This year's Cards Against Humanity secret Xmas surprise has begun, and on day one, they've delighted buyers (I'm one!) by sending us a share certificate for an infinitesimal fraction of a stretch of US/Mexican borderlands, along with details of their plans to keep the land secure from Trump's attempts to seize it and build a stupid wall on it. (more…)
Rolls of turf are made exactly how you imagine they would be: a huge truck courses over a well-kept lawn, literally screeds off three inches of grass and soil, then automatically cuts, rolls, and stacks the resulting sheets of turf.
The remorseless perfection of the machine, here, reminds me of my first real job out of college, at a newspaper. The break room was peculiarly enormous, a little kitchen tucked into one corner, dominated by a vast expanse the table and chairs couldn't fill. I wondered at this odd layout for months until someone clued me in: that's where the lead, linotype and a dozen guys with pica rules used to be before they were all canned and replaced by a couple of computers.
Roll on, fully automated gay space communism!
In most examples of sci-fi horror, a desperate human protagonist must evade, hunt and vanquish the unspeakable alien creature. But what if you were a horrific amorphous nightmare blob, crawling around the red-cast darkness of a failing space colony in search of prey to devour?
This is the premise of Sebastian Krośkiewicz's "Carrion", and it looks amazing. Part John Carpenter's Katamari Damacy, part Shoggoth simulator, all gore, the prototype animations depict a claustrophobic industrial scenario with our hero sliming and slorping around its terrified human victims. https://twitter.com/gynecomaster/status/936431441545777152 https://twitter.com/gynecomaster/status/936431441545777152 https://twitter.com/gynecomaster/status/934220512536023041 https://twitter.com/gynecomaster/status/931748776699625472
It's early days, by the looks of it; Krośkiewicz's BUTCHER, a more traditional bug hunt, is already on offer for $10.
President Donald Trump “repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election” earlier this year, according to a New York Times report citing “a half dozen lawmakers and aides.”
In a TV appearance this week, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham took exception to the media describing Donald Trump as "some kind of kook." This being a slightly odd turn of phrase, minds immediately cast back to where they might have heard it before... https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/936418280297979904
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former oil executive who famously called his boss a "fucking moron," is about to be fired by Trump. White House Plans Tillerson Ouster From State Dept., to Be Replaced by Pompeo, claims The New York Times.
The White House has developed a plan to force out Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, whose relationship with President Trump has been strained, and replace him with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, perhaps within the next several weeks, senior administration officials said on Thursday.
Rumor has it Tillerson is both a) refusing to cooperate with Trump's preferred North Korea strategy of vacuous public insults and threats, and b) had the temerity to tell him that retweet British fascists' islamophobic hate videos presented a serious diplomatic problem that could jeopardize the safety of consular staff in Muslim-majority nations.
The White House outright denies it, though.
Rex Tillerson will remain as U.S. secretary of state, a White House spokesperson said on Thursday, amid reports Tillerson will be removed in favour of Mike Pompeo, who is currently CIA director.
"When the president loses confidence in someone, they will no longer serve here," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said when asked about reports of a staff shakeup.
The Telegraph reports that Donald Trump's visit to the UK has been canceled -- at least for now. A planned "working" stop in the near future, mooted as a compromise to keep Trump away from the symbolic and prestigious trappings of an official state visit, unraveled after Trump retweeted islamophobic videos posted by a British fascist group, then harangued Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter when she issued mild condemnation of his actions.
More forceful in his condemnation was London mayor Sadiq Kahn, who openly said Trump was unwelcome in his city.
Neither the working trip nor a state visit were ever scheduled. May's invitation riled many in Britain, where Trump is widely loathed. The scaled-down "working visit" would have allowed the president to avoid losing face should the state visit not quickly materialize.
Imagine that a folded note before you reveals -- definitively -- whether an excruciating, protracted neurological death lies a decade into your future. Should you look?
Do so, and you could be rid of the grim uncertainty. Or, you could be fated to live and die with an awful truth. One which will haunt you, but also let you shape your remaining years with a foreknowledge most of us lack.
This is a terrible quandary no one should face. But one person in 10,000 carries a genetic vulnerability to a gruesome affliction called Huntington’s Disease. You almost certainly do not. But for those with a family history of Huntington’s, the odds can be as high as 50/50. And in certain genetic configurations, the disease has 100% “penetrance” - meaning that all who carry the mutation are doomed. This makes the results of a Huntington’s test as close to an iron-clad prediction as genetics ever gets.
Before the test was created, a remarkably high percentage of people with family histories said they’d take it if given the chance. But once the test was available, roughly 90% of those people changed their minds. This makes it nigh impossible to know what we ourselves would do if faced with that choice.
But all of us will face a version of that choice very soon - albeit a far less stark, and radically more ambiguous version. And roughly 0.000% of us are in a position to make that choice in an adequately-informed and emotionally-prepared manner. The choice is whether to have our full genomes read, and to learn of the innumerable consequences and uncertainties that lie therein.
