Los Angeles streetwear brand Pleasures celebrated the 40th anniversary of Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" album with a licensed line of apparel including this puffer jacket. The clothing, including hats and t-shirts, feature a plot of radio frequencies of the first pulsar discovered by scientists, a visualization that Peter Saville brilliantly borrowed for the album's cover art. (More on that in this Scientific American article.)

The reversible puffer jacket is $240 from Crusoe & Sons.

(via Uncrate) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/07/joy-division-unknown-pleasur.html

Sales of Swiss watches are declining, and sales of Apple watches are rising steeply. This must be a surprise to the makers of Swiss luxury watches, who lifted their imperious snouts in disdain at the cough-drop shaped Apple Watch when it first came out. From Enrique Dans's piece in Forbes, titled, How Apple Killed The Swiss Watch Industry:

In 2015, the year the Apple Watch was launched, LVMH watch division president and Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said the Swiss industry was not afraid of Apple’s new product, because it could not be repaired in a thousand years or eighty years, nor inherited by children, nor would it ever become a status symbol. As is always the case when disruption occurs in an industry, traditional competitors are not able to see the threat, and continue to try to analyze it according to the variables that were important yesterday.

Dans writes, "As soon as you start using the Apple Watch, you realize one thing is clear: the rest of your watch collection will live on in a drawer from now on."

Photo by Chris Abney on Unsplash Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/07/sales-of-apple-watches-eclipse.html

A while back I posted about the kind of fluffy pancakes you can get in Japan and how one guy said he makes them in a rice cooker. I still haven't tried it yet, but here's a simple recipe that I'd like to try from Kitchn:

Here’s how to make it at home: All you do is grease the insides of your rice cooker, pour your pancake batter in, set it to “cook/warm,” close the top, and for a 10-cup rice cooker, set the timer for 45 minutes or so, keeping an eye on it. Don’t worry if the giant pancake appears “wet” when you open the top. It’s just condensation from the steam. But do yourself a favor and give it a touch: it should feel firm and bouncy.

Image: Flipper's Pancake in Tokyo by Mark Frauenfelder, CC BY-SA 4.0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/07/heres-a-simple-recipe-for-ma.html

Comic book nerds are likely familiar with the work and controversies surrounding artist and inker, Vince Colletta. He is best known as an inker on Jack Kirby's The Mighty Thor, other Kirby titles, and other books at Marvel and DC.

But Colletta is not best known for the quality of his work, but rather, how fast he was, how many corners he cut, and how he did a disservice to the artist's original work in the process. Kirby would submit pencil art with crowds in the background that Colletta would simple remove, or he'd greatly simplify the machinery and technical greeblies in the backgrounds that Kirby was known for. If an image had background characters that needed to be there, Colletta would render them in silhouette rather than ink in the details. Management loved him because he met deadlines. Co-workers liked him because he was pleasant. Artists and generations of fans disparage him, dubbing him "the inker who ruined Jack Kirby's art."

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/fascinating-video-about-comic.html

Esteemed toy collector Joel Magee of Pawn Stars fame has acquired a prototype of an original Hot Wheels Camaro that was part of the 1968 "Sweet 16" series of the first Hot Wheels cars. Magee says the Camaro is valued at US$100,000 although, in reality, it is only worth whatever someone will pay for it. Apparently the white enamel paint indicates that it was a prototype. From Carscoops:

Only a “few” prototypes are known to have been mistakenly sent to retailers and most buyers would have been clueless. That appears to be what happened to the Camaro as it was found among a set of several other Hot Wheels cars. Joel examined the collection and consulted a Hot Wheels expert to determine that the “lone white Camaro was, in fact, the rarest of rare.”

Magee says the Camaro is the third rarest Hot Wheels car and the only one of its kind believed to exist. That puts it in rare company as “The Beach Bomb and the Olds 442 are the only other rare Hot Wheels on the level of the white enamel Hong Kong Camaro.”

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/hot-wheels-camaro-valued-at-th.html

“As they stole stories from real newspapers, these sites baffled scientists, activists, and journalists. Until now.”

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/fake-news-network-stole-from-l.html

I just watched the trailer for The Vast Of Night, an Amazon Prime Video feature movie that's "coming soon to theaters and Prime Video." Looks like creepy fun!

In the twilight of the 1950s, on one fateful night in New Mexico, a young, winsome switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and charismatic radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) discover a strange audio frequency that could change their small town and the future forever. Dropped phone calls, AM radio signals, secret reels of tape forgotten in a library, switchboards, crossed patchlines and an anonymous phone call lead Fay and Everett on a scavenger hunt toward the unknown.

