On Tuesday, just before Palm Beach County's board of commissioners voted to mandate masks in public spaces, the people had the opportunity to speak their minds. One of the citizens:

“And they want to throw God’s wonderful breathing system out the door. You’re all turning your backs on it. Can you prove that it’s good for people to breathe carbon dioxide over and over and over again? God made it so that we would breathe in fresh oxygen, to go to our body, to every cell in the body. It has to have that to make energy. When you wear a mask, the nose is cut off, the mouth is cut off."

Yesterday, the state of Florida reported a horrifying 19.97% positive rate for COVID-19.

(The Daily Beast)

thumbnail image: BreakShirts.com Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/they-want-to-throw-gods-wo.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/pokemon-go-grandpa-has-64.html

The mid-19th century was the heyday for s'eances, mediums, and psychics. In Boston, a chemist and silver engraver named William H. Mumler saw an opportunity to mix the hot new technology of photography with paranormal activity to make some big bucks. So he announced that if you sat for a picture in his studio, your dead relative might just turn up for the photo opp. Mumler's secret? Ye olde magical double exposure that he stumbled upon after accidentally taking a self-portrait on an already-used negative. From Mysterious Universe:

Typically, he would take a glass photographic plate that held the image of the dead person in life and simply place it over a new glass plate meant to hold the image of the customer. When the photo was then developed the two images would be fused together into a composite and voila, ghost photo. On many occasions Mumler did not have access to an actual photo of the deceased, and so he got creative, using other figures that were blurred just enough that the client could believe that it was the presence of the lost loved one, easy enough to do with a bereaved, gullible person who is willing to do anything to see them again.[...]

Mumler might have been able to keep this going for many more years if he had been a little more careful. He started producing ever more outlandish ghost photographs, including even one of the dead president Abraham Lincoln photobombing a picture of his wife Mary Todd Lincoln.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/the-chemist-who-made-big-bucks.html

Four years ago, Carly Fiorina was Ted Cruz's running mate in the 2016 GOP primaries. This time around, however, the Republican businesswoman is voting for Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate.

Fiorina is not going to keep quiet, write in another candidate, or vote third-party. “I’ve been very clear that I can’t support Donald Trump,” she told me, in an interview that can be heard in full on the latest episode of The Ticket. “And elections are binary choices.” She struggled with the decision, and whether to go public. But she said that this struggle is one Republicans need to have—including those who have rationalized supporting Trump despite their disagreements, because of some of his policies or judicial appointments.

“As citizens, our vote is more than a check on a box. You know, it’s a statement about where we want to go, and I think what we need now actually is real leadership that can unify the country,” she said. “I am encouraged that Joe Biden is a person of humility and empathy and character. I think he’s demonstrated that through his life. And I think we need humility and empathy everywhere in public life right now. And I think character counts.”

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/former-gop-vice-presidential-c.html

The CO2 Coalition is a non-profit climate denial organization with deep pockets supported by the Mercers, the Kochs, and other conservative fossil fuel financial interests. Despite the demonstrable unreality of its mission, the CO2 Coalition has already found favor in the White House.

In August 2019, they posted an op-ed on Facebook from the Washington Examiner that was written by a known climate denier and disguised itself as legitimate and factual reporting about climate change. As Judd Legum's Popular Information Newsletter explained:

The article claimed computer models used by climate scientists to predict warming have proved overblown, and thus shouldn’t be trusted. To prove it, Michaels compared “actual temperatures since 1979 with what the 32 families of climate models used in the latest U.N. report on climate science predicted they would be.”

The comparison was flawed. Michaels compared the earth’s present temperature with past climate models that predicted more carbon pollution than actually occurred. If we had polluted as much as the models predicted, the world would have warmed as much as the models predicted.

We know this because actual climate scientists have published research assessing the accuracy of climate models. […] Michaels’ analysis, on the other hand, didn’t go through any peer-review process, nor is Michaels climate scientist himself. What Michaels did was amateur Google sleuthing. What the scientists did was science.

