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Last year, over 43 million Americans hit the road to celebrate Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer. That was the second-highest travel volume this century, according to AAA, but with COVID-19 fears and quarantine orders only now starting to ease, it’s safe to say this year probably won’t attract numbers anywhere close to that high.However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have your car prepped with a few essentials for that day soon when you do need to hit the road. To help, here are 20 car accessories that can help make your trip an easier one -- and when you use the code SUMMERSAVE20 when you purchase, you’ll get an additional 20 percent off your total. Car Trouble?Emergencies happen on the road all the time -- and with the 5-in-1 Emergency Car Tool with Portable Power Bank ($15.99 after discount; originally $25.99), you’ll be ready for them. It includes an LED flashlight, a red SOS light, an emergency seatbelt cutter, a glass breaker, and a portable power bank with 2,200mAh battery capacity. Or you could go with the Kelvin.7 Automotive Emergency Multi-Tool ($31.99 after discount; originally $49.99) which, in addition to those earlier talents, also adds four built-in magnets and a hand-crank power generator to your multipurpose roster of abilities.Unless you’re a mechanic, car trouble can be frustrating and mysterious, but the THINKCAR 1S: OBDII Full-Systems Car Scanner with a Free Lifetime Subscription ($29.59 after discount; originally $54.95) is like having your own diagnostic computer that syncs up with your phone. Read the rest

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!CNN:To ensure the crayons accurately reflect the world's array of skin tones, Crayola partnered with Victor Casale, CEO and co-founder of cosmetics maker MOB Beauty.The Colors of the World crayons will come in packs of 24 and 32, with the 32-pack also including four crayons each for hair and eye colors, according to the company. Each pack will also include a side panel that serves as a color reference, while each crayon label lists the color name in English, Spanish, and French.These "Colors of the World" crayons will be available in July.Thanks, Tracy!images via CNN/Crayola Read the rest

According to a new study from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in the Netherlands, our speaking voices actually register subtle changes along with our gesticulating limbs.It’s all about acoustics: the pitch and volume of a voice change together with the movement of arms and hands. "That change is very subtle with a wrist movement," says Pouw. “It is less subtle with an arm movement. The pitch jumps up slightly whenever a movement slows down.”According to Pouw, there are two different causes for these acoustic differences. One of the causes is the creation of vibrations. The forces involved in a movement cause vibrations in your body. Through the connective tissue that holds your body together, vibrations end up in your lungs, affecting the pressure in your lungs.The second cause is muscle tension around your lungs that is needed to maintain balance. We do not merely use our arm muscles when we move our arms. “When starting the process of stopping your arm from moving, for example, other muscles are suddenly addressed to prevent your body from falling over. These muscles that maintain balance include muscles around your lungs.”Pretty cool!Acoustic information about upper limb movement in voicing [Wim Pouw, Alexandra Paxton, Steven J. Harrison, and James A. Dixon / PNAS]Body language can also be heard [Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour]Image: Public Domain via NeedPix Read the rest

It doesn’t do you much good to come up with a brilliant concept that you can’t translate into a working real-world prototype. Whether you’re thinking about building a home, a mechanical tool or a toy, that’s where the magic of computer-aided design and drafting software like AutoCAD comes into play. The longtime leader in the field, AutoCAD by Autodesk is used by architects, designers, engineers, and loads of other professionals to help flesh out 2D drawings into 3D structures, all crafted to scale. In the right hands, AutoCAD can turn creativity into practical reality and show everyone exactly how to do it.As with most ultra-powerful software tools, AutoCAD mastery comes with a fairly steep learning curve. However, the instruction in The Ultimate AutoCAD Training Bundle makes this versatile software accessible, helping everyone from first-timers to advanced users take full advantage of all the drafting and modeling tools AutoCAD has to offer.This training features 12 hours of content covering everything AutoCAD can do. Once you’ve got AutoCAD installed and you’re comfortable with the user interface and basic tools, the course guides learners into actual project work, drafting small objects to get a feel for all of the software’s capabilities.But as you advance through the course, the training wheels come off as students are challenged to improve their abilities and find better ways to fashion cleaner, more effective plans. With modeling skills on the rise, users will craft 3D structures of their design ideas, then get a deeper understanding of how AutoCAD’s roster of features can translate those items into blueprints for real-life builders and manufacturers. Read the rest

