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I am hopeful that time will cure the 17 children mistakenly dosed with hair loss treatment.El País:An internal error at the pharmaceutical company Farma-Química Sur is the cause of a hypertrichosis outbreak that has so far affected 17 babies in Spain, sources from the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) has told EL PAÍS. The company accidentally sold a strong vasodilator, which is most commonly used to treat alopecia, or hair loss, as omeprazole, a drug used to treat heartburn and acid reflux.Hypertrichosis is also known as “werewolf syndrome” because it is characterized by an abnormal amount of hair growth over the body. The AEMPS, which works under the Health Ministry, was notified of a new case on Tuesday, which was diagnosed in the province of Granada in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. In total, 10 babies have been affected in Cantabria, four in Andalusia and three in Valencia. Read the rest

We stopped using disposable plastic bags for packing lunches a couple of years ago, opting instead for these Japanese-style faux bento boxes. They typically come with two stacking containers, and one of the containers is usually divided into two compartments. The Bentgo is just such a lunch box. It comes with an elastic band to keep the containers stacked and it also includes a knife, fork, and spoon. Amazon has it on sale right now for . Read the rest

This Moonman clear demonstrator is my showy fountain pen with a lot of crazy colored ink of choice.A few years back I bought a TWBSI Eco. I enjoyed using it and it became my black/red ink pen of choice. A color I used to use a lot of. I wanted another pen to fill up with some of the neat colors I've acquired over the last few years. The Moonman C1 is a great choice.The tank is huge and it looks really cool when filled with a teal or something crazy like Noodler's Rome Burning. I also enjoy that I can fill the huge tank and write all day without fear of running out.I enjoy living with out wonder as to ink level. My checking my beloved DuoFold involved inky fingertips.The fine nib writes like a fine nib and flows ink pretty well. The Rome Burning is pretty soupy and can gum things up. I ran about 1/3rd a tank of it thru the pen and I didn not have a problem. You can unscrew the nib so I am going to assume there are lots of medium, bent and other nibs available. It looks an awful lot like the nib on my TWBSI, but I do not have the pen handy to check.Moonman C1 Fountain Pen, Transparent Clear Acrylic Demonstrator, Fine Nib Gift Writing Pen Case Set via Amazon Read the rest

YouTuber Madilyn Bailey wrote a very nice song using haters' comments. [via Madilyn Bailey ]Image: Madilyn Bailey/YouTube Read the rest

Guinness World Record holder Michelle "Cardboard Shell" Lesco broke a new record by eating 86.35 oz of mayonnaise in 3 minutes.Image: Facebook/Guinness World Records Read the rest

Camouflage passports let people pretend to be a citizen of a country other than their own. This video explains the weird world of passports for countries that no longer exist, and how they are used.You can buy them online. Here's a place that sells camouflage passports and camouflage driver licenses.Image: YouTube Read the rest

The fifth annual World Robot Conference was open to the public in Beijing last Thursday, August 22, and this bionic flying bird based on a herring gull was one of the more spectacular sights. Other robots on show at the annual event in China included robo-superheroes, and Taiji-playing robots. Rough cut of video from Reuters is here (no reporter narration).[via] Read the rest

The host of 'Jeopardy,' Alex Trebek, says he has completed chemotherapy treatment for cancer, and is 'on the mend' as he films a new season of the long-running and popular TV game show.“Alex Trebek is back at work taping the new season of "Jeopardy!," five months after being diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer,” writes Brian Stelter at CNN:A spokeswoman for the show confirmed that production of season 36 is now underway.The new episodes are slated to begin airing on local TV stations on September 9."Let me tell you, it's going to be a good year," Trebek said in the video.Trebek initially announced his cancer diagnosis in a video message in March."I'm going to fight this," he said at the time. "And I'm going to keep working, and with the love and support of my family and friends, and with the help of your prayers, also, I plan to beat the low survival rate statistics for this disease."He continued to tape episodes for season 35 -- featuring James Holzhauer's remarkable winning streak -- while undergoing treatment in the spring.Alex Trebek is done with chemotherapy and back at work on 'Jeopardy!'[via oliver darcy, image: Shutterstock] Read the rest

