ACLU: “We want you to have what you'll need to know your risks and know your rights.”

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/georgefloyd-aclu.html

Time is a flat circle, and between the quarantine and the never-ending mind-boggling madness of our ever-escalation geopolitical chaos, it's become increasingly difficult to understand our own temporal existence in the seemingly endless cesspool known as 2020.

So game developer Rami Ismail came up with a helpful solution: is2020over.com.

Got boredhttps://t.co/onijOQRrkF

 Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 1, 2020

Besides the depressing but unequivocal "NO," the website also tracks all of the insane events we've witnessed in the last 15 years of 5 months, just to help you make sense of the incomprehensible timeline that we're living on.

Is 2020 over? [Rami Ismail]

Image: Public Domain Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/is-2020-over-yet-this-website.html

It's depressingly fitting that a nationwide spree of protests against racist policing would occur on the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, what's been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history. Using guns and aircrafts, white racists destroyed 35 square blocks of what had — until then — been the wealthiest black community in the country, resulting in more than $32 million dollars in damage adjusted for inflation. Like many such tragic events, it began when white racists accused a black man of looking at a white woman the wrong way.

And sadly, it's a thing that most people didn't even know about it until they watched Damon Lindelof's Watchmen sequel on HBO in the fall of 2019. It took 80 years before any kind of official report was made to acknowledge the event; mass graves are still being discovered nearly a century later.

Here are some links if you want to learn more:

‘Watchmen’ Opened With the Tulsa Race Riot. Here’s What to Read About It. [Jennifer Vineyard / The New York Times]

"They was killing black people" [DeNeen L. Brown / The Washington Post]

The Massacre of Black Wall Street [Re/Think / The Atlantic]

Tulsa Race Riot: A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

Black Wall Street: The African American Haven That Burned and Then Rose From the Ashes [Victor Luckerson / The Ringer]

Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

  Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/its-the-99th-anniversary-of.html

It seems weird to be writing about something as frivolous as a game while the world is infected and on fire, but we do need a little distraction and joy to keep us sane, and for some of us, the gaming hobby offers just that.

Sean Sutter, the one-person game designing artistic juggernaut behind the fabulous fantasy narrative skirmish wargame, Relicblade just launched a Kickstarter for his latest product, a two-person starter set. Within 30 minutes, he had blown past his funding goal and is currently over $40,000. For those of us familiar with this game, this is no surprise at all. To know Relicblade is to love Relicblade.

While I am a huge, lifelong fan of the tabletop gaming hobby in general, I especially adore indie games that are basically the vision of one artist. Relicblade is such a wonder. Sean does nearly everything. He designs the games, writes and lays out the rulebooks, does all of the art, sculpts all of the miniatures. This would all be impressive enough, but the quality with which he does it all makes it even more impressive. His product line confidently stands next to the big dogs in the industry.

The latest campaign, called Storms of Kural, is a two-player starter set designed to provide everything needed to enter the world of Relicblade. There are two main pledge levels, one at $100 for the rulebook, minis, cards, and tokens, and one at $85 for people who already own the rulebook. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/relicblade-launches-campaign-f.html

As anti-police protests raged across the country on Sunday, the official Twitter account of the Sergeants Benevolent Association of the NYPD spent most of the day whining about New York Mayor Bill DiBlasio.

DiBlasio is hardly a stalwart of #TheResistance, and there are certainly plenty of good reasons for the average citizen to complain about him. But the SBA was pretty clearly employing Mafia-style bullying tactics to frighten the guy into submission. After DiBlasio's daughter, Chiara, was arrested for "unlawful assembly" during the New York City protests, the SBA Twitter account posted a photo of her arrest paperwork, including her personal identifying information. (Details blacked out manually)

This is, of course, illegal, as well as a hugely dangerous threat.

The tweet has since been deleted. But it's not the first time that SBA President Ed Mullins has been involved in frighteningly inflammatory rhetoric. Back in February, he openly declared war on DiBlasio, and also has an established history of sending racist emails out to the entire Police Union. I'm sure it's no coincidence that the racist union rep targeted the mayor's biracial daughter.

  Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/new-york-police-union-doxxed-m.html

Image Scrubber is a useful website that removes all the identifying metadata from any photograph and gives you the option to blur out certain parts of the photo.

This is a tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests.

It will remove identifying metadata (Exif data) from photographs, and also allow you to selectively blur parts of the image to cover faces and other identifiable information.

Hit the open button to open a photograph. The program will display the data it is removing.

Click okay, and you can then save the scrubbed image by hitting save or right clicking on it and saving it. Maximum size is 2500x2500 pixels - larger images will be scaled down.

You can select between painting over the image or blurring it out. Dragging on the image will paint on or blur it. You can change your brush size via the slider. The blur function has built-in pixel shuffling/noise and is fairly secure but sensitive information should be covered with the paint tool.

This tool works offline: on a phone you can load the page then turn on airplane mode (or turn off wifi/data) before opening any pictures. On a computer, download the zipped code, open the folder, and open index.html in a browser with the internet turned off.

All processing happens directly in the browser- no information is stored or sent anywhere.

Image: Jumpstory / CC0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/image-scrubber-is-a-website-th.html

Climate change, growing inequality, systemic racism, militarized police, rising fascism, Covid-19 pandemic, plagues of locusts. From is2020over.com, a list of 2020's bad news to date.

January More than 20% of Australia's forest is lost to forest fires.^[>] World War III is barely averted after US aggression.^[>] Africa is plagued by unprecedented locust swarms.^[>] February The UK withdraws from the European Union.^[>] The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are postponed due to COVID-19.^[>] March COVID-19 is declared a global pandemic. Hundreds of thousands die. ^[>] Schengen borders are closed, halting European travel. Global public air traffic comes to a halt. April Mecca sits eerily empty, despite Ramadan. Pentagon releases UFO footage. White people riot to get haircuts. 1986 sent a "Miss Me?" as a wildfire in the radioactive forests around Chernobyl caused radiation to spike 20-fold. May Eurovision Song Contest is cancelled. Microsoft breaks Windows via update, again. Locusts now sweep India and Pakistan. The murder of George Floyd sparks protests & riots throughout the US. June A new Ebola outbreak was declared in Mbandaka, Congo, where no cases had been found since 2018. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/is-2020-over-yet.html

We all know the drill. As the overlords of the smartphone and tablet markets, the braintrust at Apple very seldom hold sales on their signature devices. So rather than spending almost $1,000 on a brand-new iPad Pro, the folks in Cupertino are instead giving you the opportunity to score one for about a third of that price instead.

Full disclosure: these factory refurbished, WiFi-enabled iPad Pros are returns that may come with some light scratches or other minor blemishes. But techs at Apple have certified that each and every unit has been fully tested and deemed 100 percent functional, perfectly matching all their original factory specs.

And this iPad Pro with a 9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD touchscreen stands more than ready to handle just about any assignment you’ve got to throw at it.

The model sports an Apple A9X 64-bit SoC dual-core processor, powerful enough to rival those running most portable PCs. Along with 32GB of storage space, a four-speaker audio system, a 12-megapixel rear iSight camera for shooting images and even 4K video, a 5-megapixel forward-facing FaceTime HD camera, and faster wireless technologies, this tablet is more than up to your multi-tasking lifestyle.

