On Monday, the UceLi Quartet performed at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu. The opera house was filled to capacity... with 3,000 plants. They played Giacomo Puccini's "Crisantemi." From National Public Radio:"After a strange, painful period, the creator, the Liceu's artistic director and the curator Blanca de la Torre offer us a different perspective for our return to activity, a perspective that brings us closer to something as essential as our relationship with nature," according to a release on the Liceu's website.The plants came from local nurseries and will be donated along with a certificate from the artist to 2,292 health care professionals, specifically at the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the US Representative for New York's fourteenth district, faced a well-funded "centrist" challenger in this year's Democratic primary. Though Michelle Caruso-Cabrera couldn't match Ocasio-Cortez's fundraising, she was backed by Wall Street players and some of New York's richest, who thought she had a genuine chance of overcoming the left-leaning congresswoman. On the day, though, AOC trounced Caruso-Cabrera at the polls, leading 73%-19% with all precincts reporting in. It was called within minutes.Wall Street CEOs, from Goldman Sachs to Blackstone, poured in millions to defeat our grassroots campaign tonight.But their money couldn’t buy a movement.Thank you #NY14, and every person who pitched in for tonight’s victory.Here’s to speaking truth to power. pic.twitter.com/g9aRV3Cu1B— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 24, 2020Elsewhere, establishment Democrats are struggling to fend off challenges from the left: Rep. Elliot Engel has likely lost to Jamaal Bowman, with the count close enough to come down to mail-in ballots yet to be tallied. So New York didn’t only choose Jamaal Bowman over Eliot Engel tonight.It also elected Ritchie Torres, who will go on to be the first openly gay Afro-Latinx man in Congress.AND Mondaire Jones, the first openly gay Black man in Congress.History is being made.— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) June 24, 2020But Amy McGrath has likely fended off Charles Booker's insurgent run in Kentucky's race to challenge Mitch McConnell in November. A clear result will be days in coming.Republican voters are bucking the party line, too, with two Trump-hated candidates prevailing in the GOP primaries in Kentucky and North Carolina. Read the rest

Tourist Steve Challice, from Southampton in England, thought he was merely taking a photo of a "big fish" in Loch Ness while on holiday in Scotland. That's not how Loch Ness works, buddy. As reported by The Daily Record, he posted his shot online only to prove, to the satisfaction of many, that Nessie is alive and well.He estimated that it was 30 feet away and about 8 feet long.He stated that it was only during lockdown that he has had time to look through the photos he had taken from his two week trip, stating that he had "hundreds" to go through as he's a keen photographer.After sharing the image of what appears to be a large creature emerging from the water online and people commenting that it might be the monster, Steven himself stated that he believes it to be something more mundane like a big fish or a seal, he said: "Personally I know there has been some interest and some people are saying it's the monster but I don't believe that." Read the rest

RSS Box generates the "missing" feeds for Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, Instagram users, and various other sites that fail to offer RSS.This website lets you subscribe to RSS feeds for websites that do not support RSS themselves, by using the respective website's API and then translating that data to RSS feeds.If you get a page saying "Application error", simply try again. This website resolves shortlink URLs to give the reader a better experience, and embeds linked content directly into the RSS feed. You will get this error if this takes longer than the web server allows.Some websites, like YouTube, support RSS feeds but they are quite hard to find, so this website will provide the URL.You can get that pin from Diesel Sweeties. Read the rest

This is not something iguana see when I'm at a pizza restaurant.An 80-pound iguana was found in a chest freezer at Pizza Mambo on Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach by inspectors from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation on June 18, reports the Florida Sun-Sentinel.Yes, some people eat iguanas, and they are considered an invasive species in South Florida. The restaurant was temporarily closed because of the lizard findings, and some 27 other health code violations that include more than 20 “rodent droppings” under a dry storage shelf, and dead roaches throughout the restaurant. Said a Pizza Mambo employee, the deceased iguana was a personal gift to the owner “to eat later.” The pizza shop employee said the iguana, which was stored in a separate mini-freezer away from the food that was cooked in the restaurant, was promptly thrown away when officials informed the owner that it was a violation.More at the Florida Sun-Sentinel.[via CBS 12] Read the rest

If you've ever tried to get an online recipe, you'll understand why this video by MasterChiefin1 is funny ('cause it's true)!Don't you hate when you look up a recipe for something basic and the author feels like they need to tell a 10 page story about how that recipe changed their life? I sure do. I'm not sure why cooking websites allow this.Thanks, Terry! Read the rest

“She always waits on the stairs for belly rubs.”

