Tom Selleck was Steven Spielberg's pick to play Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, Selleck was under contract with CBS and they refused to release him to take the role. Fortunately for us. See what could have been in the deepfake above.
Below, Selleck recounts his experience as almost being Indy:
In 2004, Howard Hallis celebrated the devilishly wonderful crossover of Disney and Goth culture with the now-classic "Haunted Bela," a mash-up of Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead" with the spooky narration heard in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion dark ride. Listen below! Howard also created the delightful artwork above, titled "Goth Princesses."
From the days when Al Jourgensen cultivated an English accent, Ministry's underground club hit "(Everyday Is) Halloween" (1984). Above, a fan video cut up from horror films. And below, a bonus acoustic performance of the song from last year, the first time Ministry played it live in decades, with special guest guitarist Dave Navarro.
Toronto's Andrea Addario lives next to one of the world's greatest Halloween haunters. As she tweeted, he exhibits "extreme genius" every year, and this year is no exception: he's studded his tree with giant measles viruses made out of pumpkins and carrots, along with a coffin-shaped sign reading "VACCINATE YOUR KIDS." (Thanks, Allen!)
The Halloween decorations of my neighbour. Puts us all to shame, every year, with his extreme genius. pic.twitter.com/XFlxXZcuoX
— Andrea Addario (@addarioandrea) October 30, 2019
The Illuminati was a real secret society in the 18th century, but it was short lived, even though contemporary bullshit theorists pretend otherwise. Thus TED-Ed video is a great 5-minute history of the original Illuminati and its enduring influence.
This week, Facebook filed suit against the NSO Group, a cyber-arms dealer that supplies some of the world's most oppressive regimes with spying tools used to attack dissidents, journalists, human rights activists, and democratic opposition figures; Facebook alleges that NSO Group was behind more than 1,400 attacks on Whatsapp users.
After filing the suit, Facebook has reportedly terminated the accounts of NSO Group employees on Instagram and possibly its other services, including Facebook itself and Whatsapp. The termination notices accuse the NSO employees of violating Facebook's terms of service, which prohibit tampering with or exploiting its services.
Though the notices sent to NSO Group employees told them the account terminations were permanent, a Facebook representative subsequently told Ars Technica that NSO employees could appeal the notices.
A message board popular in Israel indicated that the deletion was widespread. "I had just personally verified it (I have friends working there)," one person wrote. "Ninety-eight percent of the company employees were blocked."
Another person who claimed to work at NSO responded to say he or she hadn't been blocked. Another person claiming to be an NSO employee complained bitterly on LinkedIn. An Israel-based security researcher who spoke to an NSO employee said the deletions affected a much smaller percentage of the company's employees and didn't involve WhatsApp accounts.
Facebook deletes the accounts of NSO Group workers [Dan Goodin/Ars Technica]
I'm not sure where this video was shot but many commenters in Reddit say it took place in South America and was likely a kidnapping attempt. The video was taken by a security camera on a narrow residential street.
We see a car going into a garage. As the garage starts closing another car drives up and four professional looking thugs jump and out slide under the door before it fully closes. A few seconds later, the car in the garage bursts out, running over one of the thugs in the process. Then the car rams the kindnappers' car. The rest of the video shows the kidnappers in a panic as they try to flee.
The 1969 piece LEGO Apollo Saturn V rocket may be my favorite BIG set of all time.
Build the entire three-stage rocket, the command module and the lunar lander! Amazon has a it for 25% off, get your holiday shopping done early!
Bloody Sunday was an atrocity committed by British troops in Northern Ireland, killing 14 unarmed Catholic protesters at a 1972 march. Sunday Bloody Sunday is the title of one song by John Lennon and Yoko Ono and another by U2 that commemorate the event. Sundae Bloody Sundae is a promotion at McDonald's restaurants in Portugal, for which the company is now apologizing.
“The campaign was intended as a celebration of Halloween, not as an insensitive reference to any historical event or to upset or insult anyone in any way. We sincerely apologise for any offence or distress this may have caused.”
It said all related promotional material had now been removed from its restaurants. McDonald’s is not the first company to inadvertently invoke painful chapters in Irish and British history. In 2006 the US firm Ben & Jerry apologised to Irish consumers after it launched Black and Tan ice-cream. The firm said the flavour had been inspired by the classic mixture of stout and pale ale, but customers were quick to point out the name had far grimmer associations. The Black and Tans were an irregular force of British ex-servicemen recruited and deployed during the Irish war of independence, where they quickly developed a reputation for brutality.
Meaghan Winter is the author of All Politics Is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States, a new book that analyzes how Democrats lost control of the vast majority of US state legislatures and governorships, why this is a crisis, and what to do about it next.
Winter makes a pretty compelling case for state parties as crucial to national progressive politics: "When state Democratic Parties are weak, they can’t block assaults on abortion rights, or voting rights, or collective bargaining rights. They can’t serve as talent incubators for future members of Congress, and that, in turn, weakens the national party."
But more important is her analysis of how the Republican project to hijack the states -- through gerrymandering, voter suppression and wedge issues -- came about, and why the Democrats have struggled to counter it.
In an interview with Sarah Jones in New York Magazine, Winter says that the GOP takeover was financed by deep-pocketed one-percenters making shrewd, self-interested calculations about how their investments would pay off, and that this drove them to sustain their funding, year after year, to create long-term projects with skilled, coordinated leaders who were able to court (and frighten) a base of turkeys-voting-for-Christmas poor people who would support rich peoples' further enrichment.
By contrast, one-percenters who fund the Democrats are acting out of a sense of noblesse oblige, or "moral whims," and they are thus dilettantes whose funding is both erratic and arbitrary, and therefore unable to create and sustain those strong movements.
This is in contrast to the historic funding of progressive causes -- basically, trade unions -- who were able to counter the long-term thinking of plutocrats with long-term projects for workers.
It's certainly true that the biggest funders of the right-wing hijacking of US politics are very long-term thinkers, but also that they have enormous blind-spots (Charles Koch is capable of thinking about coal automation of US politics in half-century timescales, but also incapable of thinking about climate this way).
What's more, the rise and rise of small-dollar-donor funded juggernauts like Bernie Sanders points the way to a new kind of treasury for the left, one based on pluralistic, robust movements, not "moral whims."
Democrats Lost the States. A New Book Says Activists Are Fighting Back. [Sarah Jones/New York Magazine]You write that liberal donors love “a program with a unique, special air.” And that the left is largely guided by the moral whims of rich people, whereas the right is guided by rational business decisions. In your reporting, did you identify the point where this became true of the left?