The iPad Pro's display doesn’t disappoint either. Using a DCI-P3 color space, the iPad Pro display presents a wider color gamut than standard sRGB displays. In fact, the Retina Display delivers greater contrast, more uniform brightness, and improved energy efficiency through photo alignment technology, an oxide TFT panel, display lamination, an anti-reflective coating, and a variable refresh rate. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/get-a-factory-refurbished-ipad.html

when will the media stand up to the violent antifa Marxist ideology of [checks notes] ah, cat owners pic.twitter.com/h9qWQBurag

 Sam Thielman (@samthielman) June 1, 2020

In this clip, a local news anchor mistakes a Cat Condo for a cinder block. You can hear the disappointment in his voice when he realizes it's not what he'd hoped, like the Bill Hader impression of TV crime ghoul Keith Morrison. [via Sam Thielman]

You can buy a similar model of cat condo/plush cinder block on Amazon. Or you can get one from Target, obviously. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/news-anchor-disappointed-when.html

The Action Lab's James Orgill writes, "In this video I show you how it is possible to contain the fire from a burning ball of propane in a wire mesh." Yes, it is possible. But that doesn't mean you should do it. In fact, you shouldn't.

The experiment demonstrates the phenomenon behind the Davy Lamp, a lamp that Sir Humphry Davy invented in 1812 for use in coal mines. From Wikipedia:

The lamp consists of a wick lamp with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen. The screen acts as a flame arrestor; air (and any firedamp present) can pass through the mesh freely enough to support combustion, but the holes are too fine to allow a flame to propagate through them and ignite any firedamp outside the mesh. It originally burned a heavy vegetable oil.

The lamp also provided a test for the presence of gases. If flammable gas mixtures were present, the flame of the Davy lamp burned higher with a blue tinge. Lamps were equipped with a metal gauge to measure the height of the flame. Miners could place the safety lamp close to the ground to detect gases, such as carbon dioxide, that are denser than air and so could collect in depressions in the mine; if the mine air was oxygen-poor (asphyxiant gas), the lamp flame would be extinguished (black damp or chokedamp). A methane-air flame is extinguished at about 17% oxygen content (which will still support life), so the lamp gave an early indication of an unhealthy atmosphere, allowing the miners to get out before they died of asphyxiation.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/creating-and-containing-a-smal.html

Black Protestor caught 2 White Protestors tagging Starbucks. pic.twitter.com/06LuT4ryb8

 gregarious (@gryking) May 31, 2020

Given the white women's attitude toward a black woman asking them to stop tagging "BLM" and "Down with white supremacy" on a Starbucks exterior, it's hard not to think these two are anything but boogaloo accelerationists carrying out a false flag mission. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/black-protestor-tells-two-whit.html

In a conference call with US state governors, Trump said people arrested for protesting should be sent to prison for 10 years, and that governors were "weak" for not "dominating" protests.

From The Washington Post:

Trump also called on them to take back the streets and use force to confront protesters and said if they did not, they would look like “fools,” alarming several governors on the call as they communicated privately, according to the officials.

“If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” Trump said, according to a person on the call. A second person on the call said Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and thanked Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper for his assistance.

JUST IN: President Trump unloads on the nation's governors on a call, calls on them to step up enforcement: "You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate."

 Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) June 1, 2020

One person listening in on the call describes the president's words and tone as "unhinged."

 Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) June 1, 2020

(Image: Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA 2.0) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/trump-tells-weak-governors.html

This Reuters Investigates piece looks at how the US Supreme Court uses a "little-known legal doctrine called qualified immunity" to protect cops who use excessive force to maim and kill people.

The Supreme Court’s role is evident in how the federal appeals courts, which take their cue from the high court, treat qualified immunity. In an unprecedented analysis of appellate court records, Reuters found that since 2005, the courts have shown an increasing tendency to grant immunity in excessive force cases – rulings that the district courts below them must follow. The trend has accelerated in recent years. It is even more pronounced in cases like Leija’s – when civilians were unarmed in their encounters with police, and when courts concluded that the facts could convince a jury that police actually did use excessive force.

Reuters found among the cases it analyzed more than three dozen in which qualified immunity protected officers whose actions had been deemed unlawful. Outside of Dallas, Texas, five officers fired 17 shots at a bicyclist who was 100 yards away, killing him, in a case of mistaken identity. In Heber City, Utah, an officer threw to the ground an unarmed man he had pulled over for a cracked windshield, leaving the man with brain damage. In Prince George's County, Maryland, an officer shot a man in a mental health crisis who was stabbing himself and trying to slit his own throat.