Infowars' “War Room” created a brand-new hate channel on YouTube exactly one day after chief executive Susan Wojcicki's letter to content creators about reducing extremist content. YouTube deleted Alex Jones's all-new garbage channel shortly after receiving reports of its relaunch from VICE. Yes, they're nuts. All the Infowars guys. This fluoride thing is *literally* from the “Dr. Strangelove” script, that's how old the right-wing macho conspiracy chestnuts they're pushing are.YouTube has been taking more publicly visible action of late to stamp out hate content that the Google-owned video hosting company recommends via algorithm.Reporting by Matthew Gault at VICE:Infowars returned to YouTube today after YouTube's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, invited "offensive" content back onto the site. On Tuesday, Wojcicki published a letter to YouTube’s creators on the company's official blog. “Without an open system, diverse and authentic voices have trouble breaking through,” she wrote. “I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever.”The next day, the War Room—Infowars’ program for afternoon commuters—relaunched its YouTube channel. The first video uploaded to the new channel has been up for 17 hours. It shows War Room host Owen Shroyer reading a portion of Wojcicki letters in a video titled “Breaking! YouTube CEO says ‘Alex Jones’ and ‘Infowars Ban Is Over.’” Wojcicki didn't mention Infowars in her letter, but this is how Shroyer apparently interpreted it. Since going live, War Room has uploaded 13 videos covering topics typical to Infowars, like “liberal racism,” the end of “globalism,” and how Lizzo’s performance at the VMAs was “disgusting.” Shortly after VICE published their story, YouTube deleted Infowars' War Room channel. Read the rest

A moment of peace.Photographer and night sky enthusiast Eric Brummel captured this incredible sky-stabilized Milky Way timelapse in August 2016 at Font's Point, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, CA.Watch:[I]t's the Earth that rotates, not the sky. We all *know* that's the case, but we don't really perceive it that way. I was able to use a Vixen Polarie star tracker to stabilize the sky and illustrate the Earth's rotation.You can follow Eric on Instagram. Sky-Stabilized Milky Way Timelapse - Font's Point, CA[via] Read the rest

Pavel Dobryakov's beautiful fluid simulation requires no plug-ins to play with. Read the rest

If you want more than just humming around the skies in luxury, Magnum has you covered.This seems to strike some odd note of familiarity... Read the rest

Years ago, I saw a show about a woman who made her home a sort of shrine to Precious Moments figurines. She had custom cabinets built for them and everything. I remember being horrified that someone would devote such incredible resources to Precious-freaking-Moments. Many years later, enter my hero: Canadian artist Keith Busher aka the Precious Mutator. As his artist name suggests, Keith takes old Precious Moments figurines and morphs them into hideous mutations. Yes!Apartment Therapy:Though he initially shied away from toying with Precious Moments because he didn’t want to upset anyone (and, practically speaking, because people aren’t in the habit of discarding those particular figurines very often), Busher says he hit the jackpot when he found out a local antique shop had an entire box of Precious Moments it was looking to offload. “The Precious Moments pieces tend to get the biggest audiences as they are so recognizable,” he says. “Everyone knows somebody who had this piece or that one.”Busher uses a self-hardening clay and mostly recycled materials to transform each figurine. And he takes his time. “I’ve learned that I can make pieces quickly, but I won’t be happy when it’s done,” he says. “I often add things that don’t get seen, several layers of paint to get that right feeling of depth.” He talks more about his process on his newly created YouTube channel.Want one of his creations? Head on over to his Etsy shop. View this post on Instagram 4 new mutants up on our #etsy page! Read the rest

I'm coming late to this one, because it was posted last year -- but hey, better late than never: Behold this fascinating set of Pricenomics graphics about what types of objects Americans pawn.One thing that jumps out in the data? Apple products dominate the realm of pawning. Here's the chart:Basically, Apple products are amazingly good at holding their value. Electronics are the single biggest category of what Americans pawn overall, but even within that valuable vertical, Steve Jobs has created a storehouse of capital value for everyday Americans: "Apple’s products retain value far longer than its competitors in both personal computing and smartphones. They’re the Honda of electronics– or maybe the Volvo." Jewelry and guns are the only other things in the top 5. "It turns out that weapons serve as a remarkably durable store of value."Speaking of jewelry and guns, they are, perhaps unsurprisingly, super gendered in their empawnment. Fully 76% of guns are pawned by men, and 69% of jewelry is pawned by women.Also interesting is the geographic distribution of pawning, as rendered in the state-by-state dataviz of which items are disproportionately likely to be pawned; that's the chart at the top of this entry. As the Pricenomics folks note ...Perhaps most notable in the above analysis is the category of guns. In American pawn shops, there are “gun states” and “everything” else states. In Southern states and ones with larger rural populations, like the Mountain West, people pawn guns at a much higher rate than the national average. Read the rest

