Boing Boing

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

Democratic party candidate Tom Steyer is quitting the race after blasting through an estimated $250m of his own money without significant progress. His spendthrift advertising earned a third-place finish in South Carolina, but with rivals Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden surging -- not the mention the presence of even-richer Mike Bloomberg -- billionaire Steyer's campaign has no-where left to go.None of it was enough. Steyer didn’t manage to win a single delegate to the national convention. And he was largely overshadowed by Michael Bloomberg once he entered the race — another billionaire who took a similar electoral strategy as Steyer but was better-positioned to execute it. Unlike Steyer, Bloomberg had previous experience in elective office, as New York’s mayor. Bloomberg had a bigger network of relationships in the Democratic Party — that resulted in lots of major endorsements — and significantly more wealth (an estimated $60 billion) than Steyer ($1.6 billion), allowing Bloomberg to spend a staggering amount on television commercials. And it’s still not clear that Bloomberg’s comparative advantages will do much for him either. Read the rest

Democratic party candidate Amy Klobuchar is quitting the race after failing to capitalize on a surprise third-place finish in the New Hampshare primary. With Joe Biden's strong showing in North Carolina, the senator for Minnesota joins Pete Buttigieg in yielding the center. According to CBS News, Klobuchar will endose Biden at a rally this evening in Texas. Read the rest

This aluminum egg is called a phi top, and when you spin it, it stands on end. According to the Action Lab Man, "This is the same procedure that [Nikola] Telsa applied to a copper egg in his famous Columbus egg demonstration."If you don't have an aluminum egg on hand, an egg laid by a hen that has been hardboiled will do the trick. (In fact, this is a good way to determine if an egg is raw or boiled.)Image: YouTube Read the rest

Leave it to John Oliver to cut through the bullshit and give you 20 minutes of high quality information about Covid-19, and what you should do about it. Read the rest

Two Chigaco police officers are under investigation after a bystander filmed them twice shooting an apparently unarmed man who was resisting arrest. The man, according to Chicago P.D., was being arrested for "moving between two train cars, a city ordinance violation".The video shows police struggling with the man for several minutes before he breaks free from being pinned on the ground. At that point, one of the officers yells "shoot him!" and the other fires toward the man. The officer who fired the weapon shot at the man twice, police said in a statement. The man, who was not identified, was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where he remains in critical but stable condition after surgery, police said.The rule would be "comply or die" but for the inability of the officers to shoot straight: they got him in the buttocks and the stomach. Read the rest

From the official White House flickr stream: "Vice President Mike Pence meets with the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce Wednesday, February 26, 2020, in his West Wing Office of the White House. Photo: D. Myles Cullen Read the rest

In this viral footage, shot on a potato and video-compressed with a radish, the best method of organizing nails is revealed. I'm happy to take questions about the thermodynamics of all this, and I'm sure someone will eventually be along to answer them.Some suspect that the footage is reversed; a commenter on Reddit demonstrated otherwise by actually reversing it (embedded below). View post on imgur.com Read the rest

On Friday night, someone driving on a Saskatoon, Canada highway was sure having a blast. Watch the CTV News video above.According to the newscaster, "Saskatoon police have not confirmed whether they are investigating." At least they haven't confirmed that they aren't investigating. (via Fark) Read the rest

Meet Affetto, an android child from Osaka University. Affetto may live in Japan but he was obviously born in the Uncanny Valley. From a technical paper in Frontiers in Robotics and AI:Faces of android robots are one of the most important interfaces to communicate with humans quickly and effectively, as they need to match the expressive capabilities of the human face, it is no wonder that they are complex mechanical systems containing inevitable non-linear and hysteresis elements derived from their non-rigid components. No wonder, indeed. Below, videos of Affetto's body and tactile sensors. (via IEEE Spectrum) Read the rest