My guest, Robert Green, has spent more time thinking about this than almost anyone, and our interview delves to the core of this intensely fraught and personal decision. You can hear it by searching “After On” in your favorite podcast app, or by clicking right here:
Robert has many affiliations: he directs the Genomes2People research program, is a medical geneticist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, is a Professor at Harvard Medical School, and an Associate at the Broad Institute. In all of these guises, he investigates the consequences of accessing personal genetic knowledge. Some believe this information can be - quite literally - toxic. As in, akin to ingesting a substance whose package flies the Jolly Roger. Others find that viewpoint offensively paternalistic. Robert’s own perspective is deeply nuanced and (an overused word, which nonetheless applies perfectly here) wise.
This stems from sharing the most devastating, the most exhilarating, and the most ambiguous genetic news imaginable with countless patients and families over the years. And the happy outcomes are at least as dramatic as the tragic ones. Our interview discusses a newborn whose full genome was sequenced as part of tiny experimental project. Robert’s team learned that she had a mild version exotic genetic condition, which might have cost her many IQ points or resulted in future seizures. But by discovering this so early, they were able to resolve the problem – painlessly and risklessly – with a simple vitamin supplement. Had that newborn been in the 99.999% majority who are not genetically analyzed, she could have been hobbled in a way that neither she nor her family would have ever suspected.
For now, heroic outcomes like this are as rare as tragedies like Huntington’s disease. But both will become far more common as millions, then billions of genomes are gradually read and matched to health histories. Already, Robert estimates that 15-20% of us carry an identifiable genetic predisposition to one of several thousand rare disease. Individually, each of these conditions is exceedingly rare - but collectively, they’re far more common than blue eyes or left-handedness. Very few have the 100% penetrance of certain Huntington’s variations. But in many cases, carriers will endure a “fragment” of the disease at some stage of life.
How many? And what behaviors, supplements, or incantations would improve or worsen the odds? In almost all case, we have absolutely no idea. For now. Our understanding of innumerable genetic realities will emerge relentlessly, yet slowly, from the murk, like the details of a coastline approached in heavy fog.
As for right now, you could have your full genome read tomorrow for a thousand-ish bucks. Even with the best interpretation services (which would cost far more) you’d probably learn of hundreds of low-penetrance tendencies. Ones which will interact with your environment and lifestyle in unknowably complex ways. That said, you might stumble upon a death sentence. Or, a life-saving or -enhancing fact like that lucky newborn.
Over the coming decade, the actionable information we glean from our genomes will rise exponentially, even as the cost of accessing it drops precipitously. How precipitously? Well, just fourteen years ago, it cost three billion dollars and took thirteen years to read a single human genome – the very procedure you could get done for a thousand-ish bucks tomorrow afternoon.
The cost of having you genome read will soon reach $0.00, as countless parties will gladly do it for free in exchange for getting your data. You should think very carefully before entering that bargain. But whoever pays for the actual sequencing, full genomic data will soon be as widespread as cholesterol readings.
My podcast is anything but a self-help program, so it’s exceedingly rare for me to urge people to listen to it for direct personal benefit. But this is a rare episode that I believe offers almost anyone intensely relevant wisdom, for themselves and all of their genetic relatives. So I do hope you find time for it.
YouTube stars Alissa Violet and Ricky “FaZe” Banks were ejected Saturday night from a Cleveland pub. FaZe ranted on his stream. Violet, selfying her way to hospital, sported a fat lip. The couple immediately went on an online offensive, identifying the Barley House and claiming to have been innocent victims of its bouncers. What happened next is all too predictable: their army of millions of social media fans formed an "unrelenting internet harassment campaign," issuing insults, death threats, some even driving hours to intimidate staff in person.
Violet’s fans view her not as just a celebrity but one of their closest friends. She posts daily videos about her life in Los Angeles, photos of recent modeling shoots, jokes, and personal stories on Twitter and Snapchat. She tends to her legion by faving tweets, shouting out fans, and making her followers feel like they’re intimately involved in every detail of her life.
Her online army dedicates an enormous amount of time to watching her videos, commenting on her posts, and setting up stan accounts in her likeness. When they saw someone had hurt her on Saturday night, that fanbase didn’t ask questions.
But the Barley House has the receipts, and, it turns out, the gumption to post them in public: security footage recorded that night that shows the pair instigated all the trouble, were ejected without harm, then got into a fight outside with other patrons. Banks even appears to throw a glass into the crowd.
After a crazy few days of cyber bullying including death threats to our employees, our website being hacked, our social media channels forced to be privatized, and false online review efforts to punish our reputation, we finally get the opportunity to put the facts together of what really happened and clear our name of Ricky Banks' and Alissa Violet's accusations towards Barley House.
