Boing Boing

This NSFW visit to Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway is like the "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" of NASCAR. (All Gas No Breaks) Read the rest

@_leilanaatry this! #foryoupage #airpods #seeya #WhatsYourStuf #officelife #makethisviral♬ The Box - Roddy RicchTrade an Airpod with your friend. Pop it in your ear. Use a text-to-speech program like Google Translate to "talk" to your friend across the room during the class, without ever having to open your mouth.I don't know if this is legit, but either way, it's brilliant. Read the rest

Jem may have indeed been both her name and excitement, but the Misfits' songs were better. Read the rest

Home genetics tests purport to tell you what percentage of your ancestry comes from which places, an incoherent, unscientific fraud that perpetuates ridiculous eugenic myths. But that's not all: when you take one of these tests, you nonconsensually opt your family into perpetual, global genetic surveillance (and it's not like they can opt out afterwards by changing their DNA).Lucky for the human race, these companies have run out of suckers. 23andme is laying off 100 people, and business has fallen off a cliff industry wide.It's not clear why consumers stopped buying tests in droves. It could be that the market is tapped out, and there aren't many people left curious to learn what percent French or Nigerian they are, or whether they are at risk for going bald.Others may have concerns about their DNA data staying private, since police have started accessing smaller ancestry databases to carry out genetic manhunts.Ancestry, which maintains the largest database with more than 16 million people, did not answer questions about whether it had seen a sales slowdown. Last year, Ancestry introduced new health offerings in what some analysts saw as a bid spark a "re-testing" market, or coaxing consumers to pay for an additional test. Is the consumer genetics fad over? [MIT Tech Review](via /.) Read the rest

Thanks to a series of progressive movements throughout the United States, more and more states are allowing people to smoke in the great outdoors with absolute freedom. Unfortunately, most pipe-makers have been slow to catch up with this new reality, which leads to avid smokers stuffing a cumbersome glass pipe in their pocket every time they leave the home.The intrepid Genius Pipe offers a supremely stylish and streamlined way to smoke on the go, and it’s available for 35% off its usual price today.Available in a variety of colors, this extremely compact and portable pipe makes it easier than ever to smoke when you’re on the move.Simply use the bowl to store your favorite smoking material and light up whenever you want. This pipe features an anti-scratch finish so you won’t need to worry about keeping it in your pocket with your keys, and it’s easy to toss in your bag or fit in your back pocket without drawing attention.If you’re at least 21, land this travel-friendly pipe today for just $64.95—35% off MSRP. Read the rest

"We thought she was sick, turns out she's just a jerk." That's how the Mitchell County Animal Rescue began the brutally honest adoption announcement for an unsavory cat in their care named Perdita.The Spruce Pine, North Carolina organization continues: Meet Perdita, not for the faint of heart. LIKES: staring into your soul until you feel as if you may never be cheerful again; the song Cat Scratch Fever, the movie Pet Cemetery (Church is her hero), jump scares (her specialty), lurking in dark corners, being queen of her domicile, fooling shelter staff into thinking she's sick (vet agrees...she's just a jerk) DISLIKES: the color pink, kittens (yuk they are so chipper), dogs, children, the Dixie Chicks, Disney movies, Christmas and last but NOT least...HUGS. She's single and ready to be socially awkward with a socially awkward human who understands personal space. FREE ADOPTION ;)If interested please go to www.mitchellcountyanimalrescue.org to fill out an application The News & Observer:Shelter Director Amber Lowery says 4-year-old Perdita came to the shelter on Christmas Eve like the Grinch and quickly asserted dominance...“I’m looking at her right now, and she’s rolling around in her little bed, looking all sweet and cute, but the minute you try to rub her, she slaps you. We thought she was in pain and took her to the vet and he said: ‘No, this cat is just a jerk’.”Since then, the shelter has had to warn visitors that Perdita’s shy, kitten-like attempts to draw passersby to her cage are, in fact, a ruse that will end badly. Read the rest

Last year, the EU adopted the incredibly controversial Copyright Directive (it passed by only five votes, and afterwards 10 MEPs said they'd got confused and pushed the wrong buttons!): now, EU member states have to create rules that require online platforms to filter all user-generated content and block it if it matches a secret, unaccountable blacklist of supposedly copyrighted works; and to allow news sites to veto or charge for links to their articles.But Chris Skidmore, the UK Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, has publicly announced that the UK government has no plans implement the directive, citing time pressure in the runup to and aftermath of Brexit.This doesn't mean that Britons will be spared the ill-considered effects of the directive, though. Much of the pressure to pass the directive came from the UK, with support from giant media monopolies like EMI, well-known performers like Paul McCartney and Debbie Harry, trade unions like the National Union of Journalists (of which I'm a member; when I told their policy person that the rules would allow fraudsters to claim the works of Shakespeare, they told me that their job wasn't to protect Shakespeare, it was to protect news photographers whose images were misappropriated by clickbait sites), and even prominent Labour politicians, who cheered the directive's passage as giving a black eye to US Big Tech companies (and Big Tech will have to pay out a few hundred million euros to comply with the rules, but in exchange, they can be assured that all their smaller EU-based competitors will not be able to afford this and thus be neutralised as competitive threats). Read the rest

