Los Angeles has hired robots to police one of its parks but it’s not working out. When a woman tried to report a crime, the robot told her to go away and then “trundled away while singing a song . . . pausing periodically to say ‘Please keep the park clean.’
Eliud Kipchoge, a 34-year old Kenyan, broke the two-hour barrier for the marathon. But it wasn’t exactly a marathon. To hit 1:59:40 in 26.2 miles you would need to run approximately 4:30 minutes/mile 26-times in a row!
Scholars in Japan found a missing chapter from The Tale of Genji in a storage closet. Game of Thrones fans complained about the one-year hiatus until the final season. The Tale’s final chapter had been missing since the 11th century. Junko Yamamoto, a professor who specializes in literature of the Heian Period could hardly contain her excitement.
Maybe just make the graffiti invisible? A Canadian company has invented something they call Quantum Stealth, “material is as thin as paper, inexpensive, and requires no power source” that can make things effectively invisible.
A GOP congressman (and former Army staff sergeant) wished the US Navy happy birthday on twitter with a photo of a battleship that others helpfully pointed out was a Kirov-class battlecruiser in the Russian navy.
The Air Force upgraded its nuclear missile command and control centers so they no longer require 1970s era 8-inch floppy disks.
The mayor of a village in rural Italy is blaming Google Maps for sending tourists down impassable roads where they get stuck and have to be rescued. In the past year, they’ve had to send out the local mountain rescue team 144 times.
Of course you could just send your robot. In a curious case of technology looking for a use, Japanese airline ANA unveiled a robot that they say will allow people to “experience faraway places without having to travel there.”
A Nigerian palace announced that its resident tortoise has died following a short illness. Alagba, which means elderly one was 344 years old.
After hearing about the new border wall designed so that no one can climb over it, a group of rock climbers built an exact replica and held a contest to see if anyone could make it over. One climber was up and over in 40 seconds and eight-year old made it as well.
A Seattle man broke into an office building downtown and “devoured” $200 of chocolate and promptly passed out. Sugar coma?
An agricultural researcher discovered that pigs use tools to prepare their nests.
The Sacramento Kings basketball team is getting into crypto and will be giving their fans an Ethereum-based crypto coin which can be redeemed for future games or concessions within the stadium.
The Spanish maritime patrol agents were in hot pursuit of drug smugglers when their boats collided and all three agents fell into the ocean. After responding to a plea to help, the smugglers spun around and picked up the patrol agents. The smugglers were still arrested.
A man in Tokyo was arrested on suspicion of stalking a female pop idol by studying reflections of her pupils in photos she shared on social media and using Google Street View to find out where she lived.
The new arena for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team features a “rage room” where angry fans can go break shit because that’s how Philly fans roll. The room is available only via advance reservations so you need to plan for your anger.
$2.2 million worth of counterfeit Nike sneakers were found in a Long Beach container labeled as “napkins.”
In order to comply with a US Government executive order prohibiting “transactions and services” with Venezuela, software-as-a-service company Adobe done gone and cancelled all accounts in the country and is not give refunds.
I made it to 142 cities and 22% of the population on this page. Off the top of your head, how many US cities can you name?
For extra credit, how many of these 50 songs in this video below can you name?
Defense One normally writes about new tanks or geo-political hotspots. This week they took time out for a deep-dive budgetary analysis of a Snake-and-Alligator boarder moat. “For the 1,954,000-member Snake Border Guard, the optimal force laydown should mix water moccasins (for maximum water effectiveness) and brightly colored coral snakes (for maximum visual deterrence)”
A protest in London got a little out of hand when the hose they were using to spray the Treasury building with fake blood got away from them and doused the street, trees, protestors, random passers by and pretty much everything but the Treasury, instead.
Morale is down at Uber. Due to budget cuts they no longer give out Uberversary balloons and, the ultimate insult, they stopped serving free coffee brewed by the hip Portland roaster Stumptown and now only serve – Starbucks!
Never take LSD at a theme park. That is the lesson learned from this tale of a 32-year old Swiss tourist who dropped acid with his girlfriend at Disneyland Paris. After falling into the Adventureland Lake near Captain Hook’s ship and Skull Rock, this freaked-out tripper eluded a search crew of “30 firefighters, 10 divers, 10 policemen, 80 Disneyland Paris employees and a police helicopter with a thermal-imaging camera.” He was finally discovered, 24 hours later, stark naked, on a road about a mile outside the park.
