If you gave up on playing the piano as a kid, don't despair. Things have come a long way since those drills that had you playing "Chopsticks" endlessly. Take Pianoforall, for instance. This innovative new system lets students play keys right away, learning the structure of the music by playing rhythm-style hits.The 10-hour course is geared to beginners, but you won't stay at that level for long. Within the first series of lessons, you'll learn how to play hits by Billy Joel, Norah Jones and more - and as you do, you'll learn the music theory that underlies the structure of those songs. That provides a foundation for later lessons, where you'll learn other styles including blues, jazz and rock, not to mention the chords, inversions and other tools that will eventually have you writing and improvising your own songs.Right now, you can pick up lifetime access to Pianoforall: The New Way To Learn Piano & Keyboard at a newly discounted rate of $10.99. Read the rest

At the end of March, the European Parliament will sit down to vote on the new Copyright Directive, an unparalleled disaster in the history of internet regulation with the power to wipe out the EU's tech sector, handing permanent control of the internet over to US Big Tech, all in the name of protecting copyright (while simultaneously gutting protection for artists).Right after that key vote, MEPs will fan out across Europe, returning to their home countries to start campaigning for the May elections. This timing is crucial, because it means that MEPs are really interested in whether their actions will cost them support from voters.Voters hate the Copyright Directive and its internet-destroying Article 13. The petition to kill Article 13 has drawn more signatures than any other in EU history, and at this rate, a few days from now this petition will become the most popular petition in the history of the human race.If you live in Europe, you can let your MEP know that your vote depends on their vote: the 2019 Pledge, brought to you by Epicenter Works, calls on MEPs to publicly pledge to reject Article 13. 44 MEPs have signed it so far, and work has just begun.The pledge's website lets you enter your country and your phone number and it will connect you with MEPs who have not yet taken the pledge and let you talk to them about why it's important that they do.This is a key juncture, a moment when the fate of the internet itself hangs in the balance (and not just in Europe). Read the rest

ETS was originally called "Enterprise TLS," implying that it was an "enterprise-grade" version of TLS, the system used to secure internet sessions (if you visit a URL that starts with "https://", it's being protected with TLS).But BITS, a finance industry group, was forced to change the name to ETS after loud objections from the Internet Engineering Task Force.That's because ETS intentionally weakens TLS, disabling "forward secrecy," an amazing cryptographic tool that makes intercepted connections secure against decryption, even against someone who later gains access to the server's private key.Forward secrecy is standard in all kinds of cryptographic security, and is part of TLS 1.3, the latest version of the protocol. But BITS objected to this, saying that the inability to sneakily decrypt secure communications would interfere with its ability to "implement data loss protection, intrusion detection and prevention, malware detection, packet capture and analysis, and DDoS mitigation" -- basically, BITS wanted to preserve the ability of companies to provide their private keys to third-parties who monitored all their traffic.As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jacob Hoffman-Andrews writes, "there’s a real harm that comes from weakening a critical protocol to provide easier in-datacenter monitoring for a small handful of organizations." The IETF rejected the idea of disabling forward secrecy, even in limited ways.Since being turned down at the IETF, BITS has been attempting to standardize ETS at a lesser standards body, ETSI, where they initially called the project "ETLS," but, as noted, were forced to change this to ETS. Read the rest

Artist Zachary Knoles created a wonderful series of illustrations that pay tribute to video games by imagining them as pulp novel covers, with the game writers' names in the by-line slots (a very nice touch indeed!). (via Gameraboy) Read the rest

For many years, we've been following the research on phages, viruses that kill bacteria, once a staple of Soviet medicine and now touted as a possible answer to the worrying rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.Steffanie Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist; she's written a book about her husband Tom Patterson's near-death experience: Patterson was nearly killed by a large ("soccer-ball sized"), infected cyst in his gut, and his life was saved by experimental phage therapy at UCSD medical center.That book, The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir, co-written with Patterson, is "one part medical mystery, one part personal memoir," and contains a wealth of accessible material on the potential of phages to treat nascent superbugs.Strathdee and Patterson were interviewed by Wired's Megan Molteni. It's fascinating stuff, and I've ordered a copy of The Perfect Predator after reading about it.SS: It’s been moving very quickly. After Tom’s case was publicized in April of 2017, we received funding to start North America’s first center devoted to better understanding the role of phage therapy for treating superbugs. It’s at UC San Diego, called IPATH, for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, and we now have two clinical trials in the works. One is for people with ventricular assist devices who tend to get infected with biofilm-forming bacteria, which are difficult for antibiotics to penetrate. And the other is for cystic fibrosis patients who develop resistance to the drugs that keep them alive by fighting off chronic lung infections. Read the rest