French physicist Jean-Pierre Luminet hand-plotted this image of a black hole in 1978, said to be the the first based on data rather than artistic speculation.From Wikipedia:1979 - He created the first "image" of a black hole with an accretion disk using nothing but an early computer, lots of math and India ink, predicting that it could apply to the supermassive massive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy M87. In April 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope Consortium provided a spectacular confirmation of Luminet’s predictions by providing the first telescopic image of the shadow of the M87* black hole and of its accretion disk.He used punchcards on an IBM 7040 mainframe to plot elements often ignored in other depictions until recently: the slender photon ring, gravitaional light shifting, and lensing effects. Luminet's own history of black hole visualization is your next stop.The final black and white “photographic” image was obtained from these patterns. However, lacking at the time of an appropriate drawing software, I had to create it by hand. Using numerical data from the computer, I drew directly on negative Canson paper with black India ink, placing dots more densely where the simulation showed more light – a rather painstaking process! Next, I took the negative of my negative to get the positive, the black points becoming white and the white background becoming black. The result, The result converged into a pleasantly organic, asymmetrical form, as visually engaging as it was scientifically revealing. Read the rest

Once again, the FBI is putting pressure on Apple to help them break into the phone of a mass shooter. And once again, Apple has been largely resistant to the effort. Which is good, because a government having control over a private company that gives them secret backdoor access into people's personal technology devices is an authoritarian wet dream waiting to happen.It also doesn't matter anyway because — as Reuters pointed out this week — Apple already buckled under FBI pressure a few years and cancelled their plans to add end-to-end encryption to all iPhone backups in iCloud:The company said it turned over at least some data for 90% of the requests it received [from the FBI]. It turns over data more often in response to secret U.S. intelligence court directives, which sought content from more than 18,000 accounts in the first half of 2019, the most recently reported six-month period.But what if the FBI wants access to someone's locked iPhone, and they haven't backed it up to iCloud? They still don't need Apple's help, because — as with the San Bernardino shooting — there are plenty of third-party companies that can and will gladly solve the problem in exchange for money.From OneZero:Over the past three months, OneZero sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to over 50 major police departments, sheriffs, and prosecutors around the country asking for information about their use of phone-cracking technology. Hundreds of documents from these agencies reveal that law enforcement in at least 11 states spent over $4 million in the last decade on devices and software designed to get around passwords and access information stored on phones. Read the rest

The Precious. The BBC reports that the coins had to be melted down and reminted after Brexit was delayed.The coins bear the inscription "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" and the date of 31 January. Mr [Sajid] Javid had first ordered production of the coins in advance of the UK's original 31 October departure date. But the Brexit delay meant about a million coins had to be melted down and the metal put aside until a new exit date was confirmed. Read the rest

Famed LA Laker shooting guard Kobe Bryant died along with eight others in a helicopter crash Sunday morning. The shocking incident has fans reeling—and trying to figure out what went wrong amid a barrage of speculation, fake news and conspiracy-mongering on Twitter. An eyewitness describes the crash itself: Kobe Bryant helicopter crash witness gives an intelligent and detailed account of what he saw from videos The radar records show the helicopter's flight path, and recordings of air traffic control show communications between the helicopter and controller:A helicopter pilot explains a possible sequence of events. It seems likely the pilot was scud running down the 101 under a low cloud ceiling, then attempted a wide turn through the fog west of Calabasas, only to fly into the hills south of the highway.We are following media reports the Kobe Bryant was among those killed in a crash of an S-76 helicopter near Calabasas, CA this morning. Initial data indicate N72EX is the aircraft involved. Data for N72EX is available at https://t.co/47EEtYA3uP pic.twitter.com/XZSFafHgmU— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 26, 2020Aviation Safety has records on the helicopter and the incident. Read the rest

"What Color is Your Name?" is a website that associates your name, or any name, with blocks of colors. The project's creator, Bernadette Sheridan, has grapheme–color synaesthesia, which means her brain perceives numerals and letters as very specific colors. She explains:...I am terrible at remembering names. I hear the name, but my mind is distracted. In my head, I am calculating the number of letters in the name, and visualizing the colors of each letter. Your name may be Emily, but to me, you’re a bright, happy swath of five letters with an “E” and an “I". When I meet you again later, I may think your name is Emily or Jille or Ellie. Five letters, with an “I” and an “e.”Sheridan also offers, at a reasonable price, your name-color portraits as prints.(Coudal Partners)screengrab via "What Color is Your Name?" Read the rest

Color of Change, a nonprofit founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and dedicated to social justice advocacy, and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center just completed a new study about representation and messaging in police and crime TV shows. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results backup the revelations from the Washington Post's 2016 investigative series, "Dragnets, Dirty Harrys, and Dying Hard: 100 years of the police in pop culture" — that police department PR machines have long collaborated with Hollywood executive powers-that-be to utilize TV to influence public perceptions of law enforcement.The report is based a data crunch of 353 episodes from 26 crime-related scripted television shows that aired in the 2017-2018 season. They analyzed the race and gender breakdowns of the writers, showrunners, and consultants involved in the shows, as well as the on-screen representation of criminal justice, persons of interest, and victims. Overall, the study identified 5,400 variable data points across the shows, focusing on such questions:Do crime procedurals and other crime-focused series produced in the U.S. accurately depict the reality of the criminal justice system, accurately depict racial disparities (e.g., racially biased treatment by authorities, the disproportionate targeting of people of color communities, disproportionate punishment or other outcomes based on race) and depict reforms and other solutions for correcting racial disparities in the criminal justice system?If present, do series portray any specific actions or attitudes of criminal justice professionals as directly resulting in those racial disparities? Do they portray any of the routine practices of the criminal justice system as resulting in racial disparities? Read the rest

