![Trump said immigration would be suspended from countries like Syria and Libya [Carlo Allegri/Reuters]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ulhl5QHeW-fzpZhFB9jo_PmjzxTQ9fGS9-4LYEQupVbQC3Z64qDhHyHQabRmjK0Lyj80pn1yvmAgz7nlMf0b4PIOaGRE0Cw1b7LivwLQCjdEwEo35GTJP4i6ARe3E5y1LS6m69tKAKy-CeKzMhRUsNg9YqTAPJ_TIUlezsEpFxvw=s0-d)
After a very weird day in Mexico with President Enrique Peña Nieto, then a Twitter shitstorm in which Trump was accused of lying about the content of that meeting, the Republican Presidential candidate gave a long-awaited speech in Arizona that was to put forth his policies on immigration.
Wednesday 31 August 2016
In Arizona speech, Trump calls for 'ideological certification' of immigrants, mass deportation, and that wall
Trump's claims about Mexico border wall discussion disputed by president Peña Nieto
Donald Trump flew to Mexico just before a highly anticipated immigration speech in Arizona tonight, and met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
After the meeting, Trump says the two men discussed a wall that the U.S. GOP presidential nominee has promised to build along the US/Mexico border. Trump says they did not discuss his often repeated demand that Mexico will pay for it. The Mexican president responded, and effectively said that Trump's version of events was not true.
Colored hex wrenches
This is a good idea: colored ball-end hex wrenches so you can easily tell them apart. Comes in US and metric sets. Go nuts and buy both sets in one package.
Tuesday 30 August 2016
Donald Trump to travel to Mexico and meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto
Donald Trump says he will fly to Mexico City Wednesday to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, hours before the GOP presidential nominee is to deliver a speech in Arizona on immigration.
Live video: Guns and drugs retrieved in Chris Brown LAPD standoff
The live Fox 11 helicopter video of LAPD officers surrounding Chris Brown's home is weird enough, but when you add streaming emoji typed in by viewers, it's super hyper weird.
Bizarre perfume ad by Spike Jonze is a must-see
Wow! Directed by Spike Jonze, this high-energy KENZO World ad, or "short film" as they're calling it, is the best perfume commercial I've ever seen. And the most bizarre.
The brand's new ad, directed by Spike Jonze, shows what may be best described as a perfume rapturing. Actress and dancer Margaret Qualley (star of The Leftovers and Andie MacDowell's daughter) works herself into a full-body perfume frenzy choreographed by Ryan Heffington, the choreographer of Sia's “Chandelier.”
(New York Magazine)
The song, "Mutant Brain," is an original track by Sam Spiegel (Jonze' brother) and Ape Drums. You can download the song from Amazon.
Monday 29 August 2016
$10k reward to find horrible person gunning down sea otters
Sea otters. Cute little sea otters. Someone is shooting sea otters along California's central coast.
Via the LA Times:
California wildlife officials are offering a $10,000 reward to find whoever is responsible for fatally shooting three Southern sea otters along the Central Coast over the last month.
The two juvenile males and one adult male otter were killed between late July and early August, and washed up between Santa Cruz Harbor and Seacliff State Beach in Aptos between Aug. 12 and 19, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said Monday.
The animals are protected under the Endangered Species Act and state law. Killing a Southern sea otter is punishable by up to $100,000 in fines and jail time, authorities said.
If you have any information, rat that fucker out! Give the $10,000 to the Marine Mammal Center, where I have been known to volunteer.
Also, gun ownership regulation as soon as possible please.
Anyone with information about the killings can call (888) 334-2258.
Recomendo: six cool things to see, hear, read, eat, and do
Want to get Cool Tools' Recomendo a week early in your inbox? Sign up for the Sunday newsletter here.
