Ronald Reagan spoke often of America as a shining city on a hill: a prosperous, free, and virtuous model for the nations of the world. Is Trump's Republican Party living up to that vision of our potential? Read the rest
In May, Harbor Freight recalled certain Pittsburgh-branded jack stands due to a defect in the ratchet that could lead to them collapsing under load. Unfortunately, some of the newer models have a welding defect, and are also being recalled. There is full list of the affected models.The text of the recall is embedded below. Read the rest
Japan Today reports that 42-year-old Japanese rapper Kan a.k.a. GAMI (real name: Kunihiko Kawakami) was arrested for possessing a half gram of cannabis. Police say informant contacted authorities to let them know Kawakami was in possession of the cannabis.This is the second time this year Kawakami has been arrested this year for possessing weed. He could be facing prison time, because Japan has some of the strictest drug laws in the world. According to Vice magazine, "Under Japan’s Cannabis Control Act, weed possession can lead to up to five years in jail, or seven if there’s a suspected intent to profit, and a potential fine of up to $18,000." If that seems bad, consider the penalty for weed possession in Dubai: "Keith Brown, a British youth worker and father of three, was sentenced to four years in jail in 2008 after he was found with 0.0003 grams of cannabis stuck to his shoe in the Dubai airport. The weed was the size of a grain of sugar."How much is half a gram? I took the above photo of a half gram of dried oregano next to a quarter. Read the rest
Of COURSE one of the first people to understand the power of HyperCard was @kevin2kelly! Now I want to find a copy of the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog and spend a day browsing around. pic.twitter.com/FMYZ4aA6NN— Drew Coffman (@DrewCoffman) May 26, 2020Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly's first job was at the Whole Earth Catalog. Here's a video from the 1980s that shows Kevin describing the HyperCard version of the Whole Earth Catalog. (Try it here!)I feel fortunate to have worked with and become a friend of Kevin's. We've known each other since the late 80s when we traded subscriptions for bOING bOING (when it was a zine), and the Whole Earth Review, which he edited. About 20 years ago Kevin started Cool Tools, which is an outgrowth of the Whole Earth Catalog and for the last six or seven years, I've been Kevin's business partner there. The Electronic Whole Earth Catalog is a bridge between the print version of the Catalog and Cool Tools. Also, I miss HyperCard. I wish it was still around and that it was the way to make websites. Read the rest
Like a trailer to a psychological thriller along the lines of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, in which a wire-tapping detective played by Gene Hackman struggles with mounting paranoia until he has a full-on break down, this Lincoln Project video goes beyond your usual anti-Trump ad. This one isn't for the Republicans against Trump, and it's not for waffling Independents. It's only for an audience of one -- Trump himself. Meant to goad, it's sure to exacerbate his already spiraling affliction with delusions and paranoia. Read the rest
Thank the maker for this Nylabone pacifier and teething ring! View this post on Instagram Watch as the adorable @electra___cute chews. #puppyA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Jul 3, 2020 at 12:00pm PDT We have an insanely cute new puppy, her name is Electra. You may follow her on Instagram @Electra___Cute. She is teething and, I understand Golden Retrievers chew a lot anyways. Bitter Apple and an endless supply of chew toys have been employed. The most popular is the Nylabone pacifier.I have recently renovated a shotgun shack. The puppy is the piece de resistance for my new life. I had forgotten and/or ignored the challenges of new puppy ownership. Electra seems to want to chew the corners of the new cabinets, the edging on the new rugs, and literally anything else she can get into her mouth. My daughter and I take shifts keeping wires, chair legs, and patio umbrellas out of Electra's mouth.Most toys get picked up and dropped, the endless energy of a young puppy moves on to find something else. While she has occasionally stopped to gnaw on a Kong or pair of sandals, jamming the Nylabone pacifier in her mouth usually gets a few moments of peace. Occasionally she settles down with it and chews until she falls to sleep.Right now time and this pacifier are the only hope for my furniture.Nylabone Just for Puppies Extra Small Pacifier Bone Puppy Dog Teething Chew Toy via Amazon Read the rest
A statue of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester's Maplewood Park was vandalized on the anniversary of the "What to a slave is the Fourth of July?" speech that he gave in Rochester in 1852.Given the current cultural conversation that the United States is having around statues and memorials that commemorate people who did terrible things alongside their other accomplishments, this unfortunate act is being held up as some kind of monolithic indicator of the eeeeeeevils of "cancel culture" and whiny liberals who want to get rid of statues. Consider these tweets from Yascha Mounk, a contributing editor for The Atlantic and Senior Advisor for Protect Democracy:"Removed" is quite the euphemism here, by the way. As best I can tell from this terrible news report, it has been smashed to pieces. https://t.co/qMgUwazdRl— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) July 6, 2020As of this writing, it's not clear who destroyed this statue — one of fourteen Douglass statues in Rochester, where Douglass lived and was buried. In 2018, two drunk college kids also destroyed a Frederick Douglass statue in the city. Eyewitnesses claimed the students were shouting racial slurs, but the vandals themselves insist they were just drunk and did it for the lulz. They pled guilty, and had to participate in a restorative justice program to learn more about Douglass and his contributions to the world.In other words, even that situation wasn't an indicator of anything other than the seeping subtleties that empower entitled white dudes to do dumb shit and get away with it. Read the rest