It’s no secret that when it comes to building your brand online, nothing beats having a powerful and streamlined website. BoxHosting Website Hosting makes it easy to create an extensive online presence with room for 500 domains, 500 10GB email accounts, and unlimited desk space—and you only have to pay $45 for life.In addition to a lifetime of premium web hosting, BoxHosting Website Hosting also gives you unlimited access to an easy-to-use website builder that can be used to create new sites from scratch, and there are plenty of tools and templates that will help you customize your website in order to match the specific needs of your business.This lifetime subscription also ensures super-fast upload and download speeds, along with top-level security features and 24/7 manned data centers that are there to help with any problems you may experience along the way.Treat your business to a lifetime of premium web hosting with a subscription to BoxHosting Website Hosting for just $45—over 90 percent off its usual price.Prices are subject to change.You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

Funko's Baby Yoda looks amazingly cute.I do not know where I am going to put all these damn things.Funko Pop! Star Wars: The Mandalorian - The Child via Amazon Read the rest

There’s never been a better time to work as a web developer—regardless of whether you’re looking to work with a big company or as a solo freelancer. The Essential PHP Coding Bundle will get you up to speed with one of the world’s most popular and powerful web development scripting languages, and it’s currently available for over 90% off its retail price.Through four courses and over 150 lessons, this bundle will introduce you to both the fundamentals and more advanced elements of PHP—an open-source scripting tool that’s widely used in HTML and a variety of go-to web development platforms.After an introduction to the basic terminology of the language, you’ll learn how to create dynamic web pages from scratch, find and fix common scripting errors, incorporate third-party platforms into your builds, and more.There’s also a course that teaches you how to create advanced and easily-maintainable Python applications that can be used on your sites.Add PHP to your web-building toolkit with the Essential PHP Coding Bundle—available for over 90% off MSRP at just $29.99.Prices are subject to change.You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

Kobe Bryant, 41, has died in a helicopter crash. He was 41-years-old. Eight others, including Bryant's 13-year-old daughter Gianna, were killed in the crash in Calabasas, California. From ESPN:A 6-foot, 6-inch small forward with the ability to swing up front and play point or shooting guard, Bryant entered the NBA straight out of high school. In 1996, he became the youngest player in NBA history.He won five NBA titles in his time with the Lakers, as well as two Olympic gold medals playing for the United States. Now fourth on the NBA's all-time scoring list, with 33,643 points, Bryant won two NBA Finals MVP awards and one NBA regular-season MVP nod in 2008.A native of Philadelphia, Bryant was selected No. 13 overall in 1996 by the Charlotte Hornets before being traded to the Lakers. He wore both No. 8 and 24 with the Lakers, both of which were retired by the franchise.image credit: Keith Allison (CC BY-SA 2.0)Deputies on scene with @LACOFD regarding aircraft crash. https://t.co/o2xkFluzQm pic.twitter.com/BPGfKS6nFt— LASD Lost Hills Stn. (@LHSLASD) January 26, 2020 Read the rest

There's overwhelming support for clean energy, and the planet is giving us more reasons to invest in renewable power sources with every passing year. Even in the most inhospitable areas, wind and solar can provide a good chunk of our power, if not all of it. So why aren't we all taking advantage of it?As with most things in our society, it takes a good business plan. And Arcadia might just have one.Simply put, they do the legwork of finding renewable energy sources in your area. They then serve as a middleman between you and your existing power company, negotiating prices based on the sources they find and purchasing energy certificates by proxy.Not only will this result in a better environment and more peace of mind on your part, but it can also actually save you money. In many cases, that clean power is cheaper, and Arcadia will pass the savings on to you, letting you know how much you've saved each month and how much of your power bill went to green, planet-wise sources.The more members Arcadia gets, the more collective bargaining power they have. As if you needed a bigger hint, sign up is easy - in a matter of minutes you can have your own account, keep your existing power company and get a $20 Amazon gift card or four standard LED bulbs as a bonus. Read the rest

Is Penis Man a hero or menace to Arizona? pic.twitter.com/FVjKAwMdww— Charles Rahrig (@c_rahrig) January 20, 2020Police have captured the culprit behind the "Penis Man" graffiti tags that, er, popped up in several dozen spots across Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona over the last two months. (News report from December below.) While Penis Man quickly developed a cult following, the cops weren't laughing. On Saturday, Tempe police revealed that they had nabbed Dustin Shomer, "on 16 counts of aggravated criminal damage, 8 counts of criminal damage and one count of criminal trespassing in the first degree." Shomer has since released a statement on the Facebook Unmodded - NEIGHB'rhood Group, as reported in the Phoenix New Times:"I just spent the last 24 hours in Tempe and Phoenix police custody for spraying 'Penis Man,'" Shomer wrote. "They raided my condo and vehicle and swarmed my entire complex in west Phoenix with 25 heavily armed SWAT officers, and pointed a silenced assault rifle in my face."Anyone with any doubt who the bad guys are here ... be certain it is the City of Tempe, City of Phoenix, and police forces valleywide. There is no excuse for pointing an AR-15 in the face of a non-violent offender."Shomer added in further posts that he spent a night at Maricopa County's Fourth Avenue Jail following more than five hours in Tempe police custody, during which time he was giving "nothing to eat."He wrote that he was "told I wouldn't receive medical attention after requesting it, even though it was posted on the wall to ask if desired. Read the rest

At least it isn't Our Sheriff Lobo. Read the rest

Over one week, this $500,000, Naples, Florida home belonging to Jeffrey Leibman, 40, was transformed from boring beige to a wild, multicolored dream house. The grounds and trees have also been, er, brightened up. I think it has great curb appeal! From ABC7News (video below):A Naples homeowners association said it's actually suing the man they believe trashed this house.Right now, management said Leibman is no longer living in the home, and court records show he's due in court this weekend for drug charges.(Thanks to our Florida bureau chief, Charles Pescovitz!) Read the rest

