The deadly 2013 El Reno tornado was 2.5 miles (4 km) wide and killed a team of tornado experts. But as Anton Seimon explains, his colleagues turned that tragedy into an opportunity to confirm a key element of tornado formation. Through crowdsourcing, his team was able to demonstrate that this kind of tornado forms from the ground up, not from the clouds downward.Image: YouTube / National Geographic Read the rest

Southland Tales has long occupied a special place in my heart. The only thing I knew about it was that it was written and directed by Richard Kelly, the guy who made Donnie Darko, and starred my cousin's former high school baseball teammate, the Rock, in a dramatic role. So I ordered it on Netflix DVD in the summer of 2007, and popped it in while I did some laundry, only half paying attention.Reader, Southland Tales is not a movie to half-pay attention to. Hell, even your full attention won't do it justice.I was so confused by the end of that first viewing that I went and read the Wikipedia plot summary, which made it sound like the most ambitiously epic end-of-days political sci-fi movie based on the Book of Revelations. So I immediately re-watched it … and still only barely understood what was being implied as a "plot" that fit kind of loosely within the framework of that Wikipedia plot summary. Then my roommates came home, and I forced them to watch it with me — my third viewing of the day — and frankly, I still don't think they've forgiven me.I have remained fascinated by this glorious trainwreck of a movie ever since that first accidental triple-viewing, even seeking out bootlegs of the infamous Cannes cut (which is neither better, nor worse, but rather, a different disaster of beautiful ambition). I'm not alone in this captivation; the movie has developed a cult following of people who love it both for and in spite of itself. Read the rest

Twitter, JPMorgan, and other organizations have announced they will stop using racially-charged coding and hardware terms like master, slave, blacklist, whitelist, and others as part of a thorough review of best practices around value-neutral terminology in programming and technology.Via Reuters:JPMorgan appears to be the first in the financial sector to remove most references to these racially problematic phrases, and it comes after the bank has said it is taking other steps to promote Black professionals and anti-bias culture training for staff.Columbia Business School programming professor Mattan Griffel said such terms have long been controversial and can be difficult to change. The technology that underpins bank operations is often a spaghetti-like mess that results from merged companies, decades-old code and third-party systems, and any change can have cascading effects that are difficult to predict, Griffel said.Twitter engineer Regynald Augustin described what they have been working on even before the killing of George Floyd brought even more urgency to the process:Twitter eng recently shared that we would be making the language in our code, docs, and configs more inclusive. I want to speak on how we got here and what we’ve done so far.https://t.co/87RybaAiYA— Regynald (@negroprogrammer) July 2, 2020Open source projects like GitHub are also making strides to update terminology.Twitter engineers pushed to replace ‘master’ and ‘slave’ programming terms (The Verge) Read the rest

Between work, family obligations, and just getting to bed at a decent hour, we all have a lot on our plates these days. So, it’s easy for things like grooming and skincare to never be a high-priority issue.That is until they become a high priority issue. Like when your face constantly breaks out. Or when it dries out and flakes or cracks like the desert. Or when everyone you know asks why you look so tired or pale or just generally awful lately.Eventually, self-realization happens, and that's when we finally head over to the skincare aisle, where we are promptly overwhelmed by all the creams, washes, and masks that we can't hope to make heads or tails of.To cut through all that noise, Geologie has tried to boil basic men’s skincare down to easy to follow essentials. Because let’s face it: No one has the time or energy to figure out what the heck retinol and niacinamide are.Geologie is men’s skincare reinvented and utterly simplified. When you go to the Geologie website, you take a quick 30-second diagnostic quiz about your skincare trouble areas. From there, Geologie whips up a customized four-step regimen that specifically addresses your skin and your priorities, then ships a 30-day trial supply right to your door for $37.All the Geologie products are built to be powerful, effective, and simple with clinically-proven active ingredients that get you results.Each morning, spend 60 seconds using the Everyday Face Wash to rinse away dead skin cells, then clean up with a blast of the Vital Morning Face Cream moisturizer-slash-SPF. Read the rest

The story is legendary. Nearly 50 years ago, a whale beached itself on the shores near Florence, Oregon. Its carcass was "dealt with" with dynamite by city officials, causing the blubber to fly! Now, the coastal city has opened the Exploding Whale Memorial Park to commemorate the incident.Oregonlive.com:Florence, near where the whale -- or as a KATU reporter referred to it at the time “a stinking whale of a problem” -- washed up, is finally honoring this beautiful moment in history with a new park.It was the people of Florence who picked the name Exploding Whale Memorial Park.“We asked the community for name suggestions, narrowed those 120-plus names down to nine, and had the community vote on them,” said Florence city project manager Megan Messmer.The park offers views of the Siuslaw River and Bridge and the sand dunes on the south side of the river, according to the City of Florence’s website.There are picnic tables and a shelter and a multi-use path, but, sadly, no whale carcasses, exploded or otherwise.But there is a whale mascot. (RED)Thanks, Juke! Read the rest

