Boredom sparked creativity for Florida-based Tech Strategist and new mom Lucy Smalls. While at home sheltered in place, inspiration struck and now she is feeding squirrels from little hanging picnic tables she built. She's not selling the tiny tables, or patterns to make your own, but has pointed the internet to Squirrelly Treasure Co. on Etsy which is selling both ($25 for a finished table).2 weeks of isolation and we're out here making picnic tables for squirrels because we're insane pic.twitter.com/8WfHwyJQA4— Lucy Small (@lucyleid) March 31, 2020(Neatorama)screengrab via Lucy Smalls, photo by Squirrelly Treasure Co. Read the rest

When the much-panned "musical fantasy" movie Cats came out last year, there was a rumor that somewhere a cut of the film existed that showed CGI cat "buttholes." Well, that cut has been made public, sort of. On Tuesday, Chicago-based YouTubers XVP Comedy released a hilarious video that imagines what this rumored butthole cut would look like. It's terrific. Read the rest

The Syfy Network is making all fours seasons of Battlestar Galactica available for streaming online. No registration is required.The network has also made the two BG films, Battlestar Galactica: Razor and Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, available for streaming. But wait! There's more! The Battlestar Galactica mini-series (which I've never seen) is also now available for free streaming.This is welcome news for all of us who are fans of the critically-acclaimed 2004 reboot of the original 1979 Glen A. Larson series.Image: Publicity photo Read the rest

Posted on askreddit: "What's a really awkward situation that everyone can relate with?"A small sampling:Sex scene when watching a movie with your parentsSitting there when everyone’s singing happy birthday to youSaying hi to someone you know and they don’t notice you, or thinking someone was waving at you but it was for someone behind you.That awkward moment when you and a stranger are walking opposite directions and you both go the same side multiple times to pass each other lol.Going in the wrong direction so you take out your phone and pretend something changed so you can turn around and walk in the right direction.saying goodbye to someone only to keep walking in the same direction.When you need to talk to someone and they’re in the middle of conversation already. Even worse if they’re with laughing or deeply engaged with the other personSending a text to the wrong person talking bad about the person you sent it to Read the rest

I'll be showing and telling one of my projects in today's SHOW and TELL, hosted by John Edgar Park. The fun starts at 5:30pm ET / 2:30pm PT today.We (Adafruit) are mixing things up and running a show and tell after John Park’s Workshop on Thursdays! All are welcome, show your 3D printing project, Arduino project, CircuitPython project, Raspberry Pi project, work bench, your work from home desk set up, your cat, your dog, the things your kids made over the last week while home from school.To show and share a project, view the chat or in discord and look for the JOIN link to join. Read the rest

For 50 years, Billy Barr has been the only resident of Gothic, Colorado, an abandoned silver mining town. He's not a hermit though. According to NPR, Barr says he "occasionally interacts with skiers who pass through, he talks to his sister on the phone, and he works for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory nearby, which gets flooded with scientists in the summer." Below are a few of Bill Barr's tips on social distancing. You should read the rest though because Barr is very funny. From NPR: 1. Keep track of something.Each day, Barr tracks the weather for a number of groups including the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. He started measuring snow levels in the 1970s, mostly because he was bored [...]2. Keep a routine.Barr starts early. He wakes up around 3:30 a.m. or 4 a.m., and stays in bed until about 5 a.m."Up until a week or two ago, I would listen to the news every morning so that I could start every day either totally depressed or furious. That's always a good way to start the day," he said [...]4. Embrace the grumpiness.Sometimes, Barr said, it's kind of satisfying to be grumpy about something."Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience" by Rae Ellen Bichell (NPR)image: courtesy of Billy Barr Read the rest

CNN reports that the oil supply glut is "so epic" the world is running out of places to store it. If it costs more to store oil than its worth (currently $20 a barrel), then it will have a negative value.This oil glut is creating a scenario where some obscure grades of oil already have actually dropped below zero. For instance, a Wyoming crude grade was recently bid at negative 19 cents a barrel, Bloomberg News reported last week.Shrinking storage capacity means that oil producers in some cases have to pay someone just to take the barrels off their hands."The price is trying to go to a level to force companies to keep the oil in the ground. If it has to go negative to incentivize that behavior, then it will," said Neuberger's Wyll. Read the rest

