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If you've been keeping up with the slow-burning student loan crisis -- the lifetime of debt imposed by the exploding cost of higher education -- you've probably read a thing or ten from Drew Cloud, one of the foremost experts on the subject. He's been quoted and featured in numerous articles, appearing in major news outlets such as The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNBC, always ready with insightful remarks and stunning statistics. But there's a problem with Drew. He doesn't exist.After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. "Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education," wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries.And on Monday, as The Chronicle continued to seek comment, Cloud suddenly evaporated.There's going to be a lot more of these manifestations. One more thing that was charmingly cyberpunk when it was just pop stars or twitter avatars, but not so hot when it's a moneylender undermining youngsters embarking upon adult life while prtending to be advocates for their financial wellbeing.

The context is Kanye West's long-expected but nonetheless startling MAGA turn. Nation Suddenly Concerned About Black Man's Opinion [The Onion]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Elizabeth Warren's gift that keeps on giving -- one of the most effective US government agencies, handing out real punishment to banks that break the law, fighting loan-sharks that prey on poor people, and maintaining a database of vetted consumer complaints against banks that have ripped them off. (more…)

The Handmaid's Tale, based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel of the same name, begins Season 2 tonight on Hulu. If you enjoy being scared out of your wits, this terrifying drama about authoritarian Christians who destroy the United States and who make women's lives a living hell is the show to watch. I can't wait.

A fun little tale of interspecies aid here at Youtube:We spent our Holidays at the red sea. While walking along a lonely beach we saw a stranded Octopus in the sand. We were not sure if he is already dead. So we pushed him back into the water. He needed some minutes to recover, then he swam away.Next day we went to the same beach for a walk. While Walking along the beach we saw a shadow in the water coming very quickly to us. It was our Octopus we rescued yesterday! He recognized us! He accompanied whith us a long time while we walked along the beach, all the time tried to touch our feet.We are sure that this Octopus came back to thank us for saving his life. It's amazing how intelligent animals are.I can't be sure of former point here -- it's hard to know what an octopus is thinking about, so it's tricky to say it was thanking them -- but the latter point is indisputably true: Octopuses are mad smart and curious.(Thanks to Harry Allen for finding this one!)

Carla and I enjoy the Japanese language learning video series called JapanesePod101. This episode of Life Where I'm From (produced by a Canadian who lives in Japan) has an interview with Risa, the host of JapanesePod101. She talks about how she learned English by going to England. She also has some tips for learning Japanese.

