Paul Zimmer was hot on Instagram until his young fans accused him of ripping them off: he sold shout-outs but failed to deliver, according to reports, then vanished from social media when a #banpaulzimmer hashtag aerosolized the allegations. Now his account is back in action, writes New Statesman's Sarah Manavis, trying to pass the torch to "Troy", first introduced as a lookalike, then as Paul's own younger brother.The third post, on 18 December, was a bombshell: “Hey it’s Paul Zimmer,” he wrote, “this is prolly gonna be my last social post ever… I have come to a place in my life where being in the spotlight and being an entertainer is no longer my passion... although it deeply saddens me to leave so bluntly, especially that so many of you have watched me for so many years.... I didn’t wanna leave my social media pages just sitting to die... soo I have decided to give my social media accounts to @troybeckerig because he is one of the dopest people I know and he is literally my younger twin my much younger twin I believe Troy is 15 or 16 years old hahaha…”The weirdest thing about social media is how it rewards those least aware of how clearly they are seen through. Any doubts may be dispelled by Manavis's sleuthing:Zimmer continues to maintain that he and Becker aren’t the same person. However, Becker’s IMDb page indicates the actor may have had doubts of his own. While in its current state it includes very little information, a cached version from 7 October 2019 shows that Troy Becker's "nickname" was "Paul Zimmer". Read the rest

Russian doll artist and photographer Lara Vychuzhanina takes Barbie and Ken out of their Malibu dream house and imagines them "back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR."Working with real photographs as a reference, Vychuzhanina manages to capture the style of the Soviet world in incredible detail. The delightfully nostalgic, 60 x 40 x 50cm (23.6 x 15.7 x 19.6 inch) model apartment features plastic pots, pans, and kitchen appliances that Vychuzhanina scuffed up to look as though they’re old and rusting. The meticulous artist even printed out scaled-downed food labels and stuck them onto tiny boxes and cans, and the table is laid out with a simple breakfast. View this post on Instagram Подумываю снять нечто похожее на эти фотографии, но в декорациях деревенского дома. Чтоб тоже был и мужик с водкой, и общая убогость убранства, в общем незамысловатый быт деревенского забулдыги. Конечно же с Гришей в главной роли)) Опять будете сетовать, что уж больно он цивильно выглядит для алкаша:))) . . #dollphotography #lara_v #photography_art #miniature #barbiedoll #toys #dollhouse #dollphotogallery #dollhouseminiatures #fineart #ussr #roombox #barbieworld #dollsofinstagram #communalapartment #kitchen #soviet #sovietkitchen #vodka #barbiemadetomove #ссср #коммуналка #коммунальнаяквартира #советскийсоюз #советскаякухня #алкаш #мужик #советскиймужик #водка #соседиA post shared by LARA V. (@lara_art_dolls) on Nov 16, 2017 at 9:16pm PST View this post on Instagram Как и обещала - продолжение фоток с коммунальной кухни;) Гриша съел всю жареную картошку, выкурил всю Приму и теперь размышляет о смысле жизни)) . . #dollphotography #lara_v #photography_art #miniature #barbiedoll #toys #dollhouse #dollphotogallery #dollhouseminiatures #fineart #ussr #roombox #barbieworld #dollsofinstagram #communalapartment #kitchen #soviet #sovietkitchen #vodka #boozer #ссср #коммуналка #коммунальнаяквартира #советскийсоюз #советскаякухня #алкаш #мужик #советскиймужик #водка #соседиA post shared by LARA V. Read the rest

Ewan Wilson spotted this remarkable jacket designed by Thierry Mugler in 1990, so odd it won its own spread (cropped above) in Elle magazine.Certainly Giger-influenced, as Wilson suggests; check out the bottle designs of Mugler's contemporary eaux de parfum Womanity and Alien [Amazon]. Read the rest

When real athletes train, they clearly don't go into it blindly. Balance is important, and the recovery is just as important as the workout itself.As for the rest of us, we barely have time for the workout, much less a professional massage afterward. That's why a professional-grade hand-held massage gun like the DEEP4s might end up being the best piece of exercise equipment you own.Power isn't everything when it comes to these tools, but the DEEP4s has it in spades. There are 4 speeds of intensity, ratcheting up to percussive strokes at 3,200 RPMs. The driver goes 4.7" deep, and there are 5 interchangeable heads that allows that pressure to reach any muscle group that needs it. (The 3-angle arm adjustment doesn't hurt either.)It's got all that and a durable battery that will last up to 8 hours, making it a week-long workout companion.Pick up your DEEP4s Percussive Therapy Massage Gun for Athletes right now for 23% off the retail price. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Super-Fun-Pak Comix does feature "McGruff the Crime Dog," "Guy Walks Into a Bar," and more other "Hilarious Comix"

