While every incident that causes damage to an airplane is different, especially ones where passengers, crew, or third parties are injured or killed, airlines have a general set of protocols. As Wendover Productions explains, one of the big early decisions is whether to accept or deflect blame.

One interesting aspect he mentions is how "newsy" the crash footage is, by which he means how visually interesting is the crash. A fiery crash gets way more media coverage, and that can affect how the airline responds. And commercial airline incidents almost always get more coverage because of how many people are fascinated/terrified by air travel.

Airlines' Protocol for After a Plane Crash (Wendover Productions)

Image: YouTube / Wendover Productions Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/here-are-the-protocols-airline.html

A historic move in North Carolina: The city council of Asheville has unanimously approved reparations, through investments, for its Black citizens.

Forbes:

The topic of reparations, which has gained renewed attention in light of recent racial justice protests, got a civic boost this week in Asheville, N.C., as the City Council voted to apologize for the city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations that will benefit them and their descendants...

"Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” Councilman Keith Young, one of two Black council members and the measure's chief proponent, said according to the Citizen-Times, adding “it is simply not enough to remove statutes."

The resolution does not mandate direct payments, but instead calls for investments in areas where Black residents face disparities, including boosting minority home ownership and access to other affordable housing, increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities, developing strategies to grow generational wealth and closing the gaps in health care, education, employment and pay.

image via Canva Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/reparation-plan-for-blacks-app.html

Maybe after four months, you’re finally getting tired of staring at that less-than-brilliant home computer monitor. Or maybe you really need to create your own dual-monitor configuration in your home office like the one back on your desk at work. Or maybe that 15-inch screen just isn’t doing it for you anymore and you need to step up.

Right now, five of the biggest names in computer monitors are offering up deals on 10 of their top models, each at savings of up to nearly $700. Hopefully, that’s enough incentive to finally pull the trigger on a brilliant new display. Trust us, your eyes will thank you.

You’ve really got to search to find a quality monitor for under $100, so AOC is dropping the price on their AOC 19.5" Monitor (Certified Refurbished; $79.99; originally $98) to under $80 just to get your attention. Of course, the crisp detailed images and bright vivid colors in HD 1600x900 resolution don’t hurt either. Plus, the screen offers both VGA and HDMI connections so you can watch HD video from virtually any device you own.

For more majestic viewing, the AOC 27" Monitor (Certified Refurbished; $134.99; originally $169) has virtually no outer edge for a more expanded screen view that displays even bigger than it appears. With 16.7 million colors to present brighter brights and deeper blacks, this monitor also features a built-in IPS (in-plane switching) panel that boosts your image and even increases the available viewing angles for any user.

While the edgeless display is great, you might also want to consider a curved screen experience, one that actually angles light to your eye differently while your eye moves less, which almost feels like surround viewing. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/if-youre-been-monitoring-a.html

For your next crafternoon: Make yourself a face shield with an empty Krispy Kreme box. YouTuber Andy Clockwise shows you how with this tutorial. First step, eat 12 donuts.

screengrab via Andy Clockwise/YouTube

(swissmiss) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/diy-krispy-kreme-box-face-shie.html

Being for the benefit of Mr. Cat, Haburu performs the soundtrack to Howl's Moving Castle. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/cat-enjoys-piano-massage.html

Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind was released September 24, 1991. Just a week earlier, on September 16, the band played a 45-minute set at Beehive Records in Seattle. Lines to get in went around the block.

