Boing Boing

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

Ahead of a summit between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, authorities in Vietnam have kicked out Kim impersonator Howard X. Howard is on his way back to Hong Kong, reports the Beeb.Howard X says officials have since told him his visa is "invalid", but says he has received no further explanation."Satire is a powerful weapon against any dictatorship. They are scared of a couple of guys that look like the real thing," Howard X, who was wearing a black suit and thick black glasses in the style of Kim Jong-un, told reporters. Read the rest

Sam Bennett makes art out of stones, driftwood and other natural materials found on the beach. It's like Andy Goldsworthy, but fun instead of spooky.The tides may wash away his work but he says its ephemeral nature is key to why he does it."It's there for a moment and gone the next, I'm just moving nature around," he says of his art. Read the rest

Having difficulties using a butter knife or rubber spatula to get the last ounce of peanut butter out of the jar? Or maybe you're sick of having your too-soft bread being ripped apart by peanut butter (wait, what?). Not to worry first-world citizens, inventor Andy Scherer of Burbank, California has got you covered. His Peanut Butter Pump promises to clean the jar for you. The jar-cleaning gadget won't, however, clean itself. But, it will squeeze out peanut butter in ribbons or in a stream. Get one of Scherer's patented gizmos for $25 through his Indiegogo campaign. Over 1400 backers have already funded the project. images via The Peanut Butter Pump/Indiegogo(Delish) Read the rest

On Twitter, Bret Taylor recalls a meeting at Google which almost resulted in satellite maps being termed "Bird mode." [via Jason Kottke]There was a geeky holy war on the Maps team. When Lars checked in the code to switch between maps and imagery, he called it “Satellite.” We were quickly informed that a significant % of the images were taken from airplanes — “Aerial Photography.” Our name was factually incorrect. Being the product pragmatist I am, I thought, who cares? “Aerial Photography” doesn’t fit on a button, and every person in our usability study got what “Satellite” meant. Unfortunately, to the Keyhole GIS engineers, we were basically destroying humanity with our lies.Speaking of which, the term for engineers thinking they're experts in everything is apparently "engineer's syndrome."1. And thereby the bitter knowitall hogwash they choked internet discussion with for decades until their model of the human mind was baked into emergent channels of mass communication and everything collapsed under the weight of the resulting bullshit and gave the world over to fascism and ruin. Read the rest

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"William Waiirua got more help from Hātea Kapa Haka than he bargained for when his car broke down..."NZ Herald:The harmonic voices of Hātea Kapa Haka took to the stage yesterday with their rendition of Freddie Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody.The group, from Whangārei, have found online fame last year after their cover of Queen's iconic hit in te reo Māori went viral on Facebook.The group, who collaborated with internet sensation William Wairua, created the music video as a way to pay tribute to the band's lead singer, Freddie Mercury, and to celebrate the release of the Queen biopic, also titled Bohemian Rhapsody.(MetaFilter, Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

Welcome to the town with the longest name in Europe: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales. It was, originally, a name contrived to draw tourists. But that was 150 years ago, it's legit, and it's long been enjoying the consequences.Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch recently achieved viral fame after Channel 4 producers decided to drop it on meteorologist Liam Dutton, who nailed it effortlessly. Which stands to reason, him being Welsh? Anyway, it's a joy to watch and hear:His flawless pronunciation of the 58-letter place name - the longest in Europe - garnered a total of more than 20 million views on YouTube and Facebook within a week and dominated the media around the world.Liam was interviewed by Wales Online, BBC Radio 5 Live, Canadian breakfast television and beyond, as well as featuring in Time magazine, the New York Times, MTV and Perez Hilton.He was praised by Catherine Zeta Jones, and TV anchors around the world were so impressed by his mind-blowing effort that they tried to outdo him, but with little success. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force is a new one-off graphic novel anthology from Chicago's highly topical Devil's Due comics, featuring Josh Blaylock, Tim Seeley, Hoyt Silva, Marguerite Dabaie, Dean Haspiel, Jill Thompson, Jose Garibaldi, Christa Cassano, Travis Hymel, Pat Shand, ​K. Lynn Smith, Kit Caoagas, Larry Watts, Bob Sikoryak, Adam McGovern, Nick Accardi, Shawn DePasquale, Elizabeth Marley Kim, Jason Goungor, Sherard Jackson, Peter Rostovsky, Jeffrey Burandt and Sean Von Gorman; the title is a tribute to one of her greatest Twitter moments to date. Ships in May, pre-order now (there's also a variant cover!)(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Anyone who really listens to vinyl knows the medium is far from dead. But convincing others of its appeal can be an uphill battle. For one thing, there's the gear: A quality record player takes up a lot more space than, say, a smartphone packed with thousands of streaming songs at the ready. But here's where RokBlok: The World's Smallest Record Player excels. It not only makes your listening party portable but a heck of a lot more fun.What we have here is essentially an audiophile's robot buddy. Lay any 33 1/3 or 45 RPM record on a flat surface, and the RokBlok roves around on top of it with vinyl-safe rubber wheels, playing the songs through its own built-in speaker. Made of bamboo and MDF, it's smaller than a record itself at just 2" x 4", which means you can take it anywhere. And if you want a sound boost, it can transmit to Bluetooth-enabled speakers within 30 feet.Right now, you can pick up the RokBlok for $99. Read the rest

