Love this wonderful rendition of the Beatles 'Yellow Submarine' album cover, in string art, which was of course so very much of the era of this record's release.
From R/crafts, and by @meltsir -- who mounted it on a piece of spray-painted wood.
What a wonderful reminder that patience can result in truly surprising beauty.
“I made a wooden flag out of 2x4s for my oldest friend from high school who works as a peace officer. I grinded and sanded it to look like it it blowing in the wind and used a torch to burn in the dark areas.”
From Redditoror and IMGURian GoodlyEarth.
Don't miss the video at the end!
Get a load of this delicious video of a beekeeper slicing that honeycomb down, from which to extract this year's honey harvest.
It's so sweet and sticky and amazing I literally can't handle it!
“Is this what you people want?”
“And the 2019 honey season is in the bag,” says beekeeper and IMGURian chop655. “Pulled ~30-35 gallons (360-420lbs) for the year. Bee kind to each other.”
Here's the video:
Mama bear and her cubs make off with some dog food on Elizabeth Loflin's North Carolina porch.
Video below.
ALMERIA, SPAIN: These idiots dumped a used refrigerator out in nature, and the cops made them go out and get it and dispose of it properly.
Morons dump fridge in nature. police orders them to retrieve it.
The guy in the video got fined 45K Euro, and the shitcompany appliance sales firm where he worked was also investigated:
After conducting an inspection at their facilities, located in the town of Olula del Río (Almería), the agents found about 50 washing machines stored in the outer courtyard of a warehouse among dry vegetation, as well as about 20 refrigerators under roof, all without having been removed
#ÚLTIMAHORA | Despiden y multan con 45.000 euros al joven que lanzó una nevera por un monte de #Almeria
Los compañeros del Seprona ha identificado a este hombre que se grabó lanzando un frigorífico en un monte.
pic.twitter.com/zdubu2ZxBx
— AUGC Guardia Civil (@AUGC_Comunica) July 31, 2019
More: Reddit, 20minutos.es, and levante-emv.com
[via IMGUR]
When you're at the dispensary trying to choose a strain.
Not sure what John Delaney was on at the Democratic Debate tonight, but I am certain I do not want to be on it.
MRW my wife is going through the list of things that need to get done this weekend
[via IMGUR]
Someone dropped donated a live mortar shell to Goodwill in Placerville, Califonia. While the shell, thought to be leftover from World War II, would likely have fetched more than the usual bric-à-brac on offer, the organization is clear that they don't accept donations of live ammunition. From CBS Sacramento:
Goodwill says people often drop off items in boxes that haven’t been looked through, and sometimes the donations are from a deceased war veteran...
“As we sort through those things we often find war memorabilia, grenades, it’s rare that we find a live grenade or any live ammunition, but when we do we have protocols in place to make sure that we dispose of it safely,” said Richard Abrusci, President and CEO of Goodwill Sacramento.
In the case of this potentially explosive mortar, the bomb squad came in to take it away and disposed of it at Travis Air Force Base.
An Oklahoma cop handed a driver an $80 ticket for having defective equipment on her truck. She said she wouldn't sign it, "because I don't wanna pay $80." The cop told her to get out of her truck. "You're under arrest," he said. She drove away. He followed her and found her in her truck in a parking lot. He pointed a Taser at her and yelled at her to get out of the truck. She refused so he pulled her out. A struggle ensued and he shot her with the taser, but it had little effect. Eventually, he handcuffed her. When she complained about being Tased the cop said he did it because she kicked him. She denied it, but then admitted, "Yes, I tried to kick you because I'm a country girl."
It gives me no joy to post this, but I think it offers an interesting look at an interaction between two people who assume they have authority over each other.
Image: Reddit
Up until a couple of days ago "Your Highness Qiao Biluo" was a popular blogger in China, with 100,000 followers on the live streaming site Douyu. She appeared as a stylish young woman. But a technical glitch removed the filter she'd been using, revealing her to be much older than her filter made her look.
From Oddity Central:
Your Highness Qiao Biluo stopped streaming right after the now famous glitch, but the scandal only made her more popular. Her currently inactive Douyu account has over 650,000 followers, compared to around 100,000 before the incident, and the 58-year-old is already making plans for a comeback. She’s started taking advertisements for beauty cameras like the one she used to fool her followers, and is planning to launch a music video.
This makes me think that the technical glitch might not be an accident, but a carefully thought out strategy. Her Douyu account is on hold, but her subscriber account has lept to 650,000.
Image: Douyu/Oddity Central
My former MAKE magazine colleague Becky Stern put together this pleasing video of close-up circuit solderings.
Image: YouTube/Becky Stern
Boing Boing is proudly sponsored by Sugar and Kush!
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If you aren’t confused enough by how a cannabis derivative like CBD could possibly have this many health benefits without any medical professionals knowing it, then the current state of the CBD industry must really have you spinning. Cannabidiol (CBD) is a cannabinoid found in the cannabis plant. It can be extracted from industrial hemp which is legal now that provisions from the Hemp Farming Act were included in the 2018 Farm Bill. CBD is touted as a health and wellness product that people can use as an anticonvulsant, analgesic, anxiolytic and sleep aid. Women use CBD for PMS, business professionals use it for focus and pet owners are dosing their pets with it to calm them down during thunderstorms or when traveling. If you want to find the best quality CBD gummies, oil, vape or edibles though... good luck.
If you take a look at the vast variety of CBD products available on the market now, it’s difficult to rationalize how you could think of most of them as health and wellness products. The market is full of CBD infused candies packed with sugar more suited for a trick-or-treat bag than an item you might find in a medicine cabinet. You’ll find hard candies, jelly beans and chocolate bars full of CBD, a veritable candy store. Online, you can find an array of CBD recipes for some of the most fattening and artery clogging dishes you could consume. It all looks a lot like recreational marijauna edibles that most people eat to get stoned rather than to treat chronic pain and stress. CBD makes you less achy and calmer, which is great, but still is not the same as getting stoned.
Then there is the fact that the CBD industry still isn’t regulated. Tons of reports are coming in that bottles of CBD oil, edibles and vapes don’t actually have the milligrams of CBD in them that the label’s claim, if they contain any CBD at all. Some of it actually has THC in it which is causing some people to get arrested or lose their job. Responsible companies are paying third party lab testing companies to prove their product’s constituents are what they claim, but many companies don’t bother to pay for third party verification simply because there is no regulatory body forcing them to. How can anyone trust an industry that continuously cuts corners or does not grasp that a wellness product should also be a healthy product? The large volume of unhealthy CBD products eliminates an entire consumer base that struggles with severe medical conditions and need to follow strict diets. Those individuals are the ones that may benefit the most from the medicinal properties of CBD. Let people get their sugar fix in some other way.
