Nick Garner

Some movie theaters around the world are renting out their screens to gamers to bring in a new revenue stream amid the coronavirus pandemic. The BBC reports: With many cinemas across the country closed due to coronavirus restrictions meaning that they can only open with 50% capacity, and far fewer movies being released to tempt cinemagoers, CGV [South Korea's largest cinema chain] came up with the idea of renting out its auditoriums to gamers to bring in a new revenue stream. Before 6pm up to four people can hire a screen for two hours for around $90. This then rises to $135 in the evening. Users have to bring their consoles, games and controllers with them. The auditoriums being hired out have between 100 and 200 seats, and by comparison CGV movie tickets cost around $12 each. So a 100-seat screen half filled for a film would bring in revenues of $600, rising to $1,200 for a 200-seat one at 50% capacity. And that is before the filmgoers buy their drinks and popcorn. Yet while CGV isn't making anywhere as much money from the gamers, it is bringing in some additional income. The scheme is called Azit-X after "azit," the Korean word for hideout. Since the new service launched at the start of this year, auditoriums have been booked more than 130 times so far. While the majority of customers are said to be men in their 30s or 40s, couples and families have also taken part. Korea's CGV is not the only cinema chain now letting gamers book cinema screens, as U.S. group Malco Theatres has been doing the same since November. Memphis-based Malco allows up to 20 people to hire a screen at its 36 cinemas across Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. The prices for service, which is called Malco Select, are $100 for two hours or $150 for three. Other U.S. chains, such as AMC and Cinemark, have been allowing customers in small groups to book auditoriums for private screenings.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a new book called A World Without Work by economics scholar/former government policy adviser Daniel Susskind. The Guardian succinctly summarizes its prognostications for the future: It used to be argued that workers who lost their low-skilled jobs should retrain for more challenging roles, but what happens when the robots, or drones, or driverless cars, come for those as well? Predictions vary but up to half of jobs are at least partially vulnerable to AI, from truck-driving, retail and warehouse work to medicine, law and accountancy. That's why the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers confessed in 2013 that he used to think "the Luddites were wrong, and the believers in technology and technological progress were right. I'm not so completely certain now." That same year, the economist and Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky wrote that fears of technological unemployment were not so much wrong as premature: "Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs." Yet Skidelsky, like Keynes, saw this as an opportunity. If the doomsayers are to be finally proven right, then why not the utopians, too...? The work ethic, [Susskind] says, is a modern religion that purports to be the only source of meaning and purpose. "What do you do for a living?" is for many people the first question they ask when meeting a stranger, and there is no entity more beloved of politicians than the "hard-working family". Yet faced with precarious, unfulfilling jobs and stagnant wages, many are losing faith in the gospel of work. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of UK workers said their jobs made no meaningful contribution. Susskind wonders in the final pages "whether the academics and commentators who write fearfully about a world with less work are just mistakenly projecting the personal enjoyment they take from their jobs on to the experience of everyone else". That deserves to be more than an afterthought. The challenge of a world without work isn't just economic but political and psychological... [I]s relying on work to provide self-worth and social status an inevitable human truth or the relatively recent product of a puritan work ethic? Keynes regretted that the possibility of an "age of leisure and abundance" was freighted with dread: "For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy." The state, Susskind concedes with ambivalence, will need to smooth the transition. Moving beyond the "Age of Labour" will require something like a universal basic income (he prefers a more selective conditional basic income), funded by taxes on capital to share the proceeds of technological prosperity. The available work will also need to be more evenly distributed. After decades of a 40-hour week, the recent Labour manifesto, influenced by Skidelsky, promised 32 hours by 2030. And that's the relatively easy part. Moving society's centre of gravity away from waged labour will require visionary "leisure policies" on every level, from urban planning to education, and a revolution in thinking. "We will be forced to consider what it really means to live a meaningful life," Susskind writes, implying that this is above his pay grade. The review concludes that "if AI really does to employment what previous technologies did not, radical change can't be postponed indefinitely. "It may well be utopia or bust."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes personal, criminal liability for top executives of companies turning over more than $1B/year when those companies experience data breaches and scams due to negligence (many of the recent high-profile breaches would qualify, including the Equifax giga-breach, as well as many of Wells Fargo's string of scams and scandals).