Travel Tip:
A Global Entry pass is a true bargain if you do any international travel. You don't need to wait in line for immigration at reentry to the US. But it also serves as validation for the TSA Pre-check short-cut for security screening at most major US airports. Much shorter lines. To get in the program requires an appointment to get fingerprinted and $100 every five years. Well worth it. - Kevin Kelly
Edible:
Before I take a flight, I toss a few Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt Kind bars into my travel bag. The crunchy bars are gluten free and have just 5g of sugar. The perfect snack for plane or hotel room. - Mark Frauenfelder
Destination:
If you're in Northern California and have yet to visit Amador County, I could not recommend it more. The county is steeped in Gold Rush history and offers 40+ wineries, romantic B&Bs and historical small towns, all within a short drive of one another. Side note: I was once the Lifestyles Editor for the county newspaper, which might make me a bit biased, but I also have enjoyed enough time there to know it makes for a magical getaway. - Claudia Lamar
Readable:
The Library of America publishes high-quality hardbound books with multiple novels per volume. I'm reading Ross Macdonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s, which contains three excellent novels about fictional Los Angeles detective Lew Archer. These tightly-written page-turners have kept me up way past my bedtime. - MF
Enjoyment:
I'm more audio book than podcast listener, but On Being with Krista Tippett is one of my favorite things ever. Her guests vary from artists, scientists and activists, and the conversation is always centered around the intangible aspects of life. It's philosophical without being pushy, and I'm quickly working my way through the archives. - CL
Follow:
The best photographer blog and/or photo magazine for both pros and newbies, and for all photographers in between, is on the web as PetaPixel. Sure, they have the latest nerdy camera gossip, but they also have plenty of features about the million different ways people actually capture and use images. Every day I am amazed and informed. Add it to your RSS feed. - KK
Saturday 27 August 2016
How to change people's minds on social issues with "deep canvassing"
Oddly enough, we don't know very much about how to change people's minds on social issues, not scientifically. That's why the work of the a group of LGBT activists in Los Angeles is offering something valuable to psychology and political science – a detailed map of uncharted scientific territory.
Over the last eight years, and through more than 12,000 conversations, The Leadership LAB has developed a new kind of persuasion they call deep canvassing. Volunteer's go door-to-door, talking to strangers, and often change their attitudes about things like same-sex marriage and transgender rights.
Unfortunately, the first scientist to measure the technique's effectiveness also committed scientific fraud by copy/pasting some data from another study and cutting corners in other ways, creating a wave of negative publicity that threatened the reputation of the people who created the technique, even though they were just the subjects of the study and not involved in the wrongdoing.
In the show, you will meet two scientists who uncovered the fraud and got the paper retracted, and then decided to go ahead and start over, do new research themselves, and see if the persuasion technique that the original researcher was supposed to be studying truly worked.
Can you reduce prejudice with a single 20-minute conversation? Can you flip people's opinions in just one encounter? Learn what the latest science has to say about deep canvassing in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Soundcloud
Neil deGrasse Tyson. Everything we now know about the universe-from the behavior of quarks to the birth of entire galaxies-has stemmed from scientists who've been willing to ponder the unanswerable. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.
This episode is also sponsored 
In every episode, after I read a bit of self delusion news, I taste a cookie baked from a recipe sent in by a listener/reader. That listener/reader wins a signed copy of my new book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” and I post the recipe on the YANSS Pinterest page. This episode's winner is Deanna Klingbeal who sent in a recipe for chocolate waffle cookies. Send your own recipes to david {at} youarenotsosmart.com.
Links and Sources
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Soundcloud
Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing
Video: Watch a Voter Change Her Mind
Image courtesy of The Leadership LAB, screenshot of video linked above.
Music:
Friday 26 August 2016
The long and twisted tale of the Nibbler arcade game
Never heard of Nibbler? You're not alone. Nibbler was one of a handful of arcade games produced in the early 80's by Rock-Ola Manufacturing Company, a company better known for its stylish jukeboxes. Designed by programmers Joe Ulowetz and John Jaugilas, Nibbler is the bastard lovechild of the Pac-Man and the cell phone game Snake, which you may remember playing on your 2001 Nokia handheld. Oft-maligned by classic arcade gamers as less worthy than games like Donkey Kong, Dig Dug or Defender, Nibbler is actually a fun and fairly addictive game which starts out easy and steadily ramps up difficulty as the player advances through levels of mazes. Since only about 1,500 Nibblers rolled off of the assembly line, it was a somewhat rare find in the arcade scene of the day, especially when compared to the hundreds of thousands of Pac-Man cabinets that proliferated, yet interest in Nibbler has endured into the modern era, spearheaded by a coterie of die-hard Nibbler fanatics. You see, what made Nibbler special is that it held a secret, it was the first game of its era that could be played to one billion points and beyond.
The secret was discovered by Tom Asaki, who at the time was an undergraduate at Montana State University studying physics. The founding member of the “Bozeman Think Tank,” Tom had been one of the early arcade pioneers who cracked Ms. Pac-Man (on which he held world records) and he quickly mastered Nibbler. Tom soon noticed that the score counter kept adding places and noticed that the game could hold at least nine digits. This meant that a score of 999,999,999 (or more) would be possible on Nibbler. Tom decided to see how high he could get on the game and realized that reaching the billion point mark on Nibbler would require a nearly two day, non-stop marathon (on a single quarter of course). Tom embarked on a quest to become the first player to score one billion points on a video game and made several grueling attempts at the billion. Unlike today's console games, the arcade games of yore could not be paused, so in order to take a bathroom break he had to build up a large reserve of extra lives and then dash off and return to the controls before his last man died off. Because of the pain in his elbows, Tom was forced to soak his arms in ice buckets to help reduce the swelling and discomfort that came with his billion point attempts.
