http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/dCASi6YPckE/pizza-making-robot-company-lay.html

If you can't or won't or just don't drink cow milk, Starbucks has a new option for you.

On Tuesday, the global coffee chain began offering oat milk along with other plant-based milks in beverages, at certain US locations, with plans to expand.

Starbucks had previously begun offering new beverages made with coconut and almond milk in the United States and Canada. Soy is a longtime option offered at Starbucks, worldwide. Oat is pretty recent, and I happen to like it.

More plant options seem like they'll be a good thing for the planet, because animal agriculture is linked to climate change, not to mention animal suffering.

From Reuters:

Sweden-based Oatly, which supplies oat milk to Starbucks in the Midwest, started production in the United States about three years ago and has partnered with several cafes in the country, including New York-based bubble tea caf'e Boba Guys and Chicago-based Intelligentsia.

The trend mirrors the popularity of plant-based meat substitutes, with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods adding their vegan patties and sausages to menus at fast-food and fine-dining restaurants.

Starbucks has sold lattes and coffees with oat milk in Europe since 2018 and at a few of its upscale Reserve locations in the United States since last year.

Starbucks launches oat milk drink as vegan movement grows [reuters.com] Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/V6-cvPovHfQ/starbucks-adds-oat-milk-to-veg.html

“Volume decline accelerated in 2019, down 3% through November.”

The new availability of a wide array of legal marijuana products has is beginning to take a bite out of beer consumption in Canada, reports Bloomberg News.

That's a big deal for a nation that prides itself in beer. What will Bob and Doug MacKenzie say?

Beer volumes fell by 3% through November, data from Beer Canada show.

“This is far worse than the trends seen between 2014-2018, where beer industry volumes fell an average 0.3%,” and appears to be related to Canada’s legalization of pot in late 2018, Cowen analyst Vivien Azer told Bloomberg News:

Domestic beer volumes slid 3.9% through November, while imported beer volumes grew 1.4%. Cannabis consumers appear to prefer mainstream beer “as they pursue better ‘buzz for your buck,”’ Azer said in a note published Tuesday.

There’s some debate about how much impact marijuana legalization has on alcohol consumption, although surveys of pot users indicate that they tend to drink less when they’re high. Declining sales have led to several alcohol-cannabis partnerships, including Constellation Brands Inc.’s investment in Canopy Growth Corp., Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s joint venture with Tilray Inc. and Molson Coors Brewing Co.’s partnership with Hexo Corp.

To be sure, the Canadian cannabis market is still tiny. Annual sales based on the most recent monthly data would be C$1.5 billion versus C$9.2 billion for beer and C$23 billion for alcohol.

Legal Pot Takes a Bite out of Beer Consumption in Canada [.bloomberg.com]

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/9BYjhJ83rdQ/canada-legalized-pot-and-beer.html

Be careful what you wish for. In Kentucky, authorities have arrested a man they say expressed a desire to go to jail to support his jailed girlfriend.

Raymond Pace, 47, is charged with offenses that include possession of methamphetamine, heroin and drug paraphernalia, Kentucky news outlets reported.

From the Garrard County Police Department's Facebook Page:

True Love.....

On January 4, 2020 at around 7:04 pm, Mr. Raymond Pace called dispatch wanting to report a stolen laptop computer.

When Officer Steven Debord arrived to take the report, an intoxicated Mr. Pace stated that he wanted to go to jail and needed to be locked up for 5 months, and asked if assault on a police officer would get him 5 months. Officer Debord advised Mr. Pace that he didn't want to do that, and instead suggested that they talk about whatever issues he was having. Mr. Pace agreed and invited Officer Debord into his home.

Once inside, Mr. Pace told Officer Debord that he needed to go to jail for 5 months because his girlfriend was in jail for for 5 months and he wanted to be there with her so she wouldn't be stressing out. Pace again asked if if assault would get him 5 months and shoved Officer Debord's shoulder. Officer Debord advised Pace not to do that again, and suggested that Pace go to bed and sleep off whatever alcohol he had consumed.

Pace continued to insist on going to jail, reaching under the couch and pulling out a box containing a baggie filled with suspected methamphetamine, several items of drug paraphernalia, including what Pace claimed was meth residue on a spoon.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/GDVwSDLkjwo/kentucky-man-who-wished-to-go.html

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/2YeV1Nx92sg/florida-woman-flings-poo-at-la.html

In Atlanta, a couple say they returned from their holidays to find their home had been completely wrecked by a squirrel. Their insurance company, Mercury, says nope-- squirrel damage is not covered. The couple has launched a GoFundMe. No word on the squirrel.

TODAY AT 5: A local family came home from vacation to find wood damage throughout...caused by a squirrel! Why their insurance carrier won’t cover the damage. pic.twitter.com/gh576P7HAY

 Mike Petchenik (@MPetchenikWSB) January 6, 2020

Kari and Dustin Drees purchased the home, their first, just in December in Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood.

Weeks later, off they went to visit family for the holidays.