Here's Variety's positive review.

Image: Vast of Night publicity still Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/heres-the-trailer-for-the.html

[UPDATE 2/6/20 12:09pm PT: According to the CNN, the doctor is alive but in critical condition. "Hours earlier the same state media organizations reported that he had died."

"Wuhan Central Hospital said on its official Weibo account that Li Wenliang, 34, had become seriously ill. 'In the fight against the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection, our hospital's ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected. He is currently in critical condition and we are trying our best to resuscitate him,' the statement read."]

A Chinese ophthalmologist in Wuhan who tried to warn his colleagues on December 30 about seven patients who had come down with a SARS-like virus but was censored by the Chinese government – and and then detained two days later for "rumor mongering" – has died from the disease.

After being detained for two days, Li Wenliang, age 34, helped patients with the novel coronavirus who streamed into his overrun hospital, until he himself became infected with the coronavirus and was hospitalized.

From The Washington Post:

The full outlines of his story, which came to light in recent weeks as the Wuhan outbreak exploded into an international emergency, set off a swell of outrage in China, where citizens have long chafed at the government’s penchant for relentlessly snuffing out any speech deemed threatening to social stability.

Many, including China’s judicial authorities in a rare rebuke of the police, have wondered whether the epidemic could have unfolded differently had Li not been silenced at a critical juncture ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday in late January...

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/chinese-doctor-who-tried-to-wa.html

Ten months ago the director of New Jersey's Division on Civil Rights alerted Facebook about a racist and anti-Semitic group page it was hosting, but Facebook took no action, reports Ars Technica. It took a letter from the state's attorney general to convince Facebook to remove the group page.

On Wednesday New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issued a joint statement, which read:

"We just learned that Facebook has decided to take down the public page on the company’s social network called ‘Rise Up Ocean County.’ Facebook’s action comes ten months after the Director of our Division on Civil Rights, Rachel Wainer Apter, first sent a letter to Facebook expressing concerns about racist and anti-Semitic statements on the page. Since then, we’ve consistently and repeatedly made clear our view that the page appeared to violate Facebook’s terms of service, and we appreciate that Facebook has now decided that this kind of hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform.

There remains much that should be done to stop the spread of hate on the Internet. The Murphy Administration will continue to call out hate whenever and wherever we see it, we will persist in demanding meaningful reforms to address the proliferation of hate online, and we will continue working to make New Jersey a safe and inclusive place for all of our residents.”

From the Ars Technica article:

In January the Facebook page went briefly offline, leading state officials to believe Facebook had in fact taken it down, but the group came back several hours later, "gloating" about its perseverance.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/facebook-refused-to-remove-rac.html

Lonnie Johnson, age 70, was always a maker. As a child, his experiments with rocket fuel nearly burned down his house. While in high school, Johnson was the only black student to enter the Alabama science fair; his entry, a pneumatic robot named Linex, took first prize. Johnson went on to earn engineering degrees from Tuskegee University, worked on the stealth bomber for the US Air Force, developed nuclear power systems for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has since founded two tech companies -- one that develops solid state batteries and the other focused on thermo-electrochemical converters with green energy applications.

Oh yeah, he also invented the Super Soaker.

From William Broad's 2001 New York Times profile of Johnson :

On his day job in 1982, Lonnie G. Johnson, a 32-year-old aerospace engineer, was preparing an interplanetary spacecraft for its atomic battery. But he dreamed of inventing something that would change life on earth.

He often worked at home as his wife and children slept. One weekend, while tinkering in his bathroom, Mr. Johnson hooked up to the sink a prototype cooling device.

Meant to run on water, it bore at one end a length of vinyl tubing and a homemade metal nozzle. The rest, as they say, is history.

''I turned and shot into the bathtub,'' he recalled. The blast was so powerful that the whoosh of accompanying air set the bathroom curtains flying. ''I said to myself, 'Jeez, this would make a great water gun.' ''

(via The Kid Should See This) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/meet-the-rocket-scientist-who.html

Bernie Sanders today declared victory in Iowa's bungled headcount of Democratic voters, with the latest results putting him neck-and-neck with Pete Buttigieg. It was already clear he had the most votes, but Iowa Democrats' abstruse "caucus math" had awarded Buttigieg an advantage in delegates earlier in the count.

"With 97 percent of precincts now reporting, the results showed South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 26.2 percent of state delegate equivalents and Sanders with 26.1 percent," reported The Hill's Kyle Balluck. "Sanders, however, is leading in the final alignment votes tally, though the share of delegates is considered the most important metric of the Iowa results."

When asked why he was declaring victory despite the neck-and-neck delegate count, he told reporters "because I got 6,000 more votes."

