It's been six years since comic legend Robin Williams died. Robin's Wish is a new documentary that looks at his final days and the degenerative disease (Lewy Body Dementia) that is attributed to him ending his own life on August 11, 2014.An intimate portrait of Robin Williams and his invulnerable spirit, Robin's Wish is the story of what really happened to one of the greatest entertainers of all time - and what his mind was fighting.screengrab via Robin's Wish/YouTube(The Awesomer) Read the rest
The LA Prop Store is holding an auction of real Hollywood memorabilia at the end of the month:An incredible 870 lots of rare props, costumes and production material from over 350 titles will be going up for auction, with bidding available online, by phone or in absentee.If you have lots and lots of disposable income and would like to spend, say, $30,000 on an OG bust of Admiral Ackbar, this could be your chance! You'll also found some original props from Army of Darkness, Alien and Aliens (the original Xenomorph Queen puppet is expected to go for $50-70K), Ghostbusters, A New Hope, Back To The Future, plus a really, really depressing (and even more depressingly affordable) Michelangelo costume from Ninja Turtles III in case your childhood wasn't traumatizing enough.Can you use my HSA to pay for this, and use it as a healthcare write-off on my taxes to help cure my PTSD from childhood? pic.twitter.com/V9oqooMJd6— Listen to the Roland High Life on Spotify (@thomdunn) August 12, 2020The eyes of Jabba the Hutt are also available for the low, low price of $2,500, which seems fairly low for a body part once belonging to a notorious intergalactic mob boss. I imagine there are some parents who'd be willing to spend $8K on that full-size velociraptor cage from Jurassic Park though.You can view the whole 250-page auction brochure online. If you're the kind of person who can afford any of this ridiculous memorabilia, and you're feeling particularly generous with your money, please hit me up for a list of completely unnecessary things that I would happily display in my home. Read the rest
Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra is what happens when a band is fronted by a robot, named SPO-20, and is backed by a mad scientist (ie. a human). San Diego-based Professor B. Miller is that mad scientist and he is giving Happy Mutants the opportunity to view the music video for band's latest single first. "Sea Anemones (aka Shark Wigs)" is the title and this is what he shared with me about it:It's awfully weird... on the surface it's about sharks wearing another creature as a wig that underneath is really a criticism of our culture's obsession with image and beauty and how it's marketed. Definitely not for everyone.(Professor, this is Boing Boing. You must know that we were born for the "awfully weird.")Something cool to note: Because he couldn't film a traditional music video due of the pandemic, the good Professor designed what are essentially a series of screen-printed concert posters. He took the separated color layers and animated them independently which produced that trippy effect you saw in the video.Also, to coincide with Shark Week, the band is releasing its nautical-themed album, "Lost at Sea," this Friday, August 14th (pre-order now). Look at how the 12" EP is laser-etched! John K. Peck (McSweeney's) provides the liner notes (Dr. Demento has in the past). View this post on Instagram Laser-etched vinyl! Looks even cooler in person. Pre-order “Lost at Sea” now... vinyl is limited to just 42 copies and then it’s gone. Read the rest
The North American Museum of Jewish History's been selling its Yo Semite tee shirts for about a decade. After Trump pronounced "Yosemite" thusly last week, however, sales went through the roof—or through the sequioa canopy, if you prefer. "When we first started tracking sales last week, we had sold enough shirts in the first 30 hours to equal almost our entire July sales," August said. "And now, less than a week later, our total shirt sales have exceeded the prior three months of sales combined."Created by artist Sarah Lefton, the shirt was inspired by her day job at a Jewish summer camp near Yosemite National Park, according to the museum's website.Above the words "Yo Semite" are two trees that resemble sequoia trees. Three groves in Yosemite National Park are home to giant ancient sequoias trees, with the oldest being 3,266 years old, according to the National Parks Service website.A rare viral-news victory for high-quality inventory over print-on-demand. Read the rest
Facebook is banning the pro-Trump Republican PAC “The Committee to Defend the President” from advertising, after the PAC repeatedly posted content identified as false by third-party fact-checkers.“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time on our platform,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone Thursday.From Reuters:The company declined to specify the length of the advertising ban or which posts prompted it.Politicians’ ads and posts are not subject to Facebook fact-checking, a policy that has drawn heat from lawmakers, but content from political groups like PACs can be fact-checked.The committee’s Facebook page, which has almost 1 million “likes,” has had four “false” or “partly false” fact-checking labels attached to content since the start of July. More at Reuters:Facebook bars pro-Trump PAC from advertising, citing repeated false posts Read the rest
Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order that bans doing business with ByteDance, the China-based company that owns TikTok. The ban takes effect in 45 days. From Reuters:The app may be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party and the United States “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” Trump said in the order. More at Reuters. Read the rest
Twitter will label the accounts of state-controlled media entities, as well as their senior staff and government officials, said the company in a blog post Thursday. There are no U.S. media outlets on the list.From the Twitter blog post:Twitter provides an unmatched way to connect with, and directly speak to public officials and representatives. This direct line of communication with leaders and officials has helped to democratize political discourse and increase transparency and accountability. We also took steps to protect that discourse because we believe political reach should be earned not bought. In 2019, we banned all state-backed media advertising and political advertising from Twitter. Today we’re expanding the types of political accounts we label. We will add new labels to the following categories of Twitter accounts: • Accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, ambassadors, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders. At this time, our focus is on senior officials and entities who are the official voice of the state abroad • Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their senior staff Russia was not happy about the move.Tweeted Russia’s deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, “They think they can set the rules of the game! This is an illusion. Such clear double standards backfire and undermine credibility of Western media, with ‘state-affiliate’ labels or without. People can’t find truth and facts there anymore.” From Reuters:The accounts of Russia’s Sputnik, RT, and China’s Xinhua News are among the media organizations that will be labeled, according to a Twitter spokesman. Read the rest