Opioid overdoses now kill more Americans every year than guns, breast cancer, or car accidents. 20 million Americans suffer from addiction to alcohol, illicit, or prescription drugs. On the second anniversary of Prince’s death from fentanyl overdose last weekend, the President of the United States demonstrated a deep ignorance of this medical epidemic, calling someone he considers an alcoholic and addict a “drunk/drugged up loser.” Days later we learn that Dr. Ronny Jackson, the physician Trump nominated to lead the country’s largest healthcare system, the Veterans Administration, is known to have a drinking problem and is nicknamed “The Candyman” because of his reputation for freely distributing controlled substances to White House staff. With 1 in 10 soldiers seen by the VA for problems with alcohol or drugs – the majority as an outgrowth of being treated for chronic pain – Jackson was a dangerously ignorant choice. Both the president’s regressive drug policy and his impulsive social media outbursts are conflicting, misinformed, and poorly executed, so his recent post about addicts being “losers” must seem pedestrian to most. In the same tweet he also managed to insult a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and engage in thinly veiled witness tampering before taking off for a round of golf while his wife attended Barbara Bush’s funeral. Numbed and spotty outcries ensued, and we moved along to the next week’s insults. It became just more white noise. Leadership and policy drive the public’s attitudes about addiction and these opinions have very real consequences in people’s lives, as it did for Prince. After his death, I wrote a Boing Boing piece about the influence these negative perspectives about addiction had on the way Prince pursued treatment options for a pain management regimen that became a dependency, and ultimately an addiction. That’s a common risk in treating chronic pain with opioids. Prince used back channels to get help. He used cover stories. People covered for him. In other words, he and everyone around him behaved as though addiction was something to be ashamed of. As a result, treatment was delayed because concealment was prioritized. The California specialist in addiction and pain management who was privately deployed to Paisley Park to begin Prince’s treatment with Suboxone arrived that morning to a dead body. Prince may not have been happy about the need for addiction treatment, but he knew it was time, and he had a close enough call on the plane to ponder the thought that his addiction could end his life. Clearly, he wanted to live. But he didn’t want anyone to know. Sadly, addiction is particularly lethal in the case of performing artists with egos and identities whose destruction could mean the end of their careers. Hide it, hide it, hide it. Hide it from you. Hide it from us. From my perspective, lumping Prince into the bin of rock stars done in by overdose, dismissing the tragedy as another example of excess and bad choices, is not only inaccurate, it perpetuates dangerous attitudes and ignorance about chronic pain and addiction. Every medical treatment has inherent risks. So why the shame?The shame has long been broadcast from the top down. Since the Nixon era, the trend of drug policy drifted away from rehabilitative treatment towards criminalization and punishment. The result? The prison population jumped by 1000% in the last 40 years, giving rise to the for-profit private prison industry. Those imprisoned for alcohol and drug-related offenses became a reliable and steady supply of bodies for their bottom line. https://www.youtube.com/embed/dI0walQqLsAObama finally set guidelines curtailing the use of for-profit prisons, which have no financial incentive for treating prisoners incarcerated for drug use offenses, but now Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing those guidelines and indulging his personal fetish for rebooting the war on drugs and criminalizing addiction. In general, the current administration appears to be clueless about the epidemic. This was immediately evident after the election when Trump praised Philippine President Duterte's drug policy, which primarily involves murdering addicts and dealers on the street, saying he was “doing a good job.” He even invited Duterte to the White House. There was little uproar. In the social media hellscape at the time, anyone taking offense to negative attitudes towards addicts would probably get them called a “snowflake.” But it’s not political correctness that’s upsetting. When the new president-elect is lauding the murder of people with a specific medical condition as good drug policy, it’s broadcasting dangerous myths about addiction from the very top down in a terrifying way. For most Americans, especially those who continue to insist that addiction is a choice and not a medical condition, there was a big piece of news that came out a week after the 2016 election proving otherwise. But it got buried and didn’t capture much attention from the American public, perhaps because our media diet had been so dominated and infested with pussy grabbing, email servers, anchor babies, and the minutiae of every pendulum swing from the alt-right to the alt-left. Post election, it just got louder and increasingly exhausting. On November 16, 2016, the Surgeon General released the results of an exhaustive and comprehensive study, in a report called “Facing Addiction in America: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health.” Though it contained hundreds of newsworthy findings and data, one stood out: addiction was reclassified as a chronic brain disorder. It was not a choice, a character flaw, or weakness. It wasn’t caused by bad parents or drug dealers or laziness or video games or stupidity. The substance being abused didn’t cause the disorder, it revealed it. Addiction was caused by atypical reward system wiring in some people’s brains. "For far too long, too many in our country have viewed addiction as a moral failing,” Murthy said in the report. “It is a chronic illness that we must approach with the same skill and compassion with which we approach heart disease, diabetes and cancer.” –-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy The unsexy “Alcoholism and Addiction reclassified as chronic brain disorder” headline probably got skipped over in everyone’s juicy news feeds at the time. Facebook was still busy spoon-feeding everyone Russian propaganda, and it wasn’t trending on Twitter the way #MAGA, #NeverTrump, #LockHerUp, and all the misspelled #BasketofDeplorables hashtags did. In a nation where there are now more people with substance abuse disorders than people with cancer, it was terrible timing for such revolutionary and significant news that impacted so many lives: addiction is a brain disorder. Here is a short list of some common brain disorders. Which ones do you think it is reasonable to be ashamed of or killed for?Alzheimer’s DiseaseEpilepsyMultiple SclerosisAddictionParkinson’sWe used to think mental illness was caused by demonic possession, pneumonia was caused by “night air,” that your stomach would explode if you ate Pop Rocks and drank soda at the same time, that you can get warts from holding a frog or toad, and that dipping people’s hands In warm water while they sleep will make them wet the bed. Add addiction to the list of things we didn’t get right until the realities of science were fully applied. Some people will never be convinced. They believe it’s another excuse for someone’s bad choices and need for their help. But whether we realize it or not, the public has skin in the game and needs to wise up. Ignorance about addiction is not only dangerous to those who might suffer from it, it’s costly to every American. According to the National Institutes of Health, addiction, whether it’s alcohol, illicit drugs, or prescription opioids, costs the public $520.5 billion dollars a year in costs related to crime, lost work productivity and health care. The problem is more than hurt feelings of “drunks and drugged up losers.” It’s $520.5 BILLION DOLLARS. •That’s the amount of our current federal deficit. •That’s the entire budget of the U.S. Department of Education nine times over. •That’s the cost of 25 F-16 Fighter Jets. •That’s the entire valuation of Facebook, depending on the news day. It’s a lot of damn money that could change American life in a huge way if it weren’t being spent on the consequences of millions living with an untreated brain disorder. Instead, common wisdom about addiction is that “you people just need to behave.” It’s like telling a nearsighted person they don’t need glasses, they just need to look a little harder. The myths persist despite the evidence. From the LA Times:The 426-page report, titled "Facing Addiction in America," was modeled on the 1964 surgeon general's report on smoking and health, which first linked cigarettes to cancer and led to a successful national campaign against tobacco use.Murthy described the report as "a new call to action." It lays out recommendations for elected officials, the medical community, law enforcement and the public to improve the way addiction is treated.More than 20 million Americans suffer from substance abuse disorders, far more than are diagnosed with cancer, but only about 10% receive treatment, according to the report. Murthy said that stigma surrounding addiction dissuades people from getting help and the report repeatedly referred to addiction as "a chronic brain disease.When Trump fired the Surgeon General a few months later, the Surgeon General’s “call to action” was essentially killed along with the hope that the American public would finally understand that addiction was not a choice but a disorder present even when the substance of abuse was not being used. Instead, it’s a largely unknown revelation. An eye disorder affects your vision. A skin disorder affects your complexion. But a brain disorder affects your personality – your thoughts, mood, behavior, and feelings, so it’s far more complicated to detect and treat. Also, let’s face it, we judge people and hold them responsible for their choices. I don’t want to over-simplify a 426-page report, but basically, when an addiction-disordered brain finds a substance – or activity – that gives them relief from their symptoms, they are self-medicating. But the best treatment plan for a brain disorder is not a DIY application of whatever’s on the drink menu at TGIFriday’s. However, once the alcohol or drugs hit a disordered brain, it triggers the phenomenon of craving, they lose the normal capacity to choose. Can they still choose? Sure. But the reward system in their brain is telling them that they need to drink or use more drugs as if they needed it for survival – a primal instinct. “Choosing” to stop is like choosing not to run from a lion chasing you. It goes against every driving instinct in your body and mind. It’s not the same kind of choice a regular person feels about whether or not to drink or do drugs. That’s why it’s called a disorder. It’s fucked up and it sucks. As an addict with 15 years of physical sobriety, I can assure you, the problems with my thinking and decision making didn’t begin when I started drinking and taking drugs and they didn’t end when I stopped. An alcoholic or addict – someone with this type of wiring – who is not using alcohol or drugs is still an alcoholic and an addict. Physical sobriety from whatever substance is being abused doesn’t cure the problem, because the brain is still programmed for pursuit of the biochemical reaction, the short-term gratification, regardless of consequences. This is why people need treatment and many go to AA meetings long after they stop drinking or using drugs, in fact especially after they stop. It’s their brain – their thought life – that needs continued treatment. I am one of those who attends AA meetings, and they are filled with people from all walks of life, races, genders, economic and education backgrounds. My first sponsor was a kindergarten teacher. These are regular people that didn’t know they were walking around with a brain glitch that, left untreated, could destroy their lives. That’s why the Surgeon General’s report is such a revelation.From LA Times:[U.S. Surgeon General] Murthy said that stigma surrounding addiction dissuades people from getting help. Some of the top government scientists studying addiction showed an audience of advocates, recovering addicts and family members brain scans that they said made clear addicts were suffering from a legitimate illness rather than moral weakness."Science tells us clearly that addiction is a disease of the brain," Murthy said.I know Trump name-calling someone on Twitter isn’t news. But this report on addiction should still be big news. When we see Trump mock a disabled reporter we are rightly outraged, but when we hear him refer to someone who might have a substance abuse problem as a "drunk/drugged up loser," it doesn’t get much of a reaction. Just Trump being Trump. That’s a bad sign. A really bad sign o’ the times. Image: majo1122331/Shutterstock