According to the biography Heavier than Heaven, it was the first time Kurt Cobain realized that the band was rising in popularity, and that fame was at his doorstep:

Two days later, Nirvana held an “in-store” at Beehive Records. DGC expected about 50 patrons, but when over 200 kids were lined up by two in the afternoon — for an event scheduled to start at seven — it began to dawn on them that perhaps the band’s popularity was greater than first thought. Kurt had decided that rather than simply sign albums and shake people’s hands — the usual business of an in-store — Nirvana would play. When he saw the line at the store that afternoon, it marked the first time he was heard to utter the words “holy shit” in response to his popularity. The band retreated to the Blue Moon Tavern and began drinking, but when they looked out the window and saw dozens of fans looking in, they felt like they were in the movie A Hard Day’s Night. When the show began, Beehive was so crowded that kids were standing on racks of albums and sawhorses had to be lined up in front of the store’s glass windows to protect them. Nirvana played a 45-minute set — performing on the store floor — until the crowd began smashing into the band like the pep rally in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/nirvana-playing-smells-like.html

Still not made available to the general public, the bodycam footage from the cops who killed George Floyd shows that they gave no explanation for arresting him, swore at him, pointed a gun at him and pushed him around.

Lane’s video showed that medics at the scene did not appear alarmed or rushed in assisting Floyd after taking his pulse, and that about three minutes passed before anyone began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Floyd, who had been unresponsive for several minutes by then.

Kueng’s video showed that the body camera worn by Chauvin fell off at the scene for an unknown period of time. Prosecutors have said Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly 8 minutes, but Kueng’s video showed that it as about 9 minutes and 30 seconds.

The footage (evidently of abusive, foul-mouthed, handsy officers goading Floyd into giving them cause to escalate the violence) can be reviewed "by appointment." Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/george-floyd-bodycams-show-gun.html

I found this listing on AbleAuction for, "Over 50 life size animatronic dinosaurs inc. T-Rex, Brontosaurus and Raptors; plus hundreds of fossils, animatronic equipment, lighting, speakers and more." So of course, I had to know more.

While the auction house won't say where, exactly, these delightful leviathans came from, the Vancouver Sun reports that, "the Vancouver-based Experiential Media Group (Canada) Corp. went into voluntary bankruptcy on May 5, 2020 and KPMG was appointed trustee." The article continues:

According to a KPMG report, EMG Canada was formed in January 2019 to buy the assets of Dinoking Tech Inc., that had been operating an animatronics business since 2007. In 2015, Dinoking merged with a U.S. company Premier Exhibitions that focused on historical artifact exhibitions and began having financial problems a year later.

[…]

The company’s failure come despite it creating touring exhibitions of dinosaurs and bugs that were leased to museums, zoos and tourist attractions for a fix period in over 100 cities around the world.

Apparently Dinoking Tech, Inc. also owned the only collection of artifacts for display from the Titanic wreck as well.

Able Auctions CEO Jeremy Dodd also told the Sun, "There’s just about every type of dinosaur. We also have a whole pile of authentic and original fossils and all the equipment that’s related to putting on a show like this."

Bidding on this army of robotic dinosaurs begins on Wednesday, August 5; AbleAuction advises that you sign up for their service at least one day ahead of time. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/50-life-size-animatronic-robot.html

From The New York Times:

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

To make matters worse, the HHS data archives are not open to the public — meaning the American people cannot independently verify any of the information. In other words, the Republicans are consolidating control of data in the hands of a centralized big government, because it's one that they have power over.

A spokesperson for HHS told the Times that the decision was made because CDC's data collection was inefficient. That spokesperson claimed that CDC's data was lagging about a week behind, and that CDC and HHS would ultimately be sharing data. But this conflicts with a memo from the HHS, which states, "As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site."

Instead, HHS will route their data through a private company called TeleTracking, based in Pittsburgh. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/trump-administration-wants-all.html

Why are Cis people so obsessed with made-up genders? Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/the-two-genders-according-to.html

Have you ever been let down by a business you frequent? Have you ever patronized an establishment and thought, “Man, who’s running this place? A pack of teacup chihuahua’s in a person suit?” That feeling of betrayal inspired Curb Your Enthusiasm's character Larry David to open up his very first spite store, Latte Larry’s.

The spite began when Mocha Joe, the owner of Mocha Joe’s, served Mr. David a cup of coffee that became too cool, too fast. The disagreement over proper beverage temperature motivated Mr. David to invent his shop’s signature self-heating mug. Located right next to Mocha Joe’s, Latte Larry’s goal was to ensure that not a single customer’s cup of joe goes cold.

