https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/tom-hanks-blood-could-be-use.html

As the line goes "you don't know what you've got til it's gone." The land and sea critters at the Texas State Aquarium were wondering where all of the loud and annoying 2-leggeds went. Figuring they might be missing the limelight, the staff decided to let the sea animals meet some of the land animals.

The dolphins seemed to find Chico the sloth particularly amusing. Something tells me Chico may not have been super-excited to meet the inhabitants of the shark tank.

Read more and see a video of Chico touring the aquarium on Bored Panda.

The also let puppies from a local humane society have a day at the aquarium.

Image: Screengrab Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/land-and-seas-creatures-at-the.html

Celebrated artist, Roger Dean, known for his iconic album cover art for Yes, Uriah Heep, and Asia (but mostly Yes), has been Facebook streaming the development and rendering of the cover for Yes' forthcoming record.

Dean did the first session on Wednesday and the second today. Unfortunately, his feed has had bad audio and buffering issues, making it challenging to watch. Let's hope some of that can get sorted out by the next one.

See future sessions on his Facebook page.

Image: Screengrab Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/roger-dean-designs-and-paints.html

I spent the first two weeks of my quarantine shitting in a portapotty in the parking lot of my building. It wasn't great — but hey, at least it was always stocked with hand sanitizer.

The contractors I'd hired to renovate my bathroom were not so good on timeliness or communication before the pandemic started. And it only got worse from there. So I drove 300 miles in late March where I could at least be with my pregnant wife, and where at least I could shit indoors.

I returned home the other day to find that the bathroom still wasn't finished (though at least I could shower and shit now). Disappointed, I began to unpack my things, and ended up listening to this new NPR Short Wave podcast, which strangely made me feel better. It traces the history of indoor plumbing — including the uphill battle of trying to get people to understand that no, actually, a centralized sewage system will be better for your sanitation, and you shouldn't worry about the shit from other peoples' shit infecting your home. It goes on to explain how things such as porcelain/tiling and first-floor "powder rooms" actually served utilitarian purposes, making it easier for people to distance themselves from potential disease carriers, or clean things off after hosting guests with uncertain medical histories.

To be clear, I'm not sure why this made me feel better about my frustrating bathroom contracting experience. Or the deadly virus that continues to rage just outside my doors. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/modern-bathroom-design-is-a-di.html

While CBD is not a cure-all miracle drug, millions of users can be forgiven for feeling that way and singing its praises.

CBD’s direct medical impact still remains to be fully researched and documented, but those who have become believers in the non-psychoactive cannabis extract say the drug is a godsend, alleviating the symptoms of everything from anxiety, depression, and insomnia to chronic pain, drug addiction, muscle spasms, and debilitating illnesses like Parkinson’s disease and cancer.

With growing scientific evidence backed by reams of anecdotal findings, the market for CBD and CBD-infused products is exploding, expected to grow to over $2.1 billion in consumer sales this year.

Unlike many products containing CBD or even CBD-based oils, capsules of the hemp extract help deliver a more even dosage through the body, which is why products like Common Ground Balance 900mg CBD capsules are a go-to conveyance system for those looking to maximize CBD effects.

Common Ground CBD supplements are created with premium full-spectrum hemp extracts that are farmed, extracted, formulated, and packaged in Colorado in proprietary, small-batch processes. Each capsule contains a 30mg dose of that organically-created CBD, enough to offer the whole body the full effects of its soothing properties.

Each 30 count bottle contains a month’s supply to work its healing, whether you need physical pain relief from nerve and muscle pain, arthritis, acne, or more; or biochemical support to combat Alzheimer’s symptoms, mental disorders, or high blood pressure.

With none of the mind-altering effects of THC, these supplements from Common Ground contain no artificial flavors or additives and are GMO-free, gluten-free, and vegan. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/save-20-on-these-cbd-capsules.html

Wait... what? First Lucille Ball and Star Trek and now this?

Dolly Parton secretly produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the unexpected crossover of cultural icons has left fans reeling.

While Parton was not herself credited as a producer on the long-running fantasy series, a company she co-created and owned was responsible for it coming to television.

Sandollar Entertainment, which is listed on the end credits of every episode of the show, was created by Parton and her friend and former business partner Sandy Gallin in 1986. It produced a number of films, including Father of the Bride (1991) and Fly Away Home (1996), as well as several Parton projects – most recently her Netflix anthology series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings.

Though it sounds like she had no direct involvement in the show, it's still kind of a cool association.

Read the rest here. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/dolly-parton-was-actually-a-pr.html

If it’s in this week’s tabloids, chances are it didn’t happen.

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/25/royals-clash-clooneys-divorce.html

We’re all getting pretty schooled in the fine art of DIY these days, even for stuff we’d never have dreamed of doing ourselves just two months ago.

