On Monday, Manatee County, Florida students were evacuated from a school bus after someone sprayed too much Axe body spray. WFTS reports that "according to school officials, the bus carrying Buffalo Creek Middle School students had to remove students off the bus because of the strong odor."And from the Parrish Fire District's Facebook page:Early this evening our District along with MCEMS responded to a reported hazardous materials incident on board a Manatee County School Bus. Crews arrived on scene to find fifteen students with mild respiratory irritation. All students were triaged and prioritized according to their initial complaint. It was a unified command decision to call out secondary bus to be dispatched to pick up the stranded students and remotely transport to the local High School for a limited access lot to provide security and accountability for parents to pick up students. Manatee Co. School Board reps along with the Sheriffs Office set up a coordinated pick up area.At this time, the incident is being ruled a prank, as a deodorant / aerosol body spray was discharged on the bus. This is still a active on-going Investigaion in which bus cameras will be reviewed and further interviews conducted.All 30 students on the bus were accounted for and treated and released with refusals to be be transported by EMS.(Thanks to Florida bureau chief Charles Pescovitz!)image: "Large collection of Axe products" by Dannycas (public domain) Read the rest

Twitter is advertising for "a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media" with the goal of becoming "a client of that standard."It's a pretty seismic move, albeit one that's short on details and binding promises. Twitter was originally designed to be part of a federated network, but over the years, the company has tightened controls over its APIs and other elements in such a way as to make it progressively harder to create federated or third-party tools to interact with Twitter users. Sometimes, this was undertaken in the name of privacy or security (and indeed, there were some privacy and security gains through those moves) and sometimes it was just presented as a fait accompli, and either way, it's transformed Twitter into another centralized platform -- albeit one that is more generous about linking and embedding that its primary rival, the walled gardens of Facebook and its subsidiaries, whose goal is to enclose and snuff out the open internet.Twitter CEO @Jack explains:First, we’re facing entirely new challenges centralized solutions are struggling to meet. For instance, centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people.Second, the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one’s attention. Unfortunately, these algorithms are typically proprietary, and one can’t choose or build alternatives. Read the rest

Alex from Copy Me (previously) writes, "Copying is one of the most essential steps to creativity. And if we don’t understand how it works, copyright can easily become detrimental to the very creativity we want to protect. Copy-Me's got a new video about how even the great geniuses copied others and how this practice goes waaaay back to the most famous artists and inventions. With loads of examples and quotes from experts. We tried to reach the emotion behind the beliefs we all carry with us because facts alone don’t change anyone’s mind, especially when those beliefs are so woven into every aspect of our society. It’s called, appropriately, 'Geniuses Steal', the 3rd part in a miniseries about how minds really work and how the romantic notions about creation hinder our own ability to create.We know geniuses are not real and minds don’t have Eureka moments. But we still cling to the idea of an original artist. That romantic notion of someone who creates something out of nothing, with their mind alone.But the truth is every single piece of art and technology ever created is a remix. Shakespeare copied. Mozart copied. Picasso copied. Morse copied. Tarkovsky copied too. They’re all based in the work of others before them. The obsession with originality is quite a new phenomenon in the history of our species. And maybe it’s time to reconsider how art and inventions come about before our laws destroy the very creativity we want to protect. Read the rest

Paolo Pedercini compares every bee-themed game with an eye to their scientific accuracy.Bees, particularly honeybees, are often incorrectly characterized in videogames – as well as in other media. Sometimes that’s due to their similarity with with the more aggressive wasps (which make for better enemies), sometimes that is due to the alien-like complexity of their social behavior, sometimes the creators are interested in bees only beecause they allow a multitude of puns around on the letter B. Hilarious.At the inaccurate end of things, Flappy Bee (bees do not flap) loses to a title that features bees eating pizza and operating mechas. The winners are Drunk Bee, Monarchies, and Bee Hunting Simulator 2016; the issue is salient due to the recent high-profile commercial release Bee Simulator, which scores a respectable 4/5 on Paolo's list. Read the rest

Propublica's blockbuster report on the magistrate judges in South Carolina revealed a system of patronage, cronies, and gross miscarriages of justice, with judges appointed on the say-so of a single state senator, without regard to whether they had any legal experience (some judges took the bench after working construction, or as pharmacists, or as underwear distributors), and without any vetting of their ethical lapses (some judges were disgraced lawyers who stole from clients, or retired lawmakers notorious for their racism).Earlier attempts to reform the magistrate system had foundered in South Carolina's senate, whose members jealously guard their power to hand over these patronage appointments to connected party insiders and outgoing lawmakers.But Propublica's story may yet shame South Carolina's lawmakers into taking some halting, tiny steps toward reform: state senator Thom Davis [R-Beaufort] has proposed legislation that would require the House as well as the Senate to confirm prospective magistrates, which would end the practice of appointing judges on the say-so of a single senator. Davis would also end the practice of allowing judges to serve after their terms end as "holdovers" (a practice designed to allow judges to serve briefly between their term expiry and their reappointments while paperwork is processed, but which has allowed some SC magistrates to serve for decades without being reconfirmed). Under the proposal, magistrates would receive additional legal training.The proposal also prohibits nepotism, barring lawmakers from nominating their family members, and would bar ex-lawmakers from serving as magistrates for two years after their terms expire. Read the rest