Total versatility isn't something you'd typically find in a telescope. While magnification tech has come a long way, most telescopes are designed to either gaze upon the stars or view the landscapes beneath them. The Omegon Maksutov Telescope MightyMak 60 lets you do both, and thanks to its compact design, you can easily incorporate some sightseeing into your outdoor activities. It's available today for $109.99 in the Boing Boing Store.This compact Maksutov-style telescope lets you stargaze with brighter images and a larger field of view. It boasts an included table-top tripod, an eyepiece, and a carrying bag to make transport seamless. Its T-2 thread lets you use the MightyMak as a telephoto lens, and if you fancy yourself a photographer, you can use the telescope's additional T-Ring to connect to your camera and shoot images at a longer focal length.The Omegon Maksutov Telescope MightyMak 60 retails for $134, but it's available in the Boing Boing Store for $109.99.

How the once mighty have fallen. (more…)

"Our team has begun exploring methods to bring testing time to zero," says Benjamin Wilkins, a design technologist at Airbnb. One method his team is exploring is this software that scans of a hand drawn sketch of a website prototype and turns it into actual website code.This system has already demonstrated massive potential. We’ve experimented using the same technology to live-code prototypes from whiteboard drawings, to translate high fidelity mocks into component specifications for our engineers, and to translate production code into design files for iteration by our designers.As the design systems movement gains steam and interfaces become more standardized, we believe that artificial intelligence assisted design and development will be baked into the next generation of tooling. We’re excited to share our work with the broader community of designers and developers that are exploring this emerging field and to see where this leads. Stay tuned for future updates as we continue to experiment and build. In next post of the series, Design Tools Manager Lucas Smith will dive into some of the research and literature that informs our approach.Image: Airbnb Design

Naturopathy uses plants and tinctures as medicines. A lot of of naturopathy is hokum, but some of the treatments actually work. A simple example is an orange. If you eat enough oranges, you can ward off scurvy. That's because oranges contain ascorbic acid. Homeopathy, on the other hand, uses tiny amounts of compounds derived from plants, animals, and non living substances, but it is very different from naturopathy, because it never works. Popular Science explains the difference between homeopathy, naturopathy, and pharmaceuticals.Water doesn’t have memory. Even if some of the remedies used as active ingredients in homeopathic drugs did cure headaches and joint pain, diluting them down thousands of times would only handicap their ability to help you. The NIH notes that “there is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific condition” and that “several key concepts of homeopathy are inconsistent with fundamental concepts of chemistry and physics.” The European Academies’ Scientific Advisory Council similarly concludes that “there are no known diseases for which there is robust, reproducible evidence that homeopathy is effective beyond the placebo effect” and that “the claims for homeopathy are implausible and inconsistent with established scientific concepts.”Image: By Chamille White/Shutterstock

YouTube BluShades creates video essays, and that experience has prompted him to examine how video essays deceive you. (more…)

Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore successfully completed the world's first scrotum-included penis transplant last month, restoring cock and balls to a soldier maimed by an IED in Afghanistan.The 14-hour operation took place March 26 and involved nine plastic surgeons and two urological surgeons, transplanting the penis, scrotum and partial abdominal wall from a dead donor.The donor's testes were not transplanted due to ethical guidelines, as the new owner may otherwise produce offspring with the donor's genetics. The recipient will not be able to father children.“We are hopeful that this transplant will help restore near-normal urinary and sexual functions for this young man,” W.P. Andrew Lee, M.D., professor and director of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a press release.The anonymous recipient is delighted with his new equipment: “When I first woke up, I felt finally more normal… [with] a level of confidence as well. Confidence… like finally I’m okay now.” Doctors from the same team also performed America's first bilateral arm transplant.The technical term for the operation is a vascularized composite allotransplantation, rewiring skin, muscles and tendons, nerves, bone and blood vessels. The patient will require a regimen of immunosuppressant medication.Genital mutilation is reportedly a common but rarely-discussed outcome of IED blasts, with 2013 U.S. Department of Defense figures recording 1,367 servicemen having suffered genito-urinary injuries since the invasion of Afghanistan and Johns Hopkins describing lost penises as "an unspoken injury of war."The New York Times reports two other penis transplants, though neither included the scrotum.Devon Stuart for Johns Hopkins Medicine

