Back in 2017, the new EPA Director Scott Pruitt -- a fantastically pampered shill for corporations whose income is proportional to the noxious effluvia they eject into our air, soil, and water -- passed a policy barring scientists from participating on the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board if they had ever received a grant from the EPA.This sneaky-clever move was clearly designed to create the illusion that it was “draining the swamp” by preventing any potential conflicts of interest between scientists and money. Except that most academic scientists rely on EPA (and other) grants. Which limited the pot of scientific advisors on the scientific advisory board to scientists who worked for corporations. Who … somehow … didn’t have any conflicts of interest between their money and their science?It was, as the NRDC put it, a “pernicious scheme to stack the deck in favor of big polluters by trying to shut out the voices of scientists—all to pump more pollution into our lives.” They added:Pruitt claimed that his 2017 directive reduced bias on the EPA’s nearly two dozen advisory panels, which offer scientific expertise that then guide policy decisions on environmental pollutants, such as industrial chemicals or airborne particles from power plants. But unsurprisingly, Pruitt’s rule was not extended to scientists and consultants with ties to chemical or fossil fuel companies, allowing the agency to soon fill some open seats with industry insiders who disputed the known harm of pollutants, like ozone and PFOA.Fortunately, Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. Read the rest

Have you heard of the Goblin? It's a likely dwarf-sized planet named that because it was discovered around Halloween, 2015. The Goblin travels in a 32-thousand-year orbit around our sun. It is currently 7.5 billion miles away, somewhere in the mysterious Oort Cloud area of the solar system. The Goblin is one of the farthest known objects within our solar system.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Personal information for more than 10 million former guests of MGM resorts has been posted on a hacking forum. Among the notable data breach victims: Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey. The leaked data includes home addresses, and is said to only affect guests who stayed at the hotel chain's properties before 2018.MGM Resorts says the security incident took place in the summer of 2019, and that impacted guests were told last year. Catalin Cimpanu reporting for ZDNet:According to our analysis, the MGM data dump that was shared today contains personal details for 10,683,188 former hotel guests.Included in the leaked files are personal details such as full names, home addresses, phone numbers, emails, and dates of birth.ZDNet reached out to past guests and confirmed they stayed at the hotel, along with their timeline, and the accuracy of the data included in the leaked files.We got confirmation from international business travelers, reporters attending tech conferences, CEOs attending business meetings, and government officials traveling to Las Vegas branches.MGM told ZDNet:"Last summer, we discovered unauthorized access to a cloud server that contained a limited amount of information for certain previous guests of MGM Resorts," "We are confident that no financial, payment card or password data was involved in this matter."Read more:Exclusive: Details of 10.6 million of MGM hotel guests posted on a hacking forum[via techmeme.com, Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day | February 19, 2020 -- 23:27 GMT] Read the rest

News organizations in Germany are reporting at this hour that an estimated 8 people are dead and at least 5 more injured following a mass shooting in Hanau, Germany. At the time of this blog post, reports indicate the gunmen are still at large.Reports indicate that the shooting(s) took place neat at least one hookah (shisha) bar, and a second location. This is a breaking news story, and will change as more information is confirmed by authorities. Here is the original report at BILD.Below, the earliest, possibly original source videos I could find on Twitter, plus early news reports from verified sources.Schüsse in #Hanau und leider auch Tote. Ob im folgenden Video der Täter gefasst wurde, kann ich nicht sagen. Folgendes Video wurde oft geteilt. Stay safe pic.twitter.com/nt7V1s06RD— Didar☀️ (@Didar_____) February 19, 2020part 2 pic.twitter.com/bAW7l2jrQ8— Didar☀️ (@Didar_____) February 19, 2020part 3,andere Perspektive. #Hanau. mutmaß. Täter womöglich gefasst. Alles boch Spekulation. Kraft denen, die heut Abend Freunde oder Verwsndte verloren haben.https://t.co/LhdH0T2Seu— Didar☀️ (@Didar_____) February 19, 2020die mutmaßlichen täter wurden in lamboy festgenommenein freund bzw bekannter den ich seit meiner kindheit kenne ist unter den todesopfernbin erstmal weg. #hanau (video nicht von mir, quelle unbekannt) pic.twitter.com/Ol7wwBXRAM— denerfun (@dnerfunboss) February 19, 2020Es gab offenbar eine Festnahme nach den Schüssen in #Hanau. Ob dies der Täter war, ist nicht bekannt. (Dieses Video ist wahrscheinlich keine Primärquelle, sondern nur ein Repost) https://t.co/OSSr3uu1Hd— Jan-Henrik Wiebe (@jan_wiebe) February 19, 2020Tatverdächtiger flüchtig - Mehrere Tote nach Schüssen in Hanau! Read the rest