In any case, both candidates did well on the night, with Elizabeth Warren running a close third. But it was a "gut punch" for supposed front-runner Joe Biden, trailing a distant fourth. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/sanders-declares-victory-in-io.html

Global warming is to blame for a "drastic decline" in the bumblebee population in North America and Europe, reports The Guardian, citing a new that "suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers [ at the University of Ottawa] say the rates of decline appear to be 'consistent with a mass extinction.'"

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/bumblebee-population-is-declin.html

Boston's got a bad reputation when it comes to race. And unfortunately, much of it's deserved. Of course, there are people who are trying to fight and make a positive difference despite the segregation that's left the predominantly black neighborhoods behind in schooling and socializing. Which is why the Boston Teacher's Union planned a week-long series of events in coordination with Black Lives Matter, to help educate students on inclusion and restorative justice. After all, February is Black History Month. So that all sounds good, right?

The Boston Police Patrolmen's Association disagreed, and sent a letter to BTU President Jessica Tang condoning the events. In the letter, BPPA President Michael Leary refers to Black Lives Matter an "anti-police organization" who has endangered the lives of Boston police officers. This is demonstrably untrue. But BPPA refuses to let the facts get in the way of their feelings. The letter continues on about the "irrational hatred" of BLM, accusing them of "inaccurately demonizing police as racists who kill innocent people" before passive-aggressively warning about the potential dangers of not cooperating with Boston Police, like some kind of mob protection racket.

The Boston Police patrolman association wants to shut down Black Lives Matter as School Week while citing racist propaganda as their reasoning. #notsurprised #blacklivesmatteratschool #bostonteachersunion pic.twitter.com/TsayDTCH72

 BLM Boston (@BlmBoston) February 5, 2020

BPPA is also upset about an education initiative to provide more funding for guidance counselors, instead of just shoving more police officers into schools to solve behavioral problems by threat of force. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/boston-police-union-throws-a-t.html

Last year, I cracked a joke on Twitter about the surprising similarities between NWA's "Fuck the Police" and Dominic Behan's famous Irish rebel song, "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans." At the urging of my friend Darach, author and host of the Motherf'ocloir book and podcast, I recorded a quick video of the two songs mashed-up together, that got a couple thousand views.

This year, I decided to formally record the mashup in my home studio, and release it as a digital single. But shortly after I started working on, the Wolfe Tones' version of the song miraculously returned to the #1 spot on the Irish music charts, in response to a government proposal to commemorate the Irish bootlickers who joined the Royal Irish Constabulary — aka, the Black and Tans — in the 1920s as reinforcements against the IRA during the Irish War of Independence. That's like the US putting up a statue to the soldiers behind the Boston Massacre.

Then, the day after I submitted my song to my music distributor, I got a message from Darach saying that I got a shout-out on this week's Pogues-centric episode of the Motherf'ocloir podcast — and sure enough, he'd pulled the audio from my earlier video recording of my mash-up, and was already getting requests to hear the rest of it.

So anyway, here's my single version of the mashup. Hopefully all that serendipity actually means something.

"Come Out, Ye Black and Tans (Fuck The Police)" by Thom Dunn

Image: National Library of Ireland Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/mashing-up-nwa-with-an-old-iri.html

Ludus Latrunculorum. Senet. Chaturanga. And don't forget Hnefatafl. These were just some of the board games that ancient people were into thousands of years ago. Over at Smithsonian, Meilan Solly explains "The Best Board Games of the Ancient World." From the magazine:

The rules of Mehen remain unclear, as the game faded from popularity following the decline of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and is sparsely represented in the archaeological record.

Writing in 1990, Egyptologist Peter A. Piccione explained, “Based upon what we know of this game ... the feline game pieces moved in a spiral along the squares, apparently, from the tail on the outside to the head of the serpent at the center.” The spherical, marble-like tokens may have been similarly rolled through the “longer spiralling grooves.”

In Patolli, a gambling game invented by the early inhabitants of Mesoamerica, players raced to move pebbles from one end of a cross-shaped track to the other. Drilled beans used as dice dictated gameplay, but the exact rules of “entry and movement” remain unknown, as Parlett notes in the Oxford History of Board Games.

Among the Aztecs, Patolli held unusually high stakes, with participants wagering not just physical goods or currency, but their own lives. As Diego Dur'an, a Dominican friar who authored a 16th-century tome on Aztec history and culture, explained, “At this and other games the Indians not only would gamble themselves into slavery, but even came to be legally put to death as human sacrifices.”

