A Funkaoshi Production

Jeet Heer on Trump and America.

A discussion about the rise and fall of Games Workshop and its parallels to British politics. (Coincidently, I recently picked up the new Warhammer 40,000 starter set. It’s amazing.)

Israel and Russia the only two countries that are positive now? Maximum LOLs.

Fathima Cader of Run Like The Wind writes about Canada’s and Sri Lanka’s markedly similar anti-terror laws.

What will do you do first? An unconstitutional Muslim ban? Withdraw from popular environmental treaties? Fire the FBI director? The only limit is your imagination!

Secret Hitler is an amazing (and shockingly topical) game.

The good part about naming a talk in 2017 ‘Notes from an Emergency’ is that there are so many directions to take it. The emergency I want to talk about is the rise of a vigorous ethnic nationalism in Europe and America. This nationalism makes skillful use of online tools, tools that we believed inherently promoted freedom, to advance an authoritarian agenda.

Inside the competitive Indian-American spelling community.

A lot of food. (It’s funny how soft spoke and mild mannered Shaw seems. It’s incongruent with all his giant frame and muscles.)

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

The video about hard core Japanese calculator nerds is exactly what I expected from a video about hard core Japanese calculator nerds.

This is really interesting, with a cool plot twist mid way through the story.

He had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

This is crazy. Not particularly surprising, though.

But the fallout seemed to take the White House by surprise. Trump made a round of calls around 5 p.m., asking for support from senators. White House officials believed it would be a “win-win” because Republicans and Democrats alike have problems with the FBI director, one person briefed on their deliberations said.

This guy is a fucking idiot.

Desmond Cole’s The Skin I’m In was turned into a documentary a little while ago by the CBC.

I can’t wait till i’m profiled in the New Yorker. This article is really great. It’s funny that even when he’s being serious he’s also being funny.

“She was unconscious, and she was hooked up to all these beeping machines, and I very clearly remember thinking, If she makes it out of this, I’m gonna marry her.” His voice caught. “I know that sounds cliché, and it’s actually kind of creepy and nonconsensual if you think about it too hard. But that was the thought I had.”

Facebook is a creepy company and it does creepy stuff.

A good overview of bullet journals.

Starting in the summer of 2018, the European Union may require that companies be able to give users an explanation for decisions that automated systems reach. This might be impossible, even for systems that seem relatively simple on the surface, such as the apps and websites that use deep learning to serve ads or recommend songs. The computers that run those services have programmed themselves, and they have done it in ways we cannot understand. Even the engineers who build these apps cannot fully explain their behavior.

No President in American history has ever golfed more per week than Donald Trump. In his first 12 weeks in office Trump took a staggering 18 golf course trips. That’s unheard of. In his first 12 weeks in office, President Obama didn’t visit a single golf course. By the end of this year, it’s likely that Trump will have golfed more than President Obama has in his entire presidency.

And that’s strange. It’s really strange. Because Donald Trump and other conservative pundits seemed to be deeply bothered by the times President Obama went out and golfed. It appeared to genuinely offend them. They obsessed over it.

Damn it.