Part of the reason WordPress is the undisputed king of website creation is its open-source framework, allowing anyone to create plugins offering levels of functionality to WordPress sites that were unprecedented. So where do you find all the great ideas that are pushing WordPress forward? You can sample a heaping spoonful of that innovation with The Mega 2020 WordPress Plugin Bundle.This package collects five volumes containing more than 80 different plugins categorized for use doing almost anything you’d want a website to accomplish. Once you start picking through this bundle’s content, you’ll quickly find a dozen different ways to optimize and elevate your WordPress site.The needs of commerce and marketers drive the contents of two volumes in this collection, allowing site creators to include sticky navigation bars, opt-in popups, integration with email services like Mailchimp as well as social communication like WhatsApp and Skype, Facebook list builders, and more.Meanwhile, another selection of plugins focuses in on social media and audience engagement features. Plugins like Social Boost bring the same social sharing features that drive clicks on sites like Buzzfeed and UpWorthy to your posts, while others like FB GFX Pro, Mobile Plugin, and Uber Optin can help you create professional-level Facebook fan pages, lead-generating pages, streamlined mobile integration and beyond.In addition to other plugs that can help you increase social conversions, build social credibility, showcase YouTube videos with cool sliders, and even build video aggregators and 3-D landing pages, you’ll also find plugins dedicated to upping your site’s performance metrics. Read the rest
In a speech today ahead of his rally in Ohio, Trump noted that production has been shifted to Thigh Land.Previously: Watch President Trump attempt to say "Yosemite" Read the rest
The Washington Post interviewed Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla about a Covid-19 vaccine that could be ready this year:In a Washington Post Live interview, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, DVM, PhD said the company could seek regulatory approval for their coronavirus vaccine as soon as October. Bourla said patients’ progress would be tracked for over two years. According to Bourla, the company could have approximately 100 million doses this year, which Americans would receive from the government for free. Pfizer’s contract with the United States government is priced at $19.50 per dose.In response to President Trump saying a vaccine could be ready as early as November, Bourla said Pfizer could begin seeking regulatory approval for their coronavirus vaccine as soon as October, allowing for potential distribution in November. Bourla said Pfizer would have “approximately 100 million doses” manufactured this year globally and “a big chunk of that will come to the U.S.”Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla says his company could begin seeking regulatory approval for their #coronavirus vaccine as soon as October, and they would have 100 million doses manufactured this year. https://t.co/hOumc3xZgC pic.twitter.com/uYgnJNjBJA— Washington Post Live (@postlive) August 6, 2020“If the product works, we have already started manufacturing so that we will have available quantities that would be readily available…We expect, given how fast the regulatory agencies all over the world are reviewing those applications, that we’ll do it very quickly.”Bourla said as part of Pfizer’s contract with the U.S. government, Americans will receive the first doses of the vaccine allotted to the United States for free: “We took that into consideration, that’s why we provided [the U.S. Read the rest
Ode to Desolation is Lindsey Hagen's thoughtful and intimate short documentary on Jim Henterly, an illustrator who mans of one the 60 remaining US fire lookout posts, down from 9,000 at the start of the 20th century.Like lighthouses, fire lookout posts are being replaced with satellite-based technologies.In a lovely interview, Lindsey talks about how hard it was to get her subject to agree to be in the film, explaining why it was so important to convince him to agree:The story of Jim Henterly and his role at Desolation Peak came to me from a photographer, Kellen Mohr. I was intrigued to know more about the man on the mountain with the eye and lexicon made to appreciate, indulge, and share the beauty of the natural world. I gave Jim a call and he made it well known that he had no interest in being the subject of a film. That inspired me even further. Here was a man with a heart of gold and the purest intentions in preserving our wild places. Just as Jim sought to keep our wild untainted, he too was untainted in a way. I wanted to share part of what it means to exist today ‘untainted.’ In doing so, we tribute this film to the effects of wilderness on the human soul and psyche. Jim’s way of observing and engaging with the world around him inspires me immensely.Image: Vimeo / Chris Naum Read the rest
I've been accused of being partial to Kewpie Mayonnaise because of its retro packaging, but that's only somewhat true. It's the best mayo I've ever had. Chalk it up to extra egg yolks and the MSG. It's made in Japan, but you can buy a 3-pack on Amazon. If you are making okonomiyaki (crepes with noodles, cabbage, pork, egg, etc.), it's essential.I also 3D printed a stand so that the bottle can be stored upside down. Read the rest