In this three-part series, artisans show how bamboo is harvested, cured, and processed with specialized tools to make intricate baskets and other household items. (more…)

Scientists have been experimenting with "fog harps" in arid climates as an easy way to collect potable water from fog.Via the paper:Fog harvesting is a useful technique for obtaining fresh water in arid climates. The wire meshes currently utilized for fog harvesting suffer from dual constraints: coarse meshes cannot efficiently capture microscopic fog droplets, whereas fine meshes suffer from clogging issues. Here, we design and fabricate fog harvesters comprising an array of vertical wires, which we call “fog harps”. Under controlled laboratory conditions, the fog-harvesting rates for fog harps with three different wire diameters were compared to conventional meshes of equivalent dimensions. As expected for the mesh structures, the mid-sized wires exhibited the largest fog collection rate, with a drop-off in performance for the fine or coarse meshes. In contrast, the fog-harvesting rate continually increased with decreasing wire diameter for the fog harps due to efficient droplet shedding that prevented clogging. This resulted in a 3-fold enhancement in the fog-harvesting rate for the harp design compared to an equivalent mesh.• Harvesting water from fog with harps (YouTube / American Chemical Society)

Ready to feel really old? In this React video, a group of older teens -- they all seem to have been born right around the year 2000 -- put on headphones to listen to select music from the 1990s. Their task is to guess the song's title and the artist behind it. It surprised me a little that more of them knew Los Del Rio's "Macarena" than Alanis Morissette's "Ironic." (Though, honestly, I didn't recognize all the songs either and I lived through the 90s.)

Dick's Sporting Goods has decided to destroy its stock of AR-15 rifles. If you'd like to do the same, I suggest you refer the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)'s official guide to destroying "machineguns" that would surely be effective to render AR-15 rifles completely useless. The key tool is "a cutting torch having a tip of sufficient size to displace at least ¼ inch of material at each location."• Each cut must completely sever the receiver in the area indicated by the diagonal lines. • The receiver must be completely severed in each area indicated with a diagonal torch cut.• Cutting by means of a band saw or cut-off wheel does not ensure destruction."Machinegun Destruction" (via Rolling Stone)

It is irrelevant that the planet Uranus stinks like rotten eggs, the atmosphere will kill humans very, very quickly.Via Space.comThe clouds in Uranus' upper atmosphere are composed largely of hydrogen sulfide, the molecule that makes rotten eggs so stinky, a new study suggests."If an unfortunate human were ever to descend through Uranus' clouds, they would be met with very unpleasant and odiferous conditions," study lead author Patrick Irwin, of Oxford University in England, said in a statement.But that wayward pioneer would have bigger problems, he added: "Suffocation and exposure in the negative 200 degrees Celsius [minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit] atmosphere, made of mostly hydrogen, helium, and methane, would take its toll long before the smell."Image via Wikipedia

EU and Nigerian law both ban the export of e-waste to Nigeria, but a new study jointly authored by scholars from UN University and the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Africa found that exported used cars represent a smuggler's bonanza for the illegal dumping of toxic waste. (more…)

Neko Case ran into some bad luck last September. Her Vermont home was ravaged by fire. Hours after getting the news, she went into the studio to record a song she had already written, aptly titled "Bad Luck."Paste Magazine reports:The song came after a tragic house fire that engulfed the musician’s home in September of last year. According to a press release, the fire started in the musician’s barn, where she keeps an assortment of paintings and old artworks. After a friend attended to the safety of Case’s dogs (which she prominently displays on her social media accounts), the fire spread to the house, engulfing it as well. A few hours later, Case took to her studio in Stockholm and recorded her song of galloping resilience, “Bad Luck.”From a press statement from earlier this month:Case is now stoic about the fire. “If somebody burned your house down on purpose, you’d feel so violated. But when nature burns your house down, you can’t take it personally.” The month before the blaze, Hurricane Harvey had slammed into Texas and flooded Houston. Her home burned just as Puerto Rico was plunged into a nightmare by Hurricane Maria and wildfires incinerated California. “In the big picture, my house burning was so unimportant,” she says. “So many people lost so much more: lives and lives and lives.”Neko's first solo album in five years, Hell-On, will be available June 1st (pre-orders are available now). She's also embarking on an ambitious tour (with Ray LaMontagne), starting at the end of May.Give a listen to the title track too:https://youtu.be/ESUXxAbZVZ4

Kiwami Japan tried modding a cheap kitchen knife with serrations so it can cut through rock-hard foods like China Marble hard candies, macadamia nuts, and katsuobushi. (more…)

Riffraff, step aside. A line of garden hoses for the more discerning yard worker has arrived. With models like the Gold Digger ("certainly a statement piece is for those who love a bit of show off"), the "graceful and refined" Rusty Rose, and the Caribbean Kiss (which "will make you dream of a tropical beach edged with palm trees"), it's clear that Garden Glory's hoses are no ordinary lawn wetting devices. The prices are not ordinary either. Hoses are $119 each (plus an additional $49 to $119 for the matchy-matchy nozzle) and come with an "elegant designer bag." Don't forget to kickdown for that complementary Reindeer Wall Mount ($299) to wrap your hose around. Add a pair of golden gloves for $59 and then snap some selfies of yourself "gardening." Your Instagram feed is sure to explode. All of your "luxurious alternative garden appliances" dreams have come true. **pinch**Thanks, Polly!images via Garden Glory

I enjoyed the piano stylings of Lord Vinheteiro in this "Evolution of Music" video**. He plays a little music from each year, starting with 1680 and ending with 2017. There's Beethoven, Iron Maiden, Aqua, and more.Another fun video of his has him playing the soundtrack and sound effects from Super MarioWorld on the piano along with the video game itself.**Though I found his staring at the camera a bit jarring!

