Saturday, August 31, 2024

"The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp" is $1.99 right now

at Amazon (by Simon Parkin, host of the excellent My Perfect Console podcast):
The “riveting…truly shocking” (The New York Times Book Review) story of a Jewish orphan who fled Nazi Germany for London, only to be arrested and sent to a British internment camp for suspected foreign agents on the Isle of Man, alongside a renowned group of refugee musicians, intellectuals, artists, and—possibly—genuine spies.

Following the events of Kristallnacht in 1938, Peter Fleischmann evaded the Gestapo’s roundups in Berlin by way of a perilous journey to England on a Kindertransport rescue, an effort sanctioned by the UK government to evacuate minors from Nazi-controlled areas.train. But he could not escape the British police, who came for him in the early hours and shipped him off to Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, under suspicion of being a spy for the very regime he had fled.

During Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews like Peter escaped and found refuge in Britain. After war broke out and paranoia gripped the nation, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that these innocent asylum seekers—so-called “enemy aliens”—be interned.

When Peter arrived at Hutchinson Camp, he found one of history’s most astounding prison populations: renowned professors, composers, journalists, and artists. Together, they created a thriving cultural community, complete with art exhibitions, lectures, musical performances, and poetry readings. The artists welcomed Peter as their pupil and forever changed the course of his life. Meanwhile, suspicions grew that a real spy was hiding among them—one connected to a vivacious heiress from Peter’s past.

Drawing from unpublished first-person accounts and newly declassified government documents, award-winning journalist Simon Parkin reveals an “extraordinary yet previously untold true story” (Daily Express) that serves as a “testimony to human fortitude despite callous, hypocritical injustice” (The New Yorker) and “an example of how individuals can find joy and meaning in the absurd and mundane” (The Spectator).

The new Dungeons & Dragons Lego minifigure series, including the Lady of Pain is up for preorder

Six pack at Amazon. Many of the figures come with a choice of male/female faces:

Police officers commonly seek video from bystander Teslas and seek warrants to tow the cars when owner consent is not quickly forthcoming

SF Chronicle:

In at least three instances in July and August, Oakland police sought to tow a Tesla into evidence to obtain — via a second court order — its stored video. Officers cited the cars’ “Sentry Mode” feature, a system of cameras and sensors that records noise and movement around the vehicle when it is empty and locked, storing it in a USB drive in the glove box.

...

A source familiar with [one particular] investigation said the owner showed up as crews were loading his car onto a tow truck and intervened. When he volunteered the video, police released his vehicle.

3d-printable low poly otters



(These are free, just search for the files.)

Friday, August 30, 2024

New Humble Bundle features the Discworld novels

Starts at three novels for $1.

Great video of Bautista describing his last wrestling match

Thursday, August 29, 2024

Iran's Paralympic Seated Volleyball Team has an 8'1" player


Wikipedia:
He was also the second best spiker during the 2016 Rio Paralympics.


New Humble Bundle featuring rulebooks, sourcebooks, and campaign resources from the "Lost Works of Gygax"

47 items including "The Undercaverns of Gaxmoor" and "Death Ship of the Roach Princess"

Ferrari's carbon-fire inspired racing suits for this weekend's race at the Temple of Speed (and is the safety car crashing a bad sign?)









Also:



Also:







Motorsport says:
Maylander and his passenger were unhurt and climbed out of the car unaided.

While there has been no explanation for the cause of the accident, the strange way that the car snaked under braking for Parabolica – before spinning around – suggested it could well have been caused by a mechanical problem rather than driver error.

Call of Duty Spawn action figures by McFarlane up for preorder

Spawn and "tactical" Spawn figures. The BBTS also has the Demogorgon vinyl figure by Mondo and James Groman.

An off-grid wilderness retreat in the Mojave









Wednesday, August 28, 2024

"U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors turned up dozens of violations at a Boar's Head plant in Virginia"

CBS:

The outbreak has grown to 57 hospitalizations in more than a dozen states linked to recalled products from the plant. At least eight deaths have now been reported, including new fatalities linked to the outbreak in recent days from Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico and South Carolina.

...

Records released by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service to CBS News through a Freedom of Information Act request tally 69 records of "noncompliances" flagged by the agency over the past year at the [Virginia] plant.

It's unclear whether Boar's Head will face any penalties by the USDA for the repeat issues. 

"Imagine receiving a traffic ticket in the mail because you were speeding down a Russian road in Kursk with a Ukrainian attack drone on your tail"

Ars quoting a Russian news outlet:

Mash claims that the traffic police are sympathetic and that given the drone situation, "speeding can be considered as committed in a state of extreme necessity." But those who receive a speeding ticket will have to challenge it in court on these grounds.

New Humble Bundle features Terminator comic books

Starts at two for $1. I'd actually been looking for digital versions of these recently--from what I could tell they aren't available at obvious places like Kindle or Hoopla.

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Stopmotion puppets created for the title sequence for Shudder's new docu-series "Horror's Greatest"








Naomi Osaka's beribboned outfit today










It was fun watching her disrobe in stages from the full getup to see which parts she'd actually play in:



California State Bar filed charges against an attorney for preying on prisoners

From April 2023:

How a former McKinsey consultant "built a booming enterprise by fanning false hopes in some families" that he could help get their loved ones out of prison

Now:

In a filing Monday, the bar accused [the attorney] of 18 violations of the rules of professional conduct for attorneys and the state business code, including moral turpitude and unconscionable fees. If found culpable, he faces possible penalties ranging from probation to disbarment by the state Supreme Court.

California’s prison system will stop using a "cheaper alternative" to polygraphs to assess prisoner credibility during investigations

SF Chronicle in June:

For decades, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation used a pseudoscientific technology to assess prisoners’ credibility during investigations, even after researchers debunked the CVSA and after its manufacturer, NITV Federal Services, admitted that it was not capable of detecting lies, a Chronicle investigation has found.

...

NITV Federal Services offers dozens of courses to law enforcement agencies each year and has sold its machines and training sessions to thousands of departments, billing the CVSA as a cheaper alternative to the polygraph test — another controversial lie-detector technology. Collectively, these California agencies have spent at least hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on the CVSA since 2020, the Chronicle found.

...

The CVSA purportedly works by measuring inaudible changes to a person’s speech patterns. According to an early 2000s training manual obtained by the Chronicle, a person’s vocal cords are “subject to physiological tremors” that diminish when they are stressed. Thus, a stressed person’s speech patterns would have a different frequency, and a different shape when plotted on a graph, than an unstressed person.

SF Chronicle now:

California’s prison system has moved to ban the use of a controversial lie-detector test — compared by one expert to a Ouija board or an astrological chart — following a Chronicle investigation into the technology and its impact on the incarcerated.

...

While California’s prisons will no longer use the CVSA, the Chronicle’s investigation identified 13 other law enforcement agencies around the state that were still using the technology to interview prospective officers during the hiring process. At least three of these agencies had also recently used the tool during criminal investigations.

From the CVSA Wikipedia entry:

A 2013 paper published in Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics reviewed the "scientific implausibility" of its principles and "ungrounded claims of the aggressive propaganda from sellers of voice stress analysis gadgets"