One brave outdoorsman will finally take a special shot of whiskey at a bar in Canada’s Yukon Territory containing his amputated, now-dehydrated big toe, which he donated to the establishment for their signature “Sourtoe Cocktail” after losing it to frostbite in February 2018.

{ Fox News | Continue reading }

The legendary $5 drink, called the Sourtoe Cocktail, has been served at Yukon’s Downtown Hotel since 1973. Drinkers must touch their lips to the toe to earn a certificate of completion. To date, more than 90,000 have. […]

“We have been without a big toe for some time, so his generous toe-nation will help ensure the tradition continues,” says the hotel’s general manager, Adam Gerle, in a statement. […]

“It takes six weeks to mummify a new toe on rock salt before it’s ready to serve,” Lee says.

{ NY post | Continue reading }

oil on cardboard { Edward Hopper, Nude Walking through Doorway, c.1902 }

In the first study [2010] of its kind, officials scoured the city’s subway system to discover what accounts for the perennial presence of rodents, a scourge since the system opened more than a century ago. […] Rodents, it turns out, reside inside station walls, emerging occasionally from cracks in the tile to rummage for food. The legend of teeming rat cities tucked deep into subway tunnels is, in fact, a myth. The electrified tracks, scientists said, are far too dangerous. […]

“They can fall 40 feet onto a concrete slab and keep running,” said Solomon Peeples, 86, a former director of the city’s Bureau of Pest Control Services. “We’re no match for them, as far as I’m concerned. Man does not stand no chance.” […]

Nothing quite excites a rat like a station’s “refuse room,” a storage space for bags of garbage waiting to be hauled away. For rodents, the room is “a restaurant,” as Dr. Corrigan called it, and he recommended that the transportation authority install poison bait in the rooms for a more surgical strike. (Currently, the authority places poison only on the tracks.) […]

Dr. Corrigan told health officials that while rats were a problem in the subways, the rodents inhabited many other public spaces, particularly parks. “Virtually all of New York,” he said, “is vulnerable to this uncanny mammal.”

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

New York has always been forced to coexist with the four-legged vermin, but the infestation has expanded exponentially in recent years, spreading to just about every corner of the city. […] Rat sightings reported to the city’s 311 hotline have soared nearly 38 percent, to 17,353 last year from 12,617 in 2014. […]

One key reason rats seem to be everywhere? Gentrification. The city’s construction boom is digging up burrows, forcing more rats out into the open, scientists and pest control experts say.

Milder winters — the result of climate change — make it easier for rats to survive and reproduce. And New York’s growing population and thriving tourism have brought more trash for rats to feed on.

Rats once scurried in the shadows but now they frolic brazenly in broad daylight. […] Parents at an Upper West Side playground said rats jumped into the sandbox where their children played, though the vermin have been cleared for now.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Traps. Poison. Birth control. Dry ice. And now, what city officials are touting as a high-tech solution: drowning. […] a bucket that would lure the rodents and send them plunging to their deaths in a mysterious vinegary concoction. The toxic potion, according to its maker, Rat Trap Inc., prevents them from rotting too quickly and emitting a stink. […]

Mr. Adams said he wants to install the newfangled traps, which cost between $300 and $400, in several locations in Brooklyn. If successful, he said he would look to expand the methodology citywide.

The pilot program has already hit one snag. Mr. Adams’s office initially placed five boxes in and around Brooklyn Borough Hall, but one was disabled by a very large rat. “It was so big it broke the spring mechanism in the box so that it was no longer functioning,” said Jonah Allon, Mr. Adams’s spokesman.

{ MSN/NY Times | Continue reading }

Paul Hildreth peered at a display of dozens of images from security cameras surveying his Atlanta school district and settled on one showing a woman in a bright yellow shirt walking a hallway.

A mouse click instructed the artificial-intelligence-equipped system to find other images of the woman, and it immediately stitched them into a video narrative of her immediate location, where she had been and where she was going.

There was no threat, but Hildreth’s demonstration showed what’s possible with AI-powered cameras. If a gunman were in one of his schools, the cameras could quickly identify the shooter’s location and movements, allowing police to end the threat as soon as possible, said Hildreth, emergency operations coordinator for Fulton County Schools.

AI is transforming surveillance cameras from passive sentries into active observers that can identify people, suspicious behavior and guns, amassing large amounts of data that help them learn over time to recognize mannerisms, gait and dress. If the cameras have a previously captured image of someone who is banned from a building, the system can immediately alert officials if the person returns.

