This police bodycam footage begins in mundane form, with a pulled-over motorist being issued a ticket for some traffic infraction or other. A loud crash is heard, and while we can't see it, we know it's trouble because the cop lets the motorist off and dashes back to his car. He races to the scene of the accident and we see the box truck wrecked in the highway, flames dancing around the windshield and tires. The officer and another rescuer haul the disoriented driver from the fire. Barely a second or two later, a roaring noise is recorded and we soon see that the entire cabin is engulfed.The driver suffered minor injuries, according to New Jersey State Police, and they don't know what caused the crash. Read the rest

The secret to project management is that there really is no secret. In fact, with so many popular and well-proven methodologies around for shepherding a company’s biggest initiatives from concept to completion, leaders are better served following some battle-testing paths rather than trying to build one of their own.It’s a lucrative career option for those willing to learn the ropes from the pros. The Complete 2020 PMP Training Bundle includes all the training needed to get familiar with the basics of project management and start carving your way toward becoming your company’s ultimate go-to ace in the hole.Not only does this 10-course, 150-plus hour package introduces the principles of PMP, Agile, Six Sigma and more, but the training is structured to help students get certified in each of those varied disciplines.That includes PMP certification from the world-acknowledged authority in the subject, the Project Management Institute (PMI). A pair of courses unlock industry standards found in the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the PMBOK, around scheduling, costs, resource allocation and other major areas any good PM has to know.Meanwhile, four more courses tackle the popular Agile and Agile Scrum approaches, which rely heavily on the teamwork, self-organization and accountability of team members. Finally, the Six Sigma methodology is the subject of an additional two courses dedicated to a process that values streamlining variation and cutting down on errors to keep a project focused and on track.Finally, students will also be introduced to ITIL, the well-used IT framework of best practices for making IT issues more manageable and responsive to a company and a customer’s needs. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Super Medical Force must track down a catastrophically dangerous illness to save the U.S., and even the world!

Cleethorpes is a faded northern English resort town whose inherent grimness is leavened by low rainfall and a nice sandy beach. And now it is to become home to a giant white metal palm tree, to the dismay of some locals. Artist Wolfgang Weileder has said the sculpture will serve as a "warning for the future" on climate change. It will feature a black shadow underneath, partly made from recycled material collected from Cleethorpes beach. The project, due to be installed by the end of the year, attracted mixed reactions from residents, with some describing the sculpture as a "laughing stock". North East Lincolnshire Council's planning committee approved the sculpture by six votes to four, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported.They should call it The Tree of Brexit as it will warn off invading Danes.Illustration: North East Lincolnshire Council Read the rest

Joe Biden took most of the states voting yesterday for a Democratic candidate to challenge President Trump, including an unexpected win in Texas. Rival Bernie Sanders, however, overwhelmed Biden in California to grab the night's biggest haul of delegates. The results confirm the scale of Biden's comeback, which kicked off with a big win last week in South Carolina, and suggest a two-man slog for the job.For his $500m+ investment, billionaire Mike Bloomberg won a single race -- American Samoa -- and indicated that his vanity campaign might soon be over. Elizabeth Warren could only manage third place in Massachussets, trailing across the map.With many close races, Biden and Sanders nonetheless split the haul between them. According to the BBC, with several races yet to declare, Biden has 453 convention delegates, Sanders 382, Warren 50 and Bloomberg 44. Read the rest

My colleague Jon Chase has a great new piece up on Wirecutter detailing some of the delightful ways he's found to lean into his Dad Joke-ness and use Alexa to screw with his kids:I happen to be content with the number of times I’ve heard the song “Baby Shark,” and I feel no need to hear it ever again in this life or the next. So I whipped up a quick Routine in about 30 seconds, and now, should anyone dare to utter the command “Alexa, play ‘Baby Shark,’” Alexa will reply, “Ooh, not in this house, sucker!” and then play Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.”You can use that trick for any other tune, podcast, or really any Alexa query that has worn out its welcome.I suppose my own future child is still a ways away from verbalizing Alexa commands, but this does make me strangely look forward to that moment. Still, it's kind of refreshing to remember the wonderfully stupid potential of something Alexa, without having to stain it all with security concerns. (Shit, I just ruined it, didn't I?)How I use Alexa to dunk on my kids [Jon Chase / Wirecutter]Image: PetraGrey / Wikimedia Commons (CC 4.0) Read the rest