Memorial Day has always been the traditional start to the summer season — and there’s never been a summer with more people more ready to get out and enjoy life outside their home than this one.Of course, food will be a big part (if not the centerpiece) of all of our summer celebrations, so to make sure you’re prepared, we’ve assembled a few dozen of the best kitchen, food, and food prep items available with some healthy savings right now. And if you use the code SUMMERSAVE20 at checkout, you’ll get an extra 20 percent discount off each of these handy kitchen helpers. Be versatile Counter space is always at a premium, so every appliance there needs to be a multipurpose tool like the A4-Box Induction Cooking Device ($175.99 after discount; originally $249). It features a non-stick grill pan and flat pan perfect for everything from grilling and sauteing to baking, all in one compact, convenient, and stylish package that keeps the pots and pans juggling under control.Speaking of versatile, sous vide cookers that expertly regulate cooking vacuum-sealed food in a water bath are all the rage right now — and the SOUS°V Pot Precision Sous Vide Multi-Cooker ($88.80 after discount; originally $129.99) is a great introduction. With easy to set DualAccuTemp technology for controlling temperatures needed for any ingredient, your meal will be done when you want it and how you want it, no matter whether you’re sauteing, cooking rice, steaming, boiling, or even making yogurt.Meanwhile, the Mellow Sous Vide Precision Cooker ($159.99 Read the rest

This interview presents a conversation with Ignatz award-winning cartoonist Noah Van Sciver (Fante Bukowski, Grateful Dead: Origins, Disquiet, Please Don’t Step On My JNCO Jeans, One Dirty Tree, Blammo, Saint Cole, More Mundane, Constant Companion, 1999, The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln) about his life, art and work.Jeffery Klaehn: In addition to winning an Ignatz award in 2016 for your autobiographical mini-comic, My Hot Date, you were nominated for multiple Ignatz awards throughout 2010 to 2016 for Outstanding Comic (Blammo #6 and #8), Outstanding Artist (Saint Cole and Disquiet), Outstanding Graphic Novel (Saint Cole), and Outstanding Minicomic (The Death of Elijah Lovejoy). You were nominated for an Eisner Award in 2016 for Best Writer/Artist (Fante Bukowski) and A Perfect Failure: Fante Bukowski Three was nominated for an Eisner in the Best Humor Publication category. How do you define success at this point in your career, Noah? What does it mean for you?Noah Van Sciver: Success in comics to me is a publisher and readers that have faith in you and the stories that you want to tell. A publisher that is happy to help you put your ideas together no matter what they are. Those aren’t things that come easy, and you’ve really got to earn them!JK: Your The Complete Works of Fante Bukowski released earlier this year from Fantagraphics and is available in both hardcover and digitally via Kindle. It’s 450 pages and collects all three volumes of your Fante Bukowski graphic novels, with extensive bonus material. Read the rest

In this U.S. Navy video, the USS Portland (LPD 27) conducts a Laser Weapon System Demonstrator Test in the Pacific Ocean off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.#USSPortland (LPD 27) conducts Laser Weapon System Demonstrator Test in Pacific: https://t.co/zZJglgDIcf @USNavy @USNavyResearch #NavyLethality pic.twitter.com/K8xtcEWiRz— U.S. Pacific Fleet (@USPacificFleet) May 22, 2020pic.twitter.com/jQsmR6CpqN— U.S. Pacific Fleet (@USPacificFleet) May 22, 2020The test aboard USS Portland - LPD 27 in the Pacific, which resulted in successfully disabling an unmanned aerial vehicle, was the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser.More on the laser weapons systems test at the U.S. Navy website:Amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) successfully disabled an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a Solid State Laser - Technology Maturation Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD) MK 2 MOD 0 on May 16.LWSD is a high-energy laser weapon system demonstrator developed by the Office of Naval Research and installed on Portland for an at-sea demonstration. LWSD's operational employment on a Pacific Fleet ship is the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser. The laser system was developed by Northrup Grumman, with full System and Ship Integration and Testing led by NSWC Dahlgren and Port Hueneme.“By conducting advanced at sea tests against UAVs and small crafts, we will gain valuable information on the capabilities of the Solid State Laser Weapons System Demonstrator against potential threats,” said Capt. Karrey Sanders, commanding officer of Portland.The U.S. Navy has been developing directed-energy weapons (DEWs), to include lasers, since the 1960s. Read the rest