Each winter, millions of Christmas Island red crabs mass migrate from the rainforest to the sea to lay their eggs. While the roads are closed during migration season to protect the crustaceans, a couple who live in this Australian territory still needed vehicle access to their two luxury eco-lodges. So, Chris Bray and his wife Jess attached sweeper "shoes" to their Toyota Land Cruiser tires to "gently push the crabs out of the way without harming them."They call their invention the "crab mobile": View this post on Instagram The #crab mobile working a treat! The roads are thick with red crabs migrating to the coast for a refreshing dip in the #ocean. What an amazing time to be on #Christmas Island @christmasisland @parksaustraliaA post shared by Swell Lodge (@swelllodge) on Dec 29, 2019 at 7:44pm PST(Nag on the Lake)screenshot via Chris Bray Photography/Caters Clips Read the rest

The U.K.'s Royal Mail is putting out a set of stamps featuring screenshots of classic British-made computer games, from 1984's Elite to the recent Tomb Raider remakes. A basic set is £9 at the Royal Mail's shop, with various collector sets on offer too.Two First Class stamps, two Second Class stamps, two £1.55 stamps and two £1.60 stamps.Elite | 1984 | BBC Micro and Acorn Electron Second ClassDizzy | 1987 | ZX Spectrum £1.60Populous | 1989 | Commodore Amiga £1.60Lemmings | 1991 | Commodore Amiga First ClassMicro Machines | 1991 | Sega Mega Drive £1.55Sensible Soccer | 1992 | Commodore Amiga First ClassWipeout | 1995 | Sony Playstation £1.55Worms | 1995 | Commodore Amiga Second Class Read the rest

Give me a fun novelty purse and I'm a happy gal. The kitschier the better. My collection ranges from vintage Enid Collins bags to modern-day Betsey Johnson ones (the whipped cream can is probably my favorite). My most recent acquisition is shaped to look like an oversized box of Chinese food. Now I've learned that Russian Etsy shop KruKru Studio is making leather purses that look like gas cans ($180), and lots of other uniquely-shaped bags. All of them are out of my price range but I still appreciate the heck out of them. (Neatorama) Read the rest

Sam Battle of Look Mum No Computer, the mad sonic scientist who brought us the Furby Organ, has done it again. This time, he turned a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive into an awesomely retro-sounding synthesizer.The Sega Mega Drive included a Yamaha YM2612 six-channel FM synthesizer chip under the hood. Sam broke that out to create his synth which so epically invokes that iconic, often cringe-worthy, 80s synth sound.On his second YouTube channel, Look Mum No Computer But More Serious-ish, he goes into more detail about the YM2612, the Sega Drive, and putting together the synth. Read the rest

Digital marketing in the coming decade will be a battle fought on multiple fronts. Companies are finding their customers on more web outlets than ever, and they're not getting any less fickle.It can all be pretty confusing for anyone looking to make their brand breakthrough, but the 2020 Full Stack Digital Marketing Certification Bundle is one of the best resources for anyone looking to cut through the noise.The package has 12 courses that serve as instructions for all the best tools in the marketer's belt. No "rah-rah" pep talks here, just raw info about how you can use today's biggest platforms to elevate your brand.There are specific looks at what draws face time on YouTube, Google Ads and Facebook. You'll learn how to use Google Analytics to track and act upon shifts in incoming traffic. And of course, you'll get expert, up to date advice on how to use SEO effectively across the board.The bundle is already over 90% off the cost of the individual courses. Read the rest

I'm no coin collector but I'm certainly hoping to get this great new quarter, which depicts the fruit bats of the National Park in American Samoa, as change sometime this year. CoinNews.net: Designer: Richard MastersSculptor-Engraver: Phebe HemphillMr. Masters’ design depicts a Samoan Fruit Bat mother hanging in a tree with her pup evoking the remarkable care and energy that this species puts into their offspring. The design is intended to promote awareness of the species’ threatened status due to habitat loss and commercial hunting. The National Park of American Samoa is the only park in the United States that is home to the Samoan Fruit Bat. Inscriptions are "NATIONAL PARK," "AMERICAN SAMOA," "2020," and "E PLURIBUS UNUM."This coin, part of the America the Beautiful collection, has a release date of February 3. Thanks, Kasey!image via CoinWeek Read the rest

