Get certified marketing training on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more with these classes

Twitter rants and various online ugliness aside, social media has actually grown up a bit over the past 15 years. In general, users are warier of their interactions on platforms like Facebook or Instagram — and marketers have taken note.

In fact, if you felt retailers you saw on social media were only looking to jam products down your throat, that’s not marketing in 2020. Of marketers surveyed in a recent study, the clear no. 1 goal for brands in the social media realm — a commanding 69 percent — was to build brand awareness. In case you’re curious, driving sales was a lowly fifth place on the list.

So how do products build that awareness and engage with the audience they seek? The training in The 2020 Social Media Marketing Bootcamp Certification Bundle lays out the plan for any company looking to make the most of a social media presence, drive brand success and make you an in-demand social media manager.

Since no two social media platforms are truly alike, this seven-course, 34-plus hour collection aims to help marketers create strategies customized to work on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.

The fundamentals are explained in the Digital Marketing Foundations 101 course, a nuts-and-bolts walkthrough that hammers home the most critical decision for any social media manager: crafting a clear digital strategy. This course digs into email marketing, building a website, SEO, digital advertising, measurement, analytics, and all the latest trends in the digital marketing game.

While that course lays out the basics, Social Media Foundations 101 and Social Media Strategy advance your learning into practical steps for bringing that digital marketing plan to life. Students here get well-proven tactics for creating a standout business presence on social media, defining marketing goals, target audiences, and content strategies, and understanding the reason behind incorporating each social media platform into your overall business plan.

Next, the coursework delves into training specific to three of the most crucial social platforms operating today. Facebook Marketing, Instagram Marketing, and LinkedIn Marketing get into the advantages and disadvantages of each site, offering tips for reaching your specific audience on each platform.

Finally, Facebook Advertising goes inside paid advertising on the powerful platform, explaining how to master ad targeting and buying options to get the most reach for your money.

Regularly retailing for over $2,000, all this social media mastery knowledge is available now for only $29.99.

Prices are subject to change.

 

The 2020 Social Media Marketing Bootcamp Certification Bundle - $29.99

Get the training for $29.99

If you have been wanting to make your own pizza at home this training class will get you started

Virus quarantines and shuttered restaurants sent millions of Americans back to their homes, only to rediscover the joys of firing up an oven and cooking something special for themselves. 

Whether by desire, necessity, or both, many of us have certainly been spending more time in the kitchen these last few months. And we haven’t just been hungry for the food itself. Americans have also been hungry for new ways to make it. Case in point, the Allrecipes Alexa skill saw recipe requests surge by 67 percent during March and April, while new users skyrocketed by 80 percent.

Pizza is an eternal crowd-pleaser, but plenty of chefs get intimidated at the thought of making crust and sauce from scratch. Thankfully, professional chef Tim Cunningham is on the case — and his 1-hour crash course Pizza Making: Bake the Best Sourdough Pizza at Home! seeks to prove that anyone with basic kitchen skills is more than capable of baking up a delicious pie.

The Australian-born Cunningham is a veteran of rustic Italian and Mediterranean cuisine -- and over this step-by-step instruction, students learn the fundamentals for making a world-class pizza that doesn’t require expensive equipment or ingredients. 

Over these seven lectures, Cunningham starts by explaining how to make your own sourdough starter from yeast and bacteria so your handmade crust will always be absolutely stellar. From there, he walks students through the creation of a Napoli sauce for pizza bases. 

Then armed with your crust and sauce, you’re already more than halfway to a homemade pizza that will put anything you have delivered from Grubhub to shame.

Over 1,200 students have taken chef Cunningham’s course, bestowing a 4.2 out of 5-star rating, so you know you can likely expect pizza brilliance -- so long as you can follow his easy-to-digest guide.

Best of all, the training to bake one of the world’s greatest pizzas yourself actually costs less than an order from Domino’s or Pizza Hut. The $200 course is now on sale for over 90 percent off, just $13.99.

Prices are subject to change.

