Florida’s politicians are making the state a “laboratory for fascism.”
Indoctrination is nothing new in Florida’s schools | Boing Boing
The Mandolorians are a race of people repeatedly almost decimated by genocide who now live scattered across the galaxy. These rootless cosmopolitans sometimes blend into their new societies. More often, however, they’re forced to support themselves by turning to professions their societies despise.
— Is The Mandalorian a Space Jew?, by Nathan Abrams on JewThink. Abrams is quoting Charlotte Gartenberg in The Tablet.
Harrison Ford is Jewish? If I knew that, I forgot.
Gentleman on Twitter posts his “sleep stack”—12 products and three practices he uses to sleep. Ryan Broderick is befuddled:
The “sleep stack” tweet has really thrown me. The fact the user tagged all the products he’s using. The fact he called it a “stack,” as in a “tech stack”. The fact other people in the replies are sharing their own “sleep stacks” as if this is totally normal. I think there’s a growing subset of people — especially in America — that want to both optimize and also commodify every part of their lives. I think some of these people feel a genuine discomfort when they do something that doesn’t involve spending money or buying products. Anyways, the best “sleep stack” I ever heard was from Steve Harvey back when he used to host a morning radio show and it was “a Benadryl and some silk underwear.”
The tweet..
jwz: Welcome to year four of 14 days to flatten the curve..
The pandemic is still killing 11,000 people per month in the US alone, but supposedly it’s over. I guess that’s what “over” means now.
If you choose to stand around inside a crowded room without wearing a mask — I think you’re a fucking idiot.
Turns out, nearly every person I know is a fucking idiot.
I do not claim to be smarter than anybody else about this. I’m no more careful than anybody else. I stay home more than most people, but that’s my nature.
At last we have a definitive answer to the question of whether masks work.
That answer is “maybe.”
Ars: Do masks work? It’s a question of physics, biology, and behavior
Just now I was unsuccessful trying to eat lunch and I realized after multiple failed attempts that I was holding the spoon upside down and that’s how thing are going lately.
On our walk today, the dog and I got caught in a surprise and intense hailstorm
We were at Lake Murray, about a mile from home. It came on in seconds, and hit hard, a barrage of pellets the size of BBs. Uncomfortable for us both. We took shelter in the lee of the snack bar adjacent to the Kiowa Street parking lot.
The storm passed in 10-15 minutes and we moved on, both pretty wet. I hadn’t worn rain gear, because the forecast called for rain in the morning but not the afternoon.
I’m continually impressed by what a tough little dog Minnie is. She can’t have been happy being hammered by ice BBs—I know I wasn’t—but her attitude was, “All right, we’re doing this now I guess.”
I was taking this photo of the lake at the precise moment the storm hit. When I took my phone out of my pocket, no precipitation. Seconds later: heavy hail.
That white stuff on the ground in the second photo is hail.
Father of cellphone sees dark side but also hope in new tech (AP / Kelvin Chan)
94-year-old Marty Cooper, credited with inventing the mobile phone in 1973, sees dark sides but also hope in new technology
Cooper talks with the Associated Press about the mobile industry’s current and future directions and challenges.
As for his own phone use, Cooper says he checks email and does online searches for information to settle dinner table arguments. > However, “there are many things that I have not yet learned,” he said. “I still don’t know what TikTok is.”
Cooper received a lifetime achievement award this week at the international Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s biggest conference.
MWC attracts 120,000+ people. Imagine going to an event like that and knowing all those people are there because of you.
Micro.blog does not show follower counts. It doesn’t tell you when somebody follows you. It has no concept of a like or favorite.
There are definite benefits to this system.
But there is one big drawback: Because I get very few replies to my mb posts, it feels like I’m talking to myself. On Facebook and Tumblr, I get a lot of likes. On Mastodon, I get fewer, but I get ‘em. This interaction lets me know that somebody’s listening.
Soon you’ll be able to see a restoration of one of the most infamous movies ever made: Guccione’s 1980 “Caligula.” (Boing Boing / Mark Frauenfelder)
Thomas Negovan, a musician and songwriter, has been working on the project for three years, based on the original camera negatives and location audio. He wants to create a movie that conforms to the original vision and Gore Vidal script.
“Caligula” was filmed in 1976 as a big-budget indy movie, with an impressive cast including Malcomlm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, and Helen Mirren, and budget twice the size of Star Wars.
But then Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione took over, threw out the original script, and added explicit sex scenes without the consent of the other creators. Guccione filmed the sex scenes secretly on the movie sets.
Negovan is using the original camera negatives and location audio, enhanced with AI. He created a five-minute video explaining his work—it looks great and I’m looking forward to seeing this movie, which may be a lost masterpiece.
Here’s the teaser trailer:
How donkeys changed the course of human history (BBC / Dhananjay Khadilkar)
From bearing the burdens of the Roman Empire to enabling trade over long distances, the humble donkey has been surprisingly influential.
Nazis openly harass Jewish people in Desantis Land (Boing Boing)
Native advocacy group to retire ‘Crying Indian’ anti-pollution ad (AP)
The Keep American Beautiful nonprofit is retiring the iconic “crying Indian” ad by transferring ownership of the rights to the National Congress of American Indians. Native Americans criticized and ridiculed the ad for perpetuating stereotypes.
The actor in the ad, Iron Eyes Cody, wasn’t even an Indian. He was Italian-American.
MAGA cultists advocate for Marxism to stop communist agenda (Boing Boing)
Prankster Walter Masterson easily gets MAGA and Qanon cultists to call for workers to collectivize and seize the means of production to stop socialism and communism.