After WWII, the US launched the Marshall Plan to help Europe rebuild, spending about $120B in inflation-adjusted dollars on the project, which lifted the war-stricken European nations out of disaster and launched them into post-war prosperity; the US has spent even more than that on rebuilding projects in Afghanistan since the official cessation of hostilities there, but Afghanistan remains a crumbling, corrupt, failed state where violence is rampant, opium exports are soaring, and soldiers and civilians alike are still dying. (more…)

Manhattan is just one of hundreds of metropolitan areas in the United States that has an eruv, which is a wire that symbolically turns public spaces into private spaces during the Jewish Sabbath.From Mental Floss:

https://youtu.be/l0_xGIJN32sAfter waiting and waiting for a passenger in Chicago, an Uber driver is about to leave when two young women slide into his back seat. One of them immediately gets on his case."You weren't at our location, Jesus Christ," she says. In reality, he was across the street because the corner that she was at was too crowded with other cars.She goes on to berate him, and then... "she broke me," he says on his YouTube description."Get the fuck out of my car," he tells the women."Are you joking?" she says."No, I'm dead serious, get the fuck out.""Oh, I don't think so. Nope."The women do not budge, and he gets more and more irritated. One of the women suddenly turns sweet, asking him in a syrupy voice if he'll please just take them home. Her entitled friend, however, is offensive. Her strong bitchy Valley Girl accent makes it hard to tell if she's drunk or just spoiled rotten.Yes, the driver loses it and calls her a "bitch" and a "cunt," but it's easy to see how someone can "snap," as he also says in his Youtube description, with such an obnoxious brat in his car. Finally a bystander comes over to try to smooth things out, but isn't much help. The driver ends up telling the bystander to close the door, he's going home, and if the woman doesn't get out of his car, she'll have to be dropped off at his house. She ends up finally getting out of his car, but not before he flips her off while she tapes him (although this tape comes from his own dash cam).The driver defends himself on his YouTube description with this great line: "I get paid to drive, not to eat spoiled rich brats shit."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2wF8LOV5kwHushme is an electronic muzzle that you strap around your face, talking into its built-in mic in order to prevent people from eavesdropping on your calls; you can also use it to change your voice so you sound like a howler monkey or Darth Vader. If this isn't a hoax, its so deep into Poe's Law territory that it might as well be one.

Oklahoma's Anyware Mobile Solutions was founded in 1997 to make PDA software, but after its sales collapsed, it changed its name to Macrosolve and devoted itself to suing people for violating a farcical patent that they said covered filling in questionnaires using an app. (more…)

Last night, Kellyanne Conway, responding to a question about Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped him:

Security researchers at Stony Brook deliberately visited websites that try to trick visitors into thinking that their computers are broken, urging them to call a toll-free "tech support" number run by con artists that infect the victim's computer with malware, lie to them about their computer's security, and con them out of an average of $291 for "cleanup services." (more…)

German photographer Bernard Lang has produced a photo series documenting the incredible overcrowding in the slums of Manila, a city whose mean density is 36,000 people/square mile, rising to 200,000 people in the city's 500 riverside slums. (more…)

The Guardian was interested in meeting the most hateful people on Twitter so they went all over the world to meet them and make a 20-minute documentary.

"Slick plastic panels bare your knees for a futuristic feel in tapered and cropped high-waist jeans."The only person I can imagine wearing these is Alex's mum in A Clockwork Orange.

Here's an attempt to transform 62 episodes of Breaking Bad into a 2-hour movie,

You know the type: the guy whose bio advertises "feminist," who wears the t-shirt and the pink hat, is well-versed in feminist doctrine but rather too eager to harangue women about it rather than get on with smashing nearby patriarchies. Lurking between desperate need and narcissism, the "woke misogynist" lingers, wanting what's his and spying in feminism a fashionable way to get it.Nona Willis Aronowitz writes:

Your 3D wolf snout undies will doubtless be getting a little worn by now and you're planning on reordering soon. But wait! Check out 3D Animal Print Briefs With Ears.They come in several flavors—squirrel, pig, raccoon, fox and "British Kitty"—but are one-size-fits-all. At $8, though, you could always turn them into classy wall art if it doesn't work out.