As many parts of the United States have seen huge upticks in spontaneous evening fireworks, one anxiety-filled dog has finally had enough in this cute Late Show cold open.On a more serious note, if your pandemic pal(s) are having a hard time with fireworks, Cesar Milan (aka The Dog Whisperer) has a ton of useful tips for helping our canine friends weather the fireworks season.Image: YouTube / CBS Read the rest

America First was a protectionist movement in the early 20th century whose name ultimately became the slogan of those opposed to fighting the Nazis. Revived by the Trump campaign in 2016, its antisemitic associations galvanized supporters while alarming wavering Republicans; his use of the phrase was a key moment in the forming of the "Never Trump" movement among conservative pundits. To help win re-election, he's selling T-shirts with the phrase, using a design that's unusually close to the Nazi parteiadler emblem. The potential for similarity between generically patriotic "American Eagle" designs and the the German imperial eagle (especially the Nazi iterations of it) means great care is usually taken to avoid specific elements of the parteiadler and reichsadler emblems. For Trump's nativist followers, though, such things are feature, not bugs.This is usually the point where "It's a Roman eagle!" is uttered. And so it is. Just like the salute. Read the rest

There was already enough concern about the healthy state of our drinking water before COVID-19. And while there’s no evidence that the coronavirus has ever been detected in the water supply, the general sense of fear surrounding any type of contamination is obviously at a fever pitch everywhere. Contaminants like lead, chromium, arsenic, copper, mercury, chlorine, and fluoride show up in water systems all the time. That’s a nightmare no one wants to endure, which is why creations like the GOpure Pod Water Purifier are being embraced by health-conscious men and women everywhere.Unlike faucet filters or filtration pitchers, the GOpure is billed as the smallest, most convenient portable water purifier on the planet. Less than five inches long, the pod can be dropped into any glass, water bottle, pitcher or other containers of water — and the device acts like a magnet, attracting and neutralizing all the pollutants that can be found in typical drinking water.The revolutionary technology inside the pod is an advanced core made of diatomaceous earth and trace silver that attracts, binds and absorbs heavy metals, bacteria, impure or inorganic chemicals and everything else that can foul your water. It even leeches any properties that affect the taste and smell of the water as well.Of course, it’s not all about subtraction. The GOpure also adds back important minerals and raises the pH level to 7.4, considered to be a perfectly safe drinking experience.Each pod filters the equivalent of 2,000 single-use plastic water bottles. Read the rest

Move over, vintage fingerboards. Mr. Manos has arrived with vintage martial arts films, featuring finger ninjas.The battle with Red Master above has the coolest combination of outfits and action, but they are all pretty impressive. To view the full series from the beginning, start here:Mr. Manos is a spinoff from Action Icons, a channel that curates amazing action sports content. Mr. Manos has been posting some green screen testing over on their Instagram, so it looks as if even more excitement is in store! View this post on Instagram Our very first green screen test. “The Journey Begins” in full color. Full Clip on YouTube #mrmanos x #actionicons #fingerfighting #fingerkungfu #punchingpointersA post shared by Mr. Manos (@the.mr.manos) on Jun 10, 2020 at 7:01pm PDTYouTube: Mr. Manos Read the rest

Is it hot in here...?Watch ten years of the Sun doing its thing in this 61-minute-long high-def timelapse video. The footage comes from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) which captured an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds from June 1, 2010 to June 1, 2020,. Impressive!From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system...This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions. (RED)screengrab via NASA Goddard Read the rest

This "Hamilton" parody song justifiably asks, "Can we maybe just all agree to wear a tiny flipping mask?!"I am not throwing away this mask. I am not throwing away this mask. This really should be bipartisan. Come on now, how hard is it? I am not throwing away this mask.screengrab via The Holderness Family/YouTube Read the rest

I don't need any more stringed-instruments; I have my main electric guitar; a backup electric; another electric that's strictly for sentimental decor and only occasional strumming; an acoustic-electric; an electric bass; an upright dulcimer; a lap-steel guitar; and a mandolin. But I definitely want more instruments (specifically a high-end Dreadnought acoustic and/or one of several hollow bodies I've been eyeing). So whenever I see a music sale coming up, I take a look, just in case.Which is how I found myself flipping through Guitar Center's 4th of July Sale, and stumbled on these disgusting beasts.These special edition Game of Thrones Fender Custom Shop guitars were released in April 2019, and run between $25,000 and $35,000 a piece. Yes, you read that right: twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand dollars. And according to Fender, they each take around 100 hours to make, which makes them a little less absurdly priced, but still completely unnecessary.Even if I had that kind of money, I don't think I'd go much higher than this $4,350 thinline semi-hollow Telecaster (hint hint). I genuinely cannot fathom who the market is for these hideous GoT axes. Was Fender approached by a Private Equity Consultant who encouraged them to target the niche market of a billionaire trustfund babies who love fantasy and collect guitars to display in their homes?The $30,000 Lannister Jaguar (center) does come with a 24K gold leaf over on the front, back and headstock, as well as a gold-plated pickguard; the shiny finish on the body is actually just paint. Read the rest