It is part of a raft of excellent policy proposals that Warren has introduced in conjunction with her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination (I am a donor to her campaign, as well as the Bernie Sanders campaign): lowering drug prices with federally commissioned generics, an annual wealth tax on family fortunes over $50m, antitrust breakups of Big Tech, an end to the Electoral College and a national Right to Repair law for farm equipment.

I believe that the major distinction between Warren and Sanders is that Warren believes that a market-based distribution system will work so long as the state corrects its failures, while Sanders believes that at best, markets are tools to solve the odd allocation problem.

My sympathies are more with Sanders than Warren, but I'm consistently impressed with Warren's extensive, specific policies.

I also think that Warren is laying a trap here. Plenty of people will say that no CEO can possibly oversee the operations of a billion dollar company well enough to prevent it from engaging in widespread fraud or suffering catastrophic breaches, but of course, the natural rejoinder is that this means that we shouldn't have companies that are too big to effectively oversee (let alone too big to fail).

In 2016, after the Wells Fargo fake-accounts scam came to light, I called out then-chief executive John Stumpf for gutlessly throwing workers at the bank under the bus — and told him he should resign. Weeks later, he did. When Wells Fargo elevated longtime senior executive Tim Sloan to replace Stumpf, I told Sloan he should be fired for his role in enabling and covering up the fake-accounts scam. For years, I pressured federal regulators, urging Sloan’s dismissal, and last week Sloan “retired.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad Sloan and Stumpf aren’t in charge anymore. But this isn’t real accountability. When a criminal on the street steals money from your wallet, they go to jail. When small-business owners cheat their customers, they go to jail. But when corporate executives at big companies oversee huge frauds that hurt tens of thousands of people, they often get to walk away with multimillion-dollar payouts.

Elizabeth Warren: Corporate executives must face jail time for overseeing massive scams [Elizabeth Warren/Washington Post]

HR1, the first bill that the new Democratic House of Representatives will vote on, is omnibus legislation that takes on some of the most pervasive scourges of representative democracy: vote suppression, oligarchic campaign financing and gerrymandering.

Under HR1's provisions, electoral districting will be taken away from state legislatures and handed to independent commissions (this is very popular with the American public and similar ballot initiatives just sailed into law in Colorado, Missouri and Michigan).

HR1 provides for automatic voter registration and reestablishes provisions from the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court neutered in 2013 (though as Yves notes at Naked Capitalism, "If they actually cared about voter turnout they would push election day registration which, unlike automatic registration, has been shown to increase turnout by around 5%").

HR1 also overturns Citizens United (previously), the 2010 Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited, oligarchic campaign spending, including hundreds of millions in "dark money" funneled into Super-PACs.

HR1 doesn't stop there: it also closes a loophole that exempts presidents from conflict of interest rules (a loophole that Trump has enthusiastically exploited).

It's not clear how the bill will fare; Senate Republicans are likely to be divided on it, and the provisions that override the Supreme Court are unlikely to find a hospitable reception in the current court.

But as a stake in the ground, it's a pretty impressive outing: forcing GOP politicians to vote in favor of dark money, gerrymandering, and allowing for presidential conflict-of-interest will give the Democrats a lot to campaign on in 2020.

"It's three very basic things that I think the public wants to see," said Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), who spearheads campaign finance and government ethics efforts for the House Democratic Caucus. He said H.R. 1 will "demonstrate that we hear that message loud and clear."

But even Sarbanes admits the quick vote is just a first step. Republicans, who control the Senate, are unlikely to pass the bill and President Trump is unlikely to sign it. "Give us the gavel in the Senate in 2020 and we'll pass it in the Senate," Sarbanes said. "Give us a pen in the Oval Office and we'll sign those kinds of reforms into law."

The bill would establish automatic voter registration and reinvigorate the Voting Rights Act, crippled by a Supreme Court decision in 2013. It would take away redistricting power from state legislatures and give it to independent commissions.

Other provisions would overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which declared political spending is First Amendment free speech; they would mandate more disclosure of outside money and establish a public financing match for small contributions.

