CA grid operator calls on state’s utilities to begin cutting power to some customers

Today, 236 employees at Pinterest virtually "walked out" to express solidarity with three former colleagues who said they experienced gender and race discrimination at the social media company. From the New York Times: Many of the employees also shared and signed an online petition calling on Ben Silbermann, Pinterest's chief executive and co-founder, to change […]

Today I chanced across a posting from someone who, in 2002, tracked down the maker of the unusual whiskey glass that the replicant-hunter Deckard drinks from in Blade Runner. They learned then that it had been in production for thirty years and was still available, and so it is today. Now, of course, you don't […]

Chad Wolf and top aide Ken Cuccinelli were improperly appointed to their leadership positions at the Department of Homeland Security, reports the Government Office of Accountability. The Government Accountability Office said Wolf and Cuccinelli assumed those jobs under an order of succession that was issued by an acting secretary who himself had no authority to […]

In South Lake Tahoe, two bear cubs were found wrassling in someone's backyard kiddie pool. I put my money on the small brown one. "While I was laying in bed I heard some noises coming from my backyard. When I looked outside my window I saw two cubs playing in my daughter's pool." screengrab via […]

Sure, the sound of the kid colliding into the trash bins is fake but it's still pretty funny! Previously: Deer performs classic drum fill from Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" (Kottke) screengrab via YouTube

There's a lot to unpack and think about from this BBC article about the impact of solar panels on the heroin industry. The first report of an Afghan farmer using solar power came back in 2013. The following year traders were stocking a few solar panels in Lashkar Gah, the Helmandi capital. Since then growth […]

Sometimes, being trapped inside and distanced from the world, with all of the other worries you may have on your plate, leads you to wander back to darker times. I first heard this song back in 2001. I'd left the east coast in the early days of the year, to move back to Ontario. My […]

Even as the world takes tentative steps toward reopening against the ebbs and flows of COVID-19, movie theaters remain in a netherworld limbo. High-profile film releases continue shuffling as theater chains, studios and filmgoers grapple with the fact that an enclosed theater may not be a safe place to be for some time to come. […]

FiveThirtyEight made this useful guide on how to vote in each of the U.S. states. Click on your state in the map to see a lot of the information you need in order to cast a ballot this fall — by whatever method you choose. This page will be updated on a regular basis with […]

We live in an older house, and I've replaced a lot of sink and bath washers over the years. My supply was running low so I just ordered this inexpensive assortment of washers. I hope I don't have to use them soon, but it will be nice to have them the next time a faucet […]

From one of my favorite Twitter feeds, Bizzarro Bazar: these terrible magic trick. I doubt the 16th-century author tested out this trick to see if it would actually work. He probably just thought it seemed like a cool effect. Image: Twitter

Financial services company Robinhood hired Collins to design its new brand identity. The illustrations Collins commissioned as part of its world-building exercises are beautiful and obviously heavily inspired by the late cartoonist Mœbius. From Collins: [From] a visual design perspective, the illustration system really takes center stage. We settled on a vision of the future […]

Julian Boilen, a full stack software engineer in NYC, created this cool map that lets you see photos of New York City in the late 1930s an 1940s. "Zoom in!" he says. "Every dot is a photo." Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of every building […]

Painter and director David Lynch has a nice home workshop, and in this video, he shows his hand-made iPhone holder, which can be attached to a tripod. It's nice-looking, and my favorite part is when he shows a plastic iPhone holder he bought online and says that it works well, but it was more fun […]

Writing in The Week, Ryan Cooper says, "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has collected data for the week ending July 21, before super-unemployment expired, and found that 12 percent of households were regularly short of food, 21 percent of renters were behind on their payments, and 28 percent of children were in households with one […]

No one: Brach's: "We have candy corn that tastes like Thanksgiving foods!!" — Turkey Dinner candy corn is described as "A full course meal presented in a unique mix of candy corn flavors. BRACH'S Turkey Dinner includes all of the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. From roasted turkey, green beans and stuffing to ginger glazed carrots, cranberry […]

This "house boat" for sale on Mercer Island, Washington was once the USS Manzanita, built for the US Coast Guard in 1908 and later part of the US Navy. It's now for sale for $2 million. From Realtor.com: n 1949, the boat was going to be scrapped, when a local librarian and her father bought […]

GPT-3 is a machine-learning trained language model that generates text based on a text prompt. Cory Doctorow has been playing around with a closed-beta implementation of Sudowrite, which he describes as a "GPT3-based text generator for fiction writers. You give it characters, plot summaries, dialogue, or twist endings," and Sudowrite generates one of more paragraphs […]

Chameleons have evolved a superfast and long tongue to grab insects in an instant. Inspired by this marvelous bit of nature, engineers at Seoul National University of Science and Technology created "Snatcher," a robotic tongue design that could someday be mounted on drones to pick up packages. From IEEE Spectrum: "For example, a quadrotor with […]

Seeya! Rough Google translation of the tweet: "It's a mini 4WD that has been tuned to be crisp."