It seems almost a caricature of the narcissistic, talentless YouTube star — the sort of inexplicable fame that turns everyone over the age of 18 into an out-of-touch curmudgeon.
But what's interesting is that hardly anyone over the age of 18 even knows about these people. Neither the media nor mainstream America is watching the massive, invisible personality cults of YouTube form. It's inconceivable to us that children (let alone ourselves) would watch losers like Violet and Banks jabber on, every available hour they have.
The rambling vanity of YouTube's angry alt-right nerds gives us a mistaken impression of the medium's power, especially given the obvious danger of their IRL brethren on the far right. But if this is what a pair of bullshitting numpties like Banks and Violet can summon, imagine what a person with genuine charisma and drive could do. Soon, a YouTuber is going to take an audience of millions places.
It was a hell of a ride. Peaking at nearly $11,400 earlier this week, Bitcoin's value dropped by a fifth Thursday, deflating the cryptocurrency's explosive growth since last year. Reuters:
One market-watcher attributed the fall to outages in bitcoin exchanges and the heavy price surge of recent times.
“Naturally a few of the early bitcoin traders are taking some profits off the table,” said Charles Hayter, founder of CryptoCompare.com.
“Volatility is in the market at the moment and that means both positive and negative moves.”
The latest fall has tempered an astronomical rise for the cryptocurrency in recent months - bitcoin was up almost 1,100 percent year-to-date on Wednesday. As of 1500 GMT on Thursday, it was still up around 880 percent.
A man in China was fined $125 after painting his own road signs to expedite his daily commute.
The Modern Express reports that a 28-year-old man surnamed Cai, was fined 1,000 yuan (£112; $151) in the eastern city of Lianyungang, Jiangsu province. He was captured on camera on 27 September with a can of white paint painting new arrows onto the road to redirect traffic, and told police it was the result of frustrations over the long delays on his daily bus journey to work.
"I saw that the straight lane was always packed with cars, while the lane that turns left has a lot of space," he told the police.
"I thought changing the signs would make my commute smoother."
After careful examination of several practically-identical products and a thorough delve into reader reviews, I can finally make my long-awaited recommendation for a strap-on unicorn horn: the YanJie Shiny (~$10, Amazon).
Aside from the critical rainbow model, it comes in various colors, is adjustable, and has the all-important strap so it doesn't come off your head when under extended or vigorous use.
It is five inches long, made of polyester, and a buck or two more expensive than the competition. For an item so important, though, it's worth splurging.
"I am an 'average sized' adult and I wore this for a party," writes D.T. "it fit perfectly."
"Using for cosplay and cosplay only," reports Queen of the Succubi. "It is legit enough."
"We love it, dog hates it," cautions Daniel. "What more can I say."
If you know of a superior shiny rainbow strap-on unicorn horn, tell us about it in the comments!
YanJie Shiny Unicorn Horn [Amazon]
If you hadn't noticed, Trump tweets constantly during Fox and Friends, a fact more apparent as his presidency continues, but subsiding during times of intense travel (such as his recent tour of Asia).
It's as if he lounges in the mornings watching Fox and dinking around on his phone. [via]
Ever wonder which are smarter, cats or dogs? You can teach dogs to sit, roll over, play dead, etc, which cats don't do on command. But hey, my cats can knock over water glasses and steal food off a plate when no one is looking – that oughta count for some kinds of smarts. Maybe they're just too "stubborn" to learn tricks because they're too clever to take orders from humans.
Wishful thinking. The verdict is in, and cats are stupider than dogs.
In the first study of its kind, researchers at Vanderbilt looked at the brains of animals, including cats, dogs, ferrets, mongooses (mongeese?), raccoons, hyenas, lions and brown bears. Specifically, they looked at "the number of neurons in their cerebral cortex: the 'little gray cells' associated with thinking, planning and complex behavior — all considered hallmarks of intelligence," according to Vanderbilt.
As far as dogs and cats go, the study found that dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons while cats have about 250 million. (That compares to 16 billion in the human brain.) “I believe the absolute number of neurons an animal has, especially in the cerebral cortex, determines the richness of their internal mental state and their ability to predict what is about to happen in their environment based on past experience,” [Associate Professor of Psychology and Biological Sciences Suzana] Herculano-Houzel explained. “I’m 100 percent a dog person,” she added, “but, with that disclaimer, our findings mean to me that dogs have the biological capability of doing much more complex and flexible things with their lives than cats can. At the least, we now have some biology that people can factor into their discussions about who’s smarter, cats or dogs.”
Cats, don't take it too hard, you're in good company. Brown bears were also found to be dumber than previously thought. Although a brown bear has a "respectable brain," according to Herculano-Houzel, the study found that the brown bear has only one-fifth of the neurons researchers had expected to find. https://youtu.be/8Ah5G9iYLO0
Working from a traditional score by Ron Grainer, Delia Derbyshire created one of television and electronica's most distinctive works of music: the theme tune to Doctor Who. For her pioneering work with synthesizers, often in crudely sexist and exclusionary workspaces, she is being posthumously awarded a degree by Coventry University.