CNBC's Megan Graham set up a website full of scraped news from other sites. Most ad networks she submitted it to approved it for ad placement.I only put a few hours of work into this site, but I don’t do this for a living. Real bad actors can get a lot farther than this with only a little more work. For instance, they can set up a site with actual original content, get approved, and only then start scraping content. Or, they can easily buy an existing website that’s already monetizing with adtech partners, and just flood it with plagiarized content. They can buy fake traffic to conduct traffic arbitrage, a fancy way of saying that they pay less for traffic than they gain from the ad impressions. They can set up more automated means to keep scraping huge amounts of automated content to keep the website looking fresh.Google appears to be the only platform that rejected her site. Implicit in this is the fact that Google would not have given her scraper site any respectable placement in search results, and would not have let it into Google News at all. Which gets us to an important omission from the story: she made $0. Ad networks should not have approved her in the first place, but the real check happens when a check is cut. The shadyness in all this deserves a deeper dive. Read the rest

Kremlin sent 45 Aventa-M ventilators to the United States after Trump and Putin call

Write-Only is a "typewriter", in that you can type but you cannot delete. You can copy what you've written to the clipboard and go full-screen, and that's it. Read the rest

Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, on Friday, May 22, addressed a remark he made during an interview with Charlamagne Tha God: "I should not have been so cavalier. I have never ever ever taken the African American community for granted.""I shouldn't have been such a wise guy," he added.“No one should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, their background." He was apologizing for saying "you ain't black" if you're deciding between Biden and Trump.A testy exchange at the end of the interview with @cthagod. Biden, clearly frustrated by the insinuation he hasn't done enough to help the black community, tells him "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump then you ain't black" https://t.co/7u1IReMy6B— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaNBCNews) May 22, 2020JUST IN: In a call with Black business leaders, @JoeBiden apologizes for his AM comments to @cthagod: "“I should not have been so cavalier. I've never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted." (more)— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) May 22, 2020 Read the rest

Like a third-rate children’s party magician who’s given up caring, this week’s tawdry tabloids indulge in some heavy-handed misdirection.

Trump: 'I will override the governors' if they stop houses of worship from reopening

Gel-based super glue is much easier to use than regular super glue because it's thick and easier to control. You can apply a dab to a vertical surface without having it drip. It's also slightly tacky to begin with, which helps to keep parts sticking together without holding them. And because it's thicker, it works well on porous surfaces, like the ones on this elephant coffee creamer that one of our cats broke. The kind I use is Gorilla Super Glue Gel. Read the rest

My pal Shalaco sent me this video he made with the following message: As a photographer I lost 100% of my income due to the Covid-19 crisis. I applied to every form of financial support out there and recently had a lot of success. I want to share what I've learned with the community with these tips for applying for financial resources for photographers, creatives, or really anyone. The amount of epic resource lists out there can be overwhelming, this video focuses on walking people through the process. Read the rest

"NVIDIA GameGAN is a powerful new AI model created by NVIDIA Research and was trained on 50,000 episodes of PAC-MAN to produce a fully functional version of the classic without an underlying game engine." Read the article about it was done here.Image: Nvidia Read the rest

In this segment from the 1980s Australian television program Curiosity Show, the host shows you how to make accurate drawings of natural history specimens using graph paper. You place the specimen (in this case, a spider) on a piece of graph paper. Then you use another sheet of graph paper to draw the spider, using the grids as a guide. You can use enlarged graph paper to make a larger-than-life drawing of the specimen, as the host does here. Read the rest

