After years of hearing a steady drumbeat about the necessity of surfing the web under the protection of a VPN, even the most technophobic among us are starting to come around. But even knowing the dangers one can face from cybercrooks phishing for information from unsuspecting victims online, those last holdouts still have some fears. Chief among those fears is just the tech know-how needed to get a VPN to work. Thankfully, some highly-regarded VPN options like Goose VPN get high marks for their simplicity with even the most reluctant of new users.Goose VPN is among the easiest setups in the VPN kingdom. After opening your account, just download their app to your device, and the VPN automatically configures itself.With that, all your online activity will now be protected through Goose VPN’s ultra-secure 256-bit encrypted connection. Via their own owned and managed server network in over 25 countries, you can log in from anywhere, safeguarding your IP address and all other identifying information from any government watchdog or online criminal search for a new target. The protection even covers you and all your actions when logging on to high-risk public WiFi networks.And since Goose VPN enforces a no-logging policy, none of your web activities is ever monitored or logged by Goose, ensuring where you go and what you do online always remains safely anonymous.Goose VPN also allows you to circumvent international geoblocking restrictions, granting you access to popular platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and the BBC from anywhere in the world. Read the rest

The U.S. State Department says Russia is exploiting a well-established online operation that includes proxy websites to amplify coronavirus disinformation and conspiracy theories.“The websites the State Department identified Wednesday have promoted unsupported conspiracy theories that allege COVID-19 was created in a lab as a bioweapon, billionaire Bill Gates is plotting to use the pandemic as an excuse to microchip people, and that plans for a coronavirus vaccine are simply a ploy for pharmaceutical companies to make money,” reports the Associated Press, which adds -- “There is no evidence behind those claims.” Excerpt:The department detailed a Russian-backed misinformation cycle that spreads false information online through state officials and state-funded media reports, by infiltrating U.S. social media conversation, and leveraging a deceptive internet framework of websites. The Kremlin’s efforts have most recently focused on conspiracy theories around the pandemic, the report found.“Russia is playing a significant role in creating and spreading misinformation and propaganda around many topics,” said Lea Gabrielle, head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.The department named more than a half-dozen websites that, serving as “proxies” for Russia, have peddled a series of conspiracy theories about the pandemic that have been widely spreading and hotly debated across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.The online news outlets appear independent from the Russian government, but in reality serve as a “connective tissue” between the Kremlin and state-funded media that often promote the same misinformation from their own channels, Gabrielle said.“That’s what makes them effective,” Gabrielle said. Read the rest

• Search warrant executed by FBI at Calabasas home of YouTube star Jake Paul on Wednesday• Judge has sealed the search-warrant affidavit• No info on nature of FBI investigation, or individual servedThe Southern California home of YouTube star Jake Paul was raided today in a large FBI operation that included a SWAT team. Many details in the case remain sealed. From the Associated Press:The FBI executed the search warrant starting at 6 a.m. at the Calabasas, California, mansion in connection with an ongoing investigation, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said in a statement.A judge has sealed the search-warrant affidavit and Eimiller said she could not reveal the nature of the investigation or the person it was served on. Paul’s attorney Richard Schonfeld confirmed the home was his. “We understand that a search warrant was executed at Jake’s Calabasas home this morning while Jake was out-of-state,” Schonfeld said in an email. “We are still gathering information and will cooperate with the investigation.”Video from local television news helicopters showed agents gathering several rifles from the sprawling property with a boxing ring and hot tub in the backyard that appears in many of Paul’s recent YouTube videos.An FBI spokesperson confirmed that a search conducted at Jake Paul’s Calabasas residence was part of an investigation into “allegations of criminal acts” during an incident at an Arizona mall in May. https://t.co/fkEeet01y4— Twitter Moments UK & Ireland (@UKMoments) August 6, 2020Jake Paul has been in headlines of late for throwing a huge party at his home during the pandemic without any safety measures in place https://t.co/Gumy8rPlI9 Read the rest

Is 'breakfast' macaroni & cheese a thing? What? Kraft says it's a product coming in 2021, unless this is a grotesque food hoax I've somehow fallen for.“Yes please,” or “Just, no”? [ABC News] Excerpt:After hearing that parents would serve their brand of mac & cheese to their children for breakfast, Kraft got in on the act.Kraft is giving away limited-edition Kraft Mac & Cheese Breakfast boxes through Friday. The boxes have special packaging that has "breakfast" written over where it would usually have "dinner." To win a box, you can use the hashtags #KMCforBreakfast and #Sweepstakes on Twitter to be entered to win. You can also enter to win online.The boxes will be available sometime in 2021. More here [abc13.com] Read the rest

