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When Bodega, a streetwear shop in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, released a hyped, limited-edition New Balance 997S sneaker in 2019, the entire stock sold out online in under 10 minutes. There was one problem, though: About 60 percent of Bodega's sales went to shoppers gaming the system with bots, timesaving automation software used to speed through checkout. The bots had claimed hundreds of pairs of New Balances for a single customer; many other shoppers failed to secure just one. From a report: "We got destroyed by bots," said Jay Gordon, one of Bodega's owners. "It was making it impossible for our average customers to even have a shot at the shoes." Shoppers armed with specialized sneaker bots can deplete a store's inventory in the time it takes a person to select a size and fill in shipping and payment information. For limited-release shoes, the time advantage afforded by a bot could mean the difference between disappointment and hundreds of dollars in instant profit. In the case of Bodega's New Balance drop, one person managed to buy a pair of the $160 sneakers before the product page was even live. Others seemed to navigate the site with superhuman efficiency, zooming from product page to purchase confirmation in 30 seconds. Though Bodega had limited each shopper to a maximum of three pairs, the store found that it was about to ship 200 pairs of New Balances to several addresses in the same apartment building in New Jersey. To most customers, bots are the bane of online shopping. But for sneaker brands and retailers, the relationship is more complicated. Thanks to resale sites like StockX and GOAT, collectible sneakers have become an asset class, where pricing corresponds loosely to how quickly an item sells out. Sophisticated sneaker bots, which can cost thousands of dollars, are key to creating the artificial scarcity that makes a sneaker valuable and, in turn, makes a brand seem cool. It all raises a big, difficult question: If the bots lose, who wins?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Chargers coach gets it.

Brandon Staley is already becoming a rising star in his first year as head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. Staley was a linebackers coach for the Bears and Broncos before spending last season as a defensive coordinator for the Rams, where he parlayed a successful year into the Chargers top job. Now the 38-year-old is leading a 4-1 football team in first place in the AFC West with a young star quarterback in Justin Herbert.

Staley is developing a reputation as one of football’s most quotable coaches. There have been a few viral clips of him this season talking shop with reporters, on why hurries and hits are a better measure of a pass rush than sacks, or why a quality running game is so helpful for a quarterback. While too many NFL coaches try to sidestep any probing questions on strategy out of paranoia or pure incompetence, Staley is the sort of coach who actually listens to questions and tries his best to provide a good answer. On Wednesday, he showed he understands the human aspect of the game, as well.

Staley was asked about Jon Gruden’s resignation from the Las Vegas Raiders after leaked emails exposed the former coach of using racist, misogynistic, and homophobic language in conversation with Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen. Staley gave a great response on why Gruden’s language was so hurtful.

Here’s the full quote from Staley:

Perspective and trust in this world are really, really difficult to achieve. I think about all the people that were affected by those emails — whether you’re a person of color, whether you’re a person, you know, a gender, your sexual orientation. That’s who I’m thinking about because it’s a sacred mantle for someone to call you coach or someone to call you a leader.

“Trust is really, really hard to achieve in this world. It’s really, really challenging to achieve, especially with people with those groups that I just mentioned. People are really guarded and skeptical of people because of emails like that.

“Kindness and lifting people up and respecting people you don’t know, I just think that that’s such a big part of our thing here … listening to people and learning about people because I think what you’ll discover is that we have so much more in common than not.

“For someone like me, it’s just incumbent upon you to set the example every single day so that people that were talked about in those emails that they don’t need to feel that way, they shouldn’t feel that way.

“Hopefully, all of us can learn from this, that it’s about bringing people together for me, so that people can become the people that they dream about. For me, leading this football team and being someone, hopefully, we can be a light for those people in those emails that not everybody’s like that, that there’s far more people that will love you than the opposite.

“Hopefully, this will be a chance for everybody to come together instead of go apart.”