Autodesk's former CEO Carl Bass is a deeply talented artist and maker with his own fab lab in Berkeley. Now, Carl along with his pal Chris Taggart and their families have been cranking out a unique kind of plastic face shield to help protect nurses and doctors on the front lines of COVID-19. In some cases, they've had to be discreet in their donations due to health regulations. “There are a huge number of people around the country who make stuff and are trying to figure out how to help out,” says Bass who is also a member of BLK SHP, a conspiracy of radically creative folks working to make the world a better place. The shields which cost around $1.50/each to manufacture are free for healthcare providers and financial donations are welcome. You can contact them at peoplesprotectiveequipment@gmail.com. Go Carl and Chris! From Berkeleyside:Over the weekend, working on a design put together by Taggart, the men manufactured 500 pieces of personal protective gear. The design involves snapping a long piece of plastic into a baseball cap....By Sunday, the 500 shields were gone, handed out for free in plastic-covered packs of 25 to people who had heard through word of mouth about the project. Now the men are gearing up to make tens of thousands more...The Alameda Health System issued an internal memo on Monday expanding where staff can wear masks and pledging to provide respiratory masks to workers in the ER, labor and delivery, urgent care and psychiatry emergency services. Read the rest

A group of skydivers jump at the same time, when one is accidentally kicked in the head by his buddy. He goes unconscious, but is miraculously saved when one of his partners is able to catch him and activate his chute.From Digg:The terrifying footage was shared recently by Ben Pigeon, the unfortunate diver who took a fellow diver's "femur [to the] head at 200 plus mph." Pigeon writes that he lost 3 days of memory due to the concussion, but it could have been a lot worse — luckily, another diver was able to reach Pigeon and activate his chute and he was not further injured upon landing.From another camera: Read the rest

There's a lot of back-and-forth about the effectiveness of facemasks to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and I can't vouch for this one, called the ragmask. But the design is tastefully understated and elegant, as are the PDF instructions for making your own.Image: ragmask Read the rest

Designer Yuri Suzuki of Pentagram and killer Japanese killer electronic kit maker Gakken collaborated on this fantastic-looking Easy Record Maker. The US$81 (!) device enables you to cut and play your own (very) lo-fi 5" albums! Susuki will demo the device on his Instagram tomorrow. From DesignWeek:The machine comes with ten blank five-inch discs [with more available for purchase]. You can plug in the audio source from any device, such as a computer or phone and then “engrave sound directly from the recording stylus,” Suzuki tells Design Week. You can then instantly playback sound using the tone arm and in-built speaker...“When I was a high school student, I was in a punk band – my friends and I always dreamed of pressing a record, but we knew how expensive it was,” he explains. “Personally this device is my teenage dream machine!”You can also design your own label and sleeves, which is another “platform to express yourself”, Suzuki adds. Read the rest

It turns out Zoom is super useful in these trying times. You can use it to fire 406 people at once! From Dot.la:Then, after five minutes of dead air that seemed like an eternity, a robotic-sounding, disembodied voice came on the line.The woman began by acknowledging "this is a suboptimal way to deliver this message." Then she cut to the chase: "COVID-19 has also had a massive impact on our business, one that has forced our leadership team and our board of directors to make extremely difficult and painful decisions. One of those decisions is to eliminate a number of roles at the company. Unfortunately your role is impacted by this decision."The meeting was scheduled to last half an hour but ended up going for only two minutes. Towards the end of the monologue, as the woman started talking about the future of Bird, she sounded like she was getting choked up and was trying to hold back tears."It felt like a Black Mirror episode," Alvauaje said. "This ominous voice came over and told us we were losing our jobs."While we sympathize with the workers who were laid off, we are not surprised. Bird is, after all, the company that sent Boing Boing an intimidating, bizarre, and baseless legal threat last year, which they retracted after our lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told them how wrong they were.Image: Mark Frauenfelder Read the rest

In the late 1980s, Nancye Ferguson, then-wife of DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh along with Bob Mothersbaugh, his daughter Alex, and then-DEVO drummer David Kendrick, formed Visiting Kids. Mark Mothersbaugh wrote some of the tunes and he and Bob Casale (Bob 2) produced their self-titled sole LP. Above is Visiting Kids' wonderfully weird music video for the track "Trilobites" and below is the band's TV appearance on The Late Show. (Thanks, UPSO!) Read the rest

