involved in a drive-by synagogue shooting with a KKK leader. “Patton’s association with racist groups extended into adulthood; in testimony he provided against Brown, Patton admitted to fraternizing with skinheads while serving in the U.S. Navy.”The Utah Attorney General’s Office will “fully review” a massive state contract with @Banjo after a news report showed its founder, Damien Patton, was once an active participant in a white supremacist group and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue.https://t.co/NnxAdA8t1g— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) April 28, 2020Clients including the state of Utah ditched Banjo today after the revelations were published.Maybe we shouldn't have U.S. city, state, and federal law enforcement agencies entering into multimillion dollar contracts with sketchy extreme right wing figures who run dystopian spyware and machine intelligence firms [AHEM CLEARVIEW AI] to built a vast panopticon and pandemic surveillance system? Read the rest

VIDEO: RTÉ News. Singapore's Public Utilities Board is deploying a robot to encourage people wandering the outdoor parks of the densely populated Asian metropolis to social distance, and "stay safe, stay home". The robot is named O-R3, and its task is to help Singapore curb the spread of Covid-19. Oh yeah, it also shares data with public health officers through its on-board 360-degree always-on surveillance camera.The Singapore PUB used the talking robot previously security surveillance at various reservoirs across the island state, but the coronavirus distancing surveillance and compliance role is new.It is remotely-controlled, with a 1-kilometer battery life which authorities say they're expanding to 4 km.READ MORE at RTÉ News. Read the rest

I love the video interviews of composer and music educator, Samuel Andreyev. He shares an obsession with Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and he has so far conducted one-to-two-hour interviews with Magic Band members John French (Drumbo), Bill Harkleroad (Zoot Horn Rollo), and Mark Boston (Rockette Morton), all specifically on the making of Trout Mask. He's also done a brilliant half-hour analysis of the Trout track, Frownland.In this installment of the Beef series, he talks with Zappa and Beefheart drummer, Art Tripp, about working with the crazed Captain, Frank, John Cage, and other avant-garde composers.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Kelli Ward, Arizona's unsavory GOP chairperson, tweeted that covidiots who protest in public should dress like medical workers. reports CNN:CNN spoke with ICU nurse Lauren Leander, who stood in scrubs and silently counter protested at the state capitol, where people gathered to urge Ducey to reopen Arizona.Leander, a Banner Health nurse of five years, said if given the opportunity she would walk Ward through the ICU at her hospital to the bedside of some of her coronavirus patients to see firsthand the impacts of the virus."I wish she could be in my shoes for a day, I'd have her put on a pair of scrubs and walk with me," Leander told CNN.Stolen valor is 100% on-brand for the GOP.— Sanho Tree (@SanhoTree) April 28, 2020 Read the rest

The U.S. now has 1 million patients who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, with many more unreported or undetected people infected.U.S. deaths from the respiratory virus passed 57,000 on Tuesday, equal to the upper end of estimated flu deaths for the 2019-2020 flu season, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The true death rate of COVID-19 is still unclear because of a lack of widespread testing, but current numbers suggest a rate much higher than the flu, which infects between 9 million and 45 million people in the U.S. each year, the CDC estimates.Vice President Mike Pence celebrated the milestone today by refusing to wear a mask while touring the Mayo Clinic. Read the rest

Betabrand has just announced women's pants in "catstooth," a feline-tastic take on the classic houndstooth pattern. It's black and white like the original but you'd never know from afar that you were looking at little tiny cat faces. A straight-leg chino is the only product available so far in this fun pattern ($78/pair). Read the rest

On a visit to the Mayo clinic today, Vice President Mike Pence was made aware of its policy that visitors wear masks—a policy in place since April 13 as a measure to limit the spread of coronavirus during the pandemic. Pence refused to wear one, and was the only person in the building bare-faced during the photo op.Pence was told of the new rules before he visited, the clinic said on Twitter, a post that was subsequently deleted."Mayo Clinic had informed @VP of the masking policy prior to his arrival today," they had written.But as he visited a blood and plasma donation center inside the building, Pence was bare-faced.Others in the room -- including Dr. Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration head -- wore coverings.A point is being made: that no-one can do anything about it. Read the rest

The Treble, an alt-rock band out of Winnipeg, has taken inspiration from iconic music videos from the 1980s. Their recently released music video, for the single "No Secrets (There For You)," features shot-by-shot re-creations of a bunch of them. Probably the ones that will be most familiar are a-Ha's "Take on Me" and DEVO's "Whip it" but it took me a moment to figure some of them out... and I was watched MTV religiously in my youth!(The Awesomer) Read the rest