This thing looks so clunky and brutal and fantastic.It's called The WREKTANGLE, and Michael Cthulhu is the swordsmith behind it. He's got a Patreon, and a a YouTube channel.My latest Big Dumb Sword. From Mr. Cthulhu:So in this video I make a huge brutal thing cause I was sick of the more delicate artis-anal stuff. I've often joked that Cloud's Buster Sword is basically a giant rectangle, so I've wanted to make one that was literally a giant rectangle for ages. A traditional sword handle set up on a giant sword is impossible to stab with, so I put a battering ram style thing on this thing, despite the fact that it doesn't have a tip. I basically made a sharp battering ram/ REAL HEAVY shield. Here's a related video on how to properly set up one of those forge things. [via] Read the rest

From Boston.com:Amid mounting criticism, Gov. Charlie Baker Tuesday defended a proposal — tucked inside a larger bill to create a state certification system for law enforcement officers — to provide up to $5,000 bonuses for police to take on additional training.“It’s for people who go above and beyond with respect to what they’re required to do under our proposal,” Baker said during a press conference. “And I don’t expect many to do it, but I think it’s important. If you want people to up their game, if you want people to perform at a higher level, if you want people to do a better job in serving the communities they represent and to be leaders with respect to the way they do that, it’s not unusual to create a modest incentive for them to do that.”Local activists are, understandably, outraged at this proposal, which is, uhh, quite literally the opposite of the "Defund the Police" cry that many of them have been championing.Existing anti-bias training programs for police are not particularly known for being effective, although it is certainly a profitable venture — and not just for the officers who take the governor up on that $5000 incentive. I'm also not sure why Baker thinks anyone wouldn't take him up on the offer for an easy $5K. A few weeks ago, I shared a blog post from a self-proclaimed former bastard cop, who had this to say (among other things):Let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:Increased “bias” training. Read the rest

Traintrackr is a powered circuit board showing a map of the London Underground, lighting up in real time to show train positions on 333 stations on all 12 main lines. It connects to the tube's API for live location data every second. The board is 400mm x 300mm and sells for £249. (There's also the Boston Metro) Read the rest

So, you know how the governments and citizens of some countries are doing everything they can to flatten the COVID-19 curve, while others have been flipping birds for the sake of their economies, eating in chain restaurants, and getting haircuts? The European Union has been taking notes.From The New York Times:European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times.That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.Yeah.Of course, forbidding non-essential travel, with the exception of repatriation flights, has been a thing with many countries around the world since this whole viral mess got started, earlier this year. So, picking and choosing which foreign nationals will be allowed to enter the EU and which ones will be kept at arm's length, is pretty much business as usual. Currently, the member nations that make up the European Union are still busy bickering over who will be allowed to enter their borders, once they open up non-essential travel to outsiders again. To their credit, according to the New York Times, the EU has kept the criteria for which countries will be allowed passage into their lands " ...as Read the rest

Remember the guy who shared tips on how artists could apply for COVID financial benefits? Well, that's my pal Shalaco and he's back with another great video. In this one, he shares what good has happened since life threw a monkey wrench into his plans a few years ago. This one is really inspiring!His words:with 40 million people getting laid off in the last 10 weeks, I thought it might be uplifting for folks to hear the story of how my world fell apart only to leave space for me to make my dreams come true. It's the two year anniversary of my youtube channel, and it all started with a series of unfortunate events that took me places I never could have imagined. Read the rest

A group of Senate Republicans want to force technology companies to comply with “lawful access” to encrypted information, which basically means they're targeting end-to-end encryption again, and specifically taking aim at the type of security offered by the popular messaging service WhatsApp. On Tuesday, Republican lawmakers introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act. The bill would end so-called “warrant-proof” encryption, as they like to call it, or “protecting your data and communications from hackers and other threats,” as we like to call it.Read the bill here.From reporting by Alfred Ng at CNET:The bill was proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, along with Sens. Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn. If passed, the act would require tech companies to help investigators access encrypted data if that assistance would help carry out a warrant. Lawmakers and the US Justice Department have long battled with tech companies over encryption, which can be used to encode data. The Justice Department argues that encryption prevents investigators from getting necessary evidence from suspects' devices, and has requested that tech giants provide "lawful access." That could come in many ways, such as providing a key to unlock encryption that's only available for police requests. The FBI made a similar request to Apple in 2016 when it wanted to get data from a dead terrorist's iPhone in a San Bernardino, California, shooting case. Giving access specifically to government agencies when requested is often referred to as an "encryption backdoor," something tech experts and privacy advocates have long argued endangers more people than it helps. Read the rest

This cute Australian Shepherd pup's name is Zero.Zero loves skritches.My puppy Zerovia IMGUR and IMGURian @buckyZ. Read the rest

Henry Winkler, best known for his portrayal of 'The Fonz' on TV's Happy Days, is still super cool.One hand pic.twitter.com/nrCOW27Yuk— Henry Winkler (@hwinkler4real) June 22, 2020 Read the rest