For the most part, the only CBD products available that anyone with a severe medical condition is likely to consider is a pure unflavored CBD oil. Most doctors are not going to recommend you use your lungs as a delivery system for anything, especially if you already struggle with a medical condition, which eliminates CBD vape pens. That means patients can drip an oil that tastes like hemp, which frankly just does not taste all that good, under their tongue or swallow it. An unflavored hemp oil goes well in most any food though, so there certainly are ways to disguise the taste and make healthy food with CBD at home. If your diet is geared towards trying to get your body to transition into ketogenesis, a process where the body burns fat for energy instead of carbohydrates, making keto CBD edibles should not be a problem with a pure CBD oil. There are ways of flavoring products to help improve their taste without compromising on health. It would be logical for CBD companies to focus on those sorts of flavoring methods.
Something else to consider when shopping for the best CBD products is the oil used. Some oils are better for carrying CBD through the body than others. Bioavailability is how much CBD can be absorbed into the body to truly give it a chance to soothe pains and stress. Traditional olive oil works well enough, but its thickness makes metabolizing it more difficult and reduces bioavailability relative to a thinner oil. The general consensus is that an MCT oil is the best sort of carrier for CBD. An MCT oil derived from coconuts seems to be the best one with a hint of coconut flavor that most people seem to like.
A woman named Laura Brenner fought off stage 3 ovarian cancer in her early thirties after adopting an entirely organic lifestyle that included hemp oil. She became a vegan, exercised and diligently read about how people helped their bodies battle cancer. She read that cannabis helped people destress and get a better night’s sleep. So, she turned her kitchen into a laboratory and made hemp oil. Later, when people started asking how she managed to fight off a disease as awful as cancer, she believed that the hemp oil played a major role in giving her body the strength it needed to eradicate the disease. It inspired her to create a CBD product for the people that really need it. That is why she started Sugar and Kush CBD. Her products are made for diabetics, people struggling with gluten allergies or for people just focused on their overall health and wellness.</>
In your search for the best quality CBD gummies or oils, bear in mind that you need to do your homework. You should buy CBD products online since most convenience or grocery stores are not going to provide a certificate of analysis. A CBD product sold in a dispensary may have THC in it as the CBD may be extracted from the drug-type cannabis plant instead of industrial hemp. If you are looking to avoid failing a drug test or getting high, than you want to avoid anything with THC. Look for a certificate of analysis from a third party lab to verify that the product actually contains CBD and the amount of milligrams found on the label. If you are going to add CBD into your daily regimen along with your vitamins and supplements, make it healthy. You don’t need CBD products giving you cavities or making your triglyceride count leap up on the results of your next blood work. Also, determine what sort of oil the CBD has been infused into so you can get the most out of your CBD dosages. In general, you don’t want to trade in your overall health for the analgesic and anxiolytic properties of CBD.
"It's hard to sum up what happened tonight. But most of it was a bunch of guys with no chance to win the Democratic nomination yelling Republican talking points at the people who can. It was like watching the seven dwarves offering Snow White a poison apple."
Stephen Colbert Hits Long-Shot Dems for Spewing ‘Republican Talking Points’ at CNN Debate [Matt Wilstein/The Daily Beast]
(via Naked Capitalism)
Freelance journalist Alessandra Bocchi posted this video of protesters in Hong Kong using some kind of laser to target security forces' cameras: it's part of the #612strike movement's stunning repertoire of improvised anti-police countermeasures, in a near-civil-war where faces have become a battleground.
Hong Kong protestors are on another level. Here they’re using lasers to avoid facial recognition cameras. A cyber war against Chinese artificial intelligence. pic.twitter.com/t1hIczr5Go
— Alessandra (@alessabocchi) July 31, 2019
(Thanks, @feralrobots!)
David Hayward's proposal to "solve no-deal Brexit" is pretty delicious: Her Majesty's Government need only insure all UK businesses and individuals against No Deal Brexit losses, and pay for it by issuing special "Great British Brexit Bonds" that No Deal supporters can voluntarily sink their entire pensions into.
These will be perpetual, nontransferrable bonds that pay out forever, in a sum that is indexed to post-No-Deal Brexit GDP growth. This means that all the elderly racists happy to have Bojo drive the country off the Dover cliffs need only stake everything they have to back their certainty that it will work out all right, and if they're right, they'll be handsomely rewarded for their prescience.
(Image: Dr Dunno/B3ta)I’m a modest Stylite, but I must tell you I have solved Brexit. [Thread]
— The Columnist (@Sime0nStylites) February 4, 2019
This darling denizen of the deep is a Helicocranchia, aka a piglet squid. Scientists on the Ocean Exploration Trust's E/V Nautilus caught footage of the rarely seen creature at a depth of 4,544 feet near Palmyra Atoll in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The commenters' delightful descriptions really make the clip.
There are, in Esquire's counting, 104 Bond villains as of July 31, 2019. It categorized and ranked them, creating the perfect tour of the franchise's best bits.
59. Nicknack
The Film: The Man With the Golden Gun
The Actor: Herve Villechaize
The Basics: Dedicated and diminutive manservantIf Herve Villechaize wasn't such a spirited performer, Nick Nack would be near the bottom of this list. The loyal right hand to Francisco Scaramanga, he spends the bulk of The Man With the Golden Gun going above and beyond the call of duty, even attempting to avenge his deceased employer in an extended, unnecessary, and hugely embarrassing epilogue. He may be at the center of one of the worst Bond movies, but Villechaize makes it watchable.
Nintendo's smaller, cuter, more portable new console is coming September 20th, and now you can pre-order one. It comes in yellow, teal, gray or
white with scribbles and it costs $200. Those are Amazon links; daddy gets paid if you order through them.
“Nintendo says there’s no performance difference between the two models, and you can still use the same accessories with the Lite, including Joy-Con controllers, the Switch Pro Controller, and the Poké Ball Plus. The Switch Lite still supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC, and has built-in gyro controls.”