We love our dogs. But even the most devoted and dedicated dog owners will admit they can be demanding little beasts sometimes.Dogs require a lot of human attention. It’s not their fault. It’s just the way they are. But on a busy day packed with work and family responsibilities and everything else that requires our focus every day, it isn’t always easy to carve out some serious one-on-one time with man’s best friend.Thankfully, technology has come to the rescue, with the Wickedbone serving as humankind’s attempt at righting that natural imbalance.The world’s first interactive smart dog toy, the Wickedbone has one job: to keep your dog engaged and entertained for hours. This bone-shaped device comes with nine different interactive modes to get your dog’s attention and encourage play.Once it’s connected via the Wickedbone app, you can either control it through your smartphone or tablet; or set it up to go 100 percent automatic to keep your dog busy when you’re too busy. From skittering across the ground, nudging up next to your dog, and just prompting a good old game of tag, the Wickedbone works to get the interest of any pup. It’ll roll, turn, shake, hop and even do backflips to keep your dog focused.The Wickedbone even has its own AI-driven emotional programming system, allowing it to read how your dog is reacting, then adjust itself accordingly. When your dog runs, Wickedbone runs after them. When your dog chases it, it turns around and runs away. Read the rest

Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 presedential election to Donald Trump, today endorsed Joe Biden, his Democratic rival this time around.“I am thrilled to be part of your campaign – to not only endorse you but to help highlight a lot of the issues that are at stake in this presidential election,” she told Biden in a joint live stream.Clinton also recounted her relationship with Biden from their time together in the Senate to their work in the Obama administration.“I’ve been in the lobby of the Senate. I’ve been in the Cloak Room and I’ve watched Joe bring people together,” she said. “We need a leader – a president – like Joe Biden.” Read the rest

The Bank of Nook cut the interest it pays on bell savings from .5% to .05%, or next to nothing. According to the Financial Times, the Bank of Nook was responding to a trick players discovered in which they could deposit a large sum of bells and then time travel into the future by adjusting their Switch's clock. From the Financial Times:The total interest available on any amount of savings has now been capped at 9,999 bells — the in-game currency that can be bought online at a rate of about $1 per 1.9m bells.[...]“Now that the [Bank of Nook] has cut interest rates to near zero, their next logical step is quantitative easing. It’s essential that players try to hook their game up to their printers as it might start churning out money,” [Albert Edwards, a strategist at Société Générale,] joked.[...]As many users pointed out online, the much lower interest rate means that the most effective way of making money is now to gamble on the game’s internal “stalk” market — a bourse in which the only commodity is turnips, sold to investors during a single session on Sundays. The root vegetables rot and their value drops to zero after a week. Read the rest

About five years ago my sister introduced me to these Pilot Varsity fountain pens. You can buy them in an inexpensive pack of seven. Each pen is in a different color. The ink flows smoothly and looks great in my notebook and even on cheap printer paper. Read the rest

Over 200,000 people subscribe to Drain Addict, a YouTube channel devoted exclusively to an Australian plumber's adventures unclogging drains. In the video above, titled Blocked Drain 448, the Drain Addict goes to work on a pipe completely clogged with tree roots.Doobybrain says:Drain Addict is my new obsession, and with over 400 videos on this channel, I think I know what I’m gonna be watching for the duration of this quarantine period.This channel is not for those who are squeamish because, as the title suggests, the man is a DRAIN ADDICT. As in, he unclogs drains and LOVES IT. And not just water drains. Mostly sewer drains! So tons of poop, tissue, and other things that go down the toilet.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Tomorrow, an asteroid that's at least a mile wide will pass by Earth. While NASA considers the object, named 1998 Or2, to be "potentially hazardous," it won't hit us. This time. It won't get closer than around four million miles away. Above is a time lapse of the asteroid captured through a telescope by amateur astronomer Ingvars Tomsons in Riga, Latvia. As the asteroid and Earth continue to orbit our sun, it'll continue to be a risk. And this rock is not the only one that could someday sock it to us. At National Geographic, Nadia Drake explains the risk of a catastrophic astronaut impact and NASA's fascinating planetary defense plan, including their Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) planned for next year. From National Geographic:“[The object that will pass us tomorrow] just a whopping big asteroid,” says Amy Mainzer of the University of Arizona, one of the planet’s leading scientists in asteroid detection and planetary defense. “It’s smaller than the thing thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it is easily capable of causing a lot of damage.”An asteroid passing relatively close to Earth is more common than most people realize. Every year, dozens of asteroids that are big enough to cause regional devastation pass within five million miles of Earth—the cutoff for potentially hazardous asteroids. On average, one or two space rocks large enough to cataclysmically impact a continent pass by each year.Earth will almost certainly confront a space rock large enough to obliterate a city, or worse, at some point in its future. Read the rest