Video editor Matt Dent posted this video to Twitter showing the LA skyline on July 4th, fireworks ablaze, to the tune of Vangelis' 1982 Blade Runner soundtrack. The footage was from KTLA.More LA as real-world Blade Runner. [H/t Laurie Fox] Read the rest
Within an hour after a Martinez, California community came together to paint -- with the city's permission -- Black Lives Matter on the street, a hateful MAGA man (oops, that's redundant) and Karen sidekick begins to cover it in black paint.People are shouting at the couple to stop what they're doing, to which the red-capped man says, among other things, “We’re sick of this narrative...The narrative of police brutality, the narrative of oppression, the narrative of racism. It’s a lie. It’s a lie.”“Your ancestors aren’t from here,” Karen says. As if hers are.After much back and forth, and after the B and L are painted over, a woman grabs the paint away. Now the Martinez police are looking for the vandals.From The New York Times:“The community spent a considerable amount of time putting the mural together only to have it painted over in a hateful and senseless manner,” Chief Manjit Sappal of the Martinez Police Department said in a statement. “The city of Martinez values tolerance, and the damage to the mural was divisive and hurtful.”The mural was painted on a one-block stretch of Court Street in Martinez, which is about 35 miles northeast of San Francisco. The city selected the location after Mr. Gomez, the lead organizer for Martizians for Black Lives, asked the city for permission to paint the message, he said.“We asked to do it on our city’s main street,” Mr. Gomez said. The city, he said, offered the street in front of the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse instead. Read the rest
I'm looking forward to playing Hideous Abomination [Kickstarter], because it combines two of my favorite things: games where you build something piece by piece out of cards or tiles, and grotesque cartoon creatures that defy the imagination.Hideous Abomination is a tile-laying game for 2-5 people, aged 12+ (but with simplified rules for younger players), generally running about 15-30 minutes. You’re in fierce competition with the other players to construct and complete an abomination that matches certain criteria - some of which are randomized per game! You’ll take turns rolling the die and playing, stealing and bolting tiles. There's plenty of player interaction and end-game scoring. It's fast-paced fun for social gamers, but the randomized win conditions and variables mean it's deep enough for more strategically-minded gamers, tooHere's how it's played:The creator, Judson Cowan (previously at Boing Boing) is responsible for the gameplay, the artwork, the milieux, the song in the ad, the everything, which is why it already has such a coherent and finished look to it and why I have no doubt it'll ship promptly. Hideous Abomination [Kickstarter] Read the rest
At this point, Pizza Hut had just begun franchising out from their original Wichita, Kansas location. But this commercial was created for that OG red roofed joint. Put put! Read the rest
Samara Ginsberg performs Sylvester Levay's Airwolf theme tune — originally intended for orchestral presentation but now a synth classic — on eight cellos. Stringfellow would be so proud!Bonus: Ginsberg's done Bernard Hoffer's Thundercats theme too:Previously: Knight Rider theme performed on eight cellos Read the rest
From New Scientist:As the caterpillar of the moth Uraba lugens grows, it sheds its exoskeleton – but rather than getting rid of the previous head section, it stays attached to its body to create a bizarre “hat”.This has earned it the nickname the mad hatterpillar, after the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.[…]U. lugens moults up to 13 times while in its caterpillar phase, with the tower of heads starting to be built from the fourth moult. As the caterpillar grows, each empty head is bigger than the last.The headpiece isn’t just for show, however. “The function is to protect them from predators – they use it to bat predators away,” says photographer Alan Henderson of Minibeast Wildlife, an invertebrate resource centre based in Queensland, Australia.I know butterflies are the aspirational metaphor for most caterpillars, but maybe more of us should aspire to remain in our larval forms as long as we can wear our 13 empty old heads as hats. It's even more fashionable than those fancy butterfly wings!Weird caterpillar uses its old heads to make an elaborate hat [Gigi Li / New Scientist] Read the rest
Italian composer Ennio Morricone is dead at 91.Morricone acquired fame scoring Westerns but transcended genre to become one of the world's masters of the form. "His music was always outstanding," writes Hans Zimmer, "and done with great emotional fortitude and great intellectual thought."His 1960s scores for Sergio Leone, backing a moody Clint Eastwood in the Dollars trilogy, were huge successes and came to define him: with their whistling melodies, and blend of symphonic elements with gunshots and guitars, they evoke the entire western genre. “The music is indispensable, because my films could practically be silent movies, the dialogue counts for relatively little, and so the music underlines actions and feelings more than the dialogue,” Leone has said. Morricone has said his own best work was for Leone’s 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America. Read the rest