There are many aspects of American culture that are secretly or not-so-secretly rooted in something absolutely abhorrent. I'm not just talking about the "original sin" of settler colonialism, or even the institution of slavery itself — although those things certainly help to inherently taint the nation's origins. No, I'm talking about all the other things […]

The question was asked by Huffington Post correspondent SV Dáte, who told the Guardian: I don't know why he called on me, because I've tried to ask him before [in March] and he's cut me off mid-question. Maybe he didn't recognise me this time. You know, he has this group of folks that he normally […]

Police in St. Petersburg, Florida arrested a homeless fellow who had been living in a luxury suite in Al Lang Stadium. He was apparently wearing Tampa Bay Rowdies clothing swiped from the merch shop and ate from the concession stands during his two week stay. He's now in jail on charges of burglary and "resisting […]

The US Pentagon is forming a task force to investigate military reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (aka UFOs). Over the last few years, the New York Times broke news of a similar program in the Office of Naval Intelligence, examined curious videos depicting aerial encounters between Navy jets and UFOs (above), and reported a theoretical […]

Quintin Smith explores Entropia Universe, the world's only cash-based MMO, still entertaining tens of thousands of players 17 years after its launch. No online game has bigger whales—players genuinely invested in playing the game in the hope of getting rich—even as you can play it for free by collecting in-game poop: "We set out to […]

I was invited to participate in a cool international art project benefiting mental health. It's called Decameron Row, and it's a website depicting buildings along a city street. Each building has windows occupied by a different artist, writer, or other creative person. When you click on one of the windows you can see a 1-minute […]

Run away!

Physics may have been that class you sleepwalked your way through in high school. But while it might have just slipped under your radar throughout your academic career, you probably shouldn't have given it such shallow attention. Sure, we could focus on the immediate pluses of a career as a physicist, like the more than […]

Herman Cain "tweeted" banal pro-Trump propaganda until hours before his death of Covid, a ghastly month-long spectacle seemingly pumped out by political handlers willing to speak with Cain's voice even as that voice ceased to exist. I spectulated that this would continue after his death, a melding of Trumpian incompetence, obscenity and indifference. I was asked to stop posting on grounds of Rob He Just Died, but sadly that exortation was not made to whoever is wearing Cain's corpse today on Twitter. Read the rest

My home of nearly 20 years, the quirky California island city of Alameda, never ceases to surprise me (in good ways!). Today I learned that one of my favorite casual dining spots in town, The Hobnob on Park Street, is offering a drag queen delivery service. On Saturday, August 22, Island Fantasy, a group of local drag performers, will bring you a prix fixe menu for two (salad, pasta dish, dessert, bottle of wine) and a one-minute socially distanced performance for $70 plus required 20% tip (addtl. tips encouraged). Email hobnobalameda@gmail.com before August 20 to order.Keep it quirky, Alameda!images via The Hobnob Read the rest

Jeanine Pirro's own Fox News colleagues forced her to walk back an ominous comment Wednesday after the former judge suggested that "something's going to happen" to presidential candidate Joe Biden."For some reason, I just have this feeling that Joe Biden isn't going to be on the ticket," Pirro said during a Fox News segment."I have a sense that something's going to happen before the election and he's not even going to be on the ticket, so don't even ask me if he's going to make the four years," she added.As Pirro continued with her analysis on Biden's newly announced running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, the Fox News commentator Jesse Watters could be heard in the background expressing caution. Another commentator, Dana Perino, appeared to say on the microphone, "Oh man."Pirro would later qualify her roughly three-minute monologue, saying at the end, "We certainly don't hope that anything happens to Vice President Joe Biden anytime soon."Just another day in the death cult. Read the rest

This 1967 clip from American Bandstand starts with Dick Clark asking the kids if they think The Beatles will outlast The Monkees. Almost everyone voted for The Beatles. And, of course, they were wrong! The Beatles broke up in 1970 and The Monkees are still around, and released a (really good!) album in 2016.Then the kids are treated to 1967 promotional films for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" and Clark asks them what they think. The reactions were mixed. One kid said it was "great." A young woman complained about their facial hair. Another said, "they look older and it ruins their image."(Via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