Reddit:Chandra Oppenheim’s story is one of the most innocent but interesting stories to come out of post-punk NYC.After glam moved into punk and punk moved into post-punk/new wave/no wave/noise/outsider disco/mutant disco/art punk/etc/etc, it was a musical free for all. So it makes sense that an unassuming 12-year-old from Brooklyn would enter the scene backed by a post-punk, outsider disco group under the name Chandra.Chandra Oppenheim was just twelve years old when her debut album ‘Transportation’ was released. Musically encouraged by her father from a young age Chandra was writing songs by age nine.Her father was conceptual artist, Dennis Oppenheim, who caroused with the artists and musicians of the late '70s Lower East Side. Dennis was friends with Eugenie Diserio and Steven Alexander, who had been playing the NYC post-punk circuit with the Model Citizens.The Model Citizens signed to John Cale’s Spy Label and then broke up to take things in another direction with their new band, The Dance, featuring drummer Fred Maher (who later joined Material)Chandra Oppenheim had been writing music and performing for some time, often doing songs and performances at her father’s parties. Having met Chandra when she was 11, Diserio, Alexander and Maher formed a band with Chandra and started to rehearse in a studio in Hell’s Kitchen. The result of these rehearsals was their debut EP ‘Transportation’ on the band’s own record label GOGO/ON; a mix of dissonant weird disco, bass-heavy dance grooves and Chandra’s unmistakable chant-singing. Read the rest

Revenger, a fast-paced space opera by Alastair Reynolds with strong women as protagonists and few surprises certainly took my mind off things for a bit.Worldbuilding galore takes place in Revenger's galaxy, a place littered with the detritus of humanity and other species. Kind of steam-punky and certainly the baubles offer a lot of 'Roadside Picnic'-style Zones which I find ironic as I, and other Boing Boing editors, have been reading the Strugatsky Brothers this month.Revenger is 400 pages of good solid sci-fi fun.Revenger (The Revenger Series Book 1) by Alastair Reynolds via Amazon Read the rest

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho drew out beautiful storyboards before rolling film. He's combined his drawings and all of the movie's dialogue into Parasite: A Graphic Novel in Storyboards coming out in May. In the videos above and below, Through the Viewfinder compared the storyboards and the scenes from the actual film. (via Kottke) Read the rest

More than 6.6m Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, breaking the record for the second week running. "That brings the total number of Americans who filed for unemployment over the past two weeks to nearly 10 million," writes Fox Business's Megan Henney, "a stunning sign of the colossal economic damage inflicted by the outbreak."Official figures date back to 1967, with the jobless peaks at 695,000 in 1982 and 665,000 in 2009. About 15m were unemployed in the early 1930s, however, then about 25% of the 60m-strong workforce. There are now 165m in the U.S. workforce. Read the rest

After weeks of workers' complaints they are at risk because of lack of coronavirus protections, Amazon says it will deploy face masks and temperature checks for workers by next week.The company says it will provide protective gear to staff at all its U.S. and European warehouses, in addition to all Whole Foods stores, by early next week. PREVIOUSLY ON BOING BOING:• Amazon workers have been infected with coronavirus in 10 warehouses across the U.S.• Amazon says employee in Seattle has coronavirus and remains in quarantineReuters reported the news first:The company, which has reported virus cases among warehouse staff and faced several demonstrations, said it would start testing hundreds of thousands of employees a day for fevers. It told Reuters it would use no-contact forehead thermometers at site entrances and send anyone registering more than 100.4 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) home.All locations will have surgical masks available by early next week, after millions were ordered weeks ago, according to Amazon. Particle-blocking N95 masks it has ordered will instead be donated to medical workers or sold at cost to government and healthcare organizations, it said.The company will also use machine-learning software to monitor building cameras and determine whether employees are staying at safe distances during their shifts, or whether they are often huddled too close together. READ MOREExclusive: Amazon to deploy masks and temperature checks for workers by next week[Jeffrey Dastin/Reuters] Read the rest