While they were away, their home alarm system went off, signaling a possible intruder.

“We had a friend come check it out and our doors and windows were intact, so we just thought it was a software issue,” Ms. Drees said.

No windows or doors breached.

And yet.

They returned to a home with scratched up floors, chewed up baseboards -- even the kitchen sink was left running, Kari Drees told reporters.

Who did it?

A furry little asshole with a long tail.

From the Associated Press:

A squirrel had fallen down their chimney and was trapped in the house, defecating and scratching at everything to get out. Eventually it made a nest in the couple’s couch. “We’re stressed at first, but we were like, ‘This is why you have homeowner’s insurance. It’s in situations like this.’ ... and so we weren’t too stressed,” Kari Drees said.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/iggw4RAI4Y4/squirrel-wrecks-couples-home.html

I am backing up to this Seagate 2TB portable disk.

I last backed up my laptop a little over 8 months ago. I thought I would get back to my usual storage device, a Drobo 5N2, however, I have not visited my brother in a few months. I left the Drobo to serve as his Plex media server until I have a living room again.

Living la vida #vanlife!

As I frequently work from the road I was suddenly overcome with a need to backup my laptop. The Seagate is fast and fairly quiet. The drive is small and light enough to be a nearly unnoticeable addition to my bag.

Seagate Portable 2TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac (STGX2000400) via Amazon

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/gYHfzFVHfVs/this-2tb-usb-3-0-portable-seag.html

I'm already packing.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star's habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. Scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet's potential environments to help inform future observations.

TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. It's roughly 40 of the Sun's mass and size and about half its surface temperature. The star appears in 11 of the 13 sectors TESS observed during the mission's first year, and scientists caught multiple transits by its three planets.

The innermost planet, called TOI 700 b, is almost exactly Earth-size, is probably rocky and completes an orbit every 10 days.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/0oUj_RnuWlY/nasas-tess-mission-finds-ear.html

Andrew McCarthy, posting on Instagram as Cosmic Background, takes amazing astronomical photographs. Pictured above a breathtakingly detailed shot of the moon constructed from 100,000 individual photographs. You can buy prints of this and other works of his at his online store.

My first lunar image of 2020 is also one of my most detailed. This is a blend of around 100k photos, which allowed me to sharpen the image and overcome some of the fuzzing caused by our turbulent atmosphere. The colors you see are real, caused by variations in the composition of the regolith. This first quarter moon also is one of the best for showing crater detail, as the long shadows long the terminator really make the details pop.

Below is a rather menacing photo of the sun looming behing Mercury.

View this post on Instagram

Behold, the transit of Mercury! This is little guy at around 9:45am Pacific this morning. I captured hundreds of thousands of frames of the event so I could build an animation, but didn't want to wait so long before sharing something. Mercury is about the size of our moon, so seeing it like this really puts the scale of the sun in perspective. #mercurytransit2019 #astrophotography #space #astronomy #opteam #optcorp #meadeinstruments #mercury

A post shared by Andrew McCarthy (@cosmic_background) on Nov 11, 2019 at 11:17am PST

View this post on Instagram

After I posted a picture of some star trails taken from my backyard I had a lot of positive feedback and requests for prints, but frankly I knew I could do better.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CtSFT5m0E18/andrew-mccarthys-astronomica.html

This capybara is excited, unlike all the other capybaras here. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/w11eoEygwoI/capybara-is-excited.html

At UC San Diego, a group of experts came together to try and preserve the eyesight of 3-year-old gorilla who lives at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

A UCSD medical team assisted in surgery to remove a worsening cataract that had been caused by trauma.

Leslie was the patient's name, and her caretakers had noticed that her left eye was becoming cloudier.

From the UCSD announcement:

Animal care specialists at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park were concerned when they noticed cloudiness in the left eye of Leslie, a 3-year-old female western lowland gorilla. Closer inspection confirmed the lens had changed and the left eye was shifting haphazardly, prompting Leslie to favor use of her right eye.

Given Leslie’s young age and developmental stage, Safari Park veterinarians organized a team of internal and external experts, including ophthalmologists and anesthesiologists at UC San Diego Health, to perform the Park’s first-ever cataract surgery on a gorilla.

The operation took place at the Paul Harter Veterinary Medical Center at the San Diego Zoo.

Cataract surgeon Chris Heichel led the team of surgeons. He said he has performed thousands of operations, but that this was his first on a gorilla.

“Fortunately, the similarities between the anatomy of human and gorilla eyes are great enough to allow us to safely navigate the procedure without complication,” Heichel said in a press release from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

“The remainder of the eye appeared to be in excellent health, indicating exceptional vision potential for the rest of Leslie’s life.” Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/DQtMnrLYVok/gorilla-3-gets-treated-for-c.html

A group of high school students in Michigan made good use of their holiday break: they built a toilet paper pyramid.

The students belong to a 20-member robotics team, and they plan to sell the (unused) toilet paper now to raise money for their technology studies.