There was a moment in the ’60s and ’70s when the right became more politicized in their institutional giving. And by the right, I don’t actually mean the Republican Party. I mean entities that were more extreme than that, like libertarian think tanks and people and donors who are reacting to the civil-rights movement. They decided to take a much more radical approach, whereas everyone else decided that they were going to take a safer approach, which was funding direct service rather than taking a more politicized approach.
Do you think that big liberal donors, in comparison to big right-wing donors, perceive their roles and perceive power differently?
Institutions on the right have an incentive to give because they’re going to get a return on their investment. If you are the Koch brothers and you spend a million dollars on lobbying, you’re going to get tenfold the amount of money back by pushing a piece of legislation because you’re going to get a tax break or you’re gonna get to drill oil, whatever you want. Where liberal donors, compared to Democrats at large, tend to be more socially liberal and economically conservative. And because of a bunch of complicated campaign-finance laws that I won’t go into now, there’s a lot of incentive for them to give to interest groups.
That is quite different than sustaining long-term organizing that unifies people across issues and creates an economically driven social movement, which I think ultimately could be more successful in uniting people across demographics, across the culture wars. People like Tom Steyer don’t have an incentive to give money to a bunch of people who are now disenfranchised and who, if they actually had power, would change his tax code and take away a lot of his social status.
In this video by Dr. Fakenstein, the face of Nick Offernan (in character as cantankerous libertarian Ron Swanson) is deepfaked onto that of Christina Ricci's Wednesday Addams. In an ocean of deepfakes, this one manages to crack the sea walls of reason and sanity.
This Halloween safety video from 1985 starts with puffs of dry ice smoke set to funky music. It then cuts to floating disembodied masks, and it just gets better from there.
Oh, Coronet Films, you've made a masterpiece.
While you're at it, rewatch the one from 1977. I crack up every time I see that little girl frown after her mom throws her witch mask in the trash (starting around the 4:50 mark).
Mario Mathy still lives, but even when he is gone, the jumping dance will live forever. Mathy was recently Keyboard Mag's featured artist.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR CRAZY VIDEO WITH KEYBOARDS AND HORSES: The video clip for "Jumping Dance" was actually a joke between my wife and my record company. Of course I also realize that my videos were exaggerated, but that was the only way to stand out in Belgium. My wife who is 23 years younger than me put that clip on YouTube together with my record company. And of course, it became quite popular after 32 years! It featured only Casio instruments like the CZ-3000 and 5000 and the CZ-1, because I was Casio demonstrator.
Realistic tiny rooms by Mozu Studios:
It's almost dizzying seeing how far the staircase continues behind the wall:
This video shows the creation of a tiny museum with several exhibits:
The Mozu Studios webshop is here.
Under the banner “First To Know,” the ‘National Enquirer’ reveals the psychological turmoil that has undermined golfer Tiger Woods’s game in recent months.
“Tiger Woods’ golf game is lost in the rough and he’s blaming his aching back - but insiders said he’s actually reeling from a broken heart as he pines for ex-wife Elin Nordegren!” the magazine reports.
With immaculate timing, the story comes just days after Woods’ remarkable victory at the Zozo Championship in Japan, matching Sam Snead’s long-standing record of 82 PGA wins.
Woods is “an emotional mess” now that his ex-wife has had a baby with retired NFL star Jordan Cameron, explains the ‘Enquirer,’ seeming to forget that this is the golfing ace who won the Augusta National in April and claimed victory in three of his last 14 PGA starts. Or as the ‘Enquirer’ puts it: “He stinks - thanks to ex Elin having a baby.” His rivals may wish their golf game stinks as badly.
“Meghan & Harry QUIT Royal Family!” screams the ‘Enquirer’ cover, with an exclusive that amazingly escaped notice by the massed chorus of the British Royal press pack, which clearly lacks the “palace insiders” that the US tabloids have in abundance.
"Her Majesty takes away titles, homes and $15m allowance!” says the report, which claims that Prince Harry and Meghan are homeless since the Queen took away Frogmore Cottage, which has been their marital home on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Perhaps someone should tell Meghan and Harry, who appear to still be living there as squatters.
The ‘Globe’ yet again devotes its cover to its long-anticipated Obama divorce, under the headline: “Michelle Slapped With Divorce Papers! $150 million war explodes!” Yet inexplicably the ‘Globe’ can’t find these “divorce papers” in any courthouse in America. That’s how good its investigative reporting team is: they can obtain divorce papers even before they have been filed with the court or served on the respondent.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s health is the subject of the ‘Globe’ story “Gwynnie’s Got Too Thinnie!” The actress is reportedly "alarming pals with her too-skinny look!” and an “insider” reveals that “Her ribs stick out more than her boobs.”
To prove it, the ‘Globe’ publishes a photo of Paltrow today - and she looks sensational, toned, tanned and healthy, her breasts perkily projecting several inches beyond her ribs. But don’t believe your lying eyes, because if if an unnamed insider says she’s “terrifyingly thin,” who are we to argue?
The ‘Globe’ brings us the remarkable true crime story: “Tragic Pope Was Whacked By The Mob!”
Colombo crime family mobster Anthony Raimondi reportedly claims that he stood guard while his cousins - both Catholic Cardinals - fed a sleeping Pope John Paul I cyanide to prevent him from investigating a stock fraud scheme by the Vatican Bank in 1978. After detailing Raimondi’s tale of the poisoning, the ‘Globe’ helpfully adds: “Some mob experts say Raimondi’s story is total bull.” More like Papal Bull.
While the UK press have been speculating for weeks that Duchess Kate is pregnant with her fourth child, the ‘Globe’ again comes up with the scoop that has eluded the entire British Royal press corps: “Kate Pregnant - With Twins!” Apparently the happy couple “learned Kate was expecting a few weeks ago.” and have kept their news secret from everyone except the ‘Globe’ palace insider.
‘Us’ magazine puts dueling duchesses on its cover, under the headline: “Kate & Meghan: Why They’ll Never Be Friends.” While detailing the alleged “backstabbing, lies & betrayal,” ‘Us’ then undercuts its story by suggesting that the sisters-in-law could easily become close friends again, as an unnamed “insider” says: “If Meghan were to reach out to Kate, I’m sure she’d be willing to discuss their issues. It’s Kate’s greatest wish that the children all bond and that Archie be integrated into the family. She really longs for a time when the dust has finally settled.”
Continuing fallout from the college cheating scandal dominates the ‘People’ magazine cover: “Lori Loughlin: At Her Breaking Point. New charges, new fears.” If only there were some new quotes.