Americanism has a weird obsession with vague notions of "law and order." At its core, there's nothing unique about a society whose existence depends on a collective respect for its own internal rule system — indeed, that's basically just a society. But those who buy the narrative of Good Ol' American Jingoism love to toss around their platitudes about being a "nation of laws," without giving much thought to what that actually means, or who is served by that law and order. Whatever the status quo they got used to, that's the way things have always been, and thus, it is right.Consider the US Department of Justice. I've never even given much thought to its founding; I hadn't thought much about the origins of police departments growing out of slave patrols until it was explicitly brought to my attention either.But Smithsonian Magazine has a great new piece about the origins of the DoJ, which began on July 1, 1870 — exactly 150 years ago this month. And it turns out, it's a direct extension of Reconstruction-era struggles, and was created specifically to enforce racial equality by fighting voter suppression and the KKK:In 1870, the United States was still working to bind up the nation’s wounds torn open by the Civil War. During this period of Reconstruction, the federal government committed itself to guaranteeing full citizenship rights to all Americans, regardless of race. At the forefront of that effort was [Amos T.] Akerman, a former Democrat and enslaver from Georgia, and a former officer in the Confederate Army. Read the rest
As the summer surges forward, grilling and evenings in the backyard may be the only serious outdoor excursions many of us take this season. Yet even with all of our current problems, there’s one group who doesn’t care a bit about COVID-19 and will still look to make any trip you make outside into an uncomfortable disaster. Mosquitoes. You hate ‘em. I hate ‘em. We all hate ‘em. The Centers for Disease Control calls them the world’s deadliest animal. And even though there may be some unknown environmental impacts, scientists say a mosquito genocide might not be a horrible thing for the planet.You can help get that mass extermination started right in your yard with the Kinkoo Moskiller Mosquito Killer Lamp.Rather than slathering yourself in mosquito repellant, the Moskiller takes an innovative approach to eliminating pesky, disease-carrying mosquitoes without the use of chemicals and other harmful substances.Rather than depend on just one trick, the Moskiller actually employs four different technologies to thin out your backyard mosquito horde. The unit emits 360-degree wrap-around UV light waves and bionic temperatures that attract mosquitos from a wide range of over 200 square feet. Once they get close, a seven-leaf fan creates a strong peripheral vortex airflow that essentially sucks its prey right into the Moskiller’s anti-escape storage box. There, a physical air-drying method puts the final zap on mosquitoes, dehydrating them and killing ‘em dead. Meanwhile, the Moskiller handles its responsibilities in virtual silence, so you can also keep it running while you work or sleep. Read the rest
In "Seduction Of The Innocent," the inimitable Sid Davis tells the harrowing tale of Jeanette, who falls in with the bad crowd and through peer pressure gets into marijuana, pills, and ultimately sells her body for heroin.Sid's most famous film is "Boys Beware," the anti-gay scare film made the same year, also with the help of the Santa Monica Police and the same deadpan narrator.Voa A/V Geeks Read the rest
Oakland Symphony was forced to cancel its season but they've continued to rehearse through Zoom. In lieu of its regular in-person concert, they performed their version of "This Land is Your Land" and posted it on YouTube. Its conductor, Michael Morgan, says of the song choice, "It's often misinterpreted as just another patriotic ditty. The reputation of its composer, Woody Guthrie, is smoothed over and sanitized. But the fact is, it was written in 1940 when many patriotic songs seemed to either exclude or present a very narrow vision of what it was to be American. 'This Land is Your Land' comes out of the bedrock of the social justice movement. It was an anthem of inclusion when inclusion was not mainstream. This song is radical. Woody Guthrie was a socialist, if not a communist, and his song is for everybody..."Yes, he's talking about the same Woody Guthrie who had a sticker on his guitar that read, "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS":screengrab via Oakland Symphony/YouTube; image via United States Library of Congress/Wikipedia Read the rest
With all due respect to our vegetarian friends, there might be nothing more intrinsically linked to the 4th of July holiday than a big ole cookout. Sure, fireworks and celebrating the birth of a constitutional republic are great too, but showing off your cooking prowess with a brilliantly seared, mouth-watering slab of grade-A American beef is the true measure of a peak summer holiday.Of course, cooking perfection doesn’t happen without the right tools — and right now, a July 4th sale is shaving hundreds off the price of one of the hottest steak grills on the market today, the Otto Lite 1,500°F Professional Steak Grill.Otto’s Steak Grill won the prestigious German Design Award in 2018 for its outstanding product design by doing one thing exceptionally well: delivering prime cooking conditions for steak quickly and easily.The real secret to the stainless steel Otto Lite isn’t really a secret at all: it’s this unit’s extreme heat. Unlike most barbeques that aren’t capable of hitting the extreme temperatures needed, the Otto Lite fires up to an insanely hot 1,500°F in just three minutes.With the Otto Lite’s blistering, radiant heat distribution technology, you can sear a steak quickly to give it a delicious, flavor-sealing crust while your meat remains tender on the inside. That means depending on the size of your cut, you can go from sparking the grill to finished, plated meals in less than 10 minutes.The Otto Lite also brings some versatility with its game, featuring six slide-in slots allowing safe height adjustment of the grate; as well as two simultaneously controlled radiant infra-red burners so you can dial in the ideal temperature for your meat. Read the rest