Facebook also took down a Trump post for the first time, citing COVID-19 misinformation ban

When it is playtime for Electra, it is playtime for everyone.Electra hasn't quite figured out how to get on the bed, but she sure knows how to get my attention. View this post on Instagram Sure I was vaccinated today, but my energy levels are fine! #puppy #bark #dog #dogsofinstagram #cuteA post shared by Electra (@electra___cute) on Aug 3, 2020 at 8:00pm PDT Read the rest

Raised by Wolves is the new TV show from Ridley Scott, coming to HBO Max on September 3. It looks completely deranged and I can't wait. Raised by Wolves centers around "two androids — Father and Mother — tasked with raising human children on a mysterious new planet. As the burgeoning colony of humans threatens to be torn apart by religious differences the androids learn that controlling the beliefs of humans is a treacherous and difficult task." The trailer looks and feels so much like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant that I can't shake the feeling that he's rebooting those stories, as it were — the same peculiar aesthetic and emotional setting, the same themes — free of all the Alien/Blade Runner universe baggage. Read the rest

You may not realize it, but some of the biggest films in movie history have been edited using the same tools some of you use to cut your video of vacationing at Disney World.Giant movies from Oscar favorites The Social Network and Gone Girl to blockbusters like Avatar, Deadpool, and last year’s Terminator: Dark Fate have all been put together using Adobe Premiere, a video editing mainstay and one of the crown jewels of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of apps.In fact, used in tandem with sister apps like After Effects, Spark, and Audition, filmmakers are finding they can achieve virtually any visual technique they can imagine with the same software used by millions every day.The Complete Adobe Hollywood Filmmaker Bundle is the perfect introduction for those with an interest in shooting and editing their own professional-grade feature or just for those trying to make their kid’s Little League game footage as epic as Field of Dreams.The collection includes five courses, each exploring one of five different Adobe CC apps that can help elevate your video production work.The training starts with a deep dive into the core of Adobe video editing, Introduction to Adobe Premiere Pro 2020. Even first-timers will get a thorough understanding of everything Premiere can do as students are guided through the process of starting a project, importing and organizing footage, basic editing, color correction, compositing, graphic creation, and more with expert level precision.With Adobe After Effects 2020, learners get a crash course in how to add those how-did-they-do-that special effects and animations that make any video look like it had a million-dollar budget. Read the rest

Townscaper is a charming and beautiful toy by Oskar Stålberg (previously at BB), available now for Windows and MacOS. It approaches the city-builing genre, but subtracts all the things that make such games distressing and frustrating, leaving you to create the waterside town of your dreams without worrying about resources, enemies, natural disasters or other limitations.Yet I don't want to trivialize it as less than a game, because it has such a wealth of creative possibility and polish, all aided by the author's marvelous sense of design and the world's inexorable and elegant detailing of the player's every crude click. It has the same lego-set pleasure of Minecraft's creative mode, but everything you do is perfected automatically with a pop—so long as you're content building Scandinavian Mont-Saint-Michels that would be utterly indefensible in Bad North.@OskSta #Townscaper This is my little town. pic.twitter.com/QedxFRPVTG— Creekky (@CreekkyT) July 1, 2020On the sea is implied a gently-warped grid. Clicking once raises blocks of land from the water, which first form paved quaysides but might turn into bridges, courtyards or gardens depending on context. Click again on the same spot, and a house appears. Make the house taller by clicking up, or wider by clicking in adjacent places. Obliterate work with a right-click, and struts and pillars appear to support what remains above. You can pick different colors, whirl the scene around, zoom up close, and that's more or less it.@OskSta you are a blessing - thank you for this wonderful gift. Read the rest

Kevin Reome has been an improv instructor at The Second City Training Center in Chicago since 2005. Reome’s written, directed, produced, performed in many scripted and improvised shows (The Eulogist, Rahm Zombie, Jam Sandwich, Lightfoot Loose) and teaches improv workshops around the country and in corporate settings.In 1994 I took improv classes at Improv Olympic and was eventually put on a performance team by the owner Charna Halpern. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were also on that team, along with about 10 other dudes at the start. Generically we were named “Team A” and tasked to come up with an actual team name.There were five of us at The Naming. Tina and Poehler were neither of the five. They were invited. Everyone was invited, but only 5 could make it. The plan was to meet over drinks and name our improv team. We met at the Old Town Ale House across from The Second City Chicago. The Ale House—the obvious choice to meet for such an occasion. This dank bar was, and is, the perfect extension of improv. It is warm booze and late nights and Tamale Guy and edgy wall art and improv students and improv professionals and a great after-show watering hole. It’s where improv gets discussed but also provides a distraction from it. One time a friend saw Robert Plant there.“Did you snap a picture of him?” I asked.“No. That’s why he went to the Ale House.” Plant and my friend shared the code of the Ale House. Read the rest