In Thailand, police auctioned off a Honda CRV that had been seized in a drug bust. The buyer spent 586,00 baht (US$19,000) on the vehicle. Later, a mechanic discovered a secret compartment behind the bumper that contained nearly 100,000 amphetamine pills. From the BBC News:Officials said they would conduct more thorough searches in future."According to protocols, we search every vehicle we have received and this case was no exception. However, we couldn't find anything at the time, perhaps because the pills had been well hidden," said Niyom Termsrisuk, secretary general of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB), according to the Bangkok Post.image for illustration only: "Ritalin" by Sponge (CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

In 2010, the UN adopted a rule regarding incarcerated pregnant women: "instruments of restraint shall never be used … during labour, during birth and immediately after birth." In 2018, the Federal First Step Act banned shackling pregnant women, women giving birth, and women caring for newborns; but the law does not extend to local and state jails, where 85% of the incarcerated women in America are locked up.As a result, the practice of shackling women before, during and after childbirth is rampant across America, and in the majority (61%) of these circumstances, the women are shackled not because of any specific danger, but because the facility has a policy that insists that they be in chains. The US government does not require state or local lockups to maintain statistics on pregnancy among inmates, and a bill to require this data collection has languished in Congress since September 2018.Incarcerated women are disproportionately likely to have experienced violent trauma, especially sexual trauma, and the women who have given birth in restraints describe how the experience triggered their post-traumatic stress from these incidents. Lori Yearwood's Guardian story on the practice is heartbreaking, tracing how the trauma of giving birth in chains can redound for decades after.Harriette Davis, 64, once an inmate at the California Institute for Women in Corona, is now an anti-shackling advocate and remembers well the trauma of being handcuffed to a hospital bed before giving birth to her daughter 36 years ago. The attending doctor told the guard to remove the shackles, Davis says, so that Davis could move freely, helping her baby travel more easily down the birth canal. Read the rest

Andy Byford comes from generations of public transportation workers and worked his way from a London Underground platform supervisor to running multiple British rail lines; then went to Australia where he oversaw Railcorp in NSW; then to Toronto, where he ran a successful five-year initiative that turned the TTC into the American Public Transportation Association's Outstanding Transit System of the Year -- and then he moved to New York City, to turn around the ailing MTA.Byford is a legend among transit workers; last week in Toronto I had dinner with a friend whose partner drives a TTC subway who spontaneously started singing Byford's praises -- he spent his time out in the system, talking to drivers and passengers, and understood it from top to bottom, which allowed him to intervene in the system in compassionate and effective ways.But since Byford's arrival in NYC, he's been at loggerheads with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who fancies himself a latter-day Robert Moses, and who did everything in his power to thwart Byford's work. The final straw was redefining Byford's job so that he would only do day-to-day management, with no responsibility for improvements. Cuomo accomplished this by paying the consultancy Alixpartners $4m to produce a report that recommended a sharply constrained role for Byford.Byford has resigned, as has Pete Tomlin, a trusted and much-sought-after lieutenant whom Byford brought with him from the TTC.“Out-of-town MTA executive managers always come and go,” says retired Federal Transit Administration Region 2 New York Office administrator and Railway Age opinion columnist Larry Penner. Read the rest

Writing in The Journal of Health Economics, three economists claim (Sci Hub mirror) that "a one standard deviation reduction in daily stock market returns is associated with a 0.6% increase in fatal car accidents that happen after the stock market opening" and that this is robust across "a battery of falsification tests."They examined data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System from 1990-2015, and conclude that this "might just be the tip of the iceberg" because most car accidents are not fatal and thus not reflected in their data-set. Moreover, the correlation between fatal wrecks and stock fluctuations underwent a sudden, persistent increase in the mid-nineties, when 401(k)s exposed millions of households' finances to the stock market for the first time.They recommend public information campaigns to warn people that they might drive worse after their pensions are wiped out. Though, of course, from a neoliberal perspective, this could just be the incredible serendipity of self-correcting markets: when pensions are wiped out by financial engineering, people fatally wreck their cars, circumventing the future pain of not having any pension savings. Capitalism works! When the market drives you crazy: Stock market returns and fatal car accidents [Corrado Giulietti, Mirco Tonin and Michael Vlassopoulos/The Journal of Health Economics] (Sci-Hub Mirror)(via Marginal Revolution) Read the rest

"Proactive credit line increases" (PCLIs) are when your credit card company increases your credit limit without your asking for it; it was very common prior to the 2008 crisis, but the post-crisis rules largely put a stop to it. Now, banks have figured out regulatory loopholes that allow them to throw PCLIs at their most vulnerable customers, leading to record-high national levels of credit-card debt of $880b as of last September, higher than the pre-crisis high.Credit cards are the most profitable loans that the finance industry originates, and 2019 was the best-ever year for the banks' profits from credit cards, with interest rates soaring to a 20-year peak. The US banks made $179b in credit card fees and interest in 2019, and 2020 is projected to be even better. Credit-card debt is the fastest-growing form of debt in the USA. Much of this PCLI activity is subprime -- extending credit to people who are already overburdened by debt and who will likely miss payments, leading to high penalties, which are extremely profitable for banks. The number of people aged 19-29 in the USA who are more than 90 days late on their card payments just reached a ten-year high. But after the stock slipped in 2017, [Capital One] executives came under pressure to show they could meet growth targets. They eventually tweaked their models to offer increases to more customers, betting on a quirk in human behavior, according to the person with knowledge of the decision, who asked not to be named discussing the talks. Read the rest