“You should have pushed harder. Stop complaining.” — Trump

2nd domestic cat infected in Hong Kong

As anyone that's been kicking around here for the past few years knows, I love the Nintendo Switch—not so much for its new games, although I do dig a number of those too. For me, the Switch is the ultimate port machine. As I do the majority of my work on a slowly dying early 2015 13" MacBook Pro Retina laptop, it's reasonable to say that I haven't been set up to play the majority of PC, PS4 and Xbox titles that have come down the pike, these past five years. Happily, My Switch is allowing me to catch up. I'm in the middle of The Witcher III right now. I've been playing a bit of the Metro series (which is great in handheld mode) on and off and, Good lord: Mario Kart. Yes, it's a Nintendo original, but I never had a pal who owned a Nintendo U to play it with. Now's my chance.Over the past week, I've heard some fabulous news about a number of ports that I'll be thrilled to play when I'm not busy with work check this out:The Outer Worlds, which is essentially Fallout: New Vegas in space, will be released for the Switch in JuneXCOM 2, one of the best strategy games I've ever had the chance to play and not finish, will be released for the Switch on May 29thThe Borderlands Legendary Collection, which includes Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Seque, comes out on the same dayBioShock Remastered, BioShock 2 Remastered, and BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition are all dropping at the end of May as wellThere's no good time to be quarantined or sheltering in place (although we're currently doing so for a very good reason). Read the rest

I just read this article about conservatives who still think coronavirus is a hoax and are gathering, shaking hands, etc., to stick it to the libs. Then I saw this video of an angry man licking a window because he was annoyed "that hours had changed at TD Bank due to COVID virus.""Fuck you, cunt!"Word and image, complementing one another perfectly. Read the rest

Turbo the corgi had no idea the rock could move. Just so everyone knows the turtle in the video is not a tortoise but in fact an eastern box turtle! Which is actually part of the Terrapene family. Read the rest

A man who coughed on a police officer in the UK after declaring "I am Covid" is off to jail for six months, convicted of assaulting an emergency worker.Adam Lewis, 55, told the officer: "I am Covid and I am going to cough in your face and you will get it." ... The officer was told that a man had been seen trying the handles of car doors in the area, magistrates heard. Lewis resisted the officer's attempt to search him and smashed a bottle of wine he was holding on the floor, police said. As well as coughing on the officer, Lewis also tried to cough up phlegm and threatened to bite him Read the rest

Rolling Stone is reporting that Adam Schlesinger, co-founder of Fountains of Wayne, and a prolific songwriter for film, television, and theater, has died of COVID-10. He was 52-years-old.Schlesinger had one of the most unique and busiest careers in pop. With Fountains of Wayne — a group that blended power-pop delight with indie and alt-rock sensibilities — he released five albums between 1996 and 2011. During the same period, he released six albums with his other group, Ivy, all the while building a portfolio of TV and film music. His first hit came in 1996, but it was a song engineered to sound like it was actually from the Sixties: “That Thing You Do.” The track served as the sole hit for the Wonders, the fake band at the center of Tom Hanks’ film That Thing You Do!; in real life, the track charted well and earned Schlesinger an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Seven years later, Schlesinger and Fountains of Wayne would notch their own career-defining hit, “Stacy’s Mom.”Read the rest here.Written by Schlesinger:It is staggering to try and comprehend how many of these obits we are going to be seeing in the coming weeks and months.Image: CC 2.0 Read the rest

When I started seeing all of the posts on social media (and here on Boing Boing) about "pandemic baking," it made instant and perfect sense to me. But then, I started seeing people asking "why?" on Facebook and Twitter. My first thought was "this is clearly a question from non-bakers." If you've baked bread with any regularity, I bet you know why. The next thing I thought of was this piece I wrote for my 2014 book, Borg Like Me. In it, I talk about my time as a baker, living in a commune in my youth, and another apocalyptic event, a massive snow-in in 2010, that left me trapped alone in my house with dwindling food stocks.So, I decided to share this story here. TL;DR: Bake some bread. It's hands-on, can be grounding, therapeutic, and fresh-baked bread is one of life's great simple pleasures (for those of us who partake).Bread of the SnowpocalypseI’ve always been attracted to the ancient roots, the homely honesty, of bread. When I first moved to Twin Oaks Community in Louisa, VA as a teenager, I lived in a satellite group, called Tupelo. The first Tupelo dwelling was in an old ramshackled farm house that adjoined the main Twin Oaks property. For the farmhouse, we purchased a gorgeous antique cast iron wood-burning stove that I'd lobbied obnoxiously hard for us to get. I really wanted it to be our sole stove, but less ridiculous heads prevailed (I was 17 and full of hippie revolution fervor). Read the rest