E. Jean Carroll, who has written an advice column at ELLE magazine for three decades, and last year accused President Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, today said she was fired from her longtime editorial position as a direct result of Trump's public debasement of her character.“Because Trump ridiculed my reputation, laughed at my looks, & dragged me through the mud, after 26 years, ELLE fired me,” Carroll wrote on Twitter. “I don’t blame Elle. It was the great honor of my life writing ‘Ask E. Jean.’”Trump denies her rape accusation, as he has with all the other countless sexual discrimination, harassment, and abuse allegations, over these many decades.From NBC News:Carroll's announcement of her termination from ELLE follows her lawyers' move to block a request from Trump that her suit be delayed.“Our client filed this lawsuit to prove that Donald Trump lied about sexually assaulting her and to restore her credibility and reputation. From the very beginning, Trump has tried every tactic lawyers can think of to halt this case in its tracks and keep the truth from coming out," wrote Kaplan in a statement. "His latest effort — a motion to stay our client’s case until the New York Court of Appeals decides the Summer Zervos case likely after November 2020 — is yet another obvious delay tactic that is not grounded in the law and, like his previous attempts to stall this case, will be rejected by the court.” Read the rest

Larry Tesler, the Xerox PARC computer scientist who coined the terms cut, copy, and paste, has died.Born in 1945 in New York, Tesler went on to study computer science at Stanford University, and after graduation he dabbled in artificial intelligence research (long before it became a deeply concerning tool) and became involved in the anti-war and anti-corporate monopoly movements, with companies like IBM as one of his deserving targets. In 1973 Tesler took a job at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where he worked until 1980. Xerox PARC is famously known for developing the mouse-driven graphical user interface we now all take for granted, and during his time at the lab Tesler worked with Tim Mott to create a word processor called Gypsy that is best known for coining the terms “cut,” “copy,” and “paste” when it comes to commands for removing, duplicating, or repositioning chunks of text.Read the rest of his obit on Gizmodo.[H/t Jim Leftwich]Image: Yahoo! Blog from Sunnyvale, California, USA - Larry Tesler Smiles at Whisper, CC BY 2.0, Link Read the rest

Alexandra Kopytova accepted the proposal at the barrel of a gun. Or 16 guns, technically, which were attached to a fleet of T-72B3 Soviet Battle Tanks that her now-fiance, Lieutenant Denis Kazantsev, brought in as part of an elaborate military maneuvering drill to ask his beloved's hand in marriage. From RT (because of course it's from RT):Though Valentine’s Day is not really a Russian tradition, the spirit of the day was not lost on Kazantsev’s commanders, who gave the go-ahead for the mission at the Alabino testing grounds, southwest of Moscow. On Thursday morning, 16 tanks rolled onto the range for a maneuvering drill in which they formed two columns and lined up in a heart formation.The mission’s success, however, hinged on the approval of one person who was neither a major nor a general. With her eyes covered, 19-year-old Alexandra was led into the middle of the formation by Denis, 23. When she opened her eyes, she saw Kazantsev kneeling with a bouquet of red roses."I postponed the proposal for about one month to organise all this so it would be unforgettable, once in a lifetime," Kazantsev told the Daily Mail. "It was not easy but with time my commanders agreed to let me do this."This awkwardly-sweet-in-a-distinctly-Russian-way fairytale gets even weirder when you realize that Koptyova and Kazantsev were … actually already married. He had previously proposed on New Year's Eve 2017, at a time when they were living in separate cities, and got to enjoy a whole two weeks of marriage in St. Read the rest

One of the strangest contradictory sensations of the Trump era is the man's relationship towards and with the various U.S. intelligence agencies. In many cases, Trump's broad criticisms about the unaccountable and seemingly limitless scope of intelligence gathering are valid. Or would be, anyway, if the man actually cared about those issues for any reason beyond his larger tantrum over the way those agencies have undermined his ego. Or if he wasn't simultaneously trying to use that same wide jurisdiction to target his own political enemies.In other words, Trump's not necessarily wrong about the potential abuses of secret and/or warrantless surveillance (or "wiretapping" as he puts it). But he's only mad about those things because they can be used to threaten him and his friends, instead of reinforcing his hunches. Otherwise, illegal spying and invasions of privacy are totally fine with him—as long as they target the right people.There are moments, then, where it becomes a case of "My enemy's enemy is my friend" — except that "friend" is also an enemy of sorts, which further complicates the whole mess. Case in point: this recent Just Security post by Douglas London, a former CIA operative. In it, London talks about the way that the CIA's priorities have been forced to shift from general intelligence gathering to just kind of soothing Trump's ego, and retroactively justifying all of the man's random baseless instincts:The revealing and most disconcerting aspect of this episode was not that Pompeo presumed the worst from his workforce before getting the full story, nor his vicious dressing down of a dedicated senior official and decorated officer. Read the rest