The United States "liberated" Guam and the Marianas Islands from 1898 during the Spanish-American War. As is usually the case with American Liberation, this meant further colonization, conversion into military outposts, and a forced re-education of the native Chamorros. To be fair, those indigenous inhabitants had already endured some 300 years of Spanish colonialism by then. By the time the US showed up, most Chammoros spoke in Spanish. But they also had their own language, called CHamoru.But, as the Guardian tells it, the imperialist force that famously boasts about its firm belief in the freedom of speech (from a country that doesn't even have an official language) tried to stomp out the language at all costs:The US navy banned CHamoru in 1917 “except for official interpreting”. The naval administration even burned CHamoru-English dictionaries.It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the ban on speaking CHamoru in schools was lifted, says Michael Bevacqua, a CHamoru language educator on Guam. Until then, schoolchildren who spoke CHamoru were punished, and their parents were sometimes even fined.[…]A decade ago, the US census estimated there were about 25,827 CHamoru speakers on Guam, just 2,394 of whom were under the age of 18, and only 14,176 CHamoru speakers in the rest of the island chain.Robert Underwood, the former president of the University of Guam, says most of the fluent speakers are likely to be over the age of 50.“In another 20 to 30 years there may not be any real first-language speakers of CHamoru,” he says. Read the rest

WATCH: Security footage shows a man using a fishing rod to remove a Versace necklace from a mannequin within the store just after 2am. pic.twitter.com/9S103jZjv4— Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) March 3, 2020In the surveillance footage above, a fellow is seen using a fishing rod to snatch a designer necklace from a mannequin's neck inside a Melbourne, Australia shop. Police are asking for help identifying the suspect. From CNN:Authorities believe the man made a hole in the storefront glass window, then slid the fishing rod through the hole into the store to lift the necklace from the mannequin inside, according to CNN affiliate Nine News."It appears that the burglar was fishing for about three hours before landing his catch," said police in the statement. Read the rest

This purrito cat is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and she is a Ragdoll/British Short mixed Munchkin Female who was adopted 3 years ago.Follow @Littlemunchiepooky on Instagram. View this post on Instagram Pooky Burrito! . . For any licensing requests please contact liscensing@break.comA post shared by Pooky the Munchkin (@littlemunchiepooky) on Feb 9, 2017 at 7:34am PST [via r/Purrito] Read the rest

In San Antonio, Texas -- Federal health officials were planning to drop off some of the evacuated cruise ship passengers at a local shopping mall, after the coronavirus-exposed patients got out of a two-week quarantine at a Texas air base. This is one reason the city declared a public health emergency over COVID-19, said a city spokeswoman on Tuesday.San Antonio filed a lawsuit yesterday to stop the Trump administration's plan, after a woman was mistakenly released from quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base over the weekend despite testing positive for coronavirus. The woman had visited the North Star Mall, where the others were to be dropped off, before that mistake was discovered. The mall shut down for deep cleaning.From AP:Mayes said 122 passengers were released Tuesday, while seven remained in quarantine. Many passengers were bused to San Antonio International Airport, where they were escorted to ticket counters and through security. Others who live in Texas were escorted to car rental counters.Passenger Terri Feil of Houston said a CDC official told them in a conference call Sunday that the mall, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) from the base, was chosen to avoid the media.Feil said only people who were not going to the airport were to be dropped off at the mall. The Feils showed The Associated Press a text message they said was from the CDC indicating they were to be dropped off at the entrance by The Cheesecake Factory.“My husband was asking, ‘who made this decision?’” Read the rest

A person who works at Amazon.com's corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington, has tested positive for COVID-19, said the company.At least 20 people in the Seattle region have tested positive for COVID-19, and eight have died, state health officials said Tuesday. This area of Washington state has become the U.S. outbreak's epicenter.Writes Monica Nickelsburg at GeekWire:The employee went home sick on Tuesday, Feb. 25 and later tested positive for COVID-19. Amazon notified employees who came into close contact with the individual. The employee is based out of Amazon’s Brazil building at 400 9th Ave N, near downtown Seattle. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the news and said the company is “supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine.”Amazon is advising employees who are experiencing symptoms of the coronavirus to stay home and seek medical attention. The company is conducting “enhanced deep cleaning and sanitization” at the office. Amazon employs more than 50,000 people in the Seattle region, most of whom are clustered at the headquarters in South Lake Union.[via techmeme]Amazon employee in Seattle tests positive for coronavirus https://t.co/6Q2CSKVrzz— Monica Nickelsburg (@mnickelsburg) March 4, 2020Amazon employee in Seattle has tested positive for illness caused by coronavirus, @bromano reports. https://t.co/d17P5fC6zm via @seattletimes— Rami Grunbaum (@rgrunbaum) March 4, 2020An Amazon employee in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a message sent to Amazon employees Tuesday in Seattle and Bellevue. (via @bromano)https://t.co/M6w5YG4zvf Read the rest