I think we can all agree that the endless plague of robo-calls has spiraled out of control. But the folks at the public data directory BeenVerified wanted to quantify exactly how much worse this onslaught has gotten. They collected data from more than 200,000 spam call reports from across the country, and crunched the numbers to see what they could find.And while the results aren't really surprising, per se, they're certainly harrowing.The frequency of Social Security spam calls has multiplied 23 times, from 0.4% of all spam calls in 2018, to 9.5% in 2019.BeenVerified does acknowledge that their data does not necessarily reflect a complete picture. They actually suspect that things might be worse. "The Spam Complaint Monitor is a canary in the coal mine showing broad spam and robocall topic trends," said spokesperson Justin Lavelle. "As the data is self-reported, the total numbers of complaints related to each of these spam call topics are almost certainly higher."They add:The results from the BeenVerified Spam Call Complaint Monitor mirror broader trends, as more than 76,000 Social Security scam calls were reported to the Federal Trade Commission in the 12-month period ending in March 2019, with losses totaling $19 million. Losses related to IRS scams peaked at $17 million for the 12 months ending in September 2016, the FTC reports.Less than 3.5% of Social Security scam complaints to the FTC resulted in lost cash, but when victims take the bait, the losses are comparatively high. The median reported loss was $1,500 in 2018, more than four times higher than losses from all other frauds, the FTC reports. Read the rest

Before YouTube, it was a TV show that brought us crazy home movie clips. That show, of course, is America's Funniest Home Videos (or "AFV" for short). On the air since 1989, AFV has seen several hosts and has somehow survived the Internet. Now there's a limited-run podcast that looks at its 30-year history from behind the scenes.I just learned that my friend Brittany High (previously on BB) has spent the greater part of her year working on this five-part podcast series. For America, This Is You, she's interviewed the show's creator Vin Di Bona, the writers, producers, and all of the hosts, including Bob Saget. She wrote, "Yes, he sassed me. More than once. I loved every minute of it!!!!!" She's even voiced its promo video: I'm excited for her and to listen in!America, This Is You is available now on:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/america-this-is-you/id1488369919Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/afv-america-this-is-you/PC:27414Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/siriusxm/afv-america-this-is-youOvercast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1488369919/afv-america-this-is-you Read the rest

In barely months, a 16 year-old Swedish activist has changed the record on climate change, drawing the attention of the world to a problem as it becomes critical--and the contemptuous wrath of politicians and pundits who think she'll go away if they just call her a stupid little brat again. Greta Thunberg is Time's Person of the Year for 2019.We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow,” she says, tugging on the sleeve of her blue sweatshirt. “That is all we are saying.”It’s a simple truth, delivered by a teenage girl in a fateful moment. The sailboat, La Vagabonde, will shepherd Thunberg to the Port of Lisbon, and from there she will travel to Madrid, where the United Nations is hosting this year’s climate conference. It is the last such summit before nations commit to new plans to meet a major deadline set by the Paris Agreement. Unless they agree on transformative action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution will hit the 1.5°C mark—an eventuality that scientists warn will expose some 350 million additional people to drought and push roughly 120 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. Read the rest

The Mariah Carey mashups are coming out of the woodwork this holiday season. There's this one that combines her chipper hit "All I Want For Christmas Is You" with Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People." Its creator, YouTuber Bill McClintock, calls it "All I Want For Christmas is the Beautiful People":Then there's YouTuber William Maranci's Radiohead/Mariah mashup. It takes Carey's same Christmas hit and combines it with "Creep," making for "Creep But It's All I Want For Christmas Is You." One commenter describes it aptly, "this feels exactly like dissociating in a jcpenny in December":Wait! There's one more, called "Don't Stop Christmas Now," and it brings in Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now." It came out last year, but I'm going to include it anyway. Read the rest

You might know someone who can make a pipe out of any conceivable household object. But if they're doing it every time they smoke, it might be time to get them a little Christmas present. And we've got just the thing: The Twisty™️ Glass Original Combo Pack, priced way, way down for December.If you've never used a Twisty before, this is the pipe that has changed the game in recent years for serious smokers. The spiral structure means that smoke has to travel up through five chambers before it reaches your lungs, cooling down each hit by more than 30% over traditional pipes. (And significantly more, when compared to your college buddy's "beer can with some holes poked out" version.)It also holds 2 grams of smokeables, is easy to fill and stays lit longer thanks to the "infini-cherry" design.The combo pack contains the Original Twisty Glass, a zipper case, microfiber bag, cleaning brush, replacement caps and tubes and much more. It's already more than 40% off retail, but you can take an extra 15% off that final price by using the coupon code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the Donald J. Trump Historical Players present the True Story of the Drafting of the U.S. Constitution!

I release music sometimes, under my own name, or with my rock band, the Roland High Life. And in order to get our songs onto all the major music services, I pay an annual fee to DistroKid. They're an affordable company, with an easy-to-use interface that handles all the licensing stuff and makes sure we're getting paid that one-one-bazillionth of a cent every time someone plays our songs on Spotify or YouTube or hell, even Tik-Tok, whatever that is.And now, for some inexplicable reason, they've added a new feature: automated memes. Like this:We use @distrokid for music distribution and I have no idea WHY they decided to add this automated option for our songs, but I'm damn sure glad they did: pic.twitter.com/hjNnWWacKt— The Fantalorian (@thomdunn) December 9, 2019And this:I'm not sure I watched enough Seinfeld to totally get this, but anyway here's Elaine grooving to a tune about conspiracy theories pic.twitter.com/kSFIZNxx4h— The Fantalorian (@thomdunn) December 10, 2019And of course, this:Anyway here's Baby Yoda grooving to a song I wrote about Spider-Man (you're welcome) pic.twitter.com/luAgaAKSlE— The Fantalorian (@thomdunn) December 9, 2019On one hand: why? Who really needs this feature? Will the commodification of memes push us that much further towards the brink of some disastrous culture climax?On the other hand: this is stupidly delightful and I'm having too much with it so I really don't care. Read the rest