Brandon Harrison, an officer with the St. Joseph Police Department in Missouri, was assigned to administrative duties Monday after being filmed threatening a motorist. The video sailed to millions of views over the weekend, forcing officials to launch an investigation.Meet off duty police officer Brandon Harrison of St. Joseph, Missouri.He was in a car accident with the other man you see in this video. And this is how he responded.And yes he is wearing a Trump hat. pic.twitter.com/IzGu2sOks7— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) June 22, 2020Two two drivers had apparently collided in their vehicles. Harrison was off-duty at the time, but made clear his position while yelling expletives at the man—“I am on vacation and I will fuck you up.... See who they fucking believe, bitch." A uniformed officer on the scene ordered the man to obey Harrison's demand to sit down and "do what he says", then allows Harrison to participate in a search of the man's vehicle. Local media report that she has not been disciplined and the department has refused to release her name. Read the rest

According to bigtime beekeeper Leo Sharashkin, a great benefit of using horizontal hives (as opposed to vertically-oriented boxes) is that "you can sleep in them." Sharashkin built his own bee bed and has shared free plans on his site. "I call it Bed-and-Bees or B&B and it is a long horizontal hive where you are separated from the bees by thin planks and can bathe in their warmth and vibration and smells without any danger of being stung," he writes. "It will change your life forever once you experience how relaxing and soothing and healing it is. It surely changed ours!"Bed & Bees: Sleep with the Bees (HorizontalHive.com via Weird Universe) Read the rest

In 1960, Frank Drake, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, launched Project Ozma, the first scientific effort to listen for radio communications from extraterrestrials. Frank, now 90, is still serious about SETI, writing research papers and advising scientists who are listening to the stars for signs of intelligent life. (I came to know Frank and his lovely and inspiring family while I was working on the vinyl reissue of the Voyager Golden Record; Frank was the technical director of the original Voyager Record in 1977!) In celebration of Father's Day, talented science journalist Nadia Drake (aka Frank's daughter), wrote in National Geographic about the history of her dad's Project Ozma and the current state of SETI. From National Geographic:[Drake] designed an experiment to search for signals coming from worlds that could be orbiting the nearby stars Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti. He named the experiment Project Ozma, after the princess in L. Frank Baum’s Oz series—an homage to an adventure tale populated by exotic and unearthly beings.Before sunrise on April 8, 1960, Drake climbed an 85-foot radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, jammed himself inside a trash-can-size piece of equipment, and launched humanity’s first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence—now known as SETI. For three months the telescope scanned its targets and found nothing more than cosmic static. The stars were stubbornly quiet.“That was a disappointment,” Dad told me a few years ago. “We’d hoped that, in fact, there were radio-transmitting civilizations around almost every star.” Read the rest

Enjoy this surprisingly relaxing and accurate performance of game console startup chimes by Bored Piano. Below, all the MS Windows startup chimes and nightmare beats. Read the rest

In this scene cut from the original theatrical release of Saturday Night Fever (1977), watch John Travolta do the Robot to the song "Disco Duck." Our family went to this movie when it was first in theaters but the moment the stripper appeared, my father whisked us right out. (I was 7.) Later, it was re-released as a PG version and not only did we get to see the whole incredible movie but afterward my dad took me to Record Theater to buy the soundtrack on LP. I still have it. The second scene in the above video is the full "Night Fever" sequence that was edited down in the original cut. (via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Some good news: Sorry to Bother You creator Boots Riley teased a new TV series, an "episodic joy ride" titled I'm a Virgo:"I have a show about a 13-ft tall Black man who lives in Oakland. It’s called I’m A Virgo. Jharrel Jerome is playing the lead. I’m doing this w Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res. We haven’t decided on the network/streamer.It’ll be dark, absurd, hilarious, and important."Check out the art (by Colin Laurel)!I have a show about a 13-ft tall Black man who lives in Oakland. It’s called I’m A Virgo.Jharrel Jerome is playing the lead.I’m doing this w Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res. We haven’t decided on the network/streamer.It’ll be dark, absurd, hilarious, and important. pic.twitter.com/pzOGDxMaaO— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) June 22, 2020photo by Redfishingboat (Mick O)//CC Read the rest

Apple took on the challenge of Isaac Asimov's magnificently boring masterpiece Foundation, which has managed to evade screen adaptation for fifty years. Here's the trailer. I'm looking forward to episode after episode of Jared Harris explaining things to stupid people, a role at which he is, it has to be admitted, magnificently good. Posing Seldon as a sci-fi Legasov strikes me as the masterstroke that makes the whole production possible. Read the rest