Yes, it has come to this. Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and acting U.S. president and warmongering dumbass Donald Trump are both buying duelling $10 million dollar campaign ads to run against each other during the Super Bowl. Where's that giant flaming meteor, 2020. Bring it on.“The biggest point is getting under Trump’s skin,” Michael Frazier, a spokesman for the Bloomberg campaign, told the New York Times.Citing sources with the campaigns, CNN reports that both Trump and former New York Mayor Bloomberg's presidential campaigns plan to each spend $10 million on 60-second TV spots to run during the much-watched football game.Trump's ad, according to a campaign aide, is expected to run early in the game. The campaign reserved the ad time in December and the spot has already been paid for, the aide added.Bloomberg, after Trump's plans to run an ad during the Super Bowl were reported on last year, decided that he would also air a spot during the February 2 game, a spokesperson for the former New York Mayor told CNN.Neither campaign said exactly how much they paid for their ad, but Fox executives have said that they hope a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl would cost more than $5 million, meaning a 60-second spot could cost each campaign upwards of $10 million. The Bloomberg spokesperson said that the presidential campaign would pay "market rate" for the coveted ad time.Trump, Bloomberg campaigns set to spend millions to air ads during Super Bowl [Dan Merica, Kaitlan Collins and Betsy Klein, CNN, 5:24 PM ET, Tue January 7, 2020]IMAGES courtesy miasbliv.com Read the rest

Softbank-funded unicorn Zume ran out of dough

If you can't or won't or just don't drink cow milk, Starbucks has a new option for you.On Tuesday, the global coffee chain began offering oat milk along with other plant-based milks in beverages, at certain US locations, with plans to expand. Starbucks had previously begun offering new beverages made with coconut and almond milk in the United States and Canada. Soy is a longtime option offered at Starbucks, worldwide. Oat is pretty recent, and I happen to like it.More plant options seem like they'll be a good thing for the planet, because animal agriculture is linked to climate change, not to mention animal suffering.From Reuters:Sweden-based Oatly, which supplies oat milk to Starbucks in the Midwest, started production in the United States about three years ago and has partnered with several cafes in the country, including New York-based bubble tea café Boba Guys and Chicago-based Intelligentsia.The trend mirrors the popularity of plant-based meat substitutes, with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods adding their vegan patties and sausages to menus at fast-food and fine-dining restaurants.Starbucks has sold lattes and coffees with oat milk in Europe since 2018 and at a few of its upscale Reserve locations in the United States since last year. Starbucks launches oat milk drink as vegan movement grows [reuters.com] Read the rest

“Volume decline accelerated in 2019, down 3% through November.”The new availability of a wide array of legal marijuana products has is beginning to take a bite out of beer consumption in Canada, reports Bloomberg News.That's a big deal for a nation that prides itself in beer. What will Bob and Doug MacKenzie say?Beer volumes fell by 3% through November, data from Beer Canada show.“This is far worse than the trends seen between 2014-2018, where beer industry volumes fell an average 0.3%,” and appears to be related to Canada’s legalization of pot in late 2018, Cowen analyst Vivien Azer told Bloomberg News:Domestic beer volumes slid 3.9% through November, while imported beer volumes grew 1.4%. Cannabis consumers appear to prefer mainstream beer “as they pursue better ‘buzz for your buck,”’ Azer said in a note published Tuesday.There’s some debate about how much impact marijuana legalization has on alcohol consumption, although surveys of pot users indicate that they tend to drink less when they’re high. Declining sales have led to several alcohol-cannabis partnerships, including Constellation Brands Inc.’s investment in Canopy Growth Corp., Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s joint venture with Tilray Inc. and Molson Coors Brewing Co.’s partnership with Hexo Corp.To be sure, the Canadian cannabis market is still tiny. Annual sales based on the most recent monthly data would be C$1.5 billion versus C$9.2 billion for beer and C$23 billion for alcohol.Legal Pot Takes a Bite out of Beer Consumption in Canada [.bloomberg.com] Read the rest

Be careful what you wish for. In Kentucky, authorities have arrested a man they say expressed a desire to go to jail to support his jailed girlfriend.Raymond Pace, 47, is charged with offenses that include possession of methamphetamine, heroin and drug paraphernalia, Kentucky news outlets reported.From the Garrard County Police Department's Facebook Page:True Love.....On January 4, 2020 at around 7:04 pm, Mr. Raymond Pace called dispatch wanting to report a stolen laptop computer.When Officer Steven Debord arrived to take the report, an intoxicated Mr. Pace stated that he wanted to go to jail and needed to be locked up for 5 months, and asked if assault on a police officer would get him 5 months. Officer Debord advised Mr. Pace that he didn't want to do that, and instead suggested that they talk about whatever issues he was having. Mr. Pace agreed and invited Officer Debord into his home.Once inside, Mr. Pace told Officer Debord that he needed to go to jail for 5 months because his girlfriend was in jail for for 5 months and he wanted to be there with her so she wouldn't be stressing out. Pace again asked if if assault would get him 5 months and shoved Officer Debord's shoulder. Officer Debord advised Pace not to do that again, and suggested that Pace go to bed and sleep off whatever alcohol he had consumed.Pace continued to insist on going to jail, reaching under the couch and pulling out a box containing a baggie filled with suspected methamphetamine, several items of drug paraphernalia, including what Pace claimed was meth residue on a spoon. Read the rest

She has been charged with battery of a person over 65.