The Fashion Institute of Technology has apologized for a "clearly racist" show where a black model was asked to wear giant red lips and black plastic ears. The model refused, but white colleages were photographed on the catwalk wearing the bizarre prostheses. The college's president is not sure if there was an explicitly racial comment being made, but is looking into it, reports the BBC:"Currently," its president Joyce F Brown said in a statement, "it does not appear that the original intent of the design, the use of accessories or the creative direction of the show was to make a statement about race."However, it is now glaringly obvious that has been the outcome. For that, we apologise - to those who participated in the show, to students, and to anybody who has been offended by what they saw."Amy Lefevre, the model who declined, talked to the New York Post and shared a test shot (above) taken before the show in which she wore the accessories.“I stood there almost ready to break down, telling the staff that I felt incredibly uncomfortable with having to wear these pieces and that they were clearly racist,” Amy Lefevre, 25, told The Post.“I was told that it was fine to feel uncomfortable for only 45 seconds.”The designer, Junkai Huang, is reportedly "from China" and unaware of the racial connotations of the mask. Richard Thornn, the producer of the show, is reported to have "screamed" at a student who objected before the show and has more explaining to do. Read the rest

For those with a writing flair, the thought of building a career as a professional copywriter should probably have some appeal. Thankfully, it’s also an in-demand job skill with the average copywriter making a healthy $60,000 a year for their efforts.But even if you have a way with words, you still need the industry training and background to get hired or even to start up your own thing as a freelance copy pro.Either way you choose, the training found in The 2020 Complete Digital Copywriting Master Class Bundle ($38.99, over 90 percent off) can help you get there, even if you’ve got no previous experience with how the whole business works.The package features 11 courses that can take the first-time copywriting student and begin building up your skills and knowledge to take on the pros.It all begins with The Business Writing Course, where 30-year content writer Alan Sharpe shows students the basics of the copywriting game. That training expands into greater depth with the 3-part Copywriting for Beginners courses, as students learn the seven vital questions surrounding any copywriting project, how to use headlines and openers to great effect, and the right buttons to push to persuade all manner of audiences to join your cause.In addition to training in crafting persuasive and profitable digital sales pages, there are also deep examinations on the 10 most common mistakes made by new copywriters as well as the biggest takeaways that still resonate today from one the “best ad campaign of all time,” the powerful 1960s and 1970s Volkswagen newspaper ads. Read the rest

I bought this solar powered LED illuminated street address sign earlier this month and am really happy with it. The light is is bright and makes it easy for people to find our house. It comes with several sheets of adhesive numbers that you stick onto a white plastic panel. It also comes with mounting screws, but I attached it to the side of a metal mailbox so I used outdoor mounting tape instead. My address has five numbers and I had no problem fitting them on the panel, using the included cardboard placement template.I paid full price for it, but the seller has a code 5UZYEDUV to let you buy it at a good discount. Read the rest

This "ultrasonic" pest repellent just has circuit to control LEDs inside from r/assholedesignThis Adtala ultrasonic bug and rat repellent device is advertised as having an "Upgraded Smart Chip." Reddit user SoggyMonsoon opened the case and found a circuit with 2 LEDS, 2 diodes, and three resistors, but no Upgraded Smart Chip. Does it even emit an ultrasonic tone? A commenter said: "this circuit WOULD emit ultrasonic sound. It looks like it would oscillate between the lights. Of course it would be extremely quiet since there is no amplification circuit here to the point that I highly doubt any living thing would be affected by it, but this circuit would in fact make 2 different pitches based on the light that was currently on / diodes in use. All electric circuits have a frequency. So along those lines any electronic device would be about as effective as this thing."Below, a video of a test with a Bell and Howell Ultrasonic Rodent Repeller. It didn't work. In fact, rats seem to be attracted to it:Image: Reddit Read the rest

Today is the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Iwo Jima, when the US Marines and Navy invaded and captured the island from the Imperial Japan Army. Almost 7,000 Allied troops and 18,000 Japanese soldiers were killed. The University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections is now helping the History Division of the Marine Corps digitize and make public mostly unseen film footage shot by marines in combat during the battle. There are 14,000 cans of film undergoing the digitization and preservation process. The videos above and below are barely a teaser of what's to come. From the University of South Carolina:From the beginning, Marine Corps leaders knew they wanted a comprehensive visual account of the battle — not only for a historical record but also to assist in planning and training for the invasion of the Japanese main islands. Some Marine cameramen were assigned to the front lines of individual units, and others to specific activities, such as engineering and medical units. Films from these units show the daily toll of the battle such as Marines being treated in the medical units or being evacuated off the island to hospital ships as well as essential behind-the-lines tasks of building command posts or unloading and sorting equipment on beaches....Another goal of the Marine Corps film project is to identify and label as much of the historical information in the films as possible, such as Marine Corps units and equipment. In addition to manually scanning the films for this information, Moving Images Research Collections has partnered with Research Computing and the university’s Computer Vision Lab, a research group within the College of Engineering and Computing, to use artificial intelligence to recognize text in the films to help identify units as well as individual Marines, airplanes and ships. Read the rest

News 24 reports that "No SA National Defence Force (SANDF) members were injured after a Rooikat light armoured vehicle hit a fence during a practice run ahead of the annual Armed Forces Day commemorations in Polokwane on Monday."Image: News24/YouTube Read the rest

