The CDC just broadened coronavirus testing guidelines. Anyone with COVID-19 symptoms and their doctor's approval can now get tested — but there are still not enough kits.

Today's CDC change greatly expands the pool of patients who can now qualify for diagnostic testing, even though testing capacity remains limited.

From the New York Times:

Doctors were encouraged to first rule out other causes of respiratory illness, like influenza, and to take into consideration whether there are other local coronavirus cases, officials said.

Previous guidelines required a patient to have symptoms of respiratory illness as well as a clear route of exposure, such as recent travel to China or a number of other affected countries, contact with a known coronavirus patient, or hospitalization with a severe and unexplained respiratory illness.

[PHOTO: CDC] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/cdc-broadens-coronavirus-testi.html

The 2020 election. Coronavirus. The long, slow death rattle of human decency. Screw it all, Tom & Jerry's on the tube. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/youll-never-find-same-level.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/gentleman-uses-fishing-rod-to.html

In 2013 Mats J"arlstr"om's wife got a red light camera ticket at an intersection in Oregon. J"arlstr"om, an electrical engineer by training, investigated the formula used to time yellow lights. J"arlstr"om found flaws with the formula and e-mailed the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying to let them know. Here's what happened next, according to the Institute for Justice:

The Board told Mats it had no interest in hearing about his ideas. Fair enough. But the Board didn’t stop there. After a two-year investigation, it fined him $500 for publicly criticizing the timing of traffic lights without having a Professional Engineer license. The Board also forbid him from continuing to discuss his research.

With the aid of the Institute for Justice, J"arlstr"om sued the board. In late 2018, the federal court ruled in J"arlstr"om's favor. J"arlstr"om submitted his idea to the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), which assembled a panel to consider it. In late February, the ITE panel "found that the current equation for yellow light timing should be reconsidered and as of today [Feb 28, 2020], the Institute has voted to recommend Mats’s formula as a recommended practice." Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/man-who-was-fined-500-for-cri.html

Very few people enjoy the process of buying a new or used car from a dealer. ("Let me check with my sales manager." "How much can you afford per month? I'll make it work.") But while those tactics are obvious and annoying, some dealers will run schemes that are downright illegal just to close the sale. Over at Jalopnik, professional car shopper Tom McParland reveals some of those activities as reported by two consumer protection attorneys. Here's one thing attorney Steve Lehto says to watch out for:

Dealers that curbstone. They have a hard time moving the car off their lot so they advertise it on craigslist and pretend it is a private sale. (This may be legal in some states but it certainly is shady). The key? Beware of a private seller claiming they have a dealer doing the paperwork as a favor.

And attorney Daniel Whitney calls out these dealership tricks:

Inflating income and deflating monthly rent on the credit application.

Finance managers are notorious for inflating income so a consumer will qualify for a car that they cannot afford. At the same time, they decrease the consumer’s monthly rent for the same reason. I have seen many consumers with credit applications that say they pay no rent because they “live with family,” who also are stated as making double or triple their actual monthly salary...

The dealership steals the GAP (guaranteed auto protection) and/or extended warranty money.

The fraud here is simple. The customer pays for GAP and an extended warranty, but the dealership never pays the premiums.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/the-illegal-things-that-unscru.html

The owner of a ramen shop in Japan thinks non-Japanese people are more likely to have and spread coronavirus, so he put a hand drawn sign in front of his restaurant that says "Sorry!! Japanese Only Sorry!!!"

In this video Yuta, host of the YouTube channel That Japanese Man Yuta, interviewed Japanese people to find out what they think about this. As you might guess, some people are in favor of banning foreigners from the shop, while others think it's wrong. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/what-do-japanese-people-think.html

Iggy Pop's "We Are the People" is based on a poem penned in 1970 by his old friend, the great Lou Reed. About the poem, Pop told the BBC back in September, "My God, this is the country today as I understand it, or at least one legitimate portrayal of the country today." Last week, Pop performed "We Are the People" with Reed's widow Laurie Anderson at Carnegie Hall for the Tibet House Benefit and now he's released this striking video performance. The song appears on Pop's latest album Free. From "We Are the People:"

We are the people without land / We are the people without tradition...