{ LA Times | Continue reading }

installation sketch { ecstasy, 2018 }

— Persistence 


— Talking too much 


— Contradictions between words and actions or behaviors 


— Triggering your intuition (this doesn’t feel right)

As a reliable general guideline, any time you are engaged in conversation with a stranger and you notice one or more of those characteristics in the conversation, you should expect that you are being scammed. 


{ Active Response Training | Continue reading }

The team say that sextortion emails demanding cryptocurrency payment first appeared in 2018. The scammers send their emails via botnets, such as Necurs or Cutwail. These are global networks of computers infected with malware that send out spam on demand.

This is offered as a service on the dark net. Various researchers have shown that spammers pay botnet owners between $100 and $500 to send a million spam emails. They can even rent botnets at a cost of $10,000 per month, which allows them to send 100 million spam messages. […]

Back in 2008, one group of cyber-crime experts infiltrated a botnet for 26 days and monitored spammers sending 350 million emails for a pharmaceutical product. The result was 28 sales. This generated a revenue of $2,732, which corresponds to a conversion rate of just 0.00001%. Nevertheless, the experts concluded that by using additional botnets, spammers could generate around $9,500 per day which adds up to $3.5 million per year.

Sextortion has the potential to be much more profitable, say Paquet-Clouston and co. The reason is that it does not require the spammers to host any kind of e-commerce website, or to procure, store, and ship products of any kind. And cryptocurrency payments are simpler than bank payments and do not require the involvement of a friendly bank.

{ Technology Review | Continue reading }

oil on canvas { Caleb Brown, Sports Explosion, 2009 }

Cooping was an alleged form of electoral fraud in the United States cited in relation to the death of Edgar Allan Poe in October 1849, by which unwilling participants were forced to vote, often several times over, for a particular candidate in an election. According to several of Poe’s biographers, these innocent bystanders would be grabbed off the street by so-called ‘cooping gangs’ or ‘election gangs’ working on the payroll of a political candidate, and they would be kept in a room, called the “coop”, and given alcoholic beverages in order for them to comply. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed. Often their clothing would be changed to allow them to vote multiple times. Sometimes the victims would be forced to wear disguises such as wigs, fake beards or mustaches to prevent them from being recognized by voting officials at polling stations.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

On October 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, “in great distress, and… in need of immediate assistance”, according to Joseph W. Walker who found him. He was taken to the Washington Medical College where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849 at 5:00 in the morning. He was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own.

He is said to have repeatedly called out the name “Reynolds” on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring.

All medical records and documents, including Poe’s death certificate, have been lost, if they ever existed.

Newspapers at the time reported Poe’s death as “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation”, common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism.

The actual cause of death remains a mystery. […] One theory dating from 1872 suggests that cooping was the cause of Poe’s death, a form of electoral fraud in which citizens were forced to vote for a particular candidate, sometimes leading to violence and even murder. […] Cooping had become the standard explanation for Poe’s death in most of his biographies for several decades, though his status in Baltimore may have made him too recognizable for this scam to have worked. […]

Immediately after Poe’s death, his literary rival Rufus Wilmot Griswold wrote a slanted high-profile obituary under a pseudonym, filled with falsehoods that cast him as a lunatic and a madman, and which described him as a person who “walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayers, (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned)”.

The long obituary appeared in the New York Tribune signed “Ludwig” on the day that Poe was buried. It was soon further published throughout the country. The piece began, “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.” “Ludwig” was soon identified as Griswold, an editor, critic, and anthologist who had borne a grudge against Poe since 1842. Griswold somehow became Poe’s literary executor and attempted to destroy his enemy’s reputation after his death.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

{ What makes WeWork worth more, the company seems to be saying, is that it’s a tech company + Everything about the company is over-the-top: its growth, losses, potential conflicts of interest and financial gymnastics + The company’s IPO prospectus is an exercise in ducking reality }

Before you hand over your number, ask yourself: Is it worth the risk? […]

Your phone number may have now become an even stronger identifier than your full name. I recently found this out firsthand when I asked Fyde, a mobile security firm in Palo Alto, Calif., to use my digits to demonstrate the potential risks of sharing a phone number.