Coffee expert James Hoffman tried a bunch of different supermarket instant coffees to find out which one tastes the best. He entered into the test with a strong bias against instant coffee for two reasons 1) "convenience, by and large, results in a sacrifice of quality," and 2) "instant wants to be cheap." But he was still curious, so he went to a delivery website and ordered every kind of instant coffee they stocked. After receiving 38 different kinds of coffee, he tried them all. The winner was Little's Colombian Premium Instant Coffee, but he reminds viewers that instant coffee is just a "snapshot" of fresh ground coffee. Read the rest

Big Wendy makes stop motion animation films by placing Rubik's Cubes onto a large square frame, taking a shot, changing the cubes, taking another shot, again and again. Big Wendy said it took her about a week to make this video commemorating the 40th anniversary of Pac-Man and Rubik's Cube. Amazing!Image: YouTube Read the rest

Documentary maker Michael Moore was right when he predicted Trump would win the 2016 election, despite most polls favoring Hillary Clinton. Now, Moore is predicting Trump will call off the 2020 election.Here's what he told Vanity Fair:“There will be no November 3 election if things keep going the way they’re going right now,” Moore said. “I think he would have figured out a way, even without the coronavirus, but this is a gift to him because I think he never really intended on leaving in the first place. He admires dictators. He admires strongmen, wishes he was one. I think the writing is on the wall right now that he is in deep electoral trouble.”Image: Jumpstory/CC0 Read the rest

Want a Jason Voorhees mask from its legendary creator? Complete with a fabric backing to reduce the likelihood of viral transmission? Tom Savini is taking orders. Via iHorror:Savini has worked on two of the Friday the 13th films, the 1980 original as well as Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter in 1984. Baker was responsible for the visual effects on The Dark Knight Rises. If anyone can create a fashionable and functional mask for the health and safety of others, it’s this duo! Now horror fans can don the infamous hockey mask as they protect themselves, and others, from COVID-19. The masks are being sold for $60. However, if you want your mask autographed by the father of horror make up effects himself, Savini’s signature will grace your Voorhees mask for an additional $40.You asked, we answered! “Hockey mask” personal protection masks now available. Contact/ DM @bakingjason for details. #tomsavini pic.twitter.com/uNywnJ7Kyy— Tom Savini (@THETomSavini) April 29, 2020 Read the rest

When my friend and Cool Tools partner Kevin Kelly turned 68 a few weeks ago, he posted an essay to his website titled "68 bit of unsolicited advice." (I posted it to Boing Boing.) Kevin's advice quickly went viral, and this week he was the guest on the Freakonomics podcast, where he talked about the list, among other things.KELLY (reading from 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice): Learn how to learn from those who disagree with you, or even offend you. See if you can find truth in what they believe.DUBNER: So the value of doing this one seems obvious, especially in a moment where so many people are so quick to take offense, and to be offensive. Can you give me an example of where you’ve actually done this?KELLY: There are parts of my books where I’ve written something, and somebody will say something very strong, about, “That’s dumb,” or it’s stupid, or wrong. And that’s pretty harsh. But my take is to say, “Let me see if there’s any truth to that.” Sometimes there’s not. Sometimes there may be some sliver of something. And what I’ve learned to do is to respond to that little sliver. To try to get underneath why they’re saying it and where is it they’re coming from. I don’t have to necessarily always agree with them or change it, but I have to pay attention to that signal. And so I’ve learned to treat these things as signals rather than as insults. Read the rest

How do you take a song that's already brooding and spooky, and turn it into something infinitaly creepier? Read the rest

Repeating the word "fuck" actually can reduce your experience of pain, according to a new study by Keele University researchers. The psychologists ran an experiment in which subjects underwent a cold pressor test, a common method to pain threshold and tolerance by immersing your hand in freezing cold water for a minute. (See above video for actor Brian Blessed's demonstration, unrelated to this current research.)According to the researchers' scientific paper, their data "replicate previous findings that repeating a swear word at a steady pace and volume benefits pain tolerance, extending this finding to pain threshold."Don't think any old word will help though. They found no benefit when their subjects exclaimed made-up words like “fouch” and “twizpipe." "Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Hypoalgesic Effects of Novel 'Swear” Words" (Frontiers in Psychology) Read the rest