An unnamed source says of Loughlin: “She is a fighter. She maintains that she did nothing wrong, and if they are going to lock her up, they need to lock up everyone who has donated a library to a college so their kid will get in.” Sure, good luck with that. Maybe prosecutors will compromise, and agree to lock up everyone who ever donated a library to a university and had their children pose for photos on rowing machines to win a place on a college crew team despite never having competed in the sport.
Fortunately we have the crack investigative squad at ‘Us’ magazine to tell us that Chloe Bennet wore it best, that actress Sarah Chalke “can write with my feet,” that singer Natasha Bedingfield carries cleaning wipes, healing crystals and eye drops in her Balenciaga purse, and that the stars are just like us: they eat ice cream, buy decorations, and shop at Target. Riveting, as ever.
Recognizing how implausible its stories might appear, the ‘Globe’ maintains a slim single column under the heading “Bizarre But True!”
This week’s “true" treasures include the Maryland couple who received a postcard mailed almost 60 years earlier, a Michigan woman who made her grandson wear a hazmat suit to school when his class was infested with bedbugs, and a world record 5.6-pound avocado grown in Hawaii.
But if the ‘Enquirer’ proudly brands these few stories as “True,” what are we expected to think of the rest of their offerings?
Onwards and downwards . . .
Knives Out director Rian Johnson demonstrates his killing form in the Alamo Drafthouse's latest Don't Talk PSA:
Previous PSAs have included Sam Jackson promising an "intense solution" for talking:
And some disturbing tongue clicking:
Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare offer hours of cinematic gameplay. They're so engaging you might not want to play anything else, which is great because with all the disk space they take up, you might not have room to download other titles on your console.
That's why a good hard drive has become a necessity even for casual gamers these days, and Fantom Drives are among the best.
It's simple enough to offer space for your save files and games, and Fantom's drives certainly have that. Their storage hubs for Xbox One and PS4 include a Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD that packs 2 TB of data space, accessible with a lightning-fast 5Gbps transfer rate.
But there's plenty of flexibility beyond that. The Xbox One hub is also outfitted with three USB 3.0 ports, suitable for charging controllers or adding even more storage. The PS4 model also works with the PS4 Pro, PS4 Slim, and PlayStation 3, and it allows you to convert your original PS drive into a portable SSHD. In either case, they're easy to install, without external power cords.
Right now, you can get the Fantom Drives Xbox One Storage Hub + 2TB Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD for only $119 (normally $140) and the Fantom Drives PS4 Hard Drive Upgrade Kit with 2 TB Ultra Speed Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSHD for just $99 (normally $140) today.
Foie Gras, a fatty dish created by force-feeding ducks and geese through tubes, will soon no longer be served in the thousand-or-so NYC restaurants that have it on their menus. Chefs are saying "what next, veal?" fearing other ostentatiously cruel delicacies (as opposed to the mundanely cruel ones) will be next.
Foie gras has long been a point of debate.
In 2012, California's foie gras ban went into effect, only to have the ban overturned in 2015. Then, in 2017, the ban was upheld by a circuit court judge -- a decision that was backed by the Supreme Court in January of 2019. Chicago's history with the ban is almost equally as tumultuous. The Chicago City Council passed the ban in 2006, only to lift it two years later. What makes foie gras so contentious is the method of preparation. Foie gras is made of fattened duck or goose liver, and it has long been considered a French delicacy -- so much that the country has protected it as part of France's cultural heritage. But the product is made by force-feeding ducks, an practice that many people, like councilwoman Rivera, have found troubling
Brett Tingley writes about 70 years' research into anti-gravity and similar fields of science fiction, an effort to harness nature's weakest force to military needs. It's gone nowhere, obviously—or has it?
keep in mind that all of this information comes from unclassified sources, and there is definitely more of it than just what is represented here. We can only wonder how much work has been done in the classified realm on what was once openly considered the next massive revolution in aerospace technology.
The Truth Is The Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 70 Years [The Drive]
Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowship-winning philosopher Elizabeth Anderson recently spoke with Joe Humphreys at the Irish Times about America's toxic obsession with by-your-bootstraps individualism, and specifically how it relates to poverty.
There are plenty of impactful quotes throughout the interview, but the parts that stuck out the most to me—as an agnostic born into an Irish Catholic family, whose mother worked for the church for a long time—were her observations about America's puritanical roots, and, later, the impacts of World War II. Anderson essentially proposes the idea that early America Puritans like the Pilgrims were determined to distance themselves from the institutional power of the Catholic church—which, for all its faults, has at least had a longstanding commitment to helping and empathizing with those suffering from poverty. In addition to Manifest Destiny, these Puritans believed that hard work was the only promise of salvation, which eventually evolved into the whole "rugged individualism" idea that consumes so many American conservatives and Evangelicals. While Anderson acknowledges that this ethic is rooted in a very pro-worker mindset, it's clearly been secularized over time into a highly partisan hatred of the poor, with a nod towards its religious roots:
There is a profound suspicion of anyone who is poor, and a consequent raising to the highest priority imposing incredibly humiliating, harsh conditions on access to welfare benefits on the assumption you’re some kind of grifter, or you’re trying to cheat the system. There is no appreciation for the existence of structural poverty, poverty that is not the fault of your own but because the economy maybe is in recession or, in a notorious Irish case, the potato crop fails.
[…]
I think this work ethic ideology lies at the root of prejudice against whole groups of people. So the English notoriously considered the Irish lazy, lacking in the work ethic, just as [white] Americans think of blacks that way. The work ethic lies very deep in the way western countries have conceptualise the superiority of their groups.
Anderson also ties this back to World War II (a connection I've loosely explored elsewhere) by pointing that Europe was ravaged—forcing the predominantly Catholic population to acknowledge the importance of community support—while the mainland United States remained unscathed, ushering in an era of prosperity that allowed individuals to thrive even more:
That individualism – the idea that I’ve got to save myself – got secularised over time. And it is deep, much deeper in America than in Europe – not only because there are way more Catholics in Europe who never bought into this ideology – but also in Europe due to the experience of the two World Wars they realised they are all in the boat together and they better work together or else all is lost. America was never under existential threat. So you didn’t have that same sense of the absolute necessity for individual survival that we come together as a nation. I think those experiences are really profound and helped to propel the welfare state across Europe post World War II.
The interview is brief, but the whole thing is worth it for the few small insights like this.
Why do so many Americans hate the welfare state? [Joe Humphreys/The Irish Times]
Image via Wikimedia Commons
"Do you want to fuck snowman? It doesn't have to be a snowman…"
Apparently—if you're 20-year-old Cody Meadar of St. Petersburg, Florida—it could also be a stuffed toy unicorn.
