OMG coyote vs roadrunner is real and it’s happening right now y’all!!! #Tucson pic.twitter.com/a64qEbcCdv

 Michael Thomas Bogan (@mtbogan) May 10, 2020

“There is literally a coyote chasing a roadrunner. I can’t believe it. That is a straight-up cartoon,” said Michael Thomas Bogan as he shot video of the incident in Arizona. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/14/video-real-life-coyote-chases.html

How quaint "Not Racist But #1 With Racists" now seems. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/14/supercut-of-tv-shows-making-fu.html

This humorous scene presents a beautiful fractal of American office life. The soup of politeness, defensiveness, misaligned expectations and incentives, barely-suppressed self-loathing and rage, and bullshit? Surely recognizable to anyone who ever sank into the trance of Medium Busyor the the ludic loop for which it is a euphemism. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/14/are-you-medium-busy-with-v.html

The BBC reports that conspiracy videos about Covid-19 account for "more than a quarter of the most-watched videos" about the pandemic.

The study, published online by BMJ Global Health, looked at the most widely viewed coronavirus-related videos in English, as of 21 March. After excluding duplicate videos, videos longer than an hour and videos that did not include relevant audio or visual material, they were left with 69 to analyse. The videos were scored on whether they presented exclusively factual information about viral spread, coronavirus symptoms, prevention and potential treatments. Videos from government agencies scored significantly better than other sources, but were less widely viewed.

Of the 19 videos found to include misinformation:

about a third came from entertainment news sources national news outlets accounted for about a quarter internet news sources also account for about a quarter 13% had been uploaded by independent video-makers

Social media companies made a half-hearted show of clamping down on Covid-19 conspiracy material, but Rona nuts are a fully-fledged audience blasting onto the platforms with obsessive, unremitting levels of interest and engagement. YouTube's CEO has boasted about providing a home for far-right material and admitted a "corporate obsession with maximizing usage statistics". What do you think she's gonna do about the most-watched content on YouTube? Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/14/covid-misinformation-videos-ov.html

Watch live, as ousted Trump administration health official Rick Bright testifies on his whistleblower complaint before Congress.

Congress is hearing testimony today, Thursday morning, from the former U.S. vaccine director Dr. Rick Bright who says he was fired for opposing the Trump administration's Covid-19 response.

The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing “Protecting Scientific Integrity in the COVID-19 Response” with Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is now taking place on Capitol Hill.

Bright is expected to warn Congress of 'grave risks' associated with Trump's push to 'reopen the economy,' before it is safe.

Bright objected to use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine promoted by President Trump.

Follow live updates in this blog post. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/14/grave-risks-of-rushing-to.html

If you’ve ever considered what it would take to build your own video games, you’ve probably heard of AppGameKit. Over the past decade, the UK-based firm has become one of the independent game engines that helped democratize the process of creating apps and mobile gaming for the masses.

From games to other mobile apps, AppGameKit has distinguished itself for its ease of use, a platform embraced by hundreds of developers to quickly create games and utility apps that can be coded once, then deployed across all the most popular mobile platforms.

Users can now get a feel for exactly why it’s become so popular with The Complete AppGameKit Game Creator Bundle, a training and asset bundle that explores all aspects of creating with AppGameKit and exploring the full range of its abilities.

The training begins with AppGameKit: Easy Game Development Platform, an introductory guide into the world of creating in AppGameKit. Even if you’ve never built a game before, that’s ok.  It’s all explained in this no-experienced-required environment -- with the platform itself doing a lot of your coding heavy lifting for you. Whether you want to run your games on Android or iOS devices, Windows, Linux, or even the Raspberry Pi, this training can make it happen and show users why AppGameKit is a dream spot for cross-platform development and optimization.

Rapidly coding and deploying apps is a start, but to truly make your work stand apart, additional training focuses in on the look and added dimensionality of your games. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/this-kit-can-help-first-timers.html

Today is the birthday of Stevland Hardaway Morris, aka Stevie Wonder (1950). Let's celebrate the musical genius of the man with this jaw-dropping drum solo from early in his career.

Bonus track:

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/celebrate-the-wonder-that-is-s.html

It's beautiful pic.twitter.com/uDI9nlnI4A

 beef (@shittyfriend) May 13, 2020

Image: Evan Swigart / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/a-hot-dog-is-neither-a-sandwic.html

I have a new podcast recommendation for all you creative types — one that I think you're really going to dig. All-around great guy Jason Gots' latest listening venture is called Clever Creature and it's a bit different than your average podcast. It's more like a variety show, or maybe a zine for your ears. It's more loosely structured and spontaneous than I'm used to hearing, which gives it a refreshing edge. Each episode is focused on one random word. That word inspires a story, a song, and a conversation, conversations with peeps like David Sedaris, Mary Louise Parker, and even his own 12-year-old son, Emre. At the end of the first episode (and maybe future ones?), there's a seven-minute mediation.