The BBC filmed a Boston Dynamics robot dog attemping to herd sheep in New Zealand. A robot dog designed for search and rescue missions has had a go at herding sheep in New Zealand.Technology company Rocos is exploring how the Spot robot - made by US-based Boston Dynamics - might be put to work in the agricultural industry.The BBC's choice of music is uplifting and jolly in an unusually effortful way. I can't help but wonder if this is because footage of a robot dog stalking prey animals is fundamentally alarming. By way of illustration (below), I swapped the music for the sinister Danny Elfman track used in the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy trailer and replaced the BBC's "isn't this wonderful?" text with some indistinct robot chatter. Read the rest

If there's something strange, in your Mumbai 'hood, who you gonna call? Indian author and strange phenomena investigator Jay Alani has started a helpline for people freaked out about "ghosts, spirits, black magic or anything related to the paranormal world." Alani says he receives eight to 10 calls each day. From the Hindustan Times:He has been receiving various calls of people claiming to see a ghost, hearing some unusual noise, or feeling that someone is constantly watching them, during this quarantine period.“In most of the cases, I have found that person who claims to experience any such unusual incident has been watching horror films and series during this lockdown period. After questioning them about their daily routine, family history, past trauma etc, I and my team of psychologists found out that many of them actually create a fictional ghost in their mind”, said Jay Alani who has been a full-time paranormal investigator for last many years and has investigated over 100 haunted locations and looked after over 150 paranormal cases[...]As per Jay Alani, “The main motive behind this helpline number is to provide scientific solutions to those who are encountering any unusual incidents or have any question about the paranormal world. We see that black magic and mesmerism are propagated and advertised openly in India. People usually fall in the trap of such Babas, Tantriks and Ojhas due to lack of knowledge.” Read the rest

On the same night that he fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, a watchdog who was allegedly investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over any number of potentially corrupt activities, Trump also terminated a watchdog working for the Department of Transportation. As Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington explains:At DOT, the acting IG was overseeing a high profile investigation of Secretary Chao’s alleged favoritism benefiting her husband Senator Mitch McConnell’s political prospects, but has now been replaced with a political appointee from within the agency. The acting IG’s ouster calls into question the future of the Chao-McConnell investigation, other critical oversight, and whether the watchdog was dismissed for unearthing damaging information.[…]Trump’s decision to sideline DOT acting IG Mitch Behm (who has 17 years of experience with OIG) was lost in the shuffle of outrage following the announcement that Trump planned to fire the State Department IG, but potential conflicts of interest abound. The most high profile is the DOT OIG’s review of allegations that Secretary Chao gave Senator McConnell’s constituents special treatment and helped steer millions of federal dollars to Kentucky as he is facing low approval ratings and a tough reelection bid.Secretary Chao also served as Deputy Secretary of Transportation under President George HW Bush and Secretary of Labor under President George W Bush. Her father is a wealthy and successful Chinese-American shipping magnate who has donated tens of millions of dollars to Senator Mitch McConnell, even before he married Chao in 1993 (McConnell's first wife, Sherrill Redmon, is a feminist scholar at Smith; neither she or their Democrat daughters discuss their relationship with McConnell). Read the rest

Floating out of your body and looking down on it. The story of your life flashing by before your eyes. Seeing a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. These are just two of the most common experiences that people report after a near-death experience (NDE). For some people, NDEs are a transformative spiritual or mystical experience. But what's the source of the phenomena? That's a question that fascinates Dr. Christof Koch is president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science who studies the neuroscience of consciousness. In Scientific American, Koch surveys the science of near-death experiences and what they can tell us about how our brains work under extreme duress. From Scientific American:Modern death requires irreversible loss of brain function. When the brain is starved of blood flow (ischemia) and oxygen (anoxia), the patient faints in a fraction of a minute and his or her electroencephalogram, or EEG, becomes isoelectric—in other words, flat. This implies that large-scale, spatially distributed electrical activity within the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, has broken down. Like a town that loses power one neighborhood at a time, local regions of the brain go offline one after another. The mind, whose substrate is whichever neurons remain capable of generating electrical activity, does what it always does: it tells a story shaped by the person’s experience, memory and cultural expectations.Given these power outages, this experience may produce the rather strange and idiosyncratic stories that make up the corpus of NDE reports. Read the rest