In Atlanta, a couple say they returned from their holidays to find their home had been completely wrecked by a squirrel. Their insurance company, Mercury, says nope-- squirrel damage is not covered. The couple has launched a GoFundMe. No word on the squirrel.TODAY AT 5: A local family came home from vacation to find wood damage throughout...caused by a squirrel! Why their insurance carrier won’t cover the damage. pic.twitter.com/gh576P7HAY— Mike Petchenik (@MPetchenikWSB) January 6, 2020Kari and Dustin Drees purchased the home, their first, just in December in Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood. Weeks later, off they went to visit family for the holidays.While they were away, their home alarm system went off, signaling a possible intruder. “We had a friend come check it out and our doors and windows were intact, so we just thought it was a software issue,” Ms. Drees said. No windows or doors breached.And yet.They returned to a home with scratched up floors, chewed up baseboards -- even the kitchen sink was left running, Kari Drees told reporters.Who did it?A furry little asshole with a long tail.From the Associated Press:A squirrel had fallen down their chimney and was trapped in the house, defecating and scratching at everything to get out. Eventually it made a nest in the couple’s couch. “We’re stressed at first, but we were like, ‘This is why you have homeowner’s insurance. It’s in situations like this.’ ... and so we weren’t too stressed,” Kari Drees said. Read the rest

I am backing up to this Seagate 2TB portable disk.I last backed up my laptop a little over 8 months ago. I thought I would get back to my usual storage device, a Drobo 5N2, however, I have not visited my brother in a few months. I left the Drobo to serve as his Plex media server until I have a living room again.Living la vida #vanlife! As I frequently work from the road I was suddenly overcome with a need to backup my laptop. The Seagate is fast and fairly quiet. The drive is small and light enough to be a nearly unnoticeable addition to my bag.Seagate Portable 2TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac (STGX2000400) via Amazon Read the rest

I'm already packing.NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star's habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. Scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet's potential environments to help inform future observations. TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. It's roughly 40 of the Sun's mass and size and about half its surface temperature. The star appears in 11 of the 13 sectors TESS observed during the mission's first year, and scientists caught multiple transits by its three planets. The innermost planet, called TOI 700 b, is almost exactly Earth-size, is probably rocky and completes an orbit every 10 days. Read the rest

Andrew McCarthy, posting on Instagram as Cosmic Background, takes amazing astronomical photographs. Pictured above a breathtakingly detailed shot of the moon constructed from 100,000 individual photographs. You can buy prints of this and other works of his at his online store.My first lunar image of 2020 is also one of my most detailed. This is a blend of around 100k photos, which allowed me to sharpen the image and overcome some of the fuzzing caused by our turbulent atmosphere. The colors you see are real, caused by variations in the composition of the regolith. This first quarter moon also is one of the best for showing crater detail, as the long shadows long the terminator really make the details pop.Below is a rather menacing photo of the sun looming behing Mercury. View this post on Instagram Behold, the transit of Mercury! This is little guy at around 9:45am Pacific this morning. I captured hundreds of thousands of frames of the event so I could build an animation, but didn't want to wait so long before sharing something. Mercury is about the size of our moon, so seeing it like this really puts the scale of the sun in perspective. #mercurytransit2019 #astrophotography #space #astronomy #opteam #optcorp #meadeinstruments #mercuryA post shared by Andrew McCarthy (@cosmic_background) on Nov 11, 2019 at 11:17am PST View this post on Instagram After I posted a picture of some star trails taken from my backyard I had a lot of positive feedback and requests for prints, but frankly I knew I could do better. Read the rest

This capybara is excited, unlike all the other capybaras here. Read the rest

A group of high school students in Michigan made good use of their holiday break: they built a toilet paper pyramid.The students belong to a 20-member robotics team, and they plan to sell the (unused) toilet paper now to raise money for their technology studies.“There was a lot of excitement when we got to the last few layers, but the final roll at the top was actually pretty anti-climactic,” teen robotics enthusiast Maxton Herst told MLive.com. “Every single roll you place, you want it to be in the correct spot. It was just kind of mind-numbing work.”The kids got the idea from seeing a similar pyramid in a YouTube video a few years ago.From Associated Press:The students built the pyramid during holiday break. The robotics team began to dismantle the pyramid Monday, the first day of classes after the holidays. Rolls of the two-ply toilet paper were placed into 96-count boxes for purchase.IMAGE: BLITZCREEK ROBOTICS. Read the rest