Researchers at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology in Basel, Switzerland have attempted to isolate the Neanderthal DNA from certain human stem cells. A leader on the project, Grayson Camp, had already performed a similar experiment using chimpanzee stem cells, to get a better understanding of the differences between chimp and human brains.Their research, titled "Human Stem Cell Resources Are an Inroad to Neandertal DNA Functions," was published on June 18, 2020, and began with analyzing genome data to identify the stem cells most likely to still carry Neanderthal DNA (which, as I've just now learned, mostly persists among Northern Europeans). From there, according to CNN:The team then grew brain organoids — 3D blobs of brain tissue just a few millimeters wide and only just visible to the naked eye — from these cells by nurturing them in a petri dish with a growth factor.Organoids, which can mimic in a rudimentary way many human organs, can be used to test the specific effects of drugs safely outside the body, something that has revolutionized and personalized areas such as cancer treatment."Researchers have of course generated and analyzed organoids from human cells before, just no one had ever bothered to look at what the Neanderthal DNA might be doing," Camp said.Camp made certain to clarify that these were not fully functional Neanderthal brains — they were still, technically, human cells, just ones that contained Neanderthal DNA. Which is definitely different from Jurassic Park, he insists, although I'm pretty sure that pseudoscience also relied on isolating the leftover DNA that remained in the modern descendents of certain extinct lifeforms. Read the rest

A chart of newly-confirmed cases of Covid paints a grim picture of a suddenly-resurgent pandemic in the United States. Published by the Financial Times and based on data from the Covid Tracking Project and other sources, the chart suggests that Brazil and India are similarly unable to contain the disease while Europe has limited its spread; the U.K. formally ended many lockdown measures today.The U.S. surge is reportedly centered in red states, where conservatives have been successful in lifting lockdown measures early and have sought to politicize wearing masks and social distancing. The new cases also skew younger, making them less likely to be serious. Read the rest

Last summer, I worked with IBM and the Weather Channel on some climate- and energy-related content for their Forecast Change campaign. I just learned that the project apparently won a Digiday Content Marketing Award for the best branded content site of the year, which is pretty cool (or at least, my mom might think so).But I wanted to share one of the pieces I wrote, because the concept was new to me before working on it, and it's now stuck with me ever since; I even found a way to work in as a plot point for playwriting commission I did on climate change. It has to do with floatovoltaic energy — essentially, floating solar panels on (or submerging them in!) bodies of water, to make them more efficient and save water. As I wrote then for Weather.com:“It’s like putting a plastic sheet over the whole lake, or the whole tailings pond,” explains Joshua Pearce, a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Michigan Tech. Pearce has worked extensively in the emerging field of floatovoltaic technology (FVT), or the overlap of solar energy systems and water use. He says that the presence of solar panels over a body of water can provide enough shade to consistently reduce evaporation by 70-80%.[…]A solar module can easily increase its energy output by five percent just by floating on top of a body of water, even if the panels themselves don’t actually touch the surface. The panels at Las Tórtolas are positioned several inches above the water itself resting on floating pontoons, but even that close proximity still results in an additional 3,000 kWh of electricity annually; a fully submerged solar panel can be even more efficient. Read the rest

The border between Canada and the United States has been closed to everything but essential travel, for some time now. This means that Canadians and Americans can't enter each other's nations in the name of entertainment, tourism or recreation: doing what everyone can to stem the spread of COVID-19 is the right way to go if any of us want to get out of this plague alive. On the Canadian side of things, our border service lets Americans into the country, provided they're traveling for an essential purpose (bringing produce into the country, for example), have no COVID-19 symptoms, and, if they are required to stay in Canada as part of their visit, have a plan to quarantine themselves for 14 days before carrying on their merry way.Recently, I learned that Americans are also allowed to travel on through to their home or business in Alaska, so long as they take the most direct route to the state and, in an effort to keep COVID-19 from spreading, stay the hell away from everyone else at rest stops and eateries. The majority of those headed north to Alaska have been honoring these conditions. Apparently, there are a few that are not. This past week, a few dickheads who didn't feel that the laws designed to keep us all safe apply to them, got caught.From The CBC:Alberta RCMP issued seven tickets to Americans who stopped in Banff National Park to see the sights last week despite rules observed by the Canada Border Services Agency...at Read the rest

Following up on their advice on how to safely topple a statue using science, Popular Mechanics has another great new article on dealing with LRAD (long-range acoustic device) cannons. A popular choice among riot cops and other militarized police units, LRAD units are capable of violently brutalizing protestors with the excessive force of sound waves — which is better than bullets, I guess, but can still be pretty god damn painful. Audio producer Cory Choy described the experience for Popular Mechanics: Horrible, nauseating pain hit my body. And then I realized it was sound. At first you just think, ‘What’s happening to me?’ Your body goes into complete pain and panic mode. It’s the sound equivalent of looking into the sun.Writer Lynn Peskoe-Yang uses this experience as a jumping-off point for a history of LRADs, tracing their use through the Standing Rock protests as well as the 2017 Women's March, before finally offering some advice on how to handle the onslaught of a sonic boom:The principle behind using an LRAD as crowd control, rather than for long-distance communication, is similar to the idea behind a whistle or a siren: they all emit tones in the most sensitive range of frequencies for most humans. At a distance, an LRAD deterrent tone may sound like any other alarm.But while whistles emit sound waves in all directions, LRADs concentrate the waves in a narrow cone of sound, extending about 15 degrees in every direction from the axis, like a flashlight. Read the rest