He quickly plugged my cellphone number into a public records directory. Soon, he had a full dossier on me — including my name and birth date, my address, the property taxes I pay and the names of members of my family.

From there, it could have easily gotten worse. Mr. Tezisci could have used that information to try to answer security questions to break into my online accounts. Or he could have targeted my family and me with sophisticated phishing attacks.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

image { Bell telephone magazine, March/April 1971 }

{ Trump’s ties }

{ Horns are growing on young people’s skulls, caused by the forward tilt of the head. Phone use is to blame, research suggests. | Washington Post | No, Teenagers Are Not Growing ‘Skull Horns’ Because of Smartphones | Time }

A woman who was knocked unconscious by a cyclist will be awarded compensation, despite a judge finding she had stepped into the road while looking at her phone.

Robert Hazeldean, a garden designer, who was also knocked out by the collision, will pay thousands in damages and court fees to Gemma Brushett, who works for a finance firm in the City of London and runs yoga retreats. […]

Judge Shanti Mauger, at Central London county court, said: “Cyclists must be prepared at all times for people to behave in unexpected ways.”

{ Guardian | Continue reading }

In Siege, Wolff quotes Bannon saying investigations into Trump’s finances will cut adrift even his most ardent supporters: “This is where it isn’t a witch hunt – even for the hard core, this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy, and one worth $50m instead of $10bn. Not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag.”

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

update 6/3 { Italy is revoking a lease granted to Steve Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. A letter used to guarantee the lease was forged. }

The mainstream sciences are experiencing a revolution of methodology. This revolution was inspired, in part, by the realization that a surprising number of findings in the bioscientific literature could not be replicated or reproduced by independent laboratories and were likely false discoveries.

In response – as reflected in a 2018 report of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – scientific norms and practices are rapidly moving towards openness. These reforms promise many enhancements to the scientific process, notably improved efficiency and reliability of findings.

Changes are also underway in the forensic sciences (although they have recently hit substantial political roadblocks). After years of legal-scientific criticism and several reports from peak scientific bodies, efforts are underway to establish the validity of several forensic practices and ensure forensic scientists perform and present their work in a scientifically valid way.

In this article, the authors suggest that open science reforms are distinctively suited to addressing the problems faced by forensic science. Openness comports with legal and criminal justice values, helping ensure expert forensic evidence is more reliable and susceptible to rational evaluation by the trier of fact.

{ LawArXiv | Continue reading }

transparency in lightbox { Jeff Wall, A Sunflower, 1995 }

US actor Ashton Kutcher testified in an LA courtroom that he called on a young woman’s home for a date in 2001, not realising she lay dead inside.

When the woman, Ashley Ellerin, did not answer the door, Mr Kutcher said he looked in her window and saw what he thought were wine stains on the floor. […]

Prosecutors allege Ellerin was slain by “Hollywood Ripper”, Michael Gargiulo.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore, Grand Canyon, June 1972 }

Behavioural patterns of Londoners going about their daily business are being tracked and recorded an unprecedented scale, internet expert Ben Green warns. […]

Large-scale London data-collection projects include on-street free Wi-Fi beamed from special kiosks, smart bins, police facial recognition and soon 5G transmitters embedded in lamp posts.

Transport for London announced this week they would track, collect and analyse movements of commuters around 260 Tube stations starting from July by using mobile Wi-Fi data and device MAC addresses to help improve journeys. Customers can opt out by turning off their Wi-Fi. 

{ Standard | Continue reading }

previously { The Business of Selling Your Location }

art { Poster for Autechre by the Designers Republic, 2016 }

Misdemeanor cases affect far more people than felony cases, outnumbering felony cases by more than three to one. Yet very little empirical information exists on many aspects of misdemeanor prosecutions.

This Article provides the first quantitative look at appellate review in misdemeanor cases, nationwide. It uses data drawn from a random sample of direct criminal appeals decided by every state appellate court in the nation, unpublished aggregate data on misdemeanor trial court cases provided by the Court Statistics Project, and published state court statistics.

We provide the first estimate of the rate of appellate review for misdemeanors, concluding that appellate courts review no more than eight in 10,000 misdemeanor convictions, and disturb only one conviction or sentence out of every 10,000 misdemeanor judgments. This level of oversight is much lower than that for felony cases, for reasons we explain.

