• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison increased the charge against Derek Chauvin, and charged Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd.

On Wednesday, three additional Minneapolis police officers were charged in the killing of George Floyd, and charges against Derek Chauvin were elevated to second degree murder.

READ THE AMENDED CRIMINAL COMPLAINT: [PDF LINK]

All four officers seen on the video in which George Floyd dies a violent death have been charged in connection with George Floyd’s death.

Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J Alexander Kueng face aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

Derek Chauvin’s murder charge, previously third-degree, has been upgraded to second-degree unintentional murder.

18/ And the latest, today, June 3: Attorney General Keith Ellison elevated charges against Chauvin to second-degree murder, and three other officers will be charged with aiding and abetting murder. https://t.co/velVW8xTgb

 Star Tribune (@StarTribune) June 3, 2020

FAMILY’S REACTION: This is a bittersweet moment. We are deeply gratified that @AGEllison took decisive action, arresting & charging ALL the officers involved in #GeorgeFloyd's death & upgrading the charge against Derek Chauvin to felony second-degree murder. #JusticeForGeorge pic.twitter.com/jTfXFHpsYl

 Benjamin Crump, Esq. (@AttorneyCrump) June 3, 2020

My colleague @davidschaperNPR pulled the amended criminal complaint. Derek Chauvin now charged with second degree murder in the killing of George Floyd. When Floyd said "I'm about to die," after pleading for breathe, Chauvin and two other officers continued to hold him down. https://t.co/FJYE81okMa

 Leila Fadel (@LeilaFadel) June 3, 2020

BREAKING: Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison is upgrading the charges against former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd to 2nd degree murder.

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/george-floyd-killing-derek-ch.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/the-facebook-community-standar.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/trump-denies-then-confirms-he.html

Parents can send their family's questions in about protests, racism and diversity HERE.

CNN:

The 60-minute special "Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism. A CNN/Sesame Street Town Hall for Kids and Families" will air on Saturday, June 6, at 10 a.m. ET. The show will talk to kids about racism, the recent nationwide protests, embracing diversity and being more empathetic and understanding.

Big Bird will join CNN commentator Van Jones and CNN anchor and national correspondent Erica Hill to moderate the event. They will be joined by "Sesame Street" characters -- including Elmo, Abby Cadabby and Rosita -- and other experts answering questions submitted by families...

How to watch: The town hall will air on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Espa~nol. It will stream live on CNN.com's homepage and across mobile devices via CNN's apps, without requiring a cable log-in.

You can also watch on CNNgo, and subscribers to cable/satellite systems can watch it on-demand.

image via CNN Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/cnn-and-sesame-street-to-addre.html

Bout ready to just give up pic.twitter.com/PKxykWu2nn

 Peter R. Quinones (@PeterRQuinones) May 24, 2020

Covid-19 physical distancing has sparked a new trend among Catholics with a sense of humor: baptism by water pistol.

The telltale sign that this child is a girl might not be the christening gown, but the pink water gun. Interesting too, because historically pink was associated with the masculine (it was considered a variant of red) and blue was attributed to the feminine (because The Virgin Mary was most often depicted wearing blue). So this just goes to show that the Catholic church can, in fact, to some degree, change with the times.

Image: Jumpstory / CC0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/catholics-have-more-fun-bapti.html

Her name is Keke Palmer.

She is amazing. She's an actor in Los Angeles, and an activist.

Watch the entire video.

Watch all of this. pic.twitter.com/YHq0QhXrnw

 Gadi Schwartz (@GadiNBC) June 2, 2020

“Control this area?” Keke Palmer asked the guardsman. “What is it to control, man? March with us. It would send a huge message if we just march. Just march with us. March the whole round with us.”

The National Guard member's name is Koenig.

She literally brings a group of Guardsmen to their knees at a George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 2, 2020.

I love all you guys.