"Mad About Me" is a Jizz song that was largely popularized by the Bith band Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, who famously performed it during a bar fight at Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina in that Tatooinian town of Mos Eisley.I share this, because it's important to remember that the so-called "Star Wars Cantina Song" is, canonically, jizz.So anyway here's an acoustic guitar player who goes by AcousticTrench doing a finger-pickin' cover of the classic tune, accompanied by his dog Maple on the kickdrum.Image via YouTube Read the rest

"Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" is one of the most significant documented viral songs among English-speaking children. Because it was spread as an oral tradition for its first quarter-century, many variants emerged. Tim Scott quizzed 64,000 people on their recollected version of the song, with some surprising results.His thesis is that The Simpsons had a strong role in creating the current canonical version. However, it's clear why "Robin laid an egg" is a much better line than the competitors. First, it literalizes Robin as a bird. Second, is misgenders Robin (already a gender neutral name) by saying he laid an egg. Third, it's a thinly veiled poop joke to many little kids, who are always going to like a poop joke. Thus endeth my dissertation on why "Robin laid an egg" is the vastly superior one and true version.Don't get me started on "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man."Image: YouTube / Tim Scott Read the rest

On August 19th Netflix is premiering its 6 part documentary on the history of the video game industry. Above, the trailer. Below, the opening credits clip Read the rest

One of my favorite websites is John Sisson's Dreams of Space, which is singularly focused on vintage non-fiction children's books and ephemera about space travel. Most of the stuff he posts is from the 1950s through the 1970s, a heyday for pie in the sky visions of humans breaking free of earth's wicked gravity.This month, John is posting about books that speculated on space stations of the future. One of the books is simply called Space Stations, and was written in 1962 by Erik Bergaust. In his introduction, he writes, "This book is a roundup of all current plans for space stations. It is based on official information provided by the Space Agency and by industry. The illustrations do not depict science fiction ideas; all artwork in the book was submitted by the companies currently working on our various space projects. It is based on designs by their own engineers and scientists."Click here to see scans from the book.Book caption for the above photo: "Back to Earth! Similar in design to the first space stations contemplated by the Space Agency, this illustration shows a 3-man crew returning from orbit. Soft landing by parachutes is accomplished after retro-rockets have been used to slow down the little space station from orbital speed."Erik Bergaust died in 1978 at the age of 52. According to this Washington Post obituary published in 1968, he was "author of more than 50 books on aviation, space sciences and nuclear energy, as well as the official biographer of Dr. Read the rest

Minnesota Democrat Illhan Omar fended off a well-funded challenger in yesterday's primary election and is and is now all but certain to retain her seat in November's general. Antone Melton-Meaux vastly outmatched Omar in campaign spending, raising millions more than the incumbent, but conceded by 9 p.m. Tuesday after early results signaled a thrashing.Omar was the first Somali-American and, with Rashida Tlaib, one of the first two Muslim women to enter Congress.Omar rejected Melton-Meaux’s attacks, saying they were funded by interests who wanted to get her out of Congress because she’s effective. She also downplayed Melton-Meaux’s prodigious fundraising before the vote, saying, “Organized people will always beat organized money.”Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and Republican challenger Jason Lewis easily won their primaries in the only statewide races on the ballot. Elsewhere, in western Minnesota’s conservative 7th District, former state Sen. Michelle Fischbach won a three-way Republican race for the right to challenge Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, is one of the GOP’s top targets to flip a House seat in November.In Minnesota, we know that organized people will always beat organized money. Tonight, our movement didn’t just win. We earned a mandate for change. Despite outside efforts to defeat us, we once again broke turnout records. Despite the attacks, our support has only grown.— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) August 12, 2020 Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Super-Fun-Pak Comix features Social Justice Warrior, Murdered-Parents-Man, and much, much, much more

Jim Browning (YouTube) posts long but riveting videos of him turning the tables on tech support scammers (previously at Boing Boing) and in the latest he goes full Neeson from the outset: "a scammer has just connected to my pc and he's just seen a photograph of him and his family on my desktop."Browning now uses an app to modify his voice in-call because the scammers know who he is and they fear his approach. Read the rest

Twins Tim and Fred Williams, aka Twinsthenewtrend on YouTube, make videos of themselves listening to classic songs for the first time. In their latest, they listen to Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" — just wait 'til they get to the drums...!Previously: Deer performs classic drum fill from Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight"screengrab via Twinsthenewtrend/YouTube Read the rest