Ryan Scribner and Jake Carlini stayed at the cheapest Airbnb in New York City. It was $30/night. Above is Ryan's video and below is Jake's documentation of the experience. The verdict: "It wasn't too bad!" Read the rest

I loved this image, posted today to promote a B3TA newsletter but originally from its photoshop thread challenging readers to create album covers for old (largely UK) TV shows. It's by christhebarker.If you're American and Zippy Stardust is a baffling, inexplicable horror to you, be assured the same is also true of Britons. Read the rest

Barrow (aka Utqiaġvik), Alaska is the northernmost city in the United States. It's so far from most civilization that the grocery prices are astronomical. For example, a bag of frozen french fries is $17, cucumbers are $4.50 each, and a carton of orange juice is $12. Read the rest

Millions of animals have been hurt or killed in Australia's devastating months-long fire season, but firefighter Sam Mcglone is able to save at least one of them – a baby kangaroo hiding under a log. He wraps the nervous creature in a towel and later takes it to a vet. Read the rest

Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of the iconic Generation X memoir "Prozac Nation" (1994), died today of metastatic breast cancer. She was 52. Wurtzel was also the author of Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1999) and More, Now, Again (2002), about her stimulant addiction. Several years ago, she wrote in the New York Times about the BRCA genetic mutation that can result in breast cancer and her own treatment for the disease. From today's New York Times obituary:Writing about her final illness was a natural choice for Ms. Wurtzel, who had for a quarter-century scrutinized her life in relentless detail, becoming a hero to some, especially to many women of her generation and younger, but also drawing scorn. “Prozac Nation,” her first book, published when she was 27, was unvarnished in its accounts of her student days at Harvard, her drug use, her extensive sex life and more...The book became a cultural reference point and part of a new wave of confessional writing.“Lizzie’s literary genius rests not just in her acres of quotable one-liners,” (Wurtzel's lifelong friend, author David) Samuels said by email, “but in her invention of what was really a new form, which has more or less replaced literary fiction — the memoir by a young person no one has ever heard of before. It was a form that Lizzie fashioned in her own image, because she always needed to be both the character and the author.”photo: detail of Prozac Nation book cover Read the rest

If you like to repair your own electronics, this set of screwdrivers probably has what you need. It comes with the following drivers: Phillips (PH000, PH00, PH0, PH1), Torx (T5, T6, T7), Torx Security (T8H, T9H, T10H), Pentalobe (P2, P5, P6), Triwing 3.0, and Slot 2.5. It also comes with a number of other useful tools: spudgers, tweezers, and scissors. It comes with a pouch and Amazon is selling it for Read the rest

BB contributor and DIY science hacker Ariel Waldman recently went on a research expedition to Antarctica to study microscopic extremophiles under the ice. She made a great video series about it and has now created a wonderful interactive tour of this hidden world called "Life Under the Ice." It's damn cool. (Get it? Get it?!) From Ariel's project description:Typically when we think about Antarctica, we think of a place that's barren and lifeless... except for a few penguins. But Antarctica should instead be known as a polar oasis of life, host to countless creatures that are utterly fascinating. They’ve just been invisible to us – until now. Life Under the Ice enables anyone to delve into the microscopic world of Antarctica as an explorer; as if you had been shrunk down and were wading through one large petri dish of curiosities...The collected Antarctic microbes were found living within glaciers, under the sea ice, next to frozen lakes, and in subglacial ponds. Microbes from under the sea ice were discovered in the Southern Ocean’s McMurdo Sound near McMurdo Station and the Erebus Glacier Tongue. Microbes from glaciers and frozen lakes were discovered in the McMurdo Dry Valleys at Lake Bonney and Lake Hoare.Life Under the Ice Read the rest

It seems like Tesla should have some kind of warning system that forces you to press an override icon if you really want to drive with the door open.Model X oopsie from r/IdiotsInCarsImage: Reddit video screenshot Read the rest