Writing for the New York Times, Heather Murphy has a fascinating story about the unexpected results of a bone marrow transplant.When a patient receives a bone marrow transplant, the patient's own cells are destroyed and replaced with cells from a donor. Thereafter, the patient is a "chimera," with two sets of DNA. It's believed that other than helping the recipient's immune system, the donor DNA has little impact on the recipient:“Their brain and their personality should remain the same"However, the duplicate DNA can cause confusion in criminal investigations. Murphy's article recounts a multi-year experiment carried out by the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department when an employee received a bone marrow transplant. Realizing the opportunity to further scientific knowledge, they swabbed "the heck" out of the patient before and following the procedure. Four years later, they found surprising results:Swabs of his lips and cheeks contained his DNA — but also that of his donor. Even more surprising to Mr. Long and other colleagues at the crime lab, all of the DNA in his semen belonged to his donor. “I thought that it was pretty incredible that I can disappear and someone else can appear,” he said.Read the rest of the article here, including a discussion of whether the change to the recipient's DNA will have an impact on future offspring. And if you're interested in forensic uses of DNA, check out this story about "rapid DNA testing."(Image via Wikipedia.) Read the rest

Many folks have to submit themselves to a drug test, on a routine basis in order to stay gainfully employed. There's greasy ways around these tests of course: bringing someone else's urine into the lab to have tested in place of yours, increasing your intake and output pot fluids to dilute the amount of fun in your urine, or adding an adulterant to your sample to name a few.There are, of course, bolder actions that can be taken.Captain Joshua Bird (dig that name for pilot) of the United States Air Force's 99th Reconnaissance Squadron loves his cocaine. Apparently, in order to avoid testing positive when his mandatory drug test came around, Bird shaved his entire body—hair, eyebrows, tricky bit, you name it—to foil a follicle-based drug test. This of course, is the sort of brilliant, decisive plan that one thinks of when full to the gunsels with marching powder.Needless to say, things didn't go as well for Bird as Bird had planned. As a matter of fact they went considerably worse than he could have imagined once other the Air Force learned of his other dabblings in drugs.From Task & Purpose:Bird was convicted at a general court-martial in October for using cocaine, distributing dextroamphetamine sulfate (also called "go-gel," a form of the medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD) to others for recreational use, and, most notably, for obstructing justice by "shaving his entire body to avoid a drug test," according to the notice. Read the rest

Watch Tehran-born artist Ali Akbar Beigi work on this gorgeous hyperrealistic portrait.This amazing video is identified as “Oil on Canvas by Aliakbar Beigi,” from the Instagram account of the Beigi Academy Of Art. View this post on Instagram #oiloncanvas by Aliakbar Beigi #newyorkart #newyorkartist #unitedstates #unitedkingdom #californiaartists #californiaarts #spainart #russiaart #russiaartist #artuniversity #artistsuniversity #artvideo #videoarte #eyepainting #artrenewalcenter #academyofartuniversityA post shared by Beigi Academy Of Art (@alibeigiart) on Nov 13, 2019 at 3:34am PST About the artist, from artrenewal.org:Ali Akbar Beigi was born on July 25, 1982 in an art-loving family in Tehran, Iran. He loved painting since childhood and he spent most of his time on learning this art with well-known art teachers. He developed an interest and a taste for art, when he was 14 years old. Beigi’s professional career as painter started after successfully achieved association degree in art. He established his own gallery and training institute called ‘’Beigi Academy” in 2001 and soon after opened his second branch as a result of high demand and students’ interests. Beigi’s Academy is one of the most prestigious and eminent art classes in Tehran, which is authorized by Ministry of culture in Iran. During the past years, Ali Akbar Beigi has attended 15 collective exhibitions and held 4 successful solo exhibitions in terms of high quality of exhibited artworks and high volume of visitors. He is currently studying Bachelor of fine art in Iran. In addition to that, he attended several workshops and academic courses such as Imperial Academy of Art classes in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Read the rest

With all the revolutionary tech that's out there, it's pretty sad that finding a simple stud in your wall can feel like dowsing for water. This can be equally true whether you're using a magnetic finder and it's reliance on "feel," or an electronic unit that can give fuzzy readings (especially when the batteries are low).Sometimes a simple tweak is all that an old-school solution needs. That's the hook of the StudPop, a simple stud finder that vastly improves on the traditional magnetic model.Just move the tiny gadget along the wall, and the magnet on the back gets a pull from the metal in the studs. The difference here is the indicator, a small bubble that pops out and stands straight when the magnet connects. From there, just mark the position and drill away.The manufacturers sell the unit solo, but they also incorporate two of them into their On the LEVEL device - a real time saver when you're hanging large cabinets or paintings.Both of them are on sale for well over 20% off the retail price, but you can take an additional 15% off by using the discount code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Super neat video here that is identified as “Nuclear reactor starting up (TRIGA).” Fairly sure there is science involved in this here stuff.The blue light is from electrons moving through the water causing Cherenkov radiation.Video: [Triga, Pulse operation, Nuclear reactor 240 MW, 7.12.2012]“The reactor is brought to criticality and then the transient control rod is forced out. This causes a power pulse of about 500-1000 MW.” Read the rest