During one such record attempt, while playing at the famous Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa Iowa, a sixteen-year-old local farm boy named Tim McVey noticed a crowd gathered around Tom and the Nibbler cabinet. Curious as to why Tom was receiving all the attention, he soon learned that Tom was going for a billion points on Nibbler. Though Tom failed that day, Tim decided to stick a quarter in the game that everyone was making a fuss about. Soon, he too was hooked and realized that he had a talent for playing Nibbler. With some tips from Tom and encouragement from arcade owner Walter Day, Tim decided to go for the billion points himself. The prize for such an achievement? Life-long bragging rights and a Nibbler arcade game of his very own….
***
I discovered Nibbler around 2007, it was one of a trove of games housed in a MAME (arcade emulation) cabinet, dubbed “the Ultracade” that I built from scratch and then surreptitiously smuggled onto the lot at Universal Studios where I was editing Battlestar Galactica. Working late into the evenings, doing my part to help a rag tag fleet of humans find a mythical planet known as “Earth,” arcade gaming turned out to be a perfect way to blow off steam for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. I soon learned that everybody of certain age has “their game." It could be Asteroids, or Joust, Space Invaders or Pac-Man, Centipede or Dragon's Lair, but everyone has a game they remember and enjoy playing. For me that game was Robotron, an action packed frenzy of a game in which robots rise up to destroy the human race, very fitting for the show I was working on.
During season three, when editor Tim Kinzy joined our team, I found a kindred spirit who, like myself, had a come of age in the 80s and had a nostalgia for retro gaming and 8-bit graphics. We soon started to plumb the depths of the Ultracade, seeking out lost classics and having weekly high score competitions on various games. Then one day, while scrolling through the list of rom titles, we stumbled upon Nibbler. There was something about the 8-bit snake, slithering through a Pac-Man style maze that caught our eye and we soon found ourselves competing for the Nibbler title during lunch breaks.
Our wrists and shoulders ached as we traded high scores, struggling to crest the 100,000 point mark. A few days later, returning to my editing room, I discovered a strange flyer taped to my door. It was a grainy black and white poster of a sullen looking teenager standing next to a Nibbler game with the text “Tim McVey Day” in a large type and below “congratulations for scoring 1,000,000,000 points.” The whole thing looked utterly preposterous, but a quick Google search revealed some startling details. It turned out that in 1984, a Tim McVey of Ottumwa, Iowa had in fact earned over one billion points on the game we were struggling to get one hundred thousand on. Snatching the poster off the door, I walked into our break room, where Tim Kinzy was sweating away, trying to break my Nibbler high score. Tim admitted that, in an act of desperation, he had turned to the internet looking for Nibblergame play tips and had stumbled upon the Tim McVey Day poster.
So there it was, the first-billion point game. It had all hallmarks of a classic coming of age story, of the small town local kid achieving the seemingly impossible and I wanted to know more. What had become of Tim McVey, the stalwart teenager who battled Nibbler for two days in an effort to reach the pantheon of video achievement? With all that drive and determination, what had he gone on to do; who had he become? We decided to see if we could track him down. Surprisingly, a Google search turned up quite a few Timothy McVey's in Iowa and we proceeded to call them all - it felt kind of like the Terminator searching for the right Sarah Connor. Eventually we located Tim, the Nibbler God, and found that he was an ordinary, all-American, humble, blue collar guy, still living in Iowa, just one town over from where he grew up. We hatched a plan to fly out to Iowa and conduct a round of interviews with Tim, arcade owner Walter Day and Tim's childhood friend (and billion-point witness) Mark Hoff, with the intention of gathering material to tell the story of the first-billion point game. We figured, one weekend, a little bit of editing and a 5-10 minute video documenting the first billion-point game for YouTube.
Footage in hand, we returned to Los Angeles and our busy day jobs, filing away the tapes until we had a free moment to edit them. Several months later, Tim called us to let us know that he intended to go for the record again. You see, at some point in the late 80s, a rumor of a higher Nibbler score had surfaced in Italy, though never officially verified, the rumor had cast doubt on Tim's epic achievement and had always troubled him. So now, despite the passing of twenty-five years, an older, less fit Tim McVey was going to embark on a quest to once and for all lay claim to the Nibbler world record title and dispel all doubt. It struck us that there's something universal about the story of man attempting to recapture the glory of his youth and there would be inherent drama in the two days of grueling game play that setting a new record would require. So we decided to grab our cameras and document Tim's quest. Little did we realize that we were about to embark on a multi-year filmmaking odyssey during which we would discover other die-hard Nibbler players, including the long lost Italian and learn more about Nibbler than we ever thought possible. In the end, Tim's journey would take him down a long and twisting road full of ups and downs and surprises and along the way we became what I like to call “accidental documentarians.” I don't want to spoil the film for you, but the end result is a lot of fun and surprisingly inspirational, so if your interested in learning more check out the full-length film, MAN VS SNAKE.