In 1981, The Go-Go's blew up with "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Our Sealed," two tracks from their IRS records debut Beauty and the Beat that hit number one on the Billboard charts and went double platinum. What many don't realize though is that the band, who notably wrote and played all their own music, had been a mainstay in the Los Angeles punk underground since 1978, making the scene with The Germs, X, and Fear. I can't wait for this new Showtime documentary about The Go-Go's pegged on the release of their first album in two decades, titled "Club Zero." Read the rest

Toothbrushes might seem like a good idea for scrubbing small areas, but they are not angled properly for the job and they wear out fast. The OXO good grips deep clean brush set has two brushes and a wiper blade designed for cleaning tile grout and other hard to reach areas. Read the rest

Chinese newspaper Global Times reports that "Australia is waging an intensifying espionage offensive against China - sending agents to China to spy, gather intelligence and recruit assets, instigating defection among Chinese nationals, spying on Chinese students and organizations in Australia, feeding fake news to media to hype up the 'China espionage theory' and even in early years attempting to install wiretaps in the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, the Global Times has learned from a source with a Chinese law-enforcement agency.The paper even has photos of the tools used by the Downunder spies to ply their nefarious trade: "espionage equipment, US dollars and Chinese yuan used for espionage funds, and the intelligence information they were going to exchange." Nothing Q-like at all. Disappointing! [via Bruce Sterling] Read the rest

This Public Restroom By A River from r/interestingasfuckI don't know where this riverside relief room resides, but I like the view. I'm guessing it's not in the US, since a) it hasn't been tagged and vandalized, and b) the door says WC. Read the rest

Logitech’s MX Keys [Amazon] is what it finally took to lure me away from mechanical keyboards. It’s a slim yet solidly-constructed full-size model that's similar to and superior to Apple's Magic Keyboard.It’s flat, minimalist, heavy, solid and low-profile, with large backlit keys typeset in something similar to Futura Light. The keys are square with subtle circular depressions and no give—a big improvement over the wobbly chicklet keys infesting modern non-mechanical keyboards, not least Logitech’s own cheaper models. It works with USB-C, BlueTooth or the included unifying receiver. (A tiny dongle; I use it instead of BlueTooth as it works in BIOS and I dual-boot). The function keys are on a shift layer, as is now standard. Modifier keys are labeled for both Windows and MacOS, a nice if slightly cluttering touch. Keys are hard to remove; spudge them from the top. The backlighting works even in wireless mode, but will run down the battery quicker. Recharging is via USB-C; there is no removable battery. It's lasted about 10 days so far on the charge it came with. A Logitech app lets a single keyboard and mouse pair be used with any computer on the network, so long as it's installed on both machines.The MX Keys is essentially the $200 MX Craft [Amazon] without the dial or the bulky rear panel that accomodates it. At $100, the MX Keys is not cheap, but is also no more expensive than similar models such as Apple's or Microsoft's Designer Desktop.The extra heft and weight is nice, but it's the extra travel and tactility that puts it in a league of its own. Read the rest

Over a million people started playing a game called "Finger on the App" yesterday morning. Right now, 24 hours and 21 minutes since the start of the game, 92 82 people are still playing. To win, you have to be the last person with your finger touching your smartphone screen. The winner will get up to $25,000.Taping a hotdog to the screen won't work. From the FAQ:To play Finger On The App you put your finger on your phone and keep it there for as long as possible. Occasionally we will prompt you to slide your finger to a specific location. That’s it! Whoever stays on longest wins.Some players are livestreaming:This brings to mind the 1969 movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, the 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body, and the 2015 Reddit meta-game The Button. Read the rest

More than half of you think the best way to manage your passwords is to just keep ‘em safely stashed away in your own noggin. Meanwhile, there are also bunches of you that favor saving passwords in your browser, putting them in a spreadsheet or just writing them down on a piece of paper or a sticky note.These are all sucker bets. And you know it.Passwords protect all our computers and other devices and, more importantly, the most valuable information about us. Our emails, our social security numbers, our bank access information is all only as secure as the weak system we use to safeguard them. And to be clear, anything less than a dedicated app service like the Cyclonis Password Manager is a weak system.With Cyclonis, you only need to create one master password. With that protection, Cyclonis then automatically creates, encrypts and stores unique, long-tail passwords for every login, site, and other password-protected places you go to on the web. Or have Cyclonis analyze your passwords, and it’ll estimate your password strength and offer tips and tricks on how to immediately improve it.When you need to enter a password, Cyclonis will instantly fill in all the details and you log in to your account with a single click. It’ll even notify you when a website password is old and should be updated. Meanwhile, your Cyclonis protection can sync across all your devices so access is covered from your laptop, smartphone, tablet and anywhere else you try to get into one of your accounts. Read the rest

Police in Salerno, Italy made the largest drug seizure in history: 15.4 tons of amphetamines valued at US$1.12 billion. The Guardia di Finanza say that the pills—found inside three shipping containers at the port—were produced by ISIS in Syria. Scanners didn't detect the haul but police knew to expect them. From CNN:"We weren't able to see them but we knew it was arriving because of our ongoing investigations we have with the Camorra (Italian organized crime group)," [Commander Domenico Napolitano] said[...]The Camorra bring the drugs to Italy and take a cut for helping to distribute them, Napolitano added.The pills carried the "Captagon" logo, which "distinguishes the 'drug of Jihad,'" according to the statement.[...]"The hypothesis is that during the lockdown, due to the global epidemiological emergency, the production and distribution of synthetic drugs in Europe has practically stopped and therefore many traffickers with different organized crime groups have turned to Syria, where it does not seem to have slowed down," police said.[...]Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. It is no longer produced or used, but drugs carrying the Captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Read the rest