Unmute this one! Dachshunds are the cutest.Behold, “EXPLAIN THIS BLACK MAGIC BEFORE I SEND IT TO ITS MAKER. HUMAN!,” uploaded by IMGURian MayMyEnemiesLiveLong.Sound up.EXPLAIN THIS BLACK MAGIC BEFORE I SEND IT TO ITS MAKER. HUMAN! Read the rest

Politicians love introducing tax-cuts, because they're reliable vote-getters, even if they're structured to blow up later by giving massive breaks to the super-rich and more modest breaks to middle-class voters, resulting in mounting deficits and eventual service cuts. But Trump has managed the impossible: he signed trillions of dollars of tax-cuts into law and lost in the polls as a result.Trump managed this feat by handing middle-class and poor people tax bills instead of refunds, while cutting in a tiny number of super-rich people for unbelievably large breaks (and the 99% will get stiffed even harder in 2027, when their taxes go up again).Bill Black proposes a tantalizing thought-experiment: what if Trump had spread the tax breaks around, giving, say, $5,000 to every household with a combined income of less than $75,000? What if he tailored the breaks to his base, farmers, old people, blue-collar workers (while stiffing poor people)? Not only would this have stimulated the everloving fuck out of the US economy -- wage stagnation and austerity has left the US with tons of underutilized labor and plant that could churn out tons of goods for these people to buy without any inflation to speak of -- but the Democratic leadership would have hated it, because Pelosi, Schumer and the rest of the "paygo" crowd are crazy deficit hawks who don't want any unfunded liabilities in federal budgets. The result would have been a huge PR win for Trump and a massive PR hit for the Democratic establishment. Read the rest

GE Transportation workers were told after merger their new employer “wants to turn this into an Amazon warehouse,” says labor union.

Just when you thought Facebook couldn't get any sillier. Facebook reached out to offer Hard Drive early access to a "fan subscription" product. I asked my editors about it and the complete distrust amongst our team was kinda funny. We read through the terms and found a couple things that were hilarious when compared to Patreon's 5%.— Matt Saincome (@MattSaincome) February 26, 2019TechCrunch's Josh Constine reports that Facebook is launching a fan subscription service á la Patreon, but unlike Patreon's 5% cut of the tip jar, Facebook plans to take away 30%. Because of course.Excerpt: The policy document attained by TechCrunch shows Facebook plans to take up to a 30 percent cut of subscription revenue minus fees, compared to 5 percent by Patreon, 30 percent by YouTube which covers fees, and 50 percent by Twitch.Facebook also reserves the right to offer free trials to subscriptions that won’t compensate creators. And Facebook demands a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use” creators’ content and “This license survives even if you stop using Fan Subscriptions.”Distrust of Facebook could scare creators away from the platform when combined with its significant revenue share and ability to give away or repurpose creators’ content. Facebook has consistently shown that it puts what it thinks users want and its own interests above those of partners. It cut off game developers from viral channels, inadequately warned Page owners their reach with drop over time, decimated referral traffic to news publishers, and most recently banished video makers from the feed. Read the rest

SEDC is an Atlanta-based company that provides back-ends for utility companies; a security researcher discovered that the company stored his password in the clear. The company's products have more than 15,000,000 users, whose logins and passwords are potentially also stored in plaintext. When the researcher alerted the company about this, the company ignored them, then denied that there was any problem, then demanded that the researcher not communicate about this except to SEDC's general counsel.The responses from SEDC general counsel Mark Cole split hairs over the security implications of storing unencryted passwords, insisting that because this was not prohibited by PCI-DSS, an industry regulation governing storage of customer billing information; and because logging in would not reveal billing information, there was no problem.The security researcher who discovered the password problem has received assistance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (disclosure: I am a consultant to EFF). Cole eventually sent the researcher an email that implied that the company had reformed its password handling, but with a great deal of worrying ambiguity.Storing passwords in the clear is an industry worst-practice. Because so many people re-use passwords, password breaches are a useful source of data for "credential stuffing" attacks on other sites; if SEDC or its customers suffer a breach, they could unleash millions of passwords that could be used to compromise the users of its services. So is the situation "fixed"? It's unclear. SEDC's counsel—who did not respond to Ars request for an interview—gave as little technical information as possible during the entire 120+ day saga with X. Read the rest

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra told two Berkeley-based reporters that it is against the law to even possess a copy of this never-before-publicly-released list of convicted cops.