Andrew Seklir is a producer, director and Emmy-nominated editor whose credits include WESTWORLD/HBO, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA/SyFy and ATARI: GAME OVER/Xbox Studios.
Smári McCarthy: a pirate who goes after corporate criminal ships
As the former editor-in-chief of the technology project magazine MAKE, I've learned that makers don't limit themselves to simply making things. Their urge to be an active participant in the world around them means that they also have a strong desire to make the tools, processes, systems, and organizations that empower other people to do the same. One example is Safecast, a global volunteer-centered project that developed a low cost collaborative monitoring network to measure radiation levels in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Safecast has not only generated the world's largest open dataset of background radiation measurements, it has also established a standard for collaborative environmental data measurement projects.
Similarly, another program benefiting from maker enthusiasm is the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a non-profit collaborative organization consisting of a large number investigative groups and media from around the world. The chief technologist of OCCRP is an astonishingly prolific activist and maker named Smári McCarthy.
Earlier this year, Institute for the Future invited McCarthy to come to its public gallery in Palo Alto and share with a standing-room-only crowd what he's learned about global corruption. There's enough bribery, assassinations, money laundering, treasury embezzlement, mob shoot-outs, and poisonings in his talk to fill the pages of an espionage thriller. The only difference is it's all true, and it's still happening.
Thursday 25 August 2016
400 years of equator hazings, and how I survived one
This summer, I spent a month aboard a research vessel in the Indian Ocean. At one point, we crossed the equator, which meant that those of us who had never done that before were treated to a special ceremony. In fact, it was a straight-up hazing, as I describe in a new article at Collectors Weekly.
The minute Pascal tied my hands together, I knew was in trouble. Pascal is a big man with an even bigger laugh, one of two hardworking, and hard-drinking, bosuns aboard a French research vessel called the Marion Dufresne. For his birthday a few days earlier, the crew had given Pascal a ball gag. Pascal thought this was hilarious, and immediately strapped the sex toy over his mouth, contorting his face in exaggerated expressions of mock distress, to the delight of the deckhands and officers assembled in the ship's bar. Somehow, I couldn't get that image out of my head, as Pascal, a mischievous grin now creasing his broad face, secured the knots around my wrists and gave me a wink. No doubt about it, whatever was about to happen next was totally going to suck.
Wednesday 24 August 2016
Dakota Pipeline decision delayed to Sept. 9, thousands of indigenous activists continue protest
In Washington today, District Judge James E. Boarsberge said he will not issue a decision on a legal challenge by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Dakota Access, LLC, the private firm behind a nearly $4 billion oil project Native people say will destroy their land and cause unprecedented damage to human, plant, and animal life in the region.
Baltimore police respond to report they secretly spied on city with aerial surveillance tech from Iraq War
A report out this week from Bloomberg says that since January, 2016, people in the city of Baltimore, Maryland have secretly and periodically been spied on by police using cameras in the sky. Authorities today effectively admitted that the report is accurate.
Tuesday 23 August 2016
'Sassy Trump' by Peter Serafinowicz: 'What Do You Have To Lose?' edition
“Martin Luther Trump stumbles through a teleprompted message of hope for absent black people.” (more…)
Satisfying video of the world's fastest shopping cart smashing into a wall
Dynamic Test Center, a provider of engineering and safety tests of all kinds, rolled a shopping cart into a wall at 75 miles per hour. Apparently that's a new world record. That clip is preceded by a shopping cart smashing into a car at 11 mph. It's oddly even more satisfying to watch, particularly because it isn't my car.
Watch a giant domino tower fall after 7 hours of building with 3,242 dominoes
Epic fail.
What is described as “America's largest domino tower” collapses on camera, after 7 straight hours of building. (more…)
FBI investigating reported Russian hacks that target New York Times journalists and others
Monday 22 August 2016
Amusing drunk caught on police bodycam wants footage off the net
In this footage, Sgt. Eric Kannberg deals calmly with a belligerent drunk, Cory Counts, using de-escalation techniques even after Counts gets physical. After Kannberg gets a push from Counts and it comes time to haul him to the drunk tank, Kannberg decides not to pursue through a crowd, instead stalking him at a distance until a safe opportunity presents itself. Counts earned a misdemeanor charge and the the ignominy of having the footage posted to Spokane P.D.'s Facebook page. (more…)
Spider preparing a fly for dinner
We found this little fellow in the garage preparing dinner. Despite a sultry summer, we've been free of flies and I figure it's all thanks to Team Cellar Spider.