A performance in Portland, August 26, 2017. Read the rest

Outdoor apparel brand Patagonia said it is joining the #StopHateForProfit boycott against Facebook (and Instagram, owned by Facebook) because Facebook continues to promote "hateful lies and dangerous propaganda." Last week three other major brands, The North Face, REI, and Upwork, joined the boycott and suspended all advertising on Facebook.On Sunday, Patagonia tweeted, "Patagonia is proud to join the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. We will pull all ads on Facebook and Instagram, effective immediately, through at least the end of July, pending meaningful action from the social media giant."From CNN:The coalition launched the #StopHateforProfit campaign last week with a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times.The group said that Facebook has allowed incitement against protesters fighting for racial injustice in America, refused to adequately protect users from online threats, failed to recognize and remove Holocaust denial as a form of hate, and allowed its platform to be used in voter suppression efforts that targeted Black voters."We have long seen how Facebook has allowed some of the worst elements of society into our homes and our lives," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. "When this hate spreads online it causes tremendous harm and also becomes permissible offline."He said the organizations had tried to "push Facebook to make their platforms safer," but said the company "repeatedly failed to take meaningful action.""We hope this campaign finally shows Facebook how much their users and their advertisers want them to make serious changes for the better," Greenblatt wrote. Read the rest

Somewhere between discovering The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Hellblazer, I fell deeply into love with early-to-mid 20th-century detective fiction. It was a world of smart men who mean well, knife-sharp banter, romance, the end of ropes and of, so much violence. I loved Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson, and Patricia Highsmith. But the writer that kept me up late at night, without fail, has always been Raymond Chandler.Chandler had a knack for getting his hooks into his readers, from the get-go of page one. Through hard work, talent and, no small amount of booze, he managed to find the perfect balance of descriptive prose, heartache, and humor. I’m certainly not the only reader out there to feel this way about Chandler’s work. A while back, I happened upon an outstanding, ordered list of Chandler’s best opening hooks, compiled by Dwyer Murphy, over at Crime Reads. My all-time favorite? This chunk of Chandler’s Red Wind (which originally appeared in the Saturday Evening Post before being collected into a book of short stories with the same name).From Red Wind:There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge. Read the rest

Every year, adventurous (and oft-unprepared) hikers who are fans of Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild" (1996) or the move based upon it have attempted the treacherous 20 mile trek on Alaska's Stampede Trail to the abandoned bus where Chris McCandless found refuge (until his death) in 1992. And frequently, hikers making the pilgrimage have had to be rescued. Two people have died during their trips to see the bus. From the New York Times:The tourist trap is now gone though. Last week, the Alaska Army National Guard used a Chinook helicopter to airlift the bus out of its remote resting spot to an undisclosed location. State officials say they are considering putting it on public display.The crew also removed a suitcase from the bus that held sentimental value to the McCandless family, according to the Alaska Army National Guard.Carine McCandless, Mr. McCandless’s youngest sister, said the suitcase did not belong to her brother, but may have contained journals she and others had left behind on their own journeys to the bus.[...]“Though I am saddened by the news, the decision made by Alaska D.N.R. was with good intentions toward public safety, and it was certainly their decision to make,” Ms. McCandless wrote in an email. “Bus 142 did not belong to Chris, and it doesn’t belong to his family. As for those that followed in his footsteps to where it rested, at the end of the day, their journey wasn’t about a bus.”More from US Army: "Alaska Guard airlifts 'Into the Wild' bus from Stampede Trail"image: Alaska National Guard Read the rest

Colin Kaepernick is joining Medium's board of directors. He'll also develop editorial content for Medium's Level magazine for black and brown men and their new anti-racism blog Momentum. According to Medium founder/CEO Ev Williams, the company has been in talks with Kaepernick for several months. From Ev's statement at Medium:I met Colin a couple years ago and have been wanting to work with him ever since. When he launched Kaepernick Publishing in February, we started a conversation and quickly realized how closely our ideals and sensibilities align. I know he will bring valuable insights and leadership to Medium, especially in this moment when the world is finally catching up to his vision on racial justice.Kaepernick Publishing’s mission is to uplift and elevate voices for Black and Brown communities, something that has been desperately needed in the publishing space. Through this partnership, Colin will be publishing across Medium’s platform, including a collaboration with Medium’s editorial team leading Level and Momentum. He will be sharing his thoughts on anti-Black racism in our society, and Medium and Kaepernick Publishing will co-publish thought-provoking feature stories from diverse writers of color.Disclosure: I hold shares in Medium from working there years ago.image: Erik Drost (CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