I like Suki, Molly of Denali's pet dog.Molly and her dog Suki, an Alaskan Malamute, live in the fictional town of Qyah, Alaska. Molly of Denali is the first US children's show to feature a Native American lead character, the titular Molly. Every indigenous character is voiced by an indigenous actor. Alaska Native and Canadian First Tribes people also work as writers, producers, and staff on the show.Wisconsin Public Television Blog:“When I was growing up, Indigenous people weren’t reflected in television and film,” said Princess Daazhraii Johnson (Neets’aii Gwich’in), creative producer for Molly of Denali. “When an Indigenous person was portrayed, it was usually a stereotype. What makes the Molly of Denali series so exciting is that Alaska Native voices were incorporated from the start of the show, and WGBH and PBS KIDS continue to incorporate more Alaska Native voices at every level of production. We can’t wait for Native youth to see themselves in Molly and her friends.”Molly of Denali includes Alaska Native voices in all aspects of the production, both on camera and behind the scenes. Every Indigenous character is voiced by an Indigenous actor. Producers developed Molly of Denali with a working group of Alaska Native advisors, and is creating opportunities for developing Alaska Native talent via a scriptwriting fellowship.The show also provides a window into the Alaskan experience through live-action interstitials featuring local children and regions, filmed by Alaskan production teams.My first dog was an Alaskan Malamute, her name was Sabrina. Read the rest

Apparently YouTube has been removing videos of battlebots, after their system flagged the videos for containing "animal suffering".Ars Technica has a good story on several removals that took place last week across several battlebot accounts. They've got a screenshot of a takedown notice sent to a YouTuber who'd posted "Dark Blade vs Gizmo". As the notice explained ...Content that displays the deliberate infliction of animal suffering or the forcing of animals to fight is not allowed on YouTube. Examples include, but are not limited to, dog fighting and cock fighting. We review educational, documentary, artistic, and scientific content on a case-by-case basis. Limited exceptions are made for content with sufficient and appropriate context and where the purpose of posting is clear.After being alerted about the errors, YouTube restored most of the videos -- but as Ars notes, it's still not clear exactly how they got flagged. By bleary-eyed, overworked humans? By visual AI that figured the bots looked like animals?It may not be that surprising that semiautomated review systems occasionally conclude that robots are animals, since we humans have a long track record of treating them as such. This whole episode reminded me of a terrific 2007 story in the Washington Post describing the emotional attachment that soldiers develop for their combat robots. It opens up with a story of a colonel who's observing a multi-legged robot wander around a minefield, blowing up mines by intentionally stepping on them. When the robot's finally reduced to dragging itself around on its last functioning leg, the colonel orders the experiment halted -- claiming that it was "inhumane" to the robot. Read the rest

I am addicted to Shannon Messenger's Keeper of Lost Cities series. Everblaze continues the saga of seriously reluctant hero Sophie Foster.Sophie was abducted from her human family by elves who claim she is one. Unwittingly Sophie has averted genocide, provided a long-awaited hope for the future, and somehow convinced the elves not to ruthlessly murder the people who raised her.Sophie was cruelly rejected by her elven Foster family and has suffered so many other indignities in the first two books it is shocking. In Everblaze, Sophie fucks some shit up.Ignoring the ONE RULE they gave her about being a telepath, Sophie nearly starts an interspecies war by invading the mind of the Ogre King. This comes shortly after Sophie participates in the near destruction of the Elven capital. It looks like she is starting to blossom!These books are fantastic!Everblaze, Book 3 in Shannon Messenger's Keeper of the Lost Cities series via Amazon Read the rest

Good news everybody: Apple's really sorry about recording our conversations with Siri. In a statement issued earlier today, the company's talking heads stated that they realized that the '...haven’t been fully living up to our high ideals'. The letter goes on to say that, to make up for their eavesdropping shenanigans, Apple's going to be making a few changes to how Siri does its thing.From Apple:First, by default, we will no longer retain audio recordings of Siri interactions. We will continue to use computer-generated transcripts to help Siri improve.Second, users will be able to opt in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples of their requests. We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better, knowing that Apple respects their data and has strong privacy controls in place. Those who choose to participate will be able to opt out at any time.Third, when customers opt in, only Apple employees will be allowed to listen to audio samples of the Siri interactions. Our team will work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger of SiriThis of course, is great news for anyone that uses Apple's Siri voice assistant. Unfortunately, that less people will be needed to snoop on the conversations between the companies customers and their tech likely means that some resources will need to be shifted around in order to accomoda—wait, what?From The Guardian:Hundreds of Apple workers across Europe who were employed to check Siri recordings for errors have lost their jobs after the company announced it was suspending the programme earlier this month. Read the rest

It is all the fake media, she says."No. I don't believe the President has lied."Trump campaign national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tells @ChrisCuomo President Trump has never lied to the country. pic.twitter.com/oSlLHZ4h0m— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) August 29, 2019 Read the rest