screenshot.rocks fits any image you upload into a web browser-style frame and gives you a new image of the composite. It's perfect for turning photoshopped web design ideas into mockups so people know what they might look like in real life. Or simply as a cute frame for your favorite images, for sharing on the internet. Read the rest
LEGO is jumping on the mosaic art craze with the LEGO Art poster series, out this fall. Sets will include Andy Warhol portraits of Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Iron Man, and a Star Wars series of Sith Lords.The sets also come with collector's style booklets, and some include music options for listening while assembling.Via Brothers Brick:LEGO hopes that LEGO Art will be “a new canvas for creative expression” that allows adults to relax and give them a chance to create and display art based on their passions. The structure of each portrait is comprised of 9 new 16 x 16 stud mosaic plates which can be connected to each other with Technic pins to form the larger portrait. Each set comes with two new Technic wall-hanging elements as well as a new black separator specially crafted to assist in quickly reassembling mosaics into alternate versions.The pieces will come pre-sorted by color, and the instructions will feature a “color by numbers” grid for assembling each mosaic plate. Each set comes with a unique printed 2×4 signature tile and additional black pieces to build a frame around the final portrait.Image: YouTube / Lego Quick Review Read the rest
In a video posted to Tiktok, a shopper asserts her constitutional right not to wear a mask in Costco, then her constitutional right to plant her rear on the floor. @keeping.up.with.kris Karen at Costco #karen #costco #YouGotIt #nomasknoservice #nomask #dumptrump #covid19 ♬ original sound - keeping.up.with.kris Read the rest
In this sobering video made for the Movement For Black Lives, Hamilton actor Daveed Diggs asks that we look at what Independence Day really means for Black people right now. It was inspired by Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" and was written by Safia Elhillo, Danez Smith, Lauren Whitehead, W. Kamau Bell, Angel Nafis, Idris Goodwin, Pharoahe Monch, Camonghne Felix, and Nate Marshall.What, to my people, is the Fourth of July? My people, who are failed every day by every country, sleepless in the long night, terrorized by fireworks, we who have cried salt baths for our kin.Look at all we have borne for you: arms, armistice, the sweetest fruits, flesh of children hidden away from the ugly summer of their own blood — we are on the front lines. Help me, tell me, what do we tell the children of your Fourth of July? What is death to a daughter? What is river to a sea? Where is the country where my people are safe?Ancestors set the table send dream mares in high supply. Too heavy, too spent, too hot to cook, no promise beyond the sparkly simple bombs. Keep your holiday, your hunger, the blood in your teeth. Police parade down streets, proud descendants of the slave patrol. Theater of denial, a propaganda pageant, and we are on the front lines all summer. My uncle can’t sleep and he was born free. And he ain’t never been. Read the rest
When you sit down to play a new AAA video game like The Last of Us 2, you probably assume it was created by gaming experts with insane levels of artistic and technical talent. And...you’d be right. Top developers are craftsmen of the highest order, pouring literally thousands of man-hours into creating the greatest gaming experiences possible.But even if you haven’t been coding and manipulating game engines since your middle school years, it’s still within your grasp to create a thrilling video game of your own all by yourself. In fact, the tools of game creation have become so democratized that anyone can teach themselves how to craft a really cool game without any formal coding knowledge. GameGuru was created specifically for those who aren’t programmers, designers, and artists and still want to put together a really awesome game. With the training and assets in The Complete GameGuru Bundle, that process gets a whole lot easier.GameGuru has developed an entire system for allowing anyone to try their hand at video game design. Starting out with the GameGuru: Game Making for Everyone course, invested learners will get a complete starter’s guide to DIY video game development. Using the GameGuru tools, you’ll learn how to build your own game world and design male, female and other fun characters and creatures, each with their own unique looks and movements. You’ll learn just how simple it is to find any item you want in the GameGuru asset library — and just click and drag it into your game. Read the rest
“This flight was a dream come true for me. For six years I’ve been chasing the out-and-back world record, and this year, all the pieces of the puzzle finally came together beautifully.” — Owen Morse, hang glider pilot
I'm a little late to the party as I've just discovered the fantastic world of YouTuber Pickitup's ska covers! K.K. Slider himself would be impressed by his ska-jazz cover of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons theme. Now, if that's not your thing, Pickitup's got a huge catalog of other ska/[insert music genre here] covers on his channel Ska Tune Network that are sure to delight. From his Patreon:I have been given this gift and love for music, and i've chosen to do the most important thing I can possibly think of with it, and that's to create ska covers of various songs. This entire journey began on christmas of 2016, when I jokingly posted on facebook saying I should make a bad ska cover of a christmas song, and everyone encouraged me to actually do it, so I did it and people loved it, so since then I've been using my resourses to record myself playing guitar, bass, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, keyboard, and sometimes unconventional instruments like viola, ukulele, euphonium, and honestly anything I can get my hands on to create covers of songs I find interesting or songs other people tell me I should do! Here's another fun one: A ska-punk one of Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy."screengrab via Ska Tune Network Read the rest