But you cannot connect it to a television, a thing people are just not seeming to understand about it. This is a fair assuption, as the whole point of calling the Switch "Switch" was that it could switch between a living-room and portable console. So calling this one the "Switch Lite" is an example of branding inverting meaning in the halls of high capitalism. They should, of course, have called this new portable-only device the Nintendo Snatch.
Earlier this week, I bought tickets to see a concert in September (Gogol Bordello!) and wanted to see the view from our seats. I discovered that the venue, San Francisco's legendary Warfield, has a terrific 360-degree virtual tour of the entire theater, backstage and all. It's a bit of a rabbit hole but totally worth a look. Not only can you see the view of the stage from anywhere in the theater but you can also visit its green room (spacious), "Jerry's Room" (Jerry Garcia's "second home"), and this Autograph Room. The theater calls it a "hidden gem" and it sure is! Zoom in closely to the walls (and ceiling) to try and spot the Sharpie-d art and autographs of famous people you know. I was able to find both Penn and Teller's and Beck's fairly easily.
(The seats I nabbed have a fantastic view, by the way.)
screenshot via The Warfield
Ten Second Songs is one of those amazing YouTube channels that doom you to a morning lost in someone's incredible and decidedly unique talent. In this case, performing songs in the style of other musicians, including excellent vocal impersonations. [via Metafilter]
I'd kill to see Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, or any of the Borderlands games come to the Nintendo Switch. They're some of my favorite titles to turn to at the end of a long, stupid day when my brain is in desperate need of a bit of numbing. Sadly, so far as I know, there hasn't been a reliable peep on the possibility of a port for any of them. Happily, Engadget plopped out some news today about a game that could be the next best thing to the titles on my wish list.
From Engadget:
Obsidian had already revealed its Fallout-esque sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds will debut on PC, Xbox One and PS4 October 25th. Sometime after that, it'll land on Switch too. Nintendo's console is less powerful than Sony and Microsoft's ones, and won't pack as much punch as a typical PC, so it remains to be seen how well The Outer Worlds will run on the hybrid.
For this version, Obsidian is teaming up with Virtuos, which has helped bring the likes of Dark Souls Remastered and Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age to Switch. There's no firm release date as yet for The Outer Worlds' arrival on Switch, but the UK eShop pegs the release date for sometime this year.
Obsidian was responsible for Fallout: New Vegas. From what I've seen in the trailer for The Outer Worlds, much of the humor of that old chestnut has made it alive into their space game. That the title takes place on a frontier-style planet that pits the player against evil corporate elements dead-set on keeping folks well planted under their heal: sounds like a bit of Borderlands flavor to me. Hopefully, The Outer Worlds will be as good as it looks and, in my case, more importantly, turn out to be a great a port as we've gotten use to seeing on The Switch of late.
Image via Wikipedia
My name is Herobine. I am twenty-six years old. I live in a data entity resembling an ultramodernist residence at x: 68;y: 73; z: 636 in the seed -98734659879863346. I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet of fish, bread and cake, and a rigorous exercise routine of jumping up voxel hills. In the morning, if my face is a little pixelated, I'll put on a diamond helmet while farming my generators. I can get 100 levels a day now. After I remove the diamond helmet, I eat four apples. In the cave below my house, I clear out any mobs, then collect and throw all the rotten meat into the small lava pond beside it.
Then I apply a potion of regeneration which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use antidote potions with little or no alcohol because alcohol dries your textures out and makes you look older. Then elixir, then eye drops, followed by a final moisturizing tonic potion...
There is an idea of a Herobrine, some kind of abstraction lost in the thousands of hours you gave abandoned to this game, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can see me fleetingly from a distance and feel fear gripping you and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.
PREVIOUSLY
Already regretting assigning J.G. Ballard to cover the Fyre Festival
Already regretting assigning Cormac McCarthy to report on the video of an entire pack of Boston Dynamics robot dogs
Already regretting assigning the new MacBook Pro review to Borges
Already regretting assigning the Chelsea Clinton story to Frank Herbert
Already regretting assigning Anthony Burgess to review the Samsung Galaxy Fold
I loved Robert Eggers' The Witch. It was a moody, masterfully shot masterpiece of slow-simmering tension, mistrust and the gentle hand that moves desperate people to make terrible decisions. I bought it and ripped it to watch on all the screens I own, as soon as it was released to video. Today I learned that Eggers' second film, The Lighthouse, first broke cover at the Cannes International Film Festival, a few months back.
The trailer for the movie dropped earlier today and holy crap, am I ever invested.
I've watched it a few time today and I'm sucked in further with every viewing.
This elephant residing in Kruger National Park in South Africa is evidently tired of tourists rumbling around, bothering it. "Jeezis Chroyst"
YOU CAN join Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE! Be the first kid on your block to see each week's comic, get extra comics, sneak peeks, insider scoops, and lots of other stuff! JOIN TODAY!
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In 1955, Disneyland opened. In early 1956, Sherman W. Carter, Jr. took his family to the park and shot this home movie. The video was just uploaded to YouTube on July 1 by a family friend.
The first part takes place in Frontierland, one of areas of Disneyland that has changed the most over the years. And yet there are many familiar sights as well. The park looks almost unrecognizable with so many of the trees and foliage still essentially saplings. Today it’s a veritable forest in the middle of Anaheim.
Be sure to pause the video at 0:21 where you can see three Jungle Cruise boats docked in Fowler’s Harbor, currently home to the Harbour Galley restaurant. I knew the water systems for the Rivers of America and Jungle Cruise were connected, but were you ever able to sail from one to the other in the past? We later see The Jungle Cruise with no water in the moat, so this likely just temporary storage.
Some other fun highlights to keep an eye out for; watch at 1:05 for a glimpse of the old gun fight skit atop the Golden Horseshoe Saloon. Then right after that, the Jungle Cruise with no water in the moat. Just a few wonderful shots of Tomorrowland right at the end too.
Looking for a career in design? Then you're going to need InDesign, not to mention Photoshop, Illustrator and the other versatile pieces of software in Adobe's Creative Cloud. These training bundles are a great place to jump in and learn how to use them like a pro - so you can earn like one, too.
The Adobe Photoshop CC Training Bundle
This expert's guide to Photoshop is geared to fine-tune any artist's understanding of one of Adobe's flagship tools. You'll get tips on how to create composite images, customize filters and take any photo from the shoot to a fully edited masterpiece - all from recognized Adobe masters working in the field. Not only will you learn to do a ton of new things you didn't even think were possible in Photoshop, but you'll also learn the shortcuts that will let you do them faster. Pick up the full Adobe Photoshop CC Training Bundle for $19.