For the last few years, artist Mitch O'Connell (not Mitch McConnell) has been erecting billboards depicting Trump as one of the aliens in the classic science fiction movie They Live. Whenever he post an announcement to Facebook, angry people weigh in with their opinion, which Mitch happily uses to promote his projects. I laugh every time I read them.View this post on Instagram Only $250 away from another They Live billboard (see the 10th pic)! Contribute at https://gf.me/u/ymbyf6 And for your reading pleasure, here are some fan letters from lovers of the very first billboard, way back in 2016... #trumpbillboard #theylive #gofundme #obey #vote #election2020A post shared by Mitch O'Connell (@mitchoconnellart) on Aug 6, 2020 at 5:09am PDT View this post on Instagram As we fundraiser for another They Live billboard (see last image), let’s revisit the thoughts and prayers of previous billboard fans. These are the folks you’re going to thrill with every new billboard we put up, so contribute today! :-) #trump #theylive #trumpbillboard #gofundme #obey #2020election #voteA post shared by Mitch O'Connell (@mitchoconnellart) on Aug 5, 2020 at 9:43am PDT Read the rest
Ohio governor Mike DeWine tested positive for coronavirus today, the latest high-profile politician to catch the bug. He has no symptoms, reports NBC News. DeWine ordered a statewide mask mandate two days ago, including in schools, as Covid surged in the state. "As part of the standard protocol to greet President Trump on the tarmac in Cleveland, I took a COVID test," DeWine wrote on the popular microblogging website Twitter. "I tested positive. I have no symptoms at this time. I’m following protocol and will quarantine at home for the next 14 days."Early in the pandemic, DeWine was quick to reverse his early attempt to get Ohioans to mask up.“It's really been made clear to me that a mandatory mask requirement for people who are shopping, going into a retail business, is offensive to some of our fellow Ohioans,” DeWine said in April. “I’ve also heard, for some people, this is a difficult thing to do.” Read the rest
QAnon is like an alternate reality game (ARG), says ARG designer Adrian Hon. Charlie Warzel of The New York Times interviewed Hon about the parallels between a conspiracy theory and alternate reality games. Hon had a number of interesting insights about QAnon:"It’s a collaborative fiction built on wild speculation that hardens into reality.""Many people feel alienated and left behind by the world. There’s something about QAnon like ARGs that reward and involve people for being who they are. They create a community that lets people show off their “research” skills and those people become incredibly valuable to the community.""A lot of it is about a lack of trust. But also a lack of comfort with ambiguity. In reality, the answer to most hard questions is, ‘It’s complicated.’ But people want definitive answers. Many of these theories provide that feeling for people. When really everyone needs to be a bit more comfortable with ambiguity.""What concerns me is that right now it is quite easy for bad actors to see what has worked with QAnon and try to copy it. There’s a playbook now. Any groups can hijack it. It wouldn’t take a lot to try and replicate it.""You can make projects and build community that harnesses that positively. The same way bad actors can look at QAnon and find a playbook, so can good actors. We can find similar ways to motivate alienated people in a more constructive way. At least I hope so." Read the rest
Seventy five years ago today, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 140,000 people. A year later, John Hersey, a pioneer of "new journalism," visited the city to report an incredible feature for the New Yorker about the experiences of six people who survived the blast. The US had attempted to cover up the true devastation but Hersey expressed it so the world could know. (It was such a groundbreaking undertaking and achievement that there's a new book, Fallout by Lesley M. M. Blume, to tell the story behind Hersey's story.) From Hersey's "Hiroshima" (1946), available in full at The New Yorker:he former head of the Nobori-cho Neighborhood Association, to which the Catholic priests belonged, was an energetic man named Yoshida. He had boasted, when he was in charge of the district air-raid defenses, that fire might eat away all of Hiroshima but it would never come to Nobori-cho. The bomb blew down his house, and a joist pinned him by the legs, in full view of the Jesuit mission house across the way and of the people hurrying along the street. In their confusion as they hurried past, Mrs. Nakamura, with her children, and Father Kleinsorge, with Mr. Fukai on his back, hardly saw him; he was just part of the general blur of misery through which they moved. His cries for help brought no response from them; there were so many people shouting for help that they could not hear him separately. Read the rest
After four people died and three lost some or all of their vision from drinking hand sanitizer containing methanol, the CDC issued a warning. Despite the ruminations of the President of the United States of America, disinfectants are not for internal use: "While hand sanitizers with possible methanol contamination are more life-threatening than those that are not contaminated, FDA urges consumers not to drink any of these products."Methanol is so toxic that adulterated hand sanitizers should not even be disposed of down a drain. Via the US Food and Drug Administration:The agency is aware of adults and children ingesting hand sanitizer products contaminated with methanol that has led to recent adverse events including blindness, hospitalizations and death.Methanol is not an acceptable ingredient for hand sanitizers and must not be used due to its toxic effects. FDA’s investigation of methanol in certain hand sanitizers is ongoing. The agency will provide additional information as it becomes available.Consumers who have been exposed to hand sanitizer containing methanol and are experiencing symptoms should seek immediate treatment for potential reversal of toxic effects of methanol poisoning. Substantial methanol exposure can result in nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system or death. Although all persons using these products on their hands are at risk for methanol poisoning, young children who accidently ingest these products and adolescents and adults who drink these products as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute, are most at risk.Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels Read the rest