Staley gets it in a way that too many of Gruden’s former associates do not. Whether it was Raiders quarterback David Carr offering up a word salad defense of Gruden’s character, or his former broadcasting colleagues choosing to do the same, the idea that Gruden is the persecuted one in this situation is laughable. Staley put the focus on trying to heal the marginalized groups Gruden took aim at, which is where it should be.

As his former player Keyshawn Johnson said, Gruden has always been a fraud. Few people have ever made more money out of coaching and talking about football. The man has been synonymous with the NFL for more than three decades. If this is what the past of the NFL looks like, hopefully the future can be a lot more like Staley.

In 2019, 19 of Facebook’s top 20 pages for American Christians were run by Eastern European troll farms overseas, internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal. The data shows the vast spread of Facebook misinformation is largely powered by coordinated efforts among foreign professionals working together to spread provocative content in the U.S.

These groups, based largely in Kosovo and Macedonia, have been particularly successful when it comes to targeting American Christians. Though they split their efforts among multiple pages, they were mostly operated by the same groups. Collectively, their Christian Facebook pages reach about 75 million users a month — an audience 20 times the size of the next largest Christian Facebook page.

For the most part, the people who saw and engaged with these posts didn’t actually “like” the pages they’re coming from. Facebook’s engagement-hungry algorithm simply shipped them what it “thought” they want to see. Internal studies revealed that divisive posts are more likely to reach a big audience, and troll farms use that to their advantage, spreading provocative misinformation that generates a bigger response to spread their online reach.

The Facebook study was conducted in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and found that these troll farms were targeting the same audience that Russia attempted to manipulate in 2016 with their own Facebook misinformation campaign. Though Facebook was aware of the troll farms and their manipulation of Americans in 2016, they did little to address the issue.

“Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church,” wrote the report’s author, Jeff Allen, who used to be a senior-level data scientist at Facebook.

It’s difficult to calculate the amount of influence such Facebook pages are exercising over American Christianity, but it certainly seems like it would be having some sort of impact. Christian pastors have congregations in their pews, at best, one morning a week. Facebook is in their pocket all day long, shaping their theology for its own ends. And, of course, there’s no telling how many Christian pastors themselves are engaging with bad faith Christian content from troll farms as well.

It’s tough to know how widespread the problem they document remains now, two years after the report, but given the lack of serious public attempts to quell such behavior, it’s safe to assume that it persists on at least some level.

“This is not normal. This is not healthy,” Allen continued. “We have empowered inauthentic actors to accumulate huge followings for largely unknown purposes.”

Stack Overflow's copy-paste keyboard, an April Fools' Day prank that ribbed lazy programmers, is now actually for sale. CNET reports: It's been a joke in programming circles for years: Instead of writing your code from scratch, just head over to the Stack Overflow forums and copy the way another programmer already solved your problem. The meme is such a fixture that Stack Overflow turned it into an April Fools' Day prank this year, saying it would limit free access to its site unless people bought The Key, a device with buttons for opening Stack Overflow, copying and pasting. Enough people said they'd actually buy one that Stack Overflow, with help from keyboard aficionado Cassidy Williams and custom keyboard maker Drop, designed one for real and began selling it for $29. A portion of the keyboard sales' proceeds will go to Digitalundivided, a nonprofit set up to help Black and Latinx women succeed as technology entrepreneurs. Further reading: How Often Do People Actually Copy and Paste From Stack Overflow?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our 14th most-read article of 2021.

Originally published August 23, 2021.

“Mike Richards, the executive producer of ‘Jeopardy!’ who was tapped to succeed Alex Trebek as host of the venerable game show franchise, announced Friday he is stepping aside amid recent scrutiny over past comments about women, Jews, and poor people.” – NBC News, 8/20/21

Click on each box to reveal the answer. After viewing, click back in browser to return to board. Mobile users: rotate to landscape.

QUESTION KEY

The Obvious Choice

$200: Who is “Levar Burton?”

$400: Who is “Levar Burton?”