It annoys me that the nail's owner keeps trimming it. Read the rest

In 2017, musician/activist Toshi Reagon began creating an operatic stage adaptation of Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower — the 1993 Afrofuturist sci-fi novel about an America in the year 2020 that's ravaged by climate change and income inequality and greedy politicians who appeal to imaginary racists pasts while also promising to build a wall around the wealthy.Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower: A Concert Experience received renowned productions from Boston to New York to Los Angeles. And now — since it is 2020, and we're living in an America ravaged by climate change and income inequality and greedy politicians who appeal to imaginary racists pasts while also promising to build a wall around the wealthy — the arts program at Emerson College (my alma mater) has announced a year-long residency with Reagon called Parable Path Boston, which will continue to explore Butler's work alongside real-time climate activism in Boston.To kick off the program, ArtsEmerson will be hosting a one-night screening of the show on Friday, May 22 at 6pm, followed by an online talkback with Toshi Reagon. I'm pretty sure it's free, but you have to register ahead of time for a link.I have some friends who were involved in the early workshops of the play, who still talk about it as one of their most formative artistic experiences. I know what I'm doing Friday night; but if you're not convinced to join me yet, there's more links below.Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower [Toshi Reagon / ArtsEmerson]Parable of the Songwriter: Toshi Reagon Explains Why an Octavia Butler-Inspired Opera Is More Relevant Than Ever [Maiysha Kai / The Root]A Prescient Sci-Fi ‘Parable’ Gets Set to Music [Jeremy D. Read the rest

this is the greatest thing ive seen all day pic.twitter.com/f4wSSPFHoG— glitch! @ tired (@GlitchyFur) May 20, 2020I hereby dub this genre: "Appliancewave." Read the rest

David Lynch has finally uploaded FIRE (POZAR), the experimental animated short he did in 2015, to his new David Lynch Theater on YouTube.To create it, Lynch shared the still drawings he'd done for the piece with composer Marek Zebrowski (who did the music for Lynch's Inland Empire) and didn't share any further details. After Zebrowski had composed the music, animator Noriko Miyakawa put together the final animated short.Image: YouTube Read the rest

It's been over a hundred years since the Titanic sank, and its wreckage in the North Atlantic Ocean has been protected by an International Agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. But since 2000, that agreement has specifically forbidden anyone from cutting into the wreckage or detaching any part of it. In other words, the wreckage itself must be preserved, even as researchers explore and salvage around it.From CNN:Virginia's eastern district court amended that order "for a unique opportunity to recover an artifact that will contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic, those who survived and those who gave their lives in the sinking," Judge Rebecca Beach Smith wrote.[…]The Marconi device and the artifacts associated with it face "significant threat of permanent loss," the judge said in her approval of the expedition.The radio isn't a blackbox, per se — it's not like modern planes that record the final fates of people on board. But it certainly has historical significance. Even though, on the surface, "Rescuing the radio but not the Titanic" sounds like a depressing metaphor for watching the world fall apart all around you.Radio used by the Titanic to call for help can be salvaged, judge rules [Kay Jones, Sheena Jones and Theresa Waldrop / CNN] Read the rest

Okay, now THIS is a quarantine crafting project.An amazing terrarium coffee table, shared by IMGURian @timsterrariums206.Go see the entire gallery.I made a terrarium coffee table[source: IMGUR] Read the rest

Pro-democracy lawmakers denounced the plans as “the end of Hong Kong”.