Andy Moore writes, "My friend the marvelous Ms. Truelove Waits made a song containing election advice for anyone in the UK confused about who to vote for this Thursday." (I am a member of the Labour Party and a donor to the 2019 campaign). Read the rest

Chris Knight recorded a video of the bees in his backyard and wanted to accompany it with a rendition of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 1899 composition "The Flight of the Bumblebee."Mindful of the copyright problems that plague Youtube creators who use professionally performed renditions of classical music, Knight made his own version, by feeding the sheet music to a MIDI synthesizer, noting that he'd done so on the page description: "The musical accompaniment is a computer generated audio track created from a MIDI file transcribed from the original score. As the score itself is long out of copyright, and this is not a human performance, you would be blatantly abusing the Youtube copyright system if you attempt to file a claim against this video."You will never absolutely guess what happened next.A company called "Adrev" filed an automated claim against Knight's video, through which they were able to force the video to have ads whose revenues were diverted to Adrev's coffers.There are plenty of weird things about Adrev's act of copyfraud. First, they only claimed copyright on a three-minute chunk of the music (the entire composition is repeated 60 times in the video). Knight hypothesizes that this is a tactic that lets them file a new claim against him if he disputes this one. Knight's well-versed on the obscure subject of Youtube copyright claims, so he was willing to dispute this one, despite Youtube's dire warning that if he did so and was found to have infringed copyright, he would face a strike against his account, which could lead to its permanent deletion. Read the rest

[If you thought your relatives' gift of a "smart speaker" was the worst way that a family member could compromise your privacy, think again: home genetic tests can opt your whole bloodline into mass-scale state genetic surveillance, and while there has been some progress into bringing the rule of law into the stuff of life, it's been halting -- and that's bad news, especially as companies that do genetics for spies and cops merge with consumer genomics companies, something that's just happened, as my EFF colleague Jennifer Lynch discusses below, in this crosspost from EFF's Deeplinks blog -Cory]This week, GEDmatch, a genetic genealogy company that gained notoriety for giving law enforcement access to its customers’ DNA data, quietly informed its users it is now operated by Verogen, Inc., a company expressly formed two years ago to market “next-generation [DNA] sequencing” technology to crime labs. What this means for GEDmatch’s 1.3 million users—and for the 60% of white Americans who share DNA with those users—remains to be seen. GEDmatch allows users to upload an electronic file containing their raw genotyped DNA data so that they can compare it to other users’ data to find biological family relationships. It estimates how close or distant those relationships may be (e.g., a direct connection, like a parent, or a distant connection, like a third cousin), and it enables users to determine where, along each chromosome, their DNA may be similar to another user. It also predicts characteristics like ethnicity. An estimated 30 million people have used genetic genealogy databases like GEDmatch to identify biological relatives and build a family tree, and law enforcement officers have been capitalizing on all that freely available data in criminal investigations. Read the rest

Heather sends us a notice of "a screening of Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece The Gold Rush, with live musical accompaniment at Hollywood's stunning new venue: The American Legion Theater on Highland Avenue."For this one-of-a-kind screening, the Chaplin Office has waived their usual requirement that the film be accompanied by recorded music, and has given Retroformat Silent Films' resident Musical Director Cliff Retallick permission to improvise a live, grand piano score! The screening will be introduced by world renowned independent filmmaker and Retroformat Silent Films board member Allison Anders, whose films include Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca and Grace of My Heart.In The Gold Rush, Chaplin's immortal Tramp is a lone prospector in the Alaskan Gold Rush, where he meets the beautiful dance hall girl Georgia Hale and becomes trapped in a snowbound cabin, hilariously boiling, carving and eating his own shoe and performing the famous dance-of-the-dinner-rolls, in two of the greatest scenes in movie history.The Gold Rush was originally released by United Artists in 1925, but in 1942, Chaplin recut and re-released the film, adding a score that he recorded and composed himself, dubbing it the "official version." In 1993, internationally renowned film restorationists, historians and documentarians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill restored the original 1925 version, and it is this restoration that will screen in the beautiful Legion Theater. This event will kick off a series of tributes to the founders of United Artists by Retroformat Silent Films, with subsequent screenings of films by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Mary Pickford and D.W. Read the rest

Do you have any Star Wars fans on your list? Given the reach and output of its new corporate masters these days, it might be easier to ask if there's anyone out there who isn't a Star Wars fan. So let's narrow it down further: Do you know a Star Wars fan who likes to drink?Still a pretty broad category? Okay, fine. You might want to get several of these Millennium Falcon Ice Molds, then.Fill these molds with ice, pop them in the freezer, then make that Carbonite "fwoosh" sound as it renders a tiny frozen replica of Han Solo's legendary ride. You can even see the little radar dish.The possibilities are endless here. Freeze some furry bugs into it and pretend they're Chewbacca! Give it a new paint job by using fruit punch! Or we suppose you could just put them in a glass and use them to keep your drink as cold as Hoth on Christmas.The Millennium Falcon Ice Molds are already more than 30% off retail, but you can take an extra 15% off the final price by using the discount code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Balazs Sarkadi from the Hungarian band Bankrupt ("a refreshingly energetic blend of 90s indie, hip hop and punk rock") writes, "President Trump mocked Greta Thunberg in a recent tweet, which sparkled the idea of a song in which he elaborates his point of view on climate change in a Twitter rant addressed to Greta. The mash-up music video of Minor Problem by Bankrupt is a funny and at the same time cringey compilation of Trump's most awkward moments and loosely associated footage. Read the rest