Boing Boing shares these words from our sponsor Real Tested CBD.Keto is the nutritional diet taking the health world by storm. Only way to make keto better? Add a little canna! Read on for a simple breakdown on making your own cannaflour to use in our Keto Pumpkin Loaf! Furthermore, more individuals are turning to CBD edibles, like Tribe CBD Gummies, for their dose of daily CBD. If you would rather make your own cannaflour, feel free to follow the recipe below!What is cannaflour and how is it made?Not like butter or cooking oil infusions, cannaflour encompasses cooking with and consuming ground-up cannabis. Cannaflour is easy to prepare and is a core staple of cooking with cannabis. To properly prepare your cannaflour, be sure you are using cannabis that has been decarboxylated cannabis (aka, heated) ground very finely. The preparation and storage of cannaflour is very important, to ensure freshness and taste. To decarboxylate your cannabis, preheat oven to 200-250 degrees. On a large baking sheet, spread your cannabis and place in oven between 40-60 minutes, rotating the sheet or flipping the cannabis throughout to ensure even heating. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Next grind your cannabis as finely as possible, using a blender or food processor. Related: If you’re looking for a high-strength CBD tincture, check out Blue Ribbon Hemp’s 5,000 mg CBD tincture! Next, combine ½ cup finely ground cannabis with 1 cup flour of your choice for a cannaflour mixture. Or keep your ground and dried cannabis in a separate air-tight container and add to flour or recipes directly. Read the rest

This 2.5x LED magnifier can be used as a handheld tool or on the desktop. It also has smaller, more powerful magnifying glass built-in. Perfect for peering at electronic components. I use it to inspect the spoons I whittle. Read the rest

Spitting Image was a satirical puppet show running in the UK from 1985 to 1996, about to be revived for a new era of stupid, selfish, buffoonish politicians and celebrities. The creators recently showed off the forthcoming series's Trump and Zuckerberg, and now they're giving us a sneak peek at Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his creepy aide Dominic Cummings.Mr Johnson, depicted with unkempt blonde hair and a badly knotted tie, is the latest prime minister to be depicted in rubbery form by the programme.Mr Cummings, known for a more informal dress sense, is depicted wearing a blue hoodie and black gilet, with a large silver collar.Image copyright Mark Harrison/BritBox/Avalon Spitting Image was weird and nastily funny, the punches going mostly up. It had the remarkable effect of making politics accessible and engaging, even to children, and addressing the content of politics in its mockery of politicans—two virtues that political satire rarely achieves. But it was also smug and trivializing, retaining its deepest contempt for the earnest belief in anything. It portrayed the working classes as deserving idiots and minorities with stereotypes, even as it swung hard at their oppressors. Still, it had a cold insight into where things were going -- thirty years ago it had P.W. Botha, the right-wing leader of a fading racist administration in South Africa, cunningly recast the party line as "anti-anti-apartheid". Many of its most absurd jokes are now political realities. It did more to reveal the problem with Jimmy Savile than anyone in UK media except Johnny Rotten. Read the rest

Jared Kushner is similar to Trump in many ways. They both inherited vast amounts of wealth from unsavory slumlord fathers and blew their ill-gotten fortunes on bad business decisions. This new video, from the Lincoln Project, highlights a few of Kushner's latest screw-ups, which have resulted in 160,000 Covid deaths, massive job loss, eviction, and hunger in the United States. Read the rest

Los Angeles taxpayers are on the hook for about $55 million stemming from "dozens of lawsuits and claims involving Los Angeles County deputies associated with tattooed groups accused of glorifying an aggressive style of policing," reports The Los Angeles Times. These secret cop societies have names like the Vikings, Regulators, 3000 Boys, and the Banditos, and their street gang-like criminal behavior extends back to 1990. Elected sheriffs and an FBI probe have been unable to stop the violent groups from operating.From The Los Angeles Times:"This has been a cancer of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for decades," said Ron Kaye, an attorney who represented Carrillo. "The only reason that this type of illegal activity and lawlessness under the color of law can survive is if the department and its administration looks the other way."Another lawsuit involving a bicyclist shot and killed by deputies in South L.A. was settled for $1.5 million in 2018 in part because one deputy had probably committed perjury when he denied that he was a member of the Regulators operating out of the Century station, officials said.Several of the payouts involve the 3000 Boys and the 2000 Boys at Men's Central Jail. A top jail official had described exclusive gangs of deputies who would “earn their ink” by breaking inmates’ bones. Read the rest