From the Tampa Bay Times:
A St. Petersburg man was arrested Tuesday after police said he “dry humped" multiple stuffed animals at the Park Place Target, including Olaf, the snowman from the wildly successful Disney film Frozen.
The other victim was a large stuffed unicorn.
Police said Cody Meader, 20, of St. Petersburg, entered the store around 2 p.m. Tuesday. He walked up to a display of merchandise from Frozen, picked a large Olaf stuffed animal, placed it on the floor and proceeded to rub himself against it until he ejaculated.
Then he put it back on the display.
The fact that he put it back on display might be the most egregious detail here. At least show that stuffed animal a modicum of respect by bringing home after you non-consensually violate it.
There could have been a totally-tasteless joke in here about cooling down in the warm climate of Florida. Unfortunately, it was a whopping 53 degrees Fahrenheit in St. Petersburg on the day in question. So while there's generally no excusing for ejaculating on a stuffed snowman in the middle of big box store, this guy definitely has no excuse—except for the fact that he lives in Florida.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Tomorrow, Toronto's City Council will hold a key vote on Sidewalk Labs's plan to privatize much of the city's lakeshore in the name of creating a "smart city" owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.
Today, the Globe and Mail published a summary of Sidewalk Labs's leaked "yellow book", a 2016 document that lays out Sidewalk Labs's vision for Toronto and future projects in Detroit, Denver, and Alameda.
The plan lays out a corporate-owned city similar to Lake Buena Vista, the privately owned municipality established by the Walt Disney Company on a massive tract of central Florida land that contains the Walt Disney World resort.
The plan calls for the creation of privately owned and regulated roads, charter schools in place of publicly administered schools, the power to levy and spend property taxes without democratic oversight, a corporate criminal justice system where the cops and judges work for Sidewalk Labs, and totalizing, top-to-bottom, continuous surveillance.
Torontonians who decline to "share" information with Sidewalk Labs will not receive the same level of services as those who do.
Sidewalk Labs says that the document does not reflect its current ambitions.
Sidewalk Labs previously grossly understated the scope of its ambitions. When we revealed that the company had secretly secured the right to build across virtually the city's entire waterfront, they lied to us before finally admitting it.
Those choosing to remain anonymous would not be able to access all of the area’s services: Automated taxi services would not be available to anonymous users, and some merchants might be unable to accept cash, the book warns.
The document also describes reputation tools that would lead to a “new currency for community co-operation,” effectively establishing a social credit system. Sidewalk could use these tools to “hold people or businesses accountable” while rewarding good behaviour, such as by rewarding a business’s good customer service with an easier or cheaper renewal process on its licence.
This “accountability system based on personal identity” could also be used to make financial decisions.
"A borrower’s stellar record of past consumer behaviour could make a lender, for instance, more likely to back a risky transaction, perhaps with the interest rates influenced by digital reputation ratings,” it says.
Sidewalk Labs document reveals company’s early plans for data collection, tax powers, criminal justice [Tom Cardoso and Josh O’Kane/Globe and Mail]
Brian Van Slyke writes, "STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion is a board game about building a city-wide rebellion to stop a mega-corporation's takeover. It was created in collaboration between The TESA Collective, a publisher of games about changing the world, and Jobs with Justice (JWJ), a leading labor rights organization. It has just launched on Kickstarter.
"In STRIKE!, players collaboratively lead a city-wide rebellion of workers against Happycorp’s attempt to takeover their city. Players grow their ranks, mobilize their workers, and organize strikes around their city. As the Strike Council scores victories for workers, they will gain the support of more allies, from the dockworkers to the teachers, and build new bases of support from the manufacturing district to the university. The idea for STRIKE! was born out of conversations between TESA and Jobs with Justice. For 8 months, TESA and JWJ worked on every step of the game together, from the conceptual ideas, to the world building, the game design, and playtesting. They designed it to be a game about, by, and for the labor movement.
"STRIKE!’s crowdfunding campaign comes at a time when Kickstarter workers themselves are fighting to form a union. In response to calls from the Kickstarter workers, TESA and JWJ have added statements of solidarity to the game’s campaign page as well as ways that their supporters can support Kickstarter’s workers. Like all of TESA’s previous games, STRIKE! will also be printed and assembled in the United States on sustainable materials."
STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion [The TESA Collective/Kickstarter]
Well, whatcha gonna do?
According to Classical Gas Emissions, "The band is called Mental Note, and they appeared on a show called "Johnny Sizzle's Entertainment Watch" which aired on the Winnipeg Public Access channel in 1992."
(via r/ObscureMedia)
Police shut down part of a train station in Westchester County, New York to investigate a suspicious package. Turned out that the suspicious package was a new emergency calling device for passengers to report suspicious packages and behavior.
(NBC4NY)
Enjoy this cover version of Bob Dylan's 1965 song, "Mr. Tambourine Man," performed by The Starbugs from New Zealand. It's from their 2011 album Kids Sing Bob Dylan.
Image: YouTube
The passage of AB1482, which limits annual California rent-increases to 8%, is an important step to solving California's urgent housing crisis, but thanks to lobbyists for the massive private-equity landlord industry, the bill contains a huge loophole: if landlords evict their tenants before January 1, they can effectively escape the bill's strictures.
In most California cities, this loophole is relatively minor, because landlords can't simply evict good tenants who pay their rent on time and treat their homes with respect. But some cities -- like Burbank, where I live -- allow for "no fault" evictions, in which landlords can simply evict tenants on 60 days' notice, even if they have never missed a day's rent.
The combination of the deliberately introduced loophole in AB1482 and Burbank's deficient tenant protection law has put the city's renters -- about half of our residents! -- at dire risk of eviction. Whole buildings' worth of people -- retirees, families with young kids enrolled in local schools -- have been evicted, with a deadline to vacate during Christmas week.
Last night, I spoke at a City Council meeting calling for an emergency measure to stop the evictions. Despite my remarks and those of dozens of other Burbankers, the council voted 3-2 against the measure.
The Burbank Tenants Rights Committee is now collecting signatures for a line-item initiative for our 2020 ballot that introduces comprehensive tenants' protection for Burbankers.
The Committee is soliciting donations to pay for the initiative, including paying wages for people to collect 6,200 signatures to get the issue on the ballot.
I donated $100.