$600: Who is “Levar Burton?”

$800: Who is “Levar Burton?”

$1000: Who is “Levar Burton?”

Other Obvious Choices

$200: Who is “Laura Coates?”

$400: Who is “Robin Roberts?”

$600: We would have accepted any marginalized group of people

$800: We would have accepted any answer other than “Aaron Rogers”

$1000: We would have accepted any answer other than “Dr. Mehmet Oz”

Red Flags

$200: Who are “Jewish people?”

$400: Who are “women?”

$600: Who are “people with a moral compass?”

$800: What is “a podcast?”

$1000: What is “look at one picture of the guy?”

Corporate No-Nos

$200: What is “nepotism?”

$400: What is “a conflict of interest?”

$600: What is “unfair hiring practices?”

$800: What is “bad faith?”

$1000: What is “the white supremacist heteropatriarchy?”

LeVar Burton Anagrams

$200: What is a “born vaulter?”

$400: What is an “urban revolt?”

$600: What is “a volt burner?”

$800: What is a “verbal turn on?”

$1000: What is “a burnt lover?”

White People

$200: Who are “white people?”

$400: Who are “white people?”

$600: Who are “white people?”

$800: Who are “white people?”

$1000: Who are “white people?”

This work uses a Jeopardy! template, created by Kinu Panda that is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons.

CHICAGO—In a shocking and serious turn of events, sources reportedly received word from multiple sources Tuesday that you have reached your free article limit. “Uh-oh, it looks like you’ve hit your limit—click here to confirm you’d like to continue reading TheOnion.com,” said sources, who stressed that you were only…

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Now 30 years old, Spencer Elden, the naked baby on Nirvana's iconic cover, is suing the band, the photographer and the record labels that he says profited from the image.

(Image credit: Samir Hussein/Getty Images)

It’s hard to imagine we’ll ever have another moment like “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” The sixth-and-seventh-season Simpsons event—both an obvious parody of Dallas-style TV cliffhangers, and a hype-heavy effort to replicate the ratings effects of same—ate up huge chunks of our brains over the summer of 1995, spurred on by…

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When I heard our town was considering legalizing (gulp) duplex apartments to allow more housing, I was devastated. I’m not against people having homes, but building more housing here would ruin the beautiful character of this neighborhood, which is mostly systematic racism, but it’s also not admitting it’s systematic racism.

Allowing more housing would radically disrupt what this town is, a quaint little neighborhood of half a million people located in one of the most desirable locations in the country. It’s a perfect place. I haven’t changed since 1974, so why should my neighborhood?

This neighborhood was built on certain principles, and it’s extremely important to maintain those principles and also not say them out loud where they could be used in court.

I’ve lived on this same street for thirty-six years, so I think I have a good view of the world. There is nothing wrong with drawing a big red line in the sand or on the nicer side of the highway.

We have all the good folks we need in this neighborhood. It’s not wrong to want a certain “type” of person who has a set of “morals” and is a “contributing” resident, and it’s not like it’s illegal to say these things (I consulted my attorney).

Why do people have to be so pushy about changing my way of life? Can’t these people go somewhere else and stop getting angry when I call them “these people?”

If certain types of characters really want to change things, they should do it the right way. Show up to a Community Board Meeting on the third Tuesday of semi-alternating months at 3:16 PM EST (Estonian Standard Time) and simply wait four and a half hours to make a two-minute statement. It’s that easy. I’ve been doing it for three decades, and I think things are going great.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and if it is broke, send it over to one of those junkyards in the run-down town next to ours. There’s plenty of people there who should be grateful to have it.

And why are those people just starting to complain? When this neighborhood was incorporated in 1947, I’m certain every person had a chance to vote on these rules. I can’t think of a single thing that would have stopped someone from casting a vote.

You have all sorts of people — who are mostly just one kind of person — trying to make this about race, and I think that’s awful. Calling someone a racist is the worst thing you can say about someone.