There's an AI algorithmic technique known as "Progressive Face Super-Resolution", which can take low-rez photos of people's faces and enhance them into higher-rez versions.It's actually a rather unsettling development for public privacy, as Futurism points out, because it means it's increasingly possible to take grainy surveillance-cam pictures and produce detailed pictures. (Or even more worryingly, I'd add, it'll produce pictures that have seeming realism but are in fact inaccurate up-rezzings of the low-rez pictures, thus misidentifying innocent people. These days, some AI's biggest dangers come not from its omnipotent successes but from its clown-show failures ... particularly when authorities can't tell the difference, or don't care.)Anyway! Over at I Forced A Bot, Jonathan Fly wondered what would happen if he used Progressive Face Super-Resolution to increase the resolution of emoji.Super freaky results, as it turns out! Fly used it on Twitter emoji, and the result is the picture above. As he writes:Because this model is trained specifically to look for facial landmarks it will take any excuse to draw eyes and nostrils on a pixel. And I’m pretty sure the pepperoni on that pizza is made out of human lips… 😶Here are a few more of Fry's transformed Twitter emoji ...I'm gonna have trouble getting to sleep tonight. Read the rest

DC makes some fabulous animated movies and their television programming has, even where budget has been a concern, been pretty good (I still cry over Constantine and what could have been, however). I've been way less thrilled with the last few DC Universe movies, however. Batman vs. Superman, Justice League and Aquaman weren't to my liking. I've got high hopes for The Batman movie though. Between now and when filming is complete on what will hopefully be a gem of a film featuring the Dark Knight Detective, I've got my hopes fixed on Joker. It looks dark as hell, complex and, with a stellar cast including Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro and Zazie Beetz, could well be worth forking over $40 for a ticket and popcorn to see in the theater.We won't have to wait long to find out if it's as great as it looks. Joker'll be released this October. Read the rest

In an effort to reduce the amount of false and extremist content pushed to viewers, Google's video platform YouTube will adjust its presentation algorithm for UK users. YouTube tried a similar algorithm tweak in the US recently, and recommendations of such ‘borderline’ videos were cut by 50%.After six months of the US trial, YouTube says recommendation-led views to extremist content fell by half. Because the trial was so effective, it will now be extended to the UK, Ireland, South Africa “and other English-language markets”, says Susan Wojicki.According to the video sharing site’s chief executive, Susan Wojcicki, the move is intended to give quality content “more of a chance to shine” and has the effect of reducing views from recommendations by 50%.YouTube has long taken action against content that violates the site’s policies, removing infringing videos and issuing “strikes” against creators that can ultimately result in them being blocked from uploading new videos.But only recently has the company moved against content that, in Wojcicki’s words, “brushes right up against our policy line”. This sort of content is the bedrock of the fear that YouTube is a driver of extremist views worldwide: the combination of borderline content and a recommendation algorithm that rewards the most engaging content can, critics argue, cause audiences to spiral towards more radical viewing.YouTube first took action against borderline content in the US earlier this year, and focused on videos that “could misinform users in harmful ways – such as videos promoting a phoney miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11”. Read the rest

Exhibit A is this tweet, from the President of the United States of America, angered at the presence of criticism on his favorite channel:Exhibit B is this almost-plaintive response from Fox News anchor Brit Hume, not quite able to plainly say Fox News doesn't work for him, but at least managing to say it isn't supposed to work for him.Exhibit C is all the responses to Brit Hume from angry Fox News viewers, which don't need to be embedded here, or even read, because you already know exactly what they say. Read the rest

Be still my heart. There's a cereal bowl that lets you listen to the snap, crackle, and pop of your Rice Krispies! I'm just hearing about it but apparently the "Snap Crack and Pop Amplifier Cereal Bowl" was designed by Dominic Wilcox back in 2015: Kellogg’s challenged artist and designer Dominic Wilcox to make breakfast more interesting and fun for families and children going back to school in September. Over the course of 10 weeks he designed 7 inventions and prototypes from a robot spoon to a head worn cereal serving device.The sound of Rice Krispies popping is a well known sound for many breakfast eaters, particularly from their childhood. Instead of hearing a quiet snap crackle and pop why not increase the sound? This technological cereal bowl amplifies the sound of Rice Krispies using a microphone and volume control. Simply fill the bowl with Rice Krispies, pour in the milk, with on the bowl and increase the volume of the pops by turning the dial."Well, turn it up, man!"Check out Dominic's other neat-o inventions at his website.(Dude I Want That)Thanks a million, Kent! Read the rest

I am a sucker for a good flowchart; furthermore, a fan of hand-drawn infographics; and also a partisan of overly-systematized grammatical guides.So this chart on how and when to capitalize headlines, created by Publishers Weekly managing editor Dan Berchenko -- and published by The Millions -- lands perfectly in the tiny Venn overlap of these three passions. Read the rest

The New York Times reports that the DNC has whittled the Dem field down to 10 candidates—enough to fit on a single stage for the next debate—after another round of dismal polling for the tail-end vanity candidates.• Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.• Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey• Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.• Julián Castro, the former housing secretary• Senator Kamala Harris of California• Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota• Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas• Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont• Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts• Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur Pause to consider how overwhelmingly important it is to lower-ranked Dem candidates to be on that privately-owned, legacy-media stage. Read the rest