Ordinance allows evictions based on at-fault and no-fault, as listed. Meaning Landlord must give one of the stated reasons to evict and no longer may evict for no reason. Examples of at-fault: nonpayment of rent; violation of lease and failure to cure; creation of a nuisance or other illegal activity in the unit, rental complex or within 1000 feet of; refusing Landlord reasonable access. Examples of no-fault: Landlord demolishing or substantially rehabilitating unit; seeking to recover unit for occupancy by a resident manager or specified family member; permanent removal of unit from rental market. If eviction is no-fault, Landlord must pay specified relocation payments to the tenants; all of whom split the relocation fee. Fee ranges from $7,750 to $20,050 depending on the length of tenancy and type of tenant - elderly, disabled. Commission may set new relocation fees that are no less than fees in Health and Safety Code §17975.2. In all cases, Landlord must give proper notices. Ordinance further protects against retaliatory actions or evictions, involuntary vacancies and providing a mechanism for Landlord to buyout the tenant.
Rent regulations apply to units built before February 1, 1995. Ordinance allows an annual increase in rent based on the Consumer Price Index, but no greater than 7% per year. First increase is effective September 1, 2021, calculated on the September 30, 2019 rent or rent initially charged post September 30, 2019 occupancy. There are special noticing provisions. Ordinance does not currently control initial rent amount, but may do so if state law changes. Landlord may petition Commission for a rent increase to ensure a Fair Return or tenant may petition for reduction based on specific criteria.
Commission is composed of 5 members with no fewer than 2 tenants and no more than 2 residential rental property owners, appointed by the City Council. Commission implements and oversees Ordinance; develops rules and regulations to govern; produces publications; determines annual rent adjustments; adjudicates rent petitions and establishes penalties for noncompliance by Landlords. Commission establishes its own budget, hires staff and/or outside legal counsel, initiates litigation. A fee charged to Landlords, set by Commission, will fund cost of the Commission and administration. Ordinance provides a new bureaucratic unit of City government, independent and outside of the powers granted by City Charter to City Council, City Manager and City Attorney.
Burbank Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protection Act [Burbank Tenants Rights Committee]
Lifehacker's "Evil Week" tips aren't necessarily evil, or even unethical. They are all a bit sneaky, though, but could come in handy under the right circumstances. For example, if you have to make a phone call and don't want to get stuck talking to the person tell them your phone's battery is almost exhausted. Instead of buying new plants, snip cuttings from plants belonging to others. If you want to get a better deal on your credit card (like getting points or skipping the annual fee) call and say you want to cancel your card. The credit card company will usually give you a retention offer so you change your mind.
Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash
"Vital: The Future of Healthcare" is a crowdfunded anthology of short science fiction stories about the future of health care, with contributions from top writers like James Patrick Kelly, Seanan McGuire, Annalee Newitz, Paolo Bacigalupi and Caroline M. Yoachim (they're also open to submissions!).
They're seeking at least $8,300 to pay writers and editors, and print and distribute the book. Their stretch goals include audiobooks, a marketing budget, etc. Profits from the book's sale will be donated to a fund to erect quake-resistant towers for the Loma Linda University Health in Southern California.
The project was created by Ralph M. Ambrose, a writer, editor and narrator, who works as Director of Web Services at Loma Linda University Health.
$12 gets you an ebook, $30 gets you a paperback.
Vital: The Future of Healthcare is an anthology of short stories. Vital has already gathered stories from leading futurist writers, weaving together disparate visions of what comes next in health and health science.
Our visions of the future — whether dark or hopeful, thrilling or mundane — have always challenged us to examine our world. How can we improve? What challenges will we face? Are we even ready? Vital: The Future of Healthcare aims to explore these questions as they relate to humanity’s physical and mental well-being.
Any full-sized candy bar
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Kit Kat
Twix
Snickers
Cash, or other forms of legal tender
Peanut M&M’s
Regular M&Ms
Nestle Crunch
Tolberone something or other
Milky Way
Lindt Truffle
Rolos
Three Musketeers
Hershey's Dark Chocolate
York Peppermint Patties
100 Grand Bar
Skittles
Starburst
Hershey’s Milk Chocolate
Heath Bar
Junior Mints
Caramellos
Nerds
Milk Duds
Hershey's Kisses
Jolly Ranchers (good flavor)
Cadbury Creme Eggs
Swedish Fish
Gummy Bears straight up
Smarties (American)
LemonHeads
Glow sticks
Mint Juleps
Vicodin
Pixy Stix
Licorice (not black)
LaffyTaffy
Lollipops
Mint Kisses
Minibags of chips
Bottle Caps
Smarties (Commonwealth)
Candy Corn
Now'n'Laters
Dots
Kinder Happy Hippo
Goo Goo Clusters
Fuzzy Peaches
Hard Candy
Good N' Plenty
Licorice (yes black)
Reggie Jackson Bar
Chiclets
Trail Mix
Hugs (actual physical hugs)
Bonkers (the candy)
Maynards
Sweetums (a friend to diabetes)
Healthy Fruit
Black Jacks
Pencils
Those odd marshmallow circus peanut things
Jolly Rancher (bad flavor)
Spotted Dick
Generic Brand Acetaminophen
Box'o'Raisins
Whole Wheat anything
Anonymous brown globs that come in black & orange wrappers (Mary Janes)
Creepy Religious comics/Chick Tracts
Kale smoothie
White Bread
Dental paraphenalia
Gum from baseball cards
Candy that is clearly just the stuff given out for free at restaurants
Broken glow stick
We revised the original hierarchy each year between 2006 and 2009 to include feedback from readers and onlookers back at our blog The World’s Fair. (Younger readers can google “blog.”) We then moved here to BoingBoing to find an audience eager to debate the proper order of candy enjoyment. The 2010-2013 versions were fine, they were fine. Then in 2014 we added legitimate reader contributions in the form of a not-quite-social-science-legit survey. But legit enough for talking candy. On a website. For idle speculation. That we could then make a big deal of off-line. With disproportionate certainty.
The 2006 original had a distinct top stratum, four of which were Snickers, Milky Way, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Twix. The 2014 data—the set actually defined by survey results—showed pretty much the same thing in the top tier, give or take. The four revisions between 2014 and 2017 likewise didn’t much change. Data coalesced. That’s our big conclusion. Admitting the very Western bias of the survey, you find a notably stable Top 10 and a Very Stable Top 5. Obviously “any full-sized candy bar” will always rank at the top. “Cash or other legal tender” remains popular.