Homelessness in New Orleans spiked after Hurricane Katrina, reaching 11,600 by 2007; today that number has been reduced by 90%, thanks to a "housing first" (previously) approach that starts by giving homeless people stable, permanent housing, and then addressing confounding factors like mental illness and substance addiction (on the grounds that these conditions are easier to treat when people have stable housing).Martha Kegel is executive director of Unity New Orleans, the nonprofit that led the housing first coalition. In an interview with WBUR, she explains how the program worked in NOLA, and how much money it saved, because housing is much cheaper than ER visits, jails, and/or policing petty crime and dealing with its consequences.The USA has an estimated homeless population of 500,000."Well we have reached what we call 'functional zero,' which means that we compiled a list using our outreach team [and] using our shelter lists that are updated every night. We housed, in their own apartments, every veteran on that list except nine that had refused housing, mostly because of mental illness. And we continued to work with those nine, at that point, [we] have housed four more of them. Then going forward, we have made a commitment that any time a veteran becomes newly homeless, we house them in an apartment within an average of 30 days or less. And we've maintained that now for over four years and we're extremely proud of that. It is very hard work. It requires a lot of organizations working together — and the VA and the Housing Authority — everybody working together to make that happen. Read the rest

The official cyberwarfare division of America's military successfully blocked off Internet access for the Russian government's notorious “troll factory” on the day of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Quite the story out today from Ellen Nakashima at the Washington Post.Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) in the city of St. Petersburg is reported to have been engaged in an active campaign “to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms,” several U.S. officials told the Washington Post. The denial of service attack from the USA on voting day reportedly worked (not that we're in a position to verify it?), and was intended to serve as a warning that “the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.”Excerpt:The action has been hailed as a success by Pentagon officials, and some U.S. senators credited CyberCom with averting Russian interference in the midterms.“The fact that the 2018 election process moved forward without successful Russian intervention was not a coincidence,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who did not discuss the specific details of the operation targeting the St. Petersburg group. Without CyberCom’s efforts, there “would have been some very serious cyber incursions.”No comment from CyberCom or NSA. They typically don't comment.READ MORE: U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms [washingtonpost.com] Read the rest

[TW: Suicide]A griefer has been reportedly splicing video of himself giving explicit instructions for committing suicide into animated videos on Youtube Kids; he lets the video run for several minutes before breaking in to say "Kids, remember, cut this way for attention, and this way for results"; despite "hundreds of reports" of this in the comments for the videos, they stayed online for several months until members of the Pedimom community (run by pediatrician/mother Free N Hess) made a concerted effort to report the videos.The Pedimom community has surfaced two videos with the suicide instructions spliced into them. They hypothesize that the griefer allows for a lengthy preroll of normal cartoons so that parents are lulled into a sense of security and walk away from their kids, never hearing the offensive material.The videos in question have been removed from Youtube so we only have the discussions at Pedimom to go on, as well as a camera video shot of a screen while one of the videos was playing. Four minutes and forty-five seconds into the video, a man quickly walked onto the screen, held his arm out, and taught the children watching this video how to properly kill themselves. What did I just see? Did I really just see that? I immediately turned off the video. My son’s nose stopped bleeding, and I further investigated the video in private while he went to play. I watched it again, certain that I had dreamt it up. I know YouTube had some sick videos, but I thought YouTube Kids was safe. Read the rest

All the rain wore through the layer of wax on my favorite raincoat. Nikwax spray-on wax proofing is great for a quick fix.Every summer I lay my jackets out to heat up in the sun and give them a coat of wax. This winter has had enough rain that my favorite jacket started to wick water last night. I was in a bit of a panic as I couldn't find my stand-by coat, but then I remembered I have a bottle of Nikwax in the utility closet.Nikwax sprays on like water. I used a rag to rub it into the jacket, and the neutral-colored solution disappears into the cloth. Give it 1-2 hours to dry and my coat is waterproof again.I prefer using Otter Wax because I like the patina the heavier wax gives the jacket. Over time jackets get better and better looking, the more you wax and wear them. Nikwax imbues no patina to the coat, but water beads and rolls off just like you'd used the real thing.Nikwax Wax Cotton Proof Spray-On Waterproofing via Amazon Read the rest

Director Spike Jonze presents the history of the US's racist/classist war on marijuana in this commercial for MedMen, a cannabis retailer with shops in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Read the rest

Here's some welcome news for people who enjoy watching videos of trucks getting their roof scraped off by the notorious 11 foot 8 Bridge (aka The Can Opener) in Durham, NC: the guy who runs the YouTube channel has added another camera so you can see the action from two angles.This time a truck got stuck under the bridge, necessitating a tow truck to extricate it.From the YouTube description:This is the sequel to this week's "Attack of the reefer trucks," and this time "umbrella man" (on the right) has to run for his life to avoid getting hit by the flying debris. This time the bridge wouldn't let go so easily of the truck, and so they had to bring in a big tow truck to remove the busted reefer truck. The entire operation took almost 2 hours, during which Gregson St. was completely blocked off on a Friday at lunchtime! This road has a traffic volume of 11k-12k vehicles a day, so traffic was a mess, too. Enjoy the video! This is crash # 143 since April 2008.Image: YouTube/yovo68 Read the rest