 

Pizza Making Course: Bake the Best Sourdough Pizza at Home! - $13.99

Yumm! $13.99

Get a 2-pack of these statement face masks for just $18

Now that the world is starting to re-emerge from its self-imposed COVID-19 quarantine, we’re all going to have to start making some adjustments to both short-term and long-term changes. 

And the questions… Should customers be hounded out of a store if they aren’t wearing a face mask? Are crocheted face masks safe or not? And will face masks be required everywhere, even the Happiest Place on Earth?

It’s still too early to know the answers to many of these face mask-related questions, but there’s one we already know the answer to. Who wants to wear a boring plain white N95 mask anyway?

Answer: No one. 

Therefore, you can start assembling your too-cool-for-the-room face wear wardrobe now with a two-pack of these two-ply statement face masks.  Each one is made from a premium, washable poly span stretchy fabric that covers your nose and mouth comfortably while containing and blocking any airborne pathogens.

And thankfully, they’ve created these short, direct commentaries for the wide variety of personality types out there. 

For the concerned

In two words, an entire conversation path is established. In an instant, you express your clean-as-a-whistle health status, all while inquiring about everyone else’s state.

For the hugger

This period of social distancing is hard on those who thrive in other people’s personal space. For them, this simple four-letter declaration says everything their empty arms cannot these days.

For the non-committal

Look, make your statement out in the world, but there’s no reason to tip your hand, right? Hello is about as tacitly friendly, yet socially ambiguous a greeting as possible. So if you’d like to retain your air of mystery while still putting something into the dialog, this one’s for you.

For the introvert

Sometimes, even hello is just...you know...too much. Hi. H-I. Two letters. That’s all I can give right now. 

For the crusader

If you’re gonna make a statement, then by God, sing it loud, brother! You’re invested in everyone’s well-being and you think they should be true. And maybe it’s just the right way to get that maskless guy in line at Wal-Mart thinking about his choices.

Get over 140 hours of online piano lessons for less than $40

Maybe you had a piano teacher as a kid that drove you off the instrument forever. Or maybe you always wished for some serious training, but never found the time.

Whether you have dreams of tossing off a Beethoven or Chopin piece at the drop of a hat or you have visions of being the next Ray Charles, The Ultimate Piano Bundle: From Beginner to Advanced course bundle was created to turn an interested, invested novice into a functioning, then studied master of the keys in record time.

This collection includes 10 courses with a massive 140-plus hours of training dedicated to helping you not only learn to play the piano but understand the instrument, read music, compose and generally become a real, honest-to-goodness musician.

Nobody was to get buried in scholastics before they ever touch the keys, so this training kicks off with the Ultimate Piano Course: Go from a Beginner/Average to an Advanced Pianist. Starting from the beginning, the class can make you a proficient player through over 30 hours of training. The course explains the hows and whys of music theory, walks students through the entire keypad, including chord progressions, and generally immerses first-timers in a world of music.

The next step is the Intermediate/Advanced Piano Course: Enhance Your Musical/Piano Skills as your basic skills are tested with an expanded variety of lessons to push your abilities even further. 

But since playing is only a piece of the piano experience, the collection includes courses in learning to tackle the music pages themselves. How to Read and Write Music to Play Piano and Other Instruments delves into actually understanding how to read music as well as the fundamentals to start crafting compositions of your own.

Further training unpacks how to create unique, borrowed even altered chord progressions as well as identifying the different attributes of a melody, so it becomes that much easier to craft a catchy one for your songs.

Finally, you even get a pair of courses on ear training so you can always pick out keynotes immediately, develop a strong sense of pitch, and generally know your way around music like you’ve never known it before.

Putting yourself through each of these courses separately would run you $200 apiece, but right now, the complete collection is on sale for just $34.99, less than $3.50 per course.

Prices are subject to change.

 

The Ultimate Piano Bundle: From Beginner to Advanced - $34.99

Play the piano for $34.99

Save over 90% on a 2-year subscription to Iconscout's unlimited icons plan

When you see that curved arrow on the side of a cardboard box, you instantly know that box came from Amazon. The unfurled rainbow feathers of a peacock immediately scream NBC. And a partially eaten piece of fruit in the profile is a world-recognized symbol of tech titan Apple.