Well perhaps unsurprisingly the accused Twitter hacker-Bitcoin thief’s first (virtual) hearing was shut down within 25 minutes due to relentless Zoombombing. (It ended a minute after this when someone screenshared a Porn Hub video.) pic.twitter.com/fGiceq4WfN— Jen Wieczner (@jenwieczner) August 5, 2020The Zoom bond hearing for Graham Clark, 17, who is accused of hijacking famous people's Twitter accounts in a cryptocurrency scam, was interrupted this morning by Zoombombers "shouting racial slurs, playing music and showing pornographic images," according to ABC News."How the judge in charge of the proceeding didn't think to enable settings that would prevent people from taking over the screen is beyond me," tweeted infosec journalist Brian Krebs. From the Tampa Bay Times:Hoping a brief pause would filter out the interrupters, Nash reopened the meeting. But users who disguised their names as CNN and BBC News resumed their interruptions.Nash was ultimately able to rule, declining to lower the bail amount [of $725,000]. He did, however, remove a requirement that Clark prove the legitimacy of his assets. Lawyers have said he has $3 million in Bitcoin under his control.How the judge in charge of the proceeding didn't think to enable settings that would prevent people from taking over the screen is beyond me. My guess is he didn't know he could. This guy's reaction sums it up. pic.twitter.com/Zz9aVc5iIg— briankrebs (@briankrebs) August 5, 2020(Thanks to our Florida bureau chief, Charles Pescovitz!) Read the rest

On Sunday, the SpaceX capsule containing NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. (Video above.) It was the first time a private company took humans off-world and returned them to Earth and also the first splash-down of American astronauts in 45 years. At a press conference yesterday, Behnken and Hurley recounted their trip home. From Reuters:“It came alive,” Behnken told reporters of the nearly 12-minute thruster burn. “It doesn’t sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere.”As the capsule streaked deeper through the sky, atmospheric friction scorched the protective heat shield of the plunging Crew Dragon to 3,500 Fahrenheit (1,927 Celsius), slowing its rate of descent to 350 mph (563 kph).At that point, the first of two sets of parachutes were deployed, abruptly breaking the capsule’s speed further - an interval that felt “very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat,” Behnken recalled.“It was a pretty significant jolt,” he said.[...]While bobbing in the water just after splash-down awaiting recovery teams, Hurley said they completed one final test objective for the mission: “making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we can get a hold of.” “There was a real reason for it,” Hurley said, in all seriousness, explaining that they needed to prove they could contact mission control using a sat-phone in case the crew landed from space in an unexpected part of the ocean. Read the rest

For the Seattle Mariners' virtual Opening Day festivities, my pal Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie brought some good ol' fashioned melancholy to John Fogerty's "Centerfield." Ben pre-recorded this clip in an appropriately, and sadly, empty T-Mobile Park. Read the rest

This warm and welcoming missile silo and command bunker, built in the 1970s, could be your new home. Located just 30 minutes south of Canada in Fairdale, North Dakota, the 50-acre site will go up for auction on August 11. Bring your contractor! From Pifer's auctions:Site needs some repair, but could provide that extra privacy, security and protection when needed. The site is surrounded by dual fences and sits on 3 parcels totaling 49.48 acres. There is a cement entry building, a command bunker, and 14 sprint launch tubes. Current owner utilizes portable power and water tanks. Power is available nearby and a well could be drilled for water requirements.(via Atlas Obscura) Read the rest

Mysterious packages of seeds have been turning up in American mailboxes, mailed from China. The consensus is that vendors are using the seeds to create "completed shipment" data as cheaply as possible to run up their ratings on Amazon and other online marketplaces.Though officials worried the seeds might include invasive species, tests so far show they are "innocuous", reports CBS News. Mustard, cabbage, morning glory, mint, sage, rosemary and lavender are among the gifts falling from the cracks in the Amazon Marketplace. Nonetheless, don't plant them, experts say. Read the FAQ posted by the USDA as a nice convenient PDF.Robin Pruisner, a state seed control official at the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in Iowa, told Reuters that she has heard reports of a coating of possible insecticide or fungicide on the seeds, which could prove especially harmful to crops.And if you receive them, it means someone knows enough about you to mail stuff to you and use the delivery confirmation to pose you as a verified customer on some online platform or other. Read the rest