Due to BBC policies at the time, Grainer – unwillingly – is still officially credited as the sole writer.
Derbyshire stayed at the workshop for 10 years, recording sound for Inventions for Radio and Cyprian Queen – all in the days before modern synthesisers and machines. She was later approached by Paul McCartney to work on a backing track for the Beatles hit Yesterday.
But despite her talent and credit from her peers, Delia failed to gain widespread recognition during her lifetime, eventually becoming disillusioned with the industry and finding work as a radio operator in Cumbria.
Photo: BBC
Even while the cameras were rolling, brazen Matt Lauer told his co-host Meredith Vieira to "keep bending over like that. It's a nice view." Nauseating.
Max is the internet's new hero, and, mercifully, not a duck. That's not to say, though, that Max is not a problem for his humans.
This warning was spotted posted to a library window by by childrens' book illustrator Erin McGuire
"This is basically halfway to being a children's book," wrote McGuire, who is working on a graphic novel about young Harper Lee titled "Alabama Spitfire." https://twitter.com/e_mcguire_/status/935961091015958531
Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook's former spokesperson and sister of founder Mark Zuckerberg, was told by Alaska Airlines flight crew to put up it when a fellow traveler sexually harassed her. She described herself as "disgusted & degraded" in an open letter to the airline's brass.
https://twitter.com/randizuckerberg/status/936062601561116672
Zuckerberg said the flight attendants offered to move her to a middle seat in the back of the plane, but she said she refused because she didn't feel she should have to give up her seat when she was the one being harassed.
Zuckerberg said she also learned that the comments were not unusual and that the flight attendants had previous conversations with the male passenger about his behavior. She said they told her "don't take it personally, this guy just doesn't have a filter." According to Zuckerberg, the man continued to make sexual comments throughout the flight.
The airline apologized and banned the harassing passenger. Moral of the story: if you're a woman and don't want to be shushed by a flight crew indifferent to the leering alcohol-soaked asshole in the next seat over, be powerful and famous enough to ruin their bosses' day.
A paper published by Notre Dame researchers in IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems reveals that Reddit users vote on things before reading the article.
73 percent of posts on Reddit are voted on by users that haven’t actually clicked through to view the content being rated. This is according to a newly released dataset consisting of all Reddit activity of 309 site users for a one year period. In the process, the researchers identified signs of “cognitive fatigue” in Reddit users most likely to vote on content. Online aggregation is then somewhat a function of mental exhaustion.
As of 2017, reddit sees 234 million unique monthly users, according to Alexa. It’s the fourth most trafficked website in the United States. In light of that, a 309 user sample seems pretty small. But it’s small because the Notre Dame dataset offers something a bit different than most other reddit datasets. Rather than relying on reddit’s own data collection methods (via its API or by crawling the website with software), Notre Dame computer science researcher Tim Weninger and colleagues were able to come up with their own independent data collection architecture, thus allowing them to ask different sorts of questions.
London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, said in a statement Thursday that Trump's original tweets had betrayed the "special relationship" between the two countries.
"President Trump yesterday use Twitter to promote a vile, extremist group that exists solely to sow division and hatred in our country," said Khan.
The mayor then called on May to cancel any plans to receive Trump on an official visit.
"As the mayor of this great diverse city, I have previously called on Theresa May to cancel her ill-judged offer of a state visit to President Trump.
Though the sentiment is not new, it comes after Trump retweeted an anti-muslim video posted by a British fascist group, drawing condemnation from Prime Minister Theresa May and even some of Trump's own supporters.
Matthew Combs, a Fordham University Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station grad student worked with colleagues from Fordham and the Providence College Department of Biology to sequence the genomes of brown rats in Manhattan, and made a surprising discovery: the geography of rats has a genetic correlation, so a geneticist can tell where a rat was born and raised by analyzing its DNA. (more…)
Christmas is under attack! The Satanic Temple was one of the many faith organizations who applied to put a tree at the record-breaking Christmas in the Park event in San Jose, an event that in no way abridged the separation of Church and State because it allowed any religion to participate. (more…)
A toxic mix of voter suppression and dark money infusions has allowed Republicans to seize power at the state level across America, producing a series of living labs where their ideology has been allowed to play out with disastrous consequences. (more…)
Toys R Us was taken over in a debt-loading act of financial engineering in 2005; over the years, despite turning a profit, the service on that debt dragged Toys R Us lower and lower until the management team picked by the financial engineers finally bankrupted the company. (more…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPp5FtQN8E&feature=youtu.be
Carbohydrate whisperer Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin (AKA @thePieous) (previously), author of Pies Are Awesome Vol 1 "Pie-Modding": How to Epic-Up Store Bought Pies and Be the Hero of the Party" writes "I've come up with a way of making hand pies in silicone molds that solves the big problems associated with making pies this way - primarily lack of control over the finish and texture. I make a double layer of dough with egg in between the layers, then do a partial bake in the mold juuuuuust long enough for it to retain its shape outside, and then add a very thin layer of extra decorations and complete the bake."