Your home is your castle, but that doesn't mean it has to be cold and stony. The summer is almost over, and that means the Labor Day sales are nigh. Here are 10 essential home accessories you never knew you needed, and you can take 15% off the final price (including any stated discounts). Just enter the code SAVE15HOME at checkout.EcoQube C AquariumThis ingenious mini-aquarium gives you serenity without the maintenance. Its aquaponic filtration system uses a plant to soak up fish waste and use it as fertilizer, meaning there are no filters to change and the water stays clean indefinitely. Get the EcoQube C Aquarium for $99.99, more than 40% off the list price. (15% discount code: SAVE15HOME)Comfort Linen Ultra Soft 1800 Series Bamboo-Blend Sheets: 4-Piece SetMade from a 40% blend of bamboo fiber, these sheets come with hypoallergenic properties that also make them breathable and wrinkle-free. Pick up the entire four-piece set of Comfort Linen Ultra Soft 1800 Series Bamboo-Blend Sheets for $25.99, down 84% from the MSRP. (15% discount code: SAVE15HOME)ECOVACS DEEBOT 901 Robotic Vacuum-CleanerThis vacuum bot is equipped with Smart Navi Mapping to find its way around obstacles all on its own, but there are enough customization options to suit any control freak. Set virtual boundaries, assign areas and cleaning schedules - even adjust the suction mode to the job, all with the companion app or through voice-activated smart home devices. Previously sale-priced for $309, the ECOVACS DEEBOT 901 Robotic Vacuum-Cleaner is now half off the original price at $249. Read the rest

A man suspected of killing three people in Virginia was spotted at large, naked, attacking people in the street. But when police approached, the man instead began pursuing one of the heavily-armored officers, who fled while attempting to spray him with mace. The man dashed off to attack another bystander; he was eventually apprehended with the help of a police dog.UPDATE: The suspect in a triple homicide, 19-year-old Matthew Bernard, ran toward our reporter, @KyleMWilcoxTV, before attacking a pastor and being maced, tazed by authorities. https://t.co/4OVjvg9kkQ pic.twitter.com/L5SoNfOKgW— ABC 13 News - WSET (@ABC13News) August 27, 2019I wonder what it was about this "very dangerous" rampaging triple-murder suspect that led a police officer to humiliate himself on camera rather than use his weapon to stop him. Read the rest

Matcha (powdered green tea leaves) is usually pretty expensive. When I saw a one-pound container of Organic Matcha Green Tea Powder on Amazon selling for I was suspicious, but I decided to give it a try. It's delicious. Our favorite way to drink it is to blend a teaspoon with 8 oz of soy or almond milk. We use this fantastic Nespresso Aeroccino Milk Frother to mix it up. Read the rest

When I see the price that you payI don't wanna grow upI don't ever wanna be that wayI don't wanna grow upSeems like folks turn into thingsThat they'd never wantThe only thing to live for is today...The Toys R Us jingle was written by James Patterson and Linda Kaplan Thaler. The other one is Tom Waits. Read the rest

In this BBC video, a troop of Langur monkeys come across an animatronic spy monkey with a camera in its eye, and assume it's a dead baby. They gather around it and appear to mourn it. Image: YouTube Read the rest

In this video, The Q shows how to cut the heads out of coins. Start by putting the coin in a vise. Drill a small hole through the coin. Run a jeweler's saw blade through the hole and start sawing away. That's really all there is to it!Image: The Q/YouTube Read the rest

Restored by Guy Jones, who said, "Early sound film of the latest flapper fashions from House Doeuillet in Paris, France in the year 1928."I kept hoping for the Marx Brothers to appear. Image: YouTube/Guy Jones Read the rest

Jeremy Soule, composer of game soundtracks such as Morrowind and Total Annihilation, was named by developer Natalie Lawhead as having raped her when the two worked together in 2008. Following her post, other game developers spoke out about having been assaulted by their peers, with Alex Holowka (Night in the Woods) and Luc Shelton (Gears of War) among the accused. At The Verge, Andrew Webster suggests that #MeToo may have finally reached the insular game-dev community.Zoe Quinn — developer of games like Depression Quest, author of Crash Override, and a focal point of the misogynistic Gamergate movement — posted a harrowing account on Twitter, recounting alleged abuse from indie developer Alec Holowka, best known for his work on Aquaria and Night in the Woods. “I’ve been silent about this for almost my entire career and I can’t do it anymore,” Quinn wrote. The post includes disturbing accounts that include Quinn hiding in a bathroom to avoid an attack. It also notes that Quinn was inspired to come forward in part because of Lawhead’s post, which Quinn says “shook me to my core.”In a statement on Twitter, Scott Benson, who worked with Holowka on Night in the Woods, wrote that “we believe Zoe’s account of Alec’s actions, we’re very sad and very angry.”A third incident came to light when indie developer Adelaide Gardner wrote a lengthy Twitter thread accusing Luc Shelton, a programmer at British studio Splash Damage, of sustained psychological and physical abuse two years ago. Read the rest