"It was a little worse for wear... but I wanted to nurse it back to health."An interesting video for people who like vintage computers: the mid to late 1990s is not only a hinterland of general boringness between "vintage" and "modern", but the high point of Microsoft domination, when Windows was so crummy that to try and put it to use invites an instant headache. As a $20 thrift store find, though, a mid-1990s IBM Thinkpad seems a good find.It was infested with malware, needed a new battery, couldn't even run Windows XP, and the hard drive sounded like "marbles rolling around in a teacup." Ah, but what wonders lurk in the back of the desk drawer!Spoiler: You can play old DOS games or fool around with Linux.(I found one on eBay, but will pass on it, as it's $200!)P.S. I know many will disagree, but I found those old Thinkpads perfectly portable: imagine the battery life you'd get these days from a laptop nearly two inches thick!

Colorado charity Dumb Friends League wants to perform as many as 10,000 more spay/neuter procedures to any cats brought in. It will be free, no strings attached, to reduce Denver area pet overpopulation, homelessness, and suffering. (more…)

Lewis Qball chronicles his life with Tourette syndrome. He recently cleaned a driveway with a powerwasher, creating the greatest NSFW powerwashing/Tourette mashup in history. (more…)

Take a look around your office at your coworker's laptop webcams. You probably see a lot of janky, crooked tape. (If you don't, please direct your coworkers to this page.) Not to be Petey Paranoia, but like, webcams are pretty easily hijacked, as evidenced by the CIA, that Black Mirror episode, that Mark Zuckerberg Instagram post, that Pennsylvania school district, and, well, tip of the iceberg and all that. There just may never be a more urgent tech security issue with a more simple solution.Yeah, tape will do the trick, but it can also damage your webcam if left on too long, and, well, you don't hang a picture with tape for a reason. The stuff peels. Here's a simple solution to all of the above. Nope Webcam covers aesthetically blend with your laptop while covering your webcam completely. Mounted with 3M adhesive that will last significantly longer than tape, these covers are also magnetic, allowing you to easily move them when you actually do need your webcam. And they're pretty cute, too, right?Reduced from $21.99, you can get a 6-pack of Nope webcam covers for $14.99.Explore other Best-Sellers in our store:

Peegar is an Arduinio-style electronics kit that you design programs for by dragging and dropping Scratch-style objects around in a browser; when you're done, the program is converted to a brief snatch of sound that you transmit through the board by plugging a standard audio cable into your device's headphone jack. (more…)

Moments after executing a meticulously-arranged marriage proposal—a flight in a small airplane, a "marry me" sign on the ground, the ring presentation—Darrell Hamilton Jr vomited at the feet of Rheanna Lopez, the object of his affection. She said yes!

Even the biggest, most expensive DSLR will shoot bad photos if the person behind the camera is a total dweeb. Instead of keeping it on auto and taking tons of unnecessary exposures, why not actually learn your camera’s manual controls? To get some expert instruction in the tools and theory behind capturing images, check out this Photography Masterclass.Understanding your camera settings is just step one of this comprehensive course. After learning to balance shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, you’ll take a deep dive into what actually makes a photo compelling: composition, subject, light, and post production. By studying situational photography, you'll gain insight into creating beautiful images no matter where you shoot.Additionally, the curriculum includes advanced training on choosing appropriate lenses, lighting, and setting up helpful stabilizing equipment. With 13 hours of high-quality content, you can start your path to photography mastery. You can pick up this Photography Masterclass for just $20 today.Explore other Best-Sellers in our store:

It may be too late to stop the selfie stick craze entirely, but the ARMOR-X Mini-Flexible Phone Tripod is valiantly attempting to anyway. This lightweight, ultra flexible tripod has infinite greater flexibility and functionality than a selfie stick, and actually looks like something a real photographer might use.The ARMOR-X is completely intuitive and easy to set up anywhere: on your couch, dashboard, surfboard, or even on bumpy surfaces like cliff faces (please watch your step). Made from stainless steel, high density foam, and hardened plastic, it's engineered for a life of adventure and is universally compatible with any smartphone up to 5.5 inches long. If you want, you can still do the selfie thing by adding a CR2032 button battery to use the Bluetooth remote shutter to snap pictures from a distance. This handy photography tool is on sale for 42% off - $19.99 - today.Explore other Best-Sellers in our store:

The perfect complement for your Techdirt I Invented E-Mail tee: a Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants tee from Techdirt, $20 and up.