In a little over a month, golf fans will get an answer to the big question they’ve been asking for almost a year: can Tiger do it again? After his improbable return to majors form with a stunning victory at last year’s Masters in Augusta, everybody’s anxious to see what happens this time around in April.Of course, most of our most pressing golf questions are a little closer to home. Like...when am I finally going to be able to sink a putt consistently? Or, how am I going to be able to get in some practice this week? Or just, what the heck happened to my ball?Legit questions, all. Thankfully, we’ve got a whole host of golf accessories to fill out your bag, improve your time on the links and maybe just shave a stroke or two off your game.RangefindersHow do you know how far to hit it if you don’t know how far it is? That’s where this trio of rangefinders can help accurately gauge out your shots when yardage markers are tough to come by.The NX7 Pro Slope: Golf Rangefinder ($199; originally $249) uses laser technology and a pulse vibration feature to give you precise measurement to the flag, not everything around it.With the Callaway 200s Laser Rangefinder ($169.99; originally $219), its Pin Acquisition tech will lock on to the pin from up to 275 yards away and give you up to 6x magnification to scope out every element of your shot before you swing. Read the rest

• Coronavirus fears can't stop the fromageIn Wisconsin today, the world's largest technical cheese, butter and yogurt competition kicked off with a record 3,667 entries from 26 nations.Some 55 judges will inspect, sniff, and eat samples of 132 classes of dairy products during the World Championship Cheese Contest.Judges include cheese graders, cheese buyers, dairy science professors, and researchers from 19 nations and 14 states, AP reports:The last time the competition was held in 2018, a hard sheep’s milk cheese called Esquirrou made in France at Mauleon Fromagerie won top honors. It is imported by Savencia Cheese USA. This year’s winner will be announced Thursday.One judge and 30 people from a Japanese university could not attend because the university didn’t allow international travel due to the new coronavirus, Sweeney said.There will be extra hand-washing stations and hand sanitizers for the judges “out of an abundance of good intention,” she said. Otherwise, the virus was not expected to affect the competition, she said. More at AP:Wisconsin hosts largest technical dairy competition in world Read the rest

I'm gonna need some pepto bismol to cure the headache that I have from trying to think about this logic.Medical experts at the White House have to patiently explain to Trump that his idea of using the flu vaccine to address the coronavirus will not work. pic.twitter.com/acghVStSvK— Oliver Willis (@owillis) March 2, 2020The crucial part:You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that would have an impact or much have an impact on corona?Speaking of coronavirus and vaccines, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has claimed that US medical will have performed close to a million coronavirus tests by the end of this week. That's good news! What's not good news is that some test kits have already been contaminated, after the CDC had already sent out hundreds of flawed test kits in the first place. So far, the US has tested has tested about 500 people total; according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories (via Politico), we'd still only be able to run about 10,000 tests per day across the country under ideal conditions. As such, it's not clear how Hahn reached that conclusion of one million test kits. Maybe he was using Trump inauguration math?FDA chief's claim of 1M coronavirus tests by end of week stirs controversy [David Lim / Politico]Image: White House / Public Domain Read the rest

Here's a Kickstarter for a cool graphic novel project by Ayize Jama-Everett, John Jennings, et. al. called Box of Bones, described as "Tales from the Crypt Meets Black History."When my friend Mark Dery let me know about this project, he wrote, "Jordan Peele remixes Lovecraft? Zora Neale Hurston meets EC Comics? Pulp voodoo in the age of Trump, Black Lives Matter, and white supremacy’s death rattle? I’m guessing all of the above, conjured up by Jama-Everett’s evocative prose and Jennings’s dynamic, Kirbyesque illustrations."When Black graduate student, Lyndsey, begins her dissertation work on a mysterious box that pops up during the most violent and troubled time in Africana history, she has no idea that her research will lead her on a phantasmagorical journey from West Philadelphia riots to Haitian slave uprisings. Wherever Lyndsey finds someone who has seen the Box, chaos ensues. Soon, even her own sanity falls into question. In the end, Lyndsey will have to decide if she really wants to see what’s inside the Box of Bones.Described as “Tales from the Crypt Meets Black History,” Box of Bones is a supernatural nightmare tour through some of the most violent and horrific episodes in the African Diaspora.Volume 1 contains art from John Jennings, Sole Rebel, Damian Duffy, Frances Olivia Liddell-Rodriguez, Tommy Nguyen, Jarmel and Jamal Williams, and Bryan Christopher Moss with covers by Stacey Robinson!!! Read the rest

Use promo code K2EVWP2F to get this Poweradd Surge Protector USB Power Strip with 3 USB Charging Ports for a good discount on Amazon. It's got a five-foot cord, a surge protector, and safeguards to protect against overheating and overcharging. I just bought a couple. Read the rest

Above: In 1987, TV newsmagazine 20/20 revealed the real horror of horror movies: children watching splatterpunk films on VHS in the comfort of their living rooms!"Fair warning though: There is some graphic violence in this. But we say that for you, not your kids -- they've probably already seen it."(via r/ObscureMedia)Below, The Damned's tribute to the genre, "Nasty" (1984): Read the rest