Sunday 21 August 2016
How the New York Public Library made ebooks open, and thus one trillion times better
Leonard Richardson isn't just the author of Constellation Games, one of the best debut novels I ever read and certainly one of the best books I read in 2013; he's also an extremely talented free/open source server-software developer who has been working for the New York Public Library on a software project that liberates every part of the electronic book lending system from any kind of proprietary lock-in, and, in the process, made reading library ebooks one trillion times better.
(more…)
How to make a difference
A PSA from Donate Life America.
Checking that box on your driver's license renewal, or application, is simple and saves lives.
(Thanks Robert O'Neal!)
Saturday 20 August 2016
Hugo Award Winners 2016
Tonight in Kansas City, MO, at Midamericon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, the Hugo Awards
were presented to a rapt audience in person and online, with voters weighing on a ballot
that had been partially sabotaged by a small clique of people who objected to
stories about wowen and people who weren't white.
(more…)
Help wanted: Director of Technology Policy for Consumer Reports
This is a pretty amazing vacancy: "You will lead Consumer Reports in our effort to realize a market where consumer safety is protected through strong encryption; consumers' rights to test, repair, and modify their devices are supported by copyright, security, and consumer protection laws; and consumers are empowered to make informed choices about IoT products while being protected by privacy policies regulating the collection, use, and storage of their data. This is a chance to build something big, meaningful, and new."
Friday 19 August 2016
Lane splitting now legal in California
While not previously against the law, lane splitting was left up to officer discretion. Now it is state law that the lane splitting is legal. Officers will use their judgement to determine what is safe behavior and what is not.
Via the LA Times:
Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation by Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-Hayward) that defines the practice and authorizes the California Highway Patrol to establish rules for motorcyclists on how to do it safely.
Assemblyman Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale), a retired state highway patrol sergeant who co-wrote the bill, called the new law a "groundbreaking step."
"This is a huge win for roadway safety,” Lackey said in a statement. "We are now giving riders and motorists clear guidance on when it is safe."
Lane splitting, in which a motorcyclist passes other vehicles by riding between them along the lane line, has long been a controversial issue.
Technically, it has not been legal or illegal, falling in a gray area where it was treated as acceptable by law enforcement agencies. But when the CHP published guidelines on the practice in 2015, a citizen complained that the agency should not be allowed to create public policy. In came AB 51.
Quirk's original bill proposed that lane splitting could occur legally only when a motorcycle was moving no more than 15 mph faster than the traffic around it, and it prohibited the practice at speeds above 50 mph.
Several motorcyclists' groups objected to that, saying the limit was too low. Other groups and individuals, who believe that lane splitting is dangerous regardless of speed, objected to the proposal entirely.
The revised bill, which sailed through the legislative process, provides a basic definition of "lane splitting" and leaves the rest to the CHP. Quirk has said it has many benefits, including reducing traffic congestion and promoting safety.
Two smartphone accessories for snapping pro-quality photos
When carrying around a bulky DSLR camera isn't ideal, we use these impressive add-ons to help turn our smartphones into quality cameras.
Flexible Tripod for Smartphones and Cameras
The Flexible Tripod for Smartphones and Cameras ($8.99) is perfect for capturing a group shot or leveling out your phone on an uneven surface. Its flexible legs can wrap around anything, even a tree branch, so it's great for taking photos while on a hike or while sightseeing. We were impressed with its sturdy construction that can even support a digital camera or oversized phone.
Universal 3-in-1 Lens Kit for Smartphones & Tablets
If you really want to start taking next level pictures with your phone, we suggest you invest in the Universal 3-in-1 Lens Kit for Smartphones & Tablets ($11.99). These three lenses-fisheye, wide-angle, or macro-clip right onto your smartphone's lens and help you take pictures that'll look like they were taken with a much pricier device. The lenses clip on and off to keep from damaging your phone, and they come in a convenient carrying bag for easy transport.
Thursday 18 August 2016
While eating man's face, Florida 'cannibal killer' wore Trump 'Make America Great Again' hat
On Monday night, 19 year old Austin Kelly Harrouff of Florida went homicidally berserk for reasons yet unknown. He stabbed to death a random couple twice his age, also attacking a neighbor who tried to intervene. Then Austin began biting the dead man's face off.
Horrible new details are out today. When Austin's frightened mom called 911 to report his erratic, menacing behavior with family, she told the emergency dispatcher that her son was wearing a Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” hat when he wandered off into the night ranting about being a superhero. And in a YouTube video uploaded before the attack, he spoke to the camera about bodybuilding and steroids, and of taking “a lot of shrooms.”
A person familiar with the family gave reporters two snapchats Austin sent out hours before the attack. The snapchats show him making faces for the camera with the words "Trump" and "the horse" captioning the images.