Democrats Say Their First Bill Will Focus On Strengthening Democracy At Home [Peter Overby/NPR]

(via Naked Capitalism)

(Image: Kheel Center, CC-BY)

In this Better Explained video, how the right analogies can make math joyful. "Numbers are like rocks." But what happens when the number is 0 or -1? The analogy breaks down. "OK, numbers are like points on a line," with zero at the center. But where on the line does the square root of -1 go? "OK, let's add another line at 90 degrees to the other number line, where imaginary numbers go."

South Carolina legislator Chris Corley, who was recently elected to a second term, is well-known for his support of the Confederate flag. When the flag was taken down from the Statehouse in July 2015 in response to the slaughter of nine black churchgoers by a Confederate flag embracing domestic terrorist, Corley sponsored a bill for a statewide vote to return the flag. The bill failed.

Corley is no longer a South Carolina legislator. Yesterday he pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal domestic violence, which carries a sentence from probation to 10 years in prison. The judge was lenient, giving him probation. From AP:

[A]uthorities say he attacked his wife during an argument over his infidelity the day after Christmas. In a police report, authorities said the couple's young children were present when Corley attacked his wife, biting her nose bloody and pointing a gun at her.

"Just stop, Daddy. Just stop," his children can be heard on a 911 call. "Daddy, why are you doing this?"

Corley's wife said he stopped hitting her only after noticing she was bleeding and hearing the children screaming, authorities said. Prosecutors said he took away his wife's cellphone to keep her from summoning help, but that she managed to call 911 on her Apple Watch.

Authorities said that after Corley threatened to kill her and then said he'd kill himself, his wife took the children to her mother's house across the street.

party cat posted a photo:

Julia, the muppet with autism, will join the Sesame Street TV show in April. She appeared last night on 60 minutes during an interview segment with Sesame Street writer Christine Ferraro. From NPR:

"The character Julia, she has wonderful drawing skills. She's like a little budding artist," said Rose Jochum, director of internal initiatives at the Autism Society of America, which characterizes itself as the nation's oldest advocacy group for people with the disorder. "You know — autism — it brings wonderful gifts..."

"It's not like there is a typical example of an autistic child, but we do believe that [with] Julia, we worked so carefully to make sure that she had certain characteristics that would allow children to identify with her," (Sesame Workshop executive vice president Sherrie) Westin said. "It's what Sesame does best, you know: Reaching children, looking at these things through their lens and building a greater sort of sense of commonality."

Here's the 60 Minutes segment script.

And more about puppet designer Rollie Krewson.

Sesame Street producers hope Julia’s first episode will help the audience understand when a child with autism doesn’t react as they expect. pic.twitter.com/DJCFdksPIk

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 20, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=140&v=5M1WJ48_wac

More than 8,000,000 people have watched this video of a flashmob choir performing "I Can't Keep Quiet," a song by LA musician MILCK, who performed it at Saturday's Women's March. (more…)

Tech friends of mine! In light of recent political events (both domestic and abroad), here’s a quick ethical pitch for why you should be advocates for open source (like Linux, Apache, and Firefox) and open data (like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap).

• It’s anti-autocratic. There are no single points of failure. Fewer centralized hubs where the state can force corporate cooperation. Harder for a UK-style forced backdoor when the code is open. Dissidents and the persecuted need the security and privacy guarantees that only open source can give.
• It’s egalitarian. There are no barriers to use. Anyone can translate it. Developing countries can bootstrap their own tech industries off open source. There are countless stories about rural schools using old hardware and open source software on the cheap to provide for their students. An entrepreneur anywhere in the world can start a business without needing to ask permission from a tech giant or buy a single license.
• It pushes forward Human progress. We will always be able to climb atop the shoulders of past open source giants. Open source and open data cannot quietly get shuttered when a company buys it. And it allows innovation from any quarter. You think Android could have been developed so quickly if they had to also write their own kernel? When we emerge from our current Dark Age, let’s hand the next generation a bunch of solved technology problems. I guarantee to you that the Enterprise will run on Linux.

Here’s the thing though, my tech friends. You need to also be using open source and open data.

Maybe you do not need the above advantages. You do not fear your government’s attention. You can afford the entrance fee for the walled garden and don’t need to worry about who the gatekeeper is.

But you know that there are those that do need the above guarantees. More vulnerable people than you.

