Trump accidentally admits Michael Cohen told the truth in his new lawsuit: Legal expert - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism:

But that claim doesn't make any sense for Trump, said former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo on CNN's "OutFront" on Wednesday — because it implicitly requires Trump to admit that everything Cohen said, which he is now denying by pleading not guilty to criminal charges against him in New York, is actually true.

“When you look at this, Trump is alleging that Michael Cohen broke attorney-client privilege, he’s talking about all these falsehoods that he put out there,” said anchor Erica Hill. “Is there a legal merit here? I mean, does he have a case?

“It’s an interesting case here because, on the one hand, he’s saying everything is false, right?” said Agnifilo. “So if he was breaching attorney-client privilege, you’re doing that by telling things that were said to you in confidence. But so, is he saying things that Michael Cohen is saying are true because I told him in confidence, and now he’s breached that privilege? Or is he saying that the things are false? Because if they’re false, why didn’t he bring a defamation claim? So it kind of makes no sense.

“It really reads to me like he’s just trying to put his defense in the criminal case out and try and get his statements out there in the court of public opinion."

An Air National Guardsman thought a parody website for hitmen was real and tried to get work. Turns out he was messaging the FBI. | Boing Boing:

Josiah Ernesto Garcia, 21, an Air National Guardsman from Tennessee, chanced across rentahitman.com and tried to sign up despite it glowing like the sun. He submitted his ID, his resume, and a cover letter identifying him as an expert marksman. At some point the site's operators realized he wasn't messing around and called in the FBI, which he soon agreed to kill someone for, earning himself federal charges instead of the anticipated $5,000.

It feels like Air National Guard might not be recruiting all the best…

Here’s why Substack’s scam worked so well • Buttondown:

Substack’s business is a scam. They claim to offer writers a level playing field for making a living, and instead they pay an elite, secret group of writers to be on the platform and make newsletter writing appear to be more lucrative than it is. They claim to be an app when they are a publication with an editorial policy. They claim in their terms of service that they will protect writers from abuse, but they don’t.

Customize Your AirPods Pro for Even Better Sound:

What an amazing feature for people who are hard of hearing or who have trouble focusing their audio attention (definitely me sometimes). And what’s more, you can actually upload an audiogram to create a custom profile that adjusts audio levels specifically to how you hear. What? I had no idea. Here’s Paul Lefebvre:

This is a feature that’s been around for quite a while, but never well known.

The New York case is far from the first time Donald Trump was caught in a crime:

On April 4, Donald Trump was indicted and charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Even before the charges were officially read, Republicans were in high dudgeon, screaming about the unfairness of it all and the unprecedented nature of these charges. On the one hand, they’re right: It’s unusual for a former resident of the White House to be facing charges that could potentially end with years in prison. On the other hand, they’re dead wrong. Because if there’s anything that we know about Donald Trump, it’s that “crime” might as well be his middle name.

Trump first appeared on the national stage in the middle of a Justice Department investigation in 1973. Two decades later, he was tangled in another federal case with more than 100 charges. On the eve of the 2016 election, he was dealing with New York state, plus a class action lawsuit. Less than a year after taking office, he was involved in another criminal investigation case involving multiple crimes.

The difference between what happened then and what’s happening now is the difference between how our justice system deals with most crime, and how that same system deals with most rich people’s crimes. In every one of those previous cases, Trump was guilty. In some cases, he was guilty in ways that benefited him to the tune of millions of dollars. And in every case, he was able to write a check and walk away, often while still making a profit off his crimes.

NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’ | MPR News:

For years, many journalists considered Twitter critical to monitoring news developments, to connect with people at major events and with authoritative sources, and to share their coverage. Musk's often hastily announced policy changes have undermined that. Lansing says that degradation in the culture of Twitter — already often awash in abusive content — contributed to NPR's decision to pull back.

I reiterate that NPR should craft their own ActivePub service for all social engagement. I actually think every major news outlet or company with a social component should do the same, get the public as used to @news@npr.org and similar social handles as they are with email addresses.

General Motors hates your iPhone – Six Colors:

GM wants your data. It wants to control your in-car experience. Yes, I have sympathy for a company that is trying to integrate a lot of advanced in-car navigation and safety features with its own hardware stack—in fact, I think it’s not at all unreasonable for GM to declare that if you want to use those features, you must use GM’s built-in navigation apps. But, of course, that’s not what they are actually doing. They’re trying to hide their power grab behind their need to tie auto-drive features to their own navigation system.

GM has, for the time being, ruled themselves out of my candidates for EVs. Good for them.