His name may be familiar, as he spent the last five years hosting the Big Think podcast, Think Again. At that desk, he interviewed good folks like Neil Gaiman, Roz Chast, Terry Gilliam, Margaret Atwood, and over 200 more.

The first episode, "Desert," dropped Tuesday:

art by Nathan Gelgud Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/clever-creature-is-part-po.html

Great news for Las Vegas entertainer Roy Horn, who has made a “miracle recovery" from his "COVID deathbed!” according to this week’s ‘National Enquirer.’

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/roy-horn-lives-china-lied-an.html

What happens when someone with coronavirus coughs into their hand before eating at a buffet? Interested in seeing how the virus might have spread on cruise ships, NHK, Japan's national broadcasting company, conducted a so-called experiment with 10 volunteers at a buffet. Before anyone went to get their food, a dollop of florescent paint was squirted onto one person's palm. Then everyone served themselves some grub and sat at a couple of tables to eat. Watch how the paint had spread onto everything from serving utensils, napkins, and the tablecloth to people's jackets, hands, even even their faces.

NHK conducted an experiment to see how germs spread at a cruise buffet.

They applied fluorescent paint to the hands of 1 person and then had a group of 10 people dine.

In 30 min the paint had transferred to every individual and was on the faces of 3. pic.twitter.com/1Ieb9ffehp

 Spoon & Tamago (@Johnny_suputama) May 8, 2020

Of course this is a sloppy experiment. Most of all because someone's cough wouldn't match the consistency or quantity of paint that was squirted into the volunteer's palm, so who knows how the virus would compare to the paint in spreading. But it's still a fun watch. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/watch-an-experiment-that-show.html

A couple of days ago, I posted a Covid slogan maker that spat out bizarre warnings in the distinctive hazard-sign style favored by the British government. Now you can write your own text in with a more feature-packed UK Covid Slogan Generator, created by Ron MacDonald.

There are also “Boris” and “Conspiracy Nut” modes on it. ... No advertising / rubbish / cookies etc and it’s also on GitHub (https://github.com/caf3b4b3/slogan-generator), pull requests welcome.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/make-your-own-british-governme.html

Resume padding is as American as baseball and hot dogs. In fact, 4 out of 5 job applicants stretch, if not bend, sprain or outright fracture the truth about themselves on their resume. While some resume lies are truly epic, most fall into the little white lie variety, like claiming mastery of software with which you only hold a passing familiarity. 

This brings us to a majority of business professionals who list a proficiency with Microsoft Excel among their job-worthy talents. Are you truly battle-tested in all the various features of the world’s most popular spreadsheet and data analytics tool, or did you just update some cells on an Excel file once and calling it mastery?

Excel’s power and reach is indisputable, so whether you’re adept with its features or lying through your teeth, the training in The Complete 2020 Microsoft Excel Expert Bundle is a legitimate means of making that resume bullet a 100 percent true statement of your knowledge.

This package of four courses touting more than 20 hours of instruction isn’t for the first time Excel user, but if you’ve got a few Excel hours under your belt and want to learn the tips and tricks employed by true experts, this collection can get you there.

The Microsoft Excel 2019: Advanced course goes deep into advanced charting and graphing, how to create visualizations using sparklines and data bars, formatting tricks as well as the ability to calculate interest or depreciation in a spreadsheet. 

In Power Pivot, Power Query, and DAX in Excel, users explore some of Excel’s most powerful tools, such as high-level sorting and other organizational tips in Power Query and review capabilities of a PivotTable, all made possible with knowledge of the DAX formula language. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/give-your-microsoft-excel-skil.html

Apparently a high percentage of chefs at Chinese restaurants suffer shoulder plane from wok tossing. They must rapidly move the heavy pan to launch the food into the air so it cooks but doesn't burn, even though the temperatures may hit 1200°C. Recently, Georgia Tech mechanical engineers studied the kinematics of Chinese restaurant chefs to understand how they actually move and the "optimal regime for making fried rice." According to their scientific paper, they hope their study can not only lead to better fried rice for all but also "inspire the design of stir-fry robotics and exoskeletons to reduce the rate of muscle strain injury among professional chefs." From their scientific paper:

Tossing is a combination of two independent motions, a side to side motion and a see-saw motion, allowing rice grains to slide around the wok as well as to jump off the surface. We identify two critical parameters that chefs can vary: the frequency of tossing and the phase lag between the two motions applied. By filming professional chefs, we found that, at the frequency chosen by chefs, the phase difference performed is optimal for mixing. We suggest that future chefs increase the frequency of motion, which may enable rice to jump further, and promote cooling and mixing.