The Complete Adobe CC Training Bundle
Whether you're just starting out in design or need an overall refresher, this bundle is your walk through all the components of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Each of these seven courses is a beginner-to-advanced boot camp in a different platform: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Animation. When you're done, you'll be able to not only use each of them independently but see how they can enhance each other. Grab the Complete Adobe CC Training Bundle for $29.
The Adobe Lightroom Creative Cloud Training Bundle
Lightroom makes photo editing easy for anyone, but this master class will dive deep into its professional possibilities. You'll move quickly from beginner's courses that let you fully navigate the interface to editing tips that will make your photos sing and save tons of time in the bargain. The Adobe Lightroom Creative Cloud Training Bundle is on sale for $25.
End.Game is a dark, dreamy synthpop album, all swooping pads, punchy beats and mysterious retro auras. It's the work of Luscious-235, a joint-venture between Sid Luscious (of 80s fame fronting The Pants) and "the artificial entity known as Unit 235".
This album immediately seizes a special place in my heart because it was inspired by my short story Mixtape of Lost Decade and its mythology of the 19A0s: a forgotten era between the 1970s and 1980s so culturally traumatic that it erased itself from our collective memory. Artifacts from the 19A0s, the story goes, now leak out through the internet and other liminal spaces—and here we are.
You can't expect an unbiased review from me, then, but obviously you should go and buy this album right away.
It is, after all, an act of archaeology.
Nonetheless, I loved Luscious-235's particular grasp on its aesthetic, especially the straightforward production and intense lyricism. End.Game ignores the self-consciously soulless nostalgia that immediately marks a lot of modern synth as contemporary to the 2010s, instead going to the source: cool tech, mopey vocals and sense of cultural asynchrony. It comes from the 80s side of the 19A0 divide. It's the sort of music I was trying to reacreate with trackers on a Commodore Amiga as a kid--an impossible emulation of something already uncannily out of time.
And here I am listening to Ocean City and Midnight Drivn, wondering if that's the same lamborghini tearing down the night highways around not-Miami I imagined back then. (It is.)
For me, then, these are sharp echoes. Like Gahan and Oakey and Bernard Sumner and Ure circa 1982, but not. Black Dawn's postapocalyptic tecgno-dirge is like those of Mark Shreeve, music I discovered spacing out to UK Channel 4's ident card in the early hours but could not put a name to until the internet revealed it to me more than a decade later. War Games' chorus could be the hook of a forgotten sci-fi B-movie, a betamax exclusive.
But there are also fun surprises. A track might segue from Vangelis-like synthnoir to early Pet Shop Boys b-side clubbiness, yet flower into a mopey Human League ballad.
That's the thing that's so amazing about listening to End.Game. It's one thing to have spied the 19A0s, but to hear from people who lived there is another thing entirely.
You can listen to and buy End.Game on Bandcamp; it's also available at the usual places (Spotify, Amazon, iTunes) but Bandcamp seems to be the best for getting indies paid.
The trailer and press release for the album follows below:
You don’t remember.
In the year 1979, humanity experienced dramatic, rapid technological advancement which has since been completely expunged from the historical record. One day, everything was blurry analog. And the next, primitive but rapidly evolving digital. Where did it come from? How did everything change so fast? Some say it was extraterrestrials. Or ancient secrets from the Toltecs, Mayans, or Egyptians. Maybe it was a series of covert government projects.
Within one year, the first iteration of smartphones were commonplace. 2 years after 1979, artificial humans were walking the streets, holding jobs, and paying taxes. The economies of the world turned while artificials happily carried out their functions and humans reaped the benefits. It was a utopia. Until it wasn’t.
Growing paranoia -- fueled by the uncontrolled rise of technology and coupled with religious fundamentalism -- was at the forefront of the global conversation. Some humans and governments were afraid of being completely usurped by the artificials and overwhelmed by technology. Perhaps rightfully so.
In the 3rd year, the governments of the world enacted what they called “Operation End Game”. A “hard reset” on technology and society. Nuclear warheads detonated at high altitudes, with the resulting electro-magnetic pulses destroying all electronics. Millions died in the ensuing damage and chaos.
But you don’t remember any of it. You still believe only 6 years separate “1979” and “1985”. How can humanity forget an entire decade? We were there. We remember everything.
The following years (no one knows for sure, but estimates put it between 5-8) were used to rebuild, repair, and restart everything in a carefully controlled fashion. Drugs broadcast via air, water, radio, and television provided historical scrubbing and psychological programming.
The entirety of humanity was left with no record or memory of the event. The few remaining fragments and facts have been pieced together by a small community. They call this lost time “The 19A0s”.
And so you don’t remember. But we do. We are Luscious-235 -- a band consisting of a human (Sid Luscious) and an artificial (Unit 235). When Operation End Game was enacted, we were playing a show, deep in an underground parking garage in Los Angeles. Under the concrete and dirt, we were shielded from the effects of the EMP. We survived. We remember everything.
This is our story. This is our music. This is the 19A0s.
End.Game [Bandcamp]
The greatest of all time. I cry every time I watch Inigo Montoya destroy Count Rugen. I can bring my self to cry by thinking about it.
Errol Flynn fighting Basil Rathbone in Captain Blood is just wonderful.
Something about two-handed butchering people with a broadsword always plays! The Governator is most remembered for his role in Twins with Danny De Vito, but this little known film, was wonderful fun.
Is just a masterpiece.
...and of course Doctor Jones shows us how it's done. Every call back they've made to this scene in later movies was a dud.
At the end of a 1977 bootlegged videocassette of Disney's Fantasia, a fine bit of mockery from Miracle Productions Company, "leaders in illegal Betamax recording since '76."
Trump is a "malevolent George Costanza," a person who's gotten every job "simply by being [his] obnoxious self, with no filter." That's Philippe Reines' assessment. He should know. As Hillary Clinton's debate sparring partner, he watched every one of the 15 Republican primary debates and forums Trump was in, three times. As a result, he says, "I might know his debating style—if you want to call it that—better than anyone on the planet (aside from Hillary Clinton, of course)."
