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Understanding the peculiar loathesomeness of Rick Perry's "Strong" Bots flood Twitter with noise to drown out anti-Kremlin tweets SFPD sergeant orders officers: "If [Occupy protesters] do not do what you tell them, strike them." Iranian TV shows downed US drone First-hand account of Occupy LA arrest TechShop: gifts for DIYers Beautiful custom-made and affordable lap desk TED's iPhone app Grilled Tree Rat with Peanut Butter Dipping Sauce, and other treats from The Hunger Games Cookbook Al Jaffee: live "Snappy Answers" Kid builds working farm equipment out of Lego Doctor Dreadful food-making toys How Lord Sugar taught me to hack stuff SOPA is collective punishment Extremely sophisticated, 3D printed (?) ATM skimmer HOWTO make a terrarium inside a Christmas ornament A New Driving Perspective Disaster book club: What you need to read to understand the crash of Air France 447 Gander sauce in the Georgia legislature Imperial Teen: "Runaway" (MP3) HOWTO make a fire-breathing animatronic pony Yellow Kid Weil: Autobiography of the greatest con man in American history South African musicians can't get radio play, turn to taxis Understanding the peculiar loathesomeness of Rick Perry's "Strong"
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 09, 2011 11:48 am If you watched Rick Perry's viral campaign video Strong, perhaps you were struck with by how it seemed a little off (and no, I don't mean the fact that a blowdried asshole like Perry recorded a video of himself conducting a homophobic rant while wearing the gay cowboy costume from Brokeback Mountain). No, it was ...
Read in browser Bots flood Twitter with noise to drown out anti-Kremlin tweets
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 09, 2011 09:31 am Russia's contested election have roused the ire of the Russian people, who have risked brutal crackdowns to take to the streets and protest irregularities like ballot-stuffing, which returned Putin to power. Some of that anger is being vented on the Web. Russia's power-brokers may be thugs, but they aren't technologically naive or unsophisticated. A network ...
Read in browser SFPD sergeant orders officers: "If [Occupy protesters] do not do what you tell them, strike them."
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 09, 2011 05:11 am In this video from the kettling of Occupy San Francisco protesters, SFPD sergeant Peter Thoshinsky (helmet #2197) is recorded walking the police line, ordering his officers, "If they do not do what you tell them, strike them." The protesters who record this are understandably upset and try to engage the officers in a dialog about ...
Read in browser Iranian TV shows downed US drone
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 09:23 pm BBC: "Iranian TV has broadcast footage of an advanced US drone aircraft that Tehran says it brought down using electronic methods to override its controls." Does anyone else remember the story in the back of Vaughn Bode's Junkwaffel comic book about intelligent drones that kept fighting long after the humans were gone? I thought of ...
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By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 08:22 pm Patrick Meighan, a writer on Family Guy, describes his arrest at Occupy LA, part of a brutal crackdown on 292 protesters whose belongings were destroyed and who were then subject to cruel (and in Mieghan's case, possibly crippling) detention. Meighan explains why he did it: So that's what happened to the 292 women and men ...
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By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 08:14 pm Our friend Dan Woods at TechShop (a growing chain of membership-based workshops) has some great DIY-based gift ideas. He says: The folks at TechShop are pretty proud of the role the doors they've helped open for some of the independent makers who call TechShop home. Like… Wood ties made by Wood Thumb DODOcase's book bound ...
Read in browser Beautiful custom-made and affordable lap desk
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 07:50 pm Rogier van Bakel says: As a photographer, I developed repetitive stress injury (RSI) in my right shoulder and wrist last year, due to too much mousing around in Lightroom and Photoshop. The pain got worse this summer so I decided to switch to a trackpad and a Wacom tablet. Much better, but it bugged me ...
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By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 07:37 pm TED's new iPhone app (based on the iPad app that has been downloaded almost 2 million times) has a neat feature called TED Radio, which streams audio of curated TED talks 24/7. As a podcast junkie, I love this feature. At $0.00 the TED app is an incredible way to hear amazing stories told by ...
Read in browser Grilled Tree Rat with Peanut Butter Dipping Sauce, and other treats from The Hunger Games Cookbook
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 07:28 pm Who can resist the 150 tempting recipes described in The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook, by Emily Ansara Baines?
Read in browser Al Jaffee: live "Snappy Answers"
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 07:09 pm The great Al Jaffee went on stage recently at Joe's Pub in NYC for a live version of his classic "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," which have appeared in MAD for decades. Al is 91-years-old but more lucid than many people one-quarter his age. He's also very funny and owns a cool-looking multi-pocketed vest, In ...