Julian Assange's lawyer told a London court that Trump offered to pardon the WikiLeaks founder if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in the Democratic National Committee email hack, reports The Daily Beast.Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, said Wednesday that a message had been passed on to Assange by former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.Fitzgerald said a statement produced by Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, showed “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”Image by Espen Moe - originally posted to Flickr as IMG_4739, CC BY 2.0, Link Read the rest

The latest episode of Two Minute Papers discusses a new video enhancement method called "Depth-Aware Video Frame Interpolation" to increase the frame rate of choppy videos. The breakthrough here is the way this neural network smoothly handles objects that appear from behind other objects.Image: YouTube/Two Minute Papers Read the rest

A fellow named Brett, aka "Slab," was having a beer with his buddies at the the Amble Inn in Corindi Beach, New South Wales, Australia, when he noticed a gecko in his mug. The gecko wasn't moving so Slab sprang into action, as seen in the video above. Yes, geckos do sometimes play dead as a defense mechanism. But either way, good on ya, Slab!(News.com.au) Read the rest

One of my favorite YouTube channels is Nippon Wandering TV, in which a guy walks and bikes around Japanese streets with a GoPro camera. In his latest video he bikes around Keisei Tateishi station in northeast Tokyo. and takes a look at an old neighborhood that is going to be plowed to make way for redevelopment. "Tokyo plans to redevelop this neighborhood and the retro street, old hidden bar izakaya will be all gone in the near future," he writes. "I miss these old alleys, but it can’t be avoided."Image: YouTube/Nippon Wandering TV Read the rest

Someone has been depositing pillowcases filled with live snakes outside of a fire station in Sunderland, northeast England. Last week, 13 pythons turned up and one has since died. The latest collection included 15 corn snakes and a carpet python. Fortunately, those snakes seem to be in decent health, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). From CNN:"We were in the midst of Storm Dennis at the weekend when these snakes, who need heat and light in order to survive, were left outside in the cold with just a pillowcase to contain them," said (RSPCA inspector Heidi) Cleaver."It would have been very stressful for the snakes to be in such close proximity to each other as well..."The RSPCA has appealed for information about the mystery surrounding the snakes being repeatedly dumped in the area.images: RSPCA Read the rest

SpaceX and Space Adventures have partnered to offer space tourists a trip to orbit on the SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule. They expect the first flight to launch in late 2021 or early 2022. Around $50 million will get you a seat. From Spaceflight Now: The mission would not dock with the space station, but would instead fly into an orbit above the station’s altitude of about 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Earth, according to Space Adventures, the Virginia-based company that arranged flights of seven wealthy space tourists on Russian Soyuz capsules between 2001 and 2009...Responding to a question on Twitter about a possible price tag of $52 million per seat, (Space Adventures chairman Eric) Anderson tweeted: “Per seat price for a full group of four not quite that much (not dramatically less, but significant enough to note). Definitive pricing confidential, and dependent on client specific requests, etc.”Anderson tweeted that the training regimen for the Crew Dragon flight will be “significantly less than the few months required for previous missions or ISS missions.”“Dragon in this profile allows up to 5 days,” Anderson tweeted. “3 days is probably ideal, 40-50 orbits or so.”image: SpaceX Crew Dragon (NASA, public domain) Read the rest

Burger King's switching to preservative-free ingredients, and chose to market this fact by showing what will now happen to its sandwiches if they are left out uneaten. Welcome to the intersection of advertising and earned media, puke bags are under the seats. Read the rest

The broken ASCII-art "FUCK EPIC GAMES STORE" wasn't placed intentionally by Steam to show up as the store's description in Google search results, but there it is, all the same. Google and its algorithmic gods picked the phrase, a comment left by a user of the site, for reasons known only to itself. [Rock Paper Shotgun] Read the rest

In the early 1800s, agents working for Thomas Bruce of Scotland, the 7th Earl of Elgin, conveniently “removed” about half of the remaining marble statues from the Parthenon, as well as a few other Greek sculptures, and brought them back to Britain in the name of art history cultural preservation colonialism. Bruce claimed to have permission from the Ottoman Empire to borrow these artifacts, but others have insisted that this is total bullshit. This has — understandably! — resulted in some strained tensions between the British Empire and the modern Greek government (post-Ottoman Empire) that’s gone on for about two centuries.Now that Britain has left the European Union, Greece has renewed their effort to reclaim the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles. From The Times:A draft negotiating mandate circulated among European governments in Brussels today hardened EU demands in key traditional trade areas, particularly fishing, but also included the unexpected “return and restitution” line.“The parties should address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their country of origin,” said a newly drafted text that will be signed off by EU governments next week.The Greek government has said that Brexit will shift the political balance within the EU to force Britain to return the fifth century BC marbles.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the British government is thus far refusing to cooperate. They seem to be under the impression that the marbles were legally acquired. I suppose this makes sense, on the grounds that the British government makes the laws by which the country abides, and thus, according to their own laws, they have acted in accordance with the law (that they made) in their decision to steal cultural artifacts from half the god damn world in the name of Imperialism. Read the rest