We’ve all seen the news stories for weeks. And they’re frightening. Whenever a mysterious ailment like the coronavirus springs to life, it inevitably triggers a wave of global concern over the state of public safety.But while the coronavirus doesn’t appear to be an airborne condition (although it’s not impossible), there are literally still thousands of illnesses and contaminants present in the air we breathe every day. You can take a proactive step toward improving the quality of the air in your home or vehicle right now with one of these air purification systems, all on sale now at up to 77 percent off.Only the bestWhether you suffer from allergies, catch colds easily or even face real environmental threats like toxic mold or other bacteria, a quality air purifier is one of the most critical steps you can take to protect the health of your entire household.Right now, manufacturer Brondell has two of their high-end home purifiers on sale, including the Brondell O2+ Revive Air Purifier and Humidifier ($399; originally $449). With four different operating modes, five specialized filters and a super-efficient evaporative humidifier, this unit scrubs your air of particulates and allergens up to five times per hour.Asthma and allergy sufferers should also see relief from the Brondell O2+ Halo Air Purifier ($199.99; originally $229). Its True HEPA filter removes 99.97 percent of contaminants from your area, while the woven carbon filter reduces smoke, foul odors and compounds that can become vapors or gases. Read the rest

A massively powerful eruption has been detected in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, located about 390 million light years from Earth. It is the biggest such event ever observed.In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain,” said Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and lead author of the study. “A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas.Astronomers made this discovery using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton, and radio data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India.Read the rest on SciTechDaily.Image: Credits: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/NRL/S. Giacintucci, et al., XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF Read the rest

Democratic party candidate Pete Buttigieg is quitting the race after poor showings in Nevada and South Carolina. With little cash on hand and rivals surging, the 38-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said that "the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and our nation together" as he announced the suspension of his campaign.Mr Buttigieg surprisingly, and narrowly, won the first event of the primary season, the caucuses in Iowa on 3 February. But he failed to repeat that success and win the delegates needed to make him the front- runner and later confirm his nomination. He finished a distant fourth in South Carolina on Saturday.Buttigieg broke new ground as the first openly gay man to launch a major party campaign for President; right up to the end, opinion polls showed him soundly defeating President Trump in a one-on-one matchup. Read the rest

A man in Beijing, where everyone is told to stay home due to the coronavirus, visited a mall and took a video camera. It's all but deserted: you can get served, but you're not allowed to hang around. Jump a third of the way in for the "action".P.S. This is basically every mall in Pittsburgh on a weekday except the one nice one with the Nordstroms. Read the rest

In 1982, Jeff Spicoli brought checkerboard Vans beyond the SoCal surf-skate culture and onto the big screen in one of my all-time favorite films, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (The story goes that Sean Penn had bought shortly before filming began and convinced director Amy Heckerling to let him wear them in the movie.) To celebrate the movie's release, Steve Van Doren, son of the Vans founder Paul Van Doren, made a limited run of special Fast Times slip-ons made to give away at the premiere. Those special pairs have become a holy grail of shoe collectors and now Vans has reissued them. Awesome. Totally awesome. From Vans:Borrowing details from the original Classic Slip-On and offering modernized comfort with upgraded Ortholite® sockliners, Anaheim Factory Classic Slip-On 98 DX also includes throwback details like the iconic Vans checkerboard print, higher glossed foxing tape, printed sidewalls, and sturdy canvas and textile uppers to complete the look. Read the rest

Amherst, New York's Just Pizza & Wing Co. is slapping dog adoption fliers on their pie boxes to help animals at the local SPCA find their forever homes. And if you adopt one of the dogs, you get a $50 gift certificate for the restaurant. From CNN:The unique idea came after Mary Alloy, who owns the pizza franchise with three of her children, began volunteering with the Niagara Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Alloy worked with Kimberly LaRussa, an SPCA event coordinator, to come up with ways to help more shelter animals find their forever homes."Kimberly texted me one night and was like, 'Hey, what would you think about putting pictures of the dogs on pizza boxes?' and I just couldn't wait," Alloy said. "We are all animal lovers here, so I got permission from the franchise to do it and immediately got to work...""We've had a tremendous amount of interest and support from the community and beyond since the story went viral on Friday," LaRussa told CNN. "Many people want to order a pizza just to get the shelter dog photo, other pizzerias have offered to put flyers on their pizza boxes, and so many people are tagging their friends and family.""A New York pizza shop is putting photos of dogs on pizza boxes to help them find homes" (CNN)Previously: Woman spots her dog, lost in Idaho, on a Florida brewery's "adoptable dogs" beer can Read the rest