Icons are powerful symbols, condensing volumes of connection and meaning into a compact, simple image that conveys all that history and significance. For a web designer, those tiny icons are important navigation and information signifiers that form a critical unwritten shorthand with site visitors. 

Rather than trying to create those icons yourself, designers can get a serious leg-up in their creation by having all those icons created for you. With an Iconscout subscription, all that aid is available in a simple download.

Curators of their own design research marketplace, Iconscout is home to more than 2 million high-quality, royalty-free icons, each lovingly created by one of more than 300 top designers for use in virtually any type of web project you could envision.

With that many available options (and literally thousands more added to the Iconscout library every single day), your project can find just the graphic look to mesh with your creation, whether your icons should represent tech, education, entertainment, and sports or relationships, business, science or food and drink, to name just a few. Each is available in a broad range of sizes and styles contoured to find the look and feel of any design project.

If you’d like to modify an icon to include something different, such as your brand’s colors, for example, no problem. Just push your file into the Iconscout Online Editor and make any tweaks or changes you want, then export them into your favorite file format. With that kind of customization, it’s no wonder that Iconscout icons play nicely with other software, so you can open and use these creations in all kinds of graphics programs like Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Microsoft Office, GSuite tools and more.

You can get a two-year subscription to all of Iconscout’s services now at hundreds of dollars off its regular price, just $49.99.

Prices are subject to change.

 

Iconscout Unlimited Icons Plan: 2-Yr Subscription - $49.99

Get this offer for $49.99

Fellow brushes his teeth during Japanese noise music concert by Merzbow

As Japanese musician Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) performs live in Taipei in 2013, one concertgoer shows that enjoying noise music does not preclude one from practicing good dental hygiene. Full clip below.

Get the wireless recharging power battery that looks just like a Walkman

Call it retro. Call it a throwback. Even call it kitsch. But the 80s are still a singular time in pop culture history.  From Ghostbusters and Back to the Future to your neighborhood arcade and the Atari 2600, artifacts of that seminal decade still resonate, evoking audible excitement and sighs of pleasant yesteryear remembrance.

But out of that neon-saturated, spandex-infused, go-go-decade, there may be no more symbolically fitting encapsulation of the entire era than the device that revolutionized music back in the day: the Sony Walkman and the dawn of personal audio players.

Even if you weren’t around to see that revolution firsthand in 1980, getting your hands on the Replitronics Hotline 16000 Power Bank will convince everybody that you were — even though it serves a very 2020 function.

It’s designed to look exactly like an early 80s vintage personal cassette player, right down to the old-school buttons and that plastic cover window that lets you watch your tape spin round and round. 

But beyond being a cool conversation piece, the Replitronics Hotline 16000 is a modern-day beast, offering enough juice to power up to three devices back to full strength all at once. 

With a mighty 16,000 mAh battery inside, this unit can feed power via USB 3.0, USB-C, and even wireless Qi charging all at the same time. Just plug in your iPhone and the Hotline will get you from dead to fully powered in just over an hour or in just under three if you’re charging wirelessly.

Either way, the Hotline serves up fast, hassle-free power at top speed. And rather than charge up with one of those boring gunmetal silver or obsidian black-cased modern-day power batteries, you can instead crank up the juice in a package that’ll bring smiles and comments from almost everyone.

Of course, the Hotline is also sporting some of today’s most important charging technologies under the hood as well, including protection against surging, overcharges, overheating or a short circuit.

Fully funded by nostalgia-fueled backers on Kickstarter to the tune of $91,000, you can pick up a Replitronics Hotline 16000 Power Bank now with a $5 savings off the regular price, only $34.99.

Prices are subject to change.

 

Replitronics Hotline 16000 Power Bank - $34.99

Power up for $34.99

iPad looks great in an SE/30 case

At Reddit, mtietje posted this remarkable photo of their lockdown project: an iPad stand made using an old Macintosh SE/30. The display size is perfect for the 9.7" iPad, and now that iPadOS can use mice they work much better as "normal" computers.