While we all love our iPhones and iPads, celebrating the releases of their latest and greatest versions, it’s amusing to consider how much we at the same time HATE the main item that keeps these little tech marvels powered up and working.No, Lightning cables don’t exactly inspire feelings of awe and wonder. It’s more like...anger and frustration. That’s because we all know that in a matter of weeks, and in many cases, just days, that freaking cable will get kinked, peeled, or frayed to the point of uselessness.Apple-approved cables are as fragile as eggs and like everything from Cupertino, not exactly cheap. Instead, try out this 10-ft cloth MFi-Certified Lightning cable now at over 60 percent off its regular price, only $14.99.Crafted from flexible, tangle-resistant cloth fiber, this cable is sturdy enough to survive real-world use while still delivering reliable power to your thirsty devices.These MFi-certified connectors can handle all the syncing and charging tasks you need to be handled. And thanks to its generous 10-foot reach, you’ll likely always have that extra little bit of cord needed to stay connected to your USB port or outlet even when it’s across the room.Regularly priced at $39.99, this $25 discount might make this a good time to stock up on a couple for all your various charging locations. Read the rest

Exhibit A: Boycycle, a music video by Vedran Rupic for Bosnian DJ Salvator Ganacci, who stars as the titular creature.Exhibits B1 through B3: Progressive Insurance's "Motaur" ad campaign, with a similar if less grossly-rendered motif. "Legs on the bottom, motorcycle on the top." Read the rest

Amusing yet unsettling and increasingly smooth, the deepfakes keep coming. Here's Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk's faces superimposed onto Star Trek's original 1965 pilot episode, with Bezos as the Talosian magistrate and Musk as Christopher Pike. It's by TheFakening, one of YouTube's deepfake masters.In the not too distant future Elon Musk will save us from the captivity of Jeff Bezos' Amazon illusion. Read the rest

In this security footage, three masked and armed robbers raid a pot shop in Everett, Washington, only to be confronted by an unexpected challenge: a blast of bear spray right to the face. The operator, Chris Vincent, told reporters that he was shutting up shop when the men ran in: "He was ordering me to open the register, but I couldn't. I noticed the guy was a little bit away from me so I grabbed the bear spray, I came after the second guy. They were so confused they couldn't even get the doors open."Vincent said it's the first time he's blasted someone with bear spray, which was apparently bought because pepper spray hadn't stopped the shop being knocked off in the past. It had been only eight days since the last robbery there, according to KCPQ News.The brand of spray he used was Frontiersman Bear Attack Deterrent [Amazon link], offered in 8oz canisters. Read the rest

The rich plan to ride out the plague in private jets, but there's a problem: there's not enough of them, and crews are leery of flying to China. The wealthy ones are turning to private jet operators to ask them to arrange flights, despite the huge costs.But the companies are having to turn them away due to travel bans and a lack of available planes and crews.Australia-based Darin Voyles, of Paramount Business Jets, said the firm had seen a ''considerable uptick'' in requests, but the majority can't be filled as they can't get the crew or planes. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The jet was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The CEO had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was SARS-CoV-2. Read the rest

The Financial Times, which is like The Wall Street Journal but with a three-digit IQ, has an amusing 404 Not Found page.Why wasn't this page found?We asked some leading economists.Stagflation The cost of pages rose drastically, while the page production rate slowed down. General economicsThere was no market for it.Liquidity trapsWe injected some extra money into the technology team but there was little or no interest so they simply kept it, thus failing to stimulate the page economy.Pareto inefficiencyThere exists another page that will make everyone better off without making anyone worse off. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH President Trump shoots a man on Fifth Ave. and the media urgently reports both the Democratic and Republican perspectives

Humans have been fermenting grain-flavored liquids into some simulacrum of beer for more than 10,000 years. And so it stands to reason that, over the next 10,000 years, we'll continue finding ways to combine water and yeast with some kind of sweetener and a floral bittering agent, whether out of some adherence to tradition, or just to take the edge off of after a long day of galactic work.Over at Tor.com, novelist Arkady Martine, author of the celebrated space-opera A Memory Called Empire, decided to take the thought of space beer and follow it all the way to its logical potential ends. How, exactly, would one be able to brew beer in the confines of a spaceship, using only the basic knowledge that we currently possess around the science of agriculture and fermentation?Ingredients necessary for beer: water, yeast, and a starch that the yeast can work upon.Ingredients you want if you’d like your beer to taste vaguely like the beer we know: malted barley, hops.Let’s start with yeast. The usual yeast is a brewer’s yeast, most often Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which happens—helpfully—to be the same species as the yeast that makes bread rise. Yeasts are little live creatures—single-celled microorganisms that love to eat sugars and transform them into carbon dioxide and alcohol. They need to be kept alive. A generation ship would have had to bring a yeast colony, perhaps in the form of a sourdough starter, and feed it regularly with starches and sugars, in order to be able to have a steady supply of small organisms to brew beer with. Read the rest