It’s no secret that learning about data analytics is one of the best things you can do for your career in an increasingly data-driven world.Through five courses and over 70 lessons, the Data Analytics Expert Certification Bundle will give you the skills you need in order to become your company’s go-to numbers guru, and it’s available for just $49.If you’re new to the field, start with the Introduction to Data Analytics Training Course, which will outfit you with a general understanding of the terminology of the industry along with the basics of using analytical methods to solve problems, creating charts and graphs, identifying upcoming trends, spotting inconsistencies in your data, and more.With the basics under your belt, you’ll move on to the Tableau Certification Training Course, which teaches you how to use one of the world’s most popular numbers platforms through training that focuses on data mapping, visualizations, establishing connections between events, and more.Next up, the Data Science with Python Training Course will introduce you to the limitless power and potential of Python, by teaching you how to use this go-to programming language in order to gain valuable insights from large data sets.From there, the Business Analytics Certification Training with Excel course will teach you how to use executive-level dashboards along with how to integrate Excel into your Python builds—all through easy-to-follow instruction that uses real-world examples.Finally, the MongoDB Developer & Administrator Certification Training module will solidify your new knowledge with 17 hours of MongoDB training that teaches you about a variety of in-demand analysis strategies and tools. Read the rest

Anyone who’s ever been fishing can attest to the fact that it can be mind-numbingly boring at times, which is where the intrepid GoFish Cam Wireless Underwater Fishing Camera comes into play.This WiFi-enabled camera will help you catch more fish and have more fun while you’re doing it, thanks to a 1080p lens that delivers HD footage from underwater directly to your smartphone.Compatible with both Apple and Android systems, the GoFish Cam sits on your fishing line and captures all of the underwater action while you wait for a bite.It attaches between your mainline and the leader line so you’ll be able to easily retrieve it without having to worry about it being gobbled up by a fish, and a special night vision feature allows you to keep an eye on the comings and goings of your potential catches even at night.Introduce a live underwater video feed to your fishing routine with the GoFish Cam Wireless Underwater Fishing Camera—available for just $239.99 today.Prices are subject to change.You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

A Bothell, Seattle hous -- so filled with garbage, water damaged, and hazardous that the real estate agent didn't allow anyone inside -- just sold in a bidding war for more than its $330,000 list price. Only one photo, of the exterior, was provided in the listing. There were 17 offers; the buyer and final price haven't yet been revealed. From the Seattle Times:Despite the fierce pace of offers on the Bothell home, the sale pales in comparison to the all-out bidding war that ensued in 2016 after a derelict West Seattle home was listed for $200,000.That home, with five feet of standing water and toxic air not safe to breathe, ultimately sold in 10 days for $427,000, more than double the asking price, after receiving a jaw-dropping 41 offers. It was razed and redeveloped, then sold for $1.19 million in 2017...The offers (on the newly-sold Bothel property) were almost entirely from investors and home flippers, according to agents familiar with the sale.Other homes in the same zip code sell for a median $620,700, up nearly 50% since 2015, according to Zillow.“A whole lot of potential awaits,” the listing promised.(via Fark) Read the rest

While recreational marijuana was legalized in Illinois on January 1, it is still illegal under federal law. So just a few weeks back, authorities installed "Cannabis Amnesty Boxes" at Chicago airports for travelers to drop their grass before flying. But last week, someone arriving at Chicago's Midway helped themselves to the stash. From the New York Post:Police reportedly noticed the marijuana missing from an amnesty box during a check on Wednesday evening at around 8 p.m., according to a source for NBC5. Upon reviewing the surveillance footage, police saw a man — believed to be an incoming passenger — reaching inside and absconding with the marijuana hours earlier.The marijuana itself was left behind by a separate passenger, who placed it in the amnesty box after being found with it during a security check...“Cannabis Amnesty Boxes have been placed at Chicago’s airports so travelers have the opportunity to ensure compliance with federal law, as well as the local laws at their destination. Tampering with them, or attempting to remove anything placed inside, is a crime, and detectives are investigating this matter,” said Anthony Guglielmi, the chief communications officer with the Chicago Police. “In the meantime, new, permanent theft prevention boxes are expected to replace the temporary ones in the coming weeks, making them more secure and preventing anyone from further accessing materials dropped inside.”There are also marijuana amnesty boxes at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport and the Colorado Springs Airport.image: Chicago Police Department Read the rest

From BBC Earth's "Spy in the Wild" series. Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty robot! Read the rest

Got my daughter a broken Teddy Ruxpin “little bopper” off eBay, fixed it up and wired in a speaker. Unfortunately the only radio station I get good signal on is NPR so my testing just involves teddy ruxpin convulsing to the impeachment testimony pic.twitter.com/FTbwEGJEgX— Nunzio Vuono (@nvuono) January 22, 2020And if you don't know...From Wikipedia:Teddy Ruxpin is an animatronic children's toy in the form of a talking Illiop, which looks like a bear. The creature's mouth and eyes move while "reading" stories played on an audio tape cassette deck built into its back. It was created by Ken Forsse with later assistance by Larry Larsen and John Davies,and the first version of the toy was designed by the firm RKS Design. Later versions used a digital cartridge in place of a cassette. At the peak of its popularity, Teddy Ruxpin became the best-selling toy of 1985 and 1986, and the 2006 version was awarded the 2006 Animated Interactive Plush Toy of the Year award by Creative Child Magazine. A cartoon based on the characters debuted in 1986.And from the Muppet Wiki:Little Boppers were a line of toys made by Worlds of Wonder in 1987. The toys were sound-activated plush dolls that would "dance" to music. The toys featured plush covered plastic "feet" which were articulated at the "hips" and propelled the toys forward and side to side.Versions of Baby Piggy and Baby Kermit were produced, along with a line of Disney figures (Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy), comical versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man, and Worlds of Wonder's own Teddy Ruxpin. Read the rest

