Pioneering hip hop musician Afrika Bambaataa's love for Kraftwerk is evidenced by his groundbreaking 1982 electro track "Planet Rock" (above). Indeed, Bambataaa's underground DJ sets in black nightclubs were a key point-of-entry into the United States for many international electronic musicians in the early 1980s, from Yellow Magic Orchestra to Gary Numan. I hadn't realized though that Kraftwerk readily acknowledged that it was a two-way musical conversation: Black American music, particularly R&B, was a massive influence on Kraftwerk's music. In The Wire, John Morrison writes:

In an interview with Dan Sicko, the late author of Techno Rebels: The Renegades Of Electronic Funk, former Kraftwerk percussionist Karl Bartos gives an essential statement on the influence of black R&B on the band's work: “We were all fans of American music: soul, the Tamla/Motown thing, and of course, James Brown. We always tried to make an American rhythm feel, with a European approach to harmony and melody.” When exploring the band’s early work, this rhythmic influence does occasionally peek its head up through their abstract sound. On “Tone Float” (the title track from founder members Ralf H"utter and Florian Schneider-Esleben’s pre-Kraftwerk 1970 debut album as members of Organisation), the band can be heard experimenting with a rhythmic framework similar to the “Bo Diddley'' beat, the heavily accented drum pattern that dominated rock ’n’ roll in the 50s and early 60s. For their first release as Kraftwerk, the “Bo Diddley” beat remerges, albeit with an aggressive Jazz flair courtesy of drummer Charly Weiss providing the driving pulse for the the album’s ten minute closer “Vom Himmel Hoch”.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/kraftwerks-connection-to-rb.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/facebooks-blatant-rip-off-of.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/watch-mississippi-governor-hon.html

As of today, everyone in England is an organ donor, unless they explicitly opt out, are tourists or recent immigrants, or are incapable of giving consent. Wales moved to the opt-out system in 2015, and Scotland plans to follow later this year. Correction: England, not the U.K. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/uk-moves-to-opt-out-organ-dona.html

In her first UK concert, Spanish opera soprano Laura Ruh'i Vidal warms up the Rainer Hersch Orkestra audience with a surprise performance of the Theme from Star Trek.

Composed by Alexander Courage, the original TV theme was sung by Loulie Jean Norman. Here are Gene Roddenberry's unsung lyrics that he apparently only wrote to get a piece of the action in royalties:

Beyond The rim of the star-light My love Is wand'ring in star-flight I know He'll find in star-clustered reaches Love, Strange love a star woman teaches. I know His journey ends never His star trek Will go on forever. But tell him While he wanders his starry sea Remember, remember me.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/watch-this-opera-singers-won.html

The poop of King Penguins releases high levels of nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas. An international team of researchers from China, Denmark, and the UK were studying how the retreat of glaciers and penguins activity impact soil greenhouse gases on South Georgia, an island north of Antarctica. They observed that the penguin guano is rich in nitrogen that, when it interacts with bacteria in the soil, is converted into nitrous oxide. From CNN:

"It is truly intense," said Bo Elberling, an author of the study. He noted it's not an insignificant amount, either -- the emissions measure about 100 times more than a recently fertilized Danish field. There was enough emitted nitrous, in fact, that one researcher went "completely cuckoo," while "nosing about in guano for several hours," Elberling said...

"The small nitrous oxide cylinders that you see lying in and floating around Copenhagen are no match for this heavy dose, which results from a combination of nitrous oxide with hydrogen sulphide and other gases," he added, referring to the containers designed for whipped cream but often used as a recreational drug.

"Combined effects of glacial retreat and penguin activity on soil greenhouse gas fluxes on South Georgia, sub-Antarctica" (Science of the Total Environment)

image: transformation of original photo by Andrew Shiva (CC BY-SA 4.0) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/penguins-poop-is-rich-in-laugh.html

Kelvin Watson (27) has been charged with attempted first-degree murder after police in Colorado say he shot a Waffle House cook who told him he couldn't order food without wearing a mask.

From CBS 4 Denver:

The cook said he told Watson he was not going to serve him and that he needed to leave the restaurant. Watson reportedly became very upset and slapped the cook across the face with an opened left hand, cutting his lip. The cook said he ran to the back of the restaurant and Watson followed him.

Once outside, the cook said Watson made numerous statements to the effect of “You better shut the **** up and serve me.”

That’s when Watson shot him, the cook said.

(Image: rpavich, CC-BY-2.0) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/a-restaurant-worker-told-a-man.html

I mean, sure why not at this point from r/IdiotsInCars

A couple of gentlemen enjoying a soak in the back of a makeshift pickup truck swimming pool were enjoying the luxury of receiving McDonald's food at a drive-through when the driver accelerated too quickly and then hit the brakes, causing the bathers some discomfort.