There are network effects and normalization at play here. You can vote with your feet and choose which ecosystems and technologies you support with your time, attention, and money. You can make such choices political as well as practical.

And lastly, if you have the time, I obviously also recommend contributing to open source and open data sets.

The above benefits should not be limited to the technically inclined. Let’s keep fixing the warts in these systems and fleshing out these data sets to be more complete and more useful.

Dean Hutton is a South African artist whose most notorious project involves walking around in a custom-printed black and white suit and absorbing the responses from strangers. (more…)

So. The 2016 election happened. Many of my friends and I are understandably concerned about the future. But more than anything we want concrete actions we can take to improve things (versus say, writing blog posts about it).

I’d love suggestions. Truly. I want to feel useful. But here is what I have come up with so far:

• Attend protests. I’m not much of a protests-can-change-the-world person. But I think they are useful for keeping opposition visible and engaged. If anyone knows a good source for tracking protests in the Boston area, let me know.
• Donate. More on this in a bit.
• Host fundraisers. Very similar to donating, but you get a multiplier effect for your money.
• Volunteer for any organization you would otherwise donate to.

Now, three of those four options involve finding an organization to support. The trick is which ones. Here are mine. They’re all political rather than humanitarian, because I’m focusing on long term corrections.

ACLU. Many of the difficulties in the coming years will be around civil liberties. The ACLU has a strong track record here of doing good legal work.

National Popular Vote. This is an organization trying to fix the electoral college in quite a smart way. Basically they want to get enough states (worth 270 electoral votes) to pass a bill they’ve written that says “if enough states have passed this, we’ll all give all of our electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.” Pretty clever. Eleven states worth 165 votes have already passed the bill (including MA). As a reminder, both the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections were won by candidates that did not win the popular vote.

Climate Hawks Vote. This PAC finds and funds congressional candidates that support strong climate change legislation.

MayDay.us. This PAC finds and funds congressional candidates that support campaign finance reform and anti-corruption measures.

Any other good options?

Sweden's ruling coalition of Social Democrat and Green parties has a tax plan that will make it cheaper to fix broken things and more expensive to buy things that can't be fixed after they break.

From FastCo:

The proposed legislation would cut regular tax on repairs of bikes, clothes, and shoes from 25% to 12%. Swedes would also be able to claim half the labor cost of appliance repairs (refrigerators, washing machines and other white goods) from their income tax. Together, these tax cuts are expected to cost the country around $54 million per year. This will be more than paid for by the estimated $233 million brought in by a new "chemical tax," which would tax the resources that go into making new goods and computers.

Noah writes, "This weekend a group of roguelike enthusiasts and developers are getting together for the first ever Roguelike Celebration. It'll feature talks from developers of the game that spawned the genre - rogue - as well as the creators of Dwarf Fortress, Kingdom of Loathing, ADOM, Tracery and lots more. It'll take place all day on the 17th and will be streamed live on Twitch.tv for those who can't make it in person." (Image: Deon-23, Mike Mayday, public domain)

Well I guess I shouldn't shame down on Pat's game too hard since he's wavin' his shingle pretty steady, always out hawkin' whatever new sublingual amaranth blastocyst paste or bio-available hoombacha he comes up with. It's the basis of Ages that a folk (this is the singular of folks) got to hustle, got to see what bucket of knots or larvae or Irish-flavor coffee creamers the hand will dip into.

But it is a Moment in the grocery store when you see a fellow don the apron and card table and go against all that is decent and peaceful about tryin' to buy a ham hoagie and personal-size bag of original Lay's, unmolested. It's like, we all came up kids, all the same, and we all came up wary of the salesman and the peddler, but there one of us went and did that thing. We know there's dishonor drippin' from places in his rig, even if the product is fairly decent. We know the hawker passed his greedy mind over the idea of us, and pegged how much markup we could handle before we realized an enemy-type situation, then added ten percent.

So good for Pat, he's on the hustle, wise black support shoes and doctor gloves and embroidered company logo baseball hat with too high of a crown and all. I ain't havin' none of it of course because this man punches my sass ticket like a conductor with a tic, so I walk all up (I believe I actually sauntered but nobody would probably assess that it looked that way) pretty prepared to get damn enquestionated about what he's slingin'.