The UK today promised citizenship to 3 million people in Hong Kong, a day after the city was effectively annexed by China. A former British colony established in the 1840s, Hong Kong was returned to Chinese administration in 1997 on the condition that it remain autonomous and democratic for fifty years. About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be able to come to the UK for five years.And after a further year, they will be able to apply for citizenship.British National Overseas Passport holders in Hong Kong were granted special status in the 1980s but currently have restricted rights and are only entitled to visa-free access to the UK for six months. Read the rest

"Have fun at home with my old rubber boots," the creator writes.Avant-garde performance art or fetish video? You decide.One commenter's rave review: "Nice boots. Rubber seems to be very soft."(via r/DeepIntoYouTube) Read the rest

Musician/activist Evan Greer has released a new single called "Emma Goldman Would Have Beat Your Ass," to mark what would have been the 151st birthday (June 27th) of noted anarchist and feminist activist Emma Goldman. Greer writes:This tranarcho-punk song is inspired by the time Emma Goldman literally whipped her former mentor in front of a crowd of people because he snitched out and condemned her lover after he tried to assassinate a fascist robber baron. Look it up.If you purchase the song via BandCamp, all proceeds go to the Marsha P. Johnson institute. If you're interested in learning more about Goldman's radical life and philosophy, check out this collection of her writing from the University of Chicago and Archive.org; or via Project Gutenberg, LibriVox, and Anarchy Archives. I can't even remember which specific Goldman essays I've read and which ones I haven't, but suffice to say, I recommend them all. She was sometimes referred to as "the most dangerous woman in America," for saying things like:Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. Read the rest

Monica Ion is a London-based concept artist who has designed a number of mobile games for companies like Space Ape Games. And in her spare time, she explores other high-concept designs, such as horror movies rendered in a Pixar-esque style. View this post on Instagram My series of 4 studies of "What if Pixar did Alien?" Had a lot fun taking the atmosphere of the original Nostromo and making it more colourful and stylized. #digitalpaintings #artstudy #alien #alienart #artistsoninstagram #digitalpaintings #visualdevelopment #visdevA post shared by Monica Ion (@monica_ion_art) on Apr 22, 2019 at 4:02am PDTYou can buy prints of these terrifyingly adorable images from her Inprnt Gallery. Read the rest

Back in the ancient times of the 1980s, if you wanted your thoughts quickly translated into text and didn’t want to spend all day transcribing all those meticulously archived notes yourself, you either needed to hire a secretary or a stenographer.Now, rather than spending thousands of dollars a year on an ultra-fast typist, technology and voice recognition has boiled that ability down to a trusty app. Dictanote (for the Chrome browser) lets you easily switch between using your keyboard and your voice to take any notes you want to keep.Dictanote brings together the versatility of a fully-featured notebook with AI-based speech recognition, making it easy for anyone to let notes spill out in their own words while magically appearing on their screen. Dictanote has built-in a Microsoft Word-type editor to help format notes, which are also downloadable as PDF or .docx files.While we can all think of some time-saving practical uses for Dictanote, it’s especially useful for those who conduct interviews or sift through loads of information, like journalists, lawyers, podcasters, students or professional transcriptionists.With Dictanote, it’s truly as simple as hitting the record button to dictate an email, meeting notes or even a to-do list. You can also just snap a picture of a sketch and then see that image translated to text with 90 percent accuracy. In fact, the makers of Dictanote claim their app outperforms most offline services, including the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking.Dictanote even has a few tricks up its sleeve, like a set of voice commands that allow you to put some form and structure to your notes, all with the use of your voice. Read the rest

If you’re invested in learning a new craft or even just elevating your abilities in a current skill, you likely want access to as much information as possible to help expand your talents. Different learning courses can definitely aid that pursuit, but it’s often tough to know exactly what’s included in any coursework and whether it adequately covers the topics you want to know. Because if you don’t know it, how do you know you’ll get to know exactly what you need to know, you know?The answer is...volume. In The Pro Photography and Photoshop 20 Course Bundle, we’ll get access to a virtual avalanche of photography training that’s truly exhaustive and ready to help address any of their picture-taking questions.Not three, not five, not even a dozen courses, this bundle packages together 20 separate courses housing a colossal 120 hours of photography training that should set you up to learn all the steps and methods to take great pictures with every click.Of course, it all starts with the basics, which is why the Photography Master Class is the perfect introduction. First-time students grasp concepts like exposures, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and more so that by the end of the course, the Auto mode is off forever and they’re making the minute adjustments in Manual mode from now on that make all the difference.Meanwhile, Photoshop, its Adobe companion app Lightroom, and open-source editor GIMP are industry-standard image editing software and these courses dig into every facet of how to navigate these feature-rich apps like a pro. Read the rest