“It is unclear at the current time whether this outbreak can be contained within China”

China's President Xi Jinping said the nation faces a “grave situation” as the number of deaths in the Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak jumped to 42 on Saturday. Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations also began Saturday, and fears of a pandemic have put a pall on celebrations. President Xi held a politburo meeting on Saturday on ways to fight the “accelerating” outbreak, reported Chinese state television.From Reuters on Saturday, January 25:As of 8 p.m. local time (1200 GMT) on Saturday, the death toll in China had risen to 42, authorities reported. Some 1,372 people in China have been infected with the virus - traced to a seafood market in Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife.The virus has also been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal, and the United States. And you can now add Canada to that mix. Patient zero in Canada was just confirmed in Toronto.Wuhan city is located in Hubei province, and officials there are asking for help obtaining masks and protective suits.“We are steadily pushing forward the disease control and prevention ... But right now we are facing an extremely severe public health crisis,” Hu Yinghai, deputy director-general of the Civil Affairs Department, told a news briefing.Previous Boing Boing posts:First Canada Wuhan virus case confirmed, more than 1,400 people worldwide now infected with 2019-nCoVIMAGES, TOP, and BELOW courtesy of the Chinese government's Xinhua News.Peng Zhiyong (C), head of the department of critical care medicine of Zhongnan Hospital, performs diagnosis on a patient with his colleagues in Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Jan. Read the rest

On Saturday, the government health ministry of Canada reported the first presumed case in Canada of a patient with the so-called Wuhan virus, officially known as Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV.Coronavirus has infected more than 1,400 people worldwide, most in and around Wuhan, China's third-largest city. Also on Saturday, Australia confirmed its first four cases of the new coronavirus. On Friday, Malaysia confirmed four cases, France reported Europe’s first three. Health authorities around the world are rushing to prevent a pandemic. The true state of affairs inside Wuhan is not yet known. The lethality of the virus outside Wuhan is not yet known.IMAGE, TOP: First electron microscopic images of the novel coronavirus in China [CDC.gov, public domain, 1/24/2020]Toronto Public Health received notification of the first presumptive confirmed case of coronavirus in a Canadian resident who just got backfrom Wuhan, China's third-largest city in western Hubei province, which is the epicenter of the viral outbreak.“The individual is stable and is hospitalized” the statement added.From Reuters, on Canada's Wuhan virus patient zero:The individual arrived in Toronto on Jan. 22 and was hospitalized the next day after developing symptoms of respiratory illness.The victim is a man in his 50s and Ontario health officials said he took private transportation home after getting down at Toronto airport.Ontario health officials said his family members have been put into self isolation, though the government declined to give the number of people in the family.Read more at Reuters:Canada identifies first presumptive confirmed case of coronavirusPreviously on Boing Boing:Death toll in China from Wuhan virus now 41, with 1,000+ infected globally, 2 cases in U.S. Read the rest

Google's recently announced new redesign of desktop search results would have made ads pretty much look exactly like search results. Google is now backtracking, listening to the criticism, and trying a different visual approach.Our experimenting will begin today. Over the coming weeks, while we test, some might not see favicons while some might see them in different placements as we look to bring a modern look to desktop….— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 24, 2020“Last week we updated the look of Search on desktop to mirror what’s been on mobile for months. We’ve heard your feedback about the update. We always want to make Search better, so we’re going to experiment with new placements for favicons,” wrote Danny Sullivan, Google’s search liaison, in a statement posted to Twitter. “Our experimenting will begin today. Over the coming weeks, while we test, some might not see favicons while some might see them in different placements as we look to bring a modern look to desktop.”Writes Nick Statt at The Verge:Google made one of the biggest changes to how it displays search results in the company’s history earlier this month, with the changes taking effect over the course of the last week. It involved a visual overhaul that makes it more difficult to differentiate between advertising and organic search results with the removal of color overlays and the introduction of small branded iconography, known on the web as favicons, next to non-ad results.The company’s stated intention was to align desktop search results with the way they’re presented on mobile, but it became clear this also had the effect of making it harder to distinguish between paid results and non-paid ones. Read the rest

Boxed wines have come a long way since their admittedly subpar debut, and it’s now possible to grab a box of wine that delivers a surprising amount of flavor and body for a price that won’t break the bank.This Boxxle Premium Wine Dispenser makes it even easier to enjoy your favorite bag-in-box wine by offering a more streamlined and stylish enclosure, and you can grab it right now for 24% off its MSRP.Ideal for tailgating or entertaining guests at home, this dispenser takes your go-to wine bag and elegantly raises it about your glass—eliminating the need for you to lift, squeeze, or drag the cumbersome and unsightly box to the edge of your countertop.Made from high-grade ABS plastic and 202 stainless steel, this dispenser also makes for the perfect travel companion thanks to its lightweight build and compact design.Enjoy your favorite boxed wine without that annoying box that comes with it. The Boxxle Premium Wine Dispenser is on sale for over 20% off MSRP at $74.99.Prices are subject to change.You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