But I don’t even think we should mention race, and frankly, neither does our Homeowners Association’s attorney.

This is really about preservation, about a way of life, about heritage, about an unchanging space to combat your constant fear that change means death and death means being forgotten in the eyes of your family. Especially your daughter Meredith who moved to Baltimore and refuses to let you see your grandkids.

When is this onslaught going to end? If you allow a duplex to be built, then what? A stoplight on the intersection of Second and Oak? Kick me in the shins and light me on fire.

If we don’t stop this, I’ll be forced to sell my home for twenty times what I purchased it for and move to a beautiful coastal city in a gorgeous condo with a fat retirement fund. I’d rather end it now.

Ed Bridge, the owner of Bridge Kaldro, a music shop in Christianburg, Virginia, received an interesting proposition from his employee. A sign war. He had never heard of it before, but the idea seemed fun. So Bridge put up a message daring a neighboring business: “Hey Super Shoes, want to start a sign war?” And they accepted the challenge.

But what eventually started as a fun little challenge quickly grew to a global phenomenon. Now, over 22,000 people from around the world are keeping tabs on the battle through a Facebook group, waiting for the next punch.

“I’m just so humbled because this is bigger than my little music store,” Bridge told WSLS 10 News.

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Sarah Vogl, a local who owns the Bear Dance Market & CBD Cafe with her partner Chris Reese, has been following this whole thing going down since the beginning because she’s friends with the owners and employees at Bridge Kaldro. “BKM has always had clever signs, so this is just a really explosive extension of their personalities, as well as the community-oriented personalities of our local business owners/managers,” Vogl told Bored Panda.

“I think this is an amazing representation of how much our Southwest Virginia / New River Valley area value small businesses and the community we collectively create together—owners as well as consumers.”

Vogl believes this demonstrates how deeply committed the residents are to loving and enjoying the place where they live. And she thinks most of the locals would agree!

“I don’t think there needs to be a ‘winner,'” Vogl added. “I don’t have a competitive personality so this is all just fun for me. But Chris says our signs are pretty fire.”

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Whether we’re talking about Minnesota or the United Kingdom, Ed Bridge is proud the small act is highlighting Christiansburg.

“If we can put this whole area a little bit more on the map for people coming to visit, why not?” he said.

But the sign war is not only producing laughs. It’s bringing in dollars too.

Other local stores, hair salons, restaurants, and realtors have also joined the sign war. Kabuki Japanese Steakhouse Owner Yoshi Koeda said his business has been booming since he entered the amusing competition.

“It’s an amazing free advertisement for all of us,” Koeda explained. “That’s probably the best part of everything.”

Koeda was actually the third player to join the war and added messages that incorporated song lyrics.

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

One of Koeda’s signs read: “DQ got the ice, ice baby. But we got flamin’ volcanoes and sake like it’s gettin’ hot in here.”

Even though the restaurant has been around for 23 years, Koeda said he’s never seen a sensation like this. “I don’t think any city across the US has seen something like this,” Koeda said.

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

One apparel website is also trying to use the popularity of the sign war to promote a local charity. Claytor Wear is now selling shirts and stickers to raise funds for Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley.

“After seeing it explode, we needed to figure out how to give back locally,” Claytor Wear owner Jonathan Friend said.

Friend said after businesses faced a tough hit from the pandemic, this moment is a nice sign of locals joining forces.

“I think the signs are just really an homage we are really all in this together,” he said. “So, it’s been really uplifting to see all the businesses support each other.”

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: COOL106.3FM

Image credits: Christiansburg, VA Sign War

Image credits: Christiansburg, VA Sign War

Image credits: Christiansburg, VA Sign War

Image credits: Christiansburg, VA Sign War

Here’s what people have been saying about the sign war

The post This Town Has A Sign War Going On Between Many Businesses And It's Entertaining The Locals (20 Pics) first appeared on Bored Panda.

For the past week, businesses in a Canadian town have been embroiled in a war of words via signs.