 Keke Palmer (@KekePalmer) June 3, 2020

I love @KekePalmer. She’s out in the streets of LA talking with the National Guard. pic.twitter.com/7iZ2tvubXn

 Anthony Dominic (@alloveranthony) June 2, 2020

.@KekePalmer's pleas led to a beautiful moment between National Guardsmen and protestors. https://t.co/W0XkylVT7E

 ESSENCE (@Essence) June 3, 2020

Keke Palmer Is Being Praised For This Video Of Her Confronting The National Guard At A Black Lives Matter Protest https://t.co/JJH6F5YRAe

 BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) June 3, 2020

Keke Palmer urges National Guardsmen to join George Floyd protest https://t.co/Uh2KK7BL1j pic.twitter.com/IeG5ZKc7YZ

 Page Six (@PageSix) June 3, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/watch-black-lives-matter-acti.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/philly-removes-statue-of-racis.html

The White House released this photo of the Trumps in a church. The idea is to show Donald and Melania as serious Christians after the bungled Bible photo-op, but they just look like characters from a reboot of The Omen.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/latest-trump-publicity-shot-lo.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/kpop-stans-take-whiteoutwedn.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/watch-this-awesome-young-dance.html

A personal hero, Bill Nye is now available as a Funko Pop!

This one goes next to my Mr. Rogers.

Funko Pop! AD Icons: Bill Nye - Bill Nye The Science Guy via Amazon Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/bill-nye-the-funko-pop.html

Trump and Barr keep saying Antifa is the cause of violent outbreaks that are taking place alongside peaceful police brutality protests, but the FBI released a report saying it found no evidence of antifa activity on May 31 in Washington DC. However, the FBI did note that a far-right group “called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, use automatic weapons against protesters.”

From The Nation:

Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” is a type of militant anti-racist, anti-nationalist organizing that does not rely on the justice system to confront the far right. Groups associated with antifa have destroyed property and committed violence in the past, but the fact that the FBI’s situation reports cannot find any evidence of such involvement now suggests that fears about such groups may be exaggerated.

The report did warn that individuals from a far-right social media group had “called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, use automatic weapons against protesters.” (The Nation is withholding the name of the group in order to not disrupt any potential law enforcement investigations.)

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/fbi-report-no-intelligence.html

It's game over for those holding out hope Zoom would do more for user privacy: the company's CEO explicitly cited law enforcement as why it will not offer encrypted calling to free (i.e. undocumented) users.

Yuan said free users won’t enjoy that level of privacy, which makes it impossible for third parties to decipher communications.

“Free users for sure we don’t want to give that because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose,” Yuan said on the call.

Google Duo and Apple Facetime are already encrypted, and these companies are no enemies of the state. Zoom's position is not just cooperative but collaborative: assume they are already working with law enforcement to make general surveillance of Zoom as simple and pushbutton as possible. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/zoom-ceo-says-it-wont-encryp.html

If you want to add a fun new trick to your magic performance routine, watch this video, which explains how to escape from plastic handcuffs, Houdini style! Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/magic-trick-revealed-how-to-e.html

Residents of Magangu'e, Colombia recently broke the compulsory quarantine to visit Jesus Christ who was hanging out in a tree. Praise be to pareidolia. From a El Tiempo via Google Translate:

"It looks clear and everyone is praying to him and asking him to cure the land of this evil and to protect Magangu'e," says Agustina D'iaz, a town clothing merchant, who closed her store in the center of town for the pandemic.

What worries local authorities is that the image is becoming a point of pilgrimage and worship and people are taking to the streets en masse, ignoring the health emergency in the country.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/jesus-christ-appears-in-a-colo.html

Knowledge is power. And a company that knows who its customers are is far more likely to see those customers return.  On the web, information gathering often comes in the shape of an online form. 

Whether it’s a registration, a contest, an order, or just a simple contact, those opportunities to engage with users and potential customers can prove vital in bolstering your contact lists, generating critical leads, and helping to advance your goods or services to an even broader audience.

With 20,000 paying subscribers, more than 190 million forms submitted, and over 12 years of service, 123FormBuilder is a leader in online data collection. 

With their service, you get access to over 1,000 different no-code, drag-and-drop form templates you can incorporate into your website or app effortlessly. 