As the next generation of game consoles get ready to roll out, a good friend has opted to give me the long-term use of his PS4.I am so totally stoked.During a rough financial patch, a few years back, I had to sell mine in order to keep the heat on and put food on our table. I've missed it, ever since. Over the past couple of weeks, I got to finally finish Fallout 4 (with all of the DLC!) as well as Batman: Arkham Knight. But there's still like, almost five years of games out there, that I've never had the opportunity to play. I'm betting scads of them are less expensive to purchase now, as well—Once we're out of our sublet and back into the RV, storage will be at a premium, so I'll likely go digital downloads only. As we'll be living in seclusion on Vancouver Island, this fall and winter, having the console to help keep me from going insane (or at least building on the level of insanity that I've already achieved), is going to be such a welcome comfort.I've got a copy of Red Dead Redemption III to noodle with. Any advice on what titles I should pick up? I like story-driven RPGs and open-world games. Straight ahead shooters and online games aren't my thing. Read the rest

Justin T. Brown's Donald Trump is the Dumbest Man in America² cleverly edits Trump's catastrophic interview with Jonathan Swan so that Trump is arguing with himself. It's so good, The Lincoln Project ganked it on Twitter. Read the rest

As a young child, I was by told my mother that skin color didn't matter—everyone's the same. Almost all of the faces I encountered on a daily basis, were white. Two of my mother's friends from her job at the local university were from southeast Asia. They came to our lower-middle-class home, on occasion, for dinner, or a bit of coffee. My memory is terrible. However, I recall them being lovely individuals. It wasn't until I was in grade three that I someone my own age whose skin was a different shade than mine. She was from China. She was in my class. She played flute and, looking back, seemed so nervous of her English, that her voice cracked with emotion every time she spoke. I didn't always understand what she was saying, entirely, but I liked her a lot. Most kids my own age thought I was a little spooky and stayed the hell away from me. She didn't have any shits to give. We remained friends for years before losing touch. I never noticed that most of the other kids didn't want to bother with her, either.When I entered grade seven, I saw a Black kid for the first time. She was tall, friendly, and a little churchy. Despite my being a troublemaking little shit, we always had a smile for one another and worked on class projects together frequently. Everyone seemed to like her. However, it wasn't uncommon to see her cry in our school's hallways or outside at recess. Read the rest

Congressman William Lacy Clay held Missouri's 1st district for nearly 20 years after inheriting it from his father, Bill Clay, who had held it for 32 years. Last night he was defeated in the Democratic Party's primary by a progressive challenger, Cori Bush, who proceeds to a virtually assured victory in November's general election. Ryan Grim:Bush’s win is monumental in a number of ways. Unlike Bowman, she did not have the luxury of an opponent who fled his district and told a hot mic that he only wanted to speak at a Black Lives Matter rally because he had a primary to worry about. ... Clay, however, is not old (he just turned 64, a decade younger than Engel), white, or lazy. Clay did not remotely take Bush for granted, launching a full-scale negative campaign to try to take her down, and has been focused on her as a threat since her loss to him in 2018. He is a fixture of the community, and he and his father, Bill Clay Sr., a civil rights activist and co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, have continuously held the seat since the 1960s. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH is told the frightening tale of cold-blooded murder that is Donald Trump's handling of the COVID pandemic

In 1890, French inventor Louis Le Prince vanished just as he was preparing to debut his early motion pictures. He was never seen again. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll consider the possible causes of Le Prince's disappearance and his place in the history of cinema.We'll also reflect on a murderous lawyer and puzzle over the vagaries of snake milking.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Three men were rescued from a tiny South Pacific island after they wrote a giant “SOS” sign in the sand, later spotted from search aircraft above, authorities say.From the Associated Press:The men had been missing in the Micronesia archipelago for nearly three days when their distress signal was spotted Sunday on uninhabited Pikelot Island by searchers on Australian and U.S. aircraft, the Australian defense department said Monday.The men had apparently set out from Pulawat atoll in a 7-meter (23-foot) boat on July 30 and had intended to travel about 43 kilometers (27 miles) to Pulap atoll when they sailed off course and ran out of fuel, the department said.IMAGE: In this photo provided by the Australian Defense Force, an Australian Army helicopter lands on Pikelot Island in the Federated States of Micronesia, where three men were found, Sunday, August 2, 2020, safe and healthy after missing for three days. The men were missing in the Micronesia archipelago east of the Philippines for nearly three days when their "SOS" sign was spotted by searchers on Australian and U.S. aircraft, the Australian defense department said. (Australian Defense Force) Read the rest

