In 2015, a deep investigative report from Inside Climate News revealed that as early as 1977, Exxonmobil knew that it was destroying the planet with CO2 emissions, and its response… Read the rest of the article: As New York State's shareholder suit against Big Oil for climate denial proceeds, Exxonmobil caught intimidating witnesses
Both Hong Kong protesters and cops have taken up laser pointers in support of their goals; protesters have used them to blind CCTVs and pinpoint vigilante thugs who assaulted them;… Read the rest of the article: After student arrested for carrying laser-pointers, Hong Kong protesters stage "stargazing" laser-protest
IBM's ridiculously named X-Force Red have documented a new attack vector they've dubbed "Warshipping": they mailed a sub-$100 custom, wifi-enabled low-power PC with a cellular radio to their target's offices.
Atul Gawande (previously) made an enormous shift in the practice of medicine with his research on checklists, summarized in his book The Checklist Manifesto; Gawande identified a core paradox with… Read the rest of the article: Hospital checklists work really well — except when they're not used
Christopher Brown is a lawyer and science fiction writer; his debut, 2017's Tropic of Kansas, was an outstanding novel of authoritarianism and resistance, and his next book, Rule of Capture… Read the rest of the article: Science fiction and the law: beyond mere courtroom drama
In Whisky tasting using a bimetallic nanoplasmonic tongue (Nanoscale/Royal Society of Chemistry), a team from U Glasgow's School of Engineering describe their work on an "artificial tongue" lined with "tastebuds"… Read the rest of the article: Artificial tongue's nanoscale "tastebuds" can sort real whisky from counterfeits more than 99% of the time
John Lambert is a 23-year-old from Tennessee who has done a lot in his short years on this earth: in addition to co-founding "Students for Trump," he also co-founded a… Read the rest of the article: Grifty "Students For Trump" founder pleads guilty to wire fraud for pretending to be a lawyer
The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch makes a compelling case linking US Bureau of Energy Resources foreign affairs officer Matthew Q. Gebert with a series of violent white nationalist identities… Read the rest of the article: State department official alleged be behind white nationalist terror-supporter pseudonym: "[Whites] need a country of our own with nukes"
At this year's Defcon Lock Picking Village, Ioactive's Mike Davis will present a method for cracking high-security locks made by Dormakaba Holding, a Swiss company. The locks are used in… Read the rest of the article: Security researcher cracks high-security lock used for ATMs, Air Force One, military bases
As the Hong Kong uprising hits its sixth week, the island is running out of protective gear to guard the surging protesters against police violence; in response, Hong Kongers in… Read the rest of the article: Taiwanese sympathizers are shipping helmets and gas-masks to Hong Kong
It's been a year since Chinese social media giant Bytedance relaunched its super-popular app Musica.ly as Tiktok; the company is now valued at $75b, and in the USA it has… Read the rest of the article: Tiktok is valued at $75b, is spending $3m/day on US advertising, and in China, it has been turned into a state propaganda vehicle
Shannon Byers was an investigator with the Gwinnett County (Georgia) Medical Examiner's office, until this week, when she resigned after news got out that a body whose death she had… Read the rest of the article: Medical examiner quits after declaring that bloody, stabbed corpse had died of "natural causes"
Pippin Barr (previously) writes, "I have a history of making variations on existing games (see also: PONGS, BREAKSOUT, SNAKISMS), and Chesses (source, CC BY-NC) is a continuation of that. I… Read the rest of the article: CHESSES: chess variants for nonexperts, nonplayers, and the very playful
Zupagrafika's new book Eastern Blocks (subtitle: "Concrete Landscapes of the Former Eastern Bloc") collects more than 100 beautiful photos of the brutalist towers of ex-Soviet nations, "'Sleeping districts' of Moscow,… Read the rest of the article: Eastern Blocks: photographs of the brutalist towers of the former USSR
Officially, Americas total 2017 corporate lobbying group spending was $535m, but as much as $675m more was funneled from industry groups to politicians as part of influence campaigns.
In a new column in the LA Times, business columnist Michael Hiltzik makes the argument that the only thing health insurers have done with any effectiveness is scare us into… Read the rest of the article: The only thing health insurance companies are good at is scaring us about socialized medicine
A French neonatal specialist named Dr Arnaud Gagneur has created a "vaccine counselling" program within Quebec's health-care system that uses a non-judgmental technique called "motivational interviewing" with parents of newborns… Read the rest of the article: How Quebec's health-care system uses "vaccine whisperers" to keep "vaccine hesitancy" from turning to anti-vax
When Congress legalized phone unlocking in 2014, they added a bunch of carve-outs that let phone companies veto your attempt to unlock your phone, with the big one being that… Read the rest of the article: DOJ indicts man for paying AT&T employees to help him unlock millions of customers' phones
Every time I write about the unfolding scandal of Amazon's secret partnerships with hundreds of US police departments who get free merch and access to Ring surveillance doorbell footage in… Read the rest of the article: Amazon's surveillance doorbell marketers help cops get warrantless access to video footage from peoples' homes
The ADL surveyed 1,045 US adult gamers (oversampling Jewish, Muslim, African American and Hispanic/Latinx individuals) and asked them about their experiences in multiplayer games: on the one hand, they found… Read the rest of the article: Survey finds high levels of harassment in multiplayer games, as well as white supremacist recruiting attempts
