Last minute geek

1. Vermont man installs massive middle finger sculpture on lawn
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... so he could move his truck repair and monofilament recycling businesses in nearby Swanton to his own property. Officials say Pelkey’s applications have fallen short of the town’s standards, but he thinks ...

2. Impressive upcycling of a CVS receipt
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... a picture of it to send to his friends. He came back later and actually thought the receipt was one of the blinds that had fallen on the floor. “…they’re cheap blinds so they fall off pretty often,” he ...

3. Obamacare study: 25% decline in home delinquencies among newly insured poor people
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... of poor renters across Milwaukee. “They had fallen behind [on rent] two months ago, when a neck X-ray and brain scan set Teddy back $507. Read the rest Read all  ...

4. Milo vastly in debt
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Right-wing persona Milo Yiannopoulous was supposed to tour Australia with an ever-shifting lineup of alt-right numpties. But it's all fallen apart, and the tour organizers have taken revenge by dumping ...

5. Redaction ineptitude reveals names of Proud Boys' self-styled new leaders
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... and Rufio Panman. Official leadership, at least as far as the vaguely administrative wing of the group and its website goes, seems to have fallen to an “Elders Chapter,” who, in conjunction with an ...

6. Do you know this pigeon who wears a glitzy rhinestone flight suit?
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

This fancy pigeon showed up on a Glendale, Arizona woman's back patio. She called in rescue organization Fallen Feathers who are now seeking the bird's owner. From AZFamily: "He was in her back patio ...

7. Facebook's turmoil has reportedly hit employee morale hard
(English/engadget)

Facebook has been mired in bad news lately, including numerous data privacy scandals, criticism over its role in Myanmar violence and a tumbling stock price. As such, employee morale has fallen, with just ...

8. Grandson of Winston Churchill declares rain-fearing Trump "pathetic" and "inadequate"
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry — Nicholas ...

9. Evidence for a lapsarian decline: Master of the Universe Christmas wrapping paper
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Once we were great, then we committed some unnameable sin and now we endure eternal punishment, fallen from grace. Proof: this long-departed Master of the Universe wrapping paper, the pinnacle of the ...

10. "Free is not fair" won't make authors richer, but fixing publishers' contracts will
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... though writers' median incomes have fallen, publishing's profitability has risen. The publishing industry does not have a profitability crisis: it has a fair distribution crisis, and additional copyrights ...

11. Report shows big slowdown in global growth of internet access
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide. The slowdown is described in an analysis of ...

12. GDPR: Good for privacy, even better for Google's dominance
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... penalties if their little-guy ad-broker turns out to be out-of-compliance. But there's good news, too: the amount of tracking in the EU has fallen off a cliff!Making web publishers responsible for the ...

13. Behold! The Library of Congress's audacious plan to digitize and share the nation's treasures
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Library's history, replacing unfit leaders who were brought down in grotesque corruption scandals. But her leadership has fallen short: the Copyright Office is still a creature of Big Content, and it has ...

14. Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls
(English/engadget)

Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who ...

15. Physical copies of 'Jurassic World' come with an AR baby raptor experience
(English/engadget)

The franchise hype leading up to the theatrical release of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom earlier in the summer included a slew of AR and VR games. Unsurprisingly, there's another on the way to celebrate ...

16. Apple kicks Alex Jones and Infowars podcasts from iTunes
(English/Betanews)

Alex Jones -- conspiracy theorist extraordinaire and founder of right-wing media platform Infowars -- has fallen foul of a number of companies' policies recently, and Apple is the latest to take exception ...

17. Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research, talks about his favorite tools
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... tool guy. But once I got this laser cutter, it's like everything else has fallen by the wayside, because this thing is just so much more fun and more enabling of things that any other tool I've ever had. ...

18. Samsung unveils Galaxy Tab S4 premium Android tablet
(English/Betanews)

For whatever reason, Android tablets have largely fallen out of favor with consumers. Some people will blame cannibalization by large-screen smartphones, while others will point to low-quality offerings ...

19. Blockchain, Cryptocurrency Channels Considered by European Interests to Bypass U.S. Sanctions
(English/CircleID)

... gear has fallen so much TSMC has to lower sales estimates for 2018. (That's good news for telecom. Qualcomm and probably others are close to going into production on 5G chips at TSMC. But Apple has bought ...

20. Desperate Facebook poisons the well, spamming disenchanted users with torrents of notifications, including through 2FA
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

As Facebook users drift away from the platform, the company is becoming increasingly desperate to lure them back, doubling down on its obnoxious tactic of spamming users whose activity has fallen off ...

21. Internet Evolution: Another 10 Years Later
(English/CircleID)

... to have fallen way short of the desired endpoint. Surely it must be feasible to feed an adaptive autonomous control system with the network's infrastructure and available resources, and allow the control ...

22. Dixons Carphone suffers two major security breaches exposing customers' bank card details and personal information
(English/Betanews)

Another week, another cyberattack. This time around, it's the Dixons Carphone group which says it has fallen victim to not one but two major breaches. The bank card details of 5.9 million customers have ...

23. Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order announced, releases late 2019
(English/Neowin)

It is Respawn Entertainment's time to have a crack at a Star Wars game, with EA announcing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order today at its EA Play event. The game has a Holiday 2019 release window. Read more... ...

24. Geometric Lemon Tart
(English/instructables)

I was craving the taste of bright and zingy lemon curd, perfect for Summer, and recently I've fallen in love with the work of Lauren Ko on Instagram: @LokoKitchen. It seemed like a perfect opportunity ...

25. Passing plane pummels people with poop
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... to have fallen from a plane that she saw when they were stopped at a red light with another car that was also hit, Allan said, adding she and the other driver went to a car wash and sprayed themselves ...