The wonderful Copy Me project (previously) has revealed the first installment in its new three-part series on The Creativity Delusion, which takes aim at the "myth of genius," which picks a small subsection of creators, scientists and entrepreneurs and declares them to be "original" by ignoring all the work they plundered to create their own and erasing all the creators whose shoulders they stand upon.
(more…)
The authors of the entertaining 388-page Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies For Dummies make short work of debunking a bunch of popular tinfoil hat bugaboos, like Roswell, Area 51, underground government installations, chemtrails, faked moon landings, 911 truthers, Illuminati, etc. They also have a good section explaining why some people are attracted to conspiracy theories, and tips for being a good skeptic. The paperback version is just $8.42 and according to the decription, it was was required reading in a 2010 course on conspiracy at Harvard University. My kids are at the age when they are wondering about conspiracy theories, because it is a appealing but flawed filter for understanding a complicated world. I'm hoping they'll read it. I wish I had this book when I was a teenager.
Reddit has shut down /r/deepfakes, the subreddit where people collaborate to produce incredibly disturbing faceswapped pornography that uses machine-learning to put the faces of famous people who aren't pornography performers onto the bodies of people having sex in pornographic videos.
(more…)
When we debate copyright policy on the internet, the story is pitched as "creators vs technology," but that leaves out the millions of people who create, but who are not part of the traditional entertainment industry -- people whose self-expression, artistic fulfillment, and audiences matter every bit as much as the audiences for creators who sign on to the big labels, studios, publishers and news bureaux.
(more…)
Detectives Marcus Taylor and Daniel Hersl of Baltimore's elite, seven-member Gun Trace Task Force are on trial for years of robbery, home invasions, drug dealing, gun dealing, and worse -- their defense is that they were not the primary participants in these activities, not that the crimes did not take place.
(more…)
Speaking to the Heritage Foundation last night in honor of Ronald Reagan's birthday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reckoned himself to be an expert on drug addiction and had some sage advice for opioid users: “Sometimes, you just need to take two Bufferin or something and go to bed.”
Other words of wisdom: “We think a lot of this is starting with marijuana or other drugs too.”
New federally funded research, however, finds a link between the availability of medical marijuana and fewer opioid deaths. A RAND Corporation study published earlier this month showed “an approximately 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths associated with the passage of any state medical marijuana law.”
WATCH: Attorney General Jeff Sessions says his goal for 2018 is to see a further decline in prescriptions of opioids, and says, "we think a lot of this is starting with marijuana and other drugs." pic.twitter.com/paWSsEuNrl
The producers of last year's disastrous Fyre Fest should consider hiring Atlanta entrepreneur Tiffany Brown, whose company, Tribute Contracting LLC, was awarded a $156 million contract from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver 30 million meals to starving Puerto Ricans. According to the New York Times, "By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000."
For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.
Ms. Brown, who is adept at navigating the federal contracting system, hired a wedding caterer in Atlanta with a staff of 11 to freeze-dry wild mushrooms and rice, chicken and rice, and vegetable soup. She found a nonprofit in Texas that had shipped food aid overseas and domestically, including to a Houston food bank after Hurricane Harvey.
By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000. And FEMA inspectors discovered a problem: The food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them. FEMA’s solicitation required “self-heating meals.”
“Do not ship another meal. Your contract is terminated,” Carolyn Ward, the FEMA contracting officer who handled Tribute’s agreement, wrote to Ms. Brown in an email dated Oct. 19 that Ms. Brown provided to The New York Times. “This is a logistical nightmare.”
From Dr. Tiffany Brown's "About Me" page:
Dr. Brown is a former 2009 Write-in Atlanta Mayoral Candidate and owner of 3 companies:
Tribute Contracting LLC, a minority owned government consulting firm (with Three FEMA Contracts over a span of five that equals 10.8 million and 1 million sales this year alone)
Tiffany Brown Designs- women’s clothing line
Tiffany Brown Holdings Inc.- Consulting firm that have five divisions: entertainment, vending, radio, food, nonprofit management and book publishing
Luxe Fuel- A beverage delivery software app
She is the an author of several books: Daily Reflections of Life: A Book of Affirmations for the Ambitious (2010), Prayers of a Faithful Woman (2011), Anger: How to Control It So It Won’t Control You (2014) and Beware: The Risks to Faith Based organizations regarding political advocacy and corporate sponsorship (October 2018 Release).
If Trump gets his way, your elderly relatives will be evicted from nursing homes after their Alzheimer's care eats up their lifetime Medicaid benefits; as Yves Smith writes, "are family members supposed to let them wander out into traffic and have nature take its course?"
(more…)
Botin Restaurant in Madrid has been in operation for 293 years, a world record. The owners claim the oven hasn't once gone out. The house specialty is roast suckling pig, which is 25 euros.
Ever since the doors opened in 1725, the oven has been sizzling continuously, never to be extinguished. According to deputy manager Luis Javier Sànchez Alvarez, the oven is the crown jewel of the restaurant and the fundamental element of their most popular dish, the roast suckling pig. The recipes used today have been passed down from generation to generation, keeping the legacy of these traditional dishes alive. With the honor of being the oldest restaurant in the world, Alvarez hopes to keep the doors open for centuries to come.
Computers that are isolated from the internet and local networks are said to be "airgapped," and it's considered a best practice for securing extremely sensitive systems.
(more…)
A few years ago I took a trip to Michigan, selling ads for Boing Boing. While there a friend arranged a tour of revival Detroit; this was the first I'd met Oneita Jackson.
Oneita is a magical tour-guide, a fantastic journalist, and the best damn cab driver you'll ever meet. She knows absolutely everyone in Detroit worth knowing, and was so incredibly enthusiastic that I will never forget the experience.
When Oneita sent me a copy of Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome I knew I had to read it that very day. This collection chronicles the experiences of a highly educated black woman as she moves about the many circles in American culture. Her stories will make you laugh, and you will facepalm, and most of all you will THINK.
The following story is a wonderful introduction to Oneita's work. I think these are as much poetry as short story.
BLACK PEOPLE KNIT
by Oneita Jackson
I said I was a knitter, but that’s not what she heard.
We were at a loud party at my friend’s house in West Village and I was the only One.
It didn’t matter that we were having a polite and interesting conversation, one of those getting-to- know-you, how-do-you-know-so-and-so (read: Why are YOU here?) conversations, where my announcement would have been inappropriate, moreover, inappropriate, moreover, awkward, o -topic, out of context, strange.
Arresting.
“I’m a nigger.”
What dumb-ass nigger says that at a white- people’s party?
No HNIC knitter. No hood-rat knitter. No church-folk knitter. Weed-smokin’ knitter. Educated knitter. Politically correct knitter. Hip-hop knitter. White-people-loving knitter. Avant-garde knitter. President of the United Fucking States knitter.
I knew she thought I said that other word because she didn’t react. Usually, when I announce myself as a “knitter,” people say something.
“I’m a knitter, too.”
“My grandmother knits.”
“I learned to knit when I was a kid.” “My aunt knits my kids sweaters.” “We have a stitch-and-bitch.”
“What do you knit?”
“Do you knit hats?”
“Can you knit me a scarf?”
“How long have you been knitting?”
“Where do you buy your yarn?”
“What are you working on?”
“How many projects you got goin’?”
“Do you knit on straight needles or circulars?”
They say something.
She said nothing.
It was her blank pale face that gave me pause.
I was a few sentences in before I came to. No questions forthcoming, I looked at her askance.
“Wait: Did you just think I said I was a nigger?”
“Yes.”
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s Golden Globe for BEST PORTRAYAL OF A POLITICALLY CORRECT WHITE WOMAN IN AN UNCOMFORTABLE SITUATION goes to the horrified little suburbanite at a house party in Detroit.
I placed my hand on her shoulder, amazed by her composure.
“Girl, you are good! That was so polite.”
“I said, ‘knitter,’ ” I said, and started air-knitting.
Last year Scotty of Strange Parts made an iPhone from spare parts he picked up at the mind-boggling electronics markets in Shenzhen, China. He recently returned to buy parts to make a one-of-a-kind iPhone from parts. In this video he selects a back and gets it laser engraved with a neat design.
Enough of these boring looking iPhones - let's make a custom Strange Parts iPhone here in Shenzhen, China. I headed out to the cell phone parts markets in Huaqiangbei, to find a custom iPhone back. I then headed off to the laser engraving booths to have them etch a custom design in the iphone back. I think it came out pretty well!
In 1992, Oklahoma passed a ballot initiative saying that the state could only raise taxes with a three quarters majority in the state assembly, creating a one-way ratchet where every tax cut becomes effectively permanent, including the sweetheart deals cut for frackers and the deep cuts to taxes on the wealthiest residents of the state.
(more…)
The marbled crayfish (Procambarus virginalis) is a mutant slough crayfish (Procambarus fallax) an American species; the mutation that allowed slough crayfish to reproduce asexually by cloning itself occurred a mere 25 years ago, and it came to Germany as an aquarium pet in 1995, sold as "Texas crayfish."
(more…)
Scott Wiener is California State Senator for San Francisco, whose SB827, co-sponsored by State Senator Nancy Skinner, will move some zoning responsibility from cities to the state, forcing cities to allow the construction of higher-density housing (duplexes, eight-plexes and midrise, six-story apartment buildings) near public transit stops.
(more…)
Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project, said: “It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at all.”
Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London and another member of the project’s team, agreed, saying the connection often drawn between Britishness and whiteness was “not an immutable truth. It has always changed and will change”.
Love that smile! If you're British, you've reportedly got about a 10% chance of descending from this guy's tribe. I suppose the more intellectually kempt white supremacists can remind themselves he isn't really black in the modern pseudoscientific or culturally-significant sense, but you know that's not how they feel about these things.
The instantly self-owning strategy among the crypto-racist morons of British punditry is to find white people who don't actually look like him in an attempt to suggest he's basically a Somerset lad with a tan.
Oxford's Computational Propaganda Project surveyed 13,500 "politically active" US Twitter users and 48,000 publicly visible Facebook pages, coding them for political affiliation, then measuring how much "junk news" (a news article that fails to live up to three or more of the following: professionalism, style, credibility, bias, counterfeit) was consumed and share by users based on their political affiliation.
(more…)
Tavis McGinn came to a job interview at Facebook to do the kind of work he'd done at Google, using analytics to help advertisers refine their campaigns; instead he was offered a job as Zuck's personal pollster, tracking the CEO's approval rating in fine-grained detail as he toured America and the world.
(more…)
Meet Cheddar Man. 