Regardless, the post was shared more than 2,000 times before it was removed by Facebook's Independent Fact-checkers.

Then, according to E&E News:

A "conservative" Facebook employee quietly intervened, overturning the fact check, and the misinformation was no longer labeled as false, according to the CO2 Coalition.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/facebooks-new-fact-checking.html

U.S. Representaive Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) has lost his legal battle to unmask a fictional cow on Twitter. Though the case made news of Nunes' narcissism, it was months before a judge could bring an end to his thin-skinned legal shenanigans. It was an exercise in censorship, in chilling criticism with the expensive prospect of defending even absurd lawsuits.

An interesting wrinkle: as the lawsuit suit named Twitter, its Section 230 immunity to defamation claims was how it rid itself of Nunes.

Judge John Marshall said in a decision Friday that Twitter was “immune from the defamation claims of” Nunes, R-Tulare, due to federal law that says social media companies are not liable for what people post on their platforms.

Specifically: "Judge Marshall [said] previous court cases had already settled that Section 230 applies even if the company does show bias in what content it allows people to post."

Conservatives have made a big shit sandwich out of believing Section 230 somehow means the opposite of this, and they will be eating it for years to come. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/davin-nunes-loses-legal-battle.html

We may not have Hollywood blockbusters back yet and the fall television season may be on hold until 2021, but somebody forgot to tell video game makers that COVID-19 was supposed to shut down the gaming world.

On the contrary, gamers have been feasting on announcements of huge events still to come this year, including the release of giant AAA Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Star Wars: Squadrons games as well as the expected late 2020 release of the PS5, our first new next-gen console in six years.

The gaming world never sleeps — and anybody can get involved. With training like The Hardcore Game Development and Animation Bundle, you’ll have the know-how to create your own amazing games that could spawn the new Peter Parker or Luke Skywalker of the 2020s.

Over six courses featuring more than 24 hours of content, you’ll get a full video game building education, focusing in on the character and environment creation tools and techniques that are now elevating the industry to constantly more dazzling imagery.

It all begins with Stylized Game Art: Character Sculpting for Video Games, learning the fundamentals of character creation and design as students get overviews of all the major gaming building software like Zbrush, PBR, Maya, Substance, Unity, and Unreal.

In Character Modeling and Sculpting in Zbrush, students model and sculpt their own characters, props, and other 3D assets using Zbrush, an industry-standard app for crafting three-dimensional game elements. Or you could try your hand at building your stars and their world in the Forger iOS app with iOS iPad Game Development 3D Character Sculpting and Modeling. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/if-youve-had-dreams-of-craf.html

Three members of the Wilmington Police Department in North Carolina were fired after a supervisor reviewing dashcam footage noticed them eagerly discussing the prospect of race war: "We are just going to go out and start slaughtering them fucking n----s", said one of the officers, Kevin Piner.

Michael ‘Kevin’ Piner, James ‘Brian’ Gilmore, and Jessie E. Moore II were all terminated from the force. The announcement came from the new Chief of Police Donny Williams — not even 24-hours into his first day as chief.

On Wednesday afternoon, members of City Council along with Williams held a press conference to address the conduct of the former police officers. Williams, a nearly 30-year veteran at the department said he was saddened by the actions of the officers, but would have no tolerance for this type of behavior.

The comment was one of many similarly racist and homophobic statements made during the conversation:

Piner received a phone call from Moore, according to the investigation, a segment in which Moore referred to a black female as a "negro." He also referred to the woman by using a racial slur. He repeated the use of the slur in describing a black magistrate, and Moore used a gay slur to describe the magistrate as well. ... Piner then told Moore he felt a civil war was needed to "wipe them off the (expletive) map. That'll put them back about four or five generations." Moore told Piner he was "crazy," and the recording stopped a short time later.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/north-carolina-cop-we-are-j.html

The city of Lopburi om Thailand has allegedly been overrun by gangs of wild macaques, resulting in several "no-go zones" for humans. As one resident told The Guardian: "We live in a cage but the monkeys live outside."

