Here's something I wrote about in the latest issue of my newsletter, The Magnet:
A few days ago my daughter put a small cup in a large cup and they somehow got locked together. I can't pull them apart (watch video). Do you have any ideas on how to take them apart without breaking them? The first person to suggest a successful solution gets a free one-year subscription to The Magnet, which they can use for themselves or as a gift subscription.
Who hacked the Trump campaign website?
"I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?"
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
Of a petty neighbor feud
About a piece of rich folk art
And a theme song played on loop.
Gross was a Wall Street billionaire,
Towfiq enriched from tech.
Gross blocked Towfiq's nice ocean view
With a sculpture near his deck, a sculpture near his deck.
The tensions started getting rough,
Attorneys were abused,
Entitled men who had to win
Or egos would be bruised, their egos would be bruised.
Towfiq said Gross played songs all night on a blaring stereo
with "Gilligan" on loop track, too.
The billionaire loves his life.
He doesn't care,
He's got the dough, and the nerve
to torment with "Gilligan's Isle."
Yann LeCun, an AI scientist at Facebook and a professor at New York University, wrote a brief essay about the usefulness of GPT-3 beyond entertainment and creativity. "Trying to build intelligent machines by scaling up language models is like [building] a high-altitude airplane to go to the moon," he says. "You might beat altitude records, but going to the moon will require a completely different approach."
The deepfakes of Trump, Julie Andrews, Michael Caine, Jared Kushner, Mark Zuckerberg, and Al Gore in this satire program are really good. (It's probably produced by the South Park guys.)
Fred Sassy is an American Consumer Advocate and reporter for the Cheyenne news at 9, a local TV station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. On his weekly show, Sassy Justice, Fred goes to battle for the common man in his hometown. This week, he's uncovering the dangers behind manipulated videos that are increasingly popping up on the internet.
Via Dangerous Minds
"We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the Election," says the man who had power to stop the spread of the virus but did nothing, resulting in the deaths of 225 thousand people. "COVID, COVID, COVID is being used by them, in total coordination, in order to change our great early election numbers. Should be an election law violation!" I smell fear.
I have a glass top desk. It's cold and hard, so I got a big fake leather mouse pad for it. I don't need a gel wrist protector because it has just enough give. It also looks nice on my desk. And it's cheap!
Self-made millionaire Jared Kushner, who rose up from destitute poverty and no connections in the business world, told the hosts of Fox and Friends that the trouble with some Black people is that they are just plain lazy.
From The Independent:
"One thing we've seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about but he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful."
Brian David Gilbert makes $20k a month at home by being his own boss. Why don't you join him?
New York isn't the only city experiencing high vacancy rates for office space. This chart from SocketSite shows a similar trend in San Francisco. I wonder what this means for the fate of cities after the world gets a handle on Covid-19? Will companies continue to encourage people to work from home? If so, what happens to those spaces? What about the restaurants, parking lots, and transportation systems that rely on office workers to stay in business?
From SocketSite:
At the same time, leasing activity over the past two quarters hit at a 30-year low, with only 385,000 square feet of leasing activity in the third quarter, versus a post DotCom-era nadir of 933,000 square feet in the second quarter of 2001, and with roughly 3.1 million square feet of office space now under construction as well (half of which is currently pre-leased, including Uber's new buildings on Third, and 1.6 million square feet which is not, including the million square foot Oceanwide tower rising at 50 First).
"As of this week, we've added 460 people to our no-fly list for refusing to comply with our mask requirement," Delta CEO Ed Bastian told employees in a memo yesterday.
From CNN:
In August, the airline said it had banned roughly 270 passengers since the outset of the pandemic. Delta (DAL) began requiring that passengers wear masks on flights on May 4. All major airlines now mandate that passengers wear masks in the absence of any new regulations from the federal government. Airlines in June agreed to ban passengers from future flights for refusing to wear masks. But the airlines are not sharing information with one another about the passengers they have banned. So, for example, a passenger banned on Delta can still book a flight on American (AAL) and vice versa.
The law does not apply when you are doing God's work. Police arrested James Blight (26) for stealing a bulldozer in a black neighborhood in Haines City, Florida, and driving over Biden/Harris yard signs. He's charged with grand theft auto and trespassing. According to Chron.com, Blight "told authorities he was drunk during the incident and couldn't remember what happened."
Pomodoro fans and people who need encouragement sticking to a task might benefit from this nifty 60-minute timer. Just turn the dial to the desired amount of time, and you get a slowly-shrinking red-colored pie wedge that shows how much time you have left. You can set the alarm to ring for 3 or 60 seconds, and you can set the volume of the alarm to soft or loud.
Kevin Kelly and I recently interviewed researcher and journalist Ramona Pringle on the Cool Tools podcast. Ramona's work focuses on the interactions between humans, technology and the world around us. She's a contributor to numerous media outlets, including tech columnist with the CBC (Canadian broadcasting corp), and Director of the Creative Innovation Studio at Ryerson University, in Toronto. You can find her on Twitter @ramonapringle.
Listen to the podcast and read about Ramona's tool picks here.
I came to Akira (1988) late in life, and I'm kind of glad I did, because it's nice to discover mind-blowing art throughout one's life. This video takes a technical look at the first three minutes of animation of Akira, and what makes it so successful.
Anime director Hayao Miyazaki visited the Ghibli Museum in west Tokyo, much to the delight of the staff. He sat in front of the cafe and sketched the sign, adorning it with little characters.