If the price is right, you’ll consider any deal. But when the price is free...well, that’s right in your price range, isn’t it?That’s what we thought. So here are 10 of the best offers or giveaways going on right now. You can jump in on all of these, pick up some really cool stuff, possibly win even more cool stuff — and it'll cost you no more than a couple of minutes of your time to click send.The Learn to Code for Free Course (Originally $199)You’ve never coded before. Your assignment: build Cookie Monster a website that’ll land him a job. Over this 7-day course guided by instructor Chris Castiglione, you’ll learn exactly the basics of HTML and CSS to do exactly that through fun videos, step-by-step tutorials and more.1-Month Trial to Shutterstock (Originally $29)Getting images you can use on your website or digital projects without getting sued can be difficult and expensive. But with this free one-month trial with Shutterstock, you can download royalty-free, high definition images, video clips, music tracks, and more from their stockpile of over 1 billion assets.The Mobile and Web Developer Training Course Bundle (Originally $693)Seven courses, 136 hours of content, all geared toward making you into a well-rounded full-stack web developer with training in HTML, CSS and Java. You’ll get hands-on experience using app-building tools like Firebase, Swift, Kotlin and more as you tackle Apple and Android projects like creating your own music streaming app and a fully functional weather widget app. Read the rest

You’ve spent a lot of time staring at your own four walls the past few months. And one of your conclusions is probably that your walls are looking a little...drab. Familiarity breeds contempt -- and all this familiarity is likely breeding a desire to shake things up a bit with your home decor.Rather than framing a movie poster or getting one of those torchiere floor lamps from Target that everyone has, you’ve got options for changing up the look of any room in your home in a uber-functional, artistic, ultra-cool way. Helios Touch Modular Wall Lighting covers all those bases with a singular style.Individually, each Helios Touch unit is a hexagonal magnetic tile about 4.5 inches across with a touch-sensitive LED light inside. One on its own may not look like much, but when gathered together on any wall in your home, they can be marshaled to create any number of fun patterns that can be activated with just a swipe.One part wall art, one part room lighting, these Helios Touch tiles can be configured in a host of different ways to suit either your aesthetics, your lighting needs, or both. Each unit puts out a cool white light that can be adjusted to your preferred levels. And when collected, you can swipe on as many or as few as you like, generating both the right light level for your room as well as leaving different fun light pattern configurations on your wall.Each module locks to each other via magnetic edges and can be wall-mounted using the provided sticky pads or hung cleanly on nails to create a sleek, polished look that will definitely draw attention. Read the rest

If you and your business aren’t keeping up with the times, your customers know it. Google found digitally advanced small businesses made twice the revenue per employee as their counterparts and saw four times the revenue growth.Of course, it’s usually not that most small businesses don’t want to reach out digitally. Most just don’t have the resources, the training or the time to make a full-court digital press while trying to keep their operations going.However, that’s no excuse for not having a stable web presence. Sourcery helps split the difference, offering you a cool website with innovative features that doesn’t require nearly as much work as even the simple drag-and-drop website builders.With other builders, you need the skill of a graphic artist to pick and modify your site template, a developer to block out site organization, an SEO guru to find and implement keywords and other optimization strategies; and a writer, photographer and videographer to create content.And that doesn’t even consider who’s going to be continuing to feed new content to your site.Sourcery takes all those worries off the table. Once you’ve started your Sourcery account, you put in your company name, answer a few short questions, and link your social media profiles. From there, your role is essentially done.Within seconds, Sourcery has you set. They devise a modern, dynamic site, with an industry-appropriate look and feel, fully optimized for your audience. Their decade-plus of analyzing user behavior and web analytics give them all the tools to see what a visitor wants from your site, get a better understanding of each customer, then serve them with the content they want on their next visit. Read the rest

Adrian Brandon is a Seattle-raised and Brooklyn-based visual artist, whose "Stolen" collection was originally displayed at his first public solo show in November 2019 at 263 Bowery in New York. It's stunning visual art project both in its concept, and its execution. I'll allow the artist to explain:This series is dedicated to the many black people that were robbed of their lives at the hands of the police. In addition to using markers and pencil, I use time as a medium to define how long each portrait is colored in. 1 year of life = 1 minute of color. Tamir Rice was 12 when he was murdered, so I colored his portrait for 12 minutes. As a person of color, I know that my future can be stolen from me if I’m driving with a broken taillight, or playing my music too loud, or reaching for my phone at the wrong time. So for each of these portraits I played with the harsh relationship between time and death. I want the viewer to see how much empty space is left in these lives, stories that will never be told, space that can never be filled. This emptiness represents holes in their families and our community, who will be forever stuck with the question, “who were they becoming?” This series touches on grief and the unknown.Brandon's pen-and-ink work is phenomenal. But when you see how much — or how little — color art is added to the lives of these people of color, it really drives the point home. Read the rest

