The Republicans behind The Lincoln Project are churning out anti-Trump ads on a daily basis, and their latest centers on the one scary truth that Trump shouted out at his failed Tulsa rally on Saturday: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, 'slow the testing down, please.'”

After his handlers tried to say he was just kidding, he corrected them today outside the White House: “I don’t kid," he told reporters when they asked if what he said had been a joke.

"Slow the testing down?" the narrator in the Lincoln Project ad asks. "Slow down our chance to save tens of thousands of lives. Slow down our understanding of where Covid is and how it's spreading. Slow down our steps to reopen our economy. Every single expert told him to test more and test faster. And now we know his response." Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/the-lincoln-project-todays.html

The University of Cincinnati happily took a $2 million donation from the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation to build a stadium and name it Marge Schott Stadium, even though it was aware that Schott repeatedly praised Hitler and admitted to having a swastika armband at home. But suddenly, the university decided it wasn't such a good idea to have a stadium named after her, after all, and said it will rename it.

From ESPN:

Schott's foundation has encouraged discussions about naming rights. "While we cannot make excuses for the rhetoric made by Mrs. Schott decades ago, we can ask you to learn from Mrs. Schott's mistakes as well as her great love for Cincinnati," the foundation said in a statement this month. "We appreciate what these great organizations bring to Cincinnati and we fully support the decisions made by the organizations who have received grants from the Foundation."

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/university-of-cincinnati-will.html

Henry Winkler, best known for his portrayal of 'The Fonz' on TV's Happy Days, is still super cool.

One hand pic.twitter.com/nrCOW27Yuk

 Henry Winkler (@hwinkler4real) June 22, 2020

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https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/henry-winkler-aged-75-drinks.html

In 2017, 50-year-old Mark Clark from Michigan scratched an instant lottery ticket with a special coin his father had given him and won $4,000,000. Using the same coin this week, he won another $4,000,000!

“You don’t think you’ll win millions once, and you definitely never think it would happen twice,” he said to the Michigan Lottery. “It’s hard to put into words exactly what I am feeling. ...I can’t help but think maybe that lucky coin helped me win this.”

Where can I get me one of them coins?

Via AP Image: Michigan Lottery Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/man-uses-a-lucky-coin-to-win.html

Following dismal polling and a flop rally in Tulsa, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is to step down, reports Vanity Fair.

“Brad really shit the bed Saturday night. You have to remember, execution is 95% of presidential politics,” a Republican close to the White House told me over the weekend. Parscale committed a cascade of errors, from overhyping expected turnout to blaming the half-filled arena on protesters. Trump was so furious when he saw how thin the crowd was that he threatened to not go onstage, two sources briefed on the discussions told me. The sources said that Parscale, reading the tea leaves, is planning to step down. “He knows he can’t survive,” one source told me.

Another report has Trump now referring to Parscale as "the website guy", which sounds very much like the end. Who next? Hope it's Kushner.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is planning to step down, @GabrielSherman reports: “He knows he can’t survive,” says a source https://t.co/UvtifdA06S

 VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) June 23, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/vanity-fair-trump-campaign-ma.html

In ten years, scientists hope to have mapped the entire ocean floor in high resolution. This week, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project announced that they've completed 20 percent of the map. A full mapping to "modern standards" is useful for conservation and also to support scientific understanding of ocean systems, weather, tsunami wave propagation, tides, and, of course, the impact of climate change. From the BBC News:

The map at the top of this page illustrates the challenge faced by GEBCO in the coming years.

Black represents those areas where we have yet to get direct echosounding measurements of the shape of the ocean floor. Blues correspond to water depth (deeper is purple, shallower is lighter blue)[...]

This is information required to improve the models that forecast future climate change - because it is the oceans that play a critical role in moving heat around the planet. And if you want to understand precisely how sea-levels will rise in different parts of the world, good ocean-floor maps are a must.

Much of the data that's been imported into the GEBCO grid recently has been in existence for some time but was "sitting on a shelf" out of the public domain. The companies, institutions and governments that were holding this information have now handed it over - and there is probably a lot more of this hidden resource still to be released.