However, Mr. David was unable to revel in the contemptuous victory, for where he goes fiasco follows. His invention ended up in flames, reducing both Mocha Joe’s and Latte Larry’s to ashes. Mr. David blames the accident on an employee’s rogue appendage.

While Mr. David is under investigation, a real-life version of the mugs, ironically called the Ember, has topped Science Focus Magazine’s list of the coolest gadgets for 2020. This iteration of the self-heating mug connects to your smartphone and will keep your beverage at the temperature of your choice for 1.5 hours. If you can stomach the scorching $99.95 price, check out Ember, along with 46 other new pieces of tech, here.

If you plan to avenge your enemies, please be cautious not to take yourself down with them.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/after-larry-davids-spite-goe.html

The Atlas of Moons is National Geographic's amazing interactive project to explore the incredible diversity of over 200 moons in our solar system, like Europa, shown above. Each moon is described and shown with as much recent information available.

With the upcoming JUICE launch (aka Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), public interest in Europa will undoubtedly increase. Via National Geographic:

With a vast global ocean tucked beneath a smooth, icy shell, Europa is considered one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth. Its ancient, alien sea likely contains all the ingredients needed for life as we know it. Peering beneath that crisscrossed crust is a bit tricky, but scientists recently spotted plumes of possible seawater venting into space, which could be sampled by an orbiting craft.

Discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, it was named after a lover of Zeus. Features are named for people, places, gods, or objects from Celtic myths, as well as for people and places associated with the Greek Europa myth.

Image: National Geographic Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/explore-every-moon-in-our-sola.html

Unlike the unquestioned effectiveness of a solid strip of duct tape, you never quite know what you’re going to get when you try to repair something with glue, do you? Whether it's the material itself that you’re gluing or how much glue you apply or how long you let it sit before testing, there’s always a reasonable chance that your fix-it just...well, isn’t going to work out.

Then once you factor in splintering, missing pieces, or just uneven points to rejoin two pieces, it turns the entire gluing process into a real crapshoot.

The world has been screaming for a 21st-century evolution of glue for years. Now, it’s finally arrived in the form of Bondic, a truly groundbreaking new method for replacing glue with actual liquid plastic.

In fact, Bondic might actually have more in common with welding than it does with gluing. In its initial almost honey-like solvent free non-toxic formula form, Bondic is extremely pliable, allowing you to use it to either bind two pieces together or even to virtually resculpt a broken or missing piece. 

Whether your pieces are plastic, wood, metal, PVC, steel, rubber, wiring, ceramic, vinyl, Kevlar, polypropylene, leather, or another substance, Bondic can fix what normally might have to be thrown away.

Once you’ve got your pieces together, then the true magic of Bondic is on full display. With a blast from the incorporated LED UV light, the once liquidy Bondic instantly hardens, creating a permanent bond that locks your pieces in place forever. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/bondic-is-the-glue-of-the-futu.html

Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager for his 2020 re-election campaign, is out. Trump announced Parscale's firing after a series of sparsely-attended rallies and a dire national poll that puts him 15 points behind Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Parscale, Trump's longtime "website guy", will be replaced by Bill Stepien. Stepien managed Chris Christie's gubernatorial campaigns and was his chief of staff before being fired for poor "judgment."

The president reportedly lashed out at Parscale in late April after he was presented with flagging poll numbers, even threatening to sue his campaign manager, according to a New York Times report. The Trump administration has grappled with both the economic fallout caused by the ongoing coronavirus, which brought his campaign rallies to a halt in March, and nationwide protests and unrest over the death of George Floyd.

Parcale will stay on as a "senior advisor", according to The Hill:

Making matters worse, Oklahoma health officials blamed the indoor rally for a subsequent spike in coronavirus cases in the area.

Much of the scrutiny after the rally fell on Parscale. Those close to the campaign and the president questioned if Parscale was cut out to manage a reelection bid and suggested he may be better off returning to a role where he could better use his digital expertise.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/trump-fires-parscale.html

A trio of lawsuits filed Tuesday against Microsoft, Google owner Alphabet, and Amazon accuses the tech companies of training their facial recognition tools on photos of people that have not given their consent, which is a violation of Illinois law.