The bad news: there's no cure for the common cold, because there's no such thing as a common cold. Many different kinds of viruses cause colds, and to date no one has come up with a cure-all.The good news: A number of researchers have had promising results giving mice a cold vaccine.The sobering news (from The Guardian): "about 80% of drugs that make it into clinical trials because they worked in mice do not go on to work in humans."Scientists today identify seven virus families that cause the majority of colds: rhinovirus, coronavirus, influenza and parainfluenza virus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and, finally, metapneumovirus, which was first isolated in 2001. Each has a branch of sub-viruses, known as serotypes, of which there are about 200. Rhinovirus, the smallest cold pathogen by size, is by far the most prevalent, causing up to three-quarters of colds in adults. To vanquish the cold we will need to tackle all of these different families of virus at some stage. But, for now, rhinovirus is the biggest player.Scientists first attempted to make a rhinovirus vaccine in the 1950s. They used a reliable method, pioneered by French biologist Louis Pasteur in the 1880s, in which a small amount of virus is introduced to a host in order to provoke a defensive immunological reaction that then protects the body from subsequent infection. Even so, those who had been vaccinated caught colds just as easily as those who had not.Image: CHAjAMP/Shutterstock Read the rest

Mental Floss collected 50 how-to videos from YouTube. They include how to make a bed, how to fight a shark, how to find a wick hidden under a layer of wax in a candle, and how to moonwalk. My favorite is how to hard boil eggs so they peel easily. The trick is to immerse the eggs in ice water after boiling them. Read the rest

Smartmouth Beer, of Norfolk, Virginia will release their Lucky Charms themed beer on March 2nd.Remember how you used to sort through bowls of your favorite breakfast cereal to separate the marshmallows from the cereal? Whether you ate them first or saved them for last, we've got you covered with our latest beer.Saturday Morning is an 6.6% ABV IPA, brewed with in-house toasted marshmallows and bulk dehydrated-marshmallow-bits. It has been hopped and dry-hopped with Galaxy and Calypso hops. The nose is sweet and citrus, with orange and pear aromas. It has a soft pillowy body with a slight cereal taste. The result is magically ridiculous!This is a very LIMITED release beer. Draft and cans will be available on Saturday, March 2, beginning at noon at the Norfolk tasting room ONLY. It will be distributed throughout the State of Virginia to limited restaurants, bars and specialty bottle shops. Read the rest

A Palm Beach, Florida gentleman robbed his "friend" of a rare coin collection and dropped much of it into a Coinstar machine for just the face value in bills. According to the Palm Beach Post, Shane Anthony Mele, 40, confessed to robbing Michael Johnson's office of many items totaling $350,000 in value, including around 100,000 coins, "some worth just a little and some extremely valuable." From the Palm Beach Post:(Mele) told investigators he took some coins to South Florida Coins & Jewelry in Lake Worth, where he said he got about $4,000. The store’s owner, George Hornberg, told The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday the total actually was $2,330. Mele told police he dumped the rest of the collectibles in “Coin Star” machines at area grocery stores. People often trade large stashes of loose coins for store credit, minus a fee of as much as 11.9 percent.That means if he dropped in the 33 presidential coins, valued at $1,000 each, he got about $29.30.image: "Presidential $1 Coin Program" by Bill Koslosky, MD Read the rest

Junction City, Oregon has some kickass school administrators.I might not have dropped out of High School if the staff had shown this much life.Oaklea middle school principal, Justin Corey (L) and Junction City high school co-principal, Brian Young (R) share their rendition of Simon & Garfunkel's ‘The Sound of Silence’ with a snow day announcement to the Junction City, Oregon community. Thank you Steve Barth Media Productions for helping communicate in such a fun way to our families. Read the rest

After Skydance hired Pixar sex pest John Lasseter, actress Emma Thompson quit a project there in protest. Here's her letter to the studio. The LA Times:When Skydance Media Chief Executive David Ellison announced this year that he was hiring John Lasseter to head Skydance Animation, many in and outside the company were shocked and deeply unhappy. Only months earlier, Lasseter had ended his relationship with Pixar — where he had worked since the early ’80s — and parent company Disney after multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior and the creation of a frat house-like work environment. Lasseter had admitted to inappropriate hugging and “other missteps.” Read the rest

In 1873 a Methodist missionary in New York City heard rumors of a little girl who was kept locked in a tenement and regularly whipped. She uncovered a shocking case of neglect and abuse that made headlines around the world. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell how one girl's ordeal led to a new era in child welfare.We'll also outsource Harry Potter and puzzle over Wayne Gretzky's accomplishments.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Instead of making food out of animals, visual artist Helga Stentzel makes animals out of food. See more of Stentzel's absolutely delightful work on her Instagram feed: made_by_helgal. (via PetaPixel) Read the rest