Costa Rica had been measles-free for five years, until Feb 18, when visiting French tourists took their unvaccinated five-year-old son to a doctor to investigate a "rash" that turned out to be measles -- the boy's mother was also unvaccinated.The boy's French classmates have also experienced a measles outbreak. It's not clear why the boy and his mother were not vaccinated. The boy is being kept in medical quarantine.Many countries will not admit tourists without a certificate of yellow fever vaccination; given the number of rich-world people who have decided to expose themselves and their neighbors to the risks of other preventable illnesses by eschewing vaccination, perhaps poor countries should institute a policy of turning away visitors who have not received the MMR and other vaccines. The health ministry issued a statement saying: “Our country enjoys very good vaccination coverage in general. However, in order to avoid particular cases and their possible complications, it is important that those in charge of minors ensure that children have the complete vaccination scheme.Measles returned to Costa Rica after five years by French family who had not had vaccinations [Adam Lusher/Independent](via Reddit) Read the rest

Swiss banking giant UBS has been hit with the largest fine in French history: €3.7b, the result of a 7-year investigation of the bank's role in helping the wealthiest French citizens hide €10b from tax authorities. The fine is more than ten times larger than the next-largest fine in French history, when HSBC paid €300m over its wrongdoing. The fine represents 92% of the bank's 2018 profits. After the financial crisis, Swiss law was changed to allow foreign tax authorities to pierce the veil of anonymity on Switzerland's notorious anonymous bank accounts. This allowed France's National Financial Prosecutor's office to investigate capital flows from France to Switzerland from 2004 to 2012, and to conclude that the bank and its directors "were perfectly aware that they were breaking French law."The bank's defense was that it had been duped by its French customers, who misled bank compliance staff by falsely claiming that they had declared their assets in Switzerland, but could not supply any details of which customers had so misled them. Instead, prosecutors showed that UBS had sent bank officials to gatherings of the super rich to court their business with promises of help to evade taxation, and that they had used a second set of books to track the money their clients sent to Switzerland, using the euphemisms "milk tickets" and "milk cans" to stand in for money.The record fine was also augmented with a €800m damages award to the French state, and a €15m fine for UBS's French subsidiary. Read the rest

Germany's Alternative For Germany (AfD) party (previously) are an insurgent neofascist movement with ties to senior mainstream politicians and the country's super-wealthy would-be oligarchs; the party put on a hard push in the the 2018 Bavarian elections and their meme warfare was full of familiar voter-suppression tactics, from garden-variety disinformation to exhortations to stay home on election day.Also prominent in the group's messaging: hashtags and tropes from the US far-right conspiracy theory Qanon (previously), an incoherent toxic stew of antisemitism, murder accusations, numerology, Islamophobia, and other pathologies of the moment.The connection between Qanon and AfD comes from an unreleased report from the London School of Economics-affiliated Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which bills itself as an "anti-extremist think tank"; some details of the study have been reported in the German and US press.The researchers traced the inclusion of Qanon-affiliated hashtags in AfD social media, including German translations and adaptations of popular Qanon tags (e.g. #linksliegenlassen, #MerkelMussWeg); as with the US-based Qanon activists, the German Qanon phenomenon was driven by small numbers of incredibly prolific social media users -- not bots (Erin Gallagher's research found that Qanon tweeters posting 500+ messages/day were often "older retired people with a lot of free time").There's evidence that US-based Qanon activists forged alliances with German neofascists; some popular fascist hashtags ("#ChemnitzIstDerAnfang") originated with US Qanon accounts.Qanon is becoming a kind of ideological signifier among far-right groups: members of the far-right who have adopted the yellow vest for street demonstrations in Canada and the UK have been spotted decorating the vests with Qanon memes and carrying Qanon-boosting signs. Read the rest

