In San Antonio, Texas -- Federal health officials were planning to drop off some of the evacuated cruise ship passengers at a local shopping mall, after the coronavirus-exposed patients got out of a two-week quarantine at a Texas air base. This is one reason the city declared a public health emergency over COVID-19, said a city spokeswoman on Tuesday.

San Antonio filed a lawsuit yesterday to stop the Trump administration's plan, after a woman was mistakenly released from quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base over the weekend despite testing positive for coronavirus.

The woman had visited the North Star Mall, where the others were to be dropped off, before that mistake was discovered. The mall shut down for deep cleaning.

From AP:

Mayes said 122 passengers were released Tuesday, while seven remained in quarantine. Many passengers were bused to San Antonio International Airport, where they were escorted to ticket counters and through security. Others who live in Texas were escorted to car rental counters.

Passenger Terri Feil of Houston said a CDC official told them in a conference call Sunday that the mall, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) from the base, was chosen to avoid the media.

Feil said only people who were not going to the airport were to be dropped off at the mall. The Feils showed The Associated Press a text message they said was from the CDC indicating they were to be dropped off at the entrance by The Cheesecake Factory.

“My husband was asking, ‘who made this decision?’”

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/cdc-was-going-to-drop-off-coro.html

A person who works at Amazon.com's corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington, has tested positive for COVID-19, said the company.

At least 20 people in the Seattle region have tested positive for COVID-19, and eight have died, state health officials said Tuesday. This area of Washington state has become the U.S. outbreak's epicenter.

Writes Monica Nickelsburg at GeekWire:

The employee went home sick on Tuesday, Feb. 25 and later tested positive for COVID-19. Amazon notified employees who came into close contact with the individual. The employee is based out of Amazon’s Brazil building at 400 9th Ave N, near downtown Seattle. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the news and said the company is “supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine.”

Amazon is advising employees who are experiencing symptoms of the coronavirus to stay home and seek medical attention. The company is conducting “enhanced deep cleaning and sanitization” at the office. Amazon employs more than 50,000 people in the Seattle region, most of whom are clustered at the headquarters in South Lake Union.

[via techmeme]

Amazon employee in Seattle tests positive for coronavirus https://t.co/6Q2CSKVrzz

 Monica Nickelsburg (@mnickelsburg) March 4, 2020

Amazon employee in Seattle has tested positive for illness caused by coronavirus, @bromano reports. https://t.co/d17P5fC6zm via @seattletimes

 Rami Grunbaum (@rgrunbaum) March 4, 2020

An Amazon employee in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a message sent to Amazon employees Tuesday in Seattle and Bellevue. (via @bromano)https://t.co/M6w5YG4zvf

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/amazon-says-employee-in-seattl.html

In a little over a month, golf fans will get an answer to the big question they’ve been asking for almost a year: can Tiger do it again? After his improbable return to majors form with a stunning victory at last year’s Masters in Augusta, everybody’s anxious to see what happens this time around in April.

Of course, most of our most pressing golf questions are a little closer to home. Like...when am I finally going to be able to sink a putt consistently? Or, how am I going to be able to get in some practice this week? Or just, what the heck happened to my ball?

Legit questions, all. Thankfully, we’ve got a whole host of golf accessories to fill out your bag, improve your time on the links and maybe just shave a stroke or two off your game.

Rangefinders

How do you know how far to hit it if you don’t know how far it is? That’s where this trio of rangefinders can help accurately gauge out your shots when yardage markers are tough to come by.

The NX7 Pro Slope: Golf Rangefinder ($199; originally $249) uses laser technology and a pulse vibration feature to give you precise measurement to the flag, not everything around it.

With the Callaway 200s Laser Rangefinder ($169.99; originally $219), its Pin Acquisition tech will lock on to the pin from up to 275 yards away and give you up to 6x magnification to scope out every element of your shot before you swing. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/here-are-the-accessories-that.html

• Coronavirus fears can't stop the fromage

In Wisconsin today, the world's largest technical cheese, butter and yogurt competition kicked off with a record 3,667 entries from 26 nations.