DoJ says it will end private federal prisons
Six weeks after Mother Jones published its explosive undercover expose on the abuses, shortcomings and waste in America's vast private prison system, the Department of Justice has issued a ban on renewal of federal private prison contracts (where they are not able to do this, officials are told to "substantially reduce" the scope of those contracts), with the goal of "reducing -- and ultimately ending -- our use of privately operated prisons."
(more…)
The incredible true story of the Epcot Horizons superfans who ruled the ride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5wBsv0n5nA
In 1995, after a year-long closure, Disney re-opened Horizons, the GE-sponsored original Epcot ride devoted to showcasing different ideas about the future, a kind of heir to the Futurama at the 1939 New York World's Fair; fearing the ride was likely to be shuttered soon, two Epcot superfans began covertly exploring and documenting the ride, figuring out its ways and means until they learned how to penetrate it and hide from Disney employees while sneaking in their friends and having little celebrations.
(more…)
Review of The Hike, by Drew Magary
Currently a columnist for Deadspin, GQ, and other outlets, Drew Magary crafted his voice writing blisteringly satires of NFL players, coaches, and fans like Rex Ryan, Michael Vick, Rex Grossman, and “Tommy from Quinzee” at the NFL-related humor blog KissingSuzyKolber. He gained his greatest renown in a 2013 profile of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson for GQ that brightly illuminated Robertson's homophobia and lead to Robertson's brief suspension from the show.
But to get a grasp of this captivating writer's career to date and put his new novel, The Hike, in its proper context, it helps to go back to the start of his online career. Magary began to draw attention in the blogosphere as “Big Daddy Drew” on a blog called “Father Knows Shit” and as an early, popular commenter on Deadspin, and the blogging medium and FKS' uproarious view of fatherhood remains a touchstone for his work. As he recently told me, “You know me, I never shut … up about dad crap. I try to use any available material I have in hand because it helps make the characters feel grounded and because I always try to get deep inside myself and try to get that on the page.”
Magary's first novel, The Postmortal (2011), is a fascinating update to the epistolary form as he used a series of blog entries to craft his novel's premise of a world without aging and the myriad complications to society that result. It was a deft move that combined the strengths of his non-fiction and online satire into the novel's form and content. In his review for Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder wrote, “The Postmortal is a dark, bleak tale, but it's also an exciting page turner, with bits of black humor thrown in to keep it from becoming bottomlessly depressing.” In my own review for Rougarou, I wrote that “The Postmortal offers a compelling examination of humanity's paradoxical mental fragility and arrogant need to have our existence validated by others,” and that Magary was a promising SF writer.
The Hike demonstrates an expansion of this fragility through a parent fearful of losing his family to aging, poor choices, and those forces further outside human control.
Following Frauenfelder, I can say that The Hike is also a page-turner with a more traditional narrative form-a third person narrator, straightforward plotting, etc.-that results in a successful work of contemporary fantasy. It displays a writer in command of his voice and experimenting with more traditional forms of narrative, while being inventive, funny, and, by the end of the work, quietly profound and touching. In short, if one has enjoyed Magary's fiction and non-fiction and one likes fantasy literature that is not necessarily in the Tolkienian, wizards/dragons/elves mode, then The Hike is for you. Although I found it less ground-breaking in both structure and story than The Postmortal, the ending of The Hike is both carefully earned and satisfying.
Throughout The Hike, Magary's hallmark style of bombastic invectives at life's unfairness (as well as his prodigious profanity) often overshadows his subtle but nuanced observations of the human condition. It appears to me that deep down, there is a sensibility in his writing that cannot for one moment understand life's mysterious cruelties that fuels this writer's boiling, indignant rage.
The Hike opens with Ben, like Magary a husband and father of three in the DC area, on what he imagines to be a routine business trip to a dumpy mountain inn in eastern Pennsylvania, a “wedding mill” Ben calls it, to meet with a vendor. Upon arriving, Ben decides to venture out for what he imagines will be a pleasant walk in the surrounding countryside. Quickly, Ben discovers that the path has taken him away from everything he has known as “normal”-he is quite off the Map app in his phone and finds himself in a hellscape worthy of Dante. Ben's adventures with his phone, including tantalizing moments when it connects to a cell tower and he can hear his family's voices, as well as his on-going battles with its capricious GPS sensor and battery, become a funny running sub-plot. Turns out, it's often nice to have a Virgil when Siri is unavailable, and a highlight of the novel is the revelation of just who is Ben's Virgil.