Se/30 shells turn up on eBay now and again. One's there now with bidding at $15. Shipping tends to really bloat the price of even a broken model with the bits still inside. I doubt you could reasonably shave down the SE/30 display housing to fit an iPad Pro, unfortunately: you'd lose all the beveling.

Now, the iMac G4 (below) came with a 15" screen that a 12.7" iPad Pro might hack into without looking too small. Maybe you could even just remove the display entirely and magnet the iPad on the arm?

Footage shows Louisville police shooting pepper rounds at news crew

In the footage below, broadcast live by an NBC affiliate and posted to Twitter by Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a news crew moves into the street near a line of riot police. Protestors are not nearby in significant numbers and the police are not engaging them. A cop steps forward from the line and opens fire on the news crew with what appear to be pepper rounds.

Police firing pepper bullets at our local NBC affiliate news crew live on TV. pic.twitter.com/aGBzl4WAA4

— Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons (@GuthrieGF) May 30, 2020

Video of the encounter shows Kaitlin Rust, a reporter for CBS affiliate WAVE 3 News, narrating as she walks around the area of the protest before suddenly screaming: "I'm getting shot!" Rust appears shocked but continues reporting, explaining what's happening as the camera focuses in on an officer pointing a gun with pepper bullets at the cameraman. ... The incident took place as police were reportedly trying to clear the area of large groups of protesters. It is unclear why the police chose to open fire on the reporters.

When policing is this violent and contemptuous of constitutional rights, it seems pointless to single out specific aspects of the problem. The shooter's immediate goal for opening fire on the news crew is stop the filming. He didn't get what he wanted, but he won't face any consequences, either.

Supreme Court rejects church lockdown exemption

The Supreme Court ruled friday that lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic do not place an unconstitutional burden on free speech. The court's four liberals were joined by chief justice John Roberts to form a 5-4 majority over the other conservative justices; the case concerned a church's right to fill the pews after California governor Gavin Newsome imposed a 25%-or-100-person occupancy limit.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberals in rejecting a San Diego church's request for relief from Gov. Gavin Newsom's most recent directive limiting churches to 25% of their normal maximum capacity, with an absolute maximum of 100 people at any service.

In a three-page opinion issued just before the stroke of midnight Washington time, Roberts said it would be unwise for the court to intervene on an emergency basis as state officials try to grapple with the ebb and flow of a pandemic caused by a highly infectious and sometimes deadly virus.

Deep Spock

Jarkan deepfaked Leonard Nimoy into the 2009 Star Trek movie, replacing Zachary Quinto in the scene where he meets an older version of himself from a parallel universe. This is surely going to be entering the regular toolkit of cinema soon enough, resurrecting the dead for new films. It's already more natural and convincing than CG--compare to digital Moff Tarkin, for example, which just looked like a videogame cutscene to me. But it also fails more completely; it's still Quinto at odd angles.

Kickstart your freelance career with the help of these online classes

With millions out of work, the global economy in a sharp recession, and legitimate fears for the future abound, you might think this is absolutely the worst time to strike out on your own and be your own boss as a work-for-hire freelancer.

But according to numbers compiled by financial services company Payoneer, the current state of the freelance market might not be as dire as you think. While some freelancers have reported a downturn in demand, almost 40 percent said they’ve seen no change or even an increase in business over the past three months. A resounding 75 percent said their rates were still unchanged by the pandemic; and the average 2020 freelance hourly rate remained higher than it was just two years ago.

If you can get past the fear, the opportunity is still there for those looking to make it on their own. 

And the training in the Kickstart Your Freelance Career Course Bundle can help you chart your path toward independence and prosperity working remotely as a skilled freelancer.

Over these eight courses, students earn a thorough understanding of what it takes to carve out a profitable living working for yourself as well as step-by-step guides and tips on launching a fulfilling freelance career.