Look, nobody wants to be talking about unclogging a toilet. There are few tasks more unsavory anywhere on a homeowner’s to-do list.Unfortunately, everything that ends up swirling its way down your porcelain throne doesn’t always find its final destination in the sewage system below. If a child decides to flush half the contents of a bathroom counter, you’re likely looking at a call to a plumber and a bill that could end up topping $300. Or it could just be an incident so vile you don’t even want to get too close. Possibly ever again. We get it. So instead of dropping a huge chunk of change on a plumbing repair, the Toiletsaber lets you attack the problem yourself.The Toiletsaber is a revolutionary new unclogging tool with a unique J-shaped, flexible head that makes maximum contact with tough visible clogs and swiftly and neatly clears the problem. And just like other sabers, the one is well over two feet long, assuring that you and your hands never need to get anywhere close to the scene of the crime.The Toiletsaber head is designed to first rake any excess waste away from the waste trap, while the other side of the Toiletsaber can then snake through any remaining clog to clear the obstruction.And as opposed to that disgusting plunger, the Toiletsaber wipes clean in seconds and its shatterproof, chemical resistant frame doesn’t become a breeding ground for gross bacteria.The Toiletsaber is also lightweight and safe to use with any toilet without ever scraping or leaving any scratches behind. Read the rest

The critters at the Atlanta Botanical Garden look oddly … metallic?From the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering:Their newly developed SlothBot is built to study animals, plants and the overall environment below them by moving as little as possible. It inches along overhead cables only when necessary, charging itself with solar panels to monitor factors like carbon dioxide levels and weather for as long as possible — possibly for years. It even crawls toward the sunlight to ensure it stays charged.The 3D-printed shell helps SlothBot blend in (at least in areas where sloths live) while sheltering its equipment from the rain.The robot will start by watching over the Atlanta Botanical Garden for several months, hanging from a lone 100-foot cable.The adorableness appears to be an incidental bonus.‘SlothBot in the Garden’ Demonstrates Hyper-Efficient Conservation Robot [Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering:] Read the rest

Note-taking is more than just cribbing information so it’s easier to study for a test later. Notes are taken by active learners engaging with the information. In fact, the act of taking notes is actually internalizing that information with the learner. Students who take notes are actually seven times more likely to remember those facts a week later than those who didn’t take notes. So all that information you want to make sure you don’t forget actually stands a much better chance of being remembered without notes -- simply because you took notes. Of course, notations and stray thoughts are part of virtually any workflow. So Notebag is a note-taking app that seeks to make taking notes as easy and, most importantly, as unobtrusive as possible. A no. 1 Product of the Day on ProductHunt, Notebag creator Richard Blechinger built the app for modern note-taking with a sharp focus on making all your notation steps accessible directly from your keyboard. There’s no more opening up browsers or other apps to jot down information with Notebag. The app lets users access quick global keyboard shortcuts to automatically search for facts, drop links, categorize note topics, see instant previews, and several other features. Meanwhile, Notebag also brings a ton of other valuable tricks to the note taker’s arsenal, all without slowing down the creative flow. Markdowns can happen with their own instant previews (so no need for a preview pane to type) and all formatting is automatic, though editable.Since notes often come about during a stream of consciousness diversion, they can also be easy to forget within a short time. Read the rest

Back in March, when we were all being asked to stay in our homes for God knows how long, you probably thought about a whole host of tasks you’d love to accomplish with all this new-found downtime in your house.Like many, maybe you thought this would be a good opportunity to plow through that stack of unread books that have been building up on your bedside table for the past few years now. So...how did that go for you?If you got through even one, you can count that a success. But you can also consider it a missed opportunity because with the right training, you probably could have ripped through the entire batch.Speed reading isn’t a superpower. It’s actually a process for onboarding information that anyone can learn. The courses in The Speed Reading and Memory Mastery Bundle can help you sharpen up those skills so you can read exponentially faster, retain more of what you read and even hone your memory to lock more of that information in your brain for longer.The collection includes five courses that present sound strategies for boosting your reading speed, increasing your comprehension and retention, and improve cognitive function to recall and recite your new-found information even years after learning it.First, The Ultimate Speed Reading Course is your introduction, breaking down your bad reading habits and teaching you new methods that can, in many cases, boost your current reading speed by at least two to three times. Guided by speed reading experts, the course lays out the five causes of slow reading, the four techniques you can use to reach your maximum reading potential, and even the secret to understanding everything you read the first time. Read the rest

I've had the pleasure of attending several Ignite events. They consist of a bunch of five-minute lightning talks on a wide variety of topics. You can watch previous talks here.There is a live-streamed Ignite event happening tonight at 6 PM Pacific Time and the lineup looks intriguing.The topics include historical tales of fancy pigeon feather theft, how to micro-dose, and how to get safely arrested while protesting the hegemony. Plus, we'll be joined by an epidemiologist from UNC and the woman who's been adding art to SF's boarded-up storefronts.Find out more here.Our speakers:Hope Williams - Coordinated Acts of Civil DisobedienceMonica Guzman - 7 words to keep your world from shrinkingCecily Mak - C L E A R L I F EKelly Jensen - Fancy Pigeons Are a ThingChris Taylor - The how, what and why of microdosingJeremy Conrad - The History of CocktailPaula Chowles - The Art of Documentary Filmmaking in a Streaming WorldMya Roberson - When COVID-19 and racism collideInga Bard - Birthing a RenaissanceRobert Strong - Learn How the Brain is Tricked While Learning a TrickConnie Yang - Modern matriarchal societiesKevin Kelly - Journey in a Time MachineMellina White Cusack - Attention White People: Your #BLM memes are not enough Read the rest