We are the people without sorrow who have moved beyond national pride and indifference to a parody of instinct / We are the people who are desperate beyond emotion because it defies thought / We are the people who conceive our destruction and carry it out lawfully

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/new-video-for-iggy-pops-spok.html

Prog-turned-pop band Genesis will hit the road later this year for their first tour since 2007. As usual, this will be the Genesis of the late 1970s and 1980s, after Peter Gabriel left the band. Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford will be joined by Collins' son Nic on drums and guitarist/bassist Daryl Stuermer. The Last Domino Tour 2020 begins in Dublin on November 16 before heading to England. No US dates have been announced. Yet.

(Billboard)

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/genesis-the-trio-are-reuniti.html

Gonna sing this while I wash my hands. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/this-vietnamese-pop-song-about.html

Her training regimen stops for nothing, not falling branches, downed power lines, gas leaks, loose dogs, dangerous debris in pitch darkness, and certainly not for the tornadoes that tore through Tennessee earlier this week, killing 24. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/firemen-surprised-to-see-jogge.html

This police bodycam footage begins in mundane form, with a pulled-over motorist being issued a ticket for some traffic infraction or other. A loud crash is heard, and while we can't see it, we know it's trouble because the cop lets the motorist off and dashes back to his car. He races to the scene of the accident and we see the box truck wrecked in the highway, flames dancing around the windshield and tires. The officer and another rescuer haul the disoriented driver from the fire. Barely a second or two later, a roaring noise is recorded and we soon see that the entire cabin is engulfed.

The driver suffered minor injuries, according to New Jersey State Police, and they don't know what caused the crash. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/driver-pulled-from-crashed-tru.html

The secret to project management is that there really is no secret. In fact, with so many popular and well-proven methodologies around for shepherding a company’s biggest initiatives from concept to completion, leaders are better served following some battle-testing paths rather than trying to build one of their own.

It’s a lucrative career option for those willing to learn the ropes from the pros.  The Complete 2020 PMP Training Bundle includes all the training needed to get familiar with the basics of project management and start carving your way toward becoming your company’s ultimate go-to ace in the hole.

Not only does this 10-course, 150-plus hour package introduces the principles of PMP, Agile, Six Sigma and more, but the training is structured to help students get certified in each of those varied disciplines.

That includes PMP certification from the world-acknowledged authority in the subject, the Project Management Institute (PMI). A pair of courses unlock industry standards found in the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the PMBOK, around scheduling, costs, resource allocation and other major areas any good PM has to know.

Meanwhile, four more courses tackle the popular Agile and Agile Scrum approaches, which rely heavily on the teamwork, self-organization and accountability of team members. Finally, the Six Sigma methodology is the subject of an additional two courses dedicated to a process that values streamlining variation and cutting down on errors to keep a project focused and on track.

Finally, students will also be introduced to ITIL, the well-used IT framework of best practices for making IT issues more manageable and responsive to a company and a customer’s needs. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/get-150-hours-of-elite-project.html

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Super Medical Force must track down a catastrophically dangerous illness to save the U.S., and even the world!

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/super-medical-force-detects-a.html

Cleethorpes is a faded northern English resort town whose inherent grimness is leavened by low rainfall and a nice sandy beach. And now it is to become home to a giant white metal palm tree, to the dismay of some locals.

Artist Wolfgang Weileder has said the sculpture will serve as a "warning for the future" on climate change. It will feature a black shadow underneath, partly made from recycled material collected from Cleethorpes beach. The project, due to be installed by the end of the year, attracted mixed reactions from residents, with some describing the sculpture as a "laughing stock". North East Lincolnshire Council's planning committee approved the sculpture by six votes to four, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported.

They should call it The Tree of Brexit as it will warn off invading Danes.

Illustration: North East Lincolnshire Council Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/english-resort-town-to-get-gia.html

Joe Biden took most of the states voting yesterday for a Democratic candidate to challenge President Trump, including an unexpected win in Texas. Rival Bernie Sanders, however, overwhelmed Biden in California to grab the night's biggest haul of delegates. The results confirm the scale of Biden's comeback, which kicked off with a big win last week in South Carolina, and suggest a two-man slog for the job.