Every family is chock full of stories. Stories of history, stories of memory, stories of accomplishment and stories of love. From a grandparent’s tales of life decades ago to a couple’s first meeting to amazing life experiences and moments that you wish could be preserved for future generations.Unfortunately, we all don’t have the literary talents of a Maya Angelou or a Doris Kearns Goodwin or other great biographers to truly do those stories justice in print. That’s ok...because now, Forevernote has created a cool, affordable new way of immortalizing those key memories in quality keepsake books.Essentially, Forevernote gives you your own biographer. Sign up yourself or a loved one for the service and whether you’re looking to share a few short snippets of advice or a full detailed account of someone’s life, a trained biographer will help you shape your narrative and get you ready for a one-on-one interview.During the interview, the expert biographer will ask just the right questions, talking the subject through those key life moments to help capture all the memorable details from your stories.After the interview, the Forevernote team transcribes audio into text, which you can personally edit yourself or you can enlist Forevernote’s professional editing services. You can even add in photos as the design team crafts your custom keepsake hardcover book.You’ll get a PDF of your finished book for review, an audio recording of your interview and within a few weeks, your 30 to 40-page hardcover book will arrive. Read the rest

As you might know, Robert Anton Wilson (1932 - 2007) is one of Boing Boing's patron saints. Raw's humor, skepticism, optimism, and ability to reveal the deep weirdness underlying almost everything were deeply influential to Carla and me when we launched bOING bOING as a zine in 1987. In fact, we kind of started the zine as an excuse to interview RAW at his house in Santa Monica that year. I'm very grateful I was able to get to know RAW, and honored that he wrote a regular column for bOING bOING. I'm also grateful to have become a friend of Bob's daughter, Christina, a delightful person who is active in keeping her father's books in print. Here's an essay Christina wrote about a new edition of Ishtar Rising, a book originally published by Playboy Press called The Book of the Breast. — MarkA while back, we knew that Hilaritas Press would soon be working on releasing a new edition of Robert Anton Wilson's Ishtar Rising, prepping it for publication by removing tons of typos (thanks to Gregory Arnott, Chas Faris, Rasa, and a few select others), and inserting a timely new foreword by Grant Morrison. We were excited to be manifesting what we had intended; to publish and make available as many of RAW's books as we could. I had originally read the book in its The Book of the Breast form in my early twenties, having just returned from India (yep, went to gain enlightenment, but instead gained disillusionment — which has served me well!) Read the rest

Nan Wise, Ph.D., is AASECT certified sex therapist, neuroscientist, certified relationship expert, and author. Follow her @AskDoctorNan. The following is adapted from her new book, Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life. -- MarkOur society has had a long, challenging relationship with pleasure. A recent study indicates that American adults are having sex less often than before, with an especially steep decline since the year 2000. This decline is significant even when you control for factors such as age, gender, and marital status. And to top it off, in spite of the media’s portrayal of young people as freewheeling, casual sex-seeking, hookup artists, those born in the 1980s and 1990s are now the adults who are having less sex.There is a clear paradox when it comes to our sexuality — a vexing approach/avoidance that I have come to characterize as a “lewd-prude” phenomenon. As much as we are reinforcing the need for mindful “sexual conduct,” scores of people are coming forth to report sexual harassment and sexual abuse that has long been in the shadows. Sex has become for many a place of pain rather than pleasure. Unfortunately, as movements like #MeToo have uncovered, there is quite a long-standing disconnect between the code of behavior we preach and its effectiveness in our society, creating a kind of shadow culture where people act out negatively and harmfully around sex. And even those who have not had a traumatic sexual experience are impacted by this social component that reinforces a disconnect from pleasure. Read the rest

I love this strange and wonderful project on Hackaday.io. It is digital clock which uses a ring of 60 NeoPixels in a 3D printed flying saucer and 12 lights on the inner ring to indicate the hours. It also does backups. And light shows. All it needs is a cow being sucked up into it.At the end of November 2019 my trusty old iomega StorCenter NAS (Network Attached Storage) started behaving eratically and would keep disappearing from the network and locking up every few hours. I immediately made sure I had several copies of the data and started the search for a replacement. But it dawned on me that whatever I would buy would ultimately go the same way: unsupported and unfixable.So, with the new Raspberry Pi 4 having USB3 ports and a long running desire to make a circular neopixel clock at some point, it dawned on me that there are two devices that run 24 hours a day: my NAS and my trusty old Tix clock that I bought several years ago.Why settle for another boring NAS when I can make the ultimate NAS come Clock combination? So began the flying saucer clock project...So, how does it tell time?The inner ring of the saucer contains 12 LEDs behind diffusers made from a ring of transparent PLA with black PLA colour separators, which are lit according to the current hours. The minutes and seconds are shown on the outer 60 LED ring. This also displays the hour as a series of 5 LEDs lit blue and also hour markers shown at spacing of every 5. Read the rest