John Park used a 3D printer, some Sugru moldable glue, and a variety of Adafruit electronics components to build this nifty robot companion based on Pathfinder from the game Apex Legends. I also entered Sugru's drawing for a free 3D printer. Read the rest

Starkey Spring Water, made by Whole Foods, has "at least three times the level of every other brand tested," Consumer Reports found. In fact, many of the other 45 brands tested contained undetectable amounts of arsenic, while the Whole Foods brand butted up against the maximum amount permitted by Federal regulations (10 parts per billion). The water, sold mainly in Whole Foods markets and on Amazon, has "concerning levels of arsenic," the watchdog group says, and is "potentially harmful."From Consumer Reports:CR recently tested dozens of bottled water brands and found that Starkey Spring Water, introduced by Whole Foods in 2015, had concerning levels of arsenic, ranging from 9.49 to 9.56 parts per billion (ppb), at least three times the level of every other brand tested. Federal regulations require manufacturers to limit the amount of arsenic, a potentially dangerous heavy metal, in bottled water to 10 ppb.Consumer Reports’ experts believe that level does not adequately protect public health.CR also tested samples of Starkey Spring Water in 2019, finding levels of arsenic that approached or exceeded the federal limit: Three samples ranged from 9.48 to 9.86 ppb of arsenic; a fourth registered 10.1 ppb. Those results are cited in two pending consumer lawsuits over Starkey’s arsenic content.Although one bottle shouldn't do any harm, “regular consumption of even small amounts of the heavy metal over extended periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and lower IQ scores in children, and poses other health issues as well,” says James Dickerson, chief scientific officer at Consumer Reports. Read the rest

Legendary guitarist, producer, and composer Nile Rodgers—co-founder of Chic—tells the story of transforming David Bowie's "Let's Dance" from its original "folky" vibe into the post-funk masterpiece we know and love.And for more, dig the below demo of "Let's Dance" that Rodgers shared in 2018 on what would have been Bowie's 71st birthday:(via Kottke) Read the rest

Exploding Topics is a newsletter that presents terms and words that are trending in Google Search. The latest newsletter looks at Dermaplaning (using a "scalpel to shave layers of dead skin cells from your face), SaaS SEO ("part of the 'extreme marketing specialization' metatrend"), Podcast Microphone, Back Market ("a marketplace for buying and selling refurbished electronics, like tablets and MacBooks)" and OMAD: Topic #3OMADOMAD stands for “One Meal a Day”.In other words, this diet is an extreme version of intermittent fasting. But instead of eating your first meal at noon, with OMAD you fast for 23 hours. And you spend the remaining hour eating a gigantic meal.OMAD proponents claim that the approach is easier to stick to long-term (because you can eat anything you want for your one meal).What’s interesting about OMAD is that it grew largely on Reddit. Then, radiated out into the mainstream. In fact, the r/OMAD subreddit has 138k members.What's next:OMAD is a spinoff of the massively popular intermittent fasting trend. Until recently, businesses struggled to capitalize on the trend. After all, how do you monetize not eating? But we’re starting to see a number of intermittent fasting products hit the market, like the Zero App and fasting tea.Whenever I see OMAD, I can't help but think of the Jack Kirby comic book OMAC: Read the rest

An MSNBC reporter asked Trump cultists at a rally in Phoenix why they wouldn't wear a mask. The answers they gave him didn't make a lot of sense. “It’s not about the mask,” said a woman. “It’s about the hypocrisy that it’s okay for tens of thousands of people to go and riot, to go and protest, but you cannot have a group of a thousand people -- I don’t know how many people are here, this is not okay.”Another fellow chimed in, "You talkin’ about that Covid-1984 bullshit?”Endangering seniors and people with compromised immune systems by becoming a virus vector is a weird way to own the libs.(Via Crooks and Liars) Read the rest

On Tabletop Witchcraft, John builds an amazing gladiatorial coliseum that is one of the most impressive tabletop builds I've seen in a while.It's also a surprisingly approachable build, if you have a world of patience and time (and ideally a Proxxon hot wire table). Most of it is just foam, toothpicks and skewers, and epoxy putty. He goes through the build step-by-step and even has plans available (US$7).Image: YouTube Read the rest

Netflix is rebooting Unsolved Mysteries, a true crime and paranormal event series that originally aired on various networks from 1987 to 2010."The original creators of Unsolved Mysteries and the producers of Stranger Things invite you to solve new mysteries." It premieres on July 1, 2020. I just wish the late Robert Stack could host it. Read the rest

Even with the laugh track added to Goodfellas, Joe Pesci is still as scary as hell. Read the rest