Last week, I made the first book in my EMU Club Adventures series, Alien Invasion in My Backyard, available for download for free. And today the second book, Ghostly Thief of Time, is also available for download. Free.I hope these books can offer some respite, and fun and excitement, for families under the stressful conditions of quarantine. After all, they are about three bored kids who find an amazing adventure just by being exceptionally creative and curious.Next week, check out my social media for a little project kids can do once they've finished the books.Information on how to download both books is HERE.Stuart Tennemeier, his best friend Brian Hrzincz, and his sister Violet want to start a mystery club like the ones they read about in books, but they have no idea how to even find a mystery in their suburban neighborhood. They settle on trying to solve a mundane mystery from their lives – what happened to the game controller they lost – and they find that when you look really, really closely at your world, you can find absolutely amazing things. And maybe even save the world.The EMU Club Adventures series, for kids aged 7-11 (and adventurous, curious spirits of all ages), is by cartoonist Ruben Bolling, the author of the award-winning comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug. Read the rest

$5,179 was earned last week at the United States box office. Not $5.179m, not $51.79k, but just over five thousand dollars. It's the worst week in history for the American theater industry, due to coronavirus restrictions and company policies that all but ended public movie attendance.Okay, did some math. A movie ticket was ~35¢ in the 40s, which means collectively all theatres in America would only need to sell 14.5k tickets in a week to clear $5100So now I'm thinking probably the box office hasn't been this low since the late 20s.— Dan Olson (@FoldableHuman) April 1, 2020A silver lining, perhaps: most movies on general release were shunted immediately to television-on-demand, and gave home movie services their best week ever. Read the rest

You've probably received spam emails inviting you to join class action lawsuits against the makers of over-the-counter heartburn medicine Zantac (ranitidine) as it contains a likely carcinogen. Today, the US Food and Drug Administration requested that all ranitidine products be pulled from store shelves and that consumers properly dispose of any they've already purchased. You should expect even more Zantac class action spam. From CNN: The FDA noted that an ongoing investigation has determined that levels of a contaminant in the heartburn medications increase over time and when stored at higher-than-normal temperatures, poses a risk to public health.The contaminant, N-nitrosodimethylamine or NDMA, is a probable human carcinogen and the FDA has been investigating levels of it in ranitidine since the summer of 2019."We didn't observe unacceptable levels of NDMA in many of the samples that we tested," Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in Wednesday's announcement."However, since we don't know how or for how long the product might have been stored, we decided that it should not be available to consumers and patients unless its quality can be assured," Woodcock said in part. More: "FDA Requests Removal of All Ranitidine Products (Zantac) from the Market" (FDA)image: "Ball-and-stick model of the ranitidine molecule" from A. Hempel, N. Camerman, D. Mastropaolo and A. Camerman (2000).(public domain) Read the rest

Osamu Tezuka's iconic Astro Boy TV series premiered on New Year's Day, 1963. (First episode below.) By some accounts, the cartoon was watched at its most popular point by 40% of Japanese people with a TV. I love watching cartoonists draw familiar characters and the above behind-the-scenes footage from the Astro Boy production is a real delight.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

It's always great to see a master craftsperson at work. From Vanity Fair: "Watch as Tom Kenny seamlessly improvises the voices to 5 random cartoon characters that he has never seen before. Using his skills from decades as the voice of SpongeBob, The Ice King (Adventure Time), The Mayor (Powerpuff Girls), Heffer (Rocko's Modern Life) and many others, Tom is able to create amazing characters in the blink of an eye."Image: YouTube[via Dooby Brain] Read the rest

My favorite smartphone weather app is Dark Sky because it has a graph that shows you when it is going to rain, for how hard, and how long. Apple just bought Dark Sky and the first thing they did was pull the app from Android phones. Android users who subscribed to Dark Sky were informed that they will continue to receive service until July 1, 2020, after which they will be forced to throw their Android phone in the trash and buy an iPhone.Former Dark Sky fans expressed their sentiments on Twitter:So, @apple has bought my favourite forecast provider, #darksky. Now they will:* Leave the iOS app* Remove the Android app* Eliminate forecast and maps from the website in July* close the API at the end of 2021No explanation provided.Fuck you all.https://t.co/3JVrRtIGjj— insomniac (@insomniacslk) April 1, 2020My email to the #DarkSky team after the announced that they will be "Apple Exclusive"I think it's wrong that they have done this. pic.twitter.com/mqhjb69FYH— Matthew Wright (@MatthewW191) March 31, 2020Just gutted that #darksky have sold out to Apple and are killing BOTH the Android app (of which I am a multi year subscriber) and their API.This is a huge blow to open technology. All at https://t.co/sELZt8Tz99 should hang their heads in shame.— thebaldgeek (@thebaldgeek) March 31, 2020Apple buying Dark Sky is a good test for my general "acquisitions are bad" instinct: iOS having a great weather app is a good market solution, as people won't download any of the extremely shady third-party weather apps that sell location data. Read the rest