So it’s true that for specific candies (not counting cash and the full-sizers you get from the house with the Beamer in the drive) we discovered what scholars call The Classic Quartet: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Twix, and Kit Kat. Toblerone keeps edging into a top 5 and you get those Lindt Truffles that nobody actually buys but still somehow sit high up the hierarchy. You’re gonna get your Milky Ways (the allergic kid’s Snickers), your Butterfingers, your Peanut M&Ms (always outranking plain). Since Rolo’s can be rolled to a friend, they too hang in the upper strata. And, surprisingly to many aficionados, a Nestle Crunch always finds its way hanging in top strata too.* (On the bottom deep earth side, white bread, gum from baseball cards, broken glow sticks, and dental paraphernalia are perennial un-satisfieds, so much so that after many years not a single person has cared to point out we consistently misspelled paraphernalia.)
These are the facts. So factual that we contrived a mathy-sounding thing, Joy Induction and Despair, the difference of which is Net Feelies. Nf = |Jc – Dc|. Data sets abounded. In 2017, cognitive scientist and data analyst Shannon Ellis ran the numbers from our longitudinal study. The results confirm the coalescence to show only slight movement in the upper tier.
Maybe more important was the addition of non-candy data that gave greater context to our candy eating lives.** Specifically, obviously, we mean the Friday-Sunday question run by @somelaterdate’s Various Breads and Butters (the only undefeated podcast about small college life, now retired in triumph). Do you, as a person, as a human, prefer the day Friday or Sunday? Those are the only two choices. Pick one. A lot of people. Like, ~10,000 people. In what we now understand is The Platinum Ratio, respondents prefer Friday to Sunday at a strikingly consistent 2-to-1 ratio. More to the point, Friday people dislike black licorice while sad-sack Sunday people favor it. Go ask someone. Ask that dude reading over your shoulder on the subway right now. See?
But back to the good candy, know this: When CNN reports on a new Monmouth survey showing Reese’s, Snickers, and M&Ms at the top, your answer is “no shit, people.”
When FiveThirtyEight shows a power ranking with a top four including Reese’s, Twix, Kit Kat, Snickers, your answer is “no shit, people.”
When The Cut does a slow reveal to say that the top ranked candy is…wait for it…a little longer, keep waiting…Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, pack it up, shut it down, walk away, we know.
And, and, when the La Times doesn’t even have Peanut Butter Cups in their top 20?? What the what?, then you know they are officially the Rasmussen Survey of Candies, pointless, erroneous, literally unbelievable.
To bind this all up, we encourage readers to download and carry with them this Official Candy Hierarchy for 2019 [PDF]. It collects, confirms, codifies, and captures the essence of candy priority. It is, at last, the answer we’ve been looking for all these years.
The 2019 Science Based Candy Hierarchy
*We have identified a consistent flaw, year to year, whereby mint-chocolate based candies do not rank as highly as they are supposed to. This comes up in prior commentaries of the hierarchy, so check them out to confirm the supremacy of mint-chocolate based candies.
**We’re being told it gave no greater context to our candy-eating lives.
The chart may be viewed and printed as a high-quality digital PDF poster (110kb) for detailed scrutiny
What is all the hubbub, bub? Gen X is doing just fine playing video games while it appears some Millennials are unable to keep up with the kids.
Vice:
Those who grew up playing games online know just how easy it is to blame poor performance on factors outside of your control. That person who's just absolutely wrecking you? They're obviously hacking. And now, as Millennials grow older they have yet another convenient excuse at their disposal: I'm just getting too old for this shit.
But it's the more likely scenario that's the hardest to accept: It's not that you're getting worse at video games, it's that everyone got a lot better. As a younger, bigger, and more-skilled generation has finally emerged to take your spot among the leaderboards, you cannot "git gud." In our slow march towards oblivion, we must choose: get owned, or go play something else.
I have been playing games for so long that I must 'invert-look' on all games or I am unable to control them. Perhaps this learned up-down response from the days of the Atari 2600 is what keeps my play 'trash.'
A video game is about having fun. If you have fun playing the video game you are doing it right.
A few years back, my older brother Rick Pescovitz invented the "Under the Weather Pod," a single-person pop-up shelter to sit inside. It's designed for spectator sports, fishing, and other outdoor events where it's raining but you are either obligated to watch or having so much fun you don't want to leave. Most recently, he came up with the WalkingPod, a wearable version of the tent. Yes, it looks ridiculous, but it's actually now being used by delivery people, police officers, and various other folks who have to move around in the rain. The Washington Post has a feature about the popularity of "pod" products, from laundry detergent pods to AirPods to whisky pods to, yes, my brother's WalkingPod. From the Washington Post:
More at Under The Weather Pods.“When I think of a pod, I think of personal space,” said Rick Pescovitz, the CEO of Under the Weather, the sporting-goods company responsible for this particular pod. “With outdoor and even indoor living, younger people want to have a smaller footprint and help the environment.”
Pescovitz admits the WalkingPod is “almost a joke-type item.” But he also says it’s great for sanitation workers, street vendors, ticket-takers, sports spectators, security guards, people who work on oil tankers. . . . And his company sells other pods, too — such as the StadiumPod, which is designed for bleacher-sitters.
"OK boomer" is an all-purpose rejoinder for millennials and Gen Y/Zers who are accused by their elders of eating too much avocado toast, wanting a participation trophy, or of miscellaneous snowflaking.
The phrase's origin is apparently in responses to a viral Tiktok clip showing an old white man denouncing youngsters, which spawned thousands of creative, sarcastic responses centered around the phrase "OK boomer."
The apex of the "OK boomer" moment is 19 year old Shannon O'Connor's "OK boomer" merch: hoodies and tees, captioned, "Have a terrible day." O'Connor has competition from a variety of other "OK boomer" merchandisers selling custom tees and tights through sites like Redbubble and Spreadshirt. The most successful "OK boomer" vendors say they plan to use the money to pay down the massive debts they've racked up trying to survive in a world in which boomers have arranged for massive inequality and high prices for life's essentials.
The movement's anthem is Peter Kuli's "OK boomer".
Taylor Lorenz documented "OK boomer" in a New York Times article that led to a flood of emails from aggrieved boomers who wanted to wag their fingers at her.
I'm sympathetic to this snappy rejoinder, but also mindful of Yves Smith's rebuttal that it supposes that "a 75-year-old Walmart greeter and a 75-year-old billionaire are more alike than different."
My novel Little Brother has a fictional youth uprising whose slogan is "Don't trust anyone over 25," but whose protagonists (spoiler alert!) only triumph when they make common cause with the adults in their lives who are also being victimized by the forces that have got the kid-heroes in an uproar.
The incredible support that Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have won among young people -- even people too young to vote -- is a timely reminder that our enemy is oligarchy, not demographics. "OK boomer" is a snappy comeback for generalizations about so-called generations, but like all slogans, it fails to capture some very important nuance.