Viennese artist Klemens Schillinger created these "Substitute Phones" as fidget toys with kinetic worry-beads that you can stroke and fondle when your conditioned reflex to reach for a distraction rectangle kicks in; the beads are set in channels that allow you to replicate smart-phone gestures like unlock, swipe right, and pinch-zoom. (via Red Ferret) (more…)
Even when your audience is small enough to fit inside a conference room, presentations can be absolutely nerve-wracking. If you get physically nauseous at the sight of a podium, check out this public speaking course in the Boing Boing Store.
With this 16-hour workshop, you’ll discover a wealth of strategies to build engaging speeches and exude confidence. Aside from refining your body language and delivery, you’ll learn how to appropriately tailor your talks and identify with everyone who’s watching. It includes several exercises that you can practice ahead of time to focus your brain, as well as some handy PowerPoint slide templates.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jgUYx3drA64
Whether you’re a nervous lecturer, or just have a job that involves frequent client pitch meetings, the Complete Presentation and Public Speaking Course will help you feel more comfortable. You can get lifetime access to this professional training for $15 from the Boing Boing Store.
YouTuber craftsman Paul Jackman fashioned his own "major award" a la A Christmas Story, a "manly" leg lamp based on his own leg's measurements. It's really quite impressive.
He writes:
This leg is an exact full scale model of my own leg. The leg and base are made from maple butcher block scraps from previous projects. The lamp shade is welded from scrap lengths of rebar and wrapped in pleather attached using paracord that looks like Carolina's boot laces. The boot is attached using a threaded brass lamp rod through the entire leg with a nut on both ends. There are also a couple of screws into the toe of the boot/foot.
By the way, if you're not super crafty like Mr. Jackman and want a leg lamp for your very own, the A Christmas Story House & Museum in Cleveland, Ohio has full-sized replicas of the original for sale. The downside? It won't be shaped like your own leg.
(Likecool)
Martin Molin traveled to Speelklok Museum in Utrecht for a demonstration of the Gavioli Dance Organ, part of his wonderful series on old-timey mechanical instruments. (more…)
If you teach an artificial intelligence a bunch of lullabies, will the resulting AI-generated lullaby make you dream of electric sheep? (more…)
She writes:
It is with great pleasure that I announce my craziest in-the-best-sense-of-the-word nuts live show yet! For 3 big nights - Nov. 30-Dec. 2 - the party rages on at Allee Willis’ Love ’N Latkes Chanukah Christmas Shopping (and Singing and Comedy) Extravaganza Show! An ALL NEW "one-woman + Andrae” party performance featuring hit songs (I was just nominated for the Songwriters Hall of Fame so you know they’re great hits!), sing-alongs, the least appropriate stories a songwriter could tell, and, oh yeah, not just an auction of supreme flea finds but the greatest early holiday gift shopping in the whole wide Kitsch world!!Tickets to all three shows (Thursday 11/30, Friday 12/1, and Saturday 12/2) are available now. Her shows always sell out so, if you're thinking of going, grab tickets now.That’s right! For the first time ever, I’ll be opening the vaults and auctioning off treasures from my own world-renowned personal Kitsch, Pop, and Soul collection!
Today, for some reason, I sat here wondering if sterling silver sporks exist. They do! In fact, Mark posted about one back in 2010 that was cast from a plastic Taco Bell spork. Brilliant, but it doesn't seem to be for sale.
However, I did find one for sale on Etsy. Jewelry designer Matthew White of Brooklyn makes solid silver sporks for $120 each.
He writes:
This is a solid sterling silver spork. This spork is cast from a plastic spork so it had the feel and look of plastic silverware with the strength, longevity, class of silver. The dichotomy of wealth within this piece we be a wonderful addition and conversation starter at any dinner party.
It's getting fancy up in here. 
Presidio Terrace is a private, gated street in San Francisco that has housed the likes of Nancy Pelosi and the UK Consul General; their neighborhood association failed to notify the city of San Francisco that they'd changed contact addresses for tax bills related to their private street and sidewalks, so after years of delinquency, their street, sidewalks, trees, and assorted miscellanea were put up for auction and purchased by out-of-town property speculators for the sum of $90,100. (more…)
It has been noted of late that YouTube is full of bizarre, malicious and outright depraved viral chum based on childrens' entertainment. Often difficult to tell at-a-glance from the real thing, they crudely subject popular characters such as superheroes, Disney Princesses and Peppa Pig to algorithmically-generated trauma scenarios. YouTube, shamed into action after being exposed feeding this stuff to kids via the discovery sidebar, launched a massive crackdown, banning accounts and removing thousands of videos.
