Post 10 is a vlogger who devotes his channel to "videos of unclogging culverts and drains, trains, experiments, machines, animals, trailcams, howto, aquariums, reviews, things I love and much more." I just spent an hour watching this fellow unclog storm drains during ferocious rain storms and marveling as he created gigantic whirlpools that despatched lake-sized puddles in parking lots and roads, leaving behind navigable surfaces. It's not just soothing TV, it's also inspirational to watch this guy play Anarchist Department of Public Works and freelance his town's hydrology problems. If you enjoy Mr 10's videos, you can celebrate them with a DRAIN IT! tee. (via Metafilter) Read the rest

'Dreams' by Joakim Karud is a popular track in Youtube's library of safe, royalty-free music, which it supplies to video creators who want to stay on the right side of copyright, but Sonyatv and Warner Chappell claim that the Creative Commons-licensed song contains an uncleared sample from the Kenny Burrell Quartet's 'Weaver of Dreams,' which has allowed the giant rightsholder corporations to claim ownership over any video that incorporates the track and demand the lion's share of the revenue generated by the tens of millions of views associated with them. Read the rest

China's state disinformation campaigns against the Hong Kong protesters are unwelcome on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, with the mainstream platforms shutting down accounts that spread propaganda videos; but increasingly these blocked videos are available on Pornhub, something that has been jubilantly announced by mainland Chinese social media influencers on Wechat. Read the rest

Google has blinked in the ongoing attempt to organize Youtube creators in a new organization called Fairtube, under the umbrella of the powerful German trade union IG Metall. Read the rest

Two great things that get even better together: Sublime and Hong Kong Phooey.

Penrod Pooch studied the 'Hong Kong Book of Kung-Fu' to no great effect, and Sublime was the only reason I'd go to Long Beach in the late 80s. The cartoon may be dated but the band remains in my rotation.

Thanks, Boing Boing BBS reader GulliverFoyle! Read the rest

Nathan Davis writes, "When you shuffle a deck, it rearranges the order of the cards and I got wondering what that looked like. Read the rest

Google has long allowed you to delete all the data it's stored on you, or to turn off collection, but turning off collection altogether made its services a lot less useful (for example, it made the auto-suggested locations in the Maps app of your phone worse, forcing you to do more typing on a tiny keyboard while on the go), and otherwise you had to remember to periodically open Google's privacy dashboard and delete your stored history. Read the rest

Holy shit. Read the rest

The Black Blorchestra performs a gorgeous and stirring rendition of "Glory to Hong Kong" for an audience of protesters in HK, all dressed in the uprising's defacto uniform of masks and helmets. (Thanks, Jeff Wasserstrom!) Read the rest

Infowars' “War Room” created a brand-new hate channel on YouTube exactly one day after chief executive Susan Wojcicki's letter to content creators about reducing extremist content. YouTube deleted Alex Jones's all-new garbage channel shortly after receiving reports of its relaunch from VICE. Read the rest

Apparently YouTube has been removing videos of battlebots, after their system flagged the videos for containing "animal suffering". Read the rest

In an effort to reduce the amount of false and extremist content pushed to viewers, Google's video platform YouTube will adjust its presentation algorithm for UK users. YouTube tried a similar algorithm tweak in the US recently, and recommendations of such ‘borderline’ videos were cut by 50%. Read the rest

Victoria Hogan writes, "My fiancee and I made a short film about creativity, yearning, and the scary forces of technology that might interact with those desires. More than a few people have called this a ‘Three Minute Black Mirror Episode’ - though to me, it’s more about living with the difficulties of pursuing your passion vs. stepping out of those difficulties for less gratification but more equanimity. I wanted to leave the ending open-ended rather than provide an answer/solution to this subject, though I do think the topic doesn’t have a clear answer, and is worth discussing." Read the rest

7 years ago, I posted Cookiewaits's video mashup of Cookie Monster performing Tom Waits's "God's Away on Business," but I somehow missed that Cookiewaits followed it up the next year with this brilliant mashup for "Hell Broke Luce," which is something of a favorite around these parts. If that's your bag, don't miss the Sesame Street gang performing the Beasties' "Sabotage." (Thanks, Richard Callaghan!) Read the rest

As Google has enacted a series of high-handed, opaque changes to how Youtube monetizes, upranks and censors videos, Youtubers have found themselves battered by the changes: they built Youtube into a global multi-billion-dollar success story, but they don't get a say in how it's managed. Now, a group of Youtubers have teamed up with Germany's powerful IG Metall trade union to fight back, using Europe's broad privacy laws and Germany's broad labor laws to force the company to come to the negotiating table and give them a say in how the service is run. You can read more about it on the Fairtube campaign site. Read the rest