Huge news from North Korea in advance of the North-South summit next week, and planned denuclearization talks with the U.S. President. (more…)

Remember that Trump associate who resigned as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee last week after news came out he'd hired Michael Cohen to negotiate a $1.6 million deal to buy the silence of Playboy model he impregnated? His name is Elliott Broidy and, The Intercept has a new story about how Broidy promised the Russian gas giant Novatek he get it taken off the U.S. sanctions list for a cool $26 million. Just another day in the shithole presidency.In February 2017, Broidy sent a draft of the plan by email to attorney Andrei Baev, then a Moscow- and London-based lawyer who represented major Russian energy companies for the firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP. Baev had already been communicating with Novatek about finding a way to lift U.S. sanctions.Broidy proposed arranging meetings with key White House and congressional leaders and generating op-eds and other articles favorable to the Russian company, along with a full suite of lobbying activities to be undertaken by consultants brought on board. Yet even as he offered those services, Broidy was adamant that his company, Fieldcrest Advisors LLC, would not perform lobbying services but would hire others to do it. He suggested that parties to the deal sign a sweeping non-disclosure agreement that would shield their work from public scrutiny.The plan is outlined in a series of emails and other documents obtained by The Intercept. Broidy and Baev did not dispute the authenticity of the exchanges but said the deal was never consummated.Broidy has made quite a bit of news today:Elliott Broidy plotted to force Chinese dissident from US: Documents obtained by US daily show Republican fundraiser drafted plan in hopes of getting payoffs from China and UAE.Seeking Foreign Money, G.O.P. Donor Pushed for Trump to Golf With Malaysian PremierImage: Broidy Capital Management website

The National Association of Scholars is a tiny, hydrocarbon-industry backed organization that is not to be confused with the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)

In a case study published in the journal Cognition and Consciousness, a 70-year-old musician who has been blind since birth reports on his experiences taking LSD. The man used the name "Mr. Blue Pentagon," a reference to his preferred brand of blotter. From Live Science:"I never had any visual images come to me. I can't see or imagine what light or dark might look like," Mr. Blue Pentagon told the researchers. But under the influence of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as acid), sounds felt unique and listening to music felt like being immersed in a waterfall, he said. "The music of Bach's third Brandenburg concerto brought on the waterfall effect. I could hear violins playing in my soul and found myself having a one hour long monologue using different tones of voices ... LSD gave everything 'height.' The sounds coming from songs I would normally listen to became three dimensional, deep and delayed."Mr. Blue Pentagon's account is a rare glimpse into how LSD may feel in the absence of vision. Beyond a few Q&A threads on Reddit, the only other resource is a 1963 study of 24 blind people, which was actually conducted by an ophthalmologist to test whether a functioning retina (the part of the eye that senses light) is enough for visual hallucinations (it's not), and didn’t include the participants’ psychological experiences beyond vision.Understanding Mr. Blue Pentagon's experience with the drug may give unique insights about how novel synesthetic experiences through multiple senses are concocted by the brain — especially a brain that is wired differently due to lack of vision, according to the researchers from the University of Bath in the U.K. who published the report.

Cincinnati landlord Courtland Gundlind had enough of the thief who had recently stolen two air conditioning units from his properties. So he hid a GPS tracker inside a new unit, installed it, and waited for the culprit to strike again. Two weeks later, the air conditioner texted him that it was "on the move." From Cincinnati.com:The Okeana landlord called a friend and followed the trail. The GPS updated every 60 seconds, so they remained about a minute behind. He called police who eventually caught up with the unit and a suspect at the McDonald's on Reading Road. Cincinnati Police arrested David Lester Walls, 50, of Linden Street, and charged him with theft and criminal damaging. He was arraigned April 11, pleaded not guilty, and is set to return to court May 15....(Gundling) said police were surprised the GPS in the AC worked. (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

The Action Lab set up an interesting proof of concept using a smartphone plus a cheap radio frequency 3D imaging doo-dad to sense motion in another room. (more…)

SoCraftastic tested six marker types on a non-porous surface to see which one allowed the ink to float on water. The effect is pretty cool with a stick figure. (more…)

Usually the goal of a home burglary is to get in and out of the house as quickly as possible. But apparently there are those who prefer to make a pitstop in the bathtub where, if inclined, a full-on meal can be enjoyed. Do three recent cases of burglary bathtub breaks make a trend?On Tuesday in Louisiana a woman came home from work to find another woman, Evelyn Washington, in her bathtub eating Cheetos, which were just the hors d'oeuvre. Beside her on the toilet was a full plate of food. The burglar had broken through a window, and according to the Star Telegram, she and the homeowner did not know each other.Less than two weeks earlier, a 36-year-old gentleman broke into someone's house, made himself a cup of Oxo as well as a heap of pickles, junk food and Coke, and decided to draw himself a nice bath."He had a cup of Oxo in his hand. He'd made himself a cup of Oxo," the homeowner said after discovering the naked burglar and thinking it was a ghost, according to the BBC. "He ate me crisps, had five rounds of corned beef and sauce, ate a jar of pickles, had two ice creams and a can of coke...Nobody can believe what's happened because it's something what doesn't happen."And then, a little over a year ago, there was 26-year-old Brian Walker who broke into a home in the wee hours of the morning in Visalia, California and climbed into the bath, refusing to get out when police showed up. Sadly, I don't think this guy got to enjoy a meal during his soak. Via Star-TelegramImage: Kat/Flickr

I have questions about this VR ice cream incident. First, where is this taking place? And second, was the ice cream vendor intentionally trying to kill the customer?

