Imperial Oil is Exxon's Canadian subsidiary, with control the majority of Canada's tar sand oil — the filthiest, most climate-damaging oil in the world. Calgary's Glenbow Museum has a largely… Read the rest of the article: Internal docs reveal that Canada's Exxon subsidiary knew about climate change risks and lied about it for decades
I've been writing about the Aeropress coffee maker for years, an ingenious, compact, low-cost way of brewing outstanding coffee with vastly less fuss and variation than any other method. For a decade, I've kept an Aeropress in my travel bag, even adding a collapsible silicone kettle for those hotel rooms lacking even a standard coffee-maker to heat water with.
Emily Stewart's private equity explainer for Vox is a great explainer on how the PE con works: buy up businesses, load them with debt, sell off their assets, slash their… Read the rest of the article: Explaining the con that is private equity
100 years ago, wealthy people bought up newspapers as fast as they could, then used them to smear progressive reformers, inventing lies ("Congressmen don't pay taxes!") to discredit the entire… Read the rest of the article: The New Deal was partly motivated by a desire to kill the fake news epidemic of the Gilded Age
Rodney Brooks (previously) is a distinguished computer scientist and roboticist (he's served as as head of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and CTO of Irobot); two years ago,… Read the rest of the article: AI, machine learning, and other frothy tech subjects remained overhyped in 2019
50 states' Attorneys General are investigating Google for antitrust violations, doing the work that Federal regulators have shirked since the Reagan era.
[I adored Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg's YA graphic novels The PLAIN Janes and Janes in Love, which were the defining titles for the late, lamented Minx imprint from DC comics. A decade later, the creators have gotten the rights back and there's a new edition Little, Brown. We're honored to have an exclusive transcript of Cecil and Jim in conversation, discussing the origins of Plain Janes. Make no mistake: this reissue is amazing news, and Plain James is an underappreciated monster of a classic, finally getting another day in the spotlight. If you haven't read it, consider yourself lucky, because you're about to get another chance. -Cory]
Bellingcat's Guide To Using Reverse Image Search For Investigations pits Google's reverse image-search tool against Yandex's and Bing's, and finds that Yandex's is far and away the best 00 albeit… Read the rest of the article: A masterclass in reverse image-search
If you ever find yourself time-traveling to 1975 and need to impersonate a Disneyland Haunted Mansion ride-operator, we've got you covered: just remember that in 1975, food and drinks were… Read the rest of the article: 1975 Disneyland Haunted Mansion Standard Operating Procedures manual
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail editorial, Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the 2020s, let's imagine better things, where I reflect on what… Read the rest of the article: Podcast: Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the 2020s, let's imagine better things
In my latest Locus column, Inaction is a Form of Action, I discuss how the US government's unwillingness to enforce its own anti-monopoly laws has resulted in the dominance of… Read the rest of the article: Permitting the growth of monopolies is a form of government censorship
Thomas Hofeller was the mastermind behind REDMAP, the tool used by Republican dirty-tricksters to redraw state electoral maps after the 2010 census in order to deliver state and federal legislative… Read the rest of the article: The estranged anarchist daughter of the Republican gerrymandering mastermind inherited and dumped all his files
US Air Force research scientist Michael Hansen created Rhasspy as a privacy-oriented alternative to surveilling "voice assistant" products like Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri; the free/open project supports dozens of… Read the rest of the article: Rhasspy: a free/open voice assistant toolkit that's fully offline
Clay Per Day is a Dutch sculptor whose Etsy store features grotesque, "realistic" sculptures that mash up the heads of angry babies with spiders and knurled fingers, about the right… Read the rest of the article: The finger-tentacled baby sculptures of Clay Per Day
On Christmas Eve, Brian Kolb [R-Canandaigua] — then minority leader in the New York State Assembly — published an op-ed urging New Yorkers to drive sober during the holidays; on… Read the rest of the article: Republican New York State Assembly leader publishes anti-drunk driving PSA shortly before drunkenly crashing a state-owned car
Since New Year's Day, @hindsightfiles has been tweeting a steady stream of links to leaked Cambridge Analytica documents revealing the company's work on election manipulation for candidates around the world,… Read the rest of the article: Massive Cambridge Analytica leak reveals global election manipulation: Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil
"If we were serious about crime, we'd take most of the cops off the streets and replace them with accountants": this, from the introduction to CZ Edwards' amazing Twitter thread… Read the rest of the article: Everything you wanted to know about money-laundering but were afraid to ask
Next month, I'm giving a keynote talk at The Future of the Future: The Ethics and Implications of AI, an event at UC Irvine that features Bruce Sterling, Rose Eveleth,… Read the rest of the article: Machine learning is innately conservative and wants you to either act like everyone else, or never change
I just got back from a longer-than-usual family holiday during which I did much less work than I usually do when I'm off (I recommend both to you!), but one… Read the rest of the article: Michael Moore just launched a new podcast and it's great, full of hope and anger
Anne Innis Dagg was the first female biologist to study giraffes; while all the men who preceded her had observed firsthand that male giraffes are super queer (their primary form… Read the rest of the article: Anne Dagg, pioneering giraffe biologist and feminist critic of "evolutionary psychology" receives the Order of Canada