Porn star Ron Jeremy was charged today with rape and sexual assault, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office announced today. According to the charges, Jeremy, 67, raped three women and assaulted another in incidents dating back to 2014.Prosecutors allege Jeremy forcibly raped a 25-year-old woman at a home in West Hollywood in May 2014. Jeremy allegedly sexually assaulted two women, ages 33 and 46, on separate occasions at a West Hollywood bar in 2017. He is also accused of forcibly raping a 30-year-old woman at the same bar in July 2019. The D.A.’s office noted it investigated another incident involving Jeremy from 2016 but declined the case due to insufficient evidence.Jeremy was named in a 2017 Rolling Stone article about similar allegations dating back much further, ending his reputation as a "goofy, almost family-friendly totem of an industry." Read the rest

I'm almost finished reading Maria Konnikova's new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. It's an enthralling and funny first-hand account of her transition from a person who didn't know how many cards were in a deck into a professional, tournament-winning poker player.Maria is one of my favorite nonfiction authors.I've interviewed her about her other two books, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, both of which I recommend highly.The Atlantic has an excerpt from The Biggest Bluff:I enter a $60 daily tournament at Bally’s. It’s small, only two tables’ worth of players, but I feel a certain pride in watching the numbers dwindle to a single table, then eight, seven, six, until finally, I find myself in the final four. And it’s hard for me to contain my excitement when I flop a set (three of a kind) of nines, an excellent hand if ever there were. There’s a bet before me, and I joyously shove all my chips into the middle. This is it. All my learning is paying off. I will finally have my first tournament cash. I get called by a player who is hoping the dealer completes his flush, and to my horror, the flush hits. I’m out, and devastated.I almost leave it all right then and there. This game is so damn unfair. But there’s the knowledge, somewhere deep down, that it’s to confront that very seeming unfairness that I turned to poker in the first place; I resolve to play on. Read the rest

The UK's Royal Mail is issuing a series of 13 stamps honoring the band Queen. This issue follows prior rock stamps celebrating The Beatles and Pink Floyd. From Spin:“It’s hard to put into words what I feel when looking at these beautiful stamps,” Queen guitarist Brian May said in a release. “Since we four precocious boys started out on our quest 50 years ago, our lives have been devoted to making our impossible dream come true. Sometimes it’s strange to wake up and realize the position in which we are now held – we have become a national institution! And nothing brings this home more than this incredible tribute from Royal Mail. It’s particularly poignant to look at this collection of images now – now that we are all in a world dominated by a coronavirus, in which none of this could have happened. I just know that I [have] an overwhelming desire to own one of these sets! Somehow it will be a way of persuading myself that it really DID all happen!”The album-cover stamps include Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera, News of the World, The Game, Greatest Hits, The Works, and Innuendo. The live shots include Freddie Mercury from London’s Wembley Stadium in 1986; drummer Roger Taylor from London’s Hyde Park, 1976; bassist John Deacon at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1975; and May in Budapest in 1986. And the iconic centerpiece of the set comes from the group’s first-ever studio photoshoot at a Primrose Hill studio, which shot by Johnny Dewe Mathews. Read the rest

The Republicans behind The Lincoln Project are churning out anti-Trump ads on a daily basis, and their latest centers on the one scary truth that Trump shouted out at his failed Tulsa rally on Saturday: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, 'slow the testing down, please.'” After his handlers tried to say he was just kidding, he corrected them today outside the White House: “I don’t kid," he told reporters when they asked if what he said had been a joke. "Slow the testing down?" the narrator in the Lincoln Project ad asks. "Slow down our chance to save tens of thousands of lives. Slow down our understanding of where Covid is and how it's spreading. Slow down our steps to reopen our economy. Every single expert told him to test more and test faster. And now we know his response." Read the rest

The University of Cincinnati happily took a $2 million donation from the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation to build a stadium and name it Marge Schott Stadium, even though it was aware that Schott repeatedly praised Hitler and admitted to having a swastika armband at home. But suddenly, the university decided it wasn't such a good idea to have a stadium named after her, after all, and said it will rename it.From ESPN:Schott's foundation has encouraged discussions about naming rights. "While we cannot make excuses for the rhetoric made by Mrs. Schott decades ago, we can ask you to learn from Mrs. Schott's mistakes as well as her great love for Cincinnati," the foundation said in a statement this month. "We appreciate what these great organizations bring to Cincinnati and we fully support the decisions made by the organizations who have received grants from the Foundation."Image: YouTube Read the rest

In 2017, 50-year-old Mark Clark from Michigan scratched an instant lottery ticket with a special coin his father had given him and won $4,000,000. Using the same coin this week, he won another $4,000,000! “You don’t think you’ll win millions once, and you definitely never think it would happen twice,” he said to the Michigan Lottery. “It’s hard to put into words exactly what I am feeling. ...I can’t help but think maybe that lucky coin helped me win this.”Where can I get me one of them coins?Via APImage: Michigan Lottery Read the rest