But new acquisitions will also be required. Some of these will come from a great crowdsourcing effort - from ships, big and small, routinely operating their echo-sounding equipment as they transit the globe.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/scientists-have-mapped-20-perc.html

A copy of Bartolom'e Esteban Murillo’s The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables was restored magnificently by a "furniture restorer" in Spain, whose work challenges the illustrious heights of 2012's Beast Jesus of Zaragoza.

The restorer made a second attempt, reports Europa Press, which lacks the Beast Jesus je ne sais quoi of his first effort but brings its own horror-movie corpse lady vibe to the table.

When asking the author of the 'restoration' for explanations , he tried to 'solve' the problem, but the result of the work has been an image that has nothing to do with the original. Now, the collector has contacted another specialist, this one trained for this work, who will try to rehabilitate the work, says the owner, speaking to Europa Press. The vice president of Internal Relations and coordinator in the Valencian Community of the Professional Association of Conservative Restorations explains that aberrations like this are "unfortunately much more frequent than you think."

Restorers warn of irreversible errors due to non-professional interventions [Machine translation, Google] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/another-flawless-art-restorati.html

Here are six new lateral thinking puzzles to test your wits and stump your friends -- play along with us as we try to untangle some perplexing situations using yes-or-no questions.

Show notes

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https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/six-lateral-thinking-puzzles-8.html

Brandon Harrison, an officer with the St. Joseph Police Department in Missouri, was assigned to administrative duties Monday after being filmed threatening a motorist. The video sailed to millions of views over the weekend, forcing officials to launch an investigation.

Meet off duty police officer Brandon Harrison of St. Joseph, Missouri.

He was in a car accident with the other man you see in this video. And this is how he responded.

And yes he is wearing a Trump hat.

pic.twitter.com/IzGu2sOks7

 Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) June 22, 2020

Two two drivers had apparently collided in their vehicles. Harrison was off-duty at the time, but made clear his position while yelling expletives at the man“I am on vacation and I will fuck you up.... See who they fucking believe, bitch." A uniformed officer on the scene ordered the man to obey Harrison's demand to sit down and "do what he says", then allows Harrison to participate in a search of the man's vehicle. Local media report that she has not been disciplined and the department has refused to release her name. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/off-duty-cop-off-the-streets-a.html

According to bigtime beekeeper Leo Sharashkin, a great benefit of using horizontal hives (as opposed to vertically-oriented boxes) is that "you can sleep in them." Sharashkin built his own bee bed and has shared free plans on his site.

"I call it Bed-and-Bees or B&B and it is a long horizontal hive where you are separated from the bees by thin planks and can bathe in their warmth and vibration and smells without any danger of being stung," he writes. "It will change your life forever once you experience how relaxing and soothing and healing it is. It surely changed ours!"

Bed & Bees: Sleep with the Bees (HorizontalHive.com via Weird Universe)

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https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/sleep-inside-a-beehive-free.html

View this post on Instagram

I’m literally not leaving my house anymore. This Karen cut me off, break checked me and then followed me for 4 blocks. When I started recording her antics she peeled off and tried to get away with her racism. I had time today to let her know that i am not the one. I’m glad SEVERAL white and black people saw her racism and had my back. #karens #seattle #blm #karlosdillard #karensinthewild

A post shared by Karlos Dillard (@karlosdillard) on Jun 22, 2020 at 12:27pm PDT

In this video, posted to the internet by Karlos Dillard, an allegedly road-raging woman is challenged by another motorist over her behavior (apparently Dillard himself) and melts down.

The full sequence of events, as reported: Dillard began filming the woman after she followed him for several blocks in a road-rage. He followed her in turn, then challenged her when she parked her car.

Karen got caught with her road rage.

I’m literally not leaving my house anymore. This Karen cut me off, break checked me and then followed me for 4 blocks. When I started recording her antics she peeled off and tried to get away with her racism. I had time today to let her know that i am not the one. I’m glad SEVERAL white and black people saw her racism and had my back.

Here's the edit that's viral on Twitter:

From his instagram story of her driving crazy after following him for 3 blocks breaking checking, cutting him off, and saying racial slurs...