In this Politico article, he presents the qualities that make Trump "such a tough opponent in a debate, despite the fact that he is possibly the worst debater in presidential history," and some suggestions about how the Democratic nominee could deal with Trump's non-stop torrent of lies during a debate:
[O]ur nominee should know that Trump will lie throughout their debate, but can’t count on the moderator to call them all out and can’t expect the audience to know on their own. So our nominee needs to be able to say, “You’re lying.” Easier said than done. Especially if Trump lies every time he opens his mouth.
One possible tactic is to simply, and calmly, count out loud. First time he lies, the nominee should say, “That was the first of many lies to come because that’s what he does best.” After that, when Trump lies again, the nominee should interject with a simple “Lie number two,” or, “That was a few, so we’re up to six.” The moderator might scold the candidate for interrupting, but he or she should respond, “If you were calling out his lies, I wouldn’t have to. But someone has to. He gets away with it all day every day. But not here, not now.”
To throw in my own advice, if Trump says something nasty about this tactic, the Democratic candidate can say, "I'll stop counting when you stop lying."
Image: Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock
Tam Lindsay (tambothejambo on twitter) witnessed a spectacular mistake by a bus driver in West Lothian that tore the roof off his double-decker ride.
Out a walk in Fauldhouse and heard a huge collision. Local bus tried to go under railway bridge and took top tier of bus
The error was egregious enough for the driver to be charged, reports the BBC.
No-one was injured and the Lothian Country bus driver was the only occupant of the vehicle at the time. A spokesman for the operator said: "We can confirm one of our vehicles was involved in an incident earlier today in the Fauldhouse area and we are fully assisting Police Scotland with their inquiries."
Adds the BBC:
A report will be sent to the procurator fiscal.
Just you wait until the procurator fiscal hears of this!
Ben Herzog's Cryptographic Attacks: A Guide for the Perplexed from Check Point Research is one of the clearest, most useful guides to how cryptography fails that I've ever read.
While popular media likes to depict crypto as falling prey to brute-force attacks -- which offer narratively convenient countdown timers as the digital tumblers roll into place -- the actual attacks on crypto are way more interesting (and plausible) than making a lot of guesses very fast.
Herzog lays out how these attacks work, from frequency analysis to precomputation attacks to interpolation attacks to downgrade attacks to oracle attacks, and then gives specific examples of high-profile, real world defects in cryptosystems, including CRIME, POODLE and DROWN.
Understanding how crypto goes wrong -- the complex interplay of history, human error, foolishness, and unanticipated interactions -- is key to understanding computer security. This is an invaluable guide, and Herzog promises as sequel: "In the next blog post of this series, we’ll talk about advanced attacks — such as meet-in-the-middle, differential cryptanalysis, and the birthday attack. We’ll take a short foray into the land of side-channel attacks, and then we’ll finally delve into the exquisite realm of attacks on public-key cryptography."
You might wonder who in their right mind would design a real-world system analogous to a “secure, unless you come in sideways” system, or a “secure, unless you insist otherwise” system, as described above. But much like the fictional bank would rather take the risk and retain its crypto-averse customers, systems in general often bow to requirements that are indifferent, or even overtly hostile, to security needs.
Exactly such a story surrounded the release of SSL protocol version 2 in the year 1995. The United States government had long since come to view cryptography as a weapon, best left out of the hands of geopolitical enemies and domestic threats. Pieces of code were approved on a case-by-case basis for leaving the US, often conditional on the algorithm being weakened deliberately. Netscape, then the main vendor of web browsers, was able to obtain a permit for SSLv2 (and by extension, Netscape Navigator) to support a vulnerable-by-design RSA with a key length of 512 bits (and similarly 40 bits for RC4).
By the turn of the millennium, regulations had been relaxed and access to state-of-the-art encryption became widely available. Still, clients and servers supported export-grade crypto for years, due to the same inertia that preserves support for any legacy system. Clients figured they might encounter a server which doesn’t support anything else, so they hung on to optional support for it, as a last resort. Servers did the same. Of course, SSL protocol dictates that clients and servers should never use a weak protocol when a better one is available — but then again, neither should Tressler and his bank.
Cryptographic Attacks: A Guide for the Perplexed [Ben Herzog/Check Point Research]
(via Four Short Links)
(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY, modified)
Last week, Motherboard reported on a public record request that revealed that Amazon had struck confidential deals with local police forces to get them to promote the company's Internet of Things "Ring" doorbells, and the accompanying "Neighbors" app that produces a kind of private surveillance mesh overlooking nearby public spaces -- under the terms of the deal, cops would be able to see a map noting locations of Ring surveillance cams and request footage from their owners.
Now, a further records request shows that one officer who was trained by Amazon for the program was told that 200 law enforcement agencies had struck similar deals.
The officer who sent the email told Motherboard that the email was a transcribed version of handwritten notes that he took during a team webinar with a Ring representative on April 9. Additional emails obtained by Motherboard indicate that this webinar trained officers on how to use the "Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal." This portal allows local police to see a map with the approximate locations of all Ring cameras in a neighborhood, and request footage directly from camera owners. Owners need to consent, but police do not need a warrant to ask for footage.
The email obtained by Motherboard was sent from the Waynesboro, Virginia Chief of Police to himself in an email with the subject line “Neighbors by RING notes.” The email ends with the name and phone number of a Ring Neighborhood’s Training Manager, responsible for communicating with police and training them on the use of Ring products. The email is dated April 16.
Amazon Told Police It Has Partnered With 200 Law Enforcement Agencies [Caroline Haskins/Motherboard]
(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY, modified)
Propublica Illinois has identified "dozens of suburban Chicago families" who surrendered custody of their children during the kids' junior and senior years of high-school, turning them over to aunts, grandparents, friends, and cousins, so that the kids claim to be independent and qualify for needs-based scholarships, crowding out the poor kids the scholarship was designed for.
The scheme (called a "scam" by Urbana-Champaign director of undergraduate admissions Andy Borst) allows affluent kids to qualify for the Pell Grant and the state Monetary Award Program (MAP grant), up to $11,000/year. The total amount available through these grants is capped and they are awarded on a first come, first serve basis. 82,000 eligible Illinois students were excluded from the program last year because the money ran out.
Propublica identified two key enablers of the "scam": The Rogers Law Group in Deerfield and the Kabbe Law Group in Naperville (Rick Rogers of the Rogers Law Group hired a third firm to handle his own family's case).
The parents involved declined to comment, as did the Rogers Law Group. The Kabbe Law Group said that her firm's services allows kids to get aid where the families are in "a financial position where their income is too high to qualify for financial aid but they still will struggle to pay for college."