Some people actually prefer a desktop to a laptop.There...we said it.While that might sound like the ravings of a heretic in 2020, it’s really not as crazy as it might seem. Desktops and their full-size parts almost always mean faster, smoother performance than a similarly equipped laptop. Desktops are easier to upgrade. And even when they’re sporting equivalent specs, a desktop is almost always going to be significantly cheaper than a laptop.Besides, Dell wants to put their thumb on the scale of that argument by knocking significant percentages off the price of their certified refurbished Dell desktops. Enjoy the savings AND your faster, more powerful computers, desktop lovers.Dell Precision T3420 SFF Desktop "Core i3" 8GB RAM (Certified Refurbished) - $439, originally $699.99 If you’re looking for a rig to give you an immediate performance boost, this Precision T3420 and its 6th Gen Intel Core i3 dual-core processor delivers. With 8GB of RAM memory and speeds of up to 3.7 GHz, this workhorse station for professionals can handle multitasking several productivity apps at once or creating labor-intensive digital content like a champ. Backed with a 500GB hard drive and running a full Windows 10 OS, this unit is not only certified to run like new, but it’s also over $250 off the regular price. Read the rest

The annual Geneva International Motor Show is a huge deal in the auto world where all the carmakers show off their new vehicles to the world. Due to Covid-19 concerns, the Swiss government banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people, leading to the last-minute cancellation of the Motor Show. Auto photographer GF Williams showed up anyway and the above is what he saw. Read the rest

The Bauhutte gamer bed, as pictured, includes mattress, headboard with storage, desk, keyboard stand, snack cart (or "energy wagon") and black bedsheets with red piping. [via Rock Paper Shotgun]Conceived in Japan by gaming desk maker Bauhutte, this cursed concoction is actually a Power Rangers-style amalgamation of all their gaming furniture combined. Only instead of transforming into a mighty-morphin’ humanity-saving mech suit, it’s a mighty-morphin’ gaming prison designed to bombard us with more #content than we could ever possibly consume. The only thing it’s missing is a built-in bog hole. Dystopian dread aside, thanks to the ever reliable services of Google Translate, Bauhutte’s description of their gaming bed does, at least, make for some entertaining reading. Read the rest

Behold! The Pushineenicorn [Amazon], product of a union betwixt pusheen and unicorn. PUSHEEN + UNICORN = PUSHEENICORN: This 13" plush brings the bright and beautiful Pusheenicorn to life! Features a colorful rainbow mane and tail as well as a sparkly unicorn horn.SOFT & HUGGABLE: Made from a soft, huggable material Read the rest

Team asteroid was narrowly defeated by the Terrans earlier this month when a skyscraper-sized rock named 163373 (2002 PZ39) failed to slam into Earth. The asteroids have a second chance of hitting Earth on March 3 with a scrappier contender named 2020 DA4. From IB Times:Based on the asteroid’s size and current speed, the blast from its airburst could be equivalent to multiple atomic bombs. Although much of the explosion will be directed towards the atmosphere, the remaining energy could still be powerful enough to damage buildings, shatter windows and injure people on the ground.According to CNEOS, 2020 DA4 will intersect Earth’s orbit on March 3 at 9:06 a.m. EST. As it crosses Earth’s path, the asteroid is expected to be about 0.00629 astronomical units or roughly 585,000 miles from the planet’s center. This means that the asteroid will only be about twice the distance between the Earth and the Moon during its approach. Read the rest

Trump set up Pence to fail as Coronavirus prayer-in-chief to give him reason to dump him and make Nikki Haley his VP to win the "suburban moms" vote, said CNN political analyst Paul Begala. Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, Begala said this declaration is "guaranteed" and "not a prediction. HuffPost has more:He even named an exact date: Thursday, July 16. “That’s the date the Democrat gives her or his acceptance address,” Begala said on Monday. “On that day, to interrupt that narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.”And that’s when Pence will be toast.“He’s going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those suburban moms,” Begala said. “You watch. Guaranteed.” Read the rest

Our cat has become SUPER clingy now that we both work from home. We had to improvise... from r/awwOne of my cats follows me around waiting for me to sit so he can fall asleep in my lap. I should make one of these to keep him happy while I'm standing.Image: Reddit[via Laughing Squid] Read the rest

Brit Hume, a right-wing talking head on Fox, today tweeted a screenshot of betting markets' odds on presidential candidates. One of his other tabs, however, had the title "Sexy Vixen Vinyl" and this is what everyone wants to know about.Search results for the term were immediately polluted with references to the tweet itself, but the only viable candidate is this product page at Yandy.com for a "Sexy Vixen Vinyl Set" comprising a sexy vixen vinyl bra, a sexy vixen booty shorts and other sexy vixen vinyl accessories.Look like a total goddess in this vinyl halter bra featuring underwire cups, square nail head stud accents, and a back zipper closure. (Gloves not included.) Everyone is assuming it's for his wife. Not how it works, kids. Read the rest