Nordstrom just totally loses it and the moon. Themesong rocks, tho. Read the rest

JazzFM shares:Legendary US jazz musician Ahmad Jamal has announced a solo album - something he’s never done before. The pianist who just turned 89 says this project, titled ‘Ballades’ is a French-inspired love letter to his past, as he reflects on his “transcendent journey”. It includes three original compositions and three duets with his longtime bassist and friend James Cammack. There’s a nod to Bill Evans with his composition ‘Your Story’ and the album finishes with Johnny Mandel and Johnny Mercer’s ‘Emily’. ‘Ballades’ is released on Harcourt Records September 13th.Ahmad Jamal was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Jazz FM Awards in 2013. Read the rest

CORRECTION: The gentleman in the video linked below contacted us and does cite his sources. Twitter thread embedded blow.Can't believe the BS spewed on @TuckerCarlson show!"Did u know that 40% of people that murder children, are Cannabis users" jfc.... pic.twitter.com/7qkKbPCtkY— Walter Dirion (@WalterDir3) August 28, 2019 I guess if you are talking to Tucker Carlson you don't worry about having to cite your sources.(Editor--Again, please see correction above and twitter thread below.)1/ @Jlw @@frauenfelder @doctorow @pesco @xeni @beschizza @carla_sinclair - today you accused me without evidence of "making up facts about marijuana and violence towards kids." I'm a journalist and a writer of non-fiction. Accusing me of "making up facts" is false and defamatory. https://t.co/dTTD0Z8XKc— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 28, 2019 Read the rest

Oh boy, here we go. Archie McPhee has just announced their 2019 candy cane flavors. The star of this year's line-up are the ham-flavored ones, which are aptly called Hamdy Canes.When the holidays come around, that can only mean one thing: ham! As much ham as you can eat! We think ham flavor is going to be the pumpkin spice of Christmas. Eventually, you’ll be able to get a ham latté. To get the ball rolling, we’ve created Hamdy Canes! You’ll get six ham-flavored candy canes in a box illustrated with a personified ham with a cane. It will cure what ails you. We could make all kinds of hammy jokes, but we’ll stick with the meat of the product. Each candy cane is 5-1/4" tall with pink and white stripes.Right now you can get a box of six of them for $6, you sicko.While you're there, pick up boxes of the runners-up too: Kale Candy Canes and Pizza Candy Canes. (I know what I'm secretly gifting in this year's Yankee Swap!) Read the rest

The picture doesn't do it justice but this string art mandala that I recently scored is really gorgeous. Plus, it has some cool history. When I saw it at the thrift store, it was just sitting on the floor. I immediately picked it up and flipped it over. That's when I saw this letter:(Notice that it's addressed to "Rus," and that my name is Rusty!)And this handwritten note by the artist:I didn't recognize the artist's name and don't know much about string art but I liked the piece (and that terrific logo!), so I took it home. I soon discovered that the artist, John Eichinger, is the person who kicked off the string art fad in the late sixties with his String Mandalas. I also learned that he later designed patterns for mass-produced string art hobby kits.String of the Art:A popular hobby kit distributor at the time, Open Door Enterprises, first marketed his string art kits in the late 1960s. This is noted as one of the first times everyday people took interest in string art. It became widely popular in the 1970s with an uncountable amount of U.S. homes boasting home-made string art on their walls.This was a real thrift score for me. I got this original Eichinger mandala for just $6.99.Here's a closer look at the piece's details: Read the rest

A woman born in 1852. A gentleman birthed in 1841. A lovely couple, very much in love since well before the opening of the 20th century. This short film, captured using a early Movietone camera, was lovingly restored restored by Guy Jones. It's an amazing window, not only into 1934 when it was filmed, but into the 1880s.That said, man, Washington County, Iowa was whiter than a pale of milk in a snowstorm. Read the rest

I don't think that I've ever met anyone that actually enjoys using LinkedIn. I mean sure, depending on what you do for a living, it might help you land a new gig. Maybe, it can help you to network with folks within your industry. But it's awful. On the occasions where I need to use it in order to get hold of a PR rep from some hard-to-reach tech firm, I've always found it slow to load and a drag to navigate. That said, the problems that folks like you and I have leveraging the platform for anything useful might not be enough to keep a motivated employer from using the social media platform to track down top-shelf talent.From the New York Times:Foreign agents are exploiting social media to try to recruit assets, with LinkedIn as a prime hunting ground, Western counterintelligence officials say. Intelligence agencies in the United States, Britain, Germany and France have issued warnings about foreign agents approaching thousands of users on the site. Chinese spies are the most active, officials say.“We’ve seen China’s intelligence services doing this on a mass scale,” said William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a government agency that tracks foreign spying and alerts companies to possible infiltration. “Instead of dispatching spies to the U.S. to recruit a single target, it’s more efficient to sit behind a computer in China and send out friend requests to thousands of targets using fake profiles.”Lazy access to potential intelligence assets? Read the rest