Holy smokes! View this post on Instagram The guys @santamonicaairlines blew our @jlw ‘s mind with this awesome @oscarputdowntheknife & @burritobreath collab.A post shared by Boing Boing (@boingboing) on Apr 28, 2020 at 10:19am PDT I grew up in Santa Monica, CA in the 1970s and 80s. While I had and have friends who attained the levels of awesome required to get free stuff from a skate team, I was certainly too much a kook.As a kid, Santa Monica Airlines played a huge role in helping me define 'COOL' and they still do. For 'Support Your Local Skateshop day' I had Rip City set up my re-issue 'THINK CRIME' deck with a set of Independent Trucks, Slimeballs, and ACER Racing hardware and bearings. No one does as nice a job on grip tape as those dudes at Rip City.Imagine my surprise when repeated fan posts about legendary street skater Natas Kaupas resulted in the folks at Santa Monica Airlines sending this awesome deck!I could not be more thrilled to receive this awesome Natas/Burrito Breath deck! My daughter has already asked if we can set it up for her. She will not be getting those ACER bearings, they are far too fast and I have to run off all the damn time.She will be getting pads and introduced to GrlSwrl. Read the rest

"It's all very well to use an influenza mask. But what if you want to smoke? Edward T. Duncan has supplied the answer. First, buy two-corn plasters at the drugstore. You may not see the relationship between a corn plaster and the influenza. Wait a minute. Hasn't the plaster an opening for a corn? Well, that whole can be made to fit a cigar or a cigarette."[via Bruce Sterling] Read the rest

Almost every night for the last week, I've been listening to my vinyl copy of Sade's 1985 masterpiece "Promise." Sade's deeply sexy, jazzy soul stands the test of time. This morning, I was surprised and delighted to see this stunning 1985 TV performance of "Is It A Crime" on The Old Grey Whistle Test that Reddit user castigamat posted to r/LiveIsBetter. Read the rest

I don't think that's a hot rod that the members of the manufactured band The Hondells are clustered around. Nevertheless, the song has an awesome melodica solo. Read the rest

Video game designer Sos Sosowski has been working on his Mosh Pit Simulator game since 2016. Here's the official game description:Mosh Pit Simulator is a VR game about a world that is overrun by brainless boneless humanoid creatures due to a terrible accident. They're like zombies but less gross and pretty harmless and just want to live normal lives. So even tho they don't have brains or bones, they still try to go shopping, drive cars, or go to dates, not necessarily doing a good job at that. But there's one person who is not OK with that. YOU! So you decide to save the world from these weird creatures. But there's nobody else left in the world but them so you end up just getting in their way for giggles.... or do you?Basically, the premise is: "What if you moshed by yourself using Oculus Rift?" And the earliest 3D model testing clips are like a glorious car crash that you just can't look away from:I wanted to make a mosh pit simulator but it turned out really creepy! pic.twitter.com/CiTL8mZ6y0— Sos Sosowski (@Sosowski) April 13, 2016My moshpit sim seems to be getting somewhere after all :) pic.twitter.com/hFeFZge1kW— Sos Sosowski (@Sosowski) April 14, 2016Sosowski explains the background of this weird experiment:This game was created by accident. The development began in April 2016, when I got my hands on the Vive Development Kit. After playing some games, I decided to give it a shot and create something. Read the rest