At an online press conference this morning, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced legal action to dissolve the National Rifle Association, which she said has defrauded tens of millions of dollars from its donors, corruptly enriched leaders including longtime president Wayne LaPierre, and is riven by fraud and "brazen illegality.""The four defendants failed to fulfill their fiduciary duty to the NRA and used millions upon millions from NRA reserves for personal use," James said, listing "trips for them and their families to the Bahamas and safaris in Africa, private jets, expensive meals and other private travel."The NRA was founded in 1871 in New York and is a registered nonprofit in that state.Asked why she is seeking to dissolve the organization rather than charge individual offials, James said that the misconduct was such that "they've destroyed the assets of the corporation" and that it effectively served no purpose other than to support the abuses."Donors donate to the NRA beacuse they believe in its mission, James said in response to a reporter's question about gun rights advocates' right to organize. "Four individual members have looted its assets." She nonetheless confirmed that her office was moving forward only with civil, not criminal enforcement, against LaPierre and the other officials named.#BREAKING: I filed a lawsuit to dissolve the National Rifle Association for years of self-dealing and illegal conduct.The @NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse.No organization is above the law.— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) August 6, 2020 Read the rest
Several years ago, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of an infant galaxy as it appeared 13.4 billion years ago. How did they achieve this head-spinning look so far back in time? The light they measured to create the photo was emitted by the galaxy, named GN-z11, just 400 million years after the universe began and has taken this long to reach Hubble in orbit around Earth. Video explanation above.“It’s amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form. It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon,” explained investigator Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, at the time of the 2016 discovery. More from NASA in this video: Read the rest
In 1980, Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall starred in Popeye, director Robert Altman's live action musical comedy about the great sailor. Trailer below. The film is set in the fictional town of Sweethaven which was actually a wonderfully elaborate set built near the village of Mellieħa on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Forty years later, Sweethaven still stands and has become a popular tourist attraction. The Popeye Village even hosts weddings, birthday parties, school tours, and corporate team building experiences. Make sure you eat your spinach. (via r/TIL) Read the rest
Police officers lie in arrest reports, court testimony and internal investigations. The lie to suspects, to victims, to judges and to one another. They lie pervasively in the course of their work, a volume of deception enabled by prosecutors, police unions, departmental policies and the lack of government oversight. When they are caught, discipline is so unlikely or mild that nothing changes. When they are sued, the taxpayer foots the bill, not the department. So what, asks Mark Joseph Stern, can be done about it?What would happen if a city really tried to eliminate testilying? I posed this question to Bennett Capers, a former federal prosecutor and Fordham Law professor who studies police lies. “In all honesty, I think my initial reaction would be that the system cannot exist without it,” he told me. “It would grind to a halt.” Capers said that “run of the mill policing would have to change. We are doing about 13 million misdemeanor arrests a year. With a lot of those small crimes, there’s fudging. Nobody’s paying attention.”Police, in other words, would have to stop arresting so many people for minor crimes. Once cities stopped deploying officers to harass misdemeanants, they could shrink their police force, reducing the number of encounters between cops and civilians. Stern's article is a must-read, but the tl;dr is sadly obvious: there is not much that can be done about it that is also politically likely.Consider Dan Hodges' famous remark about Sandy Hook and gun control:In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Read the rest
Originating in the 15th century, kintsugi is the Japanese art/craft of repairing cracks in pottery by obviously filling in the breaks with lacquer and gold or other precious metals to celebrate the imperfections. Artist Victor Solomon, whose "Literally Balling" series is about basketball and opulence, applied kintsugi to a deteriorating basketball court in southern Los Angeles.“With the heartbreaking beginning to 2020 and this weekend’s return of basketball – I’ve been thinking about the parallels between sport as a uniting platform to inspire healing and my ongoing experiments with the technique of Kintsugi that embellishes an objects repair with gold to celebrate it’s healing as formative part of the journey,” Solomon told Hypebeast. Read the rest
At Nick Cave's "The Red Hand Files," the musician/poet/screenwriter responded to a fan who asked, "What do you do when the lyrics just aren't coming?" In short, Cave's answer is to wait patiently. But his full reply is quite beautiful and inspiring. From The Red Hand Files:The idea of lyrics ‘not coming’ is basically a category error. What we are talking about is not a period of ‘not coming’ but a period of ‘not arriving’. The lyrics are always coming. They are always pending. They are always on their way toward us. But often they must journey a great distance and over vast stretches of time to get there. They advance through the rugged terrains of lived experience, battling to arrive at the end of our pen. In time, they emerge, leaping free of the unknown — from memory or, more thrillingly, from the predictive part of our minds that exists on the far side of the lived moment. It has been a long and arduous journey, and our waiting much anguished[...]Our task is to remain patient and vigilant and to not lose heart — for we are the destination. Read the rest
There are many nondescript and mundane tools for data recovery, but the Spider Board is not one of them. It lives up to its name, with 25 leglike needles that, carefully placed on copper traces on a denuded card, suck the data out of them like fly juice.PC-3000 Flash Spider Board Adapter is a universal solution for safe monolith recovery without tedious soldering! Using it you don’t need specific adapters to each monolith you deal with.It is designed for connection to internal contacts of NAND-based Flash drives manufactured as single-package chips (monoliths). The adapter consists of 25 universal contacts that support software configuration of their association with NAND interface signals in a corresponding task. Please note, that the adapter is supported by PC-3000 Flash Reader 4.0 only."Sufficiently advanced data recovery is indistinguishable from dark cybernetric ritual," writes @esquiring. Read the rest