The Brass-A-Holics offer this fantastic rendition of "I'll Fly Away" to help comfort those who can not give their loved ones a proper jazz funeral.I have been in love with jazz funerals since I was a teen. I only recently learned there are also jazz weddings. Should I ever remarry this will make things interesting. Read the rest

Another day, another round of Trump anxiety-tweets.“Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S.,” the impeached president and noted serial liar tweeted today.Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!Okie doke. Read the rest

Good tip pic.twitter.com/GS5mFVom4v— Engineering (@engineeringvids) March 30, 2020This looks like a good way to keep drawstrings from disappearing, as is their wont. Read the rest

Who is the best Hungarian Beatles tribute band? This is a question musicologists have argued about for years, but more than a few agree that The Bits are worthy contendors for the title. Above, a pandemic inspired "I Wanna Wash My Hands." Below, a social distanced version of "Come Together," retitled "Don't Come Together."Image: YouTube Read the rest

Ever wonder how the Space Needle's rotating glass floor works? CGI animator extraordinaire Jared Owen gives us an inside look at Seattle's most iconic structure.The Space Needle is located in Seattle Washington. It was built in 1962 just in time for the World's Fair. The top looks like a Flying Saucer and is meant to inspire people to look towards the future. The Space Needle is icon to Seattle just as Eiffel Tower is to Paris, France. Around the Space Needle there plenty to see and do as well. The bottom of the building has a large spiral ramp that tourists get to climb on their way towards the elevators. The top of tower has the observation level with an outdoor deck, a service level, and The Loupe which features a revolving glass floor. The center of the tower has supports for the 3 elevators and the stairs which are mostly used for emergencies. The Skyline level is for private events at the Space Needle. Read the rest

This is exactly how I've felt while cooped in my house these last few weeks and yes I mean "exactly."The 2-minute film was created by AJ Jeffries, a 3D illustrator and animator based in Norwich in the UK. The only description or explanation given for it is this: "A horse struggles to exist." That feels like it's vague or underselling, after watching this mesmerizing cartoon several times over, I think it's actually perfect.Horse [AJ Jeffries / Vimeo] Read the rest

View this post on Instagram #ASonnetADay A post shared by Patrick Stewart (@sirpatstew) on Mar 31, 2020 at 1:06pm PDT "Having spent so much of my life with Shakespeare’s world, passions and ideas in my head and in my mouth, he feels like a friend—someone who just went out of the room to get another bottle of wine," Patrick Stewart once said. On Instagram, he's now delivering a daily fix of the Bard. See them all at @sirpatstew on Instagram. View this post on Instagram It has led me to undertake what follows. When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn't much) and as she put it in front of me she would say: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." How about, “A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away”? So...here we go: Sonnet 1. A post shared by Patrick Stewart (@sirpatstew) on Mar 22, 2020 at 4:28pm PDT View this post on Instagram #ASonnetADay A post shared by Patrick Stewart (@sirpatstew) on Mar 28, 2020 at 12:35pm PDT Read the rest

Sean Kaen, @oddnmacabre on Twitter, posed the challenge 'let’s make some Godzilla movies!" and the results are unusually amusing due to the one rule: replace 1 word in any movie title with "Godzilla".Godzilla, Actually.— lawprofblawg (@lawprofblawg) March 28, 2020Indiana Jones and the Temple of GodzillaActually that sounds awesome!On one side you have an aged, grumpy, ill-tempered, feared being who likes to smash things... And on the other side a giant lizard.— Robert Ropars (@robertropars) March 27, 2020A Godzilla Runs Through It— Alexander Occasionally-Cortical (@Trolletariat2) March 28, 2020Four Weddings and a Godzilla— Peter de Sève (@peterdeseve) March 29, 2020The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Godzilla— E.Z. Hart (@hartez) March 28, 2020Heather offers "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Godzilla."I know I'll never get to watch "Remains of the Godzilla", but there'll always be the whale on Florence beach. And then I can found the Dead Godzillas Society. Read the rest