There's too much screen time, and then there's too much screen time. This 13-year-old boy stays at an Internet cafe in the Philippines for days at a time, addicted to his favorite video game, Rules of Survival. Rather than drag his ass home and tell the cafe not to let him back in, his mother comes over with a plate of food to feed him while his eyes stay glued to the screen. He swats her hand away a few times, seeming annoyed that she is interrupting his playtime. And this isn't just a passing fancy, according to Oddity Central — the boy has been glued to a screen for a couple of years now. 37-year-old Lilybeth Marvel first noticed there was something wrong with her son Carlito about two years ago, when he began staying up late at an internet cafe near the family home in Nueva Ecija, the Philippines. Things got progressively worse as time went by, to the point where the 13-year-old now spends days on end with his eyes glued to a monitor playing his favorite “battle royale” video game, Rules of Survival. Last week, Mrs. Marvel was filmed delivering her son’s breakfast to the internet cafe and hand feeding him while he continued to play, because he had been there for over 48 hours.After the footage went viral, the mother took to the internet to explain that she and her husband had tried a rough approach at first, by banning Carlito from going to the internet cafe. Read the rest

This is the Android Kannon, a robotic manifestation of the Buddhist bodhisattva associated with mercy. She delivered her first teachings on Saturday at Kodaiji temple in Kyoto, Japan. From The Telegraph:Developed at a cost of Y100 million (£692,000), the robot is a joint project between the Zen temple and Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor of intelligent robotics at Osaka University.The temple approached Professor Ishiguro and asked him to design a humanoid robot that can communicate the Buddha’s teachings in a way that is easy to understand and in a manner that “helps give peace of mind to trouble people”, the Asahi newspaper reported. Read the rest

Whether it's fish or not, it's certainly not the fish she was sold. Seafood fraud is quite common, according to envronmental and consumer groups. On the other hand, I hear shamwow is delicious in winter.Note: The version of the video going viral was obviously ganked by a YouTube reuploader who added obnoxious branding and did not give credit to the creator. So this is just a short excerpt; if you know who filmed this revolting fish dinner, tell me so I can salute them here. Read the rest

When Elizabeth Warren inaugurated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of her prime targets was subprime/payday/predatory lenders; and the lenders' lobbyists went on an all-out blitz, eventually prevailing under Trump's CFPB boss Mick Mulvaney.The nonprofit Campaign for Accountability used public records requests, suing all the way up to the Georgia Supreme Court, to reveal how the industry paid academics to produce papers that were secretly co-authored by lobbyists that supported the idea that payday lending benefited poor people who were underserved by the traditional finance industry. The docs reveal how Hilary Miller, an attorney with more than a decade's worth of close ties to payday lenders, arranged for a $30,000 grant to Kennesaw State University statistics and data science professor Jennifer Lewis Priestley -- who had no previous research experience in payday lending -- and proceeded to dictate which sources Priestly should cite, which words she was allowed (and prohibited) from using in her report.Priestly eventually published a paper that was relentlessly promoted by the payday lending industry and its paid PR staff, which supported the idea that payday lending was socially beneficial.The docs reveal that Miller was so entrenched in the drafting, revision and structure of the paper that Priestly offered to give Miller a co-author credit, which Miller declined, preferring to work from the shadows.The Priestly paper was part of a larger, extremely well-funded charm offensive that payday lenders mounted, which is revealed in detail through the public records requests, which includes recruiting Black clergy members, lobbying Congress, and changing the location of its annual conference to the Trump National Doral Golf Club near Miami. Read the rest

Maduro didn't like the questions Ramos was asking, per reports.

Mark Hollis, lead singer of Talk Talk, has reportedly died. He was 64. While the UK "post-rock" band may be best known for their 1984 synthy single "It's My Life," Talk Talk's true masterpiece was the much more experimental 1988 album "Spirit of Eden" that dripped with ambient, jazz, and avant-garde influences. It's an absolute stunner.From The Guardian:Talk Talk’s bassist Mark Webb, aka Rustin Man, paid tribute to Hollis on Instagram. “I am very shocked and saddened to hear the news of the passing of Mark Hollis,” he wrote. “Musically he was a genius and it was a honour and a privilege to have been in a band with him. I have not seen Mark for many years, but like many musicians of our generation I have been profoundly influenced by his trailblazing musical ideas.”In an interview with Q’s backpages at the time, later republished in the Guardian, Hollis expressed awareness that he could be “a difficult geezer” but that was because he refused to “play that game” that came with the role of musician in the spotlight.“It’s certainly a reaction to the music that’s around at the moment, ‘cos most of that is shit,” Hollis also said of Spirit of Eden. “It’s only radical in the modern context. It’s not radical compared to what was happening 20 years ago. If we’d have delivered this album to the record company 20 years ago they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.” Read the rest