Propublica also identifies Lora Georgieva, owner of Lincolnshire Destination College consulting firm, as a key enabler, noting she has ties to several of the families and to Rogers. Destination College advertises a "College Financial Plan, Using Income and Asset Shifting Strategies to Increase Your Financial and Merit Aid and Lower Out of Pocket Tuition Expenses." When reached for comment, Georgieva had an attorney contact Propublica to express her concern that her services would be "depicted in a false light."
The guardianship process the families are exploiting is intended as a way of getting children out of dangerous situations where they face physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Christian Basi, a University of Missouri spokesman, said the school is investigating to ensure that guardianships are not filed “simply to try and gain financial advantage.” He said university officials are flagging accounts that may have benefited from this practice and have been in contact with other schools in the Midwest.
“We are and would be extremely disappointed with anyone who would try to change their information with the sole purpose of taking money from a need-based program when they would typically not be eligible,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the University of Wisconsin-Madison said the university may review and adjust its financial aid award at any point if evidence emerges that a student is actually receiving parental or other financial support not reported on the FAFSA.
Parents Are Giving Up Custody of Their Kids to Get Need-Based College Financial Aid [Jodi S. Cohen and Melissa Sanchez/Propublica]
At least two people are dead after a gunman opened fire at the Southaven Walmart in Mississippi on Tuesday, with a police officer and the shooter also reportedly injured. CBS News:
WHBQ-TV reports one person was found dead in the store and another found dead in the parking lot. The suspect was taken to a Memphis hospital. His condition wasn't reported. Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto tells WATN-TV the officer was hit in his bulletproof vest and not seriously injured.Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto tells WATN-TV the officer was hit in his bulletproof vest and not seriously injured. Walmart employees joined a prayer circle outside. The company didn't immediately respond to phone calls and information requests.
The election of authoritarian racist garbage person Donald Trump to the presidency was attended by many controversies, but none so salient as his inclusion in Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents, wherein each newly elected president is represented as an animatronic figure whose dialog that president gets to record, using their own human voices.
The Trumpbot's inclusion was controversial enough that Disney reportedly considered changing the show to deny Trump his speaking role (this was later kiboshed), and while the Trumpbot may not be a repurposed Hillarybot, he has certainly attracted his share of hecklers.
Now, the memeslinging video-trickster @PaulLeeTicks has put their video-effects skills to work, putting the Trumpbot in the Nazi uniform that Cheeto Hitler implies with every public utterance.
BREAKING: Antifa thugs break into the Disney World's Hall of Presidents attraction in Florida, and vandalize the Donald Trump animatronic. pic.twitter.com/XgEwRPQnx5
— Paul Lee Ticks (@PaulLeeTicks) July 22, 2019
It's one thing to send a bogus legal threat in an effort to suppress criticism, because usually the only consequence of that is public humiliation and a little Streisand Effect heat; but if you really want to score an own-goal, the best way to do so is to send a fake court order to Google ordering removal of someone else's embarrassing post from its search index, forging a judge's signature to give it that really authentic look-and-feel.
It's amazing how many people get this brilliant idea. Back in 2017, it was Michael Arnstein, CEO of the Natural Sapphire Company, who was sentenced to nine months in prison for it.
Now, CBS has found more than 60 more of these forged court orders in the public database of takedowns that have been served to Google. Some of them reference clients of a "reputation management" company called Web Savvy, LLC, whose CEO, John Rooney, told an undercover CBS crew that other companies go to "risky...grey areas" that he won't enter.
But Rooney couldn't explain why one of his clients was referenced in a forged court order sent to Google demanding removal of an embarrassing court order.
Many of the fake court orders that CBS turned up were putatitively issued by a judge in Hamilton County, Ohio. The court clerk, local law-enforcement, and the FBI are investigating these.
While some of the fakes that CBS found were seeming attempts to launder the reputations of businesses, two were censorship attempts that targeted factual information identifying their subjects as sex offenders who had targeted children.
It seems unlikely that CBS's methodology was exhaustive, so if they found 60 of these, there are probably lots more in the database. Uncovering these would make for an interesting data-mining exercise.
CBS News worked with Volokh and identified more than 60 fraudulent court orders sent to Google. Some are obviously fake, like one with a case number of "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9." Others are more sophisticated, and appear to be drawn from nine different federal courts across the country. The most recent fake court document we identified was submitted in April.
CBS News investigation finds fraudulent court orders used to change Google search results [Jim Axelrod and Andy Bast/CBS News]
(via /.)
A man so vexed District Court Judge Marilyn Castle in Lafayette that she ordered his mouth taped shut. The Advocate reports that Michael C. Duhon, already found guilty of theft, repeatedly interrupted his sentencing hearing. Katie Gagliano reports how Castle lost control of her courtroom:
According to court minutes, Duhon objected when the judge asked him to stop submitting motions on his own behalf in the case instead of through his attorney. He objected again when evidence was submitted. He attempted to offer arguments against the inclusion of the evidence and was told to speak through his attorney. After requesting at least twice for Duhon to remain quiet, Castle ordered the bailiff to tape Duhon’s mouth shut during witness testimony. The tape was removed after an objection from Duhon’s public defense attorney, Aaron Adams. He requested the judge remove his client from the courtroom instead of putting duct tape on his client's mouth.
She also held a public defender—not representing Duhon, but in the gallery—with contempt of court for video-recording the incident, and ordered that the video be destroyed.
Lafayette Judge Marilyn Castle ordered public defender Michael Gregory to pay a $100 fine and said he cannot bring his cellphone, nor use someone else's, to the Lafayette Parish courthouse for six months. ...
Gregory said he felt there was “a compelling necessity to record the proceeding,” but Castle said the focus was on the inappropriate filming itself, not what the recording captured.
“The subject of what was photographed is irrelevant. It’s that you did it,” Castle said.
Gregory submitted a copy of the video as evidence and Castle put it under seal, making it unavailable to the public.
Photo: campaign handout
A trucker replaced a broken tail light with a red sports drink, reports the Denver Channel. His ingenuity earned him police attention in Longmont, Colo., but they let him go without a ticket.
While we appreciate the ingenuity of this tail light, this is not a permanent solution,” Longmont Fire, Police and OEM wrote in a Facebook post. “Working tail lights prevent accidents.”