I'm a big fan of the Cosy Places subreddit, but quickly learned a key tell that a lovely room isn't lived-in: libraries of uniformly handsome or antique books that tell you you're looking at a set, or the corner of a furniture store.The reality is that books tend to be a "noisy" presence, designed to advertise themselves and exhibiting loud and trendy design fads. Ready sources of cheap books -- library clear-outs and estate sales -- only reflect this state of affairs in bulk.So it turns out there's an entire industry of books hand-picked and organized to look good, sold in bulk according to a variety of visual or conceptual themes. Color gradients is a hot trend in the world of books sold by the linear foot. Just a few stores I found: Books by the Foot, Zubal Books, Read the rest

In 1979, Sesame Street animator Cathryn Aison created "Geometry of Circles," an abstract animation with original music by minimalist pioneer Philip Glass. It consists of four segments that were first aired as a complete piece. From the Muppet Wiki:The shorts consist of the movement of six circles (each with a different color of the rainbow) that are formed by and split up into various geometric patterns. Glass's music underscores the animation in a style that closely resembles the "Dance" numbers and the North Star vignettes written during the same time period as his Einstein on the Beach opera. Read the rest

Full-stack developers are the real deal. With a full breadth of front end and back end programming knowledge and a complete understanding of how those worlds work together, they’re the ones companies turn to when they really need development projects done right.And with average base salaries over $110,000 a year, they’re paid handsomely for all that expertise. While it isn’t a simple balancing act, you can still learn all the skills needed to break into this in-demand field with the training in The 2020 Learn to Code Full Stack Developer Certification Bundle.This career boot camp includes nine courses with combined 50-plus hours of in-depth instruction in all the various languages, platforms and tools that any full-service provider has to know in 2020 to thrive.HTML Programming for Everyone and Intro to PHP for Web Development are comprehensive studies of HTML and PHP, two of the most foundational coding disciplines in web design and construction. Meanwhile, courses like the Microsoft SQL Server and T-SQL Course For Beginners open students up to database management training and the fundamentals of data analysis.Any talk of analytics and hardcore big data invariably leads to Python, so the Using MySQL Databases with Python course as well as the Advanced Python Training are vital to knowing and using this programming language that’s particularly robust within the data science realm.Meanwhile, a trio of courses -- The Complete C# Programming Course, Learn C# by Building Applications, and Beginner Object-Oriented Programming in C# & .NET Core -- open up the world of C#, another modern programming tool known for its versatility and convenience. Read the rest

A tiny, bargain-priced drone that delivers cinematic HD footage? Full speed ahead, backers! But alas, there's a problem: coronavirus. The BBC reports on backers who pledged nearly $2m and are about to experience disappointment.Ash Hall, who reviews drones, published a damning video opinion piece on YouTube. He was fiercely critical not just of the MicroDrone's video quality but of alleged broken promises about its battery life, camera and weight. Hall's video unleashed another wave of furious comments from disappointed backers, many of them demanding refunds. But when I spoke to Mr Kerswell, he was defiant, insisting unhappy backers were a small minority. His explanation for the delay was long and complex, involving various production challenges. The obvious risk of crowdfunding creates moral hazard: people who suspect or know they'll fail to deliver have a bookful of excuses from the outset. Coronavirus, and its effect on the Chinese supply chain, is God's gift to all currently-outstanding scams and follies. Read the rest

This CCTV footage shows a man making a phone call on a patio. A printer suddenly falls out of the sky, missing him by inches. He appears unperturbed and continues his call. Read the rest

Jim Browning (previously at Boing Boing) turned the tables on another scamming outfit. But this isn't just a video showing a savvy user wasting a scammer's time: he gained access to the criminals' computers and even their office CCTV system. The result is incredible footage of them at work, trying to scam Jim while he records them with their own security setup. Jim also downloaded 70,000 recordings of scam calls archived by the outfit.When a scammer connected to my PC, I was able to reverse their connection and discover that they had CCTV. You're going to see the most detailed exposé of a tech support scam ever seen on YouTube. The company were called Faremart.com - A travel agency in Delhi who use their buildings and VOIP telephony to run various scams. They are one of hundreds of scam call centres in India and this one group will make over $3 million per year with scams.Browning shared his work with the BBC, which made a documentary based on it -- the trailer is embedded below. The BBC claims what Browning did was illegal hacking. Given that the scammers demanded he access their network in hopes of victimizing him through that connection, I think the BBC could do a better job of explaining the legal basis of that claim and especially the likelihood of Browning being prosecuted. Read the rest

Aindrias de Static and his band The Latchikós are a much-loved staple at music festivals around the world. Also, they're a little sweary. In this quick clip posted to YouTube, Aindrias is working hard to turn the air blue when he's warned by a clean living kid to watch his language. Always ready to please a fan, Aindrias starts up with a freshly sanitized version of the yarn he was spinning, before whipping the festival crowd into a frenzy with a frenzied bit of music to bring it all home.If you're an Irish trad fan, or know a good chunk of entertainment when you see it, you'll want to watch the video to the end. Read the rest