If you missed the promo code sale for the Aukey 10000mAh portable charger, it's back. Use code USIPNTS2 to this small (a bit larger than a deck of cards) dual-output charger at a very low price. Read the rest

PHOTO: President Donald Trump and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Joshua Roberts/ReutersNew England Patriots owner Robert Kraft today got a court date stemming from multiple prostitution charges. Robert Kraft, who is 77, allegedly paid for a sex act in Florida on the morning of the AFC Championship game between the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs.Robert Kraft hugged the woman he allegedly paid $100+ to (more than going rate) perform sex act on him. pic.twitter.com/aNP9L24LTV— Olivia Hitchcock (@ohitchcock) February 25, 2019We now know this is about 10 hours after Robert Kraft visited the Florida massage parlor. https://t.co/6L568ocnoa— Matt Young (@Chron_MattYoung) February 25, 2019Authorities issued an arrest warrant against Kraft as part of a prostitution sting in Florida. Palm Beach state’s attorney Dave Aronberg announced the charges at a press conference Monday.“These cases aren’t about any one defendant or any group of defendants,” Aronberg told reporters. “Many prostitutes are themselves victims, often lured into this country with promise of better life, only to be forced to work in a brothel performing sex acts for strangers.”Palm Beach State Attorney has released probable cause affidavits for all 25 men charged in Jupiter prostitution bust, including Robert Krafts pic.twitter.com/FTy2W4knGx— Danielle Waugh (@DanielleWaughTV) February 25, 2019I'm just surprised an NFL owner would get a handjob in a pre-existing massage parlor rather than getting taxpayers to build him a new one.— EmergenHat (@Popehat) February 23, 2019Kraft faces two first-degree misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution at 'Orchids of Asia Day Spa,' located in a Jupiter, Florida strip mall. Read the rest

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reveals the company may crowdsource fact-checking as a new model for Facebook’s third-party factchecking partnerships, now that they've botched the deal they had with Snopes.Earlier this month, we wrote that Snopes ended their 'debunking false stuff' partnership with Facebook. This is the first time we've read that Mark Zuckerberg has come up with a new plan. It sucks.From today's new reporting at the Guardian:In the first of a series of public conversations, Zuckerberg praised the efforts of factcheckers who partnered with Facebook following the 2016 presidential election as a bulwark against the flood of misinformation and fake news that was overtaking the site’s News Feed.“The issue here is there aren’t enough of them,” he said. “There just aren’t a lot of factcheckers.”He continued: “I think that the real thing that we want to try to get to over time is more of a crowdsourced model where people, it’s not that people are trusting some sort, some basic set of experts who are accredited but are in some kind of lofty institution somewhere else. It’s like do you trust? Like if you get enough data points from within the community of people reasonably looking at something and assessing it over time, then the question is: can you compound that together into something that is a strong enough signal that we can then use that?”Here's the bullshit-free response from Snopes' Brooke Binkowski, same Guardian story:Brooke Binkowski, the former managing editor of Snopes, a factchecking site that previously partnered with Facebook, said Zuckerberg’s comments signaled that he “has learned nothing at all”. Read the rest

No Costa Rican has contracted the measles since 2006. An unvaccinated tourist unknowingly traveled while contagious and is now in quarantine.The CDC lists 10 US states as reporting active measles infections and suggests children be vaccinated.Newser:A French family arrived in Costa Rica last Monday and put an end to Costa Rica's measles-free status: No citizen there has contracted the disease since 2006, and the last time a foreigner brought it to the country was in 2014. The Independent reports that a 5-year-old boy was taken to a doctor due to a rash; it turns out children at his school have been diagnosed with measles and that he hadn't been vaccinated against it. The Costa Rica Star reports he tested positive for measles and is currently being quarantined at a hospital in Puntarenas. Officials are working to determine who may have been in contact with the child during his flight and as the family traveled in San Jose and Santa Teresa; an infected person is generally contagious for about eight days. Read the rest

Authors of a research paper titled "The Effects of Being Time Poor and Time Rich on Life Satisfaction" found that 2.5 hours per day (for people who work) is optimal. Less than that and most people feel stressed. More than that and they feel lazy and unproductive.Many people living in modern society feel like they don’t have enough time and are constantly searching for more. But, is having limited discretionary time actually detrimental? And, can there be downsides of having too much free time? In two largescale datasets spanning 35,375 Americans, we test the relationship between the amount of discretionary time individuals have and their life satisfaction. We find and internally replicate a negative quadratic relationship between discretionary time and life satisfaction. These results show that while having too little time is indeed linked to lower levels of life satisfaction, having more time does not continually translate to greater life satisfaction, and can even reduce it.Image: clkraus/Shutterstock Read the rest

“Why do we contract out work that’s obviously vital to the health of this company and the products we build?” wrote one Facebook worker.