For Popular Science, the photographer and journalist Stan Horaczek took a deep dive into NYC's repair shops -- places that repair cameras, musical gear, lighting fixtures and even jeans.Horaczek does a short writeup describing each shop he visits, including this description of the camera-repair shop depicted above: Husks of vintage film cameras and lenses litter this workbench at Camera Doctor. Owner and technician Frank Rubio has scavenged many of their components for repairs because manufacturers have either disappeared or no longer make replacement parts. When a piece like an odd-size film spool is so scarce that even the secondary market is out of stock, Rubio might hire a specialist to build one out of carbon fiber. The Midtown NYC shop fixes digital cameras, but an increasing share of its work is servicing classic shooters.His photos are an amazing record of a repair scene that is slowly vanishing, as more and more modern devices are engineered for disposability, sometimes built literally to be antagonistic to repair. It's a loss not just for the environment (we generate tons of e-waste when we toss gadgets into the trash) and for the pocketbook (we buy new stuff instead of being able to fix what we own), but as Horaczek shows, it's a loss for culture. There's something magnificent about these repair shops, filled with decades of experience, byzantine domain-specific knowledge, and raw ingenuity.(Thanks to Horaczek for permission to use his photo here!) Read the rest

Allergies. A sinus infection. Neglecting to swallow often enough as the plane your riding in depends towards your final destination. A head cold. There's hundreds of reasons why your ears might be too plugged up to hear anything but the sounds of your throat taking a swallow or the beating of your heart.Here's another fabulous cause.From Fox 4 Kansas City:A not so itsy, bitsy spider not found on a waterspout. Instead, doctors removed a brown recluse spider from the ear of Susie Torres."Gross. Why, where, what and how," she asked.Torres, who despises the creepy, crawly arachnids, said she first noticed some discomfort in her ear Tuesday morning."I woke up Tuesday hearing a bunch of swooshing and water in my left ear. It was like when you went swimming and you have all of that water in your ear," Torres said.At first, she just thought it was the effects of an allergy shot. But when she went to get her ears checked out, it turned out to be much more."The medical assistant came to check me out, and she`s the one who noticed it," she said.With the help of a few tools and a bit of magic, doctors removed a dime-sized brown recluse spider from her ear.Holy shit.Somehow, the medical staff on duty, managed to extract the dangerous spider from Torres' head without the thing injecting her full of venom. That's fabulous news, considering the fact that the bite of a brown recluse spider can turn flesh necrotic leading to large areas around the bite needing to be amputated or, you know, death. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Louis of Earth must think fast to keep secret the ways of the Star Wars

Need to expand your IT know-how? It doesn't happen overnight - but there are courses out there that can get you there quickly. Big businesses need the security, storage, and flexibility that cloud computing can provide, and they need competent IT professionals that know their way around those systems. Here are three online training packages that can distill a wealth of complex technical knowledge into a few short lessons.The Complete Cloud Computing BundleNo matter what path to certification you're taking, this bundle will get you there. It gives you an overview of how to integrate big databases into the cloud, then shows you the nuts and bolts of how that works with the most popular platforms: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Over 24 courses, you'll learn how to deploy that cloud infrastructure, configure it to suit your company's needs and keep it humming for the long term. Right now, you can get lifetime access to the Complete Cloud Computing Bundle for $49.99, more than 90% off the MSRP.The Complete Oracle Master Class BundleIs your company using Oracle? If so, this exhaustive boot camp gives you everything you need to handle their database needs. It gets you up to speed and speaking Oracle's language quickly with an overview on PL/SQL, then moves on to spotlight tools like Toad 12.6, RMAN and more. In all, it's more than 180 hours of training designed to enable you to troubleshoot any Oracle system. Pick up the Complete Oracle Master Class Bundle for 92% off at $29.99. Read the rest