The young journalists at YR Media (formerly Youth Radio) were curious about "what artificial intelligence means for race, art, and the apocalypse." So they asked the opinion of a a few experts, including tech journalist Alexis Madrigal, engineer Deb Raji of New York University's AI Now Institute, artist/programmer Sam Lavigne, and AI ethicisit Rachel Thomas. You can read (and listen to) bit from the lively conversation at the Youth Media feature "In the Black Mirror." Here's an excerpt:RACE + BIASDeb Raji: There was a study released where we evaluated the commercial facial recognition systems that were deployed. And we said, "How well does this system work for different intersectional demographics?" So, how well does it work for darker skinned woman versus lighter skinned woman versus darker skinned men and lighter skinned men? And it figures that there was a 30 percent performance gap between lighter skinned men and darker skinned men, which is insane. For reference, usually you don't deploy a system that's performing at less than 95 percent accuracy.Rachel Thomas: Another example of bias comes from some software that's used in many U.S. courtrooms. It gives people a rating of how likely they are to commit another crime. And it was found that this software has twice as high a false positive rate on black defendants compared to white defendants. So that means it was predicting that people were high risk even though they were not being rearrested. And so this is something that's really impacting people's lives because it was being used in sentencing decisions and bail decisions. Read the rest

If his comedy career fizzles, Fred Armisen could be a great dialect coach. Read the rest

From the Washington Times:Two Texas women were charged last week after an undercover police sting found they were allegedly offering salon services at home during the coronavirus pandemic.Laredo police said they launched investigations into both cases this month after receiving anonymous tips that the women were violating stay-at-home orders.“Both of the violators independently solicited customers via social media,” police said in a statement, the Laredo Morning Times reported. “On both cases, an undercover officer working on the COVID-19 task force enforcement detail made contact with each solicitor to set up an appointment for a cosmetic, beauty service that is prohibited under the emergency ordinance.”While this situation could easily be used as anecdotal evidence for the dangers of government overreach in an economic crisis, I think the real problem here is the bored police officers who decided to play Hero Cop by … uhhhh … stopping people from getting their eyelashes curled?To be clear, we don't know what kind of sanitation protocols (if any) these criminal beauticians were following. It's probably still not the wisest thing to do during a pandemic, but I suppose there are some desperate people out there.Thing is … when people do dumb things because they're desperate, throwing them in jail for 6 months doesn't do anything to improve their circumstances.It's probably also worth noting that the perpetrators were both Latina women.Texas women busted in undercover sting for allegedly offering salon services at home [Jessica Chasmar / The Washington Times]Image: Zitona / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest

YouTuber Big Clive bought a "UV disinfection lamp" on eBay. He tested it first by turning it on and aiming it at the back of his hand for a few seconds and then sniffing his hand for "skin damage." There was no odor, which was a good sign that it's not really producing UV-C radiation, at least not in sufficient quantities to work as a germicide. He then took it apart to see what was inside and found "standard near UV LEDs." He says it is simply a "cheap near-UV disco light commonly sold on eBay in various color options... that's a bit naughty." Read the rest

📷 Pepper Construction is using Startup SmartVid.io to analyze worksite images for Oracle Industries Innovation Lab in Deerfield, Illinois. Existing security cameras at retail stores and workplaces are being equipped with articifial intelligence to enforce measures intendded to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Reuters reports, based on interviews with 16 different machine vision software firms and a number of businesses that are now their clients. “Reuters spoke with 16 video analytics companies, many of them startups with a few million dollars in annual revenue, that have added offerings because of the coronavirus.”From Reuters:“The last thing we want is for the governor to shut all our projects down because no one is behaving,” said Jen Suerth, vice president at Chicago-based Pepper Construction, which introduced software from SmartVid.io this month to detect workers grouping at an Oracle Corp project in Deerfield, Illinois.Samarth Diamond plans to deploy AI from Glimpse Analytics as soon as its polishing factory re-opens in Gujarat, India, while two Michigan shopping centers owned by RPT Realty will have distancing tracking from RE Insight in two weeks.Buyers expect the technology will work because they already have used similar tools to profile shoppers entering stores and find helmet scofflaws on construction sites.But some technology consultants that advise retailers and office landlords have cautioned clients against introducing new technology at a chaotic time and investing in tools that may be needed only for a period of months. Privacy activists concerned about increasingly detailed tracking of people also are urging businesses to limit use of the AI to the pandemic. Read the rest

In this NSFW performance, everyone knows something. It was 2014, but quite timely. Below, a more complete rendition. Cued by the YouTube title, I thought the song was "everyone knows shit fuck", a statement of epistemological skepticism, but it's clear it's "everyone knows shit's fucked", a catechism of faith in epistemic completion. Contemplate this on the tree of woe. Read the rest