Image: Reddit Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/this-is-why-putting-a-swimming.html

Have you ever wanted to find a book, but you don't know the title? This video and article from Make Use Of has some ideas that could help. Suggestions include using Google Book Search, BookFinder,  WorldCat, The Library of Congress, and Ask a Librarian.

Image: Jumpstory/CC0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/how-to-find-a-book-without-kno.html

Tucson.com reports that the United States government gave a $1.28 billion border wall contract to Fisher Sand and Gravel, a private company run by Tommy Fisher.

Fisher Industries seems well-suited for a president like Trump. From Wikipedia:

Tommy Fisher has appeared on local and conservative TV and radio and is a donor to several charities and the Republican Party.^[3][4] Senator Cramer suggested Fisher's Fox News appearances are what attracted Trump to the company.

The High Plains Reader has documented environmental violations and tax evasion by the company, including 169 citations and paying $1 million in air quality violation fines in Maricopa County, Arizona over the past 10 years. In 2009 Michael Fisher, then-owner of Fisher, pled guilty to nine counts of felony tax fraud, ^[5] being sentenced to 37 months in prison and over $300,000 in restitution. The comptroller also pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in 2009. Another former head of the company, David William Fisher, pled guilty in 2005 to child pornography and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.^[1] He was released on April 30, 2010.^[6]

By the way, illegal border crossings have been declining for the last 20 years. "In 2017, border-crossing apprehensions were at their lowest point since 1971." (NY Times)

Image: YouTube/Fisher Industries Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/1-28-billion-border-wall-cont.html

Hawaii is still having to deal with covidiots who want to take a vacation there and possibly spread the virus to locals. The governor issued a two-week quarantine rule for anyone arriving in the state, but many tourists are ignoring it, reports MSN. Approximately 20 people have been arrested and hundreds more have been fined for ignoring the order.

State parks and Hawaii’s famous beaches have been closed. Hotels are issuing single-use keys, forcing quarantined guests who leave their rooms to go to the front desk and explain why. Airlines have been encouraged to suspend incoming flights. The state’s visitors bureau has asked media organizations to “refrain from publishing any stories about Hawaii that might encourage people to travel to the islands.”

Image: Jumpstory/CC0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/hawaii-hotels-are-issuing-sing.html

Advice from David Bowie for artists: "always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you've felt that if you could manifest it in some way you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society." [via @ThamKhaiMeng] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/david-bowie-on-playing-to-the.html

Lenovo's new Chromebook Duet is only $280¹, but it's getting excellent reviews from sources that are usually lukewarm on low-end gadgets running Google's operating system. The 10" convertible tablet isn't going to muscle out a Surface Pro or iPad Pro, but it doesn't feel cheap.

The Verge's Monica Chin: "It feels much more like a Surface Go with some concessions than it does an ultra-budget PC. ... Another area where the Duet is punching above its weight class: battery life. Lenovo claims 10 hours; I got close to 11 and a half, running the device through my typical workload of Chrome tabs and apps including Gmail, Twitter, Slack, Asana, Facebook, Docs, and Sheets."

Wired's Scott Gilbertson: "It's plenty fast enough for getting work done in the browser, sending emails, and other communications—even light photo editing (in Gimp, running via the Linux support) and document editing. I only started to see some slowdowns after having 15 to 20 Chrome tabs open with half a dozen Android apps running simultaneously alongside some Linux for Chrome OS apps."

Android Authority's Eric Zeman: "It's practically a steal ... Lenovo's little Chromebook isn't perfect, and in fact has a few significant drawbacks, but almost nothing else competes on value. With a price starting at just $279, few Chromebooks or tablets offer as much flexibility out of the box as the Lenovo Chromebook Duet."

PC Mag's Eric Grevstad: "The Chromebook Duet earns an honorable mention among Chromebooks for consumers and captures our Editors' Choice among Chromebooks for students. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/rave-reviews-for-280-lenovo-c.html

Irish radio DJ Elaine Howley posted this on Twitter the other day:

The teddy display at Cork City dump has always been strong but it is reaching new heights pic.twitter.com/AgHIfhAlp3

 Elaine Howley (@potentialprez) May 18, 2020

Which lead me to discover that, yes, this stuffed animal display like a terrifying hybrid of Toy Story and It is, in fact, a thing. As The Irish Times reported in September 2019:

As char­i­ties stopped ac­cept­ing toys they ar­rived in droves to the dump. But in­stead of dis­card­ing the on­celoved ted­dies, work­ers have placed them art­fully — and hu­mor­ously — around the en­trance to Cork’s Civic Amenity Site just off the South City Link Road.

[…]

"We used to do­nate the toys to char­i­ties, but health and safety reg­u­la­tions stopped that," [said site man­ager Derek Cam­bridge.]

"Ted­dies come in daily. Some ar­rive brand new. We thought chil­dren would take them so we left them out by the en­trance. But they didn’t, so we put them up here in­stead.

"It seemed a shame to just dump them."

