If you are in LA later this month through September, I recommend checking out "The New Romantics" group show at Corey Helford Gallery opening July 28. There's a great line up of artists.

Over a year in the making, Corey Helford Gallery is premiering "The New Romantics" group show on July 28, its largest exhibition of 2018 so far. Curated by Caro Buermann, the show will celebrate the new romantic visions of over 30 artists from around the world, including Camilla d'Errico, Adrian Cox, Relm, Pruch SintunavaI and Marie Larkin.

“There are many shows that celebrate beautiful imagery, but there aren’t many shows that tackle the implications of neo-romance and our growing attraction to the paradisiacal, the beautiful, and the magic that these images inspire," says Caro. "In today’s world, we are instantaneously exposed to a flood of bad news and images of terror which makes people long for safe places and redemptive perspectives.”

The Neo-Romanticism movement, which inspired The New Romantics, is not a new concept. Just as Early Romantic masters’ work was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, as well as glorification of all the past and nature, this new generation of romantics reflect on the current state of their world. “They are artists who are sensitive to the current state of things and reinterpret the world through their figures, characters, or landscapes,” says Caro. “Not necessarily as it objectively exists, but rather as they are seeing and feeling it.”

Above: Marie Larkin

Above: Kate Zambrano

Above: Relm

Above: Iva Troj

Above: Joanne Nam

OPENING RECEPTION July 28, 2018 | 7pm - 11pm

ON VIEW July 28 - September 1, 2018

COREY HELFORD GALLERY 571 S. Read the rest

I travel with a small bluetooth speaker similar to this one. It's great for watching movies on my laptop and for listening to music and podcasts. Amazon is selling it for $5, when you use IPSLZEP5. Read the rest

Michael Scheuer says its about time to kill American citizens who oppose Trump. Scheuer is a former senior CIA official and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Imperial Hubris. In a now-deleted blog post (cached version here) Scheuer singles out "Strzok, Comey, McCabe, Page, and Rosenstein; worshipers of tyranny, like the Democratic members of Congress, the Clintons, the FBI, and the Obamas; apparent traitors like Brennan, Hayden, and Clapper; all of the mainstream media; and the tens of thousands of government-admitted-and-protected, violent, criminal, and illegal immigrants." He looks forward to the "sheer, nay, utter joy and satisfaction to be derived from beholding great piles of dead U.S.-citizen tyrants is not one that will be missed if Trump does not soon do the necessary to save the republic."

As this week’s end, it seems likely that it is quite near time for killing those involved in the multiple and clearly delineated attempts to stage a coup d’état against the legitimately elected Trump government and thereby kill our republic.

Finally, this week saw a significant and quickening advance toward the moment when those millions of well-armed citizens who voted for Trump, and who have been abused or wounded by Democrats, their Antifa-thugs, and their thug-civil servants for exercising their franchise to elect Trump, cannot be, in good conscience, patient for much longer.

Fortunately, they have in hand a long and very precise list of the names and photographs of those who hate and threaten them, their families, their way-of-life, their liberty, their livelihoods and their republic.

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Aarran Lee Wright, 36, a married man and father of two young children, says his sex-robot can be switched to "family mode," for G-rated playtime with the kids.

From the NY Post:

Wright revealed that his children, aged three and five, play with Samantha and watch TV alongside her. And his wife said: “I am not worried she will replace me. She is just someone there like a family member.”

Now a group of professors have slammed the idea of a family-friendly sex robot as “damaging” for kids.

“Children will imitate machines if brought up by them,” Kathleen Richardson, professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at De Montfort University, told New Statesmen.

“A daughter is going to grow up and think maybe this happened because Mommy wasn’t beautiful enough – am I?

“They’ll learn that women only have certain uses. Then they start to use that as a template for how they interact intimately with others – this is profoundly damaging.”

NSFW video:

Image: HAVC pipes by F. Javier Ballester/Shutterstock Read the rest

David Frum, the conservative Republican senior editor at The Atlantic, says it has become clear that Trump has been bribed or blackmailed into becoming a Russian puppet, and that the "United States faces a national-security emergency."

From The Atlantic:

The reasons for Trump’s striking behavior—whether he was bribed or blackmailed or something else—remain to be ascertained. That he has publicly refused to defend his country’s independent electoral process—and did so jointly with the foreign dictator who perverted that process—is video-recorded fact.

And it’s a fact that has to be seen in the larger context of his actions in office: denouncing the European Union as a “foe,” threatening to break up nato, wrecking the U.S.-led world trading system, intervening in both U.K. and German politics in support of extremist and pro-Russian forces, and continually refusing to act to protect the integrity of U.S. voting systems—it all adds up to a political indictment, whether or not it quite qualifies as a criminal one.

A post shared by David A. Lee (@davidaleephotography) on Jul 13, 2018 at 5:13pm PDT

Image: Kremlin.ru Read the rest

Our technology-centric society is making people miserable, says Don Norman, cognitive scientist and author of the classic book on human-centric design, The Design of Everyday Things. The technology we use expects us to behave like machines, he says, and when we fail, we get all the blame.

From Fast Company:

As a result, we require people to do tedious, repetitive tasks, to be alert for long periods, ready to respond at a moment’s notice: all things people are bad at doing. When the inevitable errors and accidents occur, people are blamed for “human error.” The view is so prevalent that many times the people involved blame themselves, saying things like “I knew better” or “I should have paid more attention,” not recognizing that the demands of the technology made these errors inevitable.

...

Just think about your life today, obeying the dictates of technology–waking up to alarm clocks (even if disguised as music or news); spending hours every day fixing, patching, rebooting, inventing work-arounds; answering the constant barrage of emails, tweets, text messages, and instant this and that; being fearful of falling for some new scam or phishing attack; constantly upgrading everything; and having to remember an unwieldly number of passwords and personal inane questions for security, such as the name of your least-liked friend in fourth grade. We are serving the wrong masters.