It's "happy happy joy joy" for fans of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Twenty-five years after ending its run, the popular adult animation is returning to TV. New episodes of the show are headed to Comedy Central.Consequence of Sound:The ViacomCBS-owned network is hiring a new creative team for a “reimagined take” on the legendary Nickelodeon animated series, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The New York Post adds that Billy West, the voice of Stimpy — and of Ren (for three seasons) — is expected to return for the revival, along with several of the original writers. However, the show’s original creator John Kricfalusi, who was accused of sexual misconduct in 2018, will not be involved in the project.(COS)image via COS/Nickelodeon Read the rest
Sampla is a sustainable footwear startup from Ireland, and in their current Kickstarter campaign, they're offering a new pair of animal-friendly shoes made from … apples?!Rethinking the classic tennis shoe, the upper material of our shoe is made from a vegan material called AppleSkin™. It is made using repurposed apple waste from the juice industry in Italy. The other components of the shoe were carefully selected. Organic and recycled materials were consciously chosen where possible. Nice, simple and sustainable.Partnering with Trees on the Land, we will plant an indigenous tree in Ireland for each pair produced. To keep carbon emissions as low as possible, our logistics partner sends our shoes using the most optimal route for each delivery. They are neatly packed and sent in our 0% plastic packaging.And a little more detail about the actual process behind the AppleSkin™:The apple core, pips and skins are dried and milled to a fine apple powder. Then it’s applied to a tear-resistant woven roll with cotton fabric. These rolls are heated and given an added protective layer to produce a weather-resistant durable fabric. Organic pigments are added to the brown fabric, producing colours of choice. We are left with a material that is breathable, durable, and of course, 100% vegan.The Kickstarter Campaign has an "Early Bird Special" that'll run you about $100 fora pair of apple shoes and a t-shirt (plus the carbon offset tree planting). This is apparently about 40% less than what would ultimately be the retail price. Read the rest
渋谷でゲームあるある再現してみた pic.twitter.com/dk5KH6kUgM— がんそ【駒沢アイソレーション】 (@KaoruGans0) August 5, 2020In this video, @KaoruGans0 walks around Shibuya like a character from a video game: stilted and repetetive pacing; sliding oddly along walls; and interacting robotically with landmarks, conspiciously obvious items and other people. Read the rest
"The eyeballs move!" -- Michelle Bates, co-creator of the van maskThis is the week my daughter and I had expected to be vacationing on Vashon, a lovely island in the southern Puget Sound where a dear friend of mine resides. Our plans were, of course, thwarted by the pandemic. Now, my friend has been assuring me that nothing fun is happening there this summer, that everything is closed and that we won't be "missing anything." But then I saw a post on the VashonBePrepared Facebook page that triggered my FOMO. It shows a minivan that has been anthropomorphized with eyes and an oversized mask. Quirky large-scale art with a message is definitely my thing!I had to know the story. So I tracked down one of its creators, Michelle Bates. She told me that her partner Stefan Freelan had originally masked the van for a friend's graduation parade. Together they updated it, and later drove it through an island-wide Fourth of July parade representing the Vashon Emergency Operations Center.Michelle shared that the masked van was inspired by another unusual piece of art. This past Memorial Day, artist Mik Kuhlman welcomed visitors to Vashon from the back of a pickup in a giant red coat. Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber:The purpose behind the performances was to greet Memorial Day visitors to Vashon at the moment they disembarked from ferries and traveled through town, urging them to wear masks and consider the fate of an island community with limited healthcare resources. Read the rest
Creem: America's Only Rock 'N' Roll Magazine looks at the freewheeling Detroit-based publication that was as gonzo as the artists they covered. As Craig S. Karpel observes, "There was no parallel for it in the rest of rock journalism. It was not a magazine that was about rock n' roll. Rock n' roll was taking place at the magazine."Developed under the working title Boy Howdy (their mascot's catchphrase), this fabulous doc is one of many that should be having a triumphant festival circuit, but the pandemic had other plans. Via the trailer:Capturing the messy upheaval of the '70s just as rock was re-inventing itself, the film explores CREEM Magazine's humble beginnings in post-riot Detroit, follows its upward trajectory from underground paper to national powerhouse, then bears witness to its imminent demise following the tragic and untimely deaths of its visionary publisher, Barry Kramer, and its most famous alum and genius clown prince, Lester Bangs, a year later. Fifty years after publishing its first issue, "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine" remains a seditious spirit in music and culture.Image: YouTube / Greenwich Entertainment Read the rest
I just learned about the Texas Triffid Ranch, which bills itself as "Dallas's Pretty Much Only Carnivorous Plant Gallery." The ranch is celebrating its 5th anniversary this August, although any events are on hold due to both social distancing guidelines, and what the owners describe as, "various reasons, mostly involving a day job and possible legal liability."In other words, the Ranch's growing area isn't typically open to the public at all, even under better circumstances. But they do have a travelling collection for display at local garden shows and other events; if you're interested in buying anything, you can also set up an appointment. They have a list of carnivorous plant enclosures on their website, although they are careful to note:The Triffid Ranch doesn’t actually sell triffids. We also don’t offer Audrey IIs, vargas, Krynoids, Vervoids, Delvians, Vegetons, Whomping Willows, or Slaver sunflowers. More’s the pity.Ah well.For what it's worth, the Dallas Observer named them the "Best Little Shop of Horrors" in 2017.The Texas Triffid Ranch: Dallas's Pretty Much Only Carnivorous Plant GalleryImage: Public Domain Read the rest