Edison Electric Institute created this fantastic public safety video in 1990 with CGI that's been aged to perfection for today's vaporwave music videos.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, the GOP congressman who became famous when his six brothers and sisters appeared in campaign ads warning people not to vote for him, Tweeted a fake photo that showed former Obama shaking hands with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani with the caption, "The world is a better place without these guys in power."The world is a better place without these guys in power. pic.twitter.com/gDoXQu9vO5— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) January 6, 2020People pointed out that the photo was a fake based on a 2011 photo of Obama and India's prime minister:U.S. congressman sharing a fake photo. This photoshopped from Obama meeting India's prime minister. https://t.co/7UMjyPwFDQ pic.twitter.com/ckRZx3ktok— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) January 6, 2020Gosar pretended he knew that all along, calling everyone who called him out "dim witted":2. The point remains to all but the dimmest: Obama coddled, appeased, nurtured and protected the worlds No. 1 sponsor of terror. The world is better without Obama as president. The world will be better off without Rouhani.— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) January 6, 2020People responded with their own fakes, like these:That is photoshopped. Just like this one. pic.twitter.com/g6O2KUW0Ml— Mo Latno Bill Phelan (@MoBill) January 6, 2020 pic.twitter.com/hdJBLDDt4p— Gargolito (@gargolito) January 7, 2020And real photos, like this:https://twitter.com/ReelDancing/status/121429982542172979My favorite Gosar fake is the one at the top, created by our own @beschizza. Read the rest

"just thought i would SPRING into action haha do you get it?" writes Beeble. Read the rest

Airbnb has a patent on software that analyzes social media accounts of potential guests and hosts and can supposedly flag people who show signs of “neuroticism and involvement in crimes," "narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy" or "are perceived as untrustworthy."From Evening Standard:It uses artificial intelligence to mark down those found to be “associated” with fake social network profiles, or those who have given any false details. The patent also suggests users are scored poorly if keywords, images or video associated with them are involved with drugs or alcohol, hate websites or organisations, or sex work.It adds that people “involved in pornography” or who have “authored online content with negative language” will be marked down.An Airbnb spokesperson told Business Insider that it is not using all the screening features listed in the patent.Photo by BROTE studio from Pexels Read the rest

I've been a fan of Blindboy Boatclub since I first discovered "Horse Outside," his hit(?) song with the Rubberbandits (and later, by complete happenstance, ended up staying at the same hotel that's featured in the video). His podcast consistently delivers a random, rambling ménage à trois of weird knowledge, cultural connections, empathy, and utter hilarity, and his delightful short story collections take the traditions of Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien and thrust them erotically into the social media sphere.Or, if you want a perfect microcosmic metaphor for his career, there's this Twitter thread, where Blindboy talks about his misconceptions of pizza while growing up in Limerick, which goes from silly childhood observation to profoundly resonant insight about cross-cultural communications in a post-colonial edge. And Ninja Turtles.I finally had a pizza, It was on one of my childhood birthdays, a small frozen one from dunnes, my ma refused to put the oven on for it due to the extravagance of putting an oven on for one item. So she fried it in a pan instead.— Rubber Bandits (@Rubberbandits) January 1, 2020Blindboy was not alone in this strange experience, as the replies swiftly reveal:I have a memory of my late grandfather taking us to get pizza at the Parkway Dunnes in Limerick in the early 90s. You assembled the toppings yourself, and he insisted on piling on a mound of ham cheese &sweetcorn to make a proper feed of it.— Eoin Daly (@eoinmauricedaly) January 1, 2020Because of TMNT I thought marshmallow and pepperoni was a proper pizza topping. Read the rest

A couple of men in Columbus, Mississippi allegedly thought they could collect a $100,000 lottery prize using a ticket with glued-on winning numbers. Instead they were arrested. Didn't they know you have to be a rich white president or financial services executive to commit fraud with impunity?Image by Hermann Traub from Pixabay Read the rest

Every year in Japan, animals escape from zoos in a planned exercise. Except they aren't really animals, they're humans in animal costumes. And they aren't really escaping, they're part of an annual drill to train staff on what to do when a real animal does. While funny to watch, escaped animals are no joke in a country known for earthquakes. Director of Tama Zoological Park, Yutaka Fukuda, told Metro in 2015: ‘In the event of a big earthquake, a tree could fall on a cage, or many other things could occur that may lead to an animal escape. ‘We think it is very important, and it is our responsibility to carry it out with seriousness.’Look for the real lions, their reactions to the drill are priceless.Thanks, Julie!screenshot via The Guardian Read the rest

[I adored Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg's YA graphic novels The Plain Janes and Janes in Love, which were the defining titles for the late, lamented Minx imprint from DC comics. A decade later, the creators have gotten the rights back and there's a new edition Little, Brown. We're honored to have an exclusive transcript of Cecil and Jim in conversation, discussing the origins of Plain Janes. Make no mistake: this reissue is amazing news, and Plain James is an underappreciated monster of a classic, finally getting another day in the spotlight. If you haven't read it, consider yourself lucky, because you're about to get another chance. -Cory]

Bellingcat's Guide To Using Reverse Image Search For Investigations pits Google's reverse image-search tool against Yandex's and Bing's, and finds that Yandex's is far and away the best 00 albeit within a limited, Eastern European-centric set of contexts. Read the rest