The Freelance Kickstart: Start a Successful Business You Love and Sales and Marketing for Freelancers courses cut right to the heart of the matter by laying out how to achieve the twin pillars of a successful freelance lifestyle: handling assignments and clients like a true business, and forging the right mindset to succeed in that often competitive space. Students also learn the basics of a marketing plan to find and land new partnership accounts.

Meanwhile, the Freelance Success For Artists: A Quick and Easy Guide and The Complete Freelance Writing Courses dig into the specific considerations of these two large freelancing groups, offering guidance on creating a winning portfolio, building a reputation and experience, increasing income and staying on task without getting overwhelmed or succumbing to fear.

Of course, part of succeeding as a freelancer is succeeding in the arenas where freelancers are found. With How to Win Jobs Freelancing On UpWork, Kickstart a Freelance Editor and Proofreader Career on Upwork, and Fiverr: Start a Profitable Fiverr Freelance Business Today, the coursework examines how to navigate popular freelance job venues like Fiverr and Upwork. This training explains how to put together successful bid letters, find jobs that speak to your abilities and interests, and forge lasting and profitable relationships with clients.

The course package usually runs almost $1,600, but right now, the whole collection is on sale for a fraction of that total, just $29.99.

Prices are subject to change.

 

Kickstart Your Freelance Career Course Bundle - $29.99

Start a new career for $29.99

Minneapolis Mayor declares curfew after protests over impunity in George Floyd killing

The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, has declared a curfew for the city following protests over impunity in the killing of George Floyd.

An 8 p.m. curfew imposed by the mayor late Friday will extend through the weekend.

Mayor Frey has issued Emergency Regulation No. 2020-2-1 which imposes a curfew throughout the City of Minneapolis beginning at 8 p.m. tonight (Fri., May 29) and extends through the weekend.
See the posted regulation for details at: https://t.co/iebgleKnyx pic.twitter.com/7l61oURPtc

— Minneapolis Clerk (@mplsclerk) May 29, 2020

Minneapolis mayor announces a curfew beginning 8 p.m. tonight until 6 a.m. tomorrow and another 8 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Sunday. People are banned from public streets + public places in Minneapolis with some exceptions (police, fire, National Guard, the homeless) pic.twitter.com/yuTD0QmCqm

— Mark Berman (@markberman) May 29, 2020

---

PREVIOUSLY ON BOING BOING:

• Cop who killed George Floyd arrested

• Minneapolis ablaze after prosecutor suggests no crime was committed by cops who killed George Floyd

• The cop who killed George Floyd has a long record of police brutality

Trump says he's ending U.S. relationship with WHO, president is promptly trashed by AMA

Impeached President Donald Trump announced on a Friday afternoon in the middle of a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 that he is terminating the relationship between the United States and the World Health Organization.

President Trump: We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization.

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 29, 2020

The President announces he’s terminating the relationship with the WHO pic.twitter.com/FDLwv9VVE9

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) May 29, 2020

In responding to Trump's reckless attacks on public health, the American Medical Association did not mince words.

The American Medical Association is not mincing words about Trump quitting the World Health Organization. pic.twitter.com/Vqq1sllVRQ

— Jeffrey Young (@JeffYoung) May 29, 2020

Nor did medical professionals on Twitter, like Jeremy Konyndyk of the Center for Global Development and Georgetown University.

The bottom line is that none of this is about WHO's performance. It's purely about deflecting accountability for 100k dead Americans, and counting, on Trump's watch. I dove into the merits along with @TomBollyky here: https://t.co/4dNEgob7iU

— Jeremy TEST/TRACE/ISOLATE Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) May 29, 2020

Investigation into TikTok as risk to U.S. children's privacy urged by 4 U.S. senators

Four U.S. senators today urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that the very popular video app TikTok, which is owned by a company tied to China's military and government, violated a consent decree to protect children's privacy.

From Reuters:

In their letter, lawmakers noted a report by the Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and others saying that Chinese-owned TikTok had failed to take down videos made by children under age 13 as it agreed under a 2019 consent agreement with the FTC.