In 1942, Manitoba chose a startling way to promote the sale of war bonds -- it staged a Nazi invasion of Winnipeg. For one gripping day, soldiers captured the city, arrested its leaders, and oppressed its citizens. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe If Day, which one observer called "the biggest and most important publicity stunt" in Winnipeg's history.We'll also consider some forged wine and puzzle over some unnoticed car options.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

So long, Chris. Read the rest

Since the latest coronavirus broke cover and started scaring the bejaysus out of everyone, you may have noticed that the supplies that folks think they’ll need in the event of a pandemic are becoming hard to find.I'm paranoid about potential pandemics, but I come by it honestly enough.In my old life, I worked in law enforcement while SARS was scaring the shit out of everyone in Toronto. Years later, I was charged with coming up with a Swine Flu action plan for the company I worked for in Vancouver. This time around, at the first sign of things going sideways in China, I stocked up on hand sanitizer, disposable gloves and, in case anyone in my household gets sick, N95 masks.Not everyone's as uptight about hygiene in a time of plague as I am though. If you can’t lay hands on a bottle of hand sanitizer to save your life (hopefully not literally), you'll be happy to know that making your own at home is crazy easy.The fine folks from ThoughtCo have an easy-to-follow recipe that’ll have you sanitizing your meat-hooks without soap or water, in no time. They explain, at length, how to make the gooey magic happen, but here’s the short version:Take 2/3 of a cup of 99% isopropyl alcohol or ethanol and mix it with 1/3 of a cup of aloe vera gel.Mix them together.Dump the resulting goo into a dispenser of one sort or another.That’s it.Like all good recipes, this one should be shared with your friends, family and community: being able to create an unobtainable safety product on your own can go a long way towards reliving stress. Read the rest

Fanny pack + Danny DeVito = Fanny DeVito, of course! This caught my eye because I recently discovered my 15-year-old daughter is aware of Danny DeVito through memes, much like she is of Nic Cage and Jeff Goldblum. I guess what I'm saying is that teens are amused by Mr. DeVito and that's probably why this fanny pack now exists. I suspect this is NOT an officially sanctioned product (boo!) but I can't help sharing it anyway. Pre-orders are now being taken at The Cryptic Closet ($34.99). Read the rest

A growing community of music fans and makers love the old iPods that Apple discontinued years ago. When their devices die or need better batteries or more storage, they send them to people like Manuel Mantecon (aka Pichi) who refurbishes them in his North Carolina bathroom workshop. From OneZero:Pichi said that he’s not that technical or “geeky” but got into iPod modding after his own iPod Classic’s battery died. He couldn’t find anyone to replace it for an affordable cost and felt like he was getting ripped off, so he figured he could do it himself. “I got my iPod wide open there looking like busted spaghetti with wires poking up everywhere,” he said. “So I just started messing around with it and changed the battery myself..."The more popular modifications are relatively simple: updates like adding more storage or battery life, or installing firmware that allows for customization of the user interface or downloading games outside of Apple’s ecosystem. Few iPod modders are injecting the music players with wild features or stark new aesthetics...They want to play an old game. Return to a better digital sound. Or just to preserve a time when your playback device didn’t also store thousands of unread work emails, a million pings from the group chat, hourly spam risk calls, and targeted ads."Classic iPod Hackers Say There’s No Better Way to Listen to Music" by Melanie Ehrenkranz (OneZero)image credit: Chris Harrison (CC BY-SA 2.0) Read the rest

Nobody wants to be caught with a dead phone. Usually, your poor planning is no more than a matter of momentary inconvenience. But what if your phone is dead at the wrong time?And we mean a very wrong time. Like if you’re in desperate need of emergency help. Or when you absolutely have to connect with someone immediately. In just a handful of moments, the seemingly minor act of failing to charge up can have some very real and lasting consequences.The AtomXS 3+ Hour Emergency Keychain Charger is engineered to be the ultimate failsafe when you fail to handle your charging duties.At less than 2.5 inches across and weighing only a few ounces, the ergonomic AtomXS slips unobtrusively into your pocket or can connect easily to a keychain or bag so it can always be with you for the right occasion.If your phone is running out of power, the 1,300mAh of power stuffed conveniently into this tiny high-density battery cell can be a real lifesaver. Just pop out the retractable Lightning, USB or Micro USB connector, plug it directly into your phone and you’ll immediately have an extra three hours of battery life to assure you never lose touch.The unit springs to life with a touch of the sensor and even powers off after 40 seconds of inactivity. The AtomXS holds a charge for up to three months so as long as you can remember to keep this trusty little e-charger powered up every once in a while, you’ll never find yourself with a dead device again. Read the rest

