https://boingboing.net/2020/04/14/disney-just-released-the-secre.html

This isn't the first chronological montage showing Trump's bungled response to the covid-19 pandemic, but it's definitely a good one - worth the watch. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/14/watching-trump-deny-reality-is.html

Jaz and Garry Mott of  Victoria, Australia thought it would be nice to share photos of their 2019 vacation with their Facebook friends. Unfortunately, eagle-eyed police officers spotted the photos and assumed that they'd been taken during mandatory stay-at-home orders. According to The Independent the couple was met at their door by police and "were handed fines of AU$1,652 (lb840.70) each for 'failure to comply with a direction given to a person in the exercise of a power under an authorisation given under section 199.'"

The Motts had trouble convincing the police that they were in error, which is unusual because police are well-know for quickly admitting errors when presented with the facts. In this case however, the police didn't revoke the fine until the story made the local news, after which they quietly returned the money.

Image: Facebook Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/14/australian-police-fine-couple.html

Even in their well-stocked pantry of digital goodies, Illustrator might be the most stealthily powerful app that Adobe’s popular Creative Cloud offers. As the go-to platform to create virtually any scalable vector graphic project, its versatility is mostly unmatched, even by its more famous sibling Adobe Photoshop.

Of course, learning how to harness all that creative power is another story. While you’ve got a few extra hours to kill these days, now’s a great time to go deep exploring the vast capabilities of this foundational graphic design tool with the training in The Ultimate Adobe Illustrator’s Guidebook Certification Bundle.

Whether you’re a CC first timer or just could use some extra practice with everything Illustrator can do, this collection brings together nine courses from some top instructors to explain and explore it all.

Four courses here lay the groundwork for beginners, advancing from understanding basics, exploring lines and brushes and using the pen tool to color management, creating vector shapes and typographies and how to do processes like image traces. Using those lessons on some real-world examples like redrawing famous logos will start giving you a firm command of everything Illustrator can do.

The training advances from there, helping students tackle increasingly more difficult projects, yet always using actual hands-on training examples to help reinforce the learning.

A course like Digital Design Masterclass for Graphic Designers With Adobe goes deep on digital design theory training in icon design, website layout, digitizing sketches, eBook cover design, social media campaign design, and more; while Master Popular Graphic Design Projects gets into specific media for you to create like building your own package designs, digital assets, social media graphics, album art, magazine covers, layout spreads and beyond. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/adobe-illustrator-is-the-swiss.html

Hyoog if true.

"The President of the United States has the authority to do what the President has the authority to do," President Trump says.

He says local government "can't do anything without the approval of the President of the United States." pic.twitter.com/MZsVSM1bcV

 joshscampbell (@joshscampbell) April 13, 2020

I'm going to put it very simply. The President of the United States has the authority to do what the President has the authority to do. Which is very powerful.

Damn if that ain't goin' down in history.

In other news, the GOP has continued to remain to surprisingly silent on the issue of states' rights for which they fought so hard to use an excuse for bigotry over the last 250 years.

Image: Public Domain via the White House Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/breaking-the-president-has-th.html

Good news, everyone!

One of the side effects of coronavirus lockdown around the world has been the tremendous reduction in pollution level. One can breathe in fresh air. And after ages probably, stars are also visible in the night sky.

This is an ideal time to stargaze, given the number of constellations one can easily spot in the night sky without a telescope or even binoculars. Hope you did not miss the giant pink supermoon that recently graced the night sky.

You might not want to miss another major celestial event that is going to occur soon: Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the moon will appear together for three days! April 14, 15, 16.

Read the rest at the Indiana Times.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/mars-saturn-jupiter-and-the.html

From Just Security:

What follows is a comprehensive timeline of major U.S. policy events related to the novel coronavirus pandemic. We’ve focused on the U.S. government’s preparation for a pandemic, tracking warning signals of COVID-19, and public and internal responses when the outbreak hit inside the United States.

In our view, the timeline is clear: Like previous administrations, the Trump administration knew for years that a pandemic of this gravity was possible and imminently plausible. Several Trump administration officials raised strong concerns prior to the emergence of COVID-19 and raised alarms once the virus appeared within the United States. While some measures were put in place to prepare the United States for pandemic readiness, many more were dismantled since 2017.