Shannon LaNier is a television reporter, actor, author, and a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. He's also a Black man — the sixth great-grandson of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who had six children with the Founding Father. Dressed in period clothing, LaNier recently stepped in front of the camera of Drew Gardner, a photographer who painstakingly re-creates portraits of historical figures with their direct descendants. His ongoing Descendants project is a commission by the Smithsonian.Shannon LaNier chose not to wear a wig while posing as his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. “I didn’t want to become Jefferson,” says LaNier, who has gone to reunions at Monticello and co-authored the book Jefferson’s Children: The Story of One American Family. “My ancestor had his dreams—and now it’s up to all of us living in America today to make sure no one is excluded from the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” LaNier also had this to say about his famous relative:“He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn’t practice it. He owned people. And now I’m here because of it.” Watch the behind-the-scenes video of this portrait being made. (Smithsonian Magazine)screengrabs via Smithsonian/Drew GardnerThanks, Isabel! Read the rest
Photographer Drew Gardner created a photo series depicting descendants of historical figures, each posed as their ancestors. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Dickens... It's surprising how uncanny the resemblances often are. But none are so fascinating as his portrait of Shannon LaNier, the great^6-grandson of Thomas Jefferson.The recreation was based on the famous portrait of Jefferson by American painter Rembrandt Peale, and Gardner shot his portrait using a Fujifilm GFX 50S and a Zeiss Otus 85mm f/1.4 lens. LaNier, a black man who descended from Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, tells Smithsonian that he has complex feelings about being a Jefferson descendant, and he chose to not wear a wig to more faithfully recreate his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s portrait.“He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn’t practice it,” LaNier tells the magazine. “He owned people. And now I’m here because of it.”The series was commissioned by the Smithsonian; click through for a making-of video. Read the rest
Earlier this year, we learned that Python had finally accomplished a feat other programming languages had failed for decades, to surpass Java as the second most-used coding language in the world. For its versatility and ease of use alone, its ascent among programmers isn’t hugely surprising. Then when you factor in its key role in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, the question becomes how soon until it knocks off JavaScript to become no. 1?Either way, Python mastery is a significant talent worthy of any web creator’s skill set — and The Complete Python eBook and Video Course Bundle can offer that learning impactfully and at your own pace.This collection comes with five videos and five ebooks, each exploring different facets of Python and its application across some of the fastest-growing tech job sectors anywhere. Python’s explosive rise goes hand in hand with the emergence of data science and data analytics, mining key findings from large data sets. Each video, all between two and four hours in length, bring users through various Python uses, starting with Learning Python for Data Science, as users learn data analysis, manipulation, and visualization using the Pandas library, then create statistical plots using Matplotlib and Seaborn to find all insightful patterns hidden in the data.From there, the other video courses dig into other major Python uses, from how to build neural networks using deep learning techniques in PyTorch (Deep Learning with PyTorch) to a full understanding of artificial intelligence (Advanced Artificial Intelligence Projects with Python) to using the scikit-learn library to design and build model pipelines to make machines actually think for themselves (Hands-On Machine Learning with Python & Scikit-Learn). Read the rest
Several weeks ago, I put out a call in my weekly maker tips newsletter, Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales. A friend who works in a shared workshop was being called back to the job and he was curious to know what sorts of safety guidelines other shared shops were implementing. So, I asked my readers.One respondent, Jeff Powers, works in a architectural modeling shop in London. He submitted this list of their COVID-era shop practices. I thought it was useful enough to also share here on Boing Boing.***We are an architectural workshop/model shop in London and have a similar issue. We luckily have multiple workshop spaces (2 workshops, separate computer areas, a 3D print room, and CNC room). While some of the solutions are specific to our situation, hopefully some of them can help others.1. Realisation by the team that the workshop is always an inherently risky place, and we should be used to taking precautions when we work anyway. From cleanliness, safe operation, and use of PPE, these habits just become slightly modified for COVID. Taking care and extra time before beginning a task and after it ends – to assess risk, cleanliness etc – is all the more important now, but should not significantly change any workflows. Safe operation is especially important during these times, you never want to go to the hospital with a workshop injury, but especially during these times, extra care should be observed so we don’t put any more unnecessary strain on the health care system. Read the rest