It's fun to watch this guy take old, broken, beaten-up, rusted, and dented tools and restore them to pristine condition. He uses lots of toxic solvents and special tools to do his work.Via The Roden Explorers Club Read the rest

Rather than soak thru pages and make reading the flipside of whatever I just took notes on annoying to read, these dry highlighters are just great.Mostly, these days, I use highlighters when reviewing contracts, however, I fell in love with these wax ones during my second or third run at college. Dry highlighters didn't ruin my expensive textbooks, were easy to wipe off if I got wax someplace I didn't want, and were simply more pleasant to use.Some folks love the smell of marker. I do not unless it is those berry scented ones.Staedtler Textsurfer Gel Highlighter Pen - 3mm - Pack of 3 - Pink, Orange and Yellow via Amazon Read the rest

A project to expunge marijuana-related convictions in San Francisco that took an entire year to pull together is nearly complete, San Francisco prosecutors said today, as they announced that 9,300 pot crimes will soon be removed from people’s criminal records. That's a big deal. As the SF DA said at today's press conference, a felony conviction for cannabis could mean “barriers to education, housing, employment and even being barred from a child’s school field trip because of a conviction.”San Francisco is able to do this in part because of the efforts of people at Code For America.From Joe Serna at the Los Angeles Times:Given that recreational marijuana is now legal in California and that the war on drugs has had a disproportionate effect on minorities, Dist. Atty. George Gascón said his office’s effort is aimed at removing barriers a criminal conviction poses for individuals long after they’ve served their sentence.In an announcement last year, Gascón said his office would review every marijuana-related conviction to find ones eligible for expungement under Prop 64, passed by voters in 2016. Though individuals can request expungements themselves, the process is known to be difficult to navigate and relatively few attempt it.Gascon’s office initially began the expungement process by hand and found about 1,000 cases to clear, but then teamed up with Code for America, a national nonprofit that uses technology to make government more efficient.Coders there created an algorithm that combed through San Francisco’s digitized criminal records going back to 1975 in just minutes. Read the rest

Walter Thompson-Hernández grew up in southeast Los Angeles. He went to Japan to make a short film for the New York Times about Chicano fashion and Culture in Japan.What I found when I got there is that, while most instances of cultural appropriation completely disregard the original communities, the people whom I met did the exact opposite: They are in constant communication with Los Angeles lowrider communities. To me, it was more of a form of cultural exchange. Although many people I met in the scene were born and raised in Japan, they pride themselves on appreciating lowrider culture, while also creating something new and adding their own touches through their own cultural experiences.Image: New York Times video screenshot Read the rest

Former Trump campaign staffer Alva Johnson alleges in a lawsuit that Donald Trump her forcibly kissed her without her consent before a Florida presidential campaign rally in 2016, the Washington Post reports.The White House denies the charges.Johnson us an event planner who lives in Madison County, Alabama. The federal lawsuit filed Monday in Florida (where the alleged sexual assault happened) asks for unspecified damages for emotional pain and suffering. KohnsIn addition to the forced kiss, she also alleges Trump's campaign discriminated against her in pay. She is black, and earned less than her white male counterparts. Kayleigh McEnany, campaign spokesjerk and frequent cable news pundit, rejected that claim as “off-base and unfounded.”From Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites at the Washington Post:In interviews with The Washington Post, and in the lawsuit, Alva Johnson said Trump grabbed her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the lips as he exited an RV outside the rally in Tampa on Aug. 24, 2016. Johnson said she turned her head and the unwanted kiss landed on the side of her mouth, which she called “super-creepy and inappropriate.” “I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” she said. “I can still see his lips coming straight for my face.”Johnson said she told her boyfriend, mother and stepfather about the incident later that day, an account all three confirmed to The Post. Two months later, Johnson consulted a Florida attorney about the unwanted kiss; he gave The Post text messages showing that he considered her “credible” but did not take her case for business reasons. Read the rest

Jeremy Corbyn favors a public vote to ”prevent a damaging Tory Brexit.”