Mac users are getting hit with Shlayer, a malware that installs an “Any Search” bar on their computer, reports Lifehacker. It's easy to avoid Shlayer and most other Mac (and Windows) malware - never click on an Adobe Flash updater pop-up notification.From Lifehacker:There’s no reason to install, update, or use Flash Player to access online content in 2020, save for very rare exceptions—and no, none of those exceptions include watching illegal streams of sporting events or leaked movies. If you need to download Flash, get it directly from Adobe. Nowhere else.Image: Microsoft Read the rest

A message from the Arizona Department of Public Safety: "Think you can use the HOV lane with Skeletor riding shotgun? You’re dead wrong! ☠︎ One of our motor troopers cited the 62-year-old male driver for HOV & window tint violations on SR-101 near Apache Blvd this morning."Think you can use the HOV lane with Skeletor riding shotgun? You’re dead wrong! ☠︎ One of our motor troopers cited the 62-year-old male driver for HOV & window tint violations on SR-101 near Apache Blvd this morning. #NiceTry #YoureNotHeMan #AZTroopers pic.twitter.com/wQYY831mNY— Dept. Public Safety (@Arizona_DPS) January 23, 2020(Image: Arizona Department of Public Safety) Read the rest

A massive locust infestation has migrated from Somalia and Ethiopia into Kenya, reports AP News. The insects are devouring crops in a country already afflicted by widespread hunger. The United Nations warns that coming rains could increase the locust populations by a factor of 500. The most effective way to stave of the infestation is through aerial pesticide spraying, which comes with a $70 million price. "Even a small swarm of the insects can consume enough food for 35,000 people in a single day, said Jens Laerke of the U.N. humanitarian office in Geneva," says the article.(Image: Niv Singer, CC-BY) Read the rest

According to a commenter in Reddit "This is Otto the Skateboarding Bulldog, he passed recently. This is in Lima, Peru."My dad's friend saw this dog vibin from r/funny[via r/funny] Read the rest

Back in August someone found an interesting way to get rid of old CRTs. They did this over 50x!!!6ABC:No need to adjust that dial. Doorbell surveillance cameras captured the man with a TV set over his head, laying an older set down on someone's front porch and just walking off."He wants to be known as the TV Santa Claus. I don't know," Brooksbank told WTVR-TV.The bizarre discovery happened Sunday morning in Henrico's Hampshire neighborhood. Outdated boxes were found at more than 50 homes.(h/t Leo!) Read the rest

Companies like Edubirdie offer platforms for academic cheating, connecting freelance essay-writers with desperate students who pay hundreds of dollars to have their academic papers ghostwritten for them. Edubirdie has recruited customers with on-campus "epic parties" which offered organizers $250, along with branded cups and a standee with the company's mascot, in exchange for posting five or more photos of students posed with the standee and hashtagged with #EduBirdieParty. The organizer whose party that received the most attention would get $3,000 and a 2-hour DJ set.It's just one of the many techniques used by the cheating platforms to drum up business, including running deceptive "study groups": a recruiter posing as a student will post notices offering a "study group" for people struggling with an assignment, and when students call in to join, they're given a hard-sell to pay for ghostwritten essays.Some students are offered major discounts on cheating services in exchange for providing a photo or screenshot of their class email lists.One former ghostwriter who spoke to Ed Surge says that the majority of his customers were not spoiled rich kids (he says these were 15% of his business), but rather struggling students, especially adults who had returned to university, or foreign students with poor English language skills.Edubirdie claims it doesn't facilitate cheating, but the testimonials on its site come from customers who describe how cheating with Edubirdie freelancers saved their grades.Morgan, the spokesperson for EduBirdie, says the company no longer sponsors parties, but she defended the practice. Read the rest

Cum-ex (previously) is a technical, boring financial engineering technique that lets fraudsters file multiple tax-refund claims for the same stock transactions (they called it "dividend arbitrage"); from 2006-2011, the EU's largest, most respectable banks, law firms, and investors used the scam to steal $60,000,000,000.Cum-ex is the kind of scam that the finance sector excels at: a socially useless financial engineering marvel that makes staggeringly rich people much richer, protected by a thicket of dull, deliberately complexified terminology and tactics that exist solely to obfuscate the obvious fraud underway.A few bankers have gone on trial for criminal fraud for their role in cum-ex, but so far most of the perpetrators have gotten away with it, keeping the money (one trader, Sanjay Shah, relocated from London to Dubai and bought a $1.3m yacht he calls the Cum-Ex). But German prosecutors have embarked on an aggressive program of prosecutions for everyone who profited from cum-ex, including the prominent lawyers who wrote legal opinions arguing that cum-ex was legal. They are launching 400 prosecutions stemming from 56 investigations. Among those is Hanno Berger, a former German state tax auditor who switched sides and became a key player in the theft.Berger is a revered European finance law scholar, and his work was key to conferring a halo of lawfulness to the otherwise obvious scam. In private, Berger was more frank. One of the lawyers who worked with him says that he told the lawyers he supervised that they should quit if they didn't have the stomach for raiding the German state's coffers: "Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built, here’s the door." Read the rest

On January 25, 1921 the Czech play Rossum's Universal Robots premiered, entering the word into the Science Fiction, and several of my ex-girlfriend's vocabulary.Wikipedia:R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots).[1] The English phrase "Rossum's Universal Robots" has been used as a subtitle.[2] It premiered on 25 January 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.[3]Image via Wikimedia Commons Read the rest