With more and more companies moving all their operations into the cloud, the need has never been greater for those with the skills to map exactly how an organization reconstitutes itself in that new environment.Network architects responsible for determining all the communication, storage, and infrastructure needs of an expansive organization are among the most sought-after pros in computer science today, bringing home salaries of over $135,000 a year in many cases.The journey to a role like that can begin with training like the knowledge found in The Complete Computer Networking eBook and Video Course Bundle. The collection is your very own computer networking reference library, including five ebooks and five videos covering over 14 hours of content on a truckload of critical topics, including DevOps, programming, AWS, CCNA, and more.For every important decision about how to administer a network, there are a dozen different paths to a solution — and this training takes that into account, examining several of the most popular tools for managing and growing a busy network.The ebooks start you off with a smattering of training from across the discipline. Want to know how to run a Linux network? The Hands-On Linux for Architects ebook has everything you need. Maybe you’re doing all of your coding in the C programming language — in which case Hands-On Network Programming with C explains utilizing network sockets, implementing internet protocols, designing IoT devices, and more with C. Or the AWS Certified Advanced Networking: Specialty Exam Guide can help you develop technical skills and expertise to automate AWS networking tasks and advanced skill sets to build effective AWS networking solutions of your own. Read the rest

COVID-19 sure has created some weird shortages. Clorox disinfectant wipes are one such product.American grocery shelves won’t be fully restocked with Clorox’s disinfecting wipes until next year, CEO Benno Dorer told Reuters, “as the world’s biggest cleaning products maker struggles with overwhelming pandemic-led demand for its top product.” Excerpt:Since the start of global lockdowns, makers of hygiene goods have seen a sustained boom in sales. While California-based Clorox typically holds aside excess supply for flu seasons, it says it has been unable to keep up with a six-fold increase in demand for many of its disinfectants.The company is currently understocked across much of its portfolio, which includes Glad trash bags and Burt’s Bees lip balm. Supply for most products, like liquid bleach, will improve dramatically over the next four to six months - but not wipes, Dorer said on Monday.Clorox products are used in Uber vehicles and United Airlines planes, and are sold by major retailers like Walmart, Amazon and Kroger.“Disinfecting wipes, which are the hottest commodity in the business right now, will probably take longer because it’s a very complex supply chain to make them,” Dorer said. More at Reuters. Read the rest

Graham Clark, the 17-year-old Florida boy accused of pulling off the big Twitter hack, pled not guilty to charges on Tuesday. During the security breach, top accounts including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk were taken over to push a bitcoin scam.Young Mr. Clark told Circuit Court Judge Christopher Nash in Tampa today he was not guilty of the 30 felony counts of fraud prosecutors have brought against him, according to court records.From Reuters:Clark is scheduled to appear in court again on Wednesday for a hearing on a request to change his $750,000 bond and conditions of release. Clark’s attorney, David Weisbrod, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.A 19-year-old British man and a 22-year-old man in Orlando, Florida, have also been charged under U.S. federal law with aiding the attack, the Justice Department said.Clark netted at least $100,000 from the scheme by using the celebrity accounts to solicit investments from unsuspecting Twitter users, state officials said.Mason Sheppard, a 19-year-old from Bognor Regis, Britain, who used the alias Chaewon, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering while Orlando-based Nima Fazeli, 22, nicknamed Rolex, was accused of aiding and abetting the crimes, according to a Justice Department statement. Read more at Reuters.How the Twitter hacker got inMajor Twitter hack pushes bitcoin scam on Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple, Uber, Biden accounts, collects $$$$ Read the rest

This song and video crossed my transom last week and it's been haunting me ever since. Lee Hazelwood allegedly wrote this song (and others) at the request of Frank Sinatra in an effort to help boost daughter Nancy's career and send it in new directions.The video and duet with Hazelwood and Sinatra premiered on her 1967 TV special "Movin' with Nancy." That night, Lee and Nancy also performed "Jackson" and Sinatra performed "Sugar Town," "This Town," and several other Hazelwood compositions. Lee Hazelwood would end up writing most of Nancy Sinatra's hits."Some Velvet Morning" is a strange mash-up of country and pop psychedelia with apparent references to sex, drugs, and Greek mythology. Hazelwood said that he was fascinated by mythology at the time and was particularly interested in the character of Phaedra, a tragic figure in the Greek mythos. Hazelwood said he felt sorry for her and decided to invoke her spirit in a song.Bonus Track: There are a zillion covers of "Some Velvet Morning." Here is Rowland S. Howard and Lydia Lunch's take:Image: YouTube Read the rest

Trombonist Martyn Stroud offers this humble disclaimer on his rousing watering-can rendition of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Flight of the Bumblebee," "This is not an art form. It’s not even going to be accurate, but it is good fun." That striped yellow-and-black shirt he's wearing is a nice touch.(Neatorama, ClassicFM)screengrab via Martyn Stroud/Facebook Read the rest

