From her groundbreaking first album Switched-On Bach (1968) to the unforgettable soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Tron (1982), Wendy Carlos is a living legend of electronic music. In March, Oxford University Press will publish Wendy Carlos: A Biography, written by musicologist Amanda Sewel, musical director of Interlochen Public Radio. From the book description:

With her debut album Switched-On Bach, composer and electronic musician Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) brought the sound of the Moog synthesizer to a generation of listeners, helping to effect arguably one of the most substantial changes in popular music's sound since musicians began using amplifiers. Her story is not only one of a person who blazed new trails in electronic music for decades but is also the story of a person who intersected in many ways with American popular culture, medicine, and social trends during the second half of the 20th century and well into the 21st. There is much to tell about her life and about the ways in which her life reflects many dimensions of American culture.

Carlos's identity as a transgender woman has shaped many aspects of her life, her career, how she relates to the public, and how the public has received her and her music. Cultural factors surrounding the treatment of transgender people affected many of the decisions that Carlos has made over the decades. Additionally, cultural reception and perception of transgender people has colored how journalists, scholars, and fans have written about Carlos and her music for decades.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/X80GlYvdQrM/new-biography-of-electronic-mu.html

In Winter Haven, Florida, this gentleman rolled right into a Walmart, loaded up his cart with a TV, flowers, and other goods, and glided right out the door without paying.

"Back to the Future’s McFly he’s not! But his Hover Shoes, Voyagers, Moto Kicks, Space Shoes or whatever you want to call them makes him our first futuristic thief!” the Winter Haven Police Department police posted on Facebook.

(WFLA, thanks UPSO!)

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/cOasq3FyPho/florida-man-wearing-hover-sh.html

We've all got a perfect website in our minds. In the past, the problem has been the barrier of language - specifically, the computer languages used to create those glittering, animation-filled pages you flock to.

Now, Mac users have an alternative. Blocs 3 is a website builder that can provide an easy visual interface for anyone to design a site without sacrificing clean code underneath it all.

Anyone can pick up this software and have their first page in minutes. It boils down and translates the code you need into pre-determined sections that can be modified in any number of ways. Add your own text and images, adjust the background and effects, plug in your links and go. These sections can be "stacked" like the namesake blocks of the program, making it easy for you to understand and work with the hierarchy of your site.

The end result will have CMS integration, server-side PHP functionality and all the user interactions you need for a business or personal site.

You can pick up Blocs 3 for Mac now at 60% off the MSRP. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/2w9lI4TWtd8/this-website-builder-app-lets.html

You can do all the pre-workout stretching in the world, but that doesn’t mean you’ll escape stiff muscles and nagging pain after a particularly grueling gym session. When those knots and their accompanying aches and soreness start barking, your options usually boil down to either a deep tissue massage or just grinning and bearing it.

Since no one wants to live with pain, we recommend option 1. And rather than spending up to $100 for a one-hour massage therapy session, the Evertone Prosage Thermo Percussion Massager ($149, currently 25% off) can work out all that tension and muscle ache on your schedule.

Originally designed for professional athletes, this Kickstarter-funded massage gun tackles tight, sore muscles with a combination of high-impact percussion and Theralite heating that breaks up stiffness and knots while speeding up recovery after workouts.

With variable speed settings and interchangeable heads, the Prosage Thermo penetrates muscle tissue with up to 3,200 percussions per minute, alleviating lactic acid buildup as it improves blood flow.

Meanwhile, the Theralite heating can either be used to warm up and activate muscle fibers before your workout or soothe pain and reduce spasms in muscle, joints, tendons, and ligaments after strenuous sessions.

The Prosage Thermo offers up a full body massage without keeping a professional massage therapist on staff. Right now, it’s also $50 off the regular price at $149. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/iJMtR3vfgDQ/this-theragun-alternative-has.html

Spring doesn't officially start until March, but you might want to start your spring cleaning a little early in the office supply closet. You're going to need the extra space.

HP is holding a massive "Back to Business" sale on a vast array of its gear. And when we say "gear," we're not talking about a few outdated printers and some toner. You can expect to take up to 62% off everything from high-end ZBook Workstations to premium laptops and printers

Given HP's profile in the modern office, that's a big deal. There's hardly a workspace that doesn't use at least some of their tech if not a whole suite of laptops, printers, and monitors, all synced up and doing the heavy lifting for your workload, day after day.