Not a surprise: cheese, tomato, flour, water, salt, olive oil and yeast do not really bake up a health risk. Boxes of sugar and corn on the other hand?Delish:Pizza for breakfast is an American classic. Whether it's cold and taken straight from the box or served after an early morning reheat, it's basically a delicacy all on its own. However, I've never characterized the tradition in any way, shape, or form as healthy. In fact, I'm pretty sure I haven't ever heard 'pizza' and 'healthy' in the same sentence...until now. According to New York-based nutritionist Chelsey Amer, a cheesy, greasy, carb-filled slice is better for you than your favorite breakfast cereal. So, I guess it's time for us all to rethink our a.m. eating habits—and to celebrate.Amer credits the high sugar content in most cereals for its poor reputation, while The Daily Meal adds the lack of protein and healthy fats are contributing to its "nutritionally bleak" standing. "You may be surprised to find out that an average slice of pizza and a bowl of cereal with whole milk contain nearly the same amount of calories," Amer told the site. "However, pizza packs a much larger protein punch, which will keep you full and boost satiety throughout the morning."While it still might be a little far-fetched to call your early morning pizza indulgence a healthy option, it's definitely healthier. That counts for something, right!? Amer does credit its protein content and admits, "a slice of pizza contains more fat and much less sugar than most cold cereals, so you will not experience a quick sugar crash."That's not to say all pizzas, or cereals, are create equal. Read the rest

Juston and Kristen Herbert have a good side hustle: they go to Trader Joe's and buy dozens of "Everything but the Bagel" spice bottles for $2 and then ship them to Amazon's warehouse. They sell the spice at a markup and Amazon does the fulfillment.From Money:He loads [the Trader Joe's spice] into boxes while passers-by shop around him. When the cashier asks what he’s doing with all the containers, he says he’s putting them in gift baskets and sending them to family.It comes out to $141.29 for 71 seasonings. (The Herberts say they try not to be “obnoxious,” so they limit the amount they take.)Back at home, the couple wraps the items while 6-month-old Kruze sits on the kitchen counter. There are specific pack and prep requirements they have to meet, but it basically works like this: They put an item in a bag, place a bunch of those in a box and send that box to Amazon. Amazon stores those items in a warehouse until an order comes in. Then employees package the item in an Amazon box and ship it to the person. Read the rest

In a now-viral Facebook post, Terry Robinson of Spring Texas (jokingly?) explains why when he and his wife get "old and too feeble," they will check into a Holiday Inn instead of spending their remaining years in a nursing home. Bottom line, it's a better deal. From Fox8: According to his research, the average cost for nursing home care is around $188 per day, where as if he used his senior discount for the long-term stay at the hotel chain, he’d only have to pay $59.23 per day.He said in turn, that would leave him with $128.77 a day for food, room service, laundry, gratuities and movies.He also pointed out that the Holiday Inn has locations all over the country, so if you get bored, you can always move to another city. Read the rest

Shane Parrish runs the popular website, Farnam Street. Its mission is to help readers "develop an understanding of how the world really works, make better decisions, and live a better life." I recently discovered it and it stands out from other websites of its kind.Here's a GQ article that outlines Parrish's guide for reading 80 high-quality books a year, and how to remember the important parts. It describes how to select books, how to take notes, and how to abandon books that aren't paying off.Develop a system of note-taking.Parrish calls his system The Blank Sheet: Before he begins reading a new book, he takes a blank sheet and writes down what he knows about the subject. Then, as he’s reading, he uses a different color pen to write down new ideas and connect them to what he had originally written, hanging the new knowledge on the old knowledge.“Use a different color every time, so you can visualize what you're learning as you're reading,” says Parrish. “Then before you start your next reading session, to ease your brain into it, you just review the mind map. That gives you the context of where you left off… Then when you're done with the book, you have this summary of the book.”Image: Africa Studio/Shutterstock Read the rest

From the scary movie documentarians "You're So Cool Brewster: The Story of Fright Night" and "Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary" comes "Pennywise: The Story of It." Read the rest

When Moira Boxall returned to Glasgow from Queensland, Australia, she unpacked her suitcase and was surprised to find a small python had accompanied her on the trip. The snake had made the 9,000 mile journey tucked inside a shoe. This sounds like the makings of a fun movie! From CNN:"I responded to a call from a woman who had just returned from a holiday in Australia who had found a small snake inside her shoe in her suitcase," animal rescue officer Taylor Johnstone said in a statement sent to CNN. Read the rest

In Eugene, Oregon yesterday, the Buck Buck Food Cart exploded in a spectacular fireball due to a malfunctioning gas line. Fortunately, nobody was injured. From the Register-Guard:A battalion chief said three additional buildings suffered damage from the blast, including (the nearby Oakshire Brewing Public House).Buck Buck owner Mikey Lawrence, who also owns the Black Wolf Supper Club on Willamette Street, said he woke up to a number of calls and texts informing him that the food cart had exploded. Buck Buck sells fried chicken and other southern specialties.“I live close by so I rode over, waited for the train to pass and then saw it,” Lawrence said at the scene. “And I said, ‘Holy moly.’ Well, it wasn’t as nice as ‘Holy moly,’ but it was quite a shock.” Read the rest