Researchers at West Virginia University have recently discovered how, exactly, the fungus Massospora hijacks cicadas into acting as its zombified parasite drones:Massospora manipulates male cicadas into flicking their wings like females – a mating invitation – which tempts unsuspecting male cicadas and infects them.It’s a recent discovery into the bizarre world of cicadas plagued by a psychedelic fungus that contains chemicals including those found in hallucinogenic mushrooms. The research, “Behavioral betrayal: How select fungal parasites enlist living insects to do their bidding,” was published in the journal PLOS Pathogens.[…]These actions persist amid a disturbing display of B-horror movie proportions: Massospora spores gnaw away at a cicada’s genitals, butt and abdomen, replacing them with fungal spores. Then they “wear away like an eraser on a pencil,” Lovett said.[…]“Our previous literature always mentioned the strange behaviors associated with Massospora and some closely-allied fungi but what was missing was a synthesis of all this new information that had come to light,” Kasson said. “The most interesting finding is the things we still don't know. We realized that there were some possible scenarios for infection that we had not considered before.”The researcher suspects that this fungus has also adapted to lie in wait for 17 years, so that it can emerge into the world alongside the 17-year cicada cycle.In related news, the year is still 2020, and this reality keeps happening.Return of the zombie cicadas: WVU team unearths manipulative qualities of fungal-infected flyers [WVU Today]Image: WVU Photo/Angie Macias Read the rest

Please like and share this piece of art that I made. pic.twitter.com/g2lFTC0UHv— Nick Hutson (@NickHutsonMusic) August 4, 2020Q: What is a "Mah Nà Mah Nà"?A: The question is, "Who cares?"(Thanks UPSO!) Read the rest

“Here it is, folks,” writes Yahoo News' Alexander Nazaryan. “yo-SEMITE.” Read the rest

If you do soldering work, I recommend getting a pair of these micro flush cutters. They'll cut copper wires flush with the blob of solder, making your work look tidy. Read the rest

@sciencing_bi was a well-read Science Twitter account, a queer Native American professor with a unique perspective on science and university life. They reportedly caught coronavirus and and died of Covid, drawing tributes from online admirers, some of them prominent academics. But it was only the final straw in a haybale of suspicion for people who knew BethAnn McLaughlin, a white woman that @sciencing_bi often spoke of. It turns out, with grim predictability, that it was her all along, catfishing the academic pond.The anonymous account, @Sciencing_Bi, was an active participant in the corner of Science Twitter that frequently discusses issues of sexual misconduct in the sciences. It claimed on at least one occasion to have grown up in Alabama, to have “fled the south because of their oppression of queer folk,” and to have attended Catholic school. The account began to pointedly make reference to being Native American and, earlier this year, began to identify as Hopi. ... In April, @Sciencing_Bi began to undergo a drama that belonged solely to her, announcing the coronavirus diagnosis in a tweet. It was Ms. McLaughlin who announced that the anonymous professor had died.Twitter banned both McLaughlin and her sockpuppet, but there's a lot more to unravel. An interesting element of the sockpuppet was posing @sciencing_bi at Arizona State University. One of the largest universities in the U.S., ASU has a six-figure roster of students, academics and staff, a daunting prospect to any researcher trying to track the account author down. Read the rest

I used to think the 1970s was a bad decade for pop culture. But the 70s gave us A Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Deliverance, Jaws, Taxi Driver, The Buzzcocks, Fishbone, The Ramones, Earth, Wind & Fire, Breakfast of Champions, and Surfacing.It turns out the 1980s was the terrible decade for entertainment, as evidenced by this video "tribute to '80s Entertainment." Read the rest

"Hammer Time" becomes "Sanitize" when Dr. Quentin J. Lee an Alabama principal, "sings a rap song about Covid to MC Hammer's classic hit of 'Can't Touch This.'" Read the rest

Someone attached a "Trump 2020" sticker to a bear's tracking collar in North Carolina and an animal rights organization called Help Asheville Bears is offering $5,000 for information.From CNN:"Whoever put these political stickers on these bears is cruel and heartless," HAB wrote in a Facebook post. "HAB and our followers hope to stop and expose you. This is now the second bear this happened to, which can only mean either someone in the study is doing this or it is someone in the public. Either way, a full investigation needs to be done."Image: CNN Read the rest

James Lovelock, the NASA scientist who came up with the theory that the Earth is a self-regulating system (known as Gaia theory) recently celebrated his 101st birthday. In this BBC interview, Lovelock discusses the Coronavirus, and how the human race is an "opportunity for the virus. If you go on building at the population, it's almost inevitable that something is going to say, geez, there's a lot of stuff to eat there. Let's go get it."He also talks about entering his second century of life: " I've never been so happy. I had always thought the moment you passed 100 life started going downhill and it was miseries and staggering all over the place. Well, I may stagger, but I couldn't care less, it's really enjoyable." Read the rest