So don't expect this perfect (and safe for work) example to stay up much longer.
"Taking away #NetNeutrality is the Authoritarian dream. Consolidating information into the hands of a few controlled by a few. Dangerous territory". @MarkRuffalo; Ajit Pai: "These comments are absurd. Getting rid of government authority over the Internet is the exact opposite of authoritarianism. Government control is the defining feature of authoritarians, including the one in North Korea."
I can't remember quite how I came to be in possession of a pair of these Prismatic Lazy Glasses (Amazon), but the most shocking thing about them is they actually work. You put them on, lie down completely prone, and can see at a 90° angle: perfect for watching TV (or reading) in bed without sitting up or craning one's neck.
The effect is not perfect. They create tunnel vision, and the imperfect build quality of the glasses and presumably the mirrors results in more eye strain that you'd normally experience. (Though certainly less than I experience with VR)
Whether eye strain wipes out the advantage of bodily relaxation is for you to decide; my only problem is falling asleep during practically everything.
Note that the link here is to a well-reviewed model from Amazon I assume is identical to the pair I have. I can't imagine there are vast quality differences between different brands of $10 lazy specs, but you never know.
David Dockery perfoms drums in perfect synchrony to the mutterings of Jeff Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Over the course of 66 seconds I went from almost closing the tab to startled fascination to profound revelation at Dockery's unimaginable talent.
Boing Boing editor and founding partner David Pescovitz, along with Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad, was nominated this week to receive a Grammy Award. It's for their work on reissuing the legendary Golden Record that accompanied the Voyager probe into space, which turned into one of 2016's blockbuster Kickstarter campaigns and can now be ordered directly from Ozma records or from Amazon.com.
They're competing in the Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package category, against Tim Breen, Tom Hingston and other art directors. 
What's on the Golden Record? 115 images, spoken word sections, greetings in many languages, and a heavenly playlist:
Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40 Java, court gamelan, "Kinds of Flowers," recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43 Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08 Zaire, Pygmy girls' initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56 Australia, Aborigine songs, "Morning Star" and "Devil Bird," recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26 Mexico, "El Cascabel," performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14 "Johnny B. Goode," written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38 New Guinea, men's house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20 Japan, shakuhachi, "Tsuru No Sugomori" ("Crane's Nest,") performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51 Bach, "Gavotte en rondeaux" from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55 Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55 Georgian S.S.R., chorus, "Tchakrulo," collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18 Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52 "Melancholy Blues," performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05 Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30 Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35 Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48 Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20 Bulgaria, "Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin," sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59 Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57 Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, "The Fairie Round," performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17 Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12 Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38 China, ch'in, "Flowing Streams," performed by Kuan P'ing-hu. 7:37 India, raga, "Jaat Kahan Ho," sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30 "Dark Was the Night," written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15 Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet. 6:37
Comcast fought the last net neutrality regulation in 2015 by making a bunch of promises about how fair it would be, whether or not the FCC regulated its behavior; this week, Comcast has put on charm offensive by repeating all but one of those promises, namely, its promise not to create internet slow lanes and then extort money from web publishers by threatening to put them there unless they paid for "premium access" to the Comcast subscribers who were trying to retrieve data from them. (more…)
From the delightful R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties fame, a pair of excellent enamel pins: Computers Professional ($11.33) and I want to believe in RSS ($11.55).
We just bought a house here in Burbank and I was delighted to learn that my new home office -- part of a business incorporated in the state of California -- would be sitting directly on one of the scorching-fast fiber optic likes that the city of Burbank maintains to wire up Disney, Warners and the other major businesses in town. Finally, an end to my long nightmare of slow, balky internet from Charter/Spectrum, my local cable monopolist! (more…)
YouTube's advertisers now want to choose what subject matters and personalities to advertise against. So far, so fair. But rather than be straight about this, YouTube conceals this reality behind an opaque and mechanically indifferent monetization system that seems designed to generate as much ignorance, entitlement and resentment as possible.
A researcher, however, has sleuthed out metadata buried in the source code of YouTube video pages. These, they claim, offer clues about why certain videos are "demonetized" or deprecated in search results -- reasons that YouTube has not been keen to disclose or detail.
Here's their paper. Without further ado:
102: profanity
104: sexually suggestive content
109: sensational and shocking
113: tragedy and conflict
115: Sensitive social issues (controversial, guns, etc)
P.S. The video embedded here is from the researchers, but the one most folks are learning about it is this unwatchable YouTube viral chum nightmare padded out to nine numbing minutes -- a perfect "non-political" example of why advertisers are demanding more control over what they advertise against.
Tofugu's Kanae Nakamine and Koichi went to a secret bar in Japan (somewhere) called 84. Koichi told me, "Its main customers are musicians, celebrities, comedians, pro wrestlers, game creators, and Nintendo employees. And only vetted members know its location / can get in."
Dust is a YouTube channel featuring science fiction short films from emerging filmmakers. Its latest film is called "Orbit Ever After."
Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone and set in the recesses of space on a ramshackle space hovel, Orbit Ever After details the trials of Nigel played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Game of Thrones, Love Actually, Phinneas and Ferb, Maze Runner) and The Girl, two star-crossed lovers separated by miles of distance, oppositional orbit patterns and Nigel’s risk-averse family.
After several fly bys, waves and glances through telescopes, The Girl finally gets a message to Nigel asking him to take a literal leap of faith and make the jump to her spacecraft during the next passing, leaving Nigel to make the ultimate decision between love and family…
Pan Pan is a panda who was rescued from starvation in the wild when he was a cub, in 1986. Since then, he has gone on to father 120 of the 520 pandas alive in captivity. (more…)
As vulture capitalists and profiteers circle the devastation in America's hurricane-struck island colonies, the Trump administration has nothing for them but more loans to pile onto their existing, crippling debt (even as affected mainland cities where more white people live get direct government aid). (more…)
Unless you really love crappy color printouts, get rid of your inkjet printer and buy a cheap wireless laser printer, like this one: the Brother HL-L2340DW Compact Laser Printer. I've had a similar one for years and the best thing about it is the cheap 3rd party toner cartridges. I buy them using Amazon Prime. Here's a 2-pack for $11. I've never had an incompatibility, leakage, or smearing problem with this brand.
You know things are ugly in the Roy Moore camp when they start shoving journalists from Fox News, of all outlets. The camera crew was trying to get a shot of Moore as he entered through a side entrance at a rally in Alabama. Big bruisers came out to put an end to the publicity.
D&D's Forgotten Realms setting, Baldur's Gate (immortalized in the late 90s video game of the same name), gets a chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter mash-up with the hugely successful horror game, Betrayal at House on the Hill, in Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate. In this cooperative tile-building game, you and your party try to remain alive while making your way through the dark passageways of this iconic D&D city. Collect too many bad Omens along the way and a Haunt happens, turning one party member against the others. Highly thematic and effectively creepy. Probably my favorite board game of the year. Comes with 6 really nice pre-painted minis.
The hugely popular Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy series gets a worthy sequel in Pandemic Legacy Season 2. 2-4 players cooperate to try to beat the reaper and save humanity from a virulent plague while the game itself tries to eat you. Good times! As with other Legacy games, outcomes from one session carry over to the next and the game is physically altered.
The British classic from the early 70s (which, in its heyday, outsold Monopoly in the UK) is back with a really swanky, well-designed edition from Osprey Games. Co-designed by a British POW who actually escaped from the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle, the game has 1-5 players taking on the roles of POWs while one player plays the castle's German jailers. Colditz is medium-light in complexity and takes about 2 hours to complete.
The sweeping Milton Bradley/Avalon Hill wargame classic is back with a special edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Avalon Hill brand. This version (basically a slight tweak and fluff of the short-lived 2008 special edition) offers two scenarios, one for December 1941 and the 1942 scenario from the original A&A. Fight all of WWII on a huge 24" by 46" game board crawling with some 600 plastic miniatures. This edition adds Italian and Chinese forces (also found in the 2008 edition) and some of the rules have been streamlined.
A fun and surprisingly knuckle-biting Euro-style game of jungle survival. Be prepared to die, a lot, as you and your party struggle against the Amazon in search of the lost city of El Dorado. The game is for 1-5 players and takes 30-60 minutes to play. There are solo, cooperative, and head-to-head modes. The whole thing comes to damp, itchy, and poisonous life via the very Tintin-esque illustrations of comic artist Garen Ewing.
In this award-winning and hugely popular Euro game from Sweden, 1-5 players buy card-based resources in an attempt to create the necessary conditions for altering Mar's atmosphere and biosphere. The goal is to raise the temperature of the planet, generate an atmosphere, create oceans, and build cities. This is another game known for having a very playable and satisfying solo mode.
Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games. Jungle and pirate games and settings were all the rage this year. Fifth edition D&D got in on the fun with the release of this big, beautiful tome. Tomb of Annihilation allows you to take your party of adventures (levels 1-11) to Chult, the tropical fallen kingdom of the Forgotten Realms setting. As with the Curse of Strahd sourcebook released last year, I am already starting to hear excited reports from people who have made the journey to Chult.
Dungeon Fantasy is a new boxed set compilation drawing from the Dungeon Fantasy RPG tomes that have been released over the years for the Steve Jackson Games' GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) rule set. This set works as a stand-alone fantasy adventure RPG, but is fully compatible with GURPS 5th ed. In the box you get 5 full-color rule- and sourcebooks, maps, dice, and cardboard miniatures. With its streamlined rules and shake n' bake approach to getting stuck right in, this is a great entrée game for anyone looking to dip their toe into fantasy RPGing.