Whether you're managing the hardware for a company or just your own business at home, this might be just the right time to replace or upgrade that equipment. We're seeing deals like $750 off an HP Pavilion 15Z Touch laptop, equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 processor and 256 GB of SSD storage. Other laptops include an HP 340S G7 Notebook, fully customizable with a 14" screen for just over $435. For laptops especially, you won't find these prices again for a long time.

There's also a number of printers on deep discount. For light desktop duty, you can get the HP Envy 5055 - easy to set up and capable of printing 10 pages per minute. That one is more than 50% off. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/LeQKN1Nq8NI/hps-back-to-business-sale-me.html

Christopher Tolkien, custodian and mastermind of his father's literary estate, is dead at 95. Tor.com's Andrew Liptak:

In 2017, Tolkien stepped down as the director of the Tolkien Estate and Tolkien Trust, saying at the time that Beren and L'uthien would likely be his final book. Tolkien was a staunch critic of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of his father’s trilogy, telling Le Monde in 2012 that “They gutted the book, making it an action movie for 15-25 year-olds, and it looks like The Hobbit will be the same.” His death comes at a time when his father’s books are more popular than ever, and as Amazon works to create a massive TV series based on the works that he himself helped bring to the public.

While Tolkien was the author behind the world of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien was the one responsible for ensuring that his father’s stories remained in the public view by continuing to publish develop the backstory of the world that has influenced and inspired fans around the world.

Christopher drew the original map of Middle-Earth, excerpted above, with annotations from J.R.R. He was no mere editor; his Complete History of Middle Earth [Amazon] is a twelve-volume encylopedia-cum-biography that's both penetrating and impenetrable. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/M8w3cviJ_xI/christopher-tolkien-1924-2020.html

South Dakota's HB 1057 ("The Vulnerable Child Protection Act") was introduced by Rep Fred Deutsch [R-04/605-882-3323/@freddeutsch/

“By blocking medical care supported by every major medical association, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, the legislature is compromising the health of trans youth in dangerous and potentially life-threatening ways. Research shows that transgender youth whose families affirm their gender identity have a 52 percent decrease in suicidal thoughts, a 48 percent decrease in suicide attempts and significant increases in self-esteem and general health. No other state has passed a law like HB 1057. It is unconstitutional to single out one group of people and categorically ban all care, no matter how medically necessary.”

“Every year, South Dakota lawmakers zero in on transgender youth and every year the transgender community is hurt while meaningful problems go unaddressed,” Skarin says. “The more we legislate solutions in search of problems, the more our communities suffer. It’s time we stop these attacks and focus on issues that matter to the people of South Dakota. Discrimination against a marginalized group is a distraction from the state’s real needs and hurts us all.”

Republicans Introduce Bill To Make It Illegal For Doctors To Treat Transgender Children In North Dakota [Gaily Grind]

(Image: @freddeutsch) Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/1TCuYfAJ8P0/suffer-little-children-2.html

The "Barnacle" is a networked car-immobilizer that parking guards stick over the windshield of your illegally parked car; you pay the fine online and the Barnacle gets an over-the-air signal to release itself from your car so you can remove it and put it in a nearby deposit bin.

Except that it turns out to be really easy to remove a Barnacle without paying -- some redditors say they can remove it just by running their car's windshield defroster until the suction cups give up.

What's more, once it's been removed, the Barnacle can be opened with a simple Torx screwdriver and its SIM extracted. One user reported that they were able to use this SIM to get unlimited wireless broadband for several months before the Barnacle company terminated its service.

The University of Oklahoma announced that it would begin using Barnacles for on-campus parking enforcement on Tuesday; later that day, it announced that it was canceling the project after student outcry.

U Oklahoma student Sally Johnson published a viral tweet explaining how to defeat the Barnacle that fills me with delight. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/U7LGOkjPB2Q/sucky-ideas.html

Capitalism has a foundational dependence on auditors -- outside entities who evaluate companies' claims about their financial state so that investors, suppliers and customers can understand whether to trust the companies with their money and business -- but those auditors are paid by the companies they're supposed to be keeping honest, and to make matters worse, 40 years of lax antitrust enforcement has allowed the auditing industry to contract to a four gigantic firms that openly practice fraud and abet corruption, with no real consequences.