Consulting giant McKinsey -- notorious price-gougers and architects of ICE's gulags -- took on a contract to help reduce violence at Riker's Island, and, $27.5m later, produced nothing but a set of trite and pointless recommendations that were largely ignored, backed by "research" that both McKinsey personnel and Riker's guards helped to falsify.Though McKinsey and city officials deny any falsification, Propublica's public records requests, interviews with sources with first-hand knowledge, and former corrections commissioner Joseph Ponte's sworn deposition all show that the program's overseers and designers "were cherry-picking docile inmates" to make it seem that the program was working.The program was called Restart, and it was formulated without any input from inmates or clinic staff "or others with direct insights into drivers of violence." Instead, the McKinsey team observed and communicated with the guards, whose mindset their adopted, attracting censure from a higher-up who warned them off a burgeoning obsession with tasers, shotguns and "aggressive dogs."McKinsey also produced a high-priced data analytics package for Rikers, which was never put into use -- the $5.5m program crashed the jail's antiquated computers, and relied on technologically unskilled guards and supervisors to correctly input large amounts of data and interpret the analysis the system produced.Ultimately, McKinsey produced a 14-point plan based on spectacular results from the Restart pilot programs, even as consultants and guards both scrambled to exclude violence-prone prisoners from those test populations, revising their exclusion list whenever there were flare-ups of violence in the test units.The 14-point plan was pretty anodyne, with things like "improved educational opportunities" and "more guard training." Ultimately, it proved no more useful than the data analytics package. Read the rest

I use +3.0 to read books, phone, and kindle, and +0.5 when using my computer. My readers of choice are these cheap horn-rim spex. A five-pack costs . I keep a pair in my travel bag and the others are scattered around the house. They tend to gather and disperse like a swarm of semi-intelligent robots. Read the rest

Lao Dongyan is a professor specializing in Criminal Law at Tsinghua University; on Oct 31, she posted a long, thoughtful piece to their public Wechat account about the announcement that Beijing's metro system will soon deploy facial recognition to "improve efficiency of passenger traffic." Prof Lao makes a smart, thorough argument against this, drawing on both China's rule of law, international privacy norms, and lack of meaningful consent.Prof Lao's critique is a springboard for a wider critique of facial recognition by the private sector, and the power for both private and state abuse of biometric data.The post was translated into English and posted by Jeffrey Ding, a PhD candidate in International Relations at Oxford. What struck me was the strong expectation among this Chinese legal scholar that the rule of law and proportionality will be observed by the Chinese state, which is very different from how westerners think of the Chinese political situation and of how we believe Chinese people think of their political situation.What really gives me concern and fear was that my information is being abused by public authorities; because when they misuse the data, I have no idea what the price would be for myself and my family, property, reputation, occupation, freedom, health, or life. Everything is possible.In the name of security, for public places like the subway where large numbers of people flow in and out, first it was an item inspection, then a bodily inspection. Now facial recognition is also being pushed. Read the rest

Galveston County Republican Party Chairwoman Yolanda Waters says her use of the N-word in a text message about fellow party member J.T. Edwards was simply a typo. Edwards, by pure coincidence, is black. The Galveston Daily News reports that “Waters complained about personal loans she and her husband had made to Edwards, and then followed her complaint about the money by calling Edwards a ‘typical n**.’”“I usually type very fast, and in this case, I moved too fast to see that the word was there,” Waters told the paper. “I made the typo because I did not proofread my text.”The word was there. Like it spontaneously appeared in the text message without her typing it.Again, there is no reason, no excuse and no room in our party for racist comments. The Galveston GOP Chairwoman should apologize to the respected member of the Texas SREC for using a racial slur to describe him. And she should resign as county chairman. https://t.co/BG0omQFLnC— George P. Bush (@georgepbush) December 8, 2019[via Fark] Read the rest

University of Tokyo engineers have taught a robot how to repair itself. Well, they taught it to tighten its own screws. And with that skill, it also was able to self-install a hook for hanging a tote bag from its shoulder. From IEEE Spectrum:At the moment, the robot can’t directly detect on its own whether a particular screw needs tightening, although it can tell if its physical pose doesn’t match its digital model, which suggests that something has gone wonky. It can also check its screws autonomously from time to time, or rely on a human physically pointing out that it has a screw loose, using the human’s finger location to identify which screw it is. Another challenge is that most robots, like most humans, are limited in the areas on themselves that they can comfortably reach. So to tighten up everything, they might have to find themselves a robot friend to help, just like humans help each other put on sunblock.And here is their technical paper: "Self-Repair and Self-Extension by Tightening Screws based onPrecise Calculation of Screw Pose of Self-Body with CAD Dataand Graph Search with Regrasping a Driver" Read the rest