In response to COVID-19, the United States was slow to act at a time when each day of inaction mattered most–in terms of both the eventual public health harms as well as the severe economic costs. The President and some of his closest senior officials also disseminated misinformation that left the public less safe and more vulnerable to discounting the severity of the pandemic. When it came time to minimize the loss of life and economic damage, the United States was unnecessarily underprepared, had sacrificed valuable time, and confronted the pandemic with a more mild response than public health experts recommended. These lapses meant that the United States was ultimately forced to make more drastic economic sacrifices to catch up to the severity of the pandemic than would have otherwise been necessary.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/the-most-comprehensive-timelin.html

My daughter and I are enjoying Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but when I read Cecilia D'Agostino's negative review of the smash hit Nintendo title in Wired, I couldn't help but think she has a point. "[T]rapped in an endless cycle of kawaii capitalism," indeed.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is relaxing to me the way a high-end Maui resort may be relaxing—the kind where at-attention employees taxi $20 cocktails to your stinging-hot metal beach chair atop 500 truckloads of stolen white sand. I sit out in the sun, getting more and more intoxicated, but nothing stops the stinging, and the bill just keeps getting steeper.

How is it possible to feel so completely unrelaxed in Animal Crossing? I’ve wondered this for hours, pitching my brain against the game’s repetitive dialog, frustrating mechanics, and obsession with debt bondage in search for a lasting dopamine high. And while I’ve enjoyed small, short-lived bursts of joy—a new fish species, a gift dropped from a balloon!—in the end, Animal Crossing has only felt like the grind, charmingly reskinned.

Image: Nintendo Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/a-review-of-animal-crossing-by.html

During a totally unhinged coronavirus briefing that was a verbal abuse session and campaign rally, impeached and manifestly unfit U.S. president Donald Trump said "When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total."

TRUMP: When somebody's the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that's the way it's gotta be... It's total and the governors know that.

That's it, folks. That's the blog post.

Nothing matters.

Apparently not even The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights.

Nope.

Nothing matters now.

TRUMP: "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that's the way it's gotta be. It's total." pic.twitter.com/zIuiBn1Mhw

 Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 13, 2020

Trump: "The President of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the united States calls the shots." pic.twitter.com/wia8r2Fd1g

 Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 13, 2020

President Trump just now: "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total."

Fact Check: That is definitely not true.

 Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 13, 2020

President Trump lays out his view of his own authority here: “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it has to be.”

 Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) April 13, 2020

... the president of the united states of america: "the authority is total...

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/trump-says-his-authority-is.html

'TRUMP TURNS [CORONAVIRUS] BRIEFING INTO PROPAGANDA SESSION'

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/shade-thrown-by-cnn-chyrons-du.html

“'The difference now is the speed with which it spreads, and the denigration of the institutions that we rely on to understand the truth. I think we're in dangerous territory.'”

Don't miss the New York Times investigation detailing Russia's decade-long health disinformation campaign against the United States and other Western democracies, using social media and news outlets to sow confusion and hurt institutions.

Vladimir Putin's years-long campaign to spread misinformation on public health issues included urging Americans to see vaccines as dangerous. William J. Broad / New York Times:

The Russian president has waged his long campaign by means of open media, secretive trolls and shadowy blogs that regularly cast American health officials as patronizing frauds. Of late, new stealth and sophistication have made his handiwork harder to see, track and fight.

Even so, the State Department recently accused Russia of using thousands of social media accounts to spread coronavirus misinformation — including a conspiracy theory that the United States engineered the deadly pandemic.

The Kremlin’s audience for open disinformation is surprisingly large. The YouTube videos of RT, Russia’s global television network, average one million views per day, “the highest among news outlets,” according to a U.S. intelligence report. Since the founding of the Russian network in 2005, its videos have received more than four billion views, analysts recently concluded.

Read more:Putin’s Long War Against American Science

For Vladimir Putin, spreading disinformation about coronavirus fits into a long pattern of sowing doubt about science outside of his country. Interesting story by @WilliamJBroad.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/russias-health-disinformatio.html

A class action lawsuit filed against McDonald's corporation claims that women who worked for the fast food franchise in Florida restaurants were subjected to widespread sexual harassment.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday in Chicago federal court, and accuses McDonald's of fostering a climate of “severe or pervasive sexual harassment and a hostile work environment, including groping, physical assaults, and sexually-charged verbal comments.”

From Reuters:

McDonald’s said in a statement that it was committed to ensuring workers were not subject to sexual harassment. “The plaintiffs’ allegations of harassment and retaliation were investigated as soon as they were brought to our attention, and we will likewise investigate the new allegations that they have raised in their complaint,” it said.

The plaintiffs, McDonald’s employee Jamelia Fairley and former employee Ashley Reddick, are seeking to represent a class of female employees of Florida’s more than 100 corporate-owned, non-franchise McDonald’s locations. They are asking for $500 million in compensatory damages and additional punitive damages.