Read in browser Kid builds working farm equipment out of Lego
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 07:08 pm Avi sez, "Warren Seely tore apart his first tractor engine when he was six. When he was about 12, he started making farm equipment out of LEGOs. Warren's LEGO equipment works just like the real thing -- only smaller." (Thanks, Avi!)
Read in browser Doctor Dreadful food-making toys
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 08, 2011 06:49 pm My friend Bob Knetgzer is an amazingly talented toy designer. (He writes the Toy Inventor's Notebook column in every issue of MAKE, too!) He says: I run into a lot of 20-somethings that fondly remember the TYCO Doctor Dreadful toy line from when it was first out in 1995-97 when they were little. I have ...
Read in browser How Lord Sugar taught me to hack stuff
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 08, 2011 06:22 pm This piece was originally published on a now-defunct website for general audiences. It now lives on here in vaguely inappropriate perpetuity My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, most likely bought at Dixons in Worthing, England, circa 1986. But that's not the one I'd like to talk about, because it was defective and went ...
Read in browser SOPA is collective punishment
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 06:12 pm James Losey from the New America Foundation sez, "Sascha Meinrath and I have a new article arguing that bills like the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP amount collectively punishment, something that Americans have a history of rebelling against:" The United States of America was forged in resistance to collective reprisals—the punishment of many ...
Read in browser Extremely sophisticated, 3D printed (?) ATM skimmer
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 04:45 pm This ATM skimmer was retrieved from a Chase ATM in West Hills, CA, and it appears to have been 3D printed. It is very sophisticated, with "true geek factor." On the bottom of the fake card acceptance slot is a tiny hole for a built-in spy camera that is connected to a battery. The spy ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a terrarium inside a Christmas ornament
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 03:47 pm This fairly straightforward HOWTO teaches you to build a tiny terrarium inside a clear glass Christmas tree bauble. If you love terrariums as much as we do, why not trim your holiday tree with a some of them? With just a few materials and some fresh plants, you can create ornaments featuring these glass-enclosed garden ...
Read in browser A New Driving Perspective
By Advertiser on Dec 08, 2011 03:46 pm ADVERTISEMENT Note: The 2012 Chevy Volt offers an EPA-estimated 35 miles on a single charge based on 94 MPGe [electric] and 35 city, 40 MPG highway [gas]. Actual range varies with conditions. The Chevy Volt* is unique among electric cars because it runs on two sources of energy. You have an electric source – a ...
Read in browser Disaster book club: What you need to read to understand the crash of Air France 447
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 08, 2011 03:42 pm Right now, I'm reading a book about why catastrophic technological failures happen and what, if anything, we can actually do about them. It's called Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow, a Yale sociologist. I've not finished this book yet, but I've gotten far enough into it that I think I get Perrow's basic thesis. (People with ...
Read in browser Gander sauce in the Georgia legislature
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 02:42 pm State Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, has filed a bill requiring mandatory drug-testing for members of the Georgia legislature; it's in response to a Georgia Republican bill that would drug-test parents who apply for federal financial assistance. (via Reddit)
Read in browser Imperial Teen: "Runaway" (MP3)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Dec 08, 2011 02:40 pm Sound It Out #9 -- Imperial Teen: "Runaway" It's been nearly five years since Imperial Teen's last record and I have missed them terribly. The band started in San Francisco in 1996 and have managed to put out consistently sassy and exuberant records every few years or so. All of the members appear to have ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a fire-breathing animatronic pony
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 02:00 pm Karen sez, "Instructables user lvl_joe has built the ultimate Fire-Breathing Animatronic Pony from a FurReal Butterscotch play pony." For Maker Faire Detroit 2011, I displayed a hack I made to a FurReal Friends Butterscotch Pony. My fellow LVL1 Hackers and I had taken control of the motor control system of the toy and added a ...
Read in browser Yellow Kid Weil: Autobiography of the greatest con man in American history
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 01:37 pm Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil may have been the greatest American swindler of all time. The Yellow Kid operated in the gold age of the American con, from the late 19th century up to WWII, and became a legend in his own time, immortalized in such books as The Big Con (the sociological study of con ...
Read in browser South African musicians can't get radio play, turn to taxis
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 08, 2011 01:03 pm Neil sez, "A cool video from VICE Magazine about how musicians in South Africa used taxi drivers to make their own form of Kwaito House music popular in Johannesburg and around the world." And because the new Kwaito artists couldn't get any airplay on the local radio stations, they decided to take their music to ...
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