Image: Reuters Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/how-the-supreme-court-uses-an.html

"Get your fucking knee off his neck!" people repeatedly shout as a cop dares to restrain a man by shoving his knee into the guy's neck. The cop's partner looks around, realizes what's happening (or realizes that they're on camera), and pushes the cop's knee away.

Cops arrived and started arresting looters. #seattleprotest pic.twitter.com/ThyZoUCuQ8

 Matt M. McKnight (@mattmillsphoto) May 31, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/video-cop-in-seattle-pins-man.html

Archaeologists from the Israel Museum and colleagues found residue of cannabis containing THC on an altar in the ancient Israelite temple of Tel Arad. Apparently, the discovery in this 2,700-year-old temple south of Tel Aviv, Israel, is the first proof that ancient Jews used weed in rituals. From the BBC News:

Researchers concluded that cannabis may have been burned in order to induce a high among worshippers.[...]

Frankincense was found on one altar, which was unsurprising because of its prominence in holy texts, the study's authors told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.[...] However, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN) - all compounds found in cannabis - were found on the second altar.

"Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad" (Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/01/ancient-israelites-got-high-in.html

Twitter rants and various online ugliness aside, social media has actually grown up a bit over the past 15 years. In general, users are warier of their interactions on platforms like Facebook or Instagram — and marketers have taken note.

In fact, if you felt retailers you saw on social media were only looking to jam products down your throat, that’s not marketing in 2020. Of marketers surveyed in a recent study, the clear no. 1 goal for brands in the social media realm — a commanding 69 percent — was to build brand awareness. In case you’re curious, driving sales was a lowly fifth place on the list.

So how do products build that awareness and engage with the audience they seek? The training in The 2020 Social Media Marketing Bootcamp Certification Bundle lays out the plan for any company looking to make the most of a social media presence, drive brand success and make you an in-demand social media manager.

Since no two social media platforms are truly alike, this seven-course, 34-plus hour collection aims to help marketers create strategies customized to work on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.

The fundamentals are explained in the Digital Marketing Foundations 101 course, a nuts-and-bolts walkthrough that hammers home the most critical decision for any social media manager: crafting a clear digital strategy. This course digs into email marketing, building a website, SEO, digital advertising, measurement, analytics, and all the latest trends in the digital marketing game.

While that course lays out the basics, Social Media Foundations 101 and Social Media Strategy advance your learning into practical steps for bringing that digital marketing plan to life. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/31/get-certified-marketing-traini.html

Virus quarantines and shuttered restaurants sent millions of Americans back to their homes, only to rediscover the joys of firing up an oven and cooking something special for themselves. 

Whether by desire, necessity, or both, many of us have certainly been spending more time in the kitchen these last few months. And we haven’t just been hungry for the food itself. Americans have also been hungry for new ways to make it. Case in point, the Allrecipes Alexa skill saw recipe requests surge by 67 percent during March and April, while new users skyrocketed by 80 percent.

Pizza is an eternal crowd-pleaser, but plenty of chefs get intimidated at the thought of making crust and sauce from scratch. Thankfully, professional chef Tim Cunningham is on the case — and his 1-hour crash course Pizza Making: Bake the Best Sourdough Pizza at Home! seeks to prove that anyone with basic kitchen skills is more than capable of baking up a delicious pie.

The Australian-born Cunningham is a veteran of rustic Italian and Mediterranean cuisine -- and over this step-by-step instruction, students learn the fundamentals for making a world-class pizza that doesn’t require expensive equipment or ingredients. 

Over these seven lectures, Cunningham starts by explaining how to make your own sourdough starter from yeast and bacteria so your handmade crust will always be absolutely stellar. From there, he walks students through the creation of a Napoli sauce for pizza bases. 