The US is increasingly rejecting entry to people because of content sent to those persons by others, on social media and messaging apps. Customs and Border Patrol searched at least 30,000 tech devices at border checkpoints in 2018, an increase of 4 times over the number of devices 3 years prior.Increasingly, individuals who have been subjected to those warrantless border device searches are told they've been rejected entry because of images, videos, or messages sent to them by family members or others they're connected to on social media.Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch writes:It’s a bizarre set of circumstances that has seen countless number of foreign nationals rejected from the U.S. after friends, family or even strangers send messages, images or videos over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, which are then downloaded to the traveler’s phone.The latest case saw a Palestinian national living in Lebanon and would-be Harvard freshman denied entry to the U.S. just before the start of the school year.Immigration officers at Boston Logan International Airport are said to have questioned Ismail Ajjawi, 17, for his religion and religious practices, he told the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson. The officers who searched his phone and computer reportedly took issue with his friends’ social media activity.Ajjawi’s visa was canceled and he was summarily deported — for someone else’s views.The United States border is a bizarre space where U.S. law exists largely to benefit the immigration officials who decide whether or not to admit or deny entry to travelers, and few protect the travelers themselves. Read the rest

ProPublica's Minhee Cho says: "Thought you might be interested in ProPublica’s latest report detailing how insurance companies are actually fueling a rise in ransomware attacks by choosing to pay the ransom, even when they could recover the files on their own. Why? Plain and simple: the attacks are good for business."More often than not, paying the ransom is a lot cheaper for insurers than the loss of revenue they have to cover otherwise. But, by rewarding hackers, these companies have created a perverted cycle that encourages more ransomware attacks, which in turn frighten more businesses and government agencies into buying policies. In fact, it seems hackers are specifically extorting American companies that they know have cyber insurance. After one small insurer highlighted the names of some of its cyber policyholders on its website, three of them were attacked by ransomware."The cyber insurance industry is now estimated to be a $7-8 billion market in the U.S. alone. In the past year, dozens of public entities in the U.S. — including the cities of Baltimore and Atlanta — have been paralyzed by ransomware. Just this month, attackers seeking millions of dollars encrypted the files of 22 Texas municipalities."You can read more in her full story here.Image: Unknown - http://hyphenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/petya-ransomware-screenshot.png, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

The administration of Donald Trump is pulling $270 million from the Department of Homeland Security, including $155 million of FEMA disaster relief funding, to pay for all migrant concentration camps, according to DHS and a leading congressional Democrat.Money will also reportedly be taken away from the budget for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System, and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard.Everything is awful, and getting worse.From Reuters:The money, which was also set aside for the U.S. Coast Guard, will be used to pay for detention facilities and courts for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS officials say they have been overwhelmed by a surge of asylum-seeking migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.The Trump administration is seeking to circumvent Congress and move money originally designated for other programs. This will allow the administration to continue to house immigrants arriving at the border, part of President Donald Trump’s promise not to “catch and release” migrants and allow them to await hearings outside of custody.The administration plans to take $115 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster-relief fund just as hurricane season is heating up in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a letter from U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the congressional panel that oversees Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending.The letter also details that money will be taken for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard, Roybal-Allard said. Read the rest

Deutsche Bank disclosed in a court filing on Tuesday that financial records requested by congressional Democrats that are related to U.S. President Donald Trump and three of his adult children include tax returns. The bank won't publicly disclose whether those tax returns are Donald Trump's. The illegitimate, popular-vote-losing, manifestly unfit president has famously failed to release his tax returns, and it's widely speculated that the financial documents would point the way to dirty doings he'd rather keep secret.Excerpt, Reuters:Two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in April to provide financial records belonging to the president and his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.Deutsche Bank’s filing, in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, revealed that it had tax returns that it would need to hand over if it complied with the subpoenas, which the Trumps are seeking to block. It was not clear whose tax returns it had, because names were redacted from the filing.A lawyer for the Trumps could not immediately be reached for comment. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.The disclosure comes as Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are seeking to obtain Trump’s personal and business tax returns, which the president has refused to turn over, from the Treasury Department.Deutsche Bank has long been a principal lender for Trump’s real estate business. A 2017 disclosure form showed that Trump had at least $130 million of liabilities to the bank.Deutsche Bank says records sought in Trump congressional probe include tax returns [reuters.com, photo: Shutterstock] Read the rest

Illegitimate, popular-vote-losing president Donald J. Trump, just yesterday:“I’m an environmentalist. A lot of people don’t understand that. I think I know more about the environment than most people.”Illegitimate, popular-vote-losing president Donald J. Trump, today: Says he wants to log the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, which is in Alaska. If Trump’s reported plan goes into effect, 9.5 million acres of forest would be impacted.Did we mention that in Brazil today, the Amazon rainforest is burning? The the Washington Post reports that “President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago, according to three people briefed on the issue, after privately discussing the matter with the state’s governor aboard Air Force One.”Excerpt:The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it up to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule” that has survived a decades-long legal assault.Trump has taken a personal interest in “forest management,” a term he told a group of lawmakers last year he has “redefined” since taking office.Politicians have tussled for years over the fate of the Tongass, a massive stretch of southeastern Alaska replete with old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar, rivers running with salmon, and dramatic fjords. Bill Clinton put more than half of it off limits to logging just days before leaving office in 2001, when he barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country. Read the rest