Multiple news outlets citing multiple sources report TikTok rumor, but Apple denies

For the five years that my wife and I have traveled around North America in our 40' motorhome, I've been throwing all of our cutlery, unorganized, into a single drawer, like some kind of animal.It's not that I don't want to find a fork when I need one. The drawers you'll find in most motorhomes and trailers are small. The sorts of cutlery trays y'all use at home typically won't fit into them. In the past, I've considered building an organizer into the drawer we use for cutlery. It didn't happen in the end: Just because you want to keep your knives and absinthe spoon in a drawer now, doesn't mean the storage space won't be used for something else down the road, later.After years of looking for a solution, I finally came across this adjustable cutlery tray on Amazon. Problem soved. Read the rest

Researchers successfully revived ancient microbes, some more than 100 million years old, that were buried in the seafloor. During an expedition to the South Pacific Gyre, the scientists from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and their colleagues drilled into the ocean sediment almost 6,000 meters below the surface. “Our main question was whether life could exist in such a nutrient-limited environment or if this was a lifeless zone,” JAMSTEC senior scientist Yuki Morono said. “And we wanted to know how long the microbes could sustain their life in a near-absence of food.”From a JAMSTEC announcement:With fine-tuned laboratory procedures, the scientists, led by Morono, incubated the samples to coax their microbes to grow. The results demonstrated that rather than being fossilized remains of life, the microbes in the sediment had survived, and were capable of growing and dividing.[...]“What’s most exciting about this study is that it shows that there are no limits to life in the old sediment of the world’s ocean,” said [URI Graduate School of Oceanography professor Steven] D’Hondt. “In the oldest sediment we’ve drilled, with the least amount of food, there are still living organisms, and they can wake up, grow and multiply.”The Daily Grail warns, "Lovecraftian horrors await us in 2021 don’t they…"More: "Aerobic microbial life persists in oxic marine sediment as old as 101.5 million years" (Nature Communications)image: JAMSTEC Read the rest

A classic in its own right, Everything Is Terrible's supercut of people in the '90s saying "It's the 90s" is viral again today. After all, it's the '20s again, and history is in a repetitive mood. Read the rest

In 1971 the great Sammy Davis Junior told Dick Cavett about the time he bombed on stage in Osaka in a nightclub attended by "elderly Japanese people." Davis gives quite a performance merely recounting the story.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Gum Soft-Picks do a better job than toothpicks or floss for cleaning food and plaque from between my teeth. For me, it's just much more convenient than using dental floss. The rubbery green brush pushes out all the gunk without hurting. You can buy them in packs of 50, 100, 150, or 300. Read the rest

A man who refused to wear a mask in a store, stole two cigars, fired a handgun at the clerk and later an AK-47 at cops coming to arrest him, injuring one of them, was "not handling the pandemic well," says his lawyer.Adam Zaborowski, 35, was taken into custody after the shootout with officers in Bethlehem Township, Pa., police said. Lehigh Valley Live reports the kind of day that only some of us can get out of alive.The 35-year-old Slatington man was charged Saturday with attempting to kill seven police officers near his home at 801 Main St. That shootout followed an incident Friday where Zaborowski allegedly shot at a clerk at Cigars International in Bethlehem Township. He allegedly refused to wear a face mask in the cigar store despite the threat of COVID-19. ...“He just wasn’t dealing well with the loss of his job, the loss of his child, just not handling the pandemic well,” Waldron said. “I think he was getting stretched too tight.” Read the rest

Casey William Kelley, age 42, enjoyed the good life for a few days when he came up with the idea of printing phony checks, say police in Florida. They accused Kelley of using one of the fake checks to buy a swell-looking Porsche 911 Turbo for $139,203.05, and another check for $61,521 to buy three Rolex watches.From The Palm Beach Post:However, the jeweler kept the watches until it could be determined if the check would cash. Thursday, it was reported to WCSO that the check was a fake.When arrested Wednesday afternoon, Kelley told investigators he printed out the cashier’s checks from his home computer and did not get them from his bank.Kelley was transported and booked into the Walton County Jail without incident. Read the rest

An Austrian visitor to the Gipsoteca Museum in Possagno, Italy posed for a selfie while sitting on an original plaster cast sculpture created in 1804 by Antonio Canova. The gentleman managed to snap off two of the figure's toes before making a hasty exit.Via The Art NewspaperThe tourist, identified as Austrian by the museum, “sat on the sculpture of Paolina Bonaparte… then left the museum in a hurry without reporting the incident”, officials say. The museum adds that guards discovered the damage “a few minutes later and raised the alarm”. One commentator responded on Facebook however: “How can you sit on a sculpture? We need to put up more security… You can’t get this close.” Read the rest