Rising inequality, unaffordable college tuition, political polarization exacerbated by the internet, and the climate crisis all fuel anti-boomer sentiment.
And so Ms. Kasman and other teenagers selling merch say that monetizing the boomer backlash is their own little form of protest against a system they feel is rigged. “The reason we make the ‘ok boomer’ merch is because there’s not a lot that I can personally do to reduce the price of college, for example, which was much cheaper for older generations who then made it more expensive,” Ms. Kasman said. “There’s not much I can personally do to restore the environment, which was harmed due to corporate greed of older generations. There’s not much I can personally do to undo political corruption, or fix Congress so it’s not mostly old white men boomers who don’t represent the majority of generations.”
Ms. Kasman said she plans to use proceeds to pay for college. So do others.
‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations [Taylor Lorenz/New York Times]
This Honest Trailer to Kubrick's The Shining pokes fun at noted weaknesses in an otherwise excellent movie. Before watching the video, I recommend that you read "25 Things You Might Not Know About The Shining," which has some great facts about the movie that I didn't know about.
Image: YouTube
“Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods?” Juul's then-CEO Kevin Burns allegedly said when a senior vice president told him Juul should include an expiration date on the packaging of the nicotine pods it makes. The quote is in a lawsuit filed against the company by an aggrieved former employee.
From Buzzfeed:
A former Juul executive is alleging in a lawsuit that the fast-growing startup shipped out 1 million contaminated e-cigarette pods earlier this year — but did not tell customers or issue a recall.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Siddharth Breja, a former senior vice president of global finance who worked at the San Francisco–based company from May 2018 to March 2019. In the lawsuit — filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California on the same day that Juul confirmed its plans to lay off about 500 people — Breja claims he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the contaminated shipment.
Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash
The NSO Group is one of the world's most notorious cyber-arms dealers, selling hacking tools to some of the world's most oppressive regimes that are used to identify targets for arrest, torture and even murder.
The Israeli company went through a series of buyouts and buybacks, ending up in the hands of the European private equity fund Novalpina and its owners, including Yana Peel, the former CEO of London's Serpentine Gallery who resigned her position after The Guardian revealed her ownership stake, which was deemed to be at odds with the Serpentine's commitment to human rights and free expression.
Novalpina has pledged to rehabilitate the NSO Group's reputation by reforming its practices and limiting the sale of its spying tools to legitimate actors (whomever they may be). But research from the world-leading Citizen Lab (previously) revealed that NSO was behind a string of attacks on Whatsapp users last may, which was used to target human rights campaigners, journalists, and political dissidents.
Facebook has filed a lawsuit against the NSO Group, accusing the company of being behind Whatsapp attacks in 20 countries (Whatsapp is a division of Facebook); Facebook claims that the attacks swept up at least 100 members of civil society groups.
The suit seeks an injunction against future NSO Group attacks on Whatsapp and unspecified monetary damages.
NSO is also being sued in Israel for allegedly helping to entrap the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was kidnapped, murdered and dismembered at the direction of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Facebook's suit presents a mixed bag of legal theories: they accuse NSO Group of violating California contract and property law, but also of violating the tremendously flawed Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 federal anti-hacking law that Facebook drastically expanded when it sued a competitor called Power Ventures in 2008 (the CFAA was also the law used to hound Aaron Swartz to death). There's a risk that a verdict in Facebook's favor will strengthen precedents that allow the CFAA to be wielded against legitimate competitors, independent security researchers, and other good actors.
One potential fix for this would be an "interoperator's defense" that would clarify that CFAA and other statutes do not apply to good actors, ever, something like "Notwithstanding any law or regulation, it is never an offense to create a new interoperable product, service, part, software patch or application, tool, or consumable that allows the legitimate owner or user of an existing product to service to repair, reconfigure, improve or customize that product or service."
In its statement, Facebook frames its work in the context of defending human rights, citing the work of UN Special Rapporteur on Free Expression David Kaye (previously), who has called for a moratorium on sales of cyber-weapons, including to nation-states.
The NSO Group denies any wrongdoing.
WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world [Raphael Satter/Reuters]
NSO Group / Q Cyber Technologies [Citizen Lab]
Forgot to take out the trash, the Halloween costume.
"Too embarrassed" to wear glitzy, showy Halloween costumes, a group of folks in Japan decided to start wearing "mundane" ones starting in 2014. These hilarious "jimi Halloween" costumes feature people in ordinary, everyday types of situations.
Like, here's a lady who is playing a "camera assistant for children's photo studio":
And this guy is about to win at Old Maid:
This lady is a YouTuber testing lipstick colors:
｢めっちゃ可愛くないですか!!??｣を甲高い声で繰り返し言うと美容系YouTuberになれます
会場で｢本当にYouTubeやってるんですか！？｣って色んな方に言われました
腕の細工も見て〜#地味ハロウィン #DPZ pic.twitter.com/jsUT1hbCb5
— れちゅ
ぴなふぉあ (@laitue_pina) October 27, 2019
Mundane? Sure. Boring? Never. Clever? Yes, my god, yes!
Search the hashtag #DPZ or head to Spoon & Tomago to see more.
(Kottke)
screenshot via @oni_red
In 1978, two luminaries of South Korean cinema were abducted by Kim Jong-Il and forced to make films in North Korea in an outlandish plan to improve his country's fortunes. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Choi Eun-Hee and Shin Sang-Ok and their dramatic efforts to escape their captors.
We'll also examine Napoleon's wallpaper and puzzle over an abandoned construction.
Big things are happening in tech with AI and deep learning. That's not exactly a news flash when you look at how often companies use algorithms to manage everything from online advertising to the songs, videos, posts, and other digital content platforms recommend for their users.
Getting into the field requires a pretty broad range of knowledge, and that's exactly what the Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Certification Bundle is designed for.
What you've got here is eight courses, most of them crafted and taught by Minerva Singh - one of the top web instructors on AI. The package includes a course that introduces you to the terminology and concepts behind machine learning before taking a deep dive into one of the primary programming languages that drive it: Python.
You'll learn to classify, sort, and visualize data with Python and R, then wrangle that information to form the data structures you'll need to initiate deep learning. Along the way, the bundle also covers essential software like Tensorflow and Keras - basically, everything you'll need to set up your own neural network, no matter how big the database.
You can get access to all 8 courses now for just $29.
Henderson, Kentucky is a town of about 30,000 people in the western part of the state. It's not far from Evansville, Indiana, and it's one of the top three corn and soybean producers in the state.