From CNET:

The photos in question were part of IBM's Diversity in Faces database, which is designed to advance the study of fairness and accuracy in facial recognition by looking at more than just skin tone, age and gender. The data includes 1 million images of human faces, annotated with tags such as face symmetry, nose length and forehead height.

The two Illinois residents who brought the lawsuits, Steven Vance and Tim Janecyk, say their images were included in that data set without their permission, despite clearly identifying themselves as residents of Illinois. Collection, storage and use of biometric information is illegal in the state without written consent under the Biometric Information Privacy Act, passed by the Illinois legislature in 2008.

Read more: Amazon, Google, Microsoft sued over photos in facial recognition database Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/lawsuits-accuse-amazon-alphab.html

Great news. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been released from a Baltimore hospital, after receiving treatment for what was described yesterday as a possible infection, a court spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s oldest member returned home and is “doing well,” spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a statement.

Ginsburg, 87, underwent a procedure at Johns Hopkins Hospital on Tuesday to clean a bile duct stent that was inserted last August, the court said Wednesday.

More at Reuters.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg treated in hospital for 'possible infection'

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/supreme-court-justice-ginsburg.html

Tomorrow the final hammer goes down on an archive of original Nikola Tesla patents, lightbulb design drawings by Thomas Edison, a World War II Enigma Machine, Stephen Hawking’s personal Simpsons figure, and many other science-related curiosities in Christie's "Eureka!" auction.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/auction-edisons-lightbulb-d.html

A stenciled rat sneezing green spew is just one part of Banksy's latest work, "If You Don't Mask, You Don't Get." This video, put out by the artist Tuesday morning, shows a man, disguised as a professional cleaner, creating the pro-mask piece in a London Underground train. Of course, it's already been removed. BBC:

Transport for London (TfL) said the art was removed "some days ago" in line with its "strict anti-graffiti policy"...

The statement from TfL said it appreciated "the sentiment of encouraging people to wear face coverings".

"We'd like to offer Banksy the chance to do a new version of his message for our customers in a suitable location," it added.

I bet they would!

screengrab via Banksy/Instagram Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/banksy-left-a-pro-mask-message.html

Every year, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs, a threatened species, are "milked" for up to 30% of their blood that's used to test new medical drugs, including possible COVID-19 vaccines, for bacterial contamination. The animals are eventually released but, surprise, a large percentage of them die. Revive & Restore, the wildlife conservation organization most famous for their efforts to resurrect the Woolly Mammoth and Passenger Pigeon, is pushing the adoption of a synthetic test alternative to the unsustainable horseshoe crab blood method. In the video above, Revive & Restore co-founders Ryan Phelan and Stuart Brand explain how "Biotech Can Save This Threatened Keystone Species & Keep Covid-19 Vaccines Safe."

(Bonus: the video's original score is by Revive & Restore's longtime friend Brian Eno! Double bonus: My sister-in-law Heather Sparks is Revive & Restore's communications and outreach manager!) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/why-do-we-need-the-blood-of-a.html

This Saturday, some San Francisco families will be bringing a four-mile long hopscotch course to their neighborhood. With their day-long "Hopscotch Your Block" event, the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association (NOPNA) hopes to chalk the playground game over a 30-block area.

NOPNA thinks this will be really fun and a way to help build community, support our local merchants, and improve morale...all while keeping a safe social distance from each other! And… we could potentially even break the Guiness World Record for the longest hopscotch course (currently 3.8 miles)! Let’s make history together by breaking this record!

The four mile course runs East-West (Turk, Golden Gate, McAllister, Fulton, Grove, Hayes and Fell) and connects north-south along Divisadero and Masonic. We'll be "chalking up the blocks" and connecting them all together; please only chalk the north side of sidewalk (if on an east-west street) or east side of sidewalk (if on a north-south street).

photo by Fiona Moore/Flickr Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/15/four-mile-long-hopscotch-cours.html