These two little bear cubs are play-fighting, but they look beary serious.Scary up close bear fighting!! pic.twitter.com/hKRka6A6Gd— Josh (@Pasta_Josh) May 21, 2020 Read the rest

• Ruairi O Leocháin of Athlone Wildlife Apiaries decided to make a lego beehive "just for a bit of craic" A beekeeper in Ireland put their coronavirus quarantine time to good use by crafting an elaborate, fully functioning beehive out of LEGOs.Here's the original story published by Westmeath Independent:A beehive which an Athlone schoolteacher and wildlife activist made out of lego has been creating a real buzz since video footage of it was shared online in recent days. Ruairi O Leocháin of Athlone Wildlife Apiaries decided to make a lego beehive "just for a bit of craic", but a video clip he shared of the bees in their colourful new home has been hugely popular and is about to surpass 100,000 views on Facebook. "To be honest, I wasn't expecting such a big reaction," he said."I have had people getting in touch with me from China, America, and elsewhere saying that they love the idea." LEGO Beehive Read the rest

Your concerns about the privacy and security risks of using state-run coronavirus contact tracing apps? They're reasonable concerns.This new report from mobile privacy firm Jumbo Privacy says the official North Dakota contact-tracing app is sharing location data with Foursquare and an advertising ID with Google. Writes Steven Melendez for Fast Company:The app, called Care19, and produced by a company called ProudCrowd that also makes a location-based social networking app for North Dakota State sports fans, generates a random ID number for each person who uses it. Then, it can “anonymously cache the individual’s locations throughout the day,” storing information about where people spent at least 10 minutes at a time, according to the state website. If users test positive for the coronavirus, they can provide that information to the North Dakota Department of Health for contact-tracing purposes so that other people who spent time near virus patients can potentially be notified.According to the app’s privacy policy, “location data is private to you and is stored securely on ProudCrowd, LLC servers” and won’t be shared with third parties “unless you consent or ProudCrowd is compelled under federal regulations.”But according to the Jumbo report, the app sends the random ID number, along with a phone ID used for advertising purposes and apparent latitudes and longitudes of places visited by the user, to Foursquare, a leading location-data provider. The app also sends the random ID to servers run by Bugfender, a Barcelona-based service used by app makers to track and diagnose software malfunctions, according to Jumbo, which monitored internet traffic generated by the app. Read the rest

Trump's pick follows 9/11 truther and QAnon conspiracies

William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. charged with Felony Murder & Criminal Attempt to Commit False Imprisonment.

At some point in the future, global communications networks will likely reach one standardized protocol that everyone uses. If you look back over the past few decades, there’s a decent chance that when the story of digital networking is finally settled once and for all, it’s Cisco and Cisco-based systems that the globe will be using.As a worldwide leader in network technology, Cisco hardware and software are everywhere. If you’re an IT professional or an aspiring IT professional, a strong familiarity with how to manage and administrate Cisco systems, particularly with some certification credentials to back you up, could go a long way to ensuring your value in any organization. With the training in The Premium Cisco CCNA and CCNP Lifetime Certification Prep Bundle, you’ll be well on your way to being a respected networking pro.Including seven courses packed with almost 100 hours of instruction, this training is focused on getting you ready to take and pass the Cisco CCNA and CCNP certification, two of the most sought-after credentials in the field.With Cisco CCNA 200-301 Bootcamp and New Cisco CCNA (200-301) Volume 1: The Complete Course, you’ll first get some training in passing the Cisco CCNA 200-301 exam, the test created earlier this year by Cisco consolidating several previous training areas into one all-encompassing networking basics exam.Through hands-on labs and other exercises, students will learn how routing and switching technologies work under real work conditions to help you build your knowledge to install, manage, and grow networks using Cisco routers and switchers. Read the rest

Last weekend, the Schantz family was on a drive in Caroline County, Virgina when the car in front of them swerved to avoid a bag in the middle of the road. The Schantzes stopped to pick up the bag and noticed another in a nearby ditch. Assuming the bags were garbage, they tossed them in the back of their truck to throw away later. They eventually discovered that the bags contained nearly $1 million in cash. From CNN:Within the two larger bags were smaller ones, each containing some information on where the money should have been deposited."Inside of the bag, there were plastic baggies and they were addressed with something that said 'cash vault,'" Emily Schantz told CNN affiliate WTVR.The Sheriff's department conducted its own investigation before turning it over the United States Postal Service, which is now looking into the matter [...]"It's really a credit to just the character and fiber of the family," [Caroline County Sheriff's Department Maj. Scott] Moser said. "I'm sure it'd be difficult to make that decision. It's almost $1 million in cash. But they did the right thing."image: Caroline County Sheriff's Department Read the rest