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/area-woman-has-black-husband.html

During a Congressional hearing on June 16, 2020, top legal officers from the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps acknowledged the results of a 2019 study from the Government Accountability Office, which noted that Black and Hispanic servicemembers of any gender were significantly more likely to be sent to court-martial for formal punishment after an act of misconduct than their white counterparts. The judge advocates of each of these wings of Armed Forces recognized that this is, indeed, a problem, and swiftly assured the Congressional panel that actions were already underway to uncover what could possibly have caused this striking racial disparity.

As the Army Times reports:

The Army is in the “very early stages of figuring out what could cause this,” Lt. Gen. Charles Pede, the service’s ranking attorney, told lawmakers.

Pede said he has already directed a “comprehensive assessment” in conjunction with the Army’s provost marshal general “to examine why the justice system is more likely to investigate certain soldiers and what our investigations and command decisions tell us about this issue.”

"[The GAO] report raises difficult questions — questions that demand answers. Sitting here today, we do not have those answers. So our task is to ask the right questions and find the answers," he added in his testimony.

Major General Daniel Lecce, the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, also said, "We have to get after this. We’re at the beginning, but there is a lot of work to be done. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/the-us-military-is-allegedly-i.html

In 1960, Frank Drake, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, launched Project Ozma, the first scientific effort to listen for radio communications from extraterrestrials. Frank, now 90, is still serious about SETI, writing research papers and advising scientists who are listening to the stars for signs of intelligent life. (I came to know Frank and his lovely and inspiring family while I was working on the vinyl reissue of the Voyager Golden Record; Frank was the technical director of the original Voyager Record in 1977!) In celebration of Father's Day, talented science journalist Nadia Drake (aka Frank's daughter), wrote in National Geographic about the history of her dad's Project Ozma and the current state of SETI. From National Geographic:

[Drake] designed an experiment to search for signals coming from worlds that could be orbiting the nearby stars Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti. He named the experiment Project Ozma, after the princess in L. Frank Baum’s Oz series—an homage to an adventure tale populated by exotic and unearthly beings.

Before sunrise on April 8, 1960, Drake climbed an 85-foot radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, jammed himself inside a trash-can-size piece of equipment, and launched humanity’s first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence—now known as SETI. For three months the telescope scanned its targets and found nothing more than cosmic static. The stars were stubbornly quiet.

“That was a disappointment,” Dad told me a few years ago. “We’d hoped that, in fact, there were radio-transmitting civilizations around almost every star.”

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/my-dad-launched-the-quest-to.html

Enjoy this surprisingly relaxing and accurate performance of game console startup chimes by Bored Piano. Below, all the MS Windows startup chimes and nightmare beats.

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https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/game-console-startup-chimes-pe.html

In this scene cut from the original theatrical release of Saturday Night Fever (1977), watch John Travolta do the Robot to the song "Disco Duck." Our family went to this movie when it was first in theaters but the moment the stripper appeared, my father whisked us right out. (I was 7.) Later, it was re-released as a PG version and not only did we get to see the whole incredible movie but afterward my dad took me to Record Theater to buy the soundtrack on LP. I still have it.

The second scene in the above video is the full "Night Fever" sequence that was edited down in the original cut.

(via r/ObscureMedia)

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https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/watch-john-travolta-do-the-rob.html

Some good news: Sorry to Bother You creator Boots Riley teased a new TV series, an "episodic joy ride" titled I'm a Virgo:

"I have a show about a 13-ft tall Black man who lives in Oakland. It’s called I’m A Virgo. Jharrel Jerome is playing the lead. I’m doing this w Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res. We haven’t decided on the network/streamer.It’ll be dark, absurd, hilarious, and important."

Check out the art (by Colin Laurel)!

I have a show about a 13-ft tall Black man who lives in Oakland.

It’s called I’m A Virgo.

Jharrel Jerome is playing the lead.

I’m doing this w Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res. We haven’t decided on the network/streamer.

It’ll be dark, absurd, hilarious, and important. pic.twitter.com/pzOGDxMaaO

 Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) June 22, 2020

photo by Redfishingboat (Mick O)//CC Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/boots-riley-teases-new-dark.html

If you create content for the web, you already know it takes time to build websites, write blog posts, create videos, produce graphics, and all the other steps that go into keeping a site healthy and flourishing.

But even once all that work is done, there’s a second job that needs doing — and it’s arguably just as important as the creation itself. Now, you have to play the search engine optimization (SEO) game to promote your content. You have to identify keywords, build relevant links, and trick out every page to attract users and search engine traffic alike.