There's a lot of political will to regulate the Big Tech companies in both the US and the EU at the moment, which is a very welcome juncture to have arrived at after 40 years of antitrust inaction during which companies were permitted to grow by buying nascent competitors, merging with major competitors and cornering vertical markets -- all classic anticompetitive behaviors that Reagan and his successors legalized.But regulating Big Tech isn't enough: we have to regulate them effectively. The wrong rules (like the EU's Copyright Directive) can simply cement their dominance. And, of course, we want to take care to extinguish only bad, anticompetitive behaviors, not those that give rise to the parts of tech that we love and value.Veteran tech analyst Ben Thompson wrote an essay to accompany a talk he's giving at the Antitrust in Times of Upheaval conference, in which he tries to cleave tech monopolists into two different categories: "platforms" ("a foundation on which entire ecosystems are built") and "aggregators" ("collect a critical mass of users and leverage access to those users to extract value from suppliers"). Thompson proposes that platforms and aggregators have different failure modes when it comes to anticompetitive action, and that each should be regulated differently.Platforms (like Apple's App Store or Microsoft Windows), have enormous power over third parties. If you get kicked out of the App Store, you can no longer sell to Iphone owners, so Apple has lots of opportunities for rent-extraction from its software vendors, like forcing them to use its own payment processor. Read the rest

In 2000, Mayor Pete won the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's Profiles in Courage Essay Contest with an excellent essay praising Bernie Sanders as a unique American politician, whom Buttigieg described as "a powerful force for conciliation and bipartisanship on Capitol Hill" who provides "an answer to those who say American young people see politics as a cesspool of corruption, beyond redemption."I am a donor to both Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' campaigns.Sanders has used his unique position as the lone independent congressman to help Democrats and Republicans force hearings on the internal structure of the International Monetary Fund, which he sees as excessively powerful and unaccountable. He also succeeded in quietly persuading reluctant Republicans and President Clinton to ban the import of products made by underage workers. Sanders drew some criticism from the far left when he chose to grudgingly endorse President Clinton’s bids for election and reelection as president. Sanders explained that while he disagreed with many of Clinton’s centrist policies, he felt that he was the best option for America’s working class.Sanders’s positions on many difficult issues are commendable, but his real impact has been as a reaction to the cynical climate which threatens the effectiveness of the democratic system. His energy, candor, conviction, and ability to bring people together stand against the current of opportunism, moral compromise, and partisanship which runs rampant on the American political scene. He and a few others like him have the power to restore principle and leadership in Congress and to win back the faith of a voting public weary and wary of political opportunism. Read the rest

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "A new investigation from Gizmodo just revealed that anyone, anywhere can get geographic coordinates of Ring devices from Amazon’s Neighbors App. Not only can someone find out where users live, they can use footage to track bystanders, locate children, and monitor people going into buildings, like clinics, for private appointments. Amazon sells these devices under the guise of keeping us safe. They’re lying. Their surveillance devices and network puts us all in danger. We need lawmakers to fully investigate the threats associated with Amazon’s dragnet and its impact on our privacy, security, and civil liberties. Fight for the Future has launched a campaign calling for Congress to investigate Amazon's surveillance practices. You can add your name here." (Image: Dan Calacci/MIT) Read the rest

Three gentleman who tried to liberate a 75-inch television from the wall of a real-estate office in Spain were outsmarted by the cords attached to the appliance, as well an uncooperative door framee and a less-than-desirable coefficient of friction between the soles of their shoes and the broken glass on the sidewalk the building. Image: LiveLeak Read the rest

Today is International Human Rights Day, and Storylab has arranged for a special free online screening of "The Crossing: Your Impact on Modern Day Slavery," via the interactive Hubhub platform, which lets viewers annotate and discuss videos, with comments linked to specific moments in the video. The video includes a special introduction by Emma Thompson, the project's patron.On the 10th of December we’re creating a hubub for Human Rights Day and convening a global conversation about modern day slavery. A video introduction by Patron Emma Thompson precedes the screening of the award winning film The Crossing, and following we’re inviting voices from across the world to join Tamara Barnett Human Trafficking Foundation, the film’s director Shreepali Patel, producer Colin Burrows and Rich Warren of Encounters Film Festival in an international conversation sparked by the film.UN Human Rights Day [Storylab](Thanks, Jonathan Worth!)Today on #UNHumanRightsDay, join us for a global screening of the film, The Crossing, and be a part of an urgent interactive conversation challenging #HumanTrafficking. Register here: https://t.co/2wfIkW0bYG #TheCrossing #ModernSlavery #StandUp4HumanRights pic.twitter.com/ngw4XQD3Jk— StoryLab Research (@StoryLab_ARU) December 10, 2019 Read the rest

Over at Medium, Kesh Anand has a crisp answer, or rather five possible five answers, to this questions: "Where are all the time travelers?" Of course, it's very possible that there just aren't any. And that's Anand's fifth answer. The others four are more fun to consider:1. They’re not visiting your time period.2. They’re hiding in plain sight.3. You think they’re crazy.4. People experience the past without leaving their own time.And for the last word, here is some old wisdom from Britney Spears and Kevin Federline:(via Daily Grail) Read the rest