A Russian naval zodiac boat was attacked, punctured and sunk by a walruses.
Biologists at CalTech discovered a new species of worm at Mono Lake that has three sexes.
A high-speed police chase almost ended in failure when the policeman’s pursuit vehicle, a Tesla, almost ran out of battery power.
China’s flying pilotless drone taxis are almost ready to become a thing. Guangzhou will serve as the first urban air mobility pilot city for a company called EHang. Meanwhile, the US Air Force is working on similar technology which they are calling Agility Prime.
Hasbro released a new version on Monopoly to teach kids about the gender pay gap. Girls start with $1900 and get $240 every time they pass Go while the boys need to make do with $1500 and $200 for every lap around the board.
The entire population of Ecuador (including the president) had their personal information leaked online due to a misconfigured database server.
A software engineer who discovered code that he had contributed to the Chef software project was being sold to ICE deleted his repository, forcing Chef to retroactively update and patch around his code. “I have a moral and ethical obligation to prevent my source from being used for evil.” wrote the engineer.
European scientists have developed a new type of polymer that can heal itself. They plan to use it to make self-healing robots. Hopefully not killer robots.
Looking for a long-read that will teach you something new? Check out On the Line and it’s companion piece, Dirty Business which won this year’s Student Journalism award. Both pieces go behind the scenes of the recycling business and the risks for the workers there.
My visit this year was abbreviated because of other commitments but I am grateful that I did get to spend at least some time at one of my favorite gatherings. It was also fun this year because I got to introduce XOXO to my colleague at work, Vincent Chang, who has a side gig as a game designer.
Vincent’s game is available at a local bookshop
I was happy to hear that the organizers decided against a repeat of last year’s experiment to hold the conference in the cavernous Veterans Memorial Coliseum and returned to the more intimate grounds of Revolution Hall. I applaud their attempt to be more inclusive with the larger venue but, ultimately, something is lost when you host intimate talks in a cavernous hockey rink.
This was my third XOXO (post from 2018). Each time I go, I gain a deeper appreciation for what Andy & Andy are building. I confess that I do not feel marginalized as some of the presenters but, as an Asian-American, it is helpful to learn about the struggles described in some of the talks. Empathy comes from understanding and I thank all the presenters for being so brave to share their stories and the audience in being so collectively supportive.
Against the backdrop of fascinating talks about the etymology of Ms. and the hegemony inflicted upon us by culturally one-dimensional restaurant reviewers , this year I focused on the attendees and their interesting And varied backgrounds. We were encouraged to spend 80% of our time listening and 20% talking. Moving beyond the standard conference introductions such as, “Where do you work, what do you do?” and spending time to uncover a person’s inner fire was immensely rewarding.
Some people I met included
a couple that was deep into Japanese Pro-Wrestling as an art form. They turned me on to Hoodslam, a world I’ve never heard about, taking place right in my backyard.
a recent migrant to San Francisco who was now working on a secret VR/AR project
a woman who took the last year before she turned 31 to take advantage of Australia’s Working Holiday program
I also learned more about anxiety and had an open conversation with those that experience it, what it is like and what are things that I can say that can help someone having a severe anxiety attack. I learned about Box Breathing.
Video
Estelle Caswell (Earworm) showed her video exploration into the male falsetto in popular music and answered questions about the process to make the video presenting her findings. FYI: she made a Spotify playlist.
Conference
I was only able to attend Saturday’s talks but each one was excellent.
Tracy Clayton reminded us Not only of the importance and value of a diverse workplace but also underscored that Diversity isn’t the same as Inclusion. Tracy grew up on Twitter and drew strength and support from her network but the same thing that was keeping her alive was also hurting her emotionally. She shared her struggle to reconcile those two forces and find hope. “Hope leads to motivation, motivation leads to action, and action leads to change.”
Emma Kinema shared her experience as a labor organizer for the video game industry drawling a line from the IWW in the 1930s to the present day struggles of video game developers. Organized labor as something that can unite people in our politically divided world was a theme all weekend both in and outside the conference. The labor movement is strong in Portland.