The late-80s tabletop classic (think Mad Max and Rollerball meet American football in Tolkien's Middle Earth) is back with a lovely new edition. This starter box includes Human and Orc teams with a growing number of additional teams available. This is one of Games Workshop's titles that has often been hailed as one of their highest achievements. With good reason. This game is ridiculous, goofy-good fun and is highly addictive.
Another Games Workshop classic returns, this one from the late 90s. Cyberpunky gangs fight each other over "archeo-tech" and other valuable loot in the industrial dungeons of a massive hive city in the far-future Warhammer 40,000 universe. Gorgeous new models with tons of customization options. This starter set contains two gangs, the all-female House Escher, and the genetically-enhanced beefcake of House Goliath. It's a kick-ass, empowered matriarchy vs. toxic masculinity. Place your bets!
A 30mm light-historical skirmish game that takes place in a 17th century Caribbean during the pirate heyday. Includes clever rules for ship-to-ship, ship-to-land, and land combat and uses a unique game mechanic employing standard playing cards for determining initiative. Amazingly high-quality, old-school pewter-cast miniatures and resin-cast ships, all done in a very garage-kit operation.
Working off of the phenomenal success of the Frostgrave skirmish wargame (my favorite game of the moment), creator Joseph McCullough and Osprey Games shine light in another corner of this compelling fantasy world with Ghost Archipelago, about a phantasmic tropical land with mysterious powers, lethal adversaries, and a whole new class of magic users and characters with special powers to explore it.
North Star Military Figures makes a wonderful line of multi-part plastic minis for Frostgrave. The multiple heads, torsos, weapons, and other gubbins allow you to make a vast array of custom characters. Most everything is interchangeable. With five different Frostgrave miniatures boxed sets, the combinations of characters you can make is nearly endless.
OGRE, the wargaming classic from the late 70s/early 80s (the one that began my obsession with tabletop wargaming), is back and it's more OGRE-ific than ever. This old-school map and counters game (here with added cardboard minis), features asymmetrical near-future warfare pitting puny humans and their tanks and hover-vehicles against a giant, crazed battleship-sized cybertank, the titular OGRE. For those that remember the 2012 Kickstarter campaign, where SJ Games raked in close to a million dollars, and produced a Designer's Edition of OGRE that was almost as huge and heavy as an OGRE itself, this is a more human-manageable version of that edition. An easy game to learn and play, but one with enough depth, re-playability, and thematic depth to keep you (OK, me) coming back again and again. Also, check out OGRE Objective 218, a card game set in the OGRE universe, with great art, that does an impressive job of capturing the feel of the tabletop game. 
A lovely and simple Japanese tile-laying game designed by Hisashi Hayashi. You are a Samurai and master gardener trying to impress your shōgun by creating the most beautiful garden you can. The game is for 2-5 players and only takes around 15-20 minutes to play. This is one of those games that would make a great palate cleanser between larger games at a gaming night.
I was late to the party on Netrunner, Fantasy Flight Games' extremely immersive cyberpunk "living card game." I love Netrunner now and all of the expansion data packs and boxed expansion sets they've released for it. If you are also somewhat new to Netrunner, or want an excuse to get back into it, Terminal Directive is worth taking a look at. It is a unique narrative campaign system, with a murder mystery theme, within the Android Netrunner universe and the Netrunner card game. This immediately went on my Krampus gift list. (Also be on the lookout for the Android Netrunner: Revised Core Set, which will hopefully ship in time for Christmas.)
If there is one artist who has given the most color, shape, and atmosphere to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it is John Blanche. His work has inspired the game's designers and miniature sculptures, the author's of the game's background, and it has graced the pages of the game's rulebooks, sourcebooks, and magazines. Now Blanche has created all new artwork for 52 conventional playing cards in a Dark Millennium-themed deck. At $12.50, these would make a great stocking stuffer for any fan of the 40K universe.
Look on Thingiverse and you will find a number of painting handles for holding gaming minis while you paint them. There are a number of commercial holders, too, some of them quite expensive. Most gamers just glue or poster-putty-tack their minis onto a wine cork for painting. But for only $8, this Citadel holder is a cheap and easy-to-use solution. You'd spend that much on time, filament, and wear and tear on your 3D printer. The handle is designed to easily grab and release 25mm, 32mm, and 40mm round bases, as well as hold 60x35mm ovals.
These textured acrylic rolling pins are a game changer for any game hobbyists who make a lot of their own terrain. You can roll out stone walls, brick walls, cobblestones, industrial diamond plate, and other patterns with these pins. They are made to be rolled onto two-party epoxy putty (AKA green stuff), but you can also press these into foam material. No more carving individual stones in foam to create walls and streets!
Here's a unique and thoughtful gift that your gamer recipient doesn't even know she needs. Add these 3/16" stainless steel balls to any pot of hobby paint and you have a better way to keep your paints fully mixed. As a bonus, the pot makes a satisfying tick-tick-tick sound as you shake it, like rattle can spray paint.