It's a sad day for those who enjoy watching flecks of spittle appear on the mouth corners of bloviating news personalities. Chris Matthews (74) has "retired" from MSNBC after over 20 salivary years as a hot take opinion spewer and conductor of condescending interviews with women. The straw that broke the blonde camel's back was likely to have been this recent article in GQ by Laura Bassett that describes a number of incidents highlighting Matthews' sexist behavior, putting him in the league of misogynists like Bill O'Reilly:Matthews has a pattern of making comments about women’s appearances in demeaning ways. The number of on-air incidents is long, exhausting, and creepy, including commenting to Erin Burnett, for example, “You’re a knockout...it’s all right getting bad news from you,” while telling her to move closer to the camera. Behind the scenes, one of Matthews’s former producers told The Daily Caller in 2017 that he allegedly rated his female guests on a numerical scale and would name a “hottest of the week,” like a “teenage boy.” In 1999, an assistant producer accused Matthews of sexual harassment, which CNBC, the show's network at the time, investigated. They concluded that the comments were "inappropriate," and Matthews received a “stern reprimand,” according to an MSNBC spokesperson. Read the rest

Take as much money as you want, at $7.25 an hour (current Fed minimum wage). All you have to do is turn the crank, which dispenses one penny every 4.97 seconds. Easy money, right?This brilliant art piece by Blake Fall-Conroy provides a visceral demonstration of just how little $7.25 an hour really is. If cranking this handle starts to quickly feel not worth the effort, imagine doing an actual job and making this little. Nearly two million Americans know the feeling daily.Details here.Image: Used by permission of the artist Read the rest

Back in August 2019, a female komodo dragon named Charlie gave birth to three little dragons at the Chattanooga Zoo. The zookeepers had previously tried to hook her up with a sweet dragon fella named Kadal, but the two never really seemed to hit it off — not that the staff could observe, anyway. And now that they've tested the DNA of young Onyx, Jasper, and Flint, it's finally confirmed: Charlie and Kadal did not hit it off at all, so Charlie took it upon herself to bring the kids into the world. From the Chattanooga Times Free Press:The DNA results showed the babies were the result of parthenogenesis, which is a type of reproduction where the female produces offspring without male fertilization. […] Female Komodo dragons carry WZ sex chromosomes, while males carry the ZZ type. When parthenogenesis happens, the mother can only create WW or ZZ eggs. Since eggs with the sex chromosomes of WW aren't viable, only ZZ eggs are left to produce all male hatchlings. Parthenogenesis is considered very rare, with the first case of a successful parthenogenesis reproduction in Komodo dragons recorded in 2006.I was personally fascinated to learn that there are so many different categorizations of asexual reproduction, and that it can indeed occur spontaneously in vertebrates without any fertilization. In 2007, there was apparently a bit of a scandal involving a lab-grown human embryo that was allegedly cloned, but turned it to be a productive parthenogenesis. There are also living human beings with some unique chimeric complications in which they were both fertilized by a male, but also underwent some kind of parthenogenesis at the same time, resulting in a male offspring with Y-chromosomes in his skin, but not in his blood. Read the rest

Rizwan Fadnis and Rajesh Surve, both 33, were arrested outside a bus depot in Mumbai for being in possession of 7 kg of whale vomit valued at over $275,000 reports The Hindu. The substance, also known as ambergris, is unlawful to possess without a license.From the article:“The accused tried to sell the whale vomit by claiming that its consumption helps increase the libido. Ambergris is mainly used in perfumes and cosmetics and fetches a handsome price based on its age. It has an unpleasant smell soon after it is secreted, and as it ages, starts producing a sweet smell,” an officer said. Read the rest

Woody Guthrie originally wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a kind of screed against the exploitations of private property ownership. When he submitted the song for copyright, Guthrie allegedly wrote that it was, "Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do." Although the copyright should have expired in 1973, the actual ownership of the rights has long been contested.More recently, the lawyers who successfully returned "Happy Birthday" and "We Shall Overcome" into the the Public Domain tried to take a similar approach to win back "This Land Is Your Land" for the people. Unfortunately, it didn't go as well. From The New York Times:In the case, a young musical group called Satorii sued the song’s publishers, Ludlow Music and the Richmond Organization, after paying $45.50 for a license to release a cover version of “This Land Is Your Land,” which Guthrie wrote in 1940. In their complaint — filed by the same lawyers behind the “Happy Birthday” and “We Shall Overcome” suits — the group used a detailed timeline of decades-old paperwork and Guthrie’s own hand-decorated songbooks to argue that Guthrie had essentially forfeited his copyright to the song decades ago by failing to renew it properly. Read the rest

My kids draw every day. I try to join them for an hour or so on the weekends. We store our pencils in these Lihit Lab Teffa "book style" pencil cases (Currently on Amazon). Mine contains my pencils, charcoals, lead holder, erasers, snap-blade knife, and reading glasses. It's not large, but it's designed with "pages" to hold your stuff efficiently. Pens and pencils fit behind straps, and smaller stuff can be stashed in the mesh pouches.My sketches: Read the rest