“There was a lot of excitement when we got to the last few layers, but the final roll at the top was actually pretty anti-climactic,” teen robotics enthusiast Maxton Herst told MLive.com. “Every single roll you place, you want it to be in the correct spot. It was just kind of mind-numbing work.”

The kids got the idea from seeing a similar pyramid in a YouTube video a few years ago.

From Associated Press:

The students built the pyramid during holiday break. The robotics team began to dismantle the pyramid Monday, the first day of classes after the holidays. Rolls of the two-ply toilet paper were placed into 96-count boxes for purchase.

IMAGE: BLITZCREEK ROBOTICS.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/MC7UW0XWhGk/students-build-pyramid-from-27.html

Ryan Scribner and Jake Carlini stayed at the cheapest Airbnb in New York City. It was $30/night. Above is Ryan's video and below is Jake's documentation of the experience. The verdict: "It wasn't too bad!"

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/po9_mDkqttI/i-stayed-at-the-cheapest-air.html

I loved this image, posted today to promote a B3TA newsletter but originally from its photoshop thread challenging readers to create album covers for old (largely UK) TV shows. It's by christhebarker.

If you're American and Zippy Stardust is a baffling, inexplicable horror to you, be assured the same is also true of Britons. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/OXmSNh5k4LE/zippy-stardust.html

Barrow (aka Utqiagvik), Alaska is the northernmost city in the United States. It's so far from most civilization that the grocery prices are astronomical. For example, a bag of frozen french fries is $17, cucumbers are $4.50 each, and a carton of orange juice is $12. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/8GmirpZjg0k/visiting-what-may-be-the-most.html

Millions of animals have been hurt or killed in Australia's devastating months-long fire season, but firefighter Sam Mcglone is able to save at least one of them – a baby kangaroo hiding under a log.

He wraps the nervous creature in a towel and later takes it to a vet. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/xlTWOU6zuHM/watch-an-australian-firefighte.html

Bellingcat's Guide To Using Reverse Image Search For Investigations pits Google's reverse image-search tool against Yandex's and Bing's, and finds that Yandex's is far and away the best 00 albeit within a limited, Eastern European-centric set of contexts. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/2W_DOeM0AU8/yandex-wins.html

If you ever find yourself time-traveling to 1975 and need to impersonate a Disneyland Haunted Mansion ride-operator, we've got you covered: just remember that in 1975, food and drinks were absolutely not allowed past the main gate, and that E-tickets should be torn in half and placed in the ticket box. (Thanks, Changa!) Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/cItcBzGP3mU/welcome-foolish-mortals.html

Farmers are increasingly sick of high-tech tractors that are expensive to buy and usually impossible to fix yourself due to their integrated digital technology. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, "Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days." To be sure, the farmers buying these old machines aren't luddites. In fact, they often customize and retrofit them with contemporary tech like GPS for automatic steering. From the Star Tribune:

“The newer machines, any time something breaks, you’ve got to have a computer to fix it,” (BigIron owner Mark) Stock said.

There are some good things about the software in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning if something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time to nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer is powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the dealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for labor. “That goes against the pride of ownership, plus your lifetime of skills you’ve built up being able to fix things,” (Machinery Pete founder Greg) Peterson said...

The cheaper repairs for an older tractor mean their life cycle can be extended. A new motor or transmission may cost $10,000 to $15,000, and then a tractor could be good for another 10 or 15 years.

Folland has two Versatile 875s manufactured in the early 1980s in Winnipeg and bought a John Deere 4440 last year with 9,000 hours on it, expecting to get another 5,000 hours out of it before he has to make a major repair.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/v1PGVf0pWGg/new-demand-for-very-old-farm-t.html

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail editorial, Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the 2020s, let’s imagine better things, where I reflect on what science fiction can tell us about the 2020s for the Globe's end-of-the-decade package; I wrote about how science fiction can't predict the future, but might inspire it, and how the dystopian malaise of science fiction can be turned into a inspiring tale of "adversity met and overcome – hard work and commitment wrenching a limping victory from the jaws of defeat."

I describe a scenario for a "Canadian miracle": "As the vast majority of Canadians come to realize the scale of the crisis, they are finally successful in their demand that their government address it unilaterally, without waiting for other countries to agree."

Canada goes on a war footing: Full employment is guaranteed to anyone who will work on the energy transition – building wind, tide and solar facilities; power storage systems; electrified transit systems; high-speed rail; and retrofits to existing housing stock for an order-of-magnitude increase in energy and thermal efficiency. All of these are entirely precedented – retrofitting the housing stock is not so different from the job we undertook to purge our homes of lead paint and asbestos, and the cause every bit as urgent.

How will we pay for it? The same way we paid for the Second World War: spending the money into existence (much easier now that we can do so with a keyboard rather than a printing press), then running a massive campaign to sequester all that money in war bonds so it doesn’t cause inflation.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/goBtSOmt2Fs/podcast-science-fiction-and-t.html