EPA head Scott Pruitt has gone on a multi-million dollar luxury item spending spree at taxpayers' expense. With his soundproof booth, bulletproof limousines, and chartered private jets, he seems to think people care who he is and are out to get him, when in truth he's just one of the indistinguishable swamp creatures appointed by Trump to dismantle the federal government's regulatory agencies.His expensive form of ego gratification has become so flagrant that various organizations in the federal government are finally doing something about it. “Scott Pruitt Is now being investigated by the House of Representatives, Senate, White House, Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability Office, and EPA Inspector General,” tweeted Rep. Don Beyer (Dem, VA).Scott Pruitt Is now being investigated by the House of Representatives, Senate, White House, Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability Office, and EPA Inspector Generalhttps://t.co/NDMMt8njHe— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) April 18, 2018From Beyer's press release:This week the number of investigations into embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s ethics lapses and wasteful spending grew substantially, and more may be announced in coming weeks.The latest wave of investigations came as the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report saying that Pruitt had broken laws when he ordered the installation of a $43,000 “secure privacy booth” without informing Congress:The General Accountability Office has already determined that Pruitt broke laws when he installed a privacy booth at exorbitant expense; the nonpartisan investigator has also been asked to look into the raises Pruitt gave to staff using an obscure legal loophole and his purges of the EPA’s advisory boards.The House Oversight Committee asked Pruitt for a series of documents and witness interviews spanning many of his scandals.The House Energy and Commerce Committee is now “seeking information on a flood of ethics questions and lavish spending” by Pruitt.The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is investigating Pruitt’s use of multiple emails, and whether he evaded FOIA requests.The White House said it would probe Pruitt’s relationship with an energy lobbyist who gave him a special deal on his condo rent.The Office of Management and Budget will investigate Pruitt’s wasteful spending of $43,000 on a privacy booth.The EPA Office of the Inspector General is currently conducting investigations into Pruitt over (1) his possible violation of anti-lobbying laws (2) his spending on security (3) his expensive privacy booth, and (4A) his travel, a probe which it subsequently (4B) expanded (4C) twice.The EPA Office of the Inspector General is also weighing requests by Reps. Don Beyer and Ted Lieu and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to determine whether Pruitt violated any laws or regulations with his condo arrangement.The Office of Government Ethics is not empowered to investigate or punish ethics lapses at the EPA, but its acting head still sent a letter outlining a series of concerns about Pruitt’s potential ethics lapses to EPA ethics officials.While Pruitt remains in office, additional investigations of his many wasteful and unethical activities are likely to follow.If you would like to help get Pruitt fired, Re:act recommends using this "NRDC tool to ask your senators to publicly call on Pruitt to be fired."Scott Pruitt is hurting the environment and living in luxury on taxpayer dime — it’s time for him to go pic.twitter.com/FNyKq7krWg— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 17, 2018Image: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Scott Pruitt, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

When journalist Curtis Waltman filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Washington State Fusion Center (which is partnered with Department of Homeland Security) to obtain information about Antifa and white supremacist groups, he got more than the information he was looking for – he also accidentally received a mysterious file on "psycho-electric weapons" with the label “EM effects on human body.zip.” The file included methods of "remote mind control."Creepy images like these were included:So what gives?Via the Daily Beast:According to Muckrock, a nonprofit that publishes government information gathered through FOIA requests, the mind-control documents came from the Department of Homeland Security-linked agency in the form of a file called “EM effects on human body.zip.” The file reportedly contained various diagrams detailing the horrors of “psycho-electronic weapon effects.” One diagram lists the various forms of torment supposedly made possible by using remote mind-control methods, from “forced memory blanking” and “sudden violent itching inside eyelids” to “wild flailing” followed by “rigor mortis” and a remotely induced “forced orgasm.” It was not immediately clear how the documents wound up in the agency’s response to a standard FOIA request, but there was reportedly no indication the “remote mind control” files stemmed from any government program.And according to Popular Mechanics:The federal government has absolutely experimented with mind control in a variety of methods, but the documents here do not appear to be official.Waltman had no idea why these documents were included in his request and isn't sure why the government is holding them. The WSFC did not respond to requests for more information.As fun as conspiracy theories are, Muckrock doesn't believe the images are "government material." One seems to come from a person named “Supratik Saha,” who is identified as a software engineer, the brain mapping slide has no sourcing, and the image of the body being assaulted by psychotronic weapons is sourced from raven1.net, who apparently didn’t renew their domain.Muckrock put out a call to WSFC but hasn't yet heard back from them. For more details, go to Muckrock.

Prince's Paisley Park, now a museum, is seeking an archives supervisor to "actively work in the care, catalog, storage and preservation of all artifacts and archival materials; the care, cleaning, and monitoring of all exhibits." According to the job requirements, "Some knowledge of Prince is helpful." From the job listing at the American Alliance of Museums site:RESPONSIBILITIES: Actively work in the care, catalog, storage and preservation of all artifacts and archival materials; the care, cleaning, and monitoring of all exhibits. Maintain and Update the archival database system. Monitor the trafficking of archive inventory. Assist the appropriate staff in having access to the archives collection as required. Travel/act as a courier of artifacts to locations where artifacts are to be displayed including the setting up and taking down of exhibits in these locations. Execute, maintain, and provide accurate conditioning reports for all items being moved from storage for exhibition. Ensure that the collections manual, preservation plans and archives emergency plan are observed. Locate, retrieve, and prepare artifacts for display/loans. Ensure the integrity of the collection in maintained at all times. Oversea all cleaning of exhibit spaces. Work with outside vendors to schedule monthly, quarterly and annual cleaning. Assist with Archives long term planning, conservation goals and preservation needs. Photograph and or scan artifacts when needed. Assist with exhibition installs. Maintain displayed artifacts in proper environment, eliminate risk to artifacts. Assist Director of Archives with coordinating activities involving the maintenance, preservation and mansion upkeep. Ensure the integrity of the exhibitions are maintained at all times. Assist other departments with general research/fact checking, research use of the collection Assist with the training staff in methods and procedures for the database system, in collection preparation and care, and in exhibit development and installation. Assist with the supervision the daily activities of the archives staff. Conduct annual performance evaluations of archives staff. Perform the job of courier when needed Other duties as required.

