James Coutts writes, "Indiana University Victorian Studies PhD candidate Mary Borgo Ton assembled an international group of artists/makers, a media archaeologist, laser cutters and 3D printers to create magic lantern slides that have not been made in 100 years for a show running in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe called Erewhon: "An antique magic lantern projector, an iPhone and a live musical score shine a new light on Samuel Butler’s classic sci-fi novel. A Victorian explorer discovers a colony of refugees; time travellers from the 21st century escaping their dependence on its technology. This delightful neo-historical head-scratcher playfully welds future, past and present into a glittering bracelet of time." Read the rest

Back in 1972-3, Disney ran a short-lived variety show called The Mouse Factory that intercut classic animation with live action, framed by celebrity hosts that kind of threaded it all together into a mashed-up, loose storyline. Read the rest

Douglas McKee of McAffee presented his research into the security of medical diagnostic equipment at last week's Defcon conference in Las Vegas. Read the rest

The wonderful Aquabats, nearly killed when the network they'd signed with went out of business, are back, and they want to produce a new TV special episode of Super Show! with a new album to go with it. Read the rest

Two years ago, I delivered the closing keynote at the Internet Archive's inaugural Decentralized Web event; last week, we had the second of these, and once again, I gave the closing keynote, entitled Big Tech's problem is Big, not Tech. Here's the abstract: Read the rest

Uni's Kuru Toga Roulettes are mechanical pencils that solve a problem I've never had, which is that the tip wears differentially, eventually creating a blunt instrument (I am a clod whose draftsmanship looks like I tried writing in a zeppelin caught in a tornado, so this is not a problem for me) -- the Roulette contains a tiny gearing mechanism that rotates the lead by a quarter-turn every time you lift the tip (e.g. between words); this creates an even wear around the lead's tip, keeping it sharp and reducing the likelihood that it will snap. (via Core 77) Read the rest

Three adults dug out their childhood Yu-Gi-Oh! card collection for an expert appraisal, and all were surprised, albeit one unpleasantly so. Read the rest

Qanon is a person or group behind an unhinged right-wing conspiracy theory that is really too stupid to elucidate (you can listen to this Reply All if you're really interested); it's a kind of trumpian Pizzagate successor that includes great, unhealthy lashings of secret Democratic pedophile rings (because far-right assholes are more worried about imaginary children in nonexistent pizzeria basements than they are actual children in ICE cages). Read the rest

Aaron Oppenheim writes, "I made a lil lazy mashup of Legs and Where The Streets Have No Name (just tempo and key matching) because someone on twitter pointed out that they are basically the same song. It works incredibly well." Read the rest

I'm headed to DC to sit down in studio with BookTV's "In Depth" on August 5; it'll air live on Aug 5 at 12PM Eastern/9AM Pacific and be repeated on August 6 at 12AM Eastern/(9PM Pacific on Aug 5) and on Aug 11 at 9AM Eastern/6AM Pacific. It's a phone-in! Read the rest

Archprankster Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat, etc) has a new show called Who Is America? where he disguises himself sits down with US politicians and tries to get them to do something absurd, with some pretty remarkable (and even career-ending) results (though not everybody falls for it). Read the rest

In 2008, Universal Music fraudulently claimed that a short Youtube clip of a toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" was a copyright infringement, leading to eight years of litigation and, eventually, a landmark ruling secured by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in which the court found that Universal had a duty to consider fair use before using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to censor other peoples' media. Read the rest

Apparently Facebook is running TV ads apologizing for being a creepy stalker optimized for organizing Nazi hate-mobs and genocidal pogroms (also apparently: now that all the young people are leaving Facebook, TV is how you reach the company's core user-base). Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (previously) stunned the Democratic establishment when she comprehensively kicked the ass of finance-friendly, seemingly untouchable Democrat-in-name-only incumbent Joe Crowley in a New York City primary race that she won on a Democratic Socialist platform of abolishing ICE, Medicare for all, a jobs guarantee, a housing guarantee, gun control, relief for Puerto Rico, and gun control. Read the rest

MIT's How to Win at Texas Hold 'Em is a CC-licensed open course taught by Will Ma in 2016 and now free to watch online; the game is the perfect combination of psych and stats, and learning to play is a great way to improve your basic reasoning skills. (via Kottke) Read the rest

Burbank's Magnolia Park district was a big reason my family and I moved to town three years ago: a walkable, shady, tree-lined street whose merchants are a quirky (and legendary) mix of indie bookstores, prop outlets, vintage clothing stores, collectibles stores, year-round Halloween stores, hobby shops, quirky indie designers, gaming stores, wine bars, community credit unions -- like a goth/alternative Main Street, USA. Read the rest

The E-meter is a quack device used by Scientologists in a religious ritual called "auditing" in which changes in skin potential are said to indicate past traumas (including traumas from past lives) being re-experienced and cleared from your psyche. Read the rest