Ranking high in Google searches can often be the only true route to getting your content the exposure it needs. Since SEO mastery is a skill not many of us possess, a service like Long Tail Pro can go a long way toward taking the headaches of SEO research off your hands.

Long Tail Pro is one of the original online keyword research tools — and after 15 years of perfecting their craft, they’ve assembled a full suite of analysis features and a step-by-step system for discovering thousands of profitable keywords while calculating how much work it’ll take to make you competitive for each of those keywords in your given industry or topic niche.

With Long Tail Pro, users can track their web ranking, analyze backlinks, and find the exact keywords that’ll resonate with their target audience. Users can search for the specific keywords they think will be effective, or get hundreds of keyword suggestions. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/22/learn-how-to-optimize-your-sit.html

I bought a USB microscope a few years ago because I wanted to examine kitchen knife edges after I sharpen them using different sharpeners. I'm still having fun with it. The tiny millipede in the video above is in a cup the size of a penny. Here are some images I've captured so far:

Groovy Squirmy millipede.

A Trader Joe's roasted and salted peanut. (See image full size)

A playing card.

My arm hair.

A leaf, with what looks to be some kind of parasite.

Smaller than a prescription pill bottle, the microscope has a USB cord that can be plugged into any computer. Download the software here and start looking up close at money, leaves, circuit boards, bugs, skin, hair, and anything else.

The scope has a built-in, adjustable-brightness LED for illumination. The brightest setting is not always the best --- try different levels of illumination and let the software auto-adjust the contrast. I also learned that in order to see things at the maximum 250X magnification you need to follow the instructions in the FAQ.

It comes with a suction-cup gooseneck mount that is very stable, and a plastic board with a grid pattern, which helps you align and locate the thing you are looking at. You can also simply hold the scope against things. The software takes still photos and videos, and hasn't crashed on me yet (the earlier version was buggy).

For the price, the microscope is an amazingly entertaining device and I find myself grabbing it to check out all sorts of things, including splinters, skin cuts, bugs, and playing card designs. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/22/photos-and-videos-of-bugs-and-3.html

Among Apple’s idiosyncratic quirks is a general discouragement when it comes to attaching peripheral devices. Sure, they aren’t vocally opposed, but through compatibility and other means, they don’t exactly make it easy to sync up your MacBook or iPad with all the various extra devices and formats you may need to access.

A MacBook itself may only come with ports for one or two USB-C devices...and that’s it. Instead, you can pick up this USB 8-port Type-C valet hub to get all your devices plugged in at the same time, while also keeping all your desk clutter to a minimum.

The first thing you notice about this hub is the full array of ports lining both sides of this powerhouse device. There are two USB-C connectors plus a third power delivery port; 2 USB-A 3.0 ports, plus ports for SD, Micro SD, and even 3.5mm audio devices to plugin safely.

With the nearly foot-long cable, the device plugs neatly into your MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, Surface Book, Galaxy Tab Pro, or other USB-C compatible devices for easy access, cleaning up your deskspace and eliminating that waterfall of cords and dongles dangling from your device.

Meanwhile, the entire setup is completely plug and play, requiring absolutely no software, drivers or installation of any kind to operate.

In addition to all of its connectivity goodness, Apple users will be pleased to see the valet bin on the top of the hub can hold all kinds of small accessories like pens, paper clips, earphones, and more. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/22/this-hub-keeps-up-to-8-devices.html

It turns out that police unions and benevolent associations lied and exaggerated about police officers being poisoned by Shake Shack milkshakes.

From the New York Post:

Police sources explained it was clear that the workers couldn’t have known cops had placed the orders “since it wasn’t done in person” — and they couldn’t have dosed the drinks after the officers arrived, because they were packaged and waiting for pickup when the trio walked in.

Soon after sipping the shakes, however, the cops realized they didn’t taste or smell right, so they threw the drinks in the trash and alerted a manager, who apologized and issued them vouchers for free food or drink, which they accepted, according to sources.

But when the cops told their sergeant about the incident, the supervisor called in the Emergency Service Unit to set up a crime scene.

Photo by Brenda Godinez on Unsplash Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/22/the-three-new-york-cops-who-dr.html