Notpla is an edible material made from seaweed and plants that can encapsulate drinking water other edible materials, eliminating the need for plastic packaging.From Fast Company:The designers used a technique from molecular gastronomy to create the package—if you dip a sphere of ice in a mixture of calcium chloride and brown algae extract, an edible membrane forms around the ice, holding everything in place as the ice melts back to room temperature. A small version of the package is designed to break open inside your mouth. “It’s a bit like a cherry tomato,” says Paslier. “You put it in your cheek and bite on it. It explodes, so it’s quite a surprising experience.” The startup partnered with the Scottish whisky brand Glenlivet last year to make a “glassless cocktail” capsule that customers can imbibe along with whisky. The seaweed coating, which is tasteless, can either be eaten or composted.Image: Ooho Read the rest

The online gaming portal, OnTableTop (formerly Beasts of War) is trying to establish February as "Snag-a-Normie" month. The idea is for tabletop gamers to try and bring their friends and family over to the dark side, to expand the hobby gaming community, and to find more players for yourself. As a life-long tabletop gaming enthusiast, I am all for this.As my Snag-a-Normie contribution for the month, I thought I'd share a few ideas for what I think are great gateway games for getting newbies interested in tabletop miniature games, card games, and fantasy and sci-fi board games. These choices represent my particular interests, so this is far from a universal list. YMMV.Wildlands - This 2-4 person board game with gorgeous ink-washed minis is easy to pick up and really gives players the feel of a dungeon delver without too much heavy lifting learning a lot of rules up front. Most of the action is card-driven. Here's my earlier review.Keyforge - This card game is cheap to get into. Each player (2) needs a deck of cards and the rules are free online. Every deck is unique, so you're forced to learn to leverage the strengths of the deck you have (and to overcome its weaknesses). The rules can be a little fussy to understand at first, but once you get beyond that, it's pretty straight forward. My review.Escape from the Dark Castle - My girlfriend is not a gamer, but we've played this dungeon-delving card game together and she loves it. Read the rest

What better way to use up the "brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" you won in the cosmic lottery than by frittering it away on assembling a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of Baby Yoda, better known to Star Track purists as "The Child?" Read the rest

Minimalism isn't just trendy, it's also wise. Clearing clutter and keeping things simple in your home is great for both your mind and for the earth. Bring that movement to your bedside when you replace just about everything on and around your nightstand with the Tree of Light: Wireless Charger + Bluetooth Speaker + LED Lamp.This 3-in-1 essential home accessory that doubles as a work of art will help you bypass switches, tangled cords, power strips, and the random mishmash of items you need to keep nearby at night. The LED lamp features a sleek cherry wood shade, striking tree sculpture, sleep timer, and adjustable brightness via touch control right on the base.Also on the base? A Qi-enabled wireless charging pad to keep your phone powered up and ready to go in the morning. Plus that's where you'll find the touch controls for track selection and audio volume of the built-in Bluetooth neodymium speaker. Pair your device and listen to your favorite playlist, podcast, or meditation to help you fall asleep or get ready for the day ahead.Bring an eclectic mix of form and function to your bedroom for 13% off MSRP when you buy the Tree of Light Wireless Charger + Bluetooth Speaker + LED Lamp for $129.99. Read the rest

President Trump today announced that he is commuting the prison sentence of Rod Blagojevich, a former Illinois governer jailed for corruption, and pardoning Bernard Kerik, the former New York Police Commissioner jailed for tax fraud.Blagojevich attempted to sell Barack Obama's senate seat; Kerik was found to have accepted a $250,000 bribe from a billionaire while a member of the interim administration of Iraq following the second Gulf war.By commuting the sentence, the president would free Mr. Blagojevich from prison without wiping out the conviction. Republicans have advised the president against it, arguing that Mr. Blagojevich’s crime epitomizes the corruption that Mr. Trump had said he wanted to tackle as president.The president’s decision came the same day that he pardoned Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., a former owner of the San Francisco 49ers who pleaded guilty in 1998 to concealing an extortion attempt and eventually surrendered control of his team.Also pardoned was Michael R. Milken, an investment banker convicted of securities fraud. Read the rest

When Maria Marten disappeared from the English village of Polstead in 1827, her lover said that they had married and were living on the Isle of Wight. But Maria's stepmother began having disturbing dreams that hinted at a much grimmer fate. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Red Barn, which transfixed Britain in the early 19th century.We'll also encounter an unfortunate copycat and puzzle over some curious births.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

In Gainseville, Florida, a routine crawlspace inspection turned up jars of preserved human tongues that date back to the 1960s. Police are currently investigating whether the tongues were related to research conducted by the home's previous owner, Ronald A. Baughman, a University of Florida professor emeritus whose work focused on oral medicine and surgery. (WCJB)More in this Reddit post by RandoSurfer77: "I found human remains today in a crawlspace under a home."(image: imgur) Read the rest