After years of hearing a steady drumbeat about the necessity of surfing the web under the protection of a VPN, even the most technophobic among us are starting to come around. But even knowing the dangers one can face from cybercrooks phishing for information from unsuspecting victims online, those last holdouts still have some fears. Chief among those fears is just the tech know-how needed to get a VPN to work. Thankfully, some highly-regarded VPN options like Goose VPN get high marks for their simplicity with even the most reluctant of new users.Goose VPN is among the easiest setups in the VPN kingdom. After opening your account, just download their app to your device, and the VPN automatically configures itself.With that, all your online activity will now be protected through Goose VPN’s ultra-secure 256-bit encrypted connection. Via their own owned and managed server network in over 25 countries, you can log in from anywhere, safeguarding your IP address and all other identifying information from any government watchdog or online criminal search for a new target. The protection even covers you and all your actions when logging on to high-risk public WiFi networks.And since Goose VPN enforces a no-logging policy, none of your web activities is ever monitored or logged by Goose, ensuring where you go and what you do online always remains safely anonymous.Goose VPN also allows you to circumvent international geoblocking restrictions, granting you access to popular platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and the BBC from anywhere in the world. Read the rest
The U.S. State Department says Russia is exploiting a well-established online operation that includes proxy websites to amplify coronavirus disinformation and conspiracy theories.“The websites the State Department identified Wednesday have promoted unsupported conspiracy theories that allege COVID-19 was created in a lab as a bioweapon, billionaire Bill Gates is plotting to use the pandemic as an excuse to microchip people, and that plans for a coronavirus vaccine are simply a ploy for pharmaceutical companies to make money,” reports the Associated Press, which adds -- “There is no evidence behind those claims.” Excerpt:The department detailed a Russian-backed misinformation cycle that spreads false information online through state officials and state-funded media reports, by infiltrating U.S. social media conversation, and leveraging a deceptive internet framework of websites. The Kremlin’s efforts have most recently focused on conspiracy theories around the pandemic, the report found.“Russia is playing a significant role in creating and spreading misinformation and propaganda around many topics,” said Lea Gabrielle, head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.The department named more than a half-dozen websites that, serving as “proxies” for Russia, have peddled a series of conspiracy theories about the pandemic that have been widely spreading and hotly debated across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.The online news outlets appear independent from the Russian government, but in reality serve as a “connective tissue” between the Kremlin and state-funded media that often promote the same misinformation from their own channels, Gabrielle said.“That’s what makes them effective,” Gabrielle said. Read the rest
• Search warrant executed by FBI at Calabasas home of YouTube star Jake Paul on Wednesday• Judge has sealed the search-warrant affidavit• No info on nature of FBI investigation, or individual servedThe Southern California home of YouTube star Jake Paul was raided today in a large FBI operation that included a SWAT team. Many details in the case remain sealed. From the Associated Press:The FBI executed the search warrant starting at 6 a.m. at the Calabasas, California, mansion in connection with an ongoing investigation, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said in a statement.A judge has sealed the search-warrant affidavit and Eimiller said she could not reveal the nature of the investigation or the person it was served on. Paul’s attorney Richard Schonfeld confirmed the home was his. “We understand that a search warrant was executed at Jake’s Calabasas home this morning while Jake was out-of-state,” Schonfeld said in an email. “We are still gathering information and will cooperate with the investigation.”Video from local television news helicopters showed agents gathering several rifles from the sprawling property with a boxing ring and hot tub in the backyard that appears in many of Paul’s recent YouTube videos.An FBI spokesperson confirmed that a search conducted at Jake Paul’s Calabasas residence was part of an investigation into “allegations of criminal acts” during an incident at an Arizona mall in May. https://t.co/fkEeet01y4— Twitter Moments UK & Ireland (@UKMoments) August 6, 2020Jake Paul has been in headlines of late for throwing a huge party at his home during the pandemic without any safety measures in place https://t.co/Gumy8rPlI9 Read the rest
Is 'breakfast' macaroni & cheese a thing? What? Kraft says it's a product coming in 2021, unless this is a grotesque food hoax I've somehow fallen for.“Yes please,” or “Just, no”? [ABC News] Excerpt:After hearing that parents would serve their brand of mac & cheese to their children for breakfast, Kraft got in on the act.Kraft is giving away limited-edition Kraft Mac & Cheese Breakfast boxes through Friday. The boxes have special packaging that has "breakfast" written over where it would usually have "dinner." To win a box, you can use the hashtags #KMCforBreakfast and #Sweepstakes on Twitter to be entered to win. You can also enter to win online.The boxes will be available sometime in 2021. More here [abc13.com] Read the rest
When it is playtime for Electra, it is playtime for everyone.Electra hasn't quite figured out how to get on the bed, but she sure knows how to get my attention. View this post on Instagram Sure I was vaccinated today, but my energy levels are fine! #puppy #bark #dog #dogsofinstagram #cuteA post shared by Electra (@electra___cute) on Aug 3, 2020 at 8:00pm PDT Read the rest
Raised by Wolves is the new TV show from Ridley Scott, coming to HBO Max on September 3. It looks completely deranged and I can't wait. Raised by Wolves centers around "two androids — Father and Mother — tasked with raising human children on a mysterious new planet. As the burgeoning colony of humans threatens to be torn apart by religious differences the androids learn that controlling the beliefs of humans is a treacherous and difficult task." The trailer looks and feels so much like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant that I can't shake the feeling that he's rebooting those stories, as it were — the same peculiar aesthetic and emotional setting, the same themes — free of all the Alien/Blade Runner universe baggage. Read the rest