In addition, the report said, TikTok failed to provide parents with “direct notice” of data practices before collecting information on children and did not put a link to its privacy policy on its home page, as required under the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

“Faced with compelling evidence that this wildly popular social media platform is blatantly flouting binding U.S. privacy rules, the FTC should move swiftly to launch an investigation and forcefully hold violators accountable,” said the letter, which was signed by Democratic Senators Ed Markey, an author of COPPA, and Richard Blumenthal.

It was also signed by Republican Senators Josh Hawley, a critic of big social media and China, and Marsha Blackburn.

A TikTok spokeswoman said in an email that the company “takes the issue of safety seriously for all our users, and we continue to further strengthen our safeguards and introduce new measures to protect young people on the app.”

READ MORE:
U.S. senators urge probe of TikTok on children's privacy

This brush set enlists your power drill in the war on germs and dirt

For years, dirty countertops, appliances, or bathroom fixtures were just kind of gross. But unkempt corners of your kitchen and bathroom aren’t just a sign of laziness anymore. Now, they’re a potential breeding ground for infectious disease. 

You can’t just limp through cleaning these days. You’ve gotta get rigorous about it, which means it’s no longer acceptable to bring a knife to a gunfight. The Drill Brush Cleaning Supply Kit not only ups the ante on your household cleaning regimen, but it handles the task by repurposing one of your toolkit favorites, your trusty power drill.

This set included four different brush heads, each designed with unique shapes and bristle stiffnesses to attach to your cordless drill for specific cleaning jobs. 

Snap on the 5-inch medium stiffness brush for getting stubborn dirt off your kitchen countertops or bathroom flat surfaces. Or switch out to the 5-inch soft brush to apply a lighter touch for items like carpet, upholstery, glass, leather, wheels, and more.

However, if you need to go big, this kit comes prepared. The 4-inch stiff brush really digs in, attacking dirt and other built-up filth on areas like tile walls and floors or even linoleum. Finally, the 4-inch scrub pad stands ready to step in when you need to clean stainless steel, porcelain, or composites like fiberglass or carbon fiber. The brushes are all even color-coded to help avoid the threat of any cross-contamination.

You’ll also get a backer attachment to connect your scrub pads as well as a 4-ounce bottle of Drill-Tergent, a non-toxic clean solution that obliterates 99 percent of germs on all of your household surfaces.

Applying the power of your drill, you won’t have to throw all that elbow grease into hand scrubbing and scouring with scratchy steel wool anymore. The Drill Brush was also created for handheld cleaning of cast iron pots and pans, even with baked-on food or grease. These brushes snap on and off easily and can be safely used on stoves, sinks, baseboards, ovens, oven racks, flooring, or basically anywhere that needs some serious cleaning attention.

 With an impressive 4.6 out of 5-star rating from reviewers on Amazon, this set usually retails for $39. But you can save almost $10 off the price of the Drill Brush Cleaning Supply Kit right now and get the whole set for just $29.95.

 Prices are subject to change.

 

Drill Brush® Cleaning Supply Kit with Cleaning Solution - $29.95

Clean it all for $29.95

Watch: SpaceX prototype Starship rocket just exploded in a big fireball

RIP Starship SN4 https://t.co/klPMtZHxjW pic.twitter.com/hrrElBXmSC

— Chris B - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) May 29, 2020

SpaceX's Starship SN4 prototype launch vehicle just exploded in a huge fireball during a static fire test in Boca Chica, Texas. While the Starship spacecraft is still early in development, the explosion doesn't feel great leading up to the SpaceX-NASA historic launch now scheduled for tomorrow. Scrubbed on Wednesday due to weather, it'll be the first time humans will launch to space from the United States since 2011 and the first time a private company will take humans offworld.

Impressive four minute mash-up of 50 music videos from 1988

The Hood Internet cut up bits of 50+ music videos from 1988 and mashed them into a four minute video. It would make the perfect soundtrack to a montage of 80s movie montages.

(via Laughing Squid)

Florida man spent 24 hours vandalizing high school in the nude

Miramar, Florida police arrested Matthew Crandall, 21, for allegedly breaking into Miramar High School and smashing up the