There’s a school of thought that change and innovation is always inevitable in software programming. By that logic, a coding language like Java, which has been a backbone of the discipline since the 1990s, would be poised to give way to Python or Ruby or one of the host of newer, flashier programming languages currently en vogue with creators.Yet, Java persists. Easy to learn, highly adaptable and a conveniently jumping-off point to learn lots of other coding protocols, Java remains a very in-demand skill set. And with Java developers still average salaries in the six-figure range, it’s still an easy call to look into adding Java to any coder’s bag of tricks.The 2020 Complete Java Master Class Bundle is assembled to help students of any skill level, even first time Java users, get comfortable with the basics and start creating with this heritage language almost immediately.Across seven courses and more than 62 hours of training, this package covers everything, from foundational learning to all the specialized Java uses that can make your resume truly sing.Courses like Java: Beginning to Expert and What’s New in Java 9 get first-time users up to speed or core Java elements as well as the latest iterations of the constantly growing language.As you get into more Intermediate and Advanced Java Programming, your training will spotlight how Java works with other coding tools, like the web automation testing process with Selenium WebDriver with Java: Novice to Ninja; and understanding Java’s most practical building tool in Apache Maven: A Practical Introduction. Read the rest

A few hours after Madison L'Insalata, the 23-year-old Miss Staten Island for 2020, publicly said she was bisexual, organizers of Staten Island's St. Patrick's Day parade removed her from the parade, which took place on Saturday.From CBS News:Jim Smith, the director of Miss Staten Island Scholarship Pageants, broke the news to L'Insalata late Saturday night. He said parade organizer Larry Cummings called him saying L'Insalata and another pageant queen who supported her were banned. Read the rest

Electronic music equipment maker Behringer deleted a bizarre video (above) of a fake device called the Kirn CorkSniffer, named after tech journalist Peter Kirn, founder of CDM, a digital music magazine. The fake device has a caricature which depicts Kirn as having an unusually long nose.From MusicTech:Behringer has seemingly launched a cruel and unusual attack on a widely respected music technology journalist who has previously criticised parent company Music Tribe’s legal practices. In the crosshairs is veteran industry commentator Peter Kirn, founder of CDM and co-creator of MeeBlip synths.Behringer’s attack comes in the form of a video and social media posts, which showcase a satirical product, that apparently aim to undermine the journalist’s credibility. The company has also trademarked the journo’s name for the purposes of making any products related to electronic music-making. [Editor’s note: Since publishing, Behringer has deleted the video and all social media posts related to the video] Read the rest

Dallas, the prime-time soap opera that ran from 1978-1991 and 2012-2014, is as famous for its catchy theme tune as for J.R. Ewing's machinations. In France, I today learned, that theme tune was modified so that it could include lyrics.Dallas, ton univers impitoyabledallas, glorifie la loi du plus fortdallas, et sous ton soleil implacabledallas, tu ne redoutes que la mortDallas, patrie du dollar du pétroledallas, tu ne connais pas la pitiédallas, le revolver est ton idoledallas, tu te raccroches à ton passéDallas, malheur à celui qui n’a pas comprisdallas, un jour il y perdra la viedallas, ton univers impitoyabledallas, glorifie la loi du plus fortDallas, malheur à celui qui n’a pas comprisdallas, un jour il y perdra la viedallas, ton univers impitoyabledallas, glorifie la loi du plus fortDallas, malheur à celui qui n’a pas comprisdallas, un jour il y perdra la viedallas, ton univers impitoyableBelow, see it being "performed".Paula Bosse translates and offers context.Dallas, your ruthless world,Dallas, where might is right,Dallas, and under your relentless sun,Dallas, only death is feared.Dallas, home of the oil dollar,Dallas, you do not know pity;Dallas, the revolver is your idol,Dallas, you cling to the past.Dallas, woe to him who does not understand,Dallas, one day he will lose his life.Dallas, your ruthless world,Dallas, where might is right.BONUS: Below, enjoy the disco remix of the original and correct Dallas theme. Read the rest

David Byrne (67) was in top form Saturday night when he performed "Once in a Lifetime" on SNL. The song was first released in 1980 on Talking Heads' album Remain in Light.Image: YouTube Read the rest

The lucky apes — Ganyeka, Yakini and Motaba — currently live at the Werribee Open Range Zoo in Melbourne, Australia. According to PRI, one of the zookeepers discovered that the silverback gorillas responded quite positively to Bublé's dulcet tones:When we play Michael Bublé's CDs, the boys will instantly start pleasure grumbling and sit nice and calm and relaxed. Our theory is it’s the beautiful low tones that he sings with kind of mimics their pleasure grumble. And they’ve even been shown to hum little food songs when they eat, and we think [Bublé] must really resonate with that sound.So as long as Bublé was in Australia anyway, they got him to stop by the zoo and surprise the silverbacks with a little private croon.Canadian singer delights his gorilla superfans with Christmas songs [María Elena Romero / PRI]Image via NeedPix (Public Domain) and Eva Rinaldi / Flickr (CC 2.) Read the rest