We need to switch from a technology-centric view of the world to a people-centric one. We should start with people’s abilities and create technology that enhances people’s capabilities: Why are we doing it backwards?

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My friend John Baichtal has a new project book out called 10 LED Projects for Geeks: Build Light-Up Costumes, Sci-Fi Gadgets, and Other Clever Inventions. John is an excellent teacher and his book will guide you on your way to making fun light-up projects and sharpen your maker skills, including how to:

Design versatile circuits for your own needs Build and print a custom printed circuit board Create flexible circuits which you can use to make any wearable you dream up Turn analog signal into digital data your microcontroller can read Use gesture recognition and wireless interaction for your own Internet of Things projects Experiment with copper tape and create circuits with paper and foi Build "smart" gadgets that make decisions with sensors Read the rest

iJustine and MKBHD opened a sealed iBook G3 from 2000 and started it up. It took a while to configure it to go online, but they were finally able to use Netscape Communicator to browse the Web. Then they used the World Book Encyclopedia CD-ROM to listen to animal sounds. Read the rest

$22 is the lowest price I've seen for an Aeropress coffee maker. (Just click the the little coupon checkbox on the Amazon page.) It's a lot of fun to make coffee with the Aeropress -- you pour a little water in the piston and put it in the microwave for about 40 seconds. Then you put a microfilter in the cylinder (you get a "years supply" with the Aeropress) and a scoop of ground coffee. The you put the cylinder on top of a cup (the company recommends using a clear mug to make the process even more fun), pour the heated (not boiling -- it'll make the coffee bitter and sour, they say) water, stir for 10 seconds, and press the piston down. A few seconds later, you have a wonderful cup of silky smooth coffee.

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Sarah Palin is doing a great job promoting Sacha Baron Cohen's Showtime series, Who is America?, by going on TV and complaining that she had been tricked and embarrassed by Cohen when he interviewed her under false pretenses. Gee, who wants that?

Interestingly, the is one of the first times that Palin didn't speak in the kind of nonsensical word salad she is famous for. She is articulate and directly answers the pandering softball questions that the Good Morning America host gently tosses her.

And here's former GOP Illinois congressman / radio host Joe Walsh making similar complaints about being tricked into supporting the proposal to give guns to preschoolers:

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You've probably seen the video clip from Who Is America? in which comedian provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen easily convinces right wing politicians and lobbyists to express their support for giving guns to four-year-olds. Here's another clip with Cohen's character trying to explain a mathematically unsound proposal to Bernie Sanders, who patiently explains why the proposal move the 99% into the 1% won't work. Read the rest

Fathom Information Design created an interactive website called Fakebook that presents a bunch of Facebook ads purchased by Russia-linked agents, showing the intended audiences for the ads. Is their any reason to doubt that the Russians are still buying Facebook ads designed to divide and anger Americans?

In late 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a sample of Facebook ads purchased by Russia-linked agents to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This tool reveals how they targeted demographics to spread disinformation, increase hostility and discourage voters.

Advertisers on Facebook can target users based on pages they follow. The Russians targeted over 700 interests, such as Texas secession and Bernie Sanders. We used an algorithm to cluster them into the topics shown here based on the number of times interests were targeted by the same ad.

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Curlicuecal has a PhD in entomology and did graduate work on ant behavior. Recently Curlicuecal rated ant emojis from Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and other companies on their Tumblr. Apple has the best ant, and Mozilla had the worst (they use a termite).

Beautiful big almond eye, realistic and full of expression as she gazes gently at you. Elbowed antennae and delicately segmented legs and body. Gorgeous pearlescent sheen like she is glowing. This ant moisturizes. This ant is round and huggable. This ant is a star. 11/10.

Beautifully detailed, lifelike pose but with an unexpected neck and odd antennae, perhaps scared straight. Her eyes suggest she has seen things. Her expression confirms she has seen too much. She is haunted and I want to know more. 7/10. Read the rest

I've had a Roku, Apple TV, and the Fire TV Stick. I no longer use the Roku or Apple TV because the Fire TV Stick, in my experience is less buggy and easier to use than the other streaming devices. Also, I'm an Amazon Prime member, so I can watch a bunch of shows and movies that are included in the membership. Right now its on sale for just $20. Read the rest

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee, is no different from other members of Trump's base. They admire him for his ability to stare into people's eyes and tell them "big whoppers." There is no such thing as an inconvenient truth for a Trumpkin, because they prefer falsehoods over facts.

From Slate:

When it comes to what Trump was thinking, however, the right, like everyone, was largely at a loss for words. Until Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) plunged into that abyss of logic and offered up the most incoherent, but revealing explanation for Trump’s conduct during the press conference Monday. Sen. Rounds, who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee, offered up this explanation to Erica Werner of the Washington Post for why Trump refused to acknowledge Russian election interference of any kind:

"Everything I’ve seen and all the facts are very clear: Russia did meddle in our election. That was very clear. So I think what actually happened, I think Mr. Putin just got out-Trumped by Trump. If Mr. Putin thinks he can tell a whopper, he’s not gonna be outdone by this president. And so if Mr. Putin is going to look at him and try to straight-faced tell him that they didn’t meddle, our president can look right back at him and tell just as big a whopper back to Putin as Putin told him."

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I love Squirrel Monkey's imaginings of what famous online companies would be like if they had existed in the 1980s and 1990s. Here's their take on eBay. Read the rest

Andy Weir's excellent book, The Martian, about a Robinson Crusoe on Mars, is available today on Kindle for just $3. Read the rest