ME: [Walks toward Pat, still maybe ten feet away, he sees me then continues arranging his samples]

PAT: [Doesn't act at all like I have known him for twenty years and some, and have gotten his ass out of some icky slings, and witnessed him at basically the full low shenanigans of man]

ME: Oh uh hey Pat how is your demo going

PAT: [Keeps looking down at samples, spot-polishes a part of the vinyl tablecloth that has nothing on it] Roast Beef.

ME: So uh Hey Pat what you got out for the public weal

PAT: Bohannon's Macchisandra. [He says this fast and quiet like how a kid vandal caught red-handed might give in and tell his whole name to a cop]

ME: Well damn! I am highly dissatisfied with my current Bohannon's Macchisandra! Always got that thin milky layer on top.

PAT: Hush! Hush. Don't make a mockery of this. It's not for people like you.

ME: You tell me exactly what you got goin' on here or I'm gonna tell the manager you threw a snit about these hell of GMO potato chips! [Holds up Lay's]

PAT: [Becomes suddenly animated] Alright! Alright. No need to involve the promotions manager. No need. I'll tell you whatever you'd like to know!

ME: Because some vendors might just be on probation with the various stores where they demo, due to past outbursts.

[A lady wheels up and stands across the aisle from us, examining a large assortment of canned tomato sauces]

PAT: [Nervously] Heh! So! Sir! Have you, or anyone you love, ever tried Bohannon's Macchisandra, made from ancient Chinese botanicals, camellia sinensis, and the energy-rich nectar of deep underground aquifers?

ME: Let me parse that out loud for a moment

PAT: Let me parse it for you! This elixir is decocted from hand-selected ingredients which are known for their fabled abilities to combat depression, weight gain, and lethargy. Try a sample!

ME: Fables, huh? That's the main quality?

PAT: [Drills into me with the defeated but angry eyes of a wolf looking up the hunter's barrel; smoothly and with a practiced hand draws his lips down to re-sheath any exposed fang]

LADY: [Continues to intently compare labels]  

ME: I mean, so this liquid can basically save America? Can it also make road workers not perform deep sewer replacement at critical intersections until after rush hour? Because tell me that and I am sold! Heh!

PAT: Ha! Ha! [His mouth laughs but there are not the genuine creases around his eyes that betray happiness]

ME: [The perfect unblinking look with unbroken eye contact]

PAT: Heh! Maybe...maybe next time!

LADY: [Typing on phone, seems to be sending pictures of labels to someone]

ME: You know what, I'm sold. That's it. I got to have this. You are amazing.

PAT: Good, good! Here, take our 36-sachet pack. You won't be sorry.

ME: Oh, I better take two.

PAT: [Glances over at lady, picking up what I am putting down] [A little louder] Thank you! Thank you, sir! Here, here's a packet of free...macadamia nuts! From the big island! Taste Elvis himself, riding around under the stars! [Mimes giving me macadamia nuts while the lady isn't looking, I mime keeping my hands in my pockets]

LADY: [Sighs while looking at phone, seems crestfallen, wanders off]

PAT: God damn it.

ME: Dude that stuff about Elvis was so awful that you should get jaw-caught in a pitching machine



PAT: Shut up!

ME: Hey can I uh actually taste this stuff

PAT: Whatever.

ME: [Takes sample, it is flat and thin and stale] Ugh dude this is just cheap dried ginger and bulk oolong of a sawdust nature

PAT: I don't suppose you're actually going to buy those packs, are you.

ME: I don't suppose a lot of things are gonna happen but for six bucks I'll drop these in other folks' carts and maybe they check out maybe they don't you dig

PAT: [Sighs, hands me a five and a one]

ME: Street team, reporting! [Salutes, leaves]

- - -

So, that was my deal with Pat today. Not one of his higher-integrity products, so I felt all right to drag it on the chain a bit. End of day, I made six bucks, which I promptly dropped over at Pho Dac Biet for some of that top round pho, and rice noodle for the long life.

Someone -- possibly the government of China -- has launched a series of probing attacks on the internet's most critical infrastructure, using carefully titrated doses of denial-of-service to precisely calibrate a tool for shutting down the whole net. (more…)

Heads up West Wing fans: The West Wing Weekly podcast is your must-listen companion piece. Hosted by West Wing aficionado Hrishikesh Hirway and former West Wing star Joshua Malina, the podcast takes an episode-by-episode look at Aaron Sorkin's beloved political drama. I'm enjoying the podcast so much, it even inspired me to marathon The West Wing all over again.