There've been numerous recent examples of how the Big Four accounting firms have allowed grifters to hollow out the world's largest corporations. The most egregious was Carillion, a giant contractor that had largely replaced the British government in providing vital services to large swathes of the country while sucking up billions in taxpayer money. The company had systematically defrauded the public about the state of its finances, with every one of the Big Four accounting firms signing off on its books, something that came to light in 2018 when the company collapsed in spectacular bankruptcy, leaving the people who depended on its services high and dry. To make things worse, the same accounting companies that participated in its fraud then billed Her Majesty's Government millions more to oversee Carillion's winddown.

KPMG is easily the most-scandal haunted company of the Big Four, a latter-day Arthur Anderson & Co. The company has been embroiled in scandal after scandal including instances in which they bribed government regulators to steal state documents so that KPMG could anticipate which of its audit-reports would be inspected by government officials and go back and unfuck the numbers they had frauded into those books. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/nywuDtCRe0s/existential-threat-to-capitali.html

Yesterday, Sherry Huss, former Maker-in-Chief of Maker Media, did a Facebook post about a new magazine, Reinvented, which has just released its second issue. The magazine, available in both print and digital formats, is written about women in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) by women in STEM.

Reinvented contains profiles of interesting, notable women in the field and even includes tutorials for things like electronics fundamentals, sensors, and other science, technology, and engineering subjects. The mission of the magazine is to re-invent the general perception of women in sci-tech and to inspire young girls to consider a future in STEM.

Issue two focuses on female hackers and features our pal, Limor Fried (aka Ladyada), on the cover. Every time you subscribe to the magazine, a sub is made available to a school, local library, or girl's club.

BTW: If you missed it, be sure to check out the cover profile I did of Ladyada and Adafruit for Make: magazine in 2017. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/cm9Ecc8LiXQ/reinvented-a-new-magazine-abo.html

This Hooghuys organ is over 100 years old but that didn't stop self-proclaimed Hustler Alexey Rom from making it play pop music. To get this 1914 fairground organ to pump out ABBA's "Dancing Queen," Rom had to create a custom player scroll which is no easy feat!

His first viral organ hit was playing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (8.7M views and counting!) on a 1905 Marenghi organ. This is how he describes making that happen:

The arrangement was made in Ableton Live using MIDI and was then punched into the cardboard book using an automated punch.

I can only assume the process to make the scroll was similar for this organ.

You may remember this is the same guy who played Boney M's disco hit "Rasputin" on a 1905 Marenghi organ.

(The Awesomer) Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/4AvH-SP-Vz0/abbas-dancing-queen-play.html

Celebreedy breeds new celebrities from other celebrities, using a generative adversarial network. It's the work of Eric Drass, who has a website.

Eric holds a degree in Philosophy and Psychology (Oxford) and an unfinished PhD in Cognitive Psycholinguistics (also Oxford). He is co-author on a number of patents dealing with PRISM-type surveillance technologies (long before PRISM became public), and a number of academic papers relating to neural network models of language acquisition and heritability.

He also used to be a singer in an experimental hardcore band, an unsuccessful male model, and once took at dotcom 1.0 company from a bedroom project to 14 countries and back, spending $50m on the way. Twenty years ago he was a TV star in America, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.

Nicolas Cage (62%) / Steve Buscemi (38%) pic.twitter.com/ZyH8NN2c0X

 celebreedy (@celebreedy) January 16, 2020

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/f1lFqc1XYDE/celebreedy-uses-ai-to-combine.html

For Kayla Kenney's 15th birthday party at a Texas Roadhouse, her mother asked for a cake with colors that 'pop'. A rainbow cake was provided and Kimberly Alford posted this charming photo of the youngster about to tuck in. Someone at her school, Whitefield Academy in Louisville, spotted the photo on social media, and Kenney was expelled for the "posture of morality and cultural acceptance" the cake represented.

Alford alleges the seemingly innocuous photo caused Kayla to be expelled from Whitefield Academy, a private Christian school in Louisville, where her daughter was a freshman. In an email to the family on Jan. 6, the academy’s head of school, Bruce Jacobson, wrote that Kayla’s enrollment was terminated, effective immediately, because of a social media post.