Joni Mitchell's "River," from her 1971 masterpiece, Blue, has long been one of my favorites of her compositions. The sad, dreamy imagery of a wintertime love lost and the desire to skate away on an endless frozen river forever has got to be one of the most potent evocations in popular music.In this isolated vocal from that track, we get to hear just how pure, powerful, and expressive Joni's vocals were on this recording.[Via Far Out Magazine]Image: YouTube Read the rest

Astronaut Chris Hadfield explains how astronauts wash their hands in the microgravity of space. Formerly the commander of the International Space Station, Hadfield spent nearly six months offworld. (via The Kid Should See This) Read the rest

I bought a Durascoop cat litter scoop about five years ago because the little plastic scoop I’d been using for a couple of years had gotten flimsy from use and would often buckle at the handle.The Durascoop is made from cast aluminum and will never bend. It easily shaves off hardened clumps of litter from that litter box that would cause a plastic scoop to fold in half. It’s actually a beautiful looking tool, too. If Raymond Loewy designed a scoop, it would look like this (except maybe the handle wouldn’t be covered with textured plastic). Read the rest

The robot is your shepherd. In collaboration with cloud robotics firm Rocos, Boston Dynamics demonstrates how their robot dog Spot can herd sheep and handle other farming tasks. From the video description:The use of autonomous robots in agriculture is increasing the efficiency of food production. Robots, like Spot from Boston Dynamics, increase accuracy in yield estimates, relieve the strain of worker shortages, and create precision in farming.More on the Rocos/Boston Dynamics collaboration here.And some context, albeit from 2018: "As Immigrant Farmworkers Become More Scarce, Robots Replace Humans" (New York Times) Read the rest

As part of HiloBrow's Movie Objects series of essays, Jonathan Lethem writes about Burt Lancaster's hammer in the 1958 movie adaptation of George R. Stewart’s almost last-man-on-earth novel, Earth Abides.Earth Abides surrounds a feral-looking Burt Lancaster, fresh off the set of John Huston’s The Unforgiven, with a cast of New York stage actors and unknowns, among them a young Gena Rowlands and the unforgettably eccentric character actor Timothy Carey. The material of Stewart’s Earth Abides is a lot less doomy, actually, than the Shute — despite 95 percent of the world population being extinguished in a viral plague, as the title suggests, it’s a book about survival and contemplation. The main character, Ish (Lancaster), wanders the emptied streets scouting for food and companions, but also meditating on the profound and lyrical encroachment of the natural environment over humankind’s works, and the persistence of life and meaning in the absence of societal certainties.Those who know don't ask, and those who ask don't know. Read the rest

The inimitable Jimmy Slonina cloned himself four times to lip-sync The Temptations' "I Can't Get Next to You."(Thanks, Pat!)Image: YouTube Read the rest

"In lieu of flowers, please pay someone's open bar tab." That's the request to those mourning the loss of one Randall Jacobs of Phoenix, Arizona, who died at age 65. According to his obituary, RJ, aka Uncle Bunky, "told his last joke, which cannot be printed here, on May 4th, 2020." He sounds like a real character and will be greatly missed by those who knew him. From Legacy.com:When the end drew near, he left us with a final Bunkyism: "I'm ready for the dirt nap, but you can't leave the party if you can't find the door."He found the door, but the party will never be the same without him.In lieu of flowers, please pay someone's open bar tab, smoke a bowl, and fearlessly carve out some fresh lines through the trees on the gnarliest side of the mountain.(via Fark) Read the rest

"The glove remover is a simple device that reduces the risk of contamination when changing protective gloves while increasing efficiency and convenience."The website has a link to the 3D model so you can print your own (if you have a 3D printer or access to one). Read the rest