For his $500m+ investment, billionaire Mike Bloomberg won a single race -- American Samoa -- and indicated that his vanity campaign might soon be over. Elizabeth Warren could only manage third place in Massachussets, trailing across the map.

With many close races, Biden and Sanders nonetheless split the haul between them. According to the BBC, with several races yet to declare, Biden has 453 convention delegates, Sanders 382, Warren 50 and Bloomberg 44. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/biden-wins-most-super-tuesday.html

My colleague Jon Chase has a great new piece up on Wirecutter detailing some of the delightful ways he's found to lean into his Dad Joke-ness and use Alexa to screw with his kids:

I happen to be content with the number of times I’ve heard the song “Baby Shark,” and I feel no need to hear it ever again in this life or the next. So I whipped up a quick Routine in about 30 seconds, and now, should anyone dare to utter the command “Alexa, play ‘Baby Shark,’” Alexa will reply, “Ooh, not in this house, sucker!” and then play Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.”

You can use that trick for any other tune, podcast, or really any Alexa query that has worn out its welcome.

I suppose my own future child is still a ways away from verbalizing Alexa commands, but this does make me strangely look forward to that moment. Still, it's kind of refreshing to remember the wonderfully stupid potential of something Alexa, without having to stain it all with security concerns. (Shit, I just ruined it, didn't I?)

How I use Alexa to dunk on my kids [Jon Chase / Wirecutter]

Image: PetraGrey / Wikimedia Commons (CC 4.0) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/easy-ways-to-use-alexa-just-to.html

If the year was 1836 and you were a Royal Librarian at Spain's Real Biblioteca P'ublica, this was probably your uniform. We can assume pants were part of the deal (right?).

image via CEIP Arias Montano Library (Seville)

(Neatorama, Super Punch) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/librarians-once-wore-this-as-t.html

The United States "liberated" Guam and the Marianas Islands from 1898 during the Spanish-American War. As is usually the case with American Liberation, this meant further colonization, conversion into military outposts, and a forced re-education of the native Chamorros. To be fair, those indigenous inhabitants had already endured some 300 years of Spanish colonialism by then. By the time the US showed up, most Chammoros spoke in Spanish. But they also had their own language, called CHamoru.

But, as the Guardian tells it, the imperialist force that famously boasts about its firm belief in the freedom of speech (from a country that doesn't even have an official language) tried to stomp out the language at all costs:

The US navy banned CHamoru in 1917 “except for official interpreting”. The naval administration even burned CHamoru-English dictionaries.

It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the ban on speaking CHamoru in schools was lifted, says Michael Bevacqua, a CHamoru language educator on Guam. Until then, schoolchildren who spoke CHamoru were punished, and their parents were sometimes even fined.

[…]

A decade ago, the US census estimated there were about 25,827 CHamoru speakers on Guam, just 2,394 of whom were under the age of 18, and only 14,176 CHamoru speakers in the rest of the island chain.

Robert Underwood, the former president of the University of Guam, says most of the fluent speakers are likely to be over the age of 50.

“In another 20 to 30 years there may not be any real first-language speakers of CHamoru,” he says.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/inside-the-effort-to-save-an-i.html

WATCH: Security footage shows a man using a fishing rod to remove a Versace necklace from a mannequin within the store just after 2am. pic.twitter.com/9S103jZjv4

 Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) March 3, 2020

In the surveillance footage above, a fellow is seen using a fishing rod to snatch a designer necklace from a mannequin's neck inside a Melbourne, Australia shop. Police are asking for help identifying the suspect. From CNN:

Authorities believe the man made a hole in the storefront glass window, then slid the fishing rod through the hole into the store to lift the necklace from the mannequin inside, according to CNN affiliate Nine News.

"It appears that the burglar was fishing for about three hours before landing his catch," said police in the statement.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/04/thief-used-fishing-rod-to-stea.html

This purrito cat is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and she is a Ragdoll/British Short mixed Munchkin Female who was adopted 3 years ago.

Follow @Littlemunchiepooky on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

Pooky Burrito! . . For any licensing requests please contact liscensing@break.com

A post shared by Pooky the Munchkin (@littlemunchiepooky) on Feb 9, 2017 at 7:34am PST

[via r/Purrito] Read the rest

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