Alford said an image of her Facebook post was included as an attachment to the email.

“The WA Administration has been made aware of a recent picture, posted on social media, which demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy’s beliefs,” Jacobson wrote. “We made it clear that any further promotion, celebration or any other action and attitudes counter to Whitefield’s philosophy will not be tolerated.”

Alford says neither the cake nor Kenney's jumper were a statement on sexuality. The school didn't respond to the Washington Post's inquiries, but told a local news channel Kenney had committed other "lifesyle violations" in the past, without elaborating. According to her mother, that infraction was for vape pods found in a bag search. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/mvQT1t0J7xY/christian-school-expels-studen.html

Don't Read The Comments is the newest book by Eric Smith, a literary agent and author of The Geek's Guide To Dating and other books, as well as the owner of many adorable pets. (Full disclosure: Eric was also my editor many, many years ago on the Quirk Books blog, and we've remained friends since then.) It tells the story of two teens who meet and fall in love pretty much entirely online, with the help of a video massive multiplayer game called "Reclaim The Sun." Divya Sharma has managed to turn her love of the game into a popular streaming channel that brings in a little bit of revenue for her and her recently-divorced mother. Aaron Jericho is an aspiring video game writer whose parents want nothing more than for him to follow in their footsteps and go to medical school. A chance encounter in "Reclaim The Sun" helps these two isolated brown kids find solace in each other—but a well-orchestrated doxxing campaign from a group of racist, sexist trolls threatens to tear it all down.

On the surface, this is a perfect nerdy setup of star-crossed lovers coming together against all odds, with a touch of hyper-relevant social commentary. In execution, it pulls that off with plenty of delight. It's certainly not the most high-stakes story I've read—the only doomed kingdoms exist in a video game—but Smith manages to keep the characters' internal stakes on the edge the whole time. And that's realistic, because these are teenagers, for whom everything does feel the end of the world, even when it's not. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/JqGo2QRcNC0/review-dont-read-the-comm.html

Footage of a 1990s-era David Bowie performing repeating poses against a plain blue set was used to create a holographic album insert, reports the BBC, but it turns out there's 30 minutes of video to enjoy.

... the film remained in storage at Leicester's De Montfort University. "He... started to do this set of amazing iconic movements that he was famous for and all his fans would recognise", Prof [Martin] Richardson said.

The footage was played to 300 lucky fans Monday.

Prof Richardson, who first met the star in 1994, recalled: "Bowie said to me, 'When you've done your bloody hologram it will be up and down the width and breadth of the country. I am going to make you famous.'

"He got back on the sound stage and said, 'Right, what do you want me to do?' and I thought, 'I am going to direct David Bowie, the super rock star I idolised as a boy."

The hologram was then reproduced for 500,000 copies of the album.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/mk1DjqoeFzs/bowie-footage-released-from-19.html

Akai's MPC One is a beat-making box that fits in a backpack (unlike the MPC X) and costs less than a grand (unlike the MPC Live), has a 7-inch touchscreen display, and offers a full bank of pads, knobs and dials for standalone action, and outputs and ports for hooking it up to other audio gear, synths and computers.

Dani Deahl:

For those unaware of the history of Akai’s MPC, the Japanese electronics company’s signature item first debuted over 30 years ago and changed music-making forever with its intuitive interface and all-in-one approach. It’s been a staple tool for tons of artists like Dr. Dre and Om’Mas Keith (Frank Ocean’s producer), and there’s even one in the Smithsonian. ... Akai says it packed a “remarkably comprehensive feature set” into the MPC One. Along with the standard 16 pads, it sports a seven-inch multitouch display and four touch-sensitive rotaries for manipulating sounds. On the back is a single set of MIDI I/O ports, four CV / Gate jacks (for controlling connected gear), and eight outputs total. There are 2GB of RAM, and USB flash and SD card storage can expand the unit’s 4GB capacity (which could easily top out since it’s preloaded with 2GB of drum samples and loops). The MPC One also ships with several soft synths and Air FX plug-ins for mixing and mastering. Akai tells The Verge that it focused on smaller size, added CV functionality, and a cheaper price to make the MPC One “the center of a ‘DAW-less jam’ style studio.”