It was almost a confession of guilt. Almost.The word 'unnecessary' is such a tell.Every once in a while, the liar-in-chief manages to reflect clearly on his own culpability, seemingly without the ability to realize that he is culpable. Monday, April 27, the day on which we learned that more than 55,000 Americans have now died of the novel coronavirus, was one such day.Impeached president Donald John Trump:"There has been so much unnecessary death in this country. It could have been stopped and it could have been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way. And the whole world is suffering because of it."Trump: "There has been so much unnecessary death in this country. It could have been stopped and it could have been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way. And the whole world is suffering because of it." https://t.co/9T8aUPjUrs pic.twitter.com/VPx2ah8aUy— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 27, 2020Still blaming Obama, aren't you.There is no bottom to his depravity and fecklessness. No number of dead Americans will be enough for Donald Trump.Trump on his call today with governors: "They are as thrilled as they can be, considering the fact that there has been so much unnecessary death in this country." 😳 pic.twitter.com/w2QwwCPvqZ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 27, 2020 Read the rest

COVID-19 damage (yellow) on lungs of 59-year-old man who died at George Washington University Hospital. 3D model based on computerized tomography scans, courtesy George Washington Hospital and Surgical TheaterHow exactly is coronavirus killing us?This New York Magazine piece on what we do and do not yet know about the novel coronavirus is really good. It's weird seeing everyone compare COVID-19 to the flu, when there are reports coming in of patients dying of exploding hearts and glitching cytokines. Stay the fuck at home, please. Follow the guidance of public health experts, not politicians and economists and nutjobs like Donald Trump. Wear masks, use gloves, wash hands. This thing is not a joke.The invader's impact... SARS-CoV-2 lands in the lungs and can do deep damage there. But the virus, or the body’s response to it, can injure many other organs. #COVID19 https://t.co/3K96LiJrRP pic.twitter.com/PoR71YjaX8— Frits Franssen (@fritsfranssen) April 21, 2020Writes David Wallace-Wells at New York mag's Intelligencer:On April 15, the Washington Post reported that, in New York and Wuhan, between 14 and 30 percent of ICU patients had lost kidney function, requiring dialysis. New York hospitals were treating so much kidney failure “they need more personnel who can perform dialysis and have issued an urgent call for volunteers from other parts of the country. They also are running dangerously short of the sterile fluids used to deliver that therapy.” The result, the Post said, was rationed care: patients needing 24-hour support getting considerably less. On Saturday, the paper reported that “[y]oung and middle-aged people, barely sick with COVID-19, are dying from strokes.” Read the rest

📷 Chris Platzer, a planning commissioner in Vallejo, CA, in lower left, throws a cat in the air during a Zoom meeting last week. Image: City of Vallejo“OK, first, I’d like to introduce my cat,” said Chris Platzer, a planning commissioner in Vallejo, California.He lifted the cat up to the camera, then with two hands, throwing the cat in the air off-screen.He was seen drinking beer, and allegedly called staff "bitches." He's in the doghouse now.“This type of behavior [throwing a cat during a zoom meeting] does not model the core values of the city of Vallejo.”Vallejo Planning Commissioner Chris Platzer throws his cat during a commission meeting on Monday. pic.twitter.com/JObGphUMao— John Glidden (@glid24) April 24, 2020He has resigned.From the Times-Herald:Chris Platzer said in an email to the Vallejo Times-Herald on Saturday that he has resigned from the Vallejo Planning Commission, effectively immediately — days before the Vallejo City Council was set to consider a resolution removing him from the seven-person commission.PlatzerVallejo spokesperson Christina Lee said the city was still attempting to confirm if Platzer had officially resigned from the commission. Platzer couldn’t be reached for comment via phone on Saturday.Platzer was seen drinking a beer and throwing his cat through the air during a commission meeting held via teleconference on April 20.He was also heard by city staff making derogatory remarks after the online meeting had ended.“I’m going to call bull— on you little b—s,” according to the original commission meeting video released by the city on Saturday. Read the rest

Coronavirus warnings appeared in the President's Daily Brief more than a dozen times in January and February, 2020, as the outbreak bloomed first in Asia, then in Europe.Trump does not read the brief, and kept downplaying the threat the whole time. As of Monday, more than 55,000 people in the United States died of COVID-19.From the Washington Post:The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.The frequency with which the coronavirus was mentioned in the PDB has not been previously reported, and U.S. officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.Read more:President’s intelligence briefing book repeatedly cited virus threat[Reporting by Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, April 27, 2020] Read the rest