Lime scooters have been recalled in Switzerland and cleared off the streets of New Zealand following a string of injuries, including multiple broken bones, caused by a software bug that brings the scooters to an abrupt halt, throwing their riders off (the scooters are still available in the USA despite an account of a similar incident in Texas).The company says it has found the bug: "[I]n very rare cases—usually riding downhill at top speed while hitting a pothole or other obstacle—excessive brake force on the front wheel can occur, resulting in a scooter stopping unexpectedly."There's an important underlying issue here that illustrates one of the ways in which devices whose rental terms are enforced by software do not fail safe: Lime scooters are designed so that they can be remotely immobilized, over the internet, if your credit runs out or if the scooter is doing something else the company disfavors. This design constraint means that the users of the scooter can't (in some circumstances) override the brakes. Malicious code, or code with errors in it, poses a constant risk for the scooter rider, because if it triggers this braking function, then by design the system will treat attempts by the rider override the immobilization command as an attack.In an ideal world, we'd design the control systems for devices that can harm their users to fail safe, with overrides for owners that let them judge when safety features are inappropriately triggered. But when the "safety" that these features ensures is the safety of a rental company, not the user of the device, then the "fail safe" mode is one that elevates the protection of the owner's capital investment over the user's physical wellbeing. Read the rest

Richard Sackler is the only known member of the powerful opioid family (previously) to have been deposed; the 2015 deposition was published last week by Propublica and it reveals Sackler's bizarre rationalizations for his family company's deliberate creation of the opioid epidemic.Sackler talks like the kind of powerful man who gets to say whatever bullshit comes into his mind while everyone around him nods their heads and praises him for his wisdom (see also: D. Trump).For example, when asked why he sent an email expressing seeming delight at the dismayed warning by Oxycontin inventor Robert Kaiko that the company's sales plan would lead to widespread adoption, Sackler said that he was only being polite, and that really, he planned on abandoning the plan (he didn't abandon the plan).Then there's a long section where Sackler discusses what was meant by internal company documents that detailed plans to encourage doctors to view Oxycontin as "weaker" than morphine (Oxycontin is twice as powerful as morphine), but he was using "weaker" to mean "less threatening" rather than more potent.As Ars Technica's Beth Mole points out, this is all laughable bullshit -- the only thing remarkable about it is that Sackler said it with a straight face.In 1997, Richard was involved in discussion with employees of a Sackler-owned company in Germany over whether they could get regulatory authorities there to let them sell OxyContin as an uncontrolled drug. Though OxyContin developer Robert Kaiko warned that this was a terrible idea, Richard seemed supportive of the idea, asking in a subsequent message: “How substantially would it improve your sales?” But in his deposition, Richard insisted he was never a fan of the idea, arguing, “we were not in favor of this, but we were trying to be polite and solicitous rather than saying, this is a terrible idea, forget it, don't do it.”When the idea ultimately failed, Richard sent a message to an employee in Germany saying, “When we are next together we should talk about how this idea was raised and why it failed to be realized. Read the rest

More and more, software companies are using DevOps methodology to better integrate their development and operations teams. Essentially, it's a system of tools and philosophies that get an entire staff on the same page. The result: Better code, delivered faster. If you're looking to learn how, the DevOps Certification Training Master Class Bundle is a good way to start.In 75 hours of lectures and exercises, you'll learn the relevant methodologies that are key to DevOps, such as Agile Scrum. You'll also get the nitty-gritty details about how to apply that knowledge with a walkthrough on tools such as Puppet and Microsoft Azure Services. The courses teach how to build a scalable system from the top down on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform, and configure a range of devices across Linux or Windows. By the end of the bundle, you'll be certified in the use of software like Git Docker, Jenkins, Ansible and many more.The DevOps Certification Training Master Class Bundle is currently priced at $69. Read the rest