Brandi Campbell is a sex worker, specifically a stripper. Since 2016, she's also run a blog for Stripper Labor Rights, that includes resources for other sex workers who want to protect themselves from exploitative labor issues.In 2018, Campbell had been working at the Centerfold Club in Columbus, Ohio. Although she was technically an independent contractor, the management still got pissed when they discovered her side gig, and subsequently fired her for allegedly violating "no touching" laws.This, the courts later recognized, was a retaliatory action, and thus a discriminatory firing. And as of July 31, the National Labor Relations Board has upheld this ruling, ensuring that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) also applies to strippers. Whether they're on staff, or independent contractors, strippers still have a legal right to talk about and undertake collective bargaining actions, and the management can't legally bust those unionizing efforts.From Vice:Campbell has been pushing for labor organizing from within clubs for years—between 2015 and 2017, she filed unfair labor practice charges and complaints against clubs she worked for across several states, including Nevada, multiple clubs in Minnesota, and Wisconsin, "alleging that they discriminated/retaliated against her for engaging in statutorily protected activities and deprived dancers of their statutory rights by misclassifying them as independent contractors," according to the 2019 ruling by NLRB Administrative Law Judge Andrew Gollin.Much of the ruling hinges on the requirements clubs set out for strippers as crossing from reasonable expectations for an independent contractor into demands set for an employee: At Centerfold, Gollin wrote in the 2019 ruling, this ranged from the hiring process where dancers have to audition, and follow a detailed series of rules and regulations to keep their "entertainer lease" agreement intact. Read the rest

YouTuber CalebCity hilariously demonstrates the infuriating tendency for those craptacular image grid CAPTCHAs to pop up at the worst time.My 2018 petition for karmic retribution, Let's build a robot to kill the creator of "I am not a robot" CAPTCHA image grids, certainly found a receptive audience, but it almost certainly landed me on the CAPTCHA AI's ever-expanding kill list. Read the rest

In a win for those forced to navigate the rideshare gig economy, a California judge has ruled that Uber and Lyft must treat drivers as employees, not independent contractors.Via NPR:The judge said Uber and Lyft have refused to comply with a California law passed last year that was supposed to make it harder for companies in the state to hire workers as contractors, so gig economy workers such as drivers for the ride-hailing companies would receive health insurance, workers' compensation and paid sick and family leave. As independent contractors, Uber and Lyft drivers are not provided these benefits."It bears emphasis that these harms are not mere abstractions; they represent real harms to real working people," wrote Schulman, adding: "To state the obvious, drivers are central, not tangential, to Uber and Lyft's entire ride-hailing business."Even before the pandemic, the outlook for drivers was not rosy. Now they are on the front lines of high-risk interactions with random passengers.Photo by Wendy Wei from Pexels Read the rest

Considering the state of our world, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to find lots and lots of people pushed to their breaking point. Anxiety and stress are often constant companions during the best of times. But now, with fear and frustration running rampant, it’s easy to be subsumed by all the distractions and pressures and general uncertainty of everyday life.The Calmind Mental Fitness app might not be able to answer all the questions keeping people up at night, but this digital therapy app thinks it can at least help keep the dark thoughts and confusion at bay. Calmind combines elements of neuroscience, psychoacoustics, positive CBT, and technology to form an entirely new method for improving your life by reducing stress and soothing your senses.This digital therapy regimen attacks what ails you from a host of different angles. For those with trouble sleeping, Calmind slows everything down with calming, sensory-rich stories that can help those with elevated stress or even insomnia peacefully fall asleep without melatonin gummies.For battling more generalized anxiety, Calmind works with musicians and artists to combine ASMR triggers with binaural beats and tranquil tones into a brand-new experience they call B-ASMR. As it reduces stress levels, it literally helps increase the production of positive hormones in the body, exiling bad feelings or worries more easily.Even if you’re just trying to focus on completing work tasks or procrastination-rich projects like writing, Calmind helps remove distractions and surrounding noise so you can concentrate on your goal, push past the mental blocks and get to finishing your task. Read the rest

Well folks, Jonathan Mann has done it again. [video link]Jonathan 'Song a Day' Mann : Spotify, Bandcamp, Instagram, Twitter. Read the rest