The first space hurricane ever was spotted in August 2014, consisting of "an eddy of plasma, a type of superhot, charged gas found throughout the solar system," reports Business Insider. "And instead of rain, this storm brought showers of electrons." From the report: In August 2014, satellites observed a swirling mass with a quiet center more than 125 miles above the North Pole. The space hurricane was more than 620 miles wide and high in the sky -- it formed in the ionosphere, between 50 and 600 miles up. Lockwood and his coauthors used the satellite data to create a 3D model of the storm. The space hurricane lasted eight hours, swirling counterclockwise. The researchers said it had several spiral arms snaking out from its center, a bit like a spiral galaxy. By plugging the satellite data into a computer model, Lockwood and his collaborators were able to reproduce the storm and figure out what caused it. They found that charged particles emitted by the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, were to blame. This steady stream of solar particles and coronal plasma is known as solar wind. It moves at about 1 million miles an hour. As solar wind reaches Earth, it encounters the planet's magnetic field. Earth has such a field because of the swirling liquid iron and nickel in its outer core, which gives rise to electric currents. The magnetosphere protects the planet from deadly radiation from the sun but also retains a tiny layer of plasma from that solar wind. Typically, solar winds glance off this protective sheath. But sometimes the incoming charged particles and plasma interact with either the trapped plasma or the electrical currents generating the field. Such interactions create disturbances in the magnetosphere. The 2014 space hurricane was one such disturbance. Usually, magnetic fields don't mix. But if they do come close, portions of the fields can get realigned and even merge, forming a new pattern of magnetic energy. That's what likely happened on the day of the space storm: An influx of solar wind energy formed a new pattern above Earth's magnetic north pole. The storm acted as a channel from space into Earth's atmosphere, funneling some electrons down past the planet's armor. This particle rain could have wreaked havoc on our high-frequency radio communications, radar-detection systems, or satellite technology, the study's authors said. That's because charged solar particles that seep through Earth's magnetic field can cause malfunctions in computers and circuitry on satellites and the International Space Station. Luckily, in this case, no issues were observed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Keanu Reeves is one of the most loved people on the internet. You know what, scratch that, he’s one of the most loved people in the whole world. Period.

Well, brace yourself, the lovable Keanu Reeves has just become even more lovable as CBC shared an old-school video where he reported on teddy bears. And it just goes to show that Keanu never really changed and has just been a very lovable person his entire life.

When you think Keanu Reeves can’t get any more awesome, a video from his youth surfaces

Image credits: CBC

So, CBC, a Canadian news and broadcasting network, recently shared on their Twitter a video of Keanu Reeves back when he was working at CBC as a correspondent for their news magazine Going Great.

CBC shared a video from their 1984 news magazine Going Great featuring Keanu Reeves where he was covering the Canadian International Teddy Bear Convention

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

He was covering the first Canadian International Teddy Bear Convention, where he walked around meeting people and asking them all of the most important questions, like why are all the bears’ first names Teddy? and what college did some of these teddies attend?

The report is also sprinkled with a number of Reeves’ shenanigans, like him meeting a bear named Graham and it attacking him after Reeves says he’s cute, and also talking to a rad bear with red glasses about bear business and bear necessities (yes, there were many puns.) He even kissed the little guy, scoring massive internet points.

Check out the full one-minute video here

Besides asking all the hard-hitting questions, Keanu was also up to some shenanigans

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Going Great as a show was broadcast from October of 1983 until mid-February of 1984. Keanu joined in 1984, when he was estimated to be around 20 years of age. The show performed poorly with regards to viewership and ended at a total of 39 episodes.

Since then, Reeves moved on to bigger and better things, doing a number of TV movies as well as cinema releases like the Bill and Ted films and later the Matrix trilogy, among many other projects.

It is estimated that Keanu was around 20 years old in the video segments

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

The internet was already in love with Reeves before CBC shared the video report, but everyone just had to see the video to truly understand just how adorable he really is.