My pals Brittany High and Rob Schulte invited me to be a guest on their podcast, The TV Show Show. The premise is simple — scrutinize your way through a classic TV episode. My pick, because the first few seasons were such an influence on me, was the very first episode of MTV's The Real World (1992). Listen to us pick it apart minute by minute. Things start getting real, ahem.When did you start saying “butt?” The Zine Queen Rusty Blazenhoff of Boing Boing and Rusty’s Electric Dreams joins us to talk about the very first episode of The Real World — and surprisingly things stayed pretty polite! Rusty lets us in on an MTV website secret and we all admire the show's first and possibly only bubble bath confessional.If you want to watch the episode, head to MTV. Read the rest

There's no way to explain this any better the creator, Franzoli Electronics, explains it in the description:The main loud music really comes from the tesla coil sparks. They are literally playing the music due to the programmed phase, pulse width and firing frequency! So, there are no speakers, no audio / video special effects. It looks even better in person and sounds almost the same, just without the beat / percussion backing track. Read the rest

On this Juneteenth, I thought I'd share two things I've just learned:1. It's not ok to use the word "slave." It's dehumanizing. We should use "enslaved" instead. Watch the video with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Oprah to understand why better.2. It's time we start using a capital B for Black:...Temple University journalism professor Lori L. Tharps had this to say: “When speaking of a culture, ethnicity or group of people, the name should be capitalized. Black with a capital B refers to people of the African diaspora. Lowercase black is simply a color.”Tharps’s argument highlights the fact that Black people have a common cultural identity of history, art, community, and shared experiences. Most Black Americans lack a specific geographic identity, as they are unable to conclusively trace roots back to a specific country of origin due to enslavement. That lack of shared geography is actually part of what binds Black people together. And while “African American” is a fine terminology choice, it is sometimes considered inadequately representative by Black Americans with recent Caribbean or British lineage, for example, or those who have recently emigrated to the United States from Africa.Thanks, A! Read the rest

Delivery drones could someday hitch rides on public buses to dramatically extend their range in cities. Stanford’s Intelligent Systems Laboratory and Autonomous Systems Lab modeled such a system to see if it even makes sense. According to their research paper, it does. In theory, anyway. Evan Ackerman writes in IEEE Spectrum:The first thing to understand about this paper is that it’s not trying to solve any of the practical problems surrounding the real-world deployment of a delivery network involving drones and buses, like how you’d get a drone to land on a moving bus, for instance. What the paper is about is how you’d get a potential network of drones and vehicles to operate efficiently, and how big of a difference that might be able to make in a package delivery context. In a metropolitan area like San Francisco, the idea is that you’d have a bunch of package depots scattered around the city. You’d also have a bunch of drones, and every day, you’d need to figure out how to get all of those packages where they need to go in the minimum amount of time, using the existing bus routes and schedule to boost their range when necessary. And when I say “you,” that’s where this research comes in, because it’s solving a big optimization problem that involves which drones make which deliveries in what order, when they should use buses, and for how long. It gets more complicated too, because there are conflicts that have to be resolved when buses can only carry a few drones at a time and you don’t want the drones occupying the same space on the network at the same time. Read the rest

If you’re looking to launch a new career, you’ll often see us present education course packages that will help you become a web developer or a project manager or a graphic designer. While they’re all very respectable career options, those professions don’t present the same hands-on satisfaction or visceral sense of accomplishment that comes from actually repairing a human body.While doctors often receive a lion’s share of the praise for putting ailing men and women on the mend, there are handfuls of healthcare professionals who play that role as well, including physical therapists, fitness experts, and kinesiologists. It all starts with truly understanding the human body and how it works, which is at the heart of training like the Anatomy and Physiology for Beginners Course Bundle.Whether you want a career in healthcare or just want to know why your body moves, acts and feels the way it does, these seven courses offer a smooth overview of various bodily systems and how they work together to make you, you.Introduction to the Cardiovascular System goes right to the heart, explaining how that key organ pumps blood throughout your body as you get to know major structures and basic functions of the body’s transportation system. Meanwhile, Introduction to the Skeletal System provides a complete in-depth study of the skeletal system, the composition of your bones, and how they work with other organ systems.Not to be outdone, Introduction to the Muscular System covers all 600 individual muscles, the 3 types of muscles in your body as well as the 5 types of muscle movements; and Introduction to the Respiratory System focuses on your lungs and how they redirect oxygen into your bloodstream. Read the rest

Here's the listing in Flushing, New York. As the saying goes, bring your contractor!(Rossmann Repair Group) Read the rest