Rand Paul, Mike Lee lie about NPR as Elon Musk continues his war against the free press:

See now, that's just a flat-out lie and then some. Calling NPR "state-run" is disinformation. It's simply a hoax. NPR was spun off from a congressional edict a half century ago, and the "state" has not a damn speck of influence in NPR's programming. If NPR lost all of its "federal taxpayer funding" tomorrow, it would be ... just fine. Absolutely fine. The same cannot be said of Tesla or of SpaceX; government subsidies and contracts are the stuff that keeps Elon Musk's companies from collapse.

Tokyo Jazz Joints:

Book - TOKYO JAZZ JOINTS by Philip Arneill/James Catchpole — Kickstarter:

Sadly, while I was looking for a good image to tag this with, their site has all kinds of obfuscation and such… Less press I guess.

This whole site is love for a hidden slice of life, and I hope to snag the book to explore it all.

Musk puts false ‘state-affiliated’ label on NPR’s Twitter account because he’s a big pouting baby:

Well, it doesn't look like Elon Musk's Twitter tire fire will be burning itself out anytime soon. After retooling the social media site into a pay-to-play disinformation service, more petty posturing that included an order engineers to remove the verified status of The New York Times' account, and the sudden replacement of the Twitter bird logo with the "doge" meme in what might have been a two-day-late April Fool's Day prank, it's been made clear that the reason Musk bought Twitter was because he was extremely pissed off that it existed and became willing to spend a substantial chunk of his fortune to make sure it didn't.

NPR really should host it’s own activepub for employees and get off of Phony Stark’s hate-f**k of social media.

Life after Daft Punk: Thomas Bangalter on ballet, AI and ditching the helmet - BBC News:

For 28 years, Daft Punk blurred the lines between man and machine on hits like Da Funk, One More Time and Get Lucky. Now, as he turns his hand to ballet, one of the duo has a warning about Artificial Intelligence and the "obsolescence of man".

Great interview.

On 60 Minutes, MTG insisted that Democrats are pedophiles | Boing Boing:

News outlets need to stop treating it like “both sides are valid” issues.

To Every Other Jobu Tupaki After Jamie Lee Curtis’s Oscar Win | Tor.com:

Except it’s not our failure, and definitely not Stephanie Hsu’s. It’s the Academy’s. Sure, that’s a strong feeling, and sure, I shouldn’t make a habit out of exhausting myself when incredible QTPOC stories get overlooked for awards, especially when this film did sweep in other, crucial, beautiful ways. But the specificity of the situation makes me want to put the entire Academy on an everything bagel. With extra salt. To balance out the salt in the wound that makes it impossible to ignore.

That character? In that role? In this movie? It would be one thing if she’d lost to another actor in the category. But both Hsu and Curtis play supporting characters with queer storylines who change Evelyn Wang’s life. Hsu plays every version of Joy: Jobu Tupaki, daughter and monster, supervillain and depressed queer second gen kid who just wants her mom to see her. Hsu embodies the role thrillingly, flayingly well. It’s in the way she moves, the history of hurt behind her eyes. The familiar, complicated intricacy of loving your mother in all her messy truth and wishing she would just goddamn do the same for you. It’s there, that rarely told story of shame and sharp longing.

How Drake Rescued the Long-Lost Art Carnival Luna Luna - The New York Times:

Earlier this year, in a 50,000-square-foot warehouse lined with weathered shipping containers and crates, the Viennese artist André Heller was reunited with one of the great loves of his life and career.

The psychedelic works inside, unseen by Heller or the world for 35 years, had long been lost to history, despite their flashy provenance. Together, they made up Luna Luna — a functional amusement park where the rides and attractions also happened to be contemporary art from the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Salvador Dalí, which Heller had conceptualized and opened, briefly, in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987.

Standard disclaimer that it’s NYT so could be sh*twalled… But the pics are worth the trip.

AI Tucker Carlson interviews an AI Emperor Palpatine | Boing Boing:

AI is learning to do things fast and better than humans, but Tucker Carlson? Can he be improved? Yep, pretty quickly. I don't know about the AI-Billy Mays commercial in the middle of this interview and assume it is realistic, but I don't think I've watched a cable tv commercial in 10+ years. Can't AI eliminate them?

‘We’re not gonna fix it’: Tennessee Republican says nothing can be done to stop gun violence:

To give the entire context to the “We're not gonna fix it” line, Burchett started by repeating that three children, three adults, and the shooter were dead, and it was a tragedy, but, “We're not gonna fix it.” He then said, “Criminals are going to be criminals,” and then told a possibly true story of some guy who he called “my daddy,” who had been in World War II and told little Timmy Burchett: “’Buddy,’ he said, ‘if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, then there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”

As far as I can tell, the GOP are the ones who wants to take our children out.

“The library is a safe place.” – WIL WHEATON dot NET:

“The library is a safe place.”