Some 55 judges will inspect, sniff, and eat samples of 132 classes of dairy products during the World Championship Cheese Contest.

Judges include cheese graders, cheese buyers, dairy science professors, and researchers from 19 nations and 14 states, AP reports:

The last time the competition was held in 2018, a hard sheep’s milk cheese called Esquirrou made in France at Mauleon Fromagerie won top honors. It is imported by Savencia Cheese USA. This year’s winner will be announced Thursday.

One judge and 30 people from a Japanese university could not attend because the university didn’t allow international travel due to the new coronavirus, Sweeney said.

There will be extra hand-washing stations and hand sanitizers for the judges “out of an abundance of good intention,” she said. Otherwise, the virus was not expected to affect the competition, she said.

More at AP: Wisconsin hosts largest technical dairy competition in world Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/largest-technical-dairy-compet.html

I'm gonna need some pepto bismol to cure the headache that I have from trying to think about this logic.

Medical experts at the White House have to patiently explain to Trump that his idea of using the flu vaccine to address the coronavirus will not work. pic.twitter.com/acghVStSvK

 Oliver Willis (@owillis) March 2, 2020

The crucial part:

You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that would have an impact or much have an impact on corona?

Speaking of coronavirus and vaccines, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has claimed that US medical will have performed close to a million coronavirus tests by the end of this week. That's good news! What's not good news is that some test kits have already been contaminated, after the CDC had already sent out hundreds of flawed test kits in the first place. So far, the US has tested has tested about 500 people total; according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories (via Politico), we'd still only be able to run about 10,000 tests per day across the country under ideal conditions. As such, it's not clear how Hahn reached that conclusion of one million test kits. Maybe he was using Trump inauguration math?

FDA chief's claim of 1M coronavirus tests by end of week stirs controversy [David Lim / Politico]

Image: White House / Public Domain Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/trump-suggested-using-the-flu.html

Here's a Kickstarter for a cool graphic novel project by Ayize Jama-Everett, John Jennings, et. al. called Box of Bones, described as "Tales from the Crypt Meets Black History."

When my friend Mark Dery let me know about this project, he wrote, "Jordan Peele remixes Lovecraft? Zora Neale Hurston meets EC Comics? Pulp voodoo in the age of Trump, Black Lives Matter, and white supremacy’s death rattle? I’m guessing all of the above, conjured up by Jama-Everett’s evocative prose and Jennings’s dynamic, Kirbyesque illustrations."

When Black graduate student, Lyndsey, begins her dissertation work on a mysterious box that pops up during the most violent and troubled time in Africana history, she has no idea that her research will lead her on a phantasmagorical journey from West Philadelphia riots to Haitian slave uprisings. Wherever Lyndsey finds someone who has seen the Box, chaos ensues. Soon, even her own sanity falls into question. In the end, Lyndsey will have to decide if she really wants to see what’s inside the Box of Bones.

Described as “Tales from the Crypt Meets Black History,” Box of Bones is a supernatural nightmare tour through some of the most violent and horrific episodes in the African Diaspora.

Volume 1 contains art from John Jennings, Sole Rebel, Damian Duffy, Frances Olivia Liddell-Rodriguez, Tommy Nguyen, Jarmel and Jamal Williams, and Bryan Christopher Moss with covers by Stacey Robinson!!!

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/box-of-bones-tales-from-t.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/__trashed-24.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/vhs-horror-movies-are-corrupti.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/fox-news-brit-hume-posts-web.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/books-sold-by-the-linear-foot.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/cathryn-aison-and-philip-glass.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/full-stack-developers-make-ove.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/coronavirus-a-perfect-excuse-f.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/falling-printer-misses-man-by.html

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 expos'e 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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/man-spies-on-scammers-through.html

Aindrias de Static and his band The Latchik'os 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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/irish-storyteller-cleans-up-hi.html

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 notes

Please support us on Patreon! Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/in-1942-winnipeg-staged-a-naz.html

So long, Chris. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/supercut-of-chris-matthews-c.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/making-your-own-hand-sanitizer.html

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

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/03/fanny-devito-the-danny-devito.html