Another year, another iteration of Samsung's Galaxy smartphone—except this time around Samsung sought to redefine what a smartphone can do completely. Boasting a 6.2" Quad HD+ Super AMOLED (2960x1440) infinity display, and an elite 10nm 64-bit Octa-Core Processor with 6GB RAM, the S9+ is an absolute powerhouse with a price tag to match. However, you can get a chance to win your own without spending a dime by entering into the Samsung Galaxy S9+ Giveaway.Absolutely free to enter, this giveaway nets you a shot at winning your own Samsung Galaxy S9+. In addition to its scary processing power and sharp screen, the S9+ delivers a host of cutting-edge features, like a Dual Aperture lens that adapts to light like the human eye, real-time translation through the camera, and, of course, augmented reality emojis and stickies.You can score a chance to experience the frontier of Android power for free by entering into the Samsung Galaxy S9+ Giveaway.

Yesterday, I wrote about the way that tech-sector concentration was making it nearly impossible for Russia to block the encrypted messaging service Telegram: because Telegram can serve its traffic through giant cloud providers like Amazon, Russia can only block Telegram by blocking everyone else who uses Amazon. (more…)

MAD Magazine has made the move from New York City to Los Angeles, relaunching itself with a new logo and staff (for instance, the magazine has its first female art director, Suzanne Hutchinson, aka Suzy Splab).Issue #1 has already hit the newsstands.Here's what's in store:Introducing MAD's first issue EVER*, featuring full-length spoofs of Star Wars and Riverdale! Plus, "A MAD Look at Harassment" from Sergio Aragonés, "Pop Culture That Didn't Make It Into Ready Player One," an all-new Potrzebie Comics section, The MADifesto, Spy vs. Spy, the Fold-In, and much more! (*Technically, this is our first magazine-format #1 issue ever!)Introducing MAD's first issue EVER*, featuring full-length spoofs of Star Wars and Riverdale! Plus, "A MAD Look at Harassment" from Sergio Aragonés, "Pop Culture That Didn't Make It Into Ready Player One," an all-new Potrzebie Comics section, The MADifesto, Spy vs. Spy, the Fold-In, and much more! (*Technically, this is our first magazine-format #1 issue ever!) I noticed you that if you get a 2 or 3 year subscription, they'll send you a little tiki mug that looks like Alfred E. Neuman. Want!WELCOME TO THE ALL-NEW, SOMEWHAT-FAMILIAR MAD!Issue #1's cover art by Jason Edmiston(Pee-wee Herman)

Spliff is a brand new film festival from the folks behind Dan Savage's Hump! fest. While Hump! shows homemade, but well-curated, porn, Spliff will feature films "made by the stoned for the stoned" that are a maximum of four minutes and 20 seconds in length.The SPLIFF Film Festival is where filmmakers, artists, animators, and stoners share original film shorts exploring stoner themes. From serious takes on pot culture to stoner comedy to mind-blowing weirdness—they all have a home at SPLIFF. Creative types of all stripes entertain, challenge, and amaze SPLIFF audiences with short films that examine and/or celebrate recreational marijuana use and its liberating effects on our imaginations, appetites, libidos, and creative energies. At SPLIFF, you’ll see films that will make you laugh, films that will make you think, and films that will make you ask, “What the fuck was that?!”https://vimeo.com/264489272The festival will show in four cities -- Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Denver -- in April 2019.Filmmakers: Smoke a joint, pop an edible, or vape, then make a film and submit it for consideration by March 1, 2019. That's enough time for even the most stoniest of the stoners amongst us.

Code Bullet claims in this demo video, "I was able to create what I believe to be a perfect minesweeper player." (more…)

ToS;dr is a crowdsourced database of website terms of service; install the associate plugin and your browser will display a letter grade (from A to F) for every site you visit, with subcategories for things like data-retention and the rights the site asserts to your contributions. (more…)

We've seen Disneyland-scented candles before but now there are new contenders in the category of "Things that smell like something you'd find in a Disney resort."While the Magic Candle Company in Kissimmee, Florida is not affiliated with Disney in any official way, they have made an entire line of candles, wax melts, and spray-on room fragrances that smell like something you'd find in a Disney park. I think the funniest one is this "Pirate Water" which is scented like the "musty, damp smell" of a familiar "dark water ride" (ie. the Bromine-filled waters of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride). Take a whiff down memory lane with their other (completely unofficial and unsanctioned) scents like: Pinocchio's Village (a "powerful aroma of pistachio nuts, almond, honey, heliotrope, and rich, creamy vanilla custard"), Churro ("cinnamon, sugar and hints of bergamot and creamy dark chocolate"), and the Pineapple Float (they write, "'Dole' out a smile every time you smell our Pineapple Float fragrance"). There's also something called Walt's Office which is the "warm and spicy aroma of cured pipe tobacco."Prices are $7.95 for wax melts, $18.95 for the room sprays, and between $15.95 and $28.95 for the candles.The Magic Candle CompanyThanks, Frank!