Photo: Longmont PD
You may now cool or heat a small part of your body on the go, if you are in Japan and have ¥13000 to blow. The Reon Pocket is a roughly the size of a smartphone, hangs around your neck, and claims to cool that spot up to 13C or warm it 8.3C. As you can see from the photo, a special shirt will come with it so that it can be perfectly seated.
Vxworks is a lightweight, thin OS designed for embedded systems; a new report from Armis identifies critical vulnerabilities (called "Urgent 11") in multiple versions of the OS that they estimate affects 200m systems (Vxworks' make, Wind River, disputes this figure).
The defect is network-addressable, meaning that it can be remotely exploited, and can be triggered with the sort of communications that are unlikely to be blocked by firewalls. Because of the fire-and-forget nature of embedded systems -- coupled with the low-level tasks they perform, which can't be interrupted without disrupting many higher-level processes -- many of these devices will be subject to "forever day" vulnerabilities, in which they are likely to never be patched.
Wind River says that many of the affected versions of Vxworks have been end-of-lifed, and that its current OS version is not affected.
The more immediate challenge for organizations that use affected or potentially affected equipment will be to assess the risk they face. Armis researchers are presenting Urgent 11 as posing a serious and imminent threat, potentially at the scale of the Windows vulnerabilities that allowed the 2016 WannaCry worm to sow worldwide disruptions. Armis researchers are also warning that the difficulty of patching the flaws means this risk may be with us for the foreseeable future.
But the threat may very well be much smaller than that assessment. What’s more (assuming the threat is as bad as Armis says it is), it may be possible to mitigate the risk through means other than patching, such as access control lists, which restrict the devices that can connect to a vulnerable device. A better mitigation still is to remove a vulnerable device from the outside Internet altogether. Either way, people inside any organization using devices running VxWorks should make it a priority to do a deep dive on Urgent 11 so they can understand the risk it poses.
200 million devices—some mission-critical—vulnerable to remote takeover [Dan Goodin/Ars Technica]
It's got a long way to overturn the PS2's and Nintendo DS's ~150m hauls, but Sony's PS4 reached the 100m sold mark this summer and has a good shot at ending up the third best-selling game console (currently the Game Boy, 120m sold) of all time.
The PlayStation 4 reached this milestone after just 5 years and 7 months, and less than 3 years after passing 50 million sales. Sony’s PS4 sales have been consistently strong throughout this generation, with 19 million sold in 2017 and 17.8 million last year. Sony also revealed that digital download share has passed the 50 percent mark, meaning more people are now purchasing digital games than physical disc copies. Sony’s next-generation PlayStation, most likely the PS5, now looks set to launch in fall 2020.
Next year is the year 8K TVs become "affordable", hence the big marketing push for a new generation of consoles based around 20XX-series NVidia GPUs.
Multinationals are excellent players of the global financial tax system, using "profit shifting" (through which operating profits are remitted to phony sister companies in tax havens as "licensing fees" or "management fees") to make it look like wildly profitable companies are losing money, making them eligible for tax relief and rebates -- thus it is that companies can rake in billions and then receive millions more in corporate welfare.
To see this in action, look no further than Rockstar North, the Scottish branch of Rockstar Games, makers of Grand Theft Auto (owned by Take-Two Entertainment). Between 2013-2019, Rockstar North claimed so little revenue that it owed £0.00 in taxes, and actually managed to claim £42m in tax relief from the British taxpayers.
Take-Two's market cap is £13.1b; over the period in which Rockstar North was pleading poverty (and making an estimated operating profit of £4b), the company dispersed £3.4b in executive bonuses. One of Take-Two's most profitable products is GTA, produced by Rockstar North.
Rockstar North claimed 19% of all available video game tax credits in the UK. The tax credit scheme was created to reward companies whose games make "a significant contribution to British culture" through "British settings, characters and development, and promoting cultural diversity." GTA is set in a fictional California town.
Taxwatch UK's Gaming the System report on Rockstar North's tax evasion notes that the whole scheme is perfectly legal -- in other words, the system is working exactly as it was designed to do.
Although the statutory accounts of Rockstar North, the maker of Grand Theft Auto V, state that the company is hardly making any profit, the game is widely reported to be the most profitable media product in history. The game broke several world records for the speed of its sales, and generated $800,000,000 in revenue for Take-Two within the first 24 hours of its release. Within three days the game had hit $1bn in sales, making it the fastest selling entertainment product in history. Within one year, the game had hit $3bn in sales, making it the biggest selling game of all time.6 The game continues to sell, and in May 2019, Take-Two disclosed that they had sold over 110m copies.7
Alongside GTA V, the company developed an add-on GTA Online, which created a new virtual world where gamers could interact with other players over the internet. GTA Online generates revenue for Take-Two as players can buy virtual currency to purchase new items in the game.
In 2015, two years after the release of the game, 8 million people were still playing GTA every week, and the add-on had generated an additional $500m for the company.8 The huge sales of GTA V and the popularity of GTA Online has generated an estimated $6bn in sales for Take-Two over the current lifetime of the product.9
These sales have translated into vast profits for the company and its senior management. Between 2009, when development on GTA V is known to have started, and the 2014 financial year in which the game was released, Rockstar North had total costs of £110m. In 2013, the Scotsman reported that the game had a total development and marketing budget of £170m.10 Adding in distribution costs and other ongoing development costs, Take-Two should have generated gross profits in the region of $5bn from the game. This figure is corroborated by data on internal royalties paid by the company.
Grand Theft Auto maker has paid no UK corporation tax in 10 years – report [Keza MacDonald/The Guardian]
(via /.)
In 1855 a band of London thieves set their sights on a new target: the South Eastern Railway, which carried gold bullion to the English coast. The payoff could be enormous, but the heist would require meticulous planning. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the first great train robbery, one of the most audacious crimes of the 19th century.
We'll also jump into the record books and puzzle over a changing citizen.
TIL: There are folks not familiar with Lynyrd Skynyrd's concert-closing song "Free Bird." It seems nearly unimaginable for someone who grew up hearing the Southern rock band's signature 14-minute-long power ballad. (I mean, doesn't everyone know that you jokingly request bands to play it by yelling "Free Bird!"?)
Enter YouTuber No Life Shaq. He claims he's heard the band's name before but has never heard the song. Watch this video of him listening to (and amusingly analyzing) it for the first time. I think he likes it, especially that guitar solo!
Dehydration. Sun stroke. Quickly standing up from a vinyl chair whilst wearing shorts. There's lots of danger to be found on a scorching hot summer day. According to a team of Doctors from the University of Nevada, we can add another warm weather peril to the list: hot asphalt.