Joanna Charlton shared this video of her daughter crying over closed restaurants and delivery food. This 4-year-old girl speaks for all of us. Layla-Rae Charlton was told by her mom that she could no longer go to KFC, Pizza Hut, and other favorite restaurants, and that for the foreseeable future, would have to eat mom's cooking.Layla-Rae's response has us in stitches.[Layla-Rae YouTube] Read the rest

This is a compilation of security- and dash-cam footage of auto accidents with one of the vehicles digitally removed, thereby becoming "invisible". It is remarkably creepy and unsettling, like one of those science fiction blockbusters that starts with an ingenious and terrifying disaster/invasion/escape scene but then becomes normal and boring for the rest of the movie. Read the rest

You know what you're gonna get and the master delivers. The recital begins at 6:08.While Jimmy is in quarantine, he checks in with the great Samuel L. Jackson at his home. Sam talks about canceling his trip to Italy with Magic Johnson, Jimmy wanting to be a part of their annual vacation, watching “Tiger King” with his daughter, the go-to meal he likes to cook himself. Read the rest

New York City has offered prisoners personal protective equipment and $6 an hour to dig mass graves, reports Ryan Grim for The Intercept. The best-case scenario suggests 100,000-240,000 dead in the next few weeks from coronavirus infections, according to NBC News, and New York City is the hardest-hit metro area in the country. So someone's got to do it.They're considering Hart Island for the grave sites, but are concerned there won't be enough space.The offer is only being made to those with convictions, not those jailed before trial, as is generally the case. A memo sent to prisoners, according to a source who reviewed it, does not specify what the work on Hart Island will be, but the reference to PPE leaves little doubt. The offer comes as New York City continues to be the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, with 38,000 people infected and more than 914 dead so far. New York City owns and operates a public cemetery on Hart Island, which has long been maintained by prison labor. The island was identified as a potential resting place for a surge of bodies in the event of a pandemic by a 2008 report put together by the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner.Pay them minimum wage: $15 an hour in New York City. Read the rest

If you’re charting the fortunes of a business, one glance at the right columns can instantly detail that company’s health. If you want to see their current roster of customers, a spreadsheet can bring those clients into sharp focus.Make no mistake -- the world of business is still dominated by the all-powerful spreadsheet. It’s still a defining business tool, one users can get to know inside and out with training like The 2020 Ultimate Microsoft Excel Certification Training Bundle.The package collecting 10 courses jammed full with more than 40 hours of training unlocks everything a new Microsoft Excel user needs to start exploring, managing and analyzing data in this business industry staple.First, a trio of courses guide first-timers through three levels of Excel knowledge, starting with basic terms and ideas before moving to templates, databases, and ranges, then the most advanced Excel tools like macros and creating your own Excel operations with VBA programming.Meanwhile, another three courses dig into some of Excel’s most valuable functions, including productivity tools like keyboard shortcuts and data validation; data visualizations to create data-driven maps, templates, forms and other dynamic visuals; and pivot tables for grouping and displaying your data in every conceivable way.Additional training covers powerful data modeling and business tools like Power Query and Data Analysis Expressions, how to use formulas and functions at all levels, and advanced tips for handling critical data processes like password protection and tracking changes.From Excel newbies to hardcore veterans, there are tips and strategies here to help users of any level extract even more meaning from all their Excel explorations. Read the rest

For wine lovers around the world, it's all about discovery. Once they get a taste for the grape, oenophiles are rarely satisfied with even the most carefully curated, go-to vintages. There's always a hunt for the next great pairing, the thrill of uncorking a bold new Tempranillo or sublime Moscato.That feeling is a jones that winemakers in general - and wine clubs in particular - are happy to feed. But while online wine-of-the-month clubs have made discovering new wines a lot easier, many feel there's been something lost in terms of the personal touch; that sense of place and adventure that began many wine lovers' journey in the first place.Enter Wine Access, a growing portal to the wine world that offers not just convenience but a more curated approach. At a time when a trip to Napa is out of the question, and wineries sit closed for the foreseeable future, why not bring the experience to your home?The online wine shop is based in the heart of downtown Napa, and even within that insular wine hub, the founders have some deep connections. (Their Head of Wine, Vanessa Conlin, came to the job after heading up sales and marketing for several high-profile estates including Arietta Wines.) Wine Access leverages those connections to get their members access to some rare and award-winning picks like Estate Argyros' Assyrtiko Santorini, a Grecian white that elevates any shellfish meal to a life-changing experience.But Wine Access doesn't randomly push these wines onto its subscribers, however, well-selected they may be. Read the rest