Many pointed out how Keanu never really changed as he was adorable and he continues to be so with all of the cool stuff he does, highlighting that we, as humanity, don’t deserve such a treasure.

One commenter pointed out that Keanu is like fine wine—“he just gets better and better as he ages.” And since he was super lovable in his 20s, he is, at this point, reaching the ultimate heights of awesomeness.

CBC’s shared video soon started making rounds on the internet, getting over 80k views

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

Image credits: CBC

The video garnered over 80,000 views on Twitter and soon started making headlines throughout the internet.

What are your thoughts on this? What is your favorite thing about Keanu Reeves? Let us know in the comment section below!

Here are some of the best internet reactions to Keanu’s performance in the 1984’s Going Great

Image credits: GionSpot

Image credits: LazyPandaArt

Image credits: Skyogurt

Image credits: TenaciousWii

Image credits: KevSmileTime

Image credits: causalityTime

Image credits: TheTerribleHook

Image credits: SmallTravels

Image credits: Pouvg2

Image credits: CionaJK

Image credits: xthedarkone

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Image credits: NadiaLitz

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a real-life escape room livestreamed and played through an avatar, created by Novel Escape in Austin, TX.

Room Escape Artist reviewed the real-life version of this game in August of 2019. This is a review of the online adaptation.

Format

Style of Play: real-life escape room livestreamed and played through an avatar

Required Equipment: computer with internet connection

Recommended Team Size: 2-5

Play Time: 75 minutes

Price: $60 for first two connections; $15 for each additional connection

Booking: book online for a specific time slot

Description

This is a standard, avatar-guided adaptation of a real-life escape room. In addition to the live first-person video stream of the room, you also have an auto-populating inventory that allows you to inspect items up close. This game uses Zoom video chat with Telescape inventory.

Hivemind Review Scale

Tammy McLeod’s Reaction

Given that “Novel Escape” is the name of the company, I loved how our experience began with “story time.” I felt real enthusiasm experiencing the game through the eyes of the dynamic and entertaining host. The game plays smoothly in the remote format. The puzzles were thoughtfully designed and logical and I think I even entered flow state a couple of times while solving. The aesthetic of the entire experience was very charming and there were so many little touches that just made me happy.

Joel Smileypeacefun Reaction

This experience proved that if you go in enthusiastic and you share your joy, this can be infectious on the whole team and even the gamemaster.

At its best, this was a delight from the moment the instructions began to when we finished. We got a nice variety of puzzles mixed with a light, but charming story. Novel Escape made smart changes to the virtual version, like a 75-minute timer instead of 60 minutes. While we didn’t need the extra time, it was thoughtful.

At its worst, it wasn’t the most immersive set. The inventory website is a good standard, but sometimes objects took a few moments to show up. I wanted to experience the more hands-on puzzles in real life, but you can’t hold that against them.

On a personal note: In previous reviews, I’ve grumbled about wordplay, because this can be frustrating to non-native English speakers. However, in this game I was over the moon happy to solve a well-designed wordplay puzzle!

Matthew Stein’s Reaction

Novel Escape has one of my favorite premises: each of their games will be based on a different classic novel. Their premiere game is an adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a similar but more literarily anchored relative to the many Atlantis- and submarine-themed escape rooms out there. The game starts with a thematically rhyming intro – a welcome variant on the canonical escape room rules spiel – and though the game is quite light on tech, it manages to pack in some delightful and humorous moments of discovery throughout. Most of the puzzles were reasonably adapted to the remote medium, but certain perspective reveals and tactile actions still would be much more satisfying to solve in person.