In ten years, scientists hope to have mapped the entire ocean floor in high resolution. This week, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project announced that they've completed 20 percent of the map. A full mapping to "modern standards" is useful for conservation and also to support scientific understanding of ocean systems, weather, tsunami wave propagation, tides, and, of course, the impact of climate change. From the BBC News:The map at the top of this page illustrates the challenge faced by GEBCO in the coming years.Black represents those areas where we have yet to get direct echosounding measurements of the shape of the ocean floor. Blues correspond to water depth (deeper is purple, shallower is lighter blue)[...]This is information required to improve the models that forecast future climate change - because it is the oceans that play a critical role in moving heat around the planet. And if you want to understand precisely how sea-levels will rise in different parts of the world, good ocean-floor maps are a must.Much of the data that's been imported into the GEBCO grid recently has been in existence for some time but was "sitting on a shelf" out of the public domain. The companies, institutions and governments that were holding this information have now handed it over - and there is probably a lot more of this hidden resource still to be released.But new acquisitions will also be required. Some of these will come from a great crowdsourcing effort - from ships, big and small, routinely operating their echo-sounding equipment as they transit the globe. Read the rest

A copy of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables was restored magnificently by a "furniture restorer" in Spain, whose work challenges the illustrious heights of 2012's Beast Jesus of Zaragoza.The restorer made a second attempt, reports Europa Press, which lacks the Beast Jesus je ne sais quoi of his first effort but brings its own horror-movie corpse lady vibe to the table.When asking the author of the 'restoration' for explanations , he tried to 'solve' the problem, but the result of the work has been an image that has nothing to do with the original. Now, the collector has contacted another specialist, this one trained for this work, who will try to rehabilitate the work, says the owner, speaking to Europa Press. The vice president of Internal Relations and coordinator in the Valencian Community of the Professional Association of Conservative Restorations explains that aberrations like this are "unfortunately much more frequent than you think."Restorers warn of irreversible errors due to non-professional interventions [Machine translation, Google] Read the rest

Apple is to phase out Intel CPUs in favor of its own ARM-based chips, it announced yesterday at the WWDC trade show in California. ARM designs are more energy-efficient and Apple has shown they can deliver performance with recent models of the iPad Pro, which already uses the company's silicon. The big challenge will be software, reports the BBC. Apple demonstrated popular apps and a new version of its MacOS operating system at the event, but apps made for current hardware will not run natively.Apple said it had already developed native versions of several of its own apps, including Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro. iPhone and iPad apps will also be able to be run on the computers.Apple said that Microsoft was working on an optimised version of Office, and Adobe was developing a version of Photoshop.Other developers should be able to recompile their apps to get a version running "in just a matter of days," said the company's software chief Craig Federighi. He added that old apps would automatically be translated at point of installation to run, although they would not work as well.I'm eager to see one of these new models. I love how fast, responsive and straightforward my iPad Pro feels, but iPadOS's sandboxed apps make it so difficult to establish a functional file management workflow that I've never been able to use it as a workhorse. On the other hand, MacOS on new hardware will still be MacOS, won't it? Read the rest

If you create content for the web, you already know it takes time to build websites, write blog posts, create videos, produce graphics, and all the other steps that go into keeping a site healthy and flourishing.But even once all that work is done, there’s a second job that needs doing — and it’s arguably just as important as the creation itself. Now, you have to play the search engine optimization (SEO) game to promote your content. You have to identify keywords, build relevant links, and trick out every page to attract users and search engine traffic alike.Ranking high in Google searches can often be the only true route to getting your content the exposure it needs. Since SEO mastery is a skill not many of us possess, a service like Long Tail Pro can go a long way toward taking the headaches of SEO research off your hands.Long Tail Pro is one of the original online keyword research tools — and after 15 years of perfecting their craft, they’ve assembled a full suite of analysis features and a step-by-step system for discovering thousands of profitable keywords while calculating how much work it’ll take to make you competitive for each of those keywords in your given industry or topic niche.With Long Tail Pro, users can track their web ranking, analyze backlinks, and find the exact keywords that’ll resonate with their target audience. Users can search for the specific keywords they think will be effective, or get hundreds of keyword suggestions. Read the rest

I bought a USB microscope a few years ago because I wanted to examine kitchen knife edges after I sharpen them using different sharpeners. I'm still having fun with it. The tiny millipede in the video above is in a cup the size of a penny. Here are some images I've captured so far:Groovy Squirmy millipede.A Trader Joe's roasted and salted peanut. (See image full size)A playing card.My arm hair.A leaf, with what looks to be some kind of parasite.Smaller than a prescription pill bottle, the microscope has a USB cord that can be plugged into any computer. Download the software here and start looking up close at money, leaves, circuit boards, bugs, skin, hair, and anything else.The scope has a built-in, adjustable-brightness LED for illumination. The brightest setting is not always the best --- try different levels of illumination and let the software auto-adjust the contrast. I also learned that in order to see things at the maximum 250X magnification you need to follow the instructions in the FAQ.It comes with a suction-cup gooseneck mount that is very stable, and a plastic board with a grid pattern, which helps you align and locate the thing you are looking at. You can also simply hold the scope against things. The software takes still photos and videos, and hasn't crashed on me yet (the earlier version was buggy).For the price, the microscope is an amazingly entertaining device and I find myself grabbing it to check out all sorts of things, including splinters, skin cuts, bugs, and playing card designs. Read the rest