Even if you don’t want to go with one of their pre-prepared templates, 123FormBuilder’s web-based form builder makes assembling a new one incredibly easy. Just click and drag to extend or shrink boxes, add new info spaces, separate a form into multiple pages or reformat it any way you like.

With the resources of 123FormBuilder, it’s incredibly simple to start a sign-up for your newsletter, build a mailing list, present surveys or quizzes to your visitors or receive files uploaded to your Dropbox. Each form also makes it easy to establish a workflow, so you can always decide exactly who gets notified of each new submission.

If you’re already using other apps and digital tools in your organization, 123FormBuilder can easily join the team, integrating fully with services like Salesforce, Wix, WordPress, Shopify, Weebly, Hootsuite, PayPal, MailChimp, and more. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/02/get-lifetime-access-to-this-dr.html

Attorney General William Barr has granted the Drug Enforcement Administration the power to investigate people protesting George Floyd's murder, even if drugs are not involved. The DEA has been central in ruining the lives of countless minorities in its disastrous War on Drugs, so having them "investigate" protestors is especially alarming.

From Buzzfeed:

Attorney General William Barr issued a statement Saturday following a night of widespread and at times violent protests in which he blamed, without providing evidence, “anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics,” for the unrest. He said the FBI, DEA, US Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would be “deployed to support local efforts to enforce federal law.”

Barr did not say what those agencies would do, however.

The DEA is limited by statute to enforcing drug-related federal crimes. But on Sunday, Timothy Shea, a former US attorney and close confidant of Barr's who was named acting administrator of the DEA last month, received approval from Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer to go beyond the agency’s mandate “to perform other law enforcement duties” that Barr may “deem appropriate.”

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/02/barr-gives-dea-power-to-invest.html

The Washington Post reports that "James N. Miller, undersecretary of defense for policy from 2012 to 2014, provided The Washington Post with a copy of his resignation letter, which he submitted to Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on Tuesday evening."

Dear Secretary Esper,

I resign from the Defense Science Board, effective immediately.

When I joined the Board in early 2014, after leaving government service as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, I again swore an oath of office, one familiar to you, that includes the commitment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

You recited that same oath on July 23, 2019, when you were sworn in as Secretary of Defense. On Monday, June 1, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath. Law-abiding protesters just outside the White House were dispersed using tear gas and rubber bullets — not for the sake of safety, but to clear a path for a presidential photo op. You then accompanied President Trump in walking from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for that photo President Trump’s actions Monday night violated his oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” as well as the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble.” You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it. Instead, you visibly supported it.

Anyone who takes the oath of office must decide where he or she will draw the line: What are the things that they will refuse to do?

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/02/james-n-miller-quits-defense.html

Here. Here's Dolly Parton doing a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." You're welcome.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/02/dolly-parton-singing-stairwa.html

It’s impossible for anyone to truly escape the effects our COVID-19 lifestyle changes have made, but if you’re a web developer, there’s a decent chance your work life might be virtually unchanged. 

Even before the quarantines and work-from-home orders, over 16 percent of web developers were already self-employed. And with a growing number of tech companies, including Twitter and Facebook, already allowing or anticipating a day when most of their workforce will work remotely, it’s increasingly a high paying position you can perform almost anywhere.

For those looking to join their ranks, be smart. Not only is the Python coding language one of the most popular programming tools, but its versatility and connection with emerging technologies also make it a natural addition to any developer’s skill set. With The Epic Python Developer Certification Bundle, those hoping to get hired will find a foundation and a starting point to kickstart a new career.

While one of the most user-friendly languages around, Python learning does require some effort -- as this 12-course package with more than 90 hours of rigorous training proves.  But once you’re up to speed with this primer collection, you’ll be ready to get hired in a variety of interesting new roles.

The Python for Beginners: Learn Python from Scratch and Learning Python 3 Programming for the Absolute Beginner courses get the training started right, introducing students to the basic structure and commands that make Python a favored choice among coders. These beginners-guide courses cover Python basics like variables, strings, and operators while helping newbies become comfortable using Python to solve problems with hands-on practice exercises with fully explained solutions that make the language truly accessible. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/02/get-over-90-hours-of-elite-pyt.html