Muir Beach Quilters Holiday Arts Fair —

A group of English-speaking gamers have compiled a phrasebook for chatting online with Chinese gold farmers, including phrases like "Would you like to join my group?" and "please do not steal my mobs."

jia you - GO GO GO! (Use as a cheer)
ni kan! - look!
Pao! - Run!
Deng yi xia. - Wait a moment.
Ni xian zou. - You go first.
bu yao sha ta - dont kill him/her/it
bu yao sha wo - don't kill me

Farmer Speak (Thanks, Nick!)

Avi sez, "I came across this Turneresque painting of Mumbai Local Trains by Bhuwan Silhare. Not much info about the artist online."

Bhuwan Silhare Mumbai Local Trains 2010

Some are wondering whether the auto-posted tweet constitutes “libel”; still others wonder why a customer would ever permit the Oxford Dictionary access to her Twitter account. I remember seeing the app’s request pop up, and I’d simply assumed the dictionary had added some sort of social networking functionality, something like “share this crazy new word with your friends!” or whatever. (Enfour’s software integrates very nicely with another app, the excellent Terminology, which does indeed include a “Twitter” button along with each definition.) At no point did Enfour disclose its intention to “post to Twitter on [my] behalf,” however. The request seemed perfectly innocuous.

One user did deny Enfour this permission request, and he discovered that Oxford booted him from the software entirely. This is to say, he could not use Enfour’s Oxford at all unless he granted the dictionary permission to humiliate him publicly.

Enfour has since admitted there was a “glitch” that caused “false positives” in the software. What’s especially harrowing, though, is that Enfour apparently mined the data in the iPhone itself in an effort to determine, not whether Enfour’s own software is pirated, but whether any software on the iOS device is pirated.

Tracey Northcott VP of International Communications for Enfour tweeted: "#softwarepirateconfession We do sincerely apologise for any inconvenience. The anti-piracy module kicked in today for legitimate users. Bug"

In an "open apology letter," she states again that the horrible idea was just a "bug."

UPDATE: Take a look at the reviews for this app. Some people report that they paid $55 for an app that crashes repeatedly and then sends notifications to the screen that read "I am a software thief!" And Jenn adds: Also, I apparently missed Enfour’s "apology":

Nevertheless, a number of users with certain system configurations were affected during this time period. Some may still be if they haven’t updated to the fixed version. If you are not running the latest version, we urge you to update your app immediately to avoid the potential embarrassment of an unexpected tweet.

Can’t spell “pirate” without “-irate”: on DRM and punishing the customer

On November 25, 2010, industrial music pioneer Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle and Coil died in his sleep. Today, we pause to remember Sleazy and his contributions to music and transgressive art with this exclusive "memorial mix" of "Desertshores." The song comes from Desertshore/The Final Report, a double album of music that Sleazy and his Throbbbing Gristle collaborators Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter were developing when their dear friend shuffled off this mortal coil. Desertshore is a "cover" of Nico's challenging 1970 album while The Final Report compiles Sleazy, Chris, and Cosey's 2009 and 2010 recording sessions as a trio. Desertshore/The Final Report will be released tomorrow on Industrial Records.

We are all only temporary curators of our present bodies, which will all decay, sooner or later. In a hundred years or so all the humans currently alive will have died. I take great comfort in knowing, with certainty, that thing that makes us special, able to enrich our own lives and those of others, will not cease when our bodies do but will be just starting a new (and hopefully even better) adventure ... "

- Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson (1955-2010)

On Saturday, the UK Open Rights Group held a London training session for activists who want to fight the "Snoopers' Charter," a legislative proposal to give government the power to order online service providers and merchants to retain your communications, and make them available to law enforcement, civil servants, and ministers without a warrant.

They say this is about fighting terrorism, but they're not just watching suspected terrorists, they're planning on watching all of us, all the time. They plan on turning every merchant, telcom, service provider and games company into a government spy, a political officer lurking in our schools, homes and workplaces.

I gave a closing keynote at the event, and there will be more to follow across the country. Get fighting!

Stop the Snoopers' Charter (local events) (Thanks, Allas!)

Katherine sez, "Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer will be performing a GALA PARTY on Friday, December 21st, 2012 (aka MAYAN DOOMSDAY) to benefit the restoration of Torrent Engine 18, a Boston firehouse turned flexible art gallery/theatre. On the official Last Day on Earth, the gala will offer decadent music, mystery readings, and ritual burlesque, plus fresh-fruit-infused libations by Booze Époque in a grand ballroom (a secret Boston location revealed only to ticket-holders). Gala guest spots are only available through Torrent Engine 18's Kickstarter, which ends November 30th at 9pm."

Old Boston Firehouse to become art space: Torrent Engine 18 (Thanks, Katherine!)

On CBS Sunday Morning, a video feature on the street artist KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, 38, whose Companion character was a float in this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The gray-and-white creature "who's a little too shy to show his face" floated in the parade right next to Mickey and Donald and other icons. In his native Jersey City, KAWS' faded tags "can still be seen on the sides of buildings."

Earlier this year, Carol Vogel wrote in the New York Times about the planned parade inclusion of Companion.

Read the rest

Scanned and Flickr'd by Captain Geoffrey Spaulding, an ad for Ohio Electric Works, 1897.

Shape Shifting Lizard Skin Cream, by Darren Cullen & Mark Tolson.

Shapeshifting from lizard to human form is great for controlling Earth so you can mine gold to save your dying homeworld, but it’s not so great for your skin. When you’re juggling appointments and global depopulation deadlines, you don’t have time for an exhaustive skincare regime, especially after you’ve been up all night sodomising infants on a blood-soaked altar.

That’s why there’s new Hypoallergenic Shapeshifting Lizard Skin Cream, for the hard-working reptilian overlord who wants to crush the human race AND look great. Revitalise dry cracked scales with the nutrifying formula, penetrating your watertight, abrasive epidermis with vitamin-enriched micro-molecules.

Never again spend hours removing crusty nodules from your armoured eyelids or sandblasting your segmented underbelly. Instead, spend your life-cycle on the things that really matter to you: eating babies, manipulating financial markets and basking on rocks in the warm glow of Earth’s home star.

Whichever form you’ve taken, simply lather the cream onto tough lizard scales or weak and thin human tissue. The vitamin E rich formula gets to work fast, leaving your external membrane hard, reinforced and radiant.

Start each day with that “just-shed-skin” feeling!

A wonderful night-sky photo shared in the BB Flickr Pool by Dave Hensley: "Unadjusted jpg made from 16bit/channel tiff created by a linux stacking script I wrote; operating on a series of images I captured over vacation."