Jesse Bright is a lawyer who also drives Uber; when Wilmington, North Carolina police Sgt. Kenneth Becker stopped him and insisted that he stop recording the stop because of a "new law," Bright kept on recording and kept on insisting that he was allowed to do so. (more…)

Popular Science once recommended throwing old batteries in the fire because "the burning zinc may help prevent soot formation, and the metals and chemicals make colorful flames." The November 1951 tip was bad advice, writes Snopes, but not so bad then as now: batteries a half-century ago contained different chemicals, were unsealed, and less likely to explode.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDq8jGXl78k

If you're convicted of a crime in Orange County, you can shell out thousands of dollars to be housed in Seal Beach's fancy "pay to stay" jail, which made $365,000 in the last fiscal year by aggressively marketing its "work release, flat screen TVs, computer/media room, clean facility, new beds" to deep-pocketed criminals, who pay $100 a night to stay there rather than one of Orange County's notoriously violent, dirty jails. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_lq-a5x3NoCarrie Poppy is one half of the Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast (previously), a skeptical look at fringe science and paranormal claims whose hosts distinguish themselves by their compassionate, open-minded approach to their subjects, fuelled in part by their upbringing in evangelical Christianity, a faith they've both since renounced. (more…)

"What happens when you pump 20,000 joules into a watermelon?" rhetorically asks The Backyard Scientist. "Two words. Pink Mist."

An artist calling himself "Saint Hoax" is removing the headlines from 1950s and 1960s advertisements, and applying quotes from Donald Trump. (Thanks, Matthew!)(more…)

Unbelievably, after being held for hours at the Ft Lauderdale-Hollywood airport and questioned about his religion two weeks ago, Muhammad Ali Jr was detained at another airport today. This time, it was at Reagan National Airport, boarding a domestic flight on his way to Fort Lauderdale.Spurred by the first ludicrous detainment he endured, Ali had spent yesterday testifying in front of congress about "putting a stop to such blatant discrimination," according to Miami New Times.Ali was then turned away from his flight today after being questioned about his date-of-birth, social security number and mother's name. It wasn't until he pulled out his passport – which one isn't supposed to need for a domestic flight – that they allowed him to board his plane.

Yesterday was the 20-year mark of Notorious B.I.G.'s death, and to pay tribute, Atlanta's "Action News" anchors Fred Blankenship and Mark Arum on WSB-TV ingeniously slipped in a bunch of Biggie's lyrics into their traffic report.A couple of them include: "I know you thought birthdays were the worst days but Thursdays might be the worse day," and "Ashley, Ashley, Ashley, can’t you see / these downtown delays keep hypnotizin’ me."How many more can you find?P.S. This isn't new for the duo – last year they honored the late A Tribe Called Quest rapper Phife Dawg, which you can see here:https://youtu.be/ZRujBI_vPSM

If you think your genetics are your own personal beeswax, think again. Amidst all the hoopla surrounding the Affordable Care Act this week, the House GOP quietly pushed forward a bill – HR 1313 – that would make it legal for employers to demand genetic testing from workers. Workers who refuse could be penalized for thousands of dollars.On Wednesday, a House committee approved the bill with "all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed," according to Business Insider.

Canyon or crack? Crack, obviously, since it's right there in the headline, but isn't it amazing? Especially with clouds photoshopped in to improve its virality coefficient.There's probably one of these on the plane you just boarded, lurking somewhere the hard-pressed engineers and inspectors might have missed. They have even less time than you do! Metaphorically speaking, of course. Go on, just look out the window, at the wing. Bit of rust around those bolts, eh? Well, they do say that an old, well-maintained plane is safer than a new, badly-maintained one.If the worst happens, though, and you find yourself plunging into the void of death from 30,000 feet, you can muse over a final flicker of wonderment: maybe in the next life I'll wake up in a tiny canyon.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO5gPdJxe_o

Japan's Mt. Tateyama in the Hida Mountains is considered one of the snowiest spots on the planet. More than 125 feet of snow can fall on the region in a single year. Route 6 runs right through the Mt. Tateyama but just before you enter the tunnel, there's a 1/4 mile piece of highway called yuki-no-otani, or in English, Snow Canyon. The Toyama Prefectural Road Public Corporation is responsible for plowing the road after winter. It takes about a month. From Atlas Obscura:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV1Z3opHiBgAbigail Tucker, author of "The Lion in the Living Room," explains what's going on when cats hop into boxes: imagination. "Our houses are strange places for apex predators to live 24/7. A lot of cats are just hopelessly bored."Here's more from Cat Health.