From Cory's awesome Pluralistic website, a post about the latest episode of his podcast, in which he reads the author's note from Attack Surface, his third Little Brother book.My latest podcast is a reading of the author's note from "Attack Surface" — the third Little Brother book, which comes out on Oct 12.https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531I recorded this for the audiobook edition of Attack Suface, which I've been recording all last week with Amber Benson and the Cassandra de Cuir from Skyboat Media.https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/30/authors-note-from-attack-surface/If you like what you hear, please consider pre-ordering the book — it's a scary time to have a book in the production pipeline!Here's the MP3:https://archive.org/download/authorsnotefromattacksurface/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_335_-_Attack_Surface_Authors_Note.mp3And here's the podcast feed:http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast Read the rest

Annalee Newitz has a piece in The New York Times about the "Great Plague" of London (1665-1666)--the last outbreak of bubonic plague in England--which ended up taking the lives of almost a quarter of the city's population.A lot of English people believed 1666 would be the year of the apocalypse. You can’t really blame them. In late spring 1665, bubonic plague began to eat away at London’s population. By fall, roughly 7,000 people were dying every week in the city. The plague lasted through most of 1666, ultimately killing about 100,000 people in London alone — and possibly as many as three-quarters of a million in England as a whole....It felt like Armageddon. And yet it was also the beginning of a scientific renaissance in England, when doctors experimented with quarantines, sterilization and social distancing. For those of us living through these stay-at-home days of Covid-19, it’s useful to look back and see how much has changed — and how much hasn’t. Humanity has been guarding against plagues and surviving them for thousands of years, and we have managed to learn a lot along the way....It was most likely thanks to his [King Charles II] interest in science that government representatives and doctors quickly used social distancing methods for containing the spread of bubonic plague. Charles II issued a formal order in 1666 that ordered a halt to all public gatherings, including funerals. Already, theaters had been shut down in London, and licensing curtailed for new pubs. Read the rest

Boing Boing pal Erik Davis will be joining Dennis McKenna (Terence's brother) on April 3rd for an online screening and virtual chat centered on a previously unseen lecture that Terence McKenna delivered at Esalen Institute in 1989.From Erik's monthly newsletter.This Friday, at 5:30 PST, I will be participating in a TRIBUTE TO TERENCE MCKENNA hosted by Dennis McKenna and our mutual friends at Psychedelic Seminars. Terence died twenty years ago, and over the next few weekends, Dennis will be hanging out with some of T’s wonderful friends, like Eduardo Luna, Bruce Damer, and Rupert Sheldrake.On Friday we will be streaming a recently discovered hour-long film of Terence shot at Esalen in 1989. After the showing, Dennis and I will have a chat—the first in-depth conversation we have had since the publication of High Weirdness.You can sign-up for the screening and chat here. You can find more info on the whole series here.And if you're looking for something provocative and mind-bending to read while you're cowering in your invisible zombie apocalypse hidey hole, check out Erik's wonderful new tome, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies[H/t Laurie Fox]Image: Promotional art Read the rest

When watching a magician perform some card tricks, it's a legitimate question to ask: "Would you be able to cheat at a card game?" Most performers will smirk and wink, implying they could. Truth is: they probably can't. Sleight-of-hand with cards for conjuring and entertainment purposes is one thing; gambling techniques to cheat at cards is a whole other story. Sometimes these two domains overlap, in that liminal zone of the so called "gambling demonstrations." However, the gamblers' "real work" entails a very different skillset from that of a magician—while true gambling techniques are among the most fascinating and difficult to master.The gambling expertIn the realm of gambling techniques with cards, one name immediately commands undivided admiration and respect. That name is Steve Forte. It's no hyperbole to say that what Forte can do with a pack of cards borders the unbelievable; his skillful handling is the closest thing to perfection in terms of technique. Here is a taste of his smooth and classy dexterity:Steve Forte's career spans over 40 years within the gambling industry. After dealing all casino games and serving in all casino executive capacities, he shifted gears to a spectacularly successful career as a professional high-stakes Black Jack and Poker player; shifting gears again, he later became a top consultant in the casino security field. To dig deeper into Forte's adventurous and shapeshifting life, the go-to place is the enduring profile penned by R. Paul Wilson for the October 2005 issue of Genii Magazine. Read the rest