Sarah Mendez’s Reaction

Pre-pandemic, I had been recommending the physical version of this game for its story-driven puzzles, adorable set, and the fun ways it incorporates literature and literary elements (without requiring knowledge of either). Therefore, I was eager to see whether its charm would translate across Zoom, particularly because some of its best puzzles have distinctively physical aspects. And, translate it did! As a fly on the wall, I watched my teammates giddily progress through the story with the same visceral delight that I remembered from playing in person. Captain Nemo (the avatar) navigated the physical puzzles in a way that helped us still feel involved, and the video stream actually made certain aspects of the set more immersive. So, this virtual adaptation is a worthy companion to its in-person counterpart, and I’m glad the game can now endear itself to a global audience.

The post Novel Escape – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [Hivemind Review] appeared first on Room Escape Artist.

slotted-spoon:

dark-haired-hamlet:

“There are other forces at work in this world besides the will of evil.”

Best go vote add I’ve seen, maybe ever

WASHINGTON—Expressing frustration that the president was able to attain what he himself never had, former National Security Advisor John Bolton was reportedly seething with jealousy Tuesday that President Trump got to become a real-life living, breathing biological weapon. “If only I had stayed in the administration,…

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If there’s anything that can brighten these otherwise dismal days of 2020, it’s the promise of new mega-mashups courtesy of the two producers behind The Hood Internet. From their distillation of 40 years of hip-hop to this genuinely-great-when-it--shouldn’t-be mashup of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Ginuwine’s “Pony”

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The online game Blaseball is about building community and organizing against malevolent forces beyond your control. It's also surreal, bizarre and a little weird.

(Image credit: Blaseball)

Longtime KUT/KUTX radio personality John Aielli recently suffered a stroke, the station revealed this week in an update about changes to its daily on-air schedule.Aielli, whose popular "Eklektikos" morning show celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2016, has not been on the the air since the stroke, which happened "a few months ago," according to the update on the KUTX website. [...]

There are a whole lot of people who worship the movie The Princess Bride. Wisconsin Democrats are hoping those folks will pony up some cash to see the cast get together. 

A truly impressive cast of characters — including Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Carol Kane, Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, and Rob Reiner — are going to do a virtual table read of the script on Sept. 13. Then comedian Patton Oswalt will moderate a virtual Q&A with the cast of the 1987 classic, which was directed by Reiner. 

It seems like the film's cast aren't big fans of President Donald Trump, who won Wisconsin's electoral college votes in the 2016 election.  Read more...

More about Wisconsin, Democrats, Princess Bride, Entertainment, and Activism

What are lightning sprites?

Did you know that lightning sprites exist above some thunderstorms? Sprites aren’t terribly well known, except to meteorologists, nature photographers and others who study the skies. They aren’t especially rare, but they’re fleeting and hard to capture with a camera. Lightning sprites are electrical discharges high in Earth’s atmosphere. They’re associated with thunderstorms, but they’re not born in the same clouds that send us rain. Thunderstorms – in fact all earthly weather – happen in the layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the troposphere, which extends from Earth’s surface to about 4 to 12 miles (about 6 to 19 km) up. Lightning sprites – also known as red sprites – happen in Earth’s mesosphere, up to 50 miles (80 km) high in the sky.

From a distance they look small, but they’re not

So when you’re standing on Earth’s surface and you spot one, it appears relatively small, even though, in fact, sprites can be some 30 miles (50 km) across. As Matthew Cappucci of the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang said in an article about lightning sprites a few years ago:

Imagine one electrical discharge spanning the distance from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.

Cappucci also commented:

Although sprites are poorly understood, atmospheric electrodynamicists have figured out the basics behind their formation. Sprites are often triggered by a strong, positive bolt of ordinary lightning near the ground. They’re thought to be a balancing mechanism that the atmosphere uses to dispense charges vertically. It’s a quick process that takes less than a tenth of a second.

That’s what makes hunting for sprites so tough. Blink and you’ll miss them.

A fleeting phenomenon

The fleeting aspect of lightning sprites probably explains why – when people first see photos of them – they’re surprised that such a strange-looking weather phenomenon even exists.