If you ever find yourself time-traveling to 1975 and need to impersonate a Disneyland Haunted Mansion ride-operator, we've got you covered: just remember that in 1975, food and drinks were absolutely not allowed past the main gate, and that E-tickets should be torn in half and placed in the ticket box. (Thanks, Changa!) Read the rest

Farmers are increasingly sick of high-tech tractors that are expensive to buy and usually impossible to fix yourself due to their integrated digital technology. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, "Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days." To be sure, the farmers buying these old machines aren't luddites. In fact, they often customize and retrofit them with contemporary tech like GPS for automatic steering. From the Star Tribune:“The newer machines, any time something breaks, you’ve got to have a computer to fix it,” (BigIron owner Mark) Stock said.There are some good things about the software in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning if something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time to nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer is powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the dealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for labor.“That goes against the pride of ownership, plus your lifetime of skills you’ve built up being able to fix things,” (Machinery Pete founder Greg) Peterson said...The cheaper repairs for an older tractor mean their life cycle can be extended. A new motor or transmission may cost $10,000 to $15,000, and then a tractor could be good for another 10 or 15 years.Folland has two Versatile 875s manufactured in the early 1980s in Winnipeg and bought a John Deere 4440 last year with 9,000 hours on it, expecting to get another 5,000 hours out of it before he has to make a major repair. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail editorial, Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the 2020s, let’s imagine better things, where I reflect on what science fiction can tell us about the 2020s for the Globe's end-of-the-decade package; I wrote about how science fiction can't predict the future, but might inspire it, and how the dystopian malaise of science fiction can be turned into a inspiring tale of "adversity met and overcome – hard work and commitment wrenching a limping victory from the jaws of defeat."I describe a scenario for a "Canadian miracle": "As the vast majority of Canadians come to realize the scale of the crisis, they are finally successful in their demand that their government address it unilaterally, without waiting for other countries to agree." Canada goes on a war footing: Full employment is guaranteed to anyone who will work on the energy transition – building wind, tide and solar facilities; power storage systems; electrified transit systems; high-speed rail; and retrofits to existing housing stock for an order-of-magnitude increase in energy and thermal efficiency. All of these are entirely precedented – retrofitting the housing stock is not so different from the job we undertook to purge our homes of lead paint and asbestos, and the cause every bit as urgent. How will we pay for it? The same way we paid for the Second World War: spending the money into existence (much easier now that we can do so with a keyboard rather than a printing press), then running a massive campaign to sequester all that money in war bonds so it doesn’t cause inflation. Read the rest

The best apps of 2019 could be the best deals of 2020. If you missed them last year, here are 10 of our Boing Boing reader favorites - all on sale. Take advantage of deep discounts on apps dedicated to language learning, gaming, graphic design and many more.Degoo Premium: Lifetime 10TB Backup PlanWith this super-secure backup solution, you'll never have to worry about system crashes deleting all of your data. Degoo gives you more backup space than leading cloud systems by a mile, and you can set your files to automatically back up as you go.MSRP: $3600Sale Price: $99.99Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering StormGot a friend (or world leader) who needs a safe outlet for their megalomania? Gift them a copy of this expansion for the latest edition in the world-building, world-beating Civ series that adds in new world wonders and ecological disasters.MSRP: $29.99Sale Price: $19.99Slideshop: Lifetime SubscriptionNeed your presentation to pop? Choose from and customize one of 6,000 template slides, all compatible with leading software like PowerPoint and Keynote.MSRP: $2940Sale Price: $19.99 (down from previous sale price of $39.99)StockUnlimited Vector Plan: Lifetime SubscriptionGraphic design just got a whole lot easier with access to this trove of more than 500,000 vector designs. Use them royalty-free for print or the web.MSRP: $684Sale Price: $34.99Mondly: Lifetime Subscription (All Languages)Short, entertaining lessons help you absorb words and state-of-the-art speech recognition makes sure you get them right in this acclaimed language learning app. Read the rest

In my latest Locus column, Inaction is a Form of Action, I discuss how the US government's unwillingness to enforce its own anti-monopoly laws has resulted in the dominance of a handful of giant tech companies who get to decide what kind of speech is and isn't allowed -- that is, how the USG's complicity in the creation of monopolies allows for a kind of government censorship that somehow does not violate the First Amendment.We're often told that "it's not censorship when a private actor tells you to shut up on their own private platform" -- but when the government decides not to create any public spaces (say, by declining to create publicly owned internet infrastructure) and then allows a handful of private companies to dominate the privately owned world of online communications, then those companies' decisions about who may speak and what they may say become a form of government speech regulation -- albeit one at arm's length.I don't think that the solution to this is regulating the tech platforms so they have better speech rules -- I think it's breaking them up and forcing them to allow interoperability, so that their speech rules no longer dictate what kind of discourse we're allowed to have.Imagine two different restaurants: one prohibits any discussion of any subject the management deems “political” and the other has no such restriction. It’s easy to see that we’d say that you have more right to freely express yourself in the Anything Goes Bistro than in the No Politics at the Table Diner across the street. Read the rest