Fairley and Reddick said in their complaint that McDonald’s failed to provide training to prevent sexual harassment and shuffled serial harassers from one location to another without consequence. “McDonald’s strategy in Florida appears to be: deny, ignore, and punish anyone who complains too loudly, and at times, move harassers from one restaurant to another restaurant, where they have access to and can further harass more women,” they said.

Read more at Reuters:

McDonald's faces class action over 'pervasive sexual harassment' Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/widespread-sexual-harassment.html

'The purchased accounts include a victim's email address, password, personal meeting URL, and their HostKey'

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/for-sale-on-the-dark-web-500.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/robert-fripp-in-a-bee-suit-and.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/take-a-virtual-tour-of-ramesse.html

For the first time in its 40-year history, Restaurant Depot has opened their doors to the public. The wholesale food service supplier has 135 locations in the United States and it just so happens there is one half a mile away from me. I have long wanted to check out, so, after hearing the news on Thursday night, I was in line first thing Friday morning. The promise of in-stock toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and food -- at wholesale prices -- was just too tempting. Here's some of what I saw in my nearly two-hour shopping excursion.

Ok, first, the warehouse is MASSIVE. And it's full of stuff I've never seen sold anywhere else. It makes Costco look like amateur hour.

No, really. These are WHOLE GOAT CARCASSES:

And a freezer case full of COD LOINS (which I later learned are the "filet mignon" of cod fish):

If you need a pallet of Medjool dates, this place has your back:

Or maybe "Crab Meat Seafood Specialties" are more your jam:

A vat of Bubble Gum Flavored Sno-Cone syrup? No problem!

Did you know Chinese food containers were called "Food Pails" in the industry? Neither did I:

Here's a list of some of the more everyday items *I* left with, and what they cost:

-- 25 lbs. of flour for $7.38 -- Enough Clabber Girl baking powder to start a bakery $10.65 -- Two gallons of whole milk for $6.26 -- Five lbs. of fancy shredded jack and cheddar cheese (enchiladas, yo) for $12.40 Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/wholesale-restaurant-supply-ch.html

This clip is apparently from "Malltime," a 1987 episode of the British TV documentary program Equinox. Some insist that the woman is an actor, and that may very well be true especially given the mall is located in Los Angeles. But that doesn't mean she isn't also a very enthusiastic mall walker.

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/watch-this-person-passionately.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/disney-covered-up-daryl-hanna.html

From sports to movies to concerts and beyond, so many of our favorite pastimes have been completely derailed by recent events. However, gaming is one hobby that’s only seemed to pick up steam with all these hours spent inside.

Of course, it isn’t hard to see why millions of Americans trapped in their homes would lead to some hefty hours with a controller, blasting evildoers and losing oneself for a while in a completely digital world.

However, we’d suggest rather than allowing Fortnite or Overwatch or Red Dead Redemption 2 gobble up all that time, this could be a perfect moment to start crafting a game all your own instead. With the training in The Hands-On Game Development Bundle: Make Your Own Games, you’ll explore what it takes to create your own intricate gaming universes from the ground up.

This package includes 10 courses that start with the basic programming languages and key development platforms at the center of game creation. Most of these courses teach those disciplines as you’re actually creating small, playable games, making learning new skills not only informative but a lot of fun.

After learning the C++ coding language to create a dungeon-based text game as well as Node.js to build APIs used in apps and multiplayer gaming, training also explores some of the most popular game creation platforms in use today, including Godot and the world leader, Unity.

Different courses layout how to create an engaging strategy game, tactics for understanding movement and shooting in a virtual scenario and even how to build dynamic humanoid-style animated characters with the use of Unity and Adobe’s Mixamo 3D animation software. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/learn-how-to-develop-a-video-g.html

EXCLUSIVE | An underground nightclub in SF’s Bayview was shut down Saturday for illegally operating during the coronavirus outbreak, The Chronicle has learned.Story by @ctuan: https://t.co/cF9pGsCoIm pic.twitter.com/qYphlp7BRA

 San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) April 13, 2020

San Francisco Police busted an alleged speakeasy operating in an industrial part of the Bayview neighborhood. Above is a clip of surveillance video that the city attorney's office says shows more than 150 people going in and out of the building. Not only is there a shelter-in-place mandate in San Francisco, the building apparently isn't permitted as a nightclub nor up to fire safety standards for that kind of use. From SFGate:

Over the weekend, officers from SFPD's tactical unit and the Bayview Station seized "DJ equipment, two fog machines, nine gambling machines with $670 in cash inside, two pool tables, bins of liquor, cases of beer, bar furniture, and other nightclub-related items[...]

According to court documents, the building tenant who has been allegedly operating the club told the property owner that he was using the building for storage.

Police are also separately investigating a report of shots fired inside the building on March 15.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/04/13/san-francisco-police-bust-alle.html