RETWEET until this man is identified!He harassed a group of black teens in a gated community in the affluent Village of Wellington, here in my county.According to him, "they didn't belong in this development."According to the teens, he threatened to hit them w/ his car. pic.twitter.com/ALynLUvS9E— Commissioner Omari Hardy (@OmariJHardy) June 18, 2020This gentleman, identified as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services analyst Lee Jeffers, behaved bizarrely toward a group of teenagers who were driving a golf cart in their Florida neighborhood. Jeffers yelled at the teens, spoke in tongues, shared his extensive knowledge of US states where adults can marry teens, threatened to have the kids arrested, and told a 15-year-old black girl, "You do not deserve to be in here.”From The Palm Beach Post:The teen’s grandfather, Tony Nelson, spoke with The Post Tuesday about the clash. Breonna and four friends -- two boys and two girls -- were riding in a golf cart and had stopped at the neighborhood’s security gate. Almost immediately, Nelson said, a man the teens didn’t know began following them closely, almost hitting them at one point.Frightened, the boys left the golf cart and ran, but the three girls continued walking to Breonna’s house, Nelson said.That led to the confrontation in the Nelson family’s driveway, with the man now identified as Jeffers yelling at the teens, threatening to call the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to have them removed from the neighborhood and then denying any threat when questioned by Nelson. Read the rest

Welcome to #Tulsa. People are already in line. Also, re-election songs. #MSNBC pic.twitter.com/P96d1HeMbD— Cal Perry (@CalNBC) June 18, 2020The name of this band should be called Down With People. Read the rest

Ian Hubert is the host of the "Lazy Tutorials - For Lazy People, By Lazy People" YouTube channel, which has 60-second videos of Hubert using Blender to create 3D models and textures of various things like air conditioners and bulletin boards. He makes it look easy (I know it's not), and he's also funny.[via Core 77] Read the rest

My LordWon't you help them to understandThat when someone takes the life of an innocent manWell, they never really won because all they've really doneIs set the soul free where it's supposed to be?You can lie to a child with a smilin' faceTell me that color ain't about raceYou can cast the first stones, you can break my bonesBut you're never gonna breakYou're never gonna break my faithImage: YouTube Read the rest

Rick Astley (yes, that Rick Astley), recorded this lovely cover of Foo Fighters' "Everlong" from his home studio in London. Well done, sir. Read the rest

The New York Times reports that Facebook took down Trump campaign advertisements that "prominently featured a symbol used by Nazis to classify political prisoners during World War II."The symbol was a red triangle, which ran alongside ad copy that said, “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem.”According to the Times, the red triangle is "a symbol that Nazis used to identify Communists and other political prisoners in concentration camps, just as they used a pink triangle to identify people they labeled as homosexual."From The New York Times:The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum also weighed in on Twitter, noting that the red triangle was “the most common category of prisoners registered at the German Nazi #Auschwitz camp.”Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers and the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said that “the origin of the symbol is universally agreed to be with the Nazis and the concentration camps.” He added that the red triangle was not part of the symbolism of antifa in the United States.The fact that the triangle has been reclaimed by some anti-fascists, Mr. Bray said, does not give the Trump campaign license to use the same symbol to attack antifa. “This is a symbol that represented the extermination of leftists,” he said. “It is a death threat against leftists. There’s no way around what that means historically.”A red triangle that marked 'political prisoners' was the most common category of prisoners registered at the German Nazi #Auschwitz camp. Read the rest

With no movies, concerts, or sporting events to get out and enjoy, the scope of your entertainment universe probably hasn’t strayed too far beyond the edge of your sofa in months. And all that time living life on your A-1 piece of furniture has likely resulted in some unfortunate drink-related accidents. In this couch-based lifestyle, drinks have to sit on a coffee table, which results in a fair share of reach-related mishaps. And don’t get us started on the disasters that happen when trying to balance a drink on the floor near the sofa. You always forget it’s there — and invariably kick it over.In this life of beverage calamities, the CouchCoaster rides into town like Clint Eastwood, intent on restoring order to your liquid lawlessness.The CouchCoaster has a flexible silicone body that wraps neatly around a sofa armrest to hold a drink. Whether it’s a mug or tumbler, bottle or can, hot drink or cold, any container up to 3.5 inches wide slips easily into the CouchCoaster’s tight grip and stays there.If your container is too small, no worries — the adjustable holder features its own adaptor to accommodate oddly shaped glass or even mugs. And the integrated weighted band has a tacky base that provides a secure fit either fabric or leather sofas. The CouchCaster pretty much eliminates the need for a coffee table or even a side table or tray. And when it’s not holding your drink of choice, it’s ready to store your remote, your phone, or pretty much anything else. Read the rest

Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 3 is an amazing tribute to Kevin Costner's epic Waterworld. Read the rest