YouTube personality hbomberguy shared the story of his epic 57-hour Twitch stream in which he raised over $300k for the British Trans Rights charity Mermaids. At hour 56, AOC showed up.
The charming couple Rekka and Devine make up the Hundred Rabbits team. They shared their adventures of moving their life on to a 33-foot sailboat Pino and making their way across the Pacific to Japan. Life on the water lead to extreme self-reliance and radical simplification. 11GB XCode updates and Adobe Creative Suite connectivity are unacceptable on a satellite phone connection so they were forced to build alternative solutions. Just as open source tools lead to more efficient solutions for their technology, they also have open-sourced their lifestyle to help others live off the grid.
Soliel Ho confronts East Coast media ignorance of Boba
Soleil Ho, one of the hosts of the Racist Sandwich podcast that covers the race & politics of food. Here’s a link to Episode 14 which talks about the politics of food photography. Soleil has now become one of those she used to rail against as the new food critic at the San Francisco Chronicle. In her words, “Representation in media is a powerful thing but you must beware of commodification.” This is her new challenge.
Caitlin Doughty shared her career path to a mortician and how she started her “death-positive” movement. I learned a lot about things that are not normally talked about.
Arcade
Wild at Heart beta tester
I chatted with one of the developers at Moonlight Kids, a game studio that is halfway done with, Wild at Heart. They expect it will take their small team two years to complete. The team is completely distributed and the festival was one of the rare times that the team were together. I asked how they coordinate their work schedules and maintain momentum towards deadlines set by their publisher. One thing they try and do every week is open an hours long conference call, not with any set agenda but just as a way to connect, to keep the lines open for quick questions and to be there for each other.
Tabletop
I wish I could say more – it was fun but a bit overwhelming as I’m not much of a game player. Vincent and I played Mechanica while the one of the designers of the game patiently walked us thru the mechanics. It had something to do with making vacuum cleaners.
Vincent was really in his element and he signed us up for a “Super Secret” playtest of a game called The Adventure Zone. Our round was led by Keith Baker who is someone really famous in gaming circles. He was really nice and took an interest in Vincent’s game which made him very happy.
Story
Everything is Alive
Saw the tail end of a live performance of Everything is Alive, the podcast where they interview inanimate objects. In this episode they interviewed a chainsaw.
Finally, I enjoyed the exhaustive breakdown of the Ghostbusters theme song by Ray Parker Jr., and learned about the history around the lawsuit(s). I’ll never not be able to hear Ray’s “Bustin’ makes me feel good!” line again.
Wrapping up, Demi Adejuyigbe made an announcement that he was finishing the season (and moving on from the show) and threw down the most amazing dance routine to a mashup of all the songs covered in the season. Here’s just part of it.
Vincent and I explored several places around Town.
We ducked out for dinner at McMenamin’s Kennedy School located about 6 miles outside of town but well worth the trip. The complex is a restored 1915 school with each of the rooms converted for alternative uses. There’s a speakeasy in the “Detention Room” and a Beer hall set up with crazy pipework art in the “Boiler Room” – well worth the trip but bring your bathing suit as I hear the soaking tub is quite nice too.
The Boiler Room
Back in the late-80s I visited Portland for the first time to see my sister who was attending Reed College at the time. Late one evening she and her friends took me to a cafe. All I remembered about it was that there was one table in the room that was rigged up with a pneumatic lift that ever-so-slowly would push the table upwards and downwards. They always left the table open for out-of-town visitors so that the unknowing visitor would at some point realize that what was once a normal table was now up around their chin, would let out a yelp and the rest of the room would giggle and welcome them to Portland. Vincent promptly googled and found the Rimsky-Korsakoffee House, right around the corner from the conference!
Other spots visited:
Blessed Fish of Great BountyCommunity ArtRecumbant GangBobbie’s Boat SauceTypographyPublic SupporetMike Bennett artPush x PullWhat unites us all
If you’ve read this far, thank you for indulging me. XOXO 2019 was a rich experience that I will reflect upon many months afterwards. Thank you Andy x Andy for making all the arrangements – I’m spiritually recharged with a renewed sense of optimism for the potential of a connected humanity.
Greetings from Portland! I’m a bit late this week as I’m at a conference for online artists that doesn’t have public wifi. The talks are all so amazing so I’m kinda glad about that anyway.