The Hike grabbed me early on with its uncanny depiction of Ben's horrifying realization that he is utterly unsure of how to get back to his room, his car, his familiar life. In short order, he encounters two terrifying killers, men masked by the torn faces of Rottweilers. Once away from these dual Cerberus figures, Ben meets a girl from his past-though in this scene, Ben is no longer a soon-to-be-middle-aged businessman with a balky, surgically repaired knee, but a hale and randy college student once again. After a night of sex and rehashing their brief history, she sends the present, older version of Ben on his way with a note bearing just one line: “Stay on the path.” It is a command that comes to define Ben's attempts to complete his quest to get back to his family.
From the “is it really adultery to have sex as a past, unmarried version of yourself that might actually be a hallucination” sendoff down the path, Magary's plot twists and turns in ways that will feel comfortable to readers of fantasy-his protagonist encounters various demons, temptresses, giants, and other specters, while enduring near-starvation, a battle royal, imprisonment, forced labor, and despondent isolation. In addition to images of the fantastic, Magary draws on elements from video games (not in any way to the extent of Cline's Ready Player One (2011), though I could see some readers making such a connection). And while it builds on The Postmortal's critique of gerontophobia in youth-obsessed America, The Hike is far more interested in exploring a parent's primordial fears of loss and abandonment.
This is a novel about the overwhelming desire that we often have of returning to our sense of our “normal” often formed in childhood. As well, Magary mines the adult fears of losing our youth, vitality, and those we cherish. Reading the novel, I often found myself thinking back to The Inferno's first lines: “Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark, / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” This is truly what The Hike is about-the journeys in adulthood that begin, so often, with the mundane but devolve into visions of despair. As in all good journey tales, The Hike ultimately strips Ben down to his core through his darkest fears and by revealing what sins he will and won't commit in order to return to those he loves.
Ultimately, the novel pulls back from much of its potential for existential exploration in favor of a good adventure yarn, but as a second novel from this talented writer, I believe it's worth the time to seek out and explore the book's dark forest of ideas.
Primitive but clever inventions that predate today's smart phones
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
Where Discovery Sparks Imagination: A Pictorial History of Radio and Electricity
by John D. Jenkins
American Museum of Radio and Electricity
2009, 224 pages, 8.2 x 10 x 1 inches
$16 Buy a copy on Amazon
If you're ever up near the Canadian border in the little college town of Bellingham, WA make time to check out a gem of a museum there: The SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention. It's fully charged up and literally crackling with excitement (and a 4-million volt Tesla coil!). SPARK showcases all manner of fascinating artifacts all about the history of electricity from early static electricity generators to advanced vacuum tubes that went to the moon. Can't make the trip? Then get this wonderful book!
And even if you do go to SPARK in person, you'll also want to read Where Discovery Sparks Imagination. It features lavish color photographs of hundreds of the items on display together with the interesting stories of the people and places that go along with the things. I learned even more about Alessandro Volta and volts, Andre-Marie Ampere and amps, and Georg Ohm and ohms. See the recreation of the Titanic's radio room. Learn how an undertaker in Kansas City invented the first dial phone to short circuit his competitor's switchboard shenanigans. Anyone who has used a phone, listened to a recording, or turned on a lamp will enjoy seeing the primitive but clever inventions that predate today's smart phones, PCs and LED lights. Fans of steampunkery will geek out at the endless array of 19th-century wonders like Wimhurst generators, telegraphs, “electro-magnetic motive machines,” as well as a forest of vacuum-tube devices, handsome wood-burl radio cabinetry and brassy mechanical sound players.
I was delighted to see included whimsical touches, too, like the mascot characters that put a friendly face on electrical consumer products: sure, they have a “Nipper” (the RCA mascot dog), but also the very cool 1920s Maxfield Parrish designed “Selling Fool” point of purchase display doll (with wooden jointed, posable limbs with slits for holding ad cards – and a radio tube for a helmet!). Until I can go back to SPARK (Science Powered Adventures for Real Kids) in person, I'm digging this book!
How to make garlic puree with just a knife
Here's Jacques Pépin showing how to chop garlic, and how to make garlic puree with just a knife. An important step is to remove the stem before peeling, because it makes it easy to remove the skin.
Why do trains suck in the U.S.?
This video explains why U.S. trains are slow, unreliable, expensive, and don't go where people want them to go, and why the situation is not likely to improve. Interesting fact: Amtrak operates 300 train journeys a day, while France's SNCF operates 14,000 train journeys a day.
The accidental origin of the hit song 'American Woman'
Randy Bachman of The Guess Who tells the origin story of "American Woman" (1970). It involves the Vietnam war and a broken guitar string.
Here's the song:
https://youtu.be/gkqfpkTTy2w
Here's how Big Data could change your career
With all of the digital information out there-from credit card numbers to Instagram posts to consumer behavior-there's so much data that businesses struggle with the task of storing, managing, and analyzing the information.