“The tactic, which experts in mobile-phone security said was concealed through an unusual added layer of encryption, appears to have violated Google policies”The Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday that TikTok exploited an Android vulnerability to obtain user MAC addresses, possibly for ad tracking, with no ability to opt out. They stopped the practice in November, 2019, WSJ reports:The tactic, which experts in mobile-phone security said was concealed through an unusual added layer of encryption, appears to have violated Google policies limiting how apps track people and wasn’t disclosed to TikTok users. TikTok ended the practice in November, the Journal’s testing showed.The findings come at a time when TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd., is under pressure from the White House over concerns that data collected by the app could be used to help the Chinese government track U.S. government employees or contractors. TikTok has said it doesn’t share data with the Chinese government and wouldn’t do so if asked.The identifiers collected by TikTok, called MAC addresses, are most commonly used for advertising purposes. The White House has said it is worried that users’ data could be obtained by the Chinese government and used to build detailed dossiers on individuals for blackmail or espionage.Read more at the WSJ: TikTok Tracked User Data Using Tactic Banned by Google Skirting a privacy safeguard in the @Google #Android OS, @tiktok_us collected unique identifiers from millions of mobile devices, allowing the app to track users online without allowing them to opt out, reports @WSJ. Read the rest

Putin said on Tuesday Russia is the first nation to approve a COVID-19 vaccine after only two months of human testing, a move Moscow compared to its success in the Cold War-era space race. They claim to have tested it on Putin's daughter. The vaccine is called 'Sputnik V'.No clinical trials yet.From Reuters:Moscow’s decision to grant approval before then has raised concerns among some experts. Only about 10% of clinical trials are successful and some scientists fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety.Putin and other officials have said it is completely safe. The president said one of his daughters had taken it as a volunteer and felt good afterwards.(...) The vaccine is administered in two doses and consists of two serotypes of a human adenovirus, each carrying an S-antigen of the new coronavirus, which enter human cells and produce an immune response.The platform used for the vaccine was developed by Russian scientists over two decades and had formed the basis for several vaccines in the past, including those against Ebola. Read more at Reuters:Putin hails new Sputnik moment as Russia is first to approve a COVID-19 vaccine[Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Vladimir Soldatkin]PHOTO: SPUTNIK/KREMLIN, Vladimir Putin, August 11, 2020 Read the rest

Massachusetts-based Dunkin' Donuts says they're about to launch breakfast cereals based on two of the most popular beverages at the coffee and donuts empire: Caramel Macchiato and Mocha Latte.Said one 10-year-old girl who taste-tested the cereals for The Boston Globe: “They should make a doughnut flavored cereal.” From AP:The team-up with Post Consumer Brands, the makers of Honey Bunches of Oats, Shredded Wheat, Raisin Bran and other familiar cereals, is expected to hit grocery shelves later this month.The companies say Dunkin’ coffee concentrate is added to the cereal, which consists of little crunchy spheres mixed with flavored marshmallow bits. A serving has about as much caffeine as a tenth of an 8-ounce cup of coffee. More at AP.SO, A QUESTION, DEAR READER: Would you try it? Replies in the BBS![IMAGE courtesy Post Consumer Brands/Dunkin Donuts] Read the rest

This is quite an interesting public records find from Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) of the nonprofit Open Secrets. Years ago, Kamala Harris once received a donation check for thousands of dollars from Donald Trump.She writes:Fun fact: Campaign finance & court records show Donald Trump donated thousands to Senator Kamala Harris—Joe Biden's 2020 VP pick—for her 2011 attorney general election as the AG office investigated Trump University's allegedly illegal business practicesHarris was announced as Joe Biden's running mate earlier today.Here's the weird story behind the Trump donation to Kamala Harris.Fun fact: Campaign finance & court records show Donald Trump donated thousands to Senator Kamala Harris—Joe Biden's 2020 VP pick—for her 2011 attorney general election as the AG office investigated Trump University's allegedly illegal business practices https://t.co/pjuyGnEHfZ pic.twitter.com/EKwg9UFDeg— Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) August 11, 2020Update: Kamala Harris' spox said she gave campaign money from Trump to a nonprofit advocating for Central Americans' rights in 2015—a year after her AG re-election as she launched a Senate run https://t.co/snCrJ6ByzeDisclosure data shows $6k in "civic donations" to @Carecen_LA https://t.co/tGSSi7gu80 pic.twitter.com/jR3KHLI3Eq— Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) August 11, 2020Katrina Pierson tells @albamonica, re: Trump donations to Harris' AG race that Trump "as a private businessman donated to candidates across all aisles & I'll notice that Kamala Harris is a black woman & he donated to her campaign so I hope we can squash this racism argument now." pic.twitter.com/f4507Xhib4— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) August 11, 2020And there's more. Read the rest