Then armed with your crust and sauce, you’re already more than halfway to a homemade pizza that will put anything you have delivered from Grubhub to shame. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/31/if-you-have-been-wanting-to-ma.html

Now that the world is starting to re-emerge from its self-imposed COVID-19 quarantine, we’re all going to have to start making some adjustments to both short-term and long-term changes. 

And the questions… Should customers be hounded out of a store if they aren’t wearing a face mask? Are crocheted face masks safe or not? And will face masks be required everywhere, even the Happiest Place on Earth?

It’s still too early to know the answers to many of these face mask-related questions, but there’s one we already know the answer to. Who wants to wear a boring plain white N95 mask anyway?

Answer: No one. 

Therefore, you can start assembling your too-cool-for-the-room face wear wardrobe now with a two-pack of these two-ply statement face masks.  Each one is made from a premium, washable poly span stretchy fabric that covers your nose and mouth comfortably while containing and blocking any airborne pathogens.

And thankfully, they’ve created these short, direct commentaries for the wide variety of personality types out there. 

For the concerned

In two words, an entire conversation path is established. In an instant, you express your clean-as-a-whistle health status, all while inquiring about everyone else’s state.

For the hugger

This period of social distancing is hard on those who thrive in other people’s personal space. For them, this simple four-letter declaration says everything their empty arms cannot these days.

For the non-committal

Look, make your statement out in the world, but there’s no reason to tip your hand, right? Hello is about as tacitly friendly, yet socially ambiguous a greeting as possible. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/31/get-a-2-pack-of-these-statemen.html

Maybe you had a piano teacher as a kid that drove you off the instrument forever. Or maybe you always wished for some serious training, but never found the time.

Whether you have dreams of tossing off a Beethoven or Chopin piece at the drop of a hat or you have visions of being the next Ray Charles, The Ultimate Piano Bundle: From Beginner to Advanced course bundle was created to turn an interested, invested novice into a functioning, then studied master of the keys in record time.

This collection includes 10 courses with a massive 140-plus hours of training dedicated to helping you not only learn to play the piano but understand the instrument, read music, compose and generally become a real, honest-to-goodness musician.

Nobody was to get buried in scholastics before they ever touch the keys, so this training kicks off with the Ultimate Piano Course: Go from a Beginner/Average to an Advanced Pianist. Starting from the beginning, the class can make you a proficient player through over 30 hours of training. The course explains the hows and whys of music theory, walks students through the entire keypad, including chord progressions, and generally immerses first-timers in a world of music.

The next step is the Intermediate/Advanced Piano Course: Enhance Your Musical/Piano Skills as your basic skills are tested with an expanded variety of lessons to push your abilities even further. 

But since playing is only a piece of the piano experience, the collection includes courses in learning to tackle the music pages themselves. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/30/get-over-140-hours-of-online-p.html

When you see that curved arrow on the side of a cardboard box, you instantly know that box came from Amazon. The unfurled rainbow feathers of a peacock immediately scream NBC. And a partially eaten piece of fruit in the profile is a world-recognized symbol of tech titan Apple.

Icons are powerful symbols, condensing volumes of connection and meaning into a compact, simple image that conveys all that history and significance. For a web designer, those tiny icons are important navigation and information signifiers that form a critical unwritten shorthand with site visitors. 

Rather than trying to create those icons yourself, designers can get a serious leg-up in their creation by having all those icons created for you. With an Iconscout subscription, all that aid is available in a simple download.

Curators of their own design research marketplace, Iconscout is home to more than 2 million high-quality, royalty-free icons, each lovingly created by one of more than 300 top designers for use in virtually any type of web project you could envision.

With that many available options (and literally thousands more added to the Iconscout library every single day), your project can find just the graphic look to mesh with your creation, whether your icons should represent tech, education, entertainment, and sports or relationships, business, science or food and drink, to name just a few. Each is available in a broad range of sizes and styles contoured to find the look and feel of any design project.

If you’d like to modify an icon to include something different, such as your brand’s colors, for example, no problem. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/05/30/save-over-90-on-a-2-year-subs.html