Why libraries? Because the library is so much more than a building with lots of books, internet access, 3D printers, D&D programs for kids, and all the other things. The library represents and offers equal access for everyone to all of those things. Not just the wealthy. Not just the privileged. Not just the in-group. It is a safe place for everyone to be curious, to find inspiration, to sit in the stacks, as far away from the door and the world as possible, and just quietly exist for a minute. (Don’t you love the way those books smell?) The public library is a safe place for all of us, whether we are a kid who feels invisible, a woman who is lost, or a New York Times bestselling author who has the privilege of sharing their story with you.

How America Embraced Aspics With Threatening Auras - Gastro Obscura:

As with so many things considered cutting-edge from the early to mid-1900s, this former food of the future is now a subject of derision and morbid fascination. Facebook groups like “Crimes against jello and vegetables and other mid-century transgressions” and “Aspics with threatening auras” collectively have tens of thousands of members, all of whom revel in the weirdest examples of the genre.

Whether it’s a whole turkey in aspic from the 1920s or a gelatin loaf portrait of Queen Elizabeth, the appeal lies in juxtapositions that feel, well, wrong. It’s what Freud would have called unheimlich, but in today’s internet parlance is known as “cursed.” Like an eyeball with a set of human teeth protruding under the lashes, the cursed aesthetic hinges on an image’s ability to make the viewer squirm.

Four-titude – DORK TOWER 24.03.23 – Dork Tower:

This exactly sums up my feeling about GenCon now that I’ve been away so long…

Asking for a “correction” JK Rowling podcast’s PR firm mistakenly confirms her transphobia | Boing Boing:

Yesterday Boing Boing received an email from a PR firm claiming to "work with" the folks producing JK Rowling's podcast. The PR flack asked us to change a headline they felt was inaccurate:

Now JK Rowling grossly equates trans people to her “Death Eaters.”

The PR firm’s reasoning, and evidence their request was legitimate, actually supported the headline and seemed to confirm Rowling’s bias.

I encourage people to read the email exchange, it does seem that The Author can’t justify any argument with the headline as it is.

Warframe: 10 Year Anniversary:

We’re kicking off Warframe’s 10 Year Anniversary, culminating this August when TennoCon returns to in-person celebrations in London, Ontario, Canada! Earn new and returning Rewards with 10 weeks’ worth of Anniversary Alerts and new in-game events while we reflect on Warframe’s most memorable milestones – and the amazing developments yet to come.

Warframe has been, hands down, the most influential game in my recent existence, with thousands of hours committed across multiple platforms even before Cross Play became an option.

There’s no way I can summarize how cool I think it is, how great the community is… And as part of the mobile play testing, how versatile it is. I hope more of you will join me there.

Mastodon Ownership · weblog.masukomi.org:

A group calling itself “Mask Group” has purchased three of the largest mastodon instances.

I don’t know if it’s better or worse… The brand seems to be a conglomerate of web3/NFT/crypto hucksters who are very excited by every digital MLM scheme around, and want to use every social media method they can to reach new people. If you’re allergic to BS buzzword salad, a visit to their site at mask.io might actually kill you.

I don’t believe a group like that can be a long-term steward, but I don’t know that anyone can be really. I would really like to see a simple composable package that sets up an activepub compatible server and matrix (or even XMPP) compatible server, with proper certs, in a way that anyone can setup federated social and chat on their domain for small communities in a way that we really do leverage the decentralized federated services for anyone.

Daring Fireball: It’s Game Over on Vocal Deepfakes:

Real recordings will be called fake and fake recordings will be leaked as purportedly real. I don’t think the general population is prepared for this, and I worry that news media organizations aren’t either.

This tech is moving out of the uncanny valley and into the indistinguishable realm… And bad actors will absolutely go wild with it.

Bonsai Coding · weblog.masukomi.org:

Writing code is a lot like maintaining a Bonsai Tree. If you stop pruning it it’ll stop being a Bonsai and turn into a bush. Little tweaks, frequently aesthetic ones, will help to keep it beautiful and under control. It will still grow in unexpected directions, as other developers make changes, but careful pruning will keep it balanced, and healthy.

A Rebuttal to Scaling Mastodon is Impossible · weblog.masukomi.org:

Armin Ronacher wrote that Scaling Mastodon is Impossible

I’d like to offer a rebuttal. As someone who’s been doing professional web development since 1995, with most of that time being spent in Rails jobs, or doing Rails work on the sidelines, I think i have a pretty good perspective on the situation. For those who don’t know, Mastodon is written in Ruby on Rails.

A great read on how ActivePub solves the problems of social networks in smart ways, some of which aren’t really being used as best practices yet but have potential.