You may not realize it, but some of the biggest films in movie history have been edited using the same tools some of you use to cut your video of vacationing at Disney World.Giant movies from Oscar favorites The Social Network and Gone Girl to blockbusters like Avatar, Deadpool, and last year’s Terminator: Dark Fate have all been put together using Adobe Premiere, a video editing mainstay and one of the crown jewels of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of apps.In fact, used in tandem with sister apps like After Effects, Spark, and Audition, filmmakers are finding they can achieve virtually any visual technique they can imagine with the same software used by millions every day.The Complete Adobe Hollywood Filmmaker Bundle is the perfect introduction for those with an interest in shooting and editing their own professional-grade feature or just for those trying to make their kid’s Little League game footage as epic as Field of Dreams.The collection includes five courses, each exploring one of five different Adobe CC apps that can help elevate your video production work.The training starts with a deep dive into the core of Adobe video editing, Introduction to Adobe Premiere Pro 2020. Even first-timers will get a thorough understanding of everything Premiere can do as students are guided through the process of starting a project, importing and organizing footage, basic editing, color correction, compositing, graphic creation, and more with expert level precision.With Adobe After Effects 2020, learners get a crash course in how to add those how-did-they-do-that special effects and animations that make any video look like it had a million-dollar budget. Read the rest
Townscaper is a charming and beautiful toy by Oskar Stålberg (previously at BB), available now for Windows and MacOS. It approaches the city-builing genre, but subtracts all the things that make such games distressing and frustrating, leaving you to create the waterside town of your dreams without worrying about resources, enemies, natural disasters or other limitations.Yet I don't want to trivialize it as less than a game, because it has such a wealth of creative possibility and polish, all aided by the author's marvelous sense of design and the world's inexorable and elegant detailing of the player's every crude click. It has the same lego-set pleasure of Minecraft's creative mode, but everything you do is perfected automatically with a pop—so long as you're content building Scandinavian Mont-Saint-Michels that would be utterly indefensible in Bad North.@OskSta #Townscaper This is my little town. pic.twitter.com/QedxFRPVTG— Creekky (@CreekkyT) July 1, 2020On the sea is implied a gently-warped grid. Clicking once raises blocks of land from the water, which first form paved quaysides but might turn into bridges, courtyards or gardens depending on context. Click again on the same spot, and a house appears. Make the house taller by clicking up, or wider by clicking in adjacent places. Obliterate work with a right-click, and struts and pillars appear to support what remains above. You can pick different colors, whirl the scene around, zoom up close, and that's more or less it.@OskSta you are a blessing - thank you for this wonderful gift. Read the rest
Kevin Reome has been an improv instructor at The Second City Training Center in Chicago since 2005. Reome’s written, directed, produced, performed in many scripted and improvised shows (The Eulogist, Rahm Zombie, Jam Sandwich, Lightfoot Loose) and teaches improv workshops around the country and in corporate settings.In 1994 I took improv classes at Improv Olympic and was eventually put on a performance team by the owner Charna Halpern. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were also on that team, along with about 10 other dudes at the start. Generically we were named “Team A” and tasked to come up with an actual team name.There were five of us at The Naming. Tina and Poehler were neither of the five. They were invited. Everyone was invited, but only 5 could make it. The plan was to meet over drinks and name our improv team. We met at the Old Town Ale House across from The Second City Chicago. The Ale House—the obvious choice to meet for such an occasion. This dank bar was, and is, the perfect extension of improv. It is warm booze and late nights and Tamale Guy and edgy wall art and improv students and improv professionals and a great after-show watering hole. It’s where improv gets discussed but also provides a distraction from it. One time a friend saw Robert Plant there.“Did you snap a picture of him?” I asked.“No. That’s why he went to the Ale House.” Plant and my friend shared the code of the Ale House. Read the rest
Boing Boing shares these words from our sponsor Real Tested CBD.Keto is the nutritional diet taking the health world by storm. Only way to make keto better? Add a little canna! Read on for a simple breakdown on making your own cannaflour to use in our Keto Pumpkin Loaf! Furthermore, more individuals are turning to CBD edibles, like Tribe CBD Gummies, for their dose of daily CBD. If you would rather make your own cannaflour, feel free to follow the recipe below!What is cannaflour and how is it made?Not like butter or cooking oil infusions, cannaflour encompasses cooking with and consuming ground-up cannabis. Cannaflour is easy to prepare and is a core staple of cooking with cannabis. To properly prepare your cannaflour, be sure you are using cannabis that has been decarboxylated cannabis (aka, heated) ground very finely. The preparation and storage of cannaflour is very important, to ensure freshness and taste. To decarboxylate your cannabis, preheat oven to 200-250 degrees. On a large baking sheet, spread your cannabis and place in oven between 40-60 minutes, rotating the sheet or flipping the cannabis throughout to ensure even heating. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Next grind your cannabis as finely as possible, using a blender or food processor. Related: If you’re looking for a high-strength CBD tincture, check out Blue Ribbon Hemp’s 5,000 mg CBD tincture! Next, combine ½ cup finely ground cannabis with 1 cup flour of your choice for a cannaflour mixture. Or keep your ground and dried cannabis in a separate air-tight container and add to flour or recipes directly. Read the rest
This 2.5x LED magnifier can be used as a handheld tool or on the desktop. It also has smaller, more powerful magnifying glass built-in. Perfect for peering at electronic components. I use it to inspect the spoons I whittle. Read the rest