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/VNzrX8p-H_0/akais-mpc-one-is-a-backpack.html

It's bad enough when police officers try to claim the skull symbol of the Punisher from Marvel Comics as their own. Gerry Conway, creator of the character, has spoken out about the absurdity:

It's disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. He's supposed to indict the collapse of social moral authority and the reality some people can't depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a just and capable way. […] Whether you think the Punisher is justified or not, whether you admire his code of ethics, he is an outlaw. He is a criminal. Police should not be embracing a criminal as their symbol.

The Marvel corporation has also gone after weapons manufacturers and others who use their unlicensed IP in their designs. Even the Punisher himself has addressed it in the context of a comic book:

I'll only say this once: We're not the same. You took an oath to uphold the law. You help people. I gave that up a long time ago. You don't do what I do. Nobody does. You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America and he'd be happy to have you.

(This is also a reminder to read Nate Powell's brilliant comic essay on the fashion of fascism, if you haven't already)

But now the Punisher appropriation has taken a step further, with militia groups handing out flyers at QAnon rallies emblazoned with that familiar skull:

A souvenir from yesterday's Tampa QAnon rally:

A flyer encouraging QAnon followers to "consider forming your own mutual assistance group with like minded friends.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/gLMct3knPYo/the-qanon-cult-has-started-app.html

Surprisingly convincing in the role.

DISCLAIMER: as the title suggests, this footage is fake, and has been AI generated with the help of computer programs. The actors therein did not participate in the making of this video. The lines were (poorly) voiced by me and they are not the actual lines from the show.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/shJKfu_Kgtc/steven-seagal-deepfaked-as-the.html

My friend Emily Edwards has a delightful podcast called Fuckbois of Literature, that, well, pretty much explores exactly what it promises: fuckbois, in literature.

The characters of literature other readers exalt, but you hope never to meet. Maybe they screw everything that moves (and moos). Maybe they’ve locked their first wife in the attic. Maybe they’re the author of love poetry that’s screwed up our concept of romance for over 150 years. The literary fuckboi toys with your heart and leaves you hung out to dry. Join host Emily Edwards every week to discuss the most toxic characters, writers, and tropes of literature, folklore, myths, and legend. Topics include feminist literature, toxic masculinity, gender roles, and intersectional representation in books. These are the Fuckbois of Literature.

There are lots of great and insightful episodes, from comedian Sara Benincasa talking about the Bible, to my personal favorite one on David Foster Wallace. But Emily was also kind and/or foolish enough to invite me and one of my best friends onto the show to discuss the various fuckbois of the X-Men universe — but namely, that hedonistic bald manipulator Professor Charles Xavier, and his fickle, horny protege, Scott Summers AKA Cyclops.

I have been waiting a long time for an audience to let me indulge in my deeply serious literary analysis on sex and the X-Men, and I'm just so glad that there's more than one person in the world who cares to hear my rant about the cycle of abuse and patriarchal privilege that make Professor X and Cyclops alike both treat women like crap in the pursuit of their self-righteous goals. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/45mIhZynwP0/professor-xavier-is-a-total-fu.html

Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of getting to play a new game that quickly became my son's and my favorite over the holiday break (when we try to play lots of games together). It's my friend Doc Popular's KnifeTank and he was kind enough to send me a prototype copy.

When I got the game, I was excited, but with reservations. No offense to Doc, but I expected it to be light and gimmicky, something of a vanity project. What I wasn't expecting was a game I instantly wanted to play over and over again and invite my friends to come and play (which I did). KnifeTank can hold its own against anything coming out of a large commercial game company and I look forward to it enjoying a long and happy life, with many expansions and a worldwide, enthusiastic player community.

KnifeTank comes in a poker-type tuck box and includes everything you need to play. You get 30 action/movement cards, 8 tanks (4 two-sided cards), 4 health cards, and 5 damage cards. The box also contains a rule book and there are two rules summary cards. The game is for 2-4 players and rated ages 12 and up. Each game takes about 20-30 minutes to play. The goal of the game is get your tank from your table's edge to your opponent's edge or to eliminate your opponent(s) by reducing their health/hits to zero.

Those familiar with tabletop miniature games like Star Wars X-Wing and Gaslands will likely dig the movement mechanic here. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Zw_5OsTQSes/my-favorite-new-game-knifetan.html