The macaque population in Lopburi has doubled in just three years. The monkeys were frequently fed bananas by tourists, by after the coronavirus lockdowns began and tourism froze up, they were forced to seek alternative nutrition — typically junk food and fizzy drinks stolen from local stores or given them by frightened humans. All that sugar might be making them feistier, however, both for fighting and for fucking.

But my favorite most horrifying dystopian detail comes from France 24 (which is almost identical to the Guardian, except for this paragraph):

An abandoned cinema is the macaques' headquarters -- and cemetery. Dead monkeys are laid to rest by their peers in the projection room in the cinema's rear and any human who enters is attacked.

I can't find many other details about this but wow, what a time to be alive.

Local wildlife authorities plan to embark on a sterilization campaign to help control the population of wild horny sugar junky cinephile monkeys. According to news reports, they aim to fix 500 macaques by Friday, although I couldn't find any details on how they plan to execute this, or whether it involves an epic Boss-level-esque journey into the Great Macaque Movie Theatre Morgue.

Macaque attack: humans try to take back Thai city from monkeys [Agence France-Presse] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/macaques-have-colonized-a-city.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/internet-fixes-botched-art-res.html

Mary W. Jackson was one of the black women mathematicians at NASA whose contributions to the space race were made in a segregated and sexist environment and left unsung until the publication of Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures [Amazon]. Jackson's name will now grace NASA's D.C. headquarters, permanently honoring a "human computer" who made the moon landing possible.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Wednesday the agency’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., will be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA.

Jackson started her NASA career in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Jackson, a mathematician and aerospace engineer, went on to lead programs influencing the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. In 2019, she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

“Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space. Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology,” said Bridenstine. “Today, we proudly announce the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building. It appropriately sits on ‘Hidden Figures Way,’ a reminder that Mary is one of many incredible and talented professionals in NASA’s history who contributed to this agency’s success. Hidden no more, we will continue to recognize the contributions of women, African Americans, and people of all backgrounds who have made NASA’s successful history of exploration possible.”

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/nasa-renames-dc-headquarters-a.html

The critters at the Atlanta Botanical Garden look oddly … metallic?

From the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering:

Their newly developed SlothBot is built to study animals, plants and the overall environment below them by moving as little as possible. It inches along overhead cables only when necessary, charging itself with solar panels to monitor factors like carbon dioxide levels and weather for as long as possible — possibly for years. It even crawls toward the sunlight to ensure it stays charged.

The 3D-printed shell helps SlothBot blend in (at least in areas where sloths live) while sheltering its equipment from the rain.

The robot will start by watching over the Atlanta Botanical Garden for several months, hanging from a lone 100-foot cable.

The adorableness appears to be an incidental bonus.

‘SlothBot in the Garden’ Demonstrates Hyper-Efficient Conservation Robot [Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering:]

  Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/the-slothbot-is-a-slow-moving.html

Note-taking is more than just cribbing information so it’s easier to study for a test later. Notes are taken by active learners engaging with the information. In fact, the act of taking notes is actually internalizing that information with the learner. 

Students who take notes are actually seven times more likely to remember those facts a week later than those who didn’t take notes. So all that information you want to make sure you don’t forget actually stands a much better chance of being remembered without notes -- simply because you took notes. 

Of course, notations and stray thoughts are part of virtually any workflow. So Notebag is a note-taking app that seeks to make taking notes as easy and, most importantly, as unobtrusive as possible. 

A no. 1 Product of the Day on ProductHunt, Notebag creator Richard Blechinger built the app for modern note-taking with a sharp focus on making all your notation steps accessible directly from your keyboard. There’s no more opening up browsers or other apps to jot down information with Notebag. The app lets users access quick global keyboard shortcuts to automatically search for facts, drop links, categorize note topics, see instant previews, and several other features. 

Meanwhile, Notebag also brings a ton of other valuable tricks to the note taker’s arsenal, all without slowing down the creative flow. Markdowns can happen with their own instant previews (so no need for a preview pane to type) and all formatting is automatic, though editable.

Since notes often come about during a stream of consciousness diversion, they can also be easy to forget within a short time. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/notebag-appeals-to-note-takers.html

Back in March, when we were all being asked to stay in our homes for God knows how long, you probably thought about a whole host of tasks you’d love to accomplish with all this new-found downtime in your house.

Like many, maybe you thought this would be a good opportunity to plow through that stack of unread books that have been building up on your bedside table for the past few years now. So...how did that go for you?

If you got through even one, you can count that a success. But you can also consider it a missed opportunity because with the right training, you probably could have ripped through the entire batch.

Speed reading isn’t a superpower. It’s actually a process for onboarding information that anyone can learn. The courses in The Speed Reading and Memory Mastery Bundle can help you sharpen up those skills so you can read exponentially faster, retain more of what you read and even hone your memory to lock more of that information in your brain for longer.

The collection includes five courses that present sound strategies for boosting your reading speed, increasing your comprehension and retention, and improve cognitive function to recall and recite your new-found information even years after learning it.

First, The Ultimate Speed Reading Course is your introduction, breaking down your bad reading habits and teaching you new methods that can, in many cases, boost your current reading speed by at least two to three times. Guided by speed reading experts, the course lays out the five causes of slow reading, the four techniques you can use to reach your maximum reading potential, and even the secret to understanding everything you read the first time. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/this-speed-reading-and-memory.html

I've had the pleasure of attending several Ignite events. They consist of a bunch of five-minute lightning talks on a wide variety of topics. You can watch previous talks here.

There is a live-streamed Ignite event happening tonight at 6 PM Pacific Time and the lineup looks intriguing.

The topics include historical tales of fancy pigeon feather theft, how to micro-dose, and how to get safely arrested while protesting the hegemony. Plus, we'll be joined by an epidemiologist from UNC and the woman who's been adding art to SF's boarded-up storefronts.

Find out more here.

Our speakers: Hope Williams - Coordinated Acts of Civil Disobedience Monica Guzman - 7 words to keep your world from shrinking Cecily Mak - C L E A R L I F E Kelly Jensen - Fancy Pigeons Are a Thing Chris Taylor - The how, what and why of microdosing Jeremy Conrad - The History of Cocktail Paula Chowles - The Art of Documentary Filmmaking in a Streaming World Mya Roberson - When COVID-19 and racism collide Inga Bard - Birthing a Renaissance Robert Strong - Learn How the Brain is Tricked While Learning a Trick Connie Yang - Modern matriarchal societies Kevin Kelly - Journey in a Time Machine Mellina White Cusack - Attention White People: Your #BLM memes are not enough

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/theres-a-cool-ignite-live-ev.html

John Park used a 3D printer, some Sugru moldable glue, and a variety of Adafruit electronics components to build this nifty robot companion based on Pathfinder from the game Apex Legends. I also entered Sugru's drawing for a free 3D printer. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/diy-robot-companion-based-on-p.html

Starkey Spring Water, made by Whole Foods, has "at least three times the level of every other brand tested," Consumer Reports found. In fact, many of the other 45 brands tested contained undetectable amounts of arsenic, while the Whole Foods brand butted up against the maximum amount permitted by Federal regulations (10 parts per billion).

The water, sold mainly in Whole Foods markets and on Amazon, has "concerning levels of arsenic," the watchdog group says, and is "potentially harmful."

From Consumer Reports:

CR recently tested dozens of bottled water brands and found that Starkey Spring Water, introduced by Whole Foods in 2015, had concerning levels of arsenic, ranging from 9.49 to 9.56 parts per billion (ppb), at least three times the level of every other brand tested. Federal regulations require manufacturers to limit the amount of arsenic, a potentially dangerous heavy metal, in bottled water to 10 ppb.

Consumer Reports’ experts believe that level does not adequately protect public health.

CR also tested samples of Starkey Spring Water in 2019, finding levels of arsenic that approached or exceeded the federal limit: Three samples ranged from 9.48 to 9.86 ppb of arsenic; a fourth registered 10.1 ppb. Those results are cited in two pending consumer lawsuits over Starkey’s arsenic content.

Although one bottle shouldn't do any harm, “regular consumption of even small amounts of the heavy metal over extended periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and lower IQ scores in children, and poses other health issues as well,” says James Dickerson, chief scientific officer at Consumer Reports. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/whole-foods-bottled-water-ha.html

Legendary guitarist, producer, and composer Nile Rodgers—co-founder of Chic—tells the story of transforming David Bowie's "Let's Dance" from its original "folky" vibe into the post-funk masterpiece we know and love.

And for more, dig the below demo of "Let's Dance" that Rodgers shared in 2018 on what would have been Bowie's 71st birthday:

(via Kottke) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/nile-rodgers-tells-of-transfor.html

Exploding Topics is a newsletter that presents terms and words that are trending in Google Search. The latest newsletter looks at Dermaplaning (using a "scalpel to shave layers of dead skin cells from your face), SaaS SEO ("part of the 'extreme marketing specialization' metatrend"), Podcast Microphone, Back Market ("a marketplace for buying and selling refurbished electronics, like tablets and MacBooks)" and OMAD:

 

Topic #3

OMAD

OMAD stands for “One Meal a Day”.

In other words, this diet is an extreme version of intermittent fasting. But instead of eating your first meal at noon, with OMAD you fast for 23 hours. And you spend the remaining hour eating a gigantic meal.

OMAD proponents claim that the approach is easier to stick to long-term (because you can eat anything you want for your one meal).

What’s interesting about OMAD is that it grew largely on Reddit. Then, radiated out into the mainstream. In fact, the r/OMAD subreddit has 138k members.

What's next: OMAD is a spinoff of the massively popular intermittent fasting trend. Until recently, businesses struggled to capitalize on the trend. After all, how do you monetize not eating? But we’re starting to see a number of intermittent fasting products hit the market, like the Zero App and fasting tea.

Whenever I see OMAD, I can't help but think of the Jack Kirby comic book OMAC:

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/recommended-newsletter-explod.html

Arizona is one of the 29 US states and territories surging with coronavirus cases, and Covid-related hospitalizations are at an all time high this week. And today Arizona has reported 79 deaths, according to the global Covid tracker World-O-Meter, and it's still morning for them.

Of course this dire information didn't stop Trump from squishing 3,000 people, most without masks, into a tight indoor Phoenix, AZ venue yesterday in an attempt to boost his plummeting approval ratings in national polls (as of right now, FiveThirtyEight has his average approval rating at only 41%, with a 55.4% disapproval rating).

One week ago, Arizona's Trump-supporting Governor Doug Ducey downplayed the rise in Covid-19 cases, which shot up after the state began to reopen businesses in May. Although hospitals were sounding alarm bells over fears of running out of ICU beds, Ducey dismissed them, saying, "Those are not needed or necessary right now," and that another stay-at-home order was "not under discussion."

Meanwhile, according to AZCentral two days ago:

Inpatient beds, ICU beds, ventilators in use and emergency department visits for suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients all hit their highest-ever numbers Sunday, according to hospital data released by the Arizona Department of Health Services Monday.

The highest jump came in inpatient beds, with 1,992 beds occupied by suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients Sunday, compared with 1,942 Saturday.

As of Sunday, 82% of current inpatient beds and 84% of ICU beds were in use for COVID-19 and other patients.

Image: ParsonsVillas/Pixabay Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/24/today-arizona-reports-its-high.html