Mr Beast, creator of Finger on the App, a game in which players vie to be the last one to keep their finger on their smartphone screen (and occasionally move it to a new spot indicated by the app, to prevent cheating) announced that he is ending the competition with four players remaining.He tweeted:Dear the four remaining contestants with your finger still on the app, I’m ending it here. Three days is insane! You ALL win and will ALL receive $20,000! CONGRATULATIONS!Dear the four remaining contestants with your finger still on the app, I’m ending it here. Three days is insane! You ALL win and will ALL receive $20,0000! CONGRATULATIONS!— MrBeast (@MrBeastYT) July 3, 2020GO TO SLEEP!— MrBeast (@MrBeastYT) July 3, 2020 Read the rest
A man tried to hitch a ride on a jet by hiding in one of the engines. It's a good thing he was caught before the pilot started it up.Image: YouTube Read the rest
The deadly 2013 El Reno tornado was 2.5 miles (4 km) wide and killed a team of tornado experts. But as Anton Seimon explains, his colleagues turned that tragedy into an opportunity to confirm a key element of tornado formation. Through crowdsourcing, his team was able to demonstrate that this kind of tornado forms from the ground up, not from the clouds downward.Image: YouTube / National Geographic Read the rest
Southland Tales has long occupied a special place in my heart. The only thing I knew about it was that it was written and directed by Richard Kelly, the guy who made Donnie Darko, and starred my cousin's former high school baseball teammate, the Rock, in a dramatic role. So I ordered it on Netflix DVD in the summer of 2007, and popped it in while I did some laundry, only half paying attention.Reader, Southland Tales is not a movie to half-pay attention to. Hell, even your full attention won't do it justice.I was so confused by the end of that first viewing that I went and read the Wikipedia plot summary, which made it sound like the most ambitiously epic end-of-days political sci-fi movie based on the Book of Revelations. So I immediately re-watched it … and still only barely understood what was being implied as a "plot" that fit kind of loosely within the framework of that Wikipedia plot summary. Then my roommates came home, and I forced them to watch it with me — my third viewing of the day — and frankly, I still don't think they've forgiven me.I have remained fascinated by this glorious trainwreck of a movie ever since that first accidental triple-viewing, even seeking out bootlegs of the infamous Cannes cut (which is neither better, nor worse, but rather, a different disaster of beautiful ambition). I'm not alone in this captivation; the movie has developed a cult following of people who love it both for and in spite of itself. Read the rest
Twitter, JPMorgan, and other organizations have announced they will stop using racially-charged coding and hardware terms like master, slave, blacklist, whitelist, and others as part of a thorough review of best practices around value-neutral terminology in programming and technology.Via Reuters:JPMorgan appears to be the first in the financial sector to remove most references to these racially problematic phrases, and it comes after the bank has said it is taking other steps to promote Black professionals and anti-bias culture training for staff.Columbia Business School programming professor Mattan Griffel said such terms have long been controversial and can be difficult to change. The technology that underpins bank operations is often a spaghetti-like mess that results from merged companies, decades-old code and third-party systems, and any change can have cascading effects that are difficult to predict, Griffel said.Twitter engineer Regynald Augustin described what they have been working on even before the killing of George Floyd brought even more urgency to the process:Twitter eng recently shared that we would be making the language in our code, docs, and configs more inclusive. I want to speak on how we got here and what we’ve done so far.https://t.co/87RybaAiYA— Regynald (@negroprogrammer) July 2, 2020Open source projects like GitHub are also making strides to update terminology.Twitter engineers pushed to replace ‘master’ and ‘slave’ programming terms (The Verge) Read the rest
Between work, family obligations, and just getting to bed at a decent hour, we all have a lot on our plates these days. So, it’s easy for things like grooming and skincare to never be a high-priority issue.That is until they become a high priority issue. Like when your face constantly breaks out. Or when it dries out and flakes or cracks like the desert. Or when everyone you know asks why you look so tired or pale or just generally awful lately.Eventually, self-realization happens, and that's when we finally head over to the skincare aisle, where we are promptly overwhelmed by all the creams, washes, and masks that we can't hope to make heads or tails of.To cut through all that noise, Geologie has tried to boil basic men’s skincare down to easy to follow essentials. Because let’s face it: No one has the time or energy to figure out what the heck retinol and niacinamide are.Geologie is men’s skincare reinvented and utterly simplified. When you go to the Geologie website, you take a quick 30-second diagnostic quiz about your skincare trouble areas. From there, Geologie whips up a customized four-step regimen that specifically addresses your skin and your priorities, then ships a 30-day trial supply right to your door for $37.All the Geologie products are built to be powerful, effective, and simple with clinically-proven active ingredients that get you results.Each morning, spend 60 seconds using the Everyday Face Wash to rinse away dead skin cells, then clean up with a blast of the Vital Morning Face Cream moisturizer-slash-SPF. Read the rest