There are services like housekeeping that we still hate. There are services like bartending that just work better in a group setting. Then there are beauty salons and barber shops, offering a precision service we’d be worried to try for ourselves.

But what about your friendly neighborhood massage therapist? Granted, their skills are often beyond reproach, so their usefulness is unquestioned. But unlike undyed hair or less than on fleek nails, sore muscle groups are more than a simple annoyance.

Since your massage therapist isn’t always practical logistically or financially right now, the Vortix Melo Massager is capable of picking up the slack, breaking up sore, barking muscle groups all on your own.

The Vortix comes packing six varying intensity settings, each designed to help spur relief by promoting lymphatic flow and breaking up lactic acid to fuel better blood flow and knock out muscle fatigue, soreness, spasms, and stiffness.

Its handheld design and six customized head attachments make it easy for the Vortix to reach just about anywhere, attacking pain in arm, leg, hip and feet muscles. It can even dig in deep in hard to reach places like your neck and back.

The adjustable speeds create different combinations of frequency, amplitude, and torque to apply just the right touch to your tired body at all times.

And while most personal massagers have the unfortunate side-effect of being as loud as being on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the Vortix actually purrs along at a quiet 50dB, which is about the noise level of a relatively calm suburban street. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/this-massage-therapy-gun-is-no.html

Despite the protestations of the White House Press Secretary and Breitbart — which are not, in fact, the same entity — the 45th President of the United State of America did indeed suggest that people should pump themselves full of toxic disinfectant chemicals and "UV light" to fight off coronavirus. And once again, The Onion proved itself to be not a satire site, but rather, a prophet of the apocalypse.

That was Thursday evening. By Friday afternoon, Trump insisted that his public declaration in the middle of an official government press conference was obviously meant to be sarcastic:

TRUMP TO REPORTER: "You know the way it was asked -- I was looking at you!"

REPORTER: "Sir, I wasn't here yesterday" https://t.co/sJ8wT1pOUs

 Joshua Green (@JoshuaGreen) April 24, 2020

Even if this were true — which is clearly, embarrassingly not — it would still not make for good optics if the leader of a country where 50,000 people had died from COVID-19 in just over a month was making jokes about it, especially after he had already touted another false cure that ended up killing a group of military veterans.

As The Guardian reports, Trump had actually received a message earlier this week from the leader of a religious group that worships cleansing the human body with poisonous chemicals like bleach:

[Mark] Grenon styles himself as “archbishop” of Genesis II – a Florida-based outfit that claims to be a church but which in fact is the largest producer and distributor of chlorine dioxide bleach as a “miracle cure” in the US.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/trump-insists-he-was-trolling.html

We bought Crafting With Cat Hair in 2013 when my daughter was 10. She started brushing our three cats and saving their hair in a plastic bag. Her first cat hair project was this little cat. If you aren't allergic to cats, why not take a break from Netflix and crossword puzzles and make something from your cats fur? Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/janes-cat-made-from-cat-hair.html

JAPAN: "Nowhere Man" by Lennon McCartney

RUSSIA: "She Loves You" by The Russian Beatles

CHINA: "Love Me Do" by The Cheatles

AUSTRALIA: Medly by The Australian Beatles

PHILIPPINES: "Help" and others by the Tipong Beatles

INDONESIA: "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by G-pluck

IRELAND: "I Feel Fine" by The Classic Beatles

BRAZIL: "I Saw Her Standing There" by The Beetles One

HUNGARY: "Revolution" by The Blackbirds

TURKEY: "Hard Day's Night" and "Love Me Do" by D.E.F. Orchestra

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/i-spent-too-much-time-watching.html

“Mark Grenon wrote to Trump saying chlorine dioxide ‘can rid the body of Covid-19’ days before the president promoted disinfectant as treatment”

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/man-peddling-bleach-as-coronav.html

“The Postal Service is a joke,” said the President of the United States.

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/trump-threatens-usps-amazon.html

Your phone rings, and you get a little rush of excitement. Maybe it’s a friend. Maybe it’s a family member. Maybe it’s somebody you haven’t spoken to in a while looking to reconnect. It’s a split second surge of adrenaline, pregnant with the hope of infinite promise.

Then, you look at your screen and...the spell is broken. It’s a damn telemarketer. Or a spammer. Or some other call you’ll wholeheartedly avoid. Now, you’re actively disappointed. Or annoyed. Or angry. Or all three. And that doesn’t even cover the time-wasting calls from unknown numbers.

CallHero Spam Call Blocker is a digital secretary that weeds out all those unsolicited calls that not only burn time but can actually put your data security at risk.

