Aestetix writes, "Our 13th conference is taking place next summer in a brand new location as you've probably heard. We expect it to be bigger and better than ever with lots more activities and space - all without leaving New York City! Since this is #13, we figured we'd make an initial batch of tickets available on November 13th at precisely 13:13 Eastern Time (that's 1:13 pm for those who don't do 24 hour clocks)." Read the rest

This is one of the more WTF videos I've seen in a while. It starts with a jack-in-the-box getting tossed off a school(?) bus in New York(?) and ends with one of the greatest reveals since Nicolas Roeg's 1973 psychological thriller, Don't Look Now.

It may very well be staged because it's just too good.

OMG I don't even know what to do with this! pic.twitter.com/Yl7MDwHNs8

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 12, 2019

Image: Twitter

[Updated 11/12/19 4:03pm PT] Indeed, it's a skit by Daniel Jean:

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Yesterday, volunteers and staff at New York's beloved Pacifica Radio affiliate, WBAI, got an abrupt notice informing them that Pacifica had shut down the station, in order to prevent its "financial losses" from "jeopardiz[ing] the survival of the entire network." Read the rest

A lot of companies struggle with bias in the workplace, but for many big tech companies, the problem is a bit more extreme. Why, because it's not just the human beings that are racist, a lot of their algorithms are biased too. This is the problem that Google reportedly was trying to solve when they got themselves into their latest privacy scandal, tricking black and brown “volunteers” to submit to 3D face scans. Read the rest

Mitch "the World's Best Artist" O'Connell (Not "Moscow" Mitch McConnell, the sell-out senator) got enough money in his crowdfunding campaign to erect this terrific They Live homage featuring reality TV show host Donald Trump. The VOTE billboard is ready for selfies at 7th Ave and 48th St!

Mitch said, "Mostly due to Boing Boing, it’s UP!" Yay!

Mitch received enough funds to keep the billboard up for a month, but if he gets more money it'll stay up longer. Contribute here. Read the rest

Manhattan in the early nineties, captured on what must have at the time been an unusually high-def camera.

The uploader of this incredible archival B-roll footage said to be of New York in 1993 says they captured it off of “a D-Theater HD DVHS Demo Tape by techmoan.com.

It's pretty incredible.

I miss this NYC.

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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 to that fact was to gin up a decades-long disinformation campaign aimed at sowing expensive doubt about the subject, even as it grew more certain of its facts. Read the rest

Apparently July 17 is National Tattoo Day (it's also my birthday, which means I spend it offline, not paying attention to the internet); to celebrate, the NYPL rounded up a gallery of its workers' literary tattoos. Read the rest

Days after an appeals court panel ordered the unsealing of thousands of pages of documents from one of the civil suits arising from billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's secret sweetheart plea bargain that allowed him to escape any serious penalties for years of alleged trafficking and raping of young teens, he has been arrested by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force and now faces charges related to dozens of sex offenses against young girls. Read the rest

Comedian, activist, and former late-night TV host Jon Stewart spoke on Capitol Hill today about getting health care and benefits for 9-11 first responders. Read the rest

In 2015, California enacted groundbreaking privacy legislation and in 2018, the state took up the matter again with even tougher rules that have been fought tooth-and-nail by Big Tech companies, many of whom are headquartered in the state. Read the rest

There isn't single county in the nation where a minimum-wage worker can afford to rent a two-bedroom home; and although LA has the worst homelessness crisis in the country, New York state is catching up, with homelessness growing by 46% since the financial crisis -- the fastest rate in the nation. Read the rest

Back in September 2018, the state of New York ordered Charter to leave: the company had made a bunch of promises about investing in high-speed broadband for New Yorkers as a condition of approval for its acquisition of Time Warner Cable, and then it lied like crazy, defrauding the state and attracting a $172.4M penalty (the largest penalty ever paid by a US ISP); since then, the company has been begging New York state to commute its death sentence and give it another chance. Read the rest

Update: See below for important corrections to this story

"Fruit Belt" is a 150-year-old predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo that has faced a series of systemic hurdles, each worsening the next, with the latest being the erasure of its very name, with the Big Tech platforms unilaterally renaming the area "Medical Park." Read the rest

Back in 2016, a "reputation management" company called Profile Defenders was caught forging court orders in order to get complaints about its clients removed from the site Pissed Consumer. This was a monumentally stupid thing to do, as judges are consistently unamused with people who forge their signatures. Read the rest

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) on Friday ordered two New York state agencies to investigate reports that Facebook could have access to a lot more of your personal data, if you're a smartphone user, than anyone realized before. Read the rest