In 2012, Chicago PD collaborated with the RAND Corporation and the Illinois Institute of Technology to automatically generate "risk scores" for people they arrested, which were supposed to predict the likelihood that the person would be a "party to violence" in the future (this program was called "TRAP" -- Targeted Repeat-Offender Apprehension Program" -- seemingly without a shred of irony). Now, that program has been shut down, and the City of Chicago's Office of the Inspector General has published a damning report on its eight-year reign, revealing the ways in which the program discriminated against the people ensnared in it, without reducing violent crime.Jail abolition lawyer Shakeer Rahman has published an excellent Twitter thread going through the report's highlights. A few of the points he makes:* People who were assigned high risk scores by TRAP were subjected to "enhanced prosecutions" * Routine traffic stops and other activities that pose a high risk for racial profiling were pretenses for generating TRAP scores* Your TRAP score went up even if were acquitted or had your case dismissed (Rahman: "In other words, police run arrest people on racist/arbitrary whims, and then those arrests become 'data' showing you should be targeted again")* Cops could access TRAP scores at will, and routinely violated the rules about sharing these scores outside of policing/criminal justice contextsChicago just shut down a “predictive" policing experiment that started in 2012. This report about has a bunch of alarming details about it, including info other cities have kept secret about their similar programs: https://t.co/PmXCcgbcbh Read the rest

Thank you, Mr. Oswalt.Do not watch this. Seriously. pic.twitter.com/QhIPuM8ysJ— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³º¹ (@th3j35t3r) January 23, 2020 Read the rest

If you're interested in either beginning or furthering a career in graphic design, you need to have a thorough understanding of Adobe's famed editing and illustration tools, and these bundles will get you to where you need to be for a fraction of what you'd pay for an in-class education.1. The Essential Adobe Photoshop CC BundleMSRP: $199 | Sale Price: $25 (87% off)This bundle comes with five comprehensive courses that will teach you how to professionally edit your photos in the world’s leading editing platform—through instruction that walks you through lighting tricks, vector tools, contrast ratios, and more.2. The 2020 Adobe InDesign CC Master Class BundleMSRP: $221 | Sale Price: $40 (81% off)Learn how to create industry-leading layouts both online and in print with this 5-course bundle that teaches you about desktop publishing, newsletter layouts, design essentials, and how to get great print results in any medium.3. The 2020 Adobe Illustrator CC Master Class BundleMSRP: $284 | Sale Price: $40 (85% off)With six courses and over 30 hours of training, this bundle will teach you how to create incredibly realistic images—with courses that focus on scaling, alignment, color application, and more.4. The Adobe After Effects & Nuke VFX Production BundleMSRP: $617 | Sale Price: $29 (95% off)Master visual effects for movies with this 4-course bundle, which features instruction from an actual Hollywood VFX artist who introduces you to editing essentials, visual effects, post-production strategies, and workflow tools.Prices are subject to change. Read the rest

In the latest example of Trump's Used-Car-Salesman tactics of free-association to find any word that sticks with a listener just to close a deal, the Commander In Chief of the US Armed Forces said today on CNBC that the wheel was invented by an innovative American capitalist, as an example of the corporate ingenuity that must be protected at all costs.Trump seems to believe the wheel was invented in the United States: "We have to protect all of these people that came up with, originally, the light bulb and the wheel and all of these things." pic.twitter.com/re6CyRi6HY— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 22, 2020It's not particularly notable or remarkable that Trump also credits Thomas Edison with the invention of the light bulb. It is true that Edison (through his company) perfected and patented a practical modern light bulb for use in American homes. But people across the globe had been experimenting with incandescent bulbs for a century before Edison locked it down; in fact, Edison's initial patent was denied because it was too derivative of the work done by William Sawyer.But of course Edison gets all the credit. And in this case, that's not really an indictment on Trump. It is, however, a painfully accurate metaphor for the kind of "innovators" who actually get rewarded under American Capitalism — savvy business people who navigate legal loopholes to profit off of someone else's labor and ideas.This all reminds me of something I saw on Twitter once. I can't find the original source right now, but the argument was essentially that American colonists used the wheel to prove their superiority over Native Americans. Read the rest

Laptops are great when it comes to getting work done on the move, but sometimes you need a better and more responsive keyboard in order to get your work done away from your desktop. Here are six top-rated Bluetooth keyboards that will help you power through your tasks both at the office or while you’re traveling.1. Gotek Voyage Ergonomic Bluetooth KeyboardMSRP: $89 | Sale Price: $72 (19% off)Get your work done faster and more efficiently with this V-shaped keyboard that offers Bluetooth connectivity, an ergonomic 166-degree typing angle, and a stand that supports devices with screen sizes of up to thirteen inches.2. Gotek Slim Wireless KeyboardMSRP: $49 | Sale Price: $40 (18% off)This wireless keyboard features a full QWERTY layout, function keys, and a battery that can last for up to 100 hours on a single charge—making it ideal for frequent travelers and commuters.3. Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard with Built-In StandMSRP: $79 | Sale Price: $63 (20% off)This ultra-thin and lightweight keyboard makes for the perfect travel companion, thanks to its compact design and a built-in stand that makes it easy to attach a wide range of devices.4. Gotype Rollable Keyboard with Bluetooth SpeakerMSRP: $99 | Sale Price: $75 (24% off)Type more accurately and enjoy music on the go with this portable roll-up keyboard. You’ll be able to use it with both Apple and Android devices, and there’s a built-in stand along with an HD Bluetooth speaker that offers a rich bass along with crystal-clear highs. Read the rest