The story is legendary. Nearly 50 years ago, a whale beached itself on the shores near Florence, Oregon. Its carcass was "dealt with" with dynamite by city officials, causing the blubber to fly! Now, the coastal city has opened the Exploding Whale Memorial Park to commemorate the incident.Oregonlive.com:Florence, near where the whale -- or as a KATU reporter referred to it at the time “a stinking whale of a problem” -- washed up, is finally honoring this beautiful moment in history with a new park.It was the people of Florence who picked the name Exploding Whale Memorial Park.“We asked the community for name suggestions, narrowed those 120-plus names down to nine, and had the community vote on them,” said Florence city project manager Megan Messmer.The park offers views of the Siuslaw River and Bridge and the sand dunes on the south side of the river, according to the City of Florence’s website.There are picnic tables and a shelter and a multi-use path, but, sadly, no whale carcasses, exploded or otherwise.But there is a whale mascot. (RED)Thanks, Juke! Read the rest
As many parts of the United States have seen huge upticks in spontaneous evening fireworks, one anxiety-filled dog has finally had enough in this cute Late Show cold open.On a more serious note, if your pandemic pal(s) are having a hard time with fireworks, Cesar Milan (aka The Dog Whisperer) has a ton of useful tips for helping our canine friends weather the fireworks season.Image: YouTube / CBS Read the rest
America First was a protectionist movement in the early 20th century whose name ultimately became the slogan of those opposed to fighting the Nazis. Revived by the Trump campaign in 2016, its antisemitic associations galvanized supporters while alarming wavering Republicans; his use of the phrase was a key moment in the forming of the "Never Trump" movement among conservative pundits. To help win re-election, he's selling T-shirts with the phrase, using a design that's unusually close to the Nazi parteiadler emblem. The potential for similarity between generically patriotic "American Eagle" designs and the the German imperial eagle (especially the Nazi iterations of it) means great care is usually taken to avoid specific elements of the parteiadler and reichsadler emblems. For Trump's nativist followers, though, such things are feature, not bugs.This is usually the point where "It's a Roman eagle!" is uttered. And so it is. Just like the salute. Read the rest
There was already enough concern about the healthy state of our drinking water before COVID-19. And while there’s no evidence that the coronavirus has ever been detected in the water supply, the general sense of fear surrounding any type of contamination is obviously at a fever pitch everywhere. Contaminants like lead, chromium, arsenic, copper, mercury, chlorine, and fluoride show up in water systems all the time. That’s a nightmare no one wants to endure, which is why creations like the GOpure Pod Water Purifier are being embraced by health-conscious men and women everywhere.Unlike faucet filters or filtration pitchers, the GOpure is billed as the smallest, most convenient portable water purifier on the planet. Less than five inches long, the pod can be dropped into any glass, water bottle, pitcher or other containers of water — and the device acts like a magnet, attracting and neutralizing all the pollutants that can be found in typical drinking water.The revolutionary technology inside the pod is an advanced core made of diatomaceous earth and trace silver that attracts, binds and absorbs heavy metals, bacteria, impure or inorganic chemicals and everything else that can foul your water. It even leeches any properties that affect the taste and smell of the water as well.Of course, it’s not all about subtraction. The GOpure also adds back important minerals and raises the pH level to 7.4, considered to be a perfectly safe drinking experience.Each pod filters the equivalent of 2,000 single-use plastic water bottles. Read the rest
Move over, vintage fingerboards. Mr. Manos has arrived with vintage martial arts films, featuring finger ninjas.The battle with Red Master above has the coolest combination of outfits and action, but they are all pretty impressive. To view the full series from the beginning, start here:Mr. Manos is a spinoff from Action Icons, a channel that curates amazing action sports content. Mr. Manos has been posting some green screen testing over on their Instagram, so it looks as if even more excitement is in store! View this post on Instagram Our very first green screen test. “The Journey Begins” in full color. Full Clip on YouTube #mrmanos x #actionicons #fingerfighting #fingerkungfu #punchingpointersA post shared by Mr. Manos (@the.mr.manos) on Jun 10, 2020 at 7:01pm PDTYouTube: Mr. Manos Read the rest
Is it hot in here...?Watch ten years of the Sun doing its thing in this 61-minute-long high-def timelapse video. The footage comes from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) which captured an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds from June 1, 2010 to June 1, 2020,. Impressive!From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system...This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions. (RED)screengrab via NASA Goddard Read the rest
This "Hamilton" parody song justifiably asks, "Can we maybe just all agree to wear a tiny flipping mask?!"I am not throwing away this mask. I am not throwing away this mask. This really should be bipartisan. Come on now, how hard is it? I am not throwing away this mask.screengrab via The Holderness Family/YouTube Read the rest