Also, it hasn’t been that many years since lightning sprites were confirmed. In the 20th century, pilots spoke of “flashes above thunderstorms.” It wasn’t until 1989 that someone captured lightning sprites as we know them today on film. Experimental physicist John R. Winckler (1916-2001) happened to capture one while testing a low-light television camera.

Today, people around the world routinely capture photos of lightning sprites. You’ll find many photos of them in this gallery from SpaceWeather.com.

How to photograph lightning sprites

To photograph a sprite, you need a dark sky and a clear view toward a distant thunderstorm. The sky needs to be dark, because you’ll be taking long exposures; too much stray light in your sky will wash out your photo and make capturing sprites impossible. One of the most successful sprite photographers in the U.S., and likely in the world, is Paul M. Smith. He captured the sprite below in June 2020.

Paul spoke to EarthSky about his top tips for photographing lightning sprites. He recommends that you be under dark skies, let your eyes adjust to the darkness, and be persistent! Paul hosts workshops multiple times a year for those who want to learn how to photograph lightning sprites. He said the same tips apply to those who just want to see one with their eyes alone as for those who want to photograph them. He also said:

Some storms may produce one sprite all night, whereas others may have a sprite a minute, so activity obviously plays a big role.

You can follow Paul on Twitter: @PaulMSmithPhoto. Or find him on YouTube.

Massive Jellyfish sprite up close from Kansas storms last night . 06/21/20 0415UTC. Every year for last 3 years I have managed good sprites on Fathers day. Good tradition :) #okwx #kswx @stormhour @ASIM_Payload @NASA pic.twitter.com/4xFaqsaHld

— Paul M Smith (@PaulMSmithPhoto) June 21, 2020

More lightning sprite photos

Want more photos of lightning sprites? Try these:

Lightning sprites over the Andes in early 2020, from Yuri Beletsky

Lightning sprites over Oklahoma in 2018, from Paul Smith

Captures of elusive red sprites from the International Space Station

Bottom line: Lightning sprites, or red sprites, often occurring in tandem with lightning, are short-lived electrical discharges that flash high above thunderstorms in the mesosphere layer of the atmosphere.

The post What are lightning sprites? How to photograph them first appeared on EarthSky.

Relive the Nineties, “When we didn’t have coronavirus!”

Keanu Reeves is auctioning a date with himself for charity. As if we really needed another reason to love him. Reeves is a talented director, musician, and actor known for films such as Bill & Ted and John Wick of course, but he’s also a philanthropist. Most recently, he’s teamed up with Idaho-based children’s cancer charity, Camp Rainbow Gold. He is offering a private Zoom date with himself for the charity’s Shine for Camp Online Auction. Yes, you read that correctly. A date with Keanu Reeves.

Via Yahoo, this one-on-one event will take place in the form of a 15 minute Zoom call. It must take place during the week of July 6th at a time that works for both parties. And they will not tolerate any inappropriate behavior, so don’t even think about it. The Shine for Camp Online Auction is selling this high ticket item to the highest bidder.

The organization’s mission statement is to provide emotionally empowering experiences to Idaho’s children diagnosed with cancer and their families. This auction serves to boost fundraising efforts for Camp Rainbow Gold. They had an in-person fundraising event planned, but they postponed it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reeves has been quietly donating to charities for years. He has a special connection to pediatric causes as his sister battled leukemia, so of course he’s invested in this cause.

Netflix

While the bidding started at $10,000, as of time of writing, it is over $16,000. You can place your bid until June 22. The auction includes other notable names, too. Fifth Harmony member Ally Brooke will perform a private 15 minute Zoom concert. Also, legendary voice actor Rob Paulsen is offering a private one hour voice lesson.

Camp Rainbow Gold serves more than 400 Idaho family members. More than 300 volunteers from across the country support them. Additionally, the American Camp Association accredited them in 2002.

Featured Image: Netflix

The post You Can Go on a Zoom Date with Keanu Reeves for Charity appeared first on Nerdist.