Really not looking forward to people watching VR porn while riding public transportation.
BaDoink, a leading online adult entertainment company, has been an active pioneer in the virtual reality space – attempting to bring virtual reality porn to the masses. They recently hit the streets of San Francisco, California to give passerbys their first virtual reality experience, using the Samsung Gear VR with a Samsung Galaxy 6.
h/t Venture Beat.
Is there anything more scary than an extremely well-funded government agency investing in projects to mess with DNA? The Broad Institute has announced DARPA’s investment in The Foundry:
… Read the restA facility at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and MIT that aims to achieve the full potential of engineering biology has received a five-year, $32 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Foundry, started by MIT biological engineering professor Christopher Voigt and Broad Technology Labs (BTL) director Robert Nicol, is the result of a partnership between BTL and the Synthetic Biology Center of MIT, of which Voigt is co-director. The Foundry enables the rapid design, testing, and fabrication of large sequences of genetic information so they can be assembled like building blocks for myriad medical, industrial, and agricultural applications.
“Society relies on many products from the natural world that have intricate material and chemical structures, from chemicals such as antibiotics to materials like wood,” says Voigt.
A generation ago no one would have thought mining for water was going to be a hot investment theme. Now it is, reports the New York Times (air is next, one assumes):
… Read the restCADIZ, Calif. — Gazing out of a turboprop high above his company’s main asset — 34,000 acres in the Mojave Desert with billions of gallons of fresh water locked deep below the sagebrush-dotted land — Scott Slater paints a lush picture that has enticed a hardy band of investors for a quarter-century.
Yes, Mr. Slater admits, his company, Cadiz, has never earned a dime from water. And he freely concedes it will take at least another $200 million to dig dozens of wells, filter the water and then move it 43 miles across the desert through a new pipeline before thirsty Southern Californians can drink a drop.
But tapping cash, as opposed to actual water, has never been a problem for Cadiz.
Reading the coverage and watching the TV clips following the GOP’s most recent debate, writes Nader, “once comes away with the impression that snarls, quips, ripostes, and gaffes, now pass for news.” (Image: CNN)
The mass media, with usual exceptions, have allowed themselves to be pulled down to the level of the political circus. If the Republican Party’s early primary campaigns for the presidential nomination had an elephant and a clown car, Ringling Brothers would be in trouble. It is hard for the Republican presidential candidates to resist temptation, defined by hyping an entertainment circus led by the chief circus barker – Donald Trump of gambling casino fame.
Sixteen candidates, after inexplicably excluding Mark Everson, the former IRS commissioner under George W. Bush and the first to announce, are hurling epithets, war-mongering bravados, and assorted boasts against one another. After their so-called debates, the media emphasize the insults of Trump and others against one-another.… Read the rest
Via Wikipedia:
Moments before the episode with Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Janet Flanner, Mailer, annoyed with a less-than-stellar review by Vidal of Prisoner of Sex, headbutted Vidal and traded insults with him backstage. As the show began taping, a visibly belligerent Mailer, who admitted he had been drinking, goaded Vidal and Cavett into trading insults with him on air and continually referred to his “greater intellect”. He openly taunted and mocked Vidal (who responded in kind), finally earning the ire of Flanner, who announced that she had become “very, very bored” with the discussion, telling Mailer “You act as if you’re the only people here.” Mailer moved his chair away from the other guests and Cavett joked that “perhaps you’d like two more chairs to contain your giant intellect?” Mailer replied “I’ll take the two chairs if you’ll all accept finger-bowls.” As Cavett professed to not understand Mailer’s “finger bowl” comment and made further jokes, Mailer stated “Why don’t you look at your question sheet and ask your question?”, to which Cavett responded “Why don’t you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine?”
h/t Disinfo Commenter: Cortacespedes.… Read the rest
The UK’s Labour Party recently took a big swing to the left with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. Corbyn’s now revealed himself as something of a 9/11 Truther, per the Telegraph:
… Read the restJeremy Corbyn has claimed that 9/11 was “manipulated” to make it look like Osama Bin Laden was responsible to allow the West to go to war in Afghanistan.
Jeremy Corbyn. Photo: Garry Knight (CC)
In comments that will raise questions about his suitability to lead the Labour Party, Mr Corbyn appeared to blame George Bush and Tony Blair for using the September 11 attacks in New York to allow them to go to war.
In a series of further articles, Mr Corbyn also appears to endorse controversial conspiracy theories about a “New World Order”…
Mr Corbyn was heavily criticised in the days before winning the Labour leadership after suggesting that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a “tragedy”.
We were recently contacted by someone concerned with climate change, saying “it is our firm belief that our weather is being manipulated.”
They were “involved with a team whom presented to the IPPC panel in France recently and following on from their presentation to the panel we have come to the conclusion that we are wasting our time with a diplomatic approach, they ignore all of our concerns and we are no further forward after months of hard work.”
The alternative approach is to take direct action against alleged geoengineering by, for instance, building a Wilhelm Reich ‘Orgotron’ Chem-Cannon and using it to “bust” chemtrails. The individual requested:
Please could you encourage your community to just build one device in support of this important cause and pass on this information to interested parties and encourage them to build?
So, with that in mind, you can find all the details of how to build a Wilhelm Reich ‘Orgotron’ Chem-Cannon here.… Read the rest
When considering poverty, our national conversation tends to overlook systemic causes. Instead, we often blame the poor for their poverty. Commentators echo the claim that people are poor because they have bad self-control and therefore make nearsighted choices. But psychology research says the opposite might be the case: poverty makes it hard for people to care about the future and forces them to live in the present.
As a researcher who studies goals and motivation, I wanted to know how self-control works and if science can help us get better at it. Poverty seemed like a good place to start, because greater self-control could be especially helpful there. In fact, the federal Administration for Children and Families is adding character-skills training to its programs in efforts to improve self-control among children.
But as I started this work I was surprised by all the reasons that it’s so hard for people in poverty to have good self-control.… Read the rest
Disinfonaut & resident emcee Fletch serves up his next take of camp-satire Collage/Remix Art in the form of Short Film/Hip-Hopera “Fletch In Paris.”
(Disclaimer : Audio NSFW)
Digital painting by James Curcio based on street art by Trondheim
An editorial over at Rebel News asks if it’s actually possible to work against the Man if you are also working for him?
… Read the restLet’s talk about being a rebel.
Everyone seems to want to be one. But it’s not entirely clear what it means. Does it take camo- pants? A Che T-shirt? A guitar? Is it just doing the opposite of whatever your parents did? “Be an individual, a rebel, innovate,” so many advertisements whisper. They’d have us believe that True Revolutionaries think different. They use Apple, or drink Coke. We signal our dissent to one another with the music we listen to and the cars we drive.
There’s something very peculiar going on here, something elusive and deeply contentious.
In the 1997 book, Commodify Your Dissent, Thomas Frank laid out a thesis that may appear common sense to those that have watched or lived in the commodified subcultures of the 90s, 00s, and beyond.