Unicorn is a scooter company that launched with a lot of flash and hype. Unicorn's CEO Nick Evans is the co-creator of Tile, the GPS tracking app. The company spent a vast amount of money on Facebook ads but only got pre-orders for 350 scooters. Now Evans says they have no money left and no one is getting a scooter or a refund. From The Verge:Customers, as you can imagine, are pissed. “I am upset he basically robbed everyone of his customers and is closing without delivering any scooters,” Rebecca Buchholtz wrote in an email to The Verge. “This was my daughters Christmas gift and now I cannot get her any gift.”“I find it shocking that someone like Nick Evans who has name recognition and clout in the tech community due to Tile, would operate in such a fraudulent way,” wrote Matt Furhman. Another customer, who said he is now out $998 after ordering two Unicorn scooters, called Evans “a thief.”Customers are advised to contact their credit card companies and dispute the charges from Unicorn.In an email to The Verge, Evans said the company had received only around 350 orders. “I feel horribly guilty that we left people with no scooters and no refunds,” he said. “We are working on something, but, yes, this seems unlikely.”$699 X 650 = $244,650. Is that too much for the co-founder of a very successful company to give to people who put their faith in him?A tidbit from Wikipedia: "On November 7, 2013, Tile's founder Nick Evans his company Reveal Labs were sued for allegedly stealing the Tile idea while Evans was employed by Jonathan C. Read the rest

In the Las Vegas Valley, some pigeons are wearing cowboy hats. While the chapeaus may seem cute on first glance, and pigeons are annoying anyway, it's unlikely they are purposely making a fashion statement. A "pigeon positive" animal rescue group called Lofty Hopes is now trying to catch the pigeons and safely remove their hats. "Did they glue them? And what does that mean for them?” (Lofty Hopes head Mariah) Hillman told KVVU-TV. "Is it something that's going to impede their flight or attract predators?"“We drove up and down here yesterday for a good two hours just handing out business cards to any location where I saw pigeons and people," Hillman said. "If you see these birds, just feed them until I get here. I'm only 3 miles away and I'll come trap them." Read the rest

In the December 9, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman profiles one of the most influential authors in recent decades, William Gibson.Gibson doesn’t have a name for his method; he knows only that it isn’t about prediction. It proceeds, instead, from a deep engagement with the present. When Gibson was starting to write, in the late nineteen-seventies, he watched kids playing games in video arcades and noticed how they ducked and twisted, as though they were on the other side of the screen. The Sony Walkman had just been introduced, so he bought one; he lived in Vancouver, and when he explored the city at night, listening to Joy Division, he felt as though the music were being transmitted directly into his brain, where it could merge with his perceptions of skyscrapers and slums. His wife, Deborah, was a graduate student in linguistics who taught E.S.L. He listened to her young Japanese students talk about Vancouver as though it were a backwater; Tokyo must really be something, he thought. He remembered a weeping ambulance driver in a bar, saying, “She flatlined.” On a legal pad, Gibson tried inventing words to describe the space behind the screen; he crossed out “infospace” and “dataspace” before coming up with “cyberspace.” He didn’t know what it might be, but it sounded cool, like something a person might explore even though it was dangerous.(Image: William Gibson by Frédéric Poirot , CC-BY) Read the rest

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele reveal the "deplorable conditions at Vincent Clortho Public School for Wizards." Read the rest

I'm not saying its aliens, and I figure it's for some mundane purpose such as trapping seafood, but I enjoyed watching this helicopter-shot video of mysterious beach circles near Isla Aguada in Mexico. Nothing similar is evident on Google Earth. I'm not saying it's aliens. Read the rest

Michael Epler, AKA Pilot Red Sun, (patreon) warps his digital smeartool paintings with glitchy audio and crude pseudo-3D datamoshed effects that highlight the claustrophobia and deepen the nightmare. The latest, embedded above, is titled "Not So Fast" and is about a traffic stop that ends badly for the well-luded driver.Below is "Ultimate Fuel". If you like this (or hate it in an interested way) check out the YouTube channel. Read the rest

Pigeons with hats have been spotted and filmed in Las Vegas, prompting a search for whoever is putting them there.Pigeons in Las Vegas have been spotted wearing tiny little cowboy hats. It's not clear how the pigeons got the hats on their heads. Some people found it funny, but other are wondering if this is a case of animal cruelty.As a commenter on YouTube puts it, "It's been cod in Vegas latel" [sic]. Read the rest

Princen Alice created a "password generator" that glues random Welsh-sounding words into a craggy landscape of letters. It's probably not very good, since it's three or four dictionary words and a number plus the fallacious ethnocentric belief that unpronouceability to English speakers reflects randomness, but what a delightful mess! Read the rest

Enjoy this compilation of 1990s-era sprite games extruded into lowpoly 2½D extravaganzas. These are works of static art, but I'm sure I've seen this done "live" in-game recently, in an automated, playable way. (Note that there are a number of 2½D Super Marios already--these replicas are hand-made, like this video). Read the rest

Writing at Metropole, Sarah Balakrishnan describes the development of cemeteries in a city in Ghana. As of the 1800's, the general practice in the seaside city of Accra was to bury the dead underneath the family's home. Around 1888, British colonists began forcing the populace to bury the dead in public cemeteries. The requirement served multiple purposes:Cemeteries were undoubtedly a part of British colonists’ bid to reorganize African societies according to Christian schematics of “civilization”—what has been called the “civilizing mission.” But they also had another, more insidious, ambition. Creating private property in Accra required cemeteries. Graveyards relocated ancestors to the public domain, making it possible for Gold Coasters to sell their property to interested buyers.British colonists had long understood that communities in Accra would never sell their land if it contained the remains of their elders. Public cemeteries thus transferred rituals of social reproduction—celebrating, mourning, and remembering the dead—into the domain of the state, so that private houses could be made fungible and sellable. Like elsewhere in the world, commemorations of death shaped the devolution of property. In colonial Accra, British colonists used cemeteries to enforce private property in land.Soon, large public cemeteries indeed grew, which led to various other problems. For one thing, once large public cemeteries came into existence, developers started scheming to use the land for a different purpose:While the state used cemeteries to enforce private property in land, this had come at a cost: the creation of massive “immovable properties.” Whereas chiefs and wealthy “big men” (abirempon) had built many cemeteries in the 20th century by buying expansive estates, the colonial government now wanted to build railroads and thoroughfares through these lands. Read the rest