The New York Times remembers Barbara Remington, who created the cover illustrations for Ballantine Books' 1965 paperback editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. Remington's covers will always be the canonical covers for me, because these editions were in my junior high school library when I first encountered Tolkien.From the article:Ms. Remington, who designed other book covers for Ballantine as well, was asked to illustrate the 1965 editions of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” on a tight deadline.“Ballantine was in a hurry to get these books out right away,” she said in an interview for the literary journal Andwerve. “When they commissioned me to do the artwork, I didn’t have the chance to see either book, though I tried to get a copy through my friends.“So I didn’t know what they were about,” she continued. “I tried finding people that had read them, but the books were not readily available in the states, and so I had sketchy information at best.” Read the rest

In case you don't know, HackSpace is a terrific monthly maker magazine from the U.K. Published by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, HackSpace includes articles by bunnie huang, Andrew Lewis, Marc de Vinck, Sophy Wong, Bob Knetzger, and many other authors you many recognize from the pages of Make: magazine and other domains of the maker movement. I contribute a monthly tips and tutorials column.One of the great benefits to HackSpace is that it has always been a free PDF for those who can't afford the high (over $100/year) international subscription rate. Well, good news, everyone! You can now get HackSpace for $60 a year (12 issues) and your sub comes with an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express (worth $25). Read the rest

Remember Ben Hart who sued the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (and won) after he was denied a vanity license plate that said "IM GOD?" Hart had the plate for more than a decade while living in Ohio (image above) and wanted to keep the message when he moved to Kenton County a few years ago. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet denied his application citing rules against personalized plates that are “vulgar or obscene.” Last year, American Civil Liberties Union and Freedom From Religion Foundation argued that the state had violated the First Amendment and won Hart the right to get the plate. Last week, a United States District Judge ordered the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to pay Hart $151,206 in attorneys’ fees and litigation costs. From Fox19:Hart, who identifies as an atheist, says his personalized plate is his way of spreading a political and philosophical message that faith is susceptible to individualized interpretation.“I can prove I’m God. You can’t prove I’m not. Now, how can I prove I’m God? Well, there are six definitions for God in the American Heritage Dictionary, and number five is a very handsome man, and my wife says I’m a very handsome man, and nobody argues with my wife,” Hart told FOX19 NOW.Image: aclu-ky.org Read the rest

Watch this fellow make a grand entrance – and then look surprised at his own strength. In the end, he does the gentlemanly thing and keeps on a walkin'.Via Digg Read the rest

That's not actually Paul Stanley; it's Bobby Jensen playing the part of the Starchild in the Minneapolis-based classic rock tribute band Hairball in concert. But either way, it's still pretty badass (at least until you remember the tragic Great White fire of 2003, and start to wonder why the hell there weren't more contingencies in place to prevent this kind of accident).After the incident, Jensen, who also performs in an Alice Cooper tribute act, spoke to Ultimate Classic Rock and said, "I live an Evil Knievel kind of life, so if I'm on fire a little bit, I don't care, that's just part of the fun. I knew I was on fire right away, and that wasn't a wig, that's my hair. It was really nice and foofy before the show, now I have a much better Alice Cooper cut."(This insanely metal moment actually happened over Valentine's Day weekend in 2019, but the band returned to Sioux City again this year, making the video spread like fire all over again.) Read the rest

In Hong Kong, knife-wielding robbers stole 600 rolls of toilet paper from a delivery worker outside Wellcome Supermarket. Police reportedly nabbed two suspects and recovered some of the toilet paper, a hot commodity as people stock up in fear of the coronavirus. From the BBC News:Other household products have also seen panic-buying including rice, pasta and cleaning items.Face masks and hand sanitisers are almost impossible to get as people try to protect themselves from the coronavirus, which has already claimed more than 1,700 lives...Authorities blame false online rumours for the panic buying and say supplies of food and household goods remain stable. Read the rest

Professional musician Dagmar Turner had brain surgery at King's College Hospital, London to remove a benign tumor.

“What does this guy worth $60 billion own, who wants to be president?”Memelord and presidential hopeful Michael “throw them up against the wall” Bloomberg will not be required to publicly disclose his finances until late March, “well after voters in more than a dozen states take to the polls on Super Tuesday,” reports AP on Tuesday. Under an extension granted to Bloomberg on Friday by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the second such extension Bloomberg has received — the billionaire gets to postpone release of his financial disclosures until March 20.Excerpt from AP:The timing is significant because Bloomberg has skipped campaigning in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire and is instead staking his bid on a big showing in contests that come later, like Super Tuesday on March 3. By getting approval to delay the release of his finances until after those pivotal contests, he is denying voters information about how much he is worth — and how he invests his money.“Mr. Bloomberg ... has made diligent efforts to prepare his report. Nevertheless, due to the complexity of his holdings and the need to obtain certain information from third parties, Mr. Bloomberg needs additional time to gather and review his financial information and complete and file his report,” his attorney Lawrence H. Norton wrote in a letter to the FEC.Bloomberg spokeswoman Galia Slayen declined to comment. Bloomberg has pledged to release his tax returns — a decadeslong tradition for presidential candidates until Republican Donald Trump declined to do so during the 2016 campaign — but hasn’t said when. Read the rest