Last week, a redditor posted that "When I load the Xiaomi camera in my Google home hub I get stills from other people's homes!!" The post included video of the user's tablet showing stills of strangers in their homes, including some of strangers asleep in their bedrooms.A few days later, a googler commented in the thread to say that Google was aware of the problem and had blocked all Xiaomi products from accessing Google Home or Google Assistant. Xiaomi has since issued a statement saying that they had "has always prioritized our users' privacy and information security," and that a Dec 26 update had caused the problem, but only for users with "poor network conditions" (the bug came from a cacheing system). The company says the bug affected 1044 users, and that it has been resolved, but that Xiaomi devices will not get back their Google Assistant and Google Home tools until "the root cause has been completely solved, to ensure that such issues will not happen again."Some analysts have suggested that adversarial interoperability -- where companies don't get to stop competitors from connecting to their systems -- cannot be reconciled with privacy concerns, because companies need to be able to control their systems to protect our privacy. But in this story -- as in so many others -- we see that allowing big companies like Google to decide who can plug into their systems and under what circumstances is no guarantee that they'll only choose wisely. Google and its competitors are completely capable of thoroughly vetting a partner and greenlighting its integration, even when that partner cannot be trusted. Read the rest

Thomas Hofeller was the mastermind behind REDMAP, the tool used by Republican dirty-tricksters to redraw state electoral maps after the 2010 census in order to deliver state and federal legislative seats to Republicans even when the majority of people voted Democrats.Hofeller was a secretive sociopath and had long been estranged from his daughter, Stephanie, a self-described anarchist who only discovered her father had died in 2018 when she read the obit pages of the New York Times. When Stephanie recovered her father's possessions from his home, she came into possession of files detailing the REDMAP plans, files of the sort that he had long exhorted his co-conspirators not to create or retain.Stephanie turned some of her father's files over to the government watchdog Common Cause for use in a lawsuit over North Carolina's redistricting; thanks to the frank admission of racially motivated voter suppression in Thomas's files, the court found that NC's redistricting was illegal.Now, Stephanie has licensed all her father's files under an unspecified Creative Commons license and dumped them on Google Drive for anyone to use, exhorting others to "download and distribute this material, at will. It’s yours (be nice)." Hofeller, for his part, is likely rolling over in his grave. He was secretive about his documents, and knew full well that they could undermine his work.“Emails are the tool of the devil,” one of the training slides on in the trove of files reads. “Treat every statement and document as if it was going to appear on the FRONT PAGE of your local newspaper.” Read the rest

US Air Force research scientist Michael Hansen created Rhasspy as a privacy-oriented alternative to surveilling "voice assistant" products like Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri; the free/open project supports dozens of languages from German, French and English to Mandarin, Vietnamese and Russian, and is designed to run on Raspberry Pi-based devices.It's licensed under the very permissive MIT license, and is presently intended for "advanced users that want to have a voice interface to Home Assistant, but value privacy and freedom above all else."Rhasspy runs even when completely disconnected from the internet, and works well with Home Assistant, Hass.io, and Node-RED.A typical voice assistant (Alexa, Google Home, etc.) solves a number of important problems:1. Deciding when to record audio (wake word) 2. Listening for voice commands (command listener)3. Transcribing command/question (speech to text) 4. Interpreting the speaker's intent from the text (intent recognition) 5. Fulfilling the speaker's intent (intent handling)Rhasspy provides offline, private solutions to problems 1-4 using off-the-shelf toolsRhasspy [Michael Hansen](via Four Short Links) Read the rest

If emojis had sounds, David Lap nails them with his guitar. He "impersonates" all kinds of emojis, including a UFO, cruise ship, monkey, ping pong game, T-Rex, red heart, and many others. Here's another one of his videos where he imitates musical instruments (e.g., flute, harmonica, bagpipes) with his violin. Amazing stuff! Read the rest

Helen Sharman was the first British astronaut and in 1991 became the first woman to visit the Soviet Mir space station. In an interview published in The Guardian yesterday, she made a comment about extraterrestrials, the latter part of which is an eyebrow raiser:"Aliens exist, there’s no two ways about it. There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life. Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It’s possible they’re here right now and we simply can’t see them." Read the rest