State Snaps is a send-in-your-photos party wheeze aimed at fratboys. Spread amorphously over various social media platforms, it's too sleazy to go mainstream but too successful to stay in one place. But the wannabe operators failed to register a key domain name, doitforstate.com, that reflects the viral motto "Do it for State!" associated with The Brand. So a domain squatter got it. Usually, a call to a lawyer comes next. Not these guys.The gunman wore a baseball cap, had pantyhose pulled over his face, and sunglasses covered his eyes.Deyo briefly raised his arms in surrender — then bolted into his bedroom. He slammed the door behind him and braced for impact. Moments later, the intruder kicked through the doorway and grabbed Deyo by the neck.“Where’s your computer?” he demanded. According to Deyo’s courtroom testimony, he led the man across the hall and into his office with the gun now shoved into the small of his back. He sat down, the man opened up his MacBook Pro, and Deyo felt the gun move from his spine to the rear of his skull, the metal hard on his scalp.“Okay, motherfucker,” Deyo recalled him saying. “GoDaddy.com.”Why file a trademark and SLAPP your way to a domain name you want when you can just get a goon to force the squatter to turn it over at gunpoint? All time greatest domainer tip right here. Read the rest

There's much ado about coffee brewing methods these days, but most of us - at least on the busy weekdays - just want our morning joe to be consistent, easy, and most of all, fast.If that sounds like anyone on your Christmas list, they're going to get a lot of mileage out of the FrankOne Cold Brew & Coffee Maker.This maker is just the ticket for busy bees who need that jolt in the morning, and it's portable enough to be used at work. The operation is super easy: Just pour your grounds in the top, then water right after it. Press the button on top, and wait - but not that long. The system will filter cold brew into the carafe in four minutes, significantly faster than traditional cold brewing methods. If you pour hot water in, your regular hot coffee takes only seconds.The whole thing rinses clean, and it's fully rechargeable by USB cable.Take 15% off the FrankOne Cold Brew & Coffee Maker now by using our holiday discount code: MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Back in October, TV writer Liz Alper started posting on Twitter about her harrowing experience as a writer's assistant in LA, hoping to break into the industry. Alper had spent more than a decade being overworked and underpaid, and, well, rightly had enough. Over the course of several weeks, she got the #PayUpHollywood hashtag trending, inspiring other film and TV professionals to share the stories of the less-than-glamorous lives they led in order to maybe, finally "make it" (whatever that entails).Since then, Alper and her friend Deirdre Mangan, another TV writer, have surveyed more than 1500 support staff members from the LA entertainment industry about their incoming and working conditions. As they explain in a press release about the data they compiled:“Hollywood has created a paywall around the industry that keeps out anyone who doesn’t come from money or who won’t put up with absurd, unsafe and potentially illegal working conditions,” said #PayUpHollywood co-founder Liz Alper. “We need to move past the tired myth that ‘this is just how it’s always been’, because it’s not true. Hollywood did not always negligently add to the income inequality, housing and mental health crises our country is facing. We can and must do better.”Like the recent list of journalism salaries, the survey revealed a lot of people making $50,000 a year or less while struggling to survive in an expensive city where they're expected to live in order to do their jobs. And of course, there's racial and gender inequality a-plenty, and no clear path for upwards mobility for anyone, really. Read the rest

As the Civil War fractured Washington D.C., socialite Rose O'Neal Greenhow coordinated a vital spy ring to funnel information to her beloved Confederates. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Greenhow's courage and resourcefulness, which won praise from Jefferson Davis and notoriety in the North.We'll also fragment the queen's birthday and puzzle over a paid game of pinball.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Online shopping is going to be through the roof this month, and you'd better believe that hackers know it. If you're going to invest in a virtual private network, now is the time. Especially when Windscribe VPN is offering its own holiday discount.At their current price point, it's well worth jumping on the paid version of this highly-rated VPN. It gives you unlimited downloads and data, all protected by one of the most secure networks around.How secure? Windscribe has all the usual safeguards you'd expect from a typical VPN: A firewall protects you if your connection drops out, while solid encryption of your logins masks your location and allows you to access sites regardless of geographical restrictions. You can use it on a range of devices, and Windscribe's R.O.B.E.R.T. system provides extra defense against malware and unwanted ads.But what really sets it apart is the Canadian company's commitment to anonymity. Their no-logging policy keeps your data a mystery even to Windscribe itself. And you don't even need an email to sign in.The service has already had a price drop of more than 80% off the MSRP of their 3-year subscription plan, but you can take another 20% off that final price by using the discount code GREENMONDAY20. Read the rest

The Kindle Unlimited program is $10 a month, and it gives you access to over a million books and comics on Amazon. Amazon is currently offering a deal: 3 months for 99 cents a month. I especially like that you can read tons of comic books and graphic novels this way. I'm currently reading Grant Morrison's The Invisibles on my iPhone. It works really well using the one-panel-at-a-time mode. I prefer reading comics this way over reading the print version. Read the rest