I don't need any more stringed-instruments; I have my main electric guitar; a backup electric; another electric that's strictly for sentimental decor and only occasional strumming; an acoustic-electric; an electric bass; an upright dulcimer; a lap-steel guitar; and a mandolin. But I definitely want more instruments (specifically a high-end Dreadnought acoustic and/or one of several hollow bodies I've been eyeing). So whenever I see a music sale coming up, I take a look, just in case.Which is how I found myself flipping through Guitar Center's 4th of July Sale, and stumbled on these disgusting beasts.These special edition Game of Thrones Fender Custom Shop guitars were released in April 2019, and run between $25,000 and $35,000 a piece. Yes, you read that right: twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand dollars. And according to Fender, they each take around 100 hours to make, which makes them a little less absurdly priced, but still completely unnecessary.Even if I had that kind of money, I don't think I'd go much higher than this $4,350 thinline semi-hollow Telecaster (hint hint). I genuinely cannot fathom who the market is for these hideous GoT axes. Was Fender approached by a Private Equity Consultant who encouraged them to target the niche market of a billionaire trustfund babies who love fantasy and collect guitars to display in their homes?The $30,000 Lannister Jaguar (center) does come with a 24K gold leaf over on the front, back and headstock, as well as a gold-plated pickguard; the shiny finish on the body is actually just paint. Read the rest
In 1981, The Go-Go's blew up with "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Our Sealed," two tracks from their IRS records debut Beauty and the Beat that hit number one on the Billboard charts and went double platinum. What many don't realize though is that the band, who notably wrote and played all their own music, had been a mainstay in the Los Angeles punk underground since 1978, making the scene with The Germs, X, and Fear. I can't wait for this new Showtime documentary about The Go-Go's pegged on the release of their first album in two decades, titled "Club Zero." Read the rest
Toothbrushes might seem like a good idea for scrubbing small areas, but they are not angled properly for the job and they wear out fast. The OXO good grips deep clean brush set has two brushes and a wiper blade designed for cleaning tile grout and other hard to reach areas. Read the rest
Chinese newspaper Global Times reports that "Australia is waging an intensifying espionage offensive against China - sending agents to China to spy, gather intelligence and recruit assets, instigating defection among Chinese nationals, spying on Chinese students and organizations in Australia, feeding fake news to media to hype up the 'China espionage theory' and even in early years attempting to install wiretaps in the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, the Global Times has learned from a source with a Chinese law-enforcement agency.The paper even has photos of the tools used by the Downunder spies to ply their nefarious trade: "espionage equipment, US dollars and Chinese yuan used for espionage funds, and the intelligence information they were going to exchange." Nothing Q-like at all. Disappointing! [via Bruce Sterling] Read the rest
This Public Restroom By A River from r/interestingasfuckI don't know where this riverside relief room resides, but I like the view. I'm guessing it's not in the US, since a) it hasn't been tagged and vandalized, and b) the door says WC. Read the rest
Logitech’s MX Keys [Amazon] is what it finally took to lure me away from mechanical keyboards. It’s a slim yet solidly-constructed full-size model that's similar to and superior to Apple's Magic Keyboard.It’s flat, minimalist, heavy, solid and low-profile, with large backlit keys typeset in something similar to Futura Light. The keys are square with subtle circular depressions and no give—a big improvement over the wobbly chicklet keys infesting modern non-mechanical keyboards, not least Logitech’s own cheaper models. It works with USB-C, BlueTooth or the included unifying receiver. (A tiny dongle; I use it instead of BlueTooth as it works in BIOS and I dual-boot). The function keys are on a shift layer, as is now standard. Modifier keys are labeled for both Windows and MacOS, a nice if slightly cluttering touch. Keys are hard to remove; spudge them from the top. The backlighting works even in wireless mode, but will run down the battery quicker. Recharging is via USB-C; there is no removable battery. It's lasted about 10 days so far on the charge it came with. A Logitech app lets a single keyboard and mouse pair be used with any computer on the network, so long as it's installed on both machines.The MX Keys is essentially the $200 MX Craft [Amazon] without the dial or the bulky rear panel that accomodates it. At $100, the MX Keys is not cheap, but is also no more expensive than similar models such as Apple's or Microsoft's Designer Desktop.The extra heft and weight is nice, but it's the extra travel and tactility that puts it in a league of its own. Read the rest
Over a million people started playing a game called "Finger on the App" yesterday morning. Right now, 24 hours and 21 minutes since the start of the game, 92 82 people are still playing. To win, you have to be the last person with your finger touching your smartphone screen. The winner will get up to $25,000.Taping a hotdog to the screen won't work. From the FAQ:To play Finger On The App you put your finger on your phone and keep it there for as long as possible. Occasionally we will prompt you to slide your finger to a specific location. That’s it! Whoever stays on longest wins.Some players are livestreaming:This brings to mind the 1969 movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, the 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body, and the 2015 Reddit meta-game The Button. Read the rest