From Gizmodo:
The researchers, who published their study this April in the Journal of Burn Care and Research, took a look at cases from their own university’s burn center unit. Over a five-year span, they found 173 reported pavement-related burn cases. By cross-referencing the day’s recorded weather with the date of these cases, the authors also found that the vast majority (88 percent) happened when it was at least 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside. And once it was over 105 degrees, the risk of pavement burn got exponentially higher.
While these cases might represent only a small portion of burn injuries that warrant medical attention, the authors say they’re an ever-present worry in areas where the climate is constantly hot and sunny, like the Las Vegas desert.
If you're skeptical, ywhy not conduct a little field research of your own? On an insanely hot day, take off your shoes on your front lawn. Now, walk from the grass onto the sidewalk and on into the street. Stand there for five minutes. Feel that burn? Congratulations, you're now a scientist. The University of Nevada will no doubt be eager to hear all about your findings/blistered skin. As the study is quick to point out, pavement can grow hot enough to cause a second-degree burn to skin that comes into contact with it, in seconds.
The study goes on to say that the folks most likely to feel the burn from a romp on the pavement include demographics such as motorcyclists, disabled individuals and the elderly—the latter two of which being more likely to see a burn due to mobility and balance issues. So, watch out for that. More than this, remember to mind small kids and pets: they don't have the sense to stay away from pavement during a heatwave.
Image via Flickr, courtesy of Kate Ter Haar
SL Huang got a degree in math from MIT, then became a martial artist, stuntwoman and weapons expert; her debut novel, Zero Sum Game, features an ass-kicking action hero called Cas Russell, who combines all of Huang's areas of expertise: Russell is a ninja-grade assassination/extraction contractor whose incredible math skills let her calculate the precise angles needed to shoot the bolts out of an armored window as she leaps towards it from an adjacent roof; to time a kick so that it breaks her opponent's jaw without breaking his neck, or to trace back the path of a sniper's bullet with eerie accuracy and return fire.
Apart from her math ability, Russell is a classic action hero: an enigma with a shadowy past whose hard-boiled cynicism is a mask to cover her own shattered psyche.
But that mathematical difference is a game-changer. Huang's own math background shines through here, conveying a way of thinking that is both plausible and alien, conveying a way of seeing and being in the world that is different from the experience of 99.99% of us. Huang's skilled weaving of math into action scenes -- featuring every kind of explosive, firearm, blade, vehicle and bare-hands mayhem -- elevates the story to something that is both fresh and exciting.
Zero Sum Game sees Russell pitted against several shadowy conspiracies -- G-men, secret government projects, criminal underworlds -- that she has to navigate via tenuous alliances with a PI, a super-hacker (Huang's math and computer science background make this one particularly interesting), and a vengeful psychopath whose deep Christian faith and strange code of honor make him her only friend in the world.
Huang plots out many twists and turns as her characters seek to unravel the nested mysteries of her existence and the existence of a shadowy plot whose powers seem impossible but also impossible to deny. The action rarely lets up, and Russell makes such a great anti-hero that you root for her even as you curse her pig-headedness.
This is the first Cas Russell novel, with book two, Null Set, published earlier this month, and there's more to come. It's a great start to an exciting series -- and an exciting career.
Zero Sum Game [SL Huang/Tor]
Several years ago, Jordan Guthmann, a VP at Edelman PR, interviewed for a job at Amazon. While he was on the company campus chatting with folks, someone asked to take his photo and he kindly obliged. Guthmann didn't get the gig, but apparently he at least looked like the right person for the job: Until a few days ago his photo appeared on Amazon's Talent Acquisition website. After Guthmann tweeted it, Amazon quickly swapped out the photo. As Petapixel commented, hopefully the person in the current photo actually got the job!
Years ago I went to Amazon for a job interview that I did NOT get but they were taking photos and the kind person taking photos asked me if she could snap my picture and I was like sure why not anywho that's why I'm on their jobs website today... https://t.co/ehhRvnYaC6
— Jordan Guthmann (@JGuthmann) July 24, 2019
Some of SoCal's finest skaters jumped the fence of Palm Springs' Wet ‘n’ Wild water amusement park when it was closed for winter. On their way out after a short session, they ran into the proprietor on their way out. Uh-oh? Turns out, the fellow was a new owner and planned to tear out the existing attractions. So he invited the skaters to come back for a week and shred the park to their hearts' content. Even Tony Hawk showed up. Tim Aguilar writes in Thrasher:
We were given free reign [sic] to skate anything we wanted—and you better believe we did! The street dogs sniffed out the ledges and rails and the tranny lords terrorized the tunnels. Conquering the main attraction was on everyone’s bucket list, but few overcame the mental barrier to do so. The entire week was epic but the days Tony Hawk showed up were a true spectacle. Entire families watched as a 50-year-old man took the slams and eventually conquered a loop in the wild. Thought he wouldn’t?! Our time in Palm Springs was made possible by taking a chance and luckily finding generosity on the other side of a No Trespassing sign. You never know ’til you barge.
In this new 14-minute mini-doc from Noisey, Brian Eno, his music-therapist brother Roger, and producer/musician Daniel Lanois discuss their 1983 writing and recording of Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, their soundtrack for the Al Reinert film, For All Mankind. They also talk about the newly remastered Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks – Extended Edition and the 11 additional tracks they created for it.
There is some wonderful stuff in here, like Eno revealing that the country music influences on the record were inspired by him learning that many Apollo astronauts took country with them on their missions. He loved the idea of space frontiersmen carrying the music of an older frontier and decided to try creating a cosmic, psychedelic version of country. He and Roger also talk about how they tried to assume the character of the astronauts as they composed, for example, imagining being Mike Collins staying behind in the command module, and translating that feeling of isolation and awe into music.
There is also a touching moment when Roger chokes up talking about the moment that Armstrong set foot on the moon, and how it seemed that, in a moment, humanity itself had jumped into a different mode, a more hopeful future, and how we now seem to have lost that leap. And that hope.
In case you've forgotten how glorious Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks actually is, here's the remastered version of "An Ending (Ascent)." In the Noisey documentary, Eno reveals that this final version of the track is actually the original piece he was working on played backwards.
And here is an earlier piece that David posted with one of the new tracks, "Like I Was a Spectator," off of the Extended Edition.
Image: Public Domain Pictures/CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