(more…)

Omnivore Salt is apparently so delicious that filmmaker Werner Herzog not only did a blurb on the package, but he even narrated a mini-documentary about its creator, blacksmith Angelo Garro, in his classic style: (more…)

VH1 has ordered a new unscripted series that will star Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, under the working title “Martha & Snoop’s Dinner Party.”

(more…)

FYI, Senator Elizabeth Warren is coming to the Somerville Theater Tuesday night 08/02 to talk about income inequality, for those interested. It's free, open doors at 6:00PM.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1602175433413408/

Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman has bankrolled an experimental, one-time prize of $250,000 that the Media Lab will award for research that harnesses "responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging the norms, rules, or laws that sustain society’s injustices?" (more…)

Funai Electric Company, maker of VHS video cassette recorders for its brands like Magnavox, Emerson, and Sanyo, has announced that they will stop production on new VHS video cassette records this month.

According to the newspaper Nikkei, it's difficult to source the parts and, surprise, sales of new units have continued to plummet.

Expect a VHS-only store to appear in a hipster neighborhood near you soon. Y'now, the image just looks... warmer.

(Anime News Network)

Stallion Mancakes is kickstarting these wordy Donald Trump tees, reading, "I VOTED FOR DONALD TRUMP AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID RACIST SEXIST FRAUDULENT OPPORTUNISTIC DIMWITTED EAR-GRATING EGOTISTICAL SOLIPSISTIC PANDERING SHYSTERING CHEAP-O MONEY-GRUBBING SCAPEGOATING HATEMONGERING ISOLATIONIST FASCIST POW-BASHING DRAFT-DODGING UNHINGED VACUOUS BILIOUS HYPERBOLIC DELUSIONAL MANIPULATIVE UNDIGNIFIED MERITLESS HOT-TEMPERED DANGEROUS SLEAZY SLIPPERY SILVER-TONGUED SILVER-SPOONED INSECURE VAMPING THUMB-SUCKING BODY-SHAMING SMALL-MINDED SHORT-FINGERED SHORT-SIGHTED UNDERBAKED OVERHYPED ARTLESS SHALLOW HOLLOW CRASS UNJUST TWO-FACED IRRESPONSIBLE UNETHICAL MANIACAL HYPOCRITICAL CERTIFIABLE LOUSY...T-SHIRT." (more…)

Achewood strip for Friday, June 17, 2016

Achewood strip for Friday, May 13, 2016

A new scientific study reveals that air rage is much more likely on airplanes where inequality is obvious -- that is, airplanes where there's economy and first class sections. The University of Toronto researchers published their results in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences. From CNN:

It found that passengers in economy seating were 3.84 times more likely to have an incident of air rage if they were on a plane that had a first-class section. They were 2.18 times more likely to have an outburst if they had to walk through first class to board the plane, as opposed to boarding in the middle of the plane, directly into the economy section....

"Psychology (research) tells us that when people feel a sense of deprivation and inequality, they are more likely to act out," said Katherine A. DeCelles, associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto....

There was also a nearly 12-fold increase in the rate of air rage among first-class passengers on flights where all passengers boarded through the first-class section, compared with flights that had separate entrances for first class and economy.

"When people from higher social class backgrounds are more aware of their higher status, they are more likely to be antisocial, to have entitled attitudes and to be less compassionate," DeCelles said.

"Air rage triggered by walking past first-class seating, study says" (CNN)

Sebastian Ly Serena's website consists solely of a bizarre HTML contraption that animates form elements until all of them have expanded and the author's email address is exposed. It's built entirely from standard web forms and javascript, ugly as sin, and completely wonderful. [via Hacker News, whose commenters are unimpressed because the underlying code doesn't really model a chain reaction.]

There are many conspiracy theories about the source of the Panama Papers leak. One of the more prominent theories today blames the CIA. Bradley Birkenfeld is “the most significant financial whistleblower of all time,” and he has opinions about who's responsible for leaking the Panama Papers rattling financial and political power centers around the world.

(more…)