It's also home to a City Commissioner named Patti Bugg who, according to the local 14 News, is totally panicking over the less-than-2-percent Latine population sharing their annual Day of the Dead festivities with the rest of the townsfolk. For the first time ever, the town's Central Park will transform into a full public celebration of ancestral memories—ya know, like ya do on Dia de los Muertos. Mexican and Latine cultures are hardly alone in observing some sort of not-strictly-Christian communing with the spirit world as a mid-autumn tradition. But Bugg is concerned that the event might take a more…insidious turn (emphasis added):
“I’d say 99 percent of the day of the dead is probably innocent. I think that’s fine," says Commissioner Bugg. "I think if you want to honor your loved ones. I think the only challenge is if they actually try to summons somebody else, you know, a loved one from the grave, then I think they’re asking for some serious stuff. As a Christian, I don’t think they can do that.”
On one hand, she has a point. I mean, if we're being technical, anyone actually attempting to resurrect the dead through supernatural (or scientific!) means is indeed "asking for some serious stuff." On the other hand, Patti Bugg (what a name) is clearly a xenophobic moron if she thinks that even one percent of the town's growing Latine population (read: about 6 people) is planning to raise an army of zombies to gentrify those fine Kentucky suburbs—and even if they did, it shouldn't fucking matter. As a government representative, Patti Bugg's Christian beliefs are particularly irrelevant, thanks to that handy First Amendment.
image via needpix
Polygon interviewed Watchmen costume designer Meghan Kasperlik, who described the movie magic used to bring Looking Glass to life:
“We had five different masks,” the designer says, explaining that exactly what Nelson was wearing would change depending on the demands of the scene. Some of the masks were for motion tracking, featuring a special print that would aid with motion capture and tracking, keeping track of the orientation of Nelson’s face at all times. Others were purely green screen or spandex, while yet another — the only mask that wouldn’t require the reflectiveness to be added via CG later — was made of lamé, a type of fabric that has metallic fiber woven throughout it, meaning only one of the actual masks used during shooting was that distinctive silver.
Den of Geek talked to Tim Blake Nelson about wearing the mask:
“The mask is fine to wear. I really like it,” he says. “Actually it furnishes a wonderful challenge that is specific to itself. In drama school we did mask class and the reason they taught that was to take away the visage, which is an essential form of expression that we have, and force the actor to use only body and voice. I looked at this as a really fun exercise over an entire season of television in which I would get to explore that. And moreover going in the opposite direction with this character. Rather than amplifying body and voice to use the mask to pull back even more. In other words, go in the opposite direction, use less of my voice, less of my body, and to simplify.”
Blaine Gibson managed to pull off a convincing Looking Glass costume in real life:
The "annual" is a British comics tradition, in which a beloved comic like the Beano produces an end-of-the-year gift book full of puzzles, short stories, artwork, games, comics, and suchlike.
The Scarfolk Annual is a facsimile of a notional annual produced for the blighted children of Scarfolk, distressed and scuffed to give it the appearance of a discarded library book that's been discovered in a charity shop bin (an introduction informs the reader that this is just what's happened, and that, moreover, the erstwhile owner disappeared under mysterious circumstances).
The Annual is a showcase for the brilliance of Scarfolk, which uses the iconography of the Thatcher-era authoritarian malaise to skewer Thatcher's ideological descendants, who combine cruelty and clownishness with barely disguised racism and eugenics as they drive the country towards catastrophe while serving the ultra-rich, punishing the poor for the sin of poverty, and use racism to cement a thoroughly despicable coalition of the hereditarily posh, sociopathic financiers, and terrified, small-minded Little Englanders.
As with all of Littler's work, the Annual presents itself as a deceptively simple satire, but rewards close attention as the fine details and hidden gags add texture and depth.
This is Littler at the top of his Scarfolk form -- an unpredictably wonderful, brilliant piece of political satire.
The Scarfolk Annual [Richard Littler/William Collins]
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Like a lot of people, I belong to a number of neighborhood-centric Facebook groups. While the general Jamaica Plain group is broadly fine, there's also a private, invite-only group for complaining about the general day-to-day absurdity of living in newly desirable neighborhood of any increasingly-expensive city.
And that's where I discovered this glorious work of art (which, as far as I can tell after a Tin Eye search, originated from the fittingly-named Humans of Late Capitalism Facebook page):
According to these standards, my beloved home in JP is actually in pretty good shape. Though we are the home of the original Sam Adams Brewery, we only have one other brewpub (so far). We're also (so far) safe from the axe-throwing bar trend, and at least Boston Logan is a pretty good airport. In lieu of cows, we have an albino squirrel and those god damn Brookline turkeys. But otherwise…well, shit. I'm pretty sure I am "Guy with stories about band/artist who made it."
Image via Matt Brown/Flickr
The Cybersecurity Visuals Challenge was conceived as a way to produce "imagery that better represents the cybersecurity space in an accessible and compelling manner." Something more meaningful than "pictures of locks, white men in hoodies, or green 1s and 0s."
25 submissions were shortlisted, including this one by Bronney Hui, intended to highlight the absurdity of over-sharing of personal data:
Those shortlisted selections were further refined, until the five winners were announced. Winners include "So Long And Thanks For All The Phishing" by Abraham Pena:
In style, I was inspired by the drawing style of the New Yorker covers, as this is a major publication aimed at a public looking for information and quality reports. Given the wide demographic range, they should be friendly to an audience of both sexes, of a wide age range and not necessarily illustrated in deep concepts of technology or engineering. Therefore the use of bright colors, warm, in a more casual tone and even slightly irreverent.
Ivana Troselj based her submission on The Cuckoo's Egg:
I don’t think we yet understand how to best recognise this threat; it has crept into the most trustworthy aspects of our everyday business. The bird is mistakenly rearing a grenade in a nest of its own eggs. This represents the act of misplaced trust. Information Warfare elements (my PhD topic of research) are often masked as trustworthy elements of our online information space, which we willingly incorporate into our networks, or accept in good faith as part of our decision making processes. The dangerous outcome of this misplaced trust is analogous to the metaphor of the cuckoo, which will soon outgrow its starving parents, and kill all the other young it finds in the nest.
...
I am working on a zoo of surrealist cyber-animals and children in a dark Wonderland world as metaphors for the activity that daily take place in ‘dark woods’ of the internet. But I’d like to present these pictures as part of a graphic ‘story’ about children lost in the woods, and not just stand-alone images. Nature offers many beautiful analogies that are readily recognisable, and the child in the fairytale supplies a values-driven genre that is immediately understood.
You can see all the winners and download high resolution versions of the graphics, which are available for use under Creative Commons license, here.