Images from top down: "Senet from the Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund; "Mehen" by Anagoria (CC BY 3.0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/the-ancient-worlds-greatest.html

For a decade, people have been destroying public toilets across Tokyo. Over the last six years, vandals have broken 85 toilets just in Hikarigaoka Park. What a pisser. Now, Tokyo officials have commissioned ironworks Ito Tekko to construct iron urinals for public use. From SoraNews24:

People in Japan were conflicted, feeling both pride in the quality engineering of these urine collectors as well as shame that it has come to this.

“I know people who like to smash toilets won’t agree, but I think these are great toilets.” “I had no idea so many toilets were getting broken.” “I think we should deal with the underlying issues of toilet smashing first.”

(via Fark) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/tokyo-installing-public-urinal.html

r/imsorryjon is inspired by the pioneering work of Will Burke, creator of a striking series of horrific Garfield drawings in 2018. (He wasn't the first, though.)

The example shown here is by Omega Black (instagram).

Previously: GANfield Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/collection-of-garfield-based-c.html

Gareth's post yesterday about the mysterious shortwave numbers stations used by spies to communicate happily reminded me of this article I wrote for bOING bOING Digital back in 1999 about the Conet Project, a legendary compilation of numbers station broadcasts produced by Irdial-Discs! Of course, this piece was written before Irdial-Discs sued the band Wilco for using a sample from the Conet Project recordings on their 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. From bOING bOING Digital:

Twisting the dial of your shortwave radio, you come across the most "experimental" sounding station you've ever heard. A glockenspiel tune is followed by the voice of a little girl speaking numbers and letters in what sounds like a random order. Performance art? No, the message inside the madness just wasn't meant for you. Perhaps its intended for the ears of a CIA agent. Or KGB. Or MOSSAD. You've stumbled across a Numbers Station.

"Shortwave Numbers Stations are a perfect method of anonymous, one way communication--spies located anywhere in the world can be communicated to by their masters via small, locally available, and unmodified Shortwave receivers," reads the Web site of The Conet Project, an outfit that's compiled 150 Numbers Stations recordings from the last three decades on a four CD set. (The word "Conet" is the sign-off signal on one station.)

Is this spy stuff true or not? Well, a rare mainstream media article about Numbers Stations published in the Daily Telegraph last year quoted a spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry, responsible for regulating the airwaves in the UK: "These (Numbers Stations) are what you suppose they are.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/listen-to-spies-shortwave-ra.html

Barnes & Noble thought it would be a good idea to celebrate Black History Month by reissuing classic novels (including Moby Dick, Emma, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Three Musketeers) with new covers depicting the lead characters as black, reports CNN. After many people on social media pointed out the problems with this campaign, the bookseller scrapped it.

From CNN:

Alexandre Dumas, who wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers," is the only black author on the list.

The new covers were called "literary blackface" by African American writer Rod Faulkner in an essay on Medium, and others have said the energy spent making the "Diverse Editions" would have been better spent promoting books written by people of color.

"What?!? No! Is it really this hard? People sat down & had meetings & put a lot of energy & money into creating covers f/black people on books w/ the same old stories INSTEAD of promoting books written by black authors & featuring black characters?WTF?!," author Tracey Livesay tweeted.

The Diverse Editions event at our @BNFifthAvenue location originally scheduled for this evening has been cancelled. Please see our statement: pic.twitter.com/jGquff9MyM

 Barnes & Noble (@BNBuzz) February 5, 2020

Image: TBWA Chiat Day Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/barnes-and-noble-canceled-its.html

After the CEO of Agroplasma, an Arizona fertilizer company, is told to sit in the back seat by a black driver, the CEO is greatly offended and argues relentlessly. The driver, an Arizona State University student, remains calm and polite and also firm about his no-front-seat-passengers policy. The CEO, Hans Berglund, 72, asks, "Is that because I'm white?" And then, finally calls him the N-- word. (Watch the exchange below.)

Agroplasma has suspended Berglund while they investigate what happened, and Uber has banned him from the app.

From NBC:

“In light of the events of this past Friday, Agroplasma CEO Hans Berglund has been relieved of his duties while the company performs a full internal investigation,” the firm said, adding, "The incident is not at all reflective of Agroplasma’s values and ethics.”

Uber told KPNX that it would ban Berglund from using its app, saying, “Discrimination has no place on the Uber app or anywhere.”

Berglund in a telephone interview with KPNX said he had been drinking and regrets his comments. “I apologize to the guy. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

The driver has had a strict policy of not allowing anyone to sit in the front seat unless it's a party of 3 or more since someone sexually assaulted him last year.

Here's the Uber exchange, starting at (:30):

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/arizona-ceo-who-calls-black-ub.html