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Wednesday 17 August 2016
Trump spokesman angry at fact
On CNN, host Brianna Keilar asked Trump spokesman Michael Cohen about his candidate's sinking poll numbers. "Says who?" he demands. (more…)
California Blue Cut wildfire captured by JPL's MISR instrument on NASA Terra satellite
A striking new image of massive wildfires raging through Southern California, captured by JPL's MISR instrument on the NASA Terra satellite. The image was taken at about noon Pacific time today, and shows the destructive rage of the Blue Cut wildfire, east of Los Angeles.
Breitbart's Stephen Bannon, now Trump's new CEO, reveals his master plan
UC Davis Chancellor spent $400K+ to scrub her online reputation after pepper-spray incident
Back in April, we learned that UC David Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi had hired a sleazy "reputation-management" company to scrub her reputation and that of the university after the 2011 incident in which university police lieutenant John Pike hosed down peaceful protesters with pepper spray, jetting chemical irritant directly into their open mouths and eyes.
(more…)
Tuesday 16 August 2016
Florida student, 19, kills older couple and eats man's face off while “grunting and growling”
Univision to buy Gawker for $135m
Univision won the auction for Gawker Media with a $135m bid, reports Peter Kafka.
... the auction is a disappointing conclusion for Gawker Media owner Nick Denton, who founded the company in 2002. Last year, as rival media companies like Vice, BuzzFeed and Vox Media (which owns this site) were raising money at increasingly high valuations, Denton was arguing that his company was worth $250 million or more.
The price was depressed by the circumstances of the sale: a $140m award against it after publishing a Hulk Hogan sex tape and losing the subsequent lawsuit, which was secretly funded by vengeful billionaire Peter Thiel. Though experts generally expect Gawker to prevail on appeal, it was forced into bankruptcy by the penalty and the only other bidder was Ziff Davis, at $90m.
This weds Gawker to The Onion and Fusion in the Univision website stable; The Onion is very much its own thing, but Fusion's web presence is quite similar to Gawker itself and one wonders will it blend?
Monday 15 August 2016
Cards Against Humanity's has a PAC to "drive Trump nuts"
https://vimeo.com/178509721
There are two new CAH decks being marketed by the organization's new PAC: one bearing Trump's likeness, the other with Hillary's: at the end of the sales period, Cards Against Humanity PAC will add up the total sales of each of the America Votes With Cards decks and "depending on the sales" give all the proceeds to the Hillary campaign.
(more…)
Sunday 14 August 2016
Alex Jones shouting "NEVER!" for an hour
The conspiracy-minded talk host, boiled down to the essentials and taken to infinity. (Original clip via @immolations)
https://twitter.com/immolations/status/764566345459568641
Saturday 13 August 2016
What's inside a Tiki Bird?
Kevin Kidney owns a couple of audio-animatronic birds from the Enchanted Tiki Room, the first Disney showcase for robotic animals, still running and glorious today -- he's decided to make them good as new, and is documenting his process.
(more…)
#Slaveroo: Crowdsourcing a strike-fund for exploited gig economy workers
"Gig economy" scooter drivers for London's Deliveroo service earn £7/hour plus £1/delivery, and that's nowhere near a living wage: but rather than giving their a pay rise (£9.40/hour, plus £1/delivery, plus petrol, plus tips), Deliveroo wants to cut them all to zero-hours contracts with no hourly wage and £3.75/delivery and they fired all the drivers who asked for a living wage, so naturally, drivers are crowdfunding a strike-fund to fight back.
(more…)
RIP, R2D2: Star Wars actor Kenny Baker has died
The British actor who played R2-D2 in the classic Star Wars films died today, age 81, after a long illness.
WordPress Wizard Bundle: Maybe the first step toward being your own boss, just $49
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Friday 12 August 2016
Woman wins suit against New Jersey to use 8THEIST license plate
Two years ago Shannon Morgan of New Jersey ordered a vanity license plate that read 8THEIST. State officials denied her order, explaining that it might be considered offensive. She sued and won. The state Motor Vehicle Commission will also have to pay Morgan $75,000 to resolve her claim. They don't give a damn, because it's taxpayer money that they'll use to pay for their foolishness. Everyone in the chain of command who rejected the license plate request should be fired and barred from working for the government ever again, and forced to wear a colander on their head for the term of their natural lives, if you ask me.
Bonus: as a result of the lawsuit, the DMV must also issue the following vanity plates or "combinations that are substantially similar": SECULAR, RATIONL, HUMANST, ATHEISM, GODLESS, HEATHEN, HERETIC, SKEPTIC, BLASFMR, REASON, EVOLVE, TRANS, LGBTR.TS, LGBTQ, PRIDE, QUEER, GAYPOWR, LGBTALY, FEMINISM, FEMINST, EQUALITY and 4WOMEN.
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