CallHero isn’t just a call blocker. It’s a smart, learning AI screening service that intelligently assesses, then deals with calls from numbers you don’t know, the first such AI-powered app in Apple’s App Store.

When you see a number you don’t recognize, you can kick it to CallHero’s next-gen technology. CallHero will actually screen the call, determine if it’s legit, then dump scammers or put real callers through to your ringer. So even if a high-tech spammer or robocaller has spoofed a number, CallHero will catch it and deal with it accordingly.

So far, CallHero has a solid track record, blocking nearly 100 percent of spam calls through traditional call filtering methods, then allowing the AI to correctly handle the rest with over 90 percent accuracy.

You can even personalize your CallHero secretary’s voice from friendly and personable to strictly professional for business lines. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/heres-how-to-harness-the-pow.html

The president says he was being sarcastic when he suggested during a White House coronavirus briefing that people should consider injecting bleach and consuming disinfectants as cure for COVID-19.

He was not being sarcastic.

He was being completely fucking nuts.

We should expect more shockers like this as things get worse inside his deranged brain.

From the Daily Beast:

Inside the West Wing, it was clear that the president’s talk of studying bizarre injections was not something that Trump had put a whole lot of thought into, nor did it seem like something he’d spent much time dwelling on privately before blurting it out.

Four senior administration officials and two sources close to the president each said on Friday that they had not previously heard Trump ever bring up disinfectant injections as something scientists should test as a coronavirus treatment. All were dumbfounded by what he had said during the televised briefing. Several official Trump surrogates reached by The Daily Beast on Friday morning had zero appetite to defend the president’s remarks, and were simply waiting for this bit of inconvenient news to slip out of the cable-news cycle.

“I was just sitting there watching it [live] and thinking to myself, ‘I guess this is going to be the thing tomorrow,’” said one of the administration officials.

In the halls of the White House, top aides went into a very familiar damage-control mode. A former senior White House official noted that in the West Wing, Trump’s lieutenants have a very simple standard operating procedure for when the president “says something dumb that he probably should not have said”: just claim he was taken out of context or misinterpreted, insist that his underlying point was valid or good, and then go on the offense, usually by complaining about mainstream-media outlets treating Trump unfairly or obsessing over insignificant detail.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/cleanup-on-aisle-trump-dont.html

Israeli spy-tech firm used WhatsApp accounts to hack, Facebook claims

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/facebook-accuses-israels-nso.html

New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday tweeted what he identified as a letter he received from a farmer in northeast Kansas.

Enclosed was an N95 mask the man had left over from his farming work, to be donated for use in the coronavirus crisis.

It's a beautiful letter.

Here's the tweet, below, and under that there's an embedded copy of the image.

I received this letter from a farmer in northeast Kansas. His wife is ill and he is aging.

He sent me 1 of 5 N95 masks he has from farming to pass on to a doctor or nurse in New York.

This is humanity at its best. I share his letter as inspiration. pic.twitter.com/Fa4h5LH9rL

 Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 24, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/read-the-letter-ny-gov-andrew.html

Wow, here's something you don't see every day! Here's a video of dolphins "glowing" from the high amount of bioluminescence in the water off of Newport Beach, California.

Patrickc_la shot this gorgeous 4K video on a Sony a7Sii and writes:

Last night was truly one of the most magical nights of my life. Capt. Ryan @lawofthelandnsea of @newportcoastaladventure invited me along to capture rare video of Dolphins swimming in bioluminescence. The first time I saw this actually filmed was a few months back while watching a Night on Earth documentary on Netflix. The second I saw that footage it became a dream of mine to one day capture something similar and that’s exactly what we did. This was by far the most challenging video I’ve shot for a number of reason. For starters the bioluminescence has sweet spots to where it shows up and then fades away so while on the water it’s impossible to just find it. Not only that but actually finding any type of animal in pitch black is just so ridiculously hard. Conditions have to be absolutely perfect the bioluminescence to show up and to have an animal swim through it so we can film it. On top of all that just trying to nail the focus at such a wide aperture with something moving in the water was a nightmare. We were out for a few hours and on our final stretch back we finally had 2 Dolphins pop up to start the incredible glowing show.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/stunning-new-4k-video-of-dolph.html

“The president's financial dealings with the state-owned bank complicate his attacks on Biden.”

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/trump-owes-10s-of-millions-to.html

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alyssa Limperis (@alyssalimp) on Apr 18, 2020 at 11:11am PDT

Here's Comedian Alyssa Limp doing an excellent job channeling Michael Scott as the obnoxious boss trying to get a laugh at the start of every Zoom meeting. Her video sketches are always the highlight of my Instagram scrolls. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/24/the-boss-who-tries-to-be-funny.html