"The physics of tossing fried rice" (Journal of the Royal Society Interface via Science News) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/how-to-improve-your-fried-rice.html

The Hollywood Hills home that was the TV and real life abode of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson is now on the market for $6.5 million. Airing from 1952-1966, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet featured many exterior shots of the family's actual house. (Recently, it was also used as Ari Gold's residence on Entourage.) The current owner of the 1916 home is Law & Order: SVU star Christopher Meloni who purchased it in 2014. The home features many amenities, including a ghost, likely that of Ozzie Nelson who in 1975 reportedly died in the bedroom. From Architectural Digest:

It should be noted that—possibly as a result of Ozzie’s death—numerous previous owners have reportedly complained that the property is haunted. Spooky incidents include Ozzie’s model train, which runs on a track near the ceiling in the pub room, inexplicably running on its own in the middle of the night; and the smell of rose-scented perfume.

image: Hilton & Hyland Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/for-sale-ozzie-and-harriets.html

"Revvin' up your engine, listen to her howlin' roar. Metal under tension, beggin' you to touch and go."

Next up, a deepfake with Tom Cruise as Luke Skywalker?

(Thanks, Emmett K!) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/star-wars-meets-top-gun.html

In hopes of minimizing the spread of coronavirus in their community, the Cheyenne River Sioux have established a series of checkpoints on state highways that run through tribal reservations in South Dakota. As Truthout explains:

Commercial drivers and South Dakota residents are being allowed to travel on tribal lands, but non-state residents are only allowed entry onto the reservations if they can provide proof of tribal membership or proof that they live there. Non-state residents are also being banned from hunting or fishing on tribal lands.

These, of course, are far more active measures than anything that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has done so far in this pandemic. And this clearly made her upset, or possibly embarrassed, because she wrote a letter to tribal leaders stating:

I request the Tribe immediately cease interfering or regulating traffic on U.S. and State Highways and remove all travel checkpoints. If the checkpoints are not removed within the next 48 hours, the State will take necessary legal action.

Under normal circumstances, there may be a valid argument about what some would consider the vigilantism on display here. However, when it comes to Native American land rights and legal jurisdictions, things get complicated. But they've been putting up with this shit for a while now, and many of them have a keen understanding of how things with the US government — namely, that it won't do shit to help them, except when it wants something, which usually ends up hurting the members of the tribe. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/south-dakota-governor-tries-to.html

I keep the Kitchen IQ Edge Grip 2-Stage Knife Sharpener next to my knife block and run a knife through the "Fine" slot almost every time I cut something. The ceramic rods are arranged at a pre-set angle, which makes it easy to get a serviceably sharp knife. The bottom of the sharpener has a V-channel so you can set it against the edge of a counter. That way you won't smack your knife against the countertop when it slides out of the sharpening slot.

The "Coarse" sharpening slot has carbide blades that will sharpen dull knives in just a few strokes. Just don't use it every time because it eats up your knife blades quickly. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/tiny-kitchen-knife-sharper-doe.html

Will dogs obey commands from robots? In IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman writes that "Yale University’s Social Robotics Lab led by Brian Scassellati presented a paper taking the first step towards determining whether dogs, which are incredibly good at understanding social behaviors in humans, see human-ish robots as agents—or more specifically, whether dogs see robots more like humans (which they obey), or more like speaker systems (which they don’t)."

Spoiler: The dogs do respond to the robot's commands much more frequently than they obey the voice from the speaker system, even if the experiment appeared to baffle the animals.

From IEEE Spectrum:

We asked [lead researcher Meiyin] Qin whether she thought it would make a difference if the robot was more or less humanoid, how much of a face it had, whether it smelled like anything, and other traits that dogs might associate with human-ness. “Since dogs are very sensitive to human social cues, the robot being a humanoid or not may make a difference,” Qin says. “However, if a non-humanoid robot behaved like an agent (e.g., behaved like a dog, or exhibit any social behaviors), dogs may also respond in a social manner.”

She explained that, in terms of whether the robot has eyes or not, or smells like a person, these factors could also impact how dogs respond to the robot. But Qin adds that the researchers need further evidence to give a more affirmative answer. “Whether the robot moves or not could affect the dogs differently,” she says.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/dogs-will-obey-commands-from-s.html

The Night Watch is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt. It hangs in The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Today, the museum posted the "largest and most detailed ever photograph of The Night Watch on its website, making it possible to zoom in on individual brushstrokes and even particles of pigment in the painting." I've been exploring it and it's incredible!

The Rijksmuseum’s imaging team led by datascientist Robert Erdmann made this photograph of The Night Watch from a total of 528 exposures. The 24 rows of 22 pictures were stitched together digitally with the aid of neural networks. The final image is made up of 44.8 gigapixels (44,804,687,500 pixels), and the distance between each pixel is 20 micrometres (0.02 mm). This enables the scientists to study the painting in detail remotely. The image will also be used to accurately track any future aging processes taking place in the painting.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/you-can-zoom-way-way-into-thi.html