Additional findings include new information about the rate of felony trial court review of lower court misdemeanor cases, ratios of appeals to convictions for various misdemeanor-crime categories, detailed descriptive information about misdemeanor cases that reach state appellate courts, the results of a complete statistical analysis examining which features are significantly associated with a greater or lesser likelihood of success, including crime type, claim raised, judicial-selection method, and type of representation, and the first quantitative look at how misdemeanor appeals differ from felony appeals.

{ LawArXiv | Continue reading }

watercolor on paper { JMW Turner, A Wreck, possibly related to Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End, c.1834 }

previously { The Federalist Society — A 30-Year Plan to Transform the Courts }

In Shenzhen, the local subway operator is testing various advanced technologies backed by the ultra-fast 5G network, including facial-recognition ticketing.

At the Futian station, instead of presenting a ticket or scanning a QR bar code on their smartphones, commuters can scan their faces on a tablet-sized screen mounted on the entrance gate and have the fare automatically deducted from their linked accounts. […]

Consumers can already pay for fried chicken at KFC in China with its “Smile to Pay” facial recognition system, first introduced at an outlet in Hangzhou in January 2017. […]

Chinese cities are among the most digitally savvy and cashless in the world, with about 583 million people using their smartphones to make payment in China last year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. Nearly 68 per cent of China’s internet users used a mobile wallet for their offline payments.

{ South China Morning Post | Continue reading }

photo { The Collection of the Australian National Maritime Museum }

Beer bottles are often used in physical disputes. If the bottles break, they may give rise to sharp trauma. However, if the bottles remain intact, they may cause blunt injuries. […]

We tested the fracture properties of beer bottles in a drop-tower. Full bottles broke at 30 J impact energy, empty bottles at 40 J. These breaking energies surpass the minimum fracture-threshold of the human neurocranium. […]

The phenomenon of empty beer bottles breaking at higher energies than full ones is explainable by two factors. Firstly, beer is an almost incompressible fluid. Even a slight deformation of the bottle due to the impact of the steel ball leads to an increase of the pressure within the bottle and its destruction. Another possibly major additional factor may be that beer is carbonated.

{ Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore, Miami, Oklahoma, July 1972 }

Products developed by companies such as Activtrak allow employers to track which websites staff visit, how long they spend on sites deemed “unproductive” and set alarms triggered by content considered dangerous. […]

To quantify productivity, “profiles” of employee behaviour — which can be as granular as mapping an individual’s daily activity — are generated from “vast” amounts of data. […]

If combined with personal details, such as someone’s age and sex, the data could allow employers to develop a nuanced picture of ideal employees, choose whom they considered most useful and help with promotion and firing decisions. […]

Some technology, including Teramind’s and Activtrak’s, permits employers to take periodic computer screenshots or screen-videos — either with employees’ knowledge or in “stealth” mode — and use AI to assess what it captures.

Depending on the employer’s settings, screenshot analysis can alert them to things like violent content or time spent on LinkedIn job adverts. 

But screenshots could also include the details of private messages, social media activity or credit card details in ecommerce checkouts, which would then all be saved to the employer’s database. […]

Meanwhile, smart assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa for Business, are being introduced into workplaces, but it is unclear how much of office life the devices might record, or what records employers might be able to access.

{ Financial Times | Continue reading }

Google uses Gmail to track a history of things you buy. […] Google says it doesn’t use this information to sell you ads.

{ CNBC | Continue reading }

unrelated { Navy Seal’s lawyers received emails embedded with tracking software }

photo { Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Paris, 1996 }

[I]nside of a Google server or a Facebook server is a little voodoo doll, avatar-like version of you […] All I have to do is simulate what conversation the voodoo doll is having, and I know the conversation you just had without having to listen to the microphone.

{ Quartz | Continue reading }

…a phenomenon privacy advocates have long referred to as the “if you build it, they will come” principle — anytime a technology company creates a system that could be used in surveillance, law enforcement inevitably comes knocking. Sensorvault, according to Google employees, includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade.

The new orders, sometimes called “geofence” warrants, specify an area and a time period, and Google gathers information from Sensorvault about the devices that were there. It labels them with anonymous ID numbers, and detectives look at locations and movement patterns to see if any appear relevant to the crime. Once they narrow the field to a few devices they think belong to suspects or witnesses, Google reveals the users’ names and other information. […]

Google uses the data to power advertising tailored to a person’s location, part of a more than $20 billion market for location-based ads last year.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }