For all their obvious similarities, language learning apps will often each take unique approaches to teaching a foreign tongue. Or, in the case of many services, a whole bunch of foreign tongues. 

While some providers give you access to training across overwhelming menus of more than 150 different languages, the people behind the Busuu Language Learning system have settled on only 12. English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, and Arabic. That’s it. 

While that comes as an obvious disappointment for those with their heart set on learning Fijian, Lithuanian or Tok Pisin, the creole-based language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea, Busuu’s focus on the fundamentals has paid off, with more than 100 million learners worldwide.

Crafted by an in-house team of education and linguistic experts, Busuu has fashioned more than 1,000 fully optimized lessons aimed at getting new speakers proficient in the four main language skills — reading, writing, listening, and, of course, speaking. So unlike language systems that only focus on spoken word training, Busuu gives you a well-rounded immersion in all aspects of your new language.

One of Busuu’s strongest advantages is that massive 100 million-strong community, which allows students to advance their learning through practice directly with native speakers around the world. For example, you can send off written work in your new language and get a native to critique you almost instantly.

Meanwhile, Busuu has also crafted their service to couple that old-school, one-on-one personal training method with all the advantages of a high-tech world. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/busuu-can-teach-you-your-favor.html

This LEGO Ideas version of the International Space Station pretty much made my 10-year-old nephew's head explode.

Complete with astronaut minifigs and a mini-Space Shuttle, this 864 piece kit is pretty hard to turn away from.

LEGO Ideas International Space Station 21321 Building Kit, Adult Set for Display, Makes a Great Birthday Present, New 2020 (864 Pieces) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/i-know-a-kid-who-will-be-build.html

I used to buy Gildan T-shirts, but after Carla bought me Calvin Klein t-shirts, I noticed a big difference in the quality of the fabric. The Calvin Klein cotton feels a lot better! And occasionally Amazon has the shirts on sale. Right now you can get a 5-pack for a really good price. I just bought a combo pack that includes three white shirts and two gray ones. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/good-price-on-calvin-klein-t-s.html

"I will kill everybody! Accept it! Die in the name of Jesus!" screamed a passenger Saturday night on an Alaska Airlines flight heading to Chicago from Seattle. Two passengers helped subdue him while the plane returned to Seattle's Sea-Tac airport.

From The Seattle Times:

The incident occurred shortly after Alaska Airlines Flight 422 took off at 11:10 p.m., said Peter McGraw, spokesperson for the port...

“The man became extremely belligerent and physically aggressive during the ascent,” Ray Lane, external communications manager for Alaska Airlines, said in an email.

Video from a passenger shows the man walking in the aisle and shouting that he would kill everyone on board “in the name of Jesus.”

Nobody was injured and were booked on later flights. The man was arrested while police investigate further. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/man-threatens-to-kill-everyone.html

Example no. 3,225 why the real world isn’t like The Brady Bunch: your home office. Mike Brady was able to turn his den into a truly groovy cool home office for his architectural work. Mike had a wife, six kids and a live-in maid, yet still had a spare room he could devote to his business, which is a lot luckier than most of us. 

In fact, we bet since many of your home offices are only 3 or 4 months old, they may just consist of a laptop perched on the corner of the dining room table during non-dinner hours.

That won’t do. It’s time to devote a room and remake your space into a real home office — and we’ve got 20 ideas to help make it happen. Even if you just want the space more ready for your after-hours play, we think you’ll approve.

Maybe you can’t devote space to a big, bulky new desk, but this laptop stand will help make your trusty computer feel more like a proper business tool. In addition to a sleek, sturdy profile that looks great and an adjustable angle to help reduce screen glare, this stand also has four built-in USB ports, so you can keep your phone and all your other important devices charged at your desk without a tangle of outlets and connectors.

Ok, if a full desk isn’t your speed, at least make the laptop perched in your lap a more comfortable experience with this Lazy Lap Desk. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/your-home-office-could-use-som.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/woman-reads-trump-campaigns.html

Spoken Word with Electronics is an audio series delivering to you a two side recording of unusual stories paired with vintage modular electronic sounds

Hi, everyone - Welcome back to the show. This week, the topic is on Time Keeping, and asks: What's your favorite Riot? My favorite riot is mythically referred to as "The Calendar Riots". It was a reaction across the British Empire for a government theft of eleven days from September 1752. Specifically September 2nd would immediately be followed by September 14th, with September 3rd-13th deleted.

People stormed through villages demanding these stolen eleven days, and the possible loss of experiences, be returned. Some say the riots didn't happen, and I think that makes the riots even better. You can't control an invisible riot, and a riot that never happened is one that never stops.

As to why, The British were one of few standouts on shifting from the flawed Julian Calendar to the more accurate but less pagan Gregorian one. The solution on shifting to the Gregorian was sloppy. The Calendar Act is an interesting moment at controlling a population through decrees.

Jump into our Time Capsule and bounce back to 1752. Hear an actual Riot Act declared (reference audio), and consider The Calendar Act in modern times as a new effort for Time Made Great Again by the Trump Administration. "Clock, You're Up!"

SPOKEN WORD WITH ELECTRONICS #18: The Calendar Act of 1750 & The Fake or Real Calendar RIOTS of 1752

In this era of Covid, "Give Us Our Eleven Days" sounds resonant. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/often-feel-like-youre-missin.html

A 1% mortality rate might not seem like much, but the death rate for COVID-19 is just the tip of a massive iceberg that the US economy is heading towards full-steam ahead.

From Franklin Veaux's Quora post:

For every one person who dies:

19 more require hospitalization. 18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives. 10 will have permanent lung damage. 3 will have strokes. 2 will have neurological damage that leads to chronic weakness and loss of coordination. 2 will have neurological damage that leads to loss of cognitive function.

So now all of a sudden, that “but it’s only 1% fatal!” becomes:

3,282,000 people dead. 62,358,000 hospitalized. 59,076,000 people with permanent heart damage. 32,820,000 people with permanent lung damage. 9,846,000 people with strokes. 6,564,000 people with muscle weakness. 6,564,000 people with loss of cognitive function.

His conclusion: "The choice is not 'ruin the economy to save 1%.' If we reopen the economy, it will be destroyed anyway. The US economy cannot survive everyone getting COVID-19."

Image: Jumpstory / CC0 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/how-can-a-disease-with-1-mort.html

"Americans have gone from having access to most of the world to being banned from most of it," writes Indi Samarajiva for Medium Politics. "An American passport is now worthless."

The world now looks at Americans as unhygienic, arrogant, willfully ignorant, science hating, magical thinking, untrustworthy, selfish rule-breakers.

The most reliable projections are saying 200,000 dead and 50 million infected by election day in November. Even these projections struggle to account for completely irrational federal actions like denigrating masks, pushing to reopen early, and pushing students back into schools. This is not the absence of public health, this is its opposite.

It is, in effect, governance by COVID-19. Not a failed state. A plague state. Even after election day, Donald Trump will still be in power for nearly 3 months, until January 20th. Besides impeaching a dead-duck President, there’s nothing America can do but wait, while COVID-19 grows ever stronger. Grows completely out of control. In a pandemic, days matter, hours matter. A year is entirely too late.

America will be lucky to exit this pandemic with less than a million dead and 100 million infected. The living will be lucky to exit their country within the next five years.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/u-s-passports-are-worthless.html

New Zealand lifted restrictions on social distancing and public gatherings after reporting no new cases for 2 weeks. They are also keeping their borders closed.

How did New Zealand managed to contain the virus, when so many others, most notably the United States, have failed miserably? Pretty simple, they agree to take the necessary precautions to keep the disease from spreading. From the BBC:

New Zealand first went into lockdown on 25 March, setting up a new four-stage alert system and going in at level four, where most businesses were shut, schools closed and people told to stay at home.

After more than five weeks, it moved to level three in April, allowing takeaway food shops and some non-essential businesses to re-open.

As the number of community cases continued to decline, the country moved into level two in mid-May.

The move to level one comes ahead of time - the government had originally planned to make the move on 22 June, but it was brought forward after no new cases were reported for 17 days.

Image: Devonport, NZ in 2003 by Mark Frauenfelder Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/with-no-new-cases-for-two-week.html

What could have been a disaster turns out to be a joy ride for this screaming passenger. Found on reddit, it's not clear where or when this took place. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/man-gets-caught-in-ropes-of-ho.html

The New York Times reports that researchers in Singapore have invented a device that fits in a window and can reduce loud noises from the outside by 10 decibels. “If you sit in the room, you get that same feeling like when you flick on the switch of noise-canceling earphones,” says Bhan Lam, a researcher at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore that developed the Anti-Noise Control Window.

Their results were published on Thursday in Scientific Reports. The prototype is not yet the most practical device in real world conditions, but it points the way toward the development of technologies that may help ease the strain of noisy city living.

Borrowing from the same technological principles used in noise-canceling headphones, the team expanded the concept to fit an entire room by placing 24 small speakers in a window. The speakers emit sound waves that correspond to the incoming racket and neutralize it — or, at least some of it.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/scientists-invent-an-electroni.html

The Lincoln project, a political group founded by Republican nevertrumpers, released an ad this weekend that takes a look at Trump's claim that he's a law and order president.

Trump’s campaign manager is a felon.

His deputy campaign manager is a felon.

His national security advisor is a felon.

His foreign policy advisor is a felon. His personal lawyer is a felon.

His long time advisor is a felon.

It’s not a campaign, it’s a criminal enterprise.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/lincoln-project-law-and-ord.html

There's a reason that the United States has the highest Covid-19 death toll in the world with more than 135,000 coronavirus fatalities so far. And there's a reason that Florida broke the record for highest cases of coronavirus in one day. Just take a look at this video, taken at an anti-mask rally at a restaurant in Windermere, Florida (but of course), and you'll see the broken logic that is behind "freedom" defenders' rights to spread and catch coronavirus.

Rather than give up their "freedom" by simply wearing a mask, they'd rather risk losing a bigger freedom by filling hospitals to full capacity (as they did in, er, Florida), shutting down international travel (because other countries are turning Americans away who try to enter), shutting down cities and states with a high coronavirus caseload, and obliterating our economy. With that kind of logic, Americans should be permitted the freedom to drive drunk or race cars on public streets. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/angry-folks-throw-an-anti-mask.html

I had no idea there was such a thing as tactile Rubik's Cubes. Here's Big Wendy, an accomplished Rubik's Cube artist, making a portrait of Rubik's Cube inventor Erno Rubik using 400 tactile cubes while blindfolded. She says, "The actual portrait took me around 7 hours to finish and the prep took around 3." Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/blinfolded-big-wendy-makes-a.html

Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged pimp and procurer for pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, is being regularly moved to keep her alive, according to The Daily Mail, which also wants you to know she isn't "Cruella De Vil."

Maxwell’s allies have told The Mail on Sunday that she:

Is not the person who introduced billionaire Epstein to Prince Andrew; Fears dying of Covid-19 while in prison; Insists she and Epstein had not met in person for 15 years; Weeps over friends who have lost jobs because of their association with her; Has not had a haircut in a year and is being moved ‘from cell-to-cell’ for her own safety.

The Mail is a notorious fabricator even by the dismal standards of U.K. tabloids, with recent form for misleadingly edited photographs, outright fake news and even falsifying its own historical stories. The point is that it is about the last outlet you'd expect an anonymously-sourced woe-is-her sympathy piece about Ghislaine Maxwell to appear right now. To paraphrase the Bolsheviks, who fucks whom? Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/ghislaine-maxwell-moved-to-a.html

Meditation seems simple. Just sit on the floor, clear your mind, and zen out. But have you tried sitting cross-legged on the floor without moving for even 10 minutes? It starts getting mighty uncomfortable after a while. And if you’ve got a few years on you, the knees and thighs are going to be barking loudly if you aren’t positioned or your posture is off.

Much like your bed is the key to better sleep, the right meditation cushion is the key to a better, more comfortable session of self-reflection and clarity. Walden confidently calls their high-end pillows the best meditation cushions on Earth, created as a way to support each user’s spiritual mind and body journey.

More practically, Walden figures if you’re comfortable, you’re much more inclined to make a meditation session part of your daily habit. That’s why their Walden Meditation Cushion is engineered to provide better stability and balance throughout your body while you go deep inside your mind.

These cushions aren’t just some dime-store throw pillows either. Walden cushions are made by expert craftspeople in New York City and are constructed with premium state-of-the-art, durable materials for a superior experience.

Crafted using gel-infused memory foam as well as organic and hypoallergenic buckwheat hull sourced locally, a Walden cushion helps raise your hips, allowing for a firm, yet comfortable position without detracting from your mental pursuits.

Each cushion adapts to your particular body type with a water-resistant, antimicrobial zippered shell covering with easy-to-clean coating to make sure your cushion lasts forever. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/12/this-meditation-cushion-is-the.html

Unless you’re doing a lot better than most of us these days, having a personal masseuse on call isn’t really financially doable. And of course, how many masseurs are still doing house calls or accepting visitors during all this time of medical uncertainty?

With skilled human hands mostly out of play right now, it falls to mechanical help in your own hands to handle bringing soothing relief to aching, tired muscles and joints. Since they debuted 10 to 15 years ago, massage guns pounding deep tissue pain into submission have become almost standard issue equipment to quell inflammation. 

But unless you’re one of those Rockefellers we talked about earlier, you probably aren’t ponying up for the Cadillac of massage guns, the $700 Theragun.

Not to worry. We found deals on 10 massage guns that will help quiet aching body parts — and won’t even cost you half of the Theragun’s price.

If you need a post-workout recovery, this handheld unit should be able to help, digging deep into strained muscles to find deep relaxation. With five replaceable heads to target specific body areas, this gun is also cordless with up to three hours of battery life on a single charge.

With six intensity levels to adjust massage pressure, this unit with an ultra-quiet motor is ready to attack different muscle groups with just the right amount of power and pressure. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/12/these-10-massage-gun-deals-pro.html

With the cancelation of live events for the foreseeable future, the rave community has been facing serious withdrawals. No hypnotizing light shows to get lost in, no desert playground to run around in, and no trading kandi with strangers.

In an attempt to comfort the EDM community, famous event organizer Insomniac, whose festivals include the Electric Daisy Carnival, has been hosting virtual raves.

But, it may have done little to soothe a raver's EDM heart.

Ravers aching to get back into the scene pulled up to Insomniac and Restless Beats' “Park ‘N Rave” event at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports in Chandler, Arizona on June 26 and 27.

In a way, this socially distanced version of raving seems more luxurious than it is traditionally. One guest described her experience on edmmaniac.com saying,

“Our personal dance floor was ample space for us to set up our viewing station. We were allowed to bring our own lawn chairs, blow up couches, air beds, and beer pong tables. As a grandma raver, being able to chill from time to time between sets without leaving my group or having to walk away from the stage was awesome. Guests were also encouraged to bring decorations, so many personalized their space with tapestries, flowers, Christmas lights, totems, and flags that made it feel like a camping festival. There was so much space for flow arts! I saw so many hoopers, levi wanders, glovers, and staffers doing their thing without being afraid to run into people!

Being able to bring our own food and alcohol was a real game changer!

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/11/drive-in-raves-bring-back-larg.html

The man who writes what Tucker Carlson says was exposed this weekend as a psuedonymous online troll notorious for racist remarks and sexist harassment. CNN business sleuthed him out.

Just this week, the writer, Blake Neff, responded to a thread started by another user in 2018 with the subject line, "Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?" Neff wrote, "I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no." (The subject line was not censored on the forum.) On June 5, Neff wrote, "Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down." On June 24, Neff commented, "Honestly given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep." On June 26, Neff wrote that the only people who care about changing the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins are "white libs and their university-'educated' pets."

And over the course of five years, Neff has maintained a lengthy thread in which he has derided a woman and posted information about her dating life that has invited other users to mock her and invade her privacy. There has at times also been overlap between some material he posted or saw on the forum and Carlson's show.

Even in the extremism of his white nationalist sentiments, Tucker is relatively cautious and measured. In his bow-tied days he was more openly bigoted. Though cut from the same cloth in terms of their feelings about women and minorities, these two men are worlds apart in one respect: Neff is a fungible content drone with no charisma, whereas Carlson is a powerful and increasingly orange cable TV star. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/11/tucker-carlsons-head-writer.html