Like a scene from a 1970s horror flick, tumbleweeds invaded a neighborhood in Victorville, California on Monday, racing towards a neighborhood at 60mph and piling up so high against houses that some residents were calling 911 for help. “We’re not exactly sure how many homes are affected, but we’re estimating about 100 to 150 homes in that area," a Victorville spokesman told the Victorville Daily Press. “The primary goal is to clear the front of the houses, to remove the tumbleweeds in order to allow residents safe access to their homes...With the winds as strong as they are, as soon as they clear certain areas, more tumbleweeds are blowing right back in.” Not surprisingly, crews had to work overtime into the night to get rid of these thorny invaders.

This clever little guy calmly examines his situation, listens to the nervous crowd of grown-ups trying to explain what he needs to do, and finally works it out. No window-smashing was needed.

James Comey is on the road to promote his new book, A Higher Loyalty. Stephen Colbert interviewed him for a full half hour on the Late Show, where the two discussed the odd actions he took during the investigations of Hillary Clinton's email servers and his interactions with Trump before he was fired as the director of the FBI. Colbert didn't hold back from asking tough questions.

While light on rocks, you can certainly lift a box with Luke and the Force at LEGO Yoda's Hut. (more…)

The BBC posted an online archive of many of its sound effects. The nature scenes and peculiar things of historical interests are wonderful, though the broad focus seems to be components for radio plays and the like: footsteps, actions, incidental moments. The BBC license isn't free and has odd stipulations, but the point of the project and its accompanying rules is remarkable: "RemArc, or Reminiscence Archive, is designed to help trigger memories in people with dementia using BBC Archive material as stimulation. "

In 1853, the U.S. Government bought a 29,670 square mile chunk of dirt in a deal that, as history buffs will tell you, ended up being called the Gadsden Purchase. It was a dick move: purchasing the land meant bisecting the territory of the area's indigenous Tohono O’odham Nation. This left half of the Tohono O’odham in Mexico and the other half in the United States. Today, the Tohono O’odham are a federally recognized tribe, with somewhere around 34,000 members. This number includes around 2,000 Tohono O’odham who live in Mexico. It's not uncommon for the tribe to cooperate with Homeland Security where protecting the border is concerned. But guess what? A tribe that had their lands split up by the Federal government once isn't crazy about having it done again.According to Splinter, the Tohono O’odham Nation controls the second largest land base in the United States. This includes a full 75 miles of the U.S./Mexico border. Given that members of their tribe live on both sides of the border, they're less than chuffed with the notion of allowing the National Guard onto their lands to surveil their territory or to allow a border wall to be built on their property. The reasons for their objections are sound: Having a wall thrown up in the middle of their land would keep members of their tribe from easily traveling to participate in culturally important events on their own frigging land.From Splinter:Tohono O’odham chairman Edward D. Manuel recently went on a local radio station to tell members of the tribe that no National Guard or military personnel were welcomed on the land, according to a spokesperson for Manuel’s office. The tribe also released a statement announcing the Border Patrol has agreed to not send military personnel to its land. (Border Patrol officials in the Tucson Sector, which covers the area where the tribe lives, did not respond to a request for comment.)It'll be interesting to see, should the Trump administration ever get its shit together and sort out the funds for a border wall, how things shake out with the Tohono O’odham. I'd love to think that they'd be successful in keeping the Feds off of their soil. But the pessimist in me feels that their desire to freely traverse their own lands could fall by the wayside in favour of the ineffectual security plans of the current Administration.Image via Wikipedia Commons

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the crew of an American seaplane were caught off guard near New Zealand. Unable to return across the Pacific, they were forced to fly home "the long way" -- all the way around the world. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the adventures of the Pacific Clipper on its 30,000-mile journey through a world engulfed in war.We'll also delve into the drug industry and puzzle over a curious case of skin lesions.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

So, there's this skeleton that archaeologists discovered in Italy during the mid-1990s. They reckon the man, who became the skeleton, was alive somewhere between the sixth and eighth century. Those were hard times. Life was short and seldom sweet. In the case of our man the skeleton, somewhere along the line, he lost his hand. Archaeologists say that it was taken off with a single blow. Maybe it was because he was involved in a war or being punished for a crime. It could have been removed for medical reasons. Anyway, BOOM, gone. It's amazing, in an era where antibiotics didn't exist, that someone would survive an amputation. Sure, it happened but it was rare. The recovery process must have been terrible. But did our pal from so long ago allow the lose of a hand and acquisition of a new stump get him down? Hell no. He did what I'd like to believe anyone of you reading this would do: HE REPLACED HIS LOST HAND WITH A FRIGGING KNIFE BLADE.According to a paper published in the Journal of Antrological Sciences by Ileana Micarelli, Robert Paine, Caterina Giostra, Mary Anne Tafuri, Antonio Profico, Marco Boggioni, Fabio Di Vincenzo, Danilo Massani, Andrea Papini and Giorgio Manzi (something something Too Many Cooks.) Once the Middle Ages bad ass healed up, he found a way to lash a knife blade to his stump using a leather mount that he tied in place with his teeth. The paper makes for pretty dense reading, but Gizmodo's George Dvorsky does a great job of digging into it:Further analysis of the man’s bones points to the use of a prosthesis. Bony healing tissue called callus formed around the ends of the bone, which likely formed as the result of frequent biomechanical force. Supporting archaeological evidence exists in the form of a knife, a cap on the stump, and a D-shaped buckle with decomposed organic material around it, likely leather. Other male skeletons found at the site were buried with their arms by their sides, but T US 380 had his right arm placed across his torso, and a knife blade with the butt aligned with his amputated wrist.It's not clear what the man may have used the knife for when he was alive, but I need to believe it had something to do with fighting Deadites and the possibility of securing an ancient magical book, charged with the power to send him to the future.Image via Pxhere