I quite like Cork. Last time I was there, I enjoyed some great craft beer as I laughed at all the graffiti boasting that, "Cork is daycent." But a stuffed animal trash pile might be an even more beautiful metaphor for that fine city. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/the-cork-city-dump-is-a-haunte.html

Your heart will race and your skin perspire, of course, but the real magic happens in your kidneys. Dr. Bernard Hsu reports on B.B., a 21 year old man presenting to the emergency room unconscious, having been found collapsed while studying for his final exams. Unfortunately, his worst subject just happened to be chemistry. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/what-happens-if-you-drink-two.html

• Yay, Clearview AI but for shopping!

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg today announced the launch of Facebook Shops, an e-commerce feature to allows business users to list and sell products on Facebook and Instagram.

Here's the Facebook blog post launching the new shop feature.

Today we're introducing Facebook Shops, which will make it easy for businesses to set up a single online store on both @facebookapp and @instagram, and soon @messenger and @WhatsApp too pic.twitter.com/bBloRGBFzP

 Facebook (@Facebook) May 19, 2020

Here's more at CNBC about Facebook Shops.

Separately, Kyle Wiggers at VentureBeat reports on some of the very creepy personal details examined for the shopping experience by Facebook's artificial intelligence:

Facebook says its AI-powered shopping systems segment, detect, and classify images to know where products appear and deliver shopping suggestions. One of those systems — GrokNet — was trained on seven data sets containing images of products that millions of users post, buy, and sell in dozens of categories, ranging from SUVs to stiletto heels to side tables. Another creates 3D views from 2D videos of products, even those obscured by dim or overly bright lighting, while a third spotlights apparel like scarfs, ties, and more that might be partially obscured by their surroundings.

Facebook says that GrokNet, which can detect exact, similar (via related attributes), and co-occurring products across billions of photos, performs searches and filtering on Marketplace at least twice as accurately than the algorithm it replaced. For instance, it’s able to identify 90% of home and garden listings compared with Facebook’s text-based attribution systems, which can only identify 33%.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind-fac.html

The SEATBELTS, the original band that recorded the theme song to the amazing Japanese anime TV series, Cowboy Bebop, have recreated the song in social isolation. "Tank," the jazzy theme song, was recorded at home by each of the ten individual players. The song has always been memorable and this performance nails the its intensity and excitement.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/original-band-does-wonderful-i.html

The Dad, How Do I? YouTube channel is filled with practical "dadvice" tutorials, everything from how to shave to how to change a tire to how to love yourself.

Inspired by growing up without a father himself, the YouTuber created the channel in hopes that children without dads could find it and use it as a resource. There’s even a bungled dad joke or two thrown in for good measure.

Breathe in this wholesome content and find your faith in humanity restored, at least for an hour or two. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/dad-how-do-i-provides-ho.html

While the past two months and the upheavals of our new work from home routines have put many business projects on hold, you might be surprised to learn the changes driven by the pandemic are actually fueling more companies to adopt proven project management tools.

With workers handling remaining projects remotely and less direct oversight, more companies are enacting digital workflows and popular project management methodologies to make sure initiatives are staying on track.

Whether you’re running a company that needs more structure around its key projects or an employee who wants to shepherd those major plans, the training in The Accredited Agile Project Management Bundle by SPOCE can help put those efforts on course.

Featuring three courses packed with 360 lectures and more than 100 hours of instruction, this collection of accredited training lays the groundwork so you or your company can use some of the most popular and battle-tested project management frameworks to successfully guide a project through all the stages of its lifecycle.

After a decade of teaching and certifying project managers, SPOCE has formulated this training to focus on Agile and PRINCE2, a pair of PM tools that fit well together to reach project success.

In the AgilePM Project Management Foundation and Practitioner Course, students are introduced to the Agile way of thinking, a highly collaborative series of short, goal-oriented sprints that keep a project’s goals under constant observation with regular analysis and evaluation.

But if Agile is the high-concept idea about how a project should work, PRINCE2 is the roadmap. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/19/become-an-in-demand-project-ma.html

A 17-year-old boy who killed a woman at an "erotic" spa in Toronto was motivated by "incel ideology", say police. Charges against the teen, anonymous due to his age, were upgraded to terroristic murder as a result.

He was already facing first-degree and attempted murder charges, but the development means police believe the incident was terrorism-related. In a joint statement, the RCMP and Toronto Police Service said their investigation had determined the attack “was inspired by the Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE) movement commonly known as INCEL.”

“As a result, federal and provincial Attorney Generals have consented to commence terrorism proceedings, alleging that the murder was terrorist activity … and the attempted murder was terrorist activity.”

Often lost in discussion of incels is the fact that the "involuntary" part is rarely truthful. Incels have idealized expectations of dating and sexual partners rooted in their catastrophically bizarre ideology, and their raging narcissistic egos cannot accept anything less. Sex, to them, is exclusively a measurement of the self. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/19/incel-terror-killing-at-erotic.html