Spitting Image was a satirical puppet show running in the UK from 1985 to 1996, about to be revived for a new era of stupid, selfish, buffoonish politicians and celebrities. The creators recently showed off the forthcoming series's Trump and Zuckerberg, and now they're giving us a sneak peek at Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his creepy aide Dominic Cummings.Mr Johnson, depicted with unkempt blonde hair and a badly knotted tie, is the latest prime minister to be depicted in rubbery form by the programme.Mr Cummings, known for a more informal dress sense, is depicted wearing a blue hoodie and black gilet, with a large silver collar.Image copyright Mark Harrison/BritBox/Avalon Spitting Image was weird and nastily funny, the punches going mostly up. It had the remarkable effect of making politics accessible and engaging, even to children, and addressing the content of politics in its mockery of politicans—two virtues that political satire rarely achieves. But it was also smug and trivializing, retaining its deepest contempt for the earnest belief in anything. It portrayed the working classes as deserving idiots and minorities with stereotypes, even as it swung hard at their oppressors. Still, it had a cold insight into where things were going -- thirty years ago it had P.W. Botha, the right-wing leader of a fading racist administration in South Africa, cunningly recast the party line as "anti-anti-apartheid". Many of its most absurd jokes are now political realities. It did more to reveal the problem with Jimmy Savile than anyone in UK media except Johnny Rotten. Read the rest
Jared Kushner is similar to Trump in many ways. They both inherited vast amounts of wealth from unsavory slumlord fathers and blew their ill-gotten fortunes on bad business decisions. This new video, from the Lincoln Project, highlights a few of Kushner's latest screw-ups, which have resulted in 160,000 Covid deaths, massive job loss, eviction, and hunger in the United States. Read the rest
Los Angeles taxpayers are on the hook for about $55 million stemming from "dozens of lawsuits and claims involving Los Angeles County deputies associated with tattooed groups accused of glorifying an aggressive style of policing," reports The Los Angeles Times. These secret cop societies have names like the Vikings, Regulators, 3000 Boys, and the Banditos, and their street gang-like criminal behavior extends back to 1990. Elected sheriffs and an FBI probe have been unable to stop the violent groups from operating.From The Los Angeles Times:"This has been a cancer of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for decades," said Ron Kaye, an attorney who represented Carrillo. "The only reason that this type of illegal activity and lawlessness under the color of law can survive is if the department and its administration looks the other way."Another lawsuit involving a bicyclist shot and killed by deputies in South L.A. was settled for $1.5 million in 2018 in part because one deputy had probably committed perjury when he denied that he was a member of the Regulators operating out of the Century station, officials said.Several of the payouts involve the 3000 Boys and the 2000 Boys at Men's Central Jail. A top jail official had described exclusive gangs of deputies who would “earn their ink” by breaking inmates’ bones. Read the rest
Well perhaps unsurprisingly the accused Twitter hacker-Bitcoin thief’s first (virtual) hearing was shut down within 25 minutes due to relentless Zoombombing. (It ended a minute after this when someone screenshared a Porn Hub video.) pic.twitter.com/fGiceq4WfN— Jen Wieczner (@jenwieczner) August 5, 2020The Zoom bond hearing for Graham Clark, 17, who is accused of hijacking famous people's Twitter accounts in a cryptocurrency scam, was interrupted this morning by Zoombombers "shouting racial slurs, playing music and showing pornographic images," according to ABC News."How the judge in charge of the proceeding didn't think to enable settings that would prevent people from taking over the screen is beyond me," tweeted infosec journalist Brian Krebs. From the Tampa Bay Times:Hoping a brief pause would filter out the interrupters, Nash reopened the meeting. But users who disguised their names as CNN and BBC News resumed their interruptions.Nash was ultimately able to rule, declining to lower the bail amount [of $725,000]. He did, however, remove a requirement that Clark prove the legitimacy of his assets. Lawyers have said he has $3 million in Bitcoin under his control.How the judge in charge of the proceeding didn't think to enable settings that would prevent people from taking over the screen is beyond me. My guess is he didn't know he could. This guy's reaction sums it up. pic.twitter.com/Zz9aVc5iIg— briankrebs (@briankrebs) August 5, 2020(Thanks to our Florida bureau chief, Charles Pescovitz!) Read the rest
On Sunday, the SpaceX capsule containing NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. (Video above.) It was the first time a private company took humans off-world and returned them to Earth and also the first splash-down of American astronauts in 45 years. At a press conference yesterday, Behnken and Hurley recounted their trip home. From Reuters:“It came alive,” Behnken told reporters of the nearly 12-minute thruster burn. “It doesn’t sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere.”As the capsule streaked deeper through the sky, atmospheric friction scorched the protective heat shield of the plunging Crew Dragon to 3,500 Fahrenheit (1,927 Celsius), slowing its rate of descent to 350 mph (563 kph).At that point, the first of two sets of parachutes were deployed, abruptly breaking the capsule’s speed further - an interval that felt “very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat,” Behnken recalled.“It was a pretty significant jolt,” he said.[...]While bobbing in the water just after splash-down awaiting recovery teams, Hurley said they completed one final test objective for the mission: “making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we can get a hold of.” “There was a real reason for it,” Hurley said, in all seriousness, explaining that they needed to prove they could contact mission control using a sat-phone in case the crew landed from space in an unexpected part of the ocean. Read the rest
For the Seattle Mariners' virtual Opening Day festivities, my pal Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie brought some good ol' fashioned melancholy to John Fogerty's "Centerfield." Ben pre-recorded this clip in an appropriately, and sadly, empty T-Mobile Park. Read the rest