Colossal has a gallery of Australian designer and illustrator Dan McPharlin's Analogue Miniatures -- "a marvel of papercraft. The tiny analogue synthesizers and pieces of recording equipment were pieced together with paper, framing mat board, string, rubber bands and cardboard."Check out the full set here.

In Los Angeles, people convicted of crimes can sometimes pay extra money to stay in comfortable city jails, like the Beverly Hills City Jail, instead of crowded, dangerous county jails. The LA Times reports that "allowing some defendants to avoid the region’s notoriously dangerous county jails has long rankled some in law enforcement who believe it runs counter to the spirit of equal justice.

iRuler.net detects the dimensions and resolution of your display and then displays a rule upon it. In the photo above, I've placed a real ruler on the screen (above) to verify the accuracy of the iRuler (below). Good enough for me!

A group of artists placed signs in NYC subway cars that look like standard "If You See Something, Say Something" signs, but they contain additional information. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvbqxBUG_cThe new Zelda game has rave reviews for its open-world gameplay and dreamy looks, but its Video Game Dunkey's gameplay recording that finally convinced me to actually buy a Nintendo Switch. There's some salty language, but it's all good!

MNTNT's Albert Clock is a clock that presents the hours and minutes as simple math problems. Is it annoying or engaging? Or.... both!

Virtually every cent raised by Geert Wilders, a notorious Islamophobic candidate in the upcoming Dutch elections, has come from a clutch of secretive American millionaires, led by David Horowitz, who calls Wilders "the Paul Revere of Europe." (more…)

Alan writes, "For a while, I wondered what the RFID chip looked like inside the front cover of a US passport. Yesterday, I had an x-ray image of my passport taken. Looks pretty cool. Chip is in the left upper front of the book, connected coiled wire (high-rez)."

The thing with my Miriam Black books is, they’re all named after birds. It starts with Blackbirds, then moves to Mockingbird, The Cormorant, and now, Thunderbird. (If I can write one called Blue-Footed Booby, I will, so don’t tempt me, goddamnit.) Part of the reason for that is the mystic, supernatural symbolism sometimes associated with birds (particularly as psychopomps), and also because Miriam eventually through the story gains the ability to control birds by entering their minds. At the start of Thunderbird, she, umm, requires the help of some vultures to complete a task.Now, vultures are pretty bad-ass birds. We don’t think of them as such – we think of them as lazy, dull scavengers, but that’s not true at all.We have a local animal rescue near us, and they do a lot of work with rehabilitating birds – or housing birds that cannot be rehabilitated – and so I got to meet and study some vultures, and learn some charming facts about these gorgeous and grotesque harbingers of death.Let us begin.1.) Vultures are not only scavengers. We think of them as picking meat off roadkill, but make no mistake, some vultures are happy to go predator when it suits them. Black vultures in particular sometimes perform acts of predation on livestock. They’ll besiege baby cows and eat them alive. They’ll even find a larger cow—usually a sick one—and mob its back and peck out its eyes. (They do not generally attack healthy livestock, however.)2.) Vultures have featherless scalps because it makes it all the easier for them to plunge their entire faces into a carcass. It makes sure they can easily extract their heads from the body without also bringing up lots of parasites and other bacteria. It’s like bobbing for apples, except in this instance, the ‘apples’ are actually ‘half-rotten internal organs.’ Diagnosis: delicious.3.) I am nothing if not a fan of the collective nouns of various animals. Vultures share two collective nouns. When in flight, they are a kettle of vultures. When on the ground, gathered to feed, they are a wake of vultures.4.) Vultures are associated with various burial rituals. In Tibet, a corpse is left upon a mountain to be disposed of, in part, by vultures. In Zoroastrian tradition, bodies are left upon a raised structure – a Tower of Silence – where carrion birds like vultures are meant to cleanse the body of its flesh.5.) Vultures pee on their feet to keep cool. But really, who doesn’t?6.) Vultures can weaponize their own barf. Yes, that’s right. No, you didn’t misread that. See, vultures like to feed on the most disgusting food imaginable — dead things. As such, their intense digestive systems house a rather toxic slurry of rancid, ruined food. When threatened, a vulture can disgorge this vital slurry onto an attacker – meaning, they projectile barf the nastiest hell-soup onto whoever would dare to interrupt their meal. (Which also lightens them for a fast flight away.) Pro-tip: don’t interrupt a vulture’s meal.7.) Vultures are a vital part of an ecosystem, but can be threatened by those who think of them as vicious predators or as disease-carriers. They are also vulnerable to cars, to pesticides, to other poisons. Many of India’s vultures are nearly extinct, now: where once there were 80 million white-rumped vultures, for instance, now there are only a few hundred thousand. Why is this? Livestock in the country were fed an anti-inflammatory drug, diclofenac, that was fatal to vultures. Vultures would swoop in, eat the dead and disposed-of livestock, and perish. A healthy ecosystem includes scavengers, and that means a healthy ecosystem involves vultures. (Consider donating to projects aimed at saving vulture populations in Asia and around the world.)Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He’s the author of many published novels, including but not limited to: Blackbirds, The Blue Blazes, the YA Heartland series, and the New York Times bestselling series Star Wars: Aftermath; the third book in the trilogy, Empire’s End is out this February. He is co-writer of the short film Pandemic and the Emmy Award–nominated digital narrative Collapsus. Wendig has contributed over two million words to the game industry. His collaborative comic book project, The Sovereigns will be released from Dynamite in April. He is also well known for his profane-yet-practical advice to writers, which he dispenses at his blog, TerribleMinds.com, and through several popular ebooks, including The Kick-Ass Writer, published by Writers Digest. He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with wife, tiny human, and dog.Image: Wikimedia/Ayush1025

The new Panasonic Stain Master machines have an intensive stain-removal mode which is being marketed in India as a curry-stain removal button; it also has other Indian-focused modes, such as one for removing hair oil. They are planning other Stain Masters customized for other Asian markets with stain-removal buttons tailored to their national cuisines and stubbourn stains. (more…)

Two of the NSA's mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden are Prism (which give the NSA "bulk data" access to the servers of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others) and Upstream (through which the NSA taps the internet's fiber optic backbones). Both are possible because of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires this year. (more…)

It's not a parody, apparently: "You eat a coffee for lunch. You follow through on your follow through. Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a doer. In doers we trust." As Nick Mamatas says, "Back in the 1990s, this ad would be the result of billboard liberation."

Wikileaks' seismic Vault 7 release didn't follow the usual Wikileaks procedure: perhaps in response to earlier criticism, the organization redacted many of the files prior to their release, cutting names of CIA operatives and the sourcecode for the cyber-weapons the CIA had developed, which exploit widely used mobile devices, embedded systems, and operating systems. (more…)

It's time to go full Katy Perry in the shower (or Frozen, or Slipknot - whatever you're into, no judgements here) with this waterproof Bluetooth Speaker.This speaker is easy to install in your shower and streams audio from your smartphone or computer, giving you a nice background chorus in the mornings. With a built-in microphone and speakerphone, it'll even let you talk on the phone while you're getting cleaned up if it really is that urgent of a call. Intuitive control buttons allow you to adjust the volume, fast forward, skip back, pause or play with the touch of a button, and with six hours of playback time, 120 hours of standby time and a water resistant loud speaker, this Bluetooth Shower Speaker will be your shower companion for weeks at a time.Like we said, no judgements on what you do with it, just wanted you to know it's available now for just $9.99.Explore other Best-Sellers in our store:

One of the most interesting series ever is Closer To Truth, which "presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions." For instance: is mathematics invented or discovered? (more…)

Street artist Plastic Jesus recruited artists to affix signs at construction sites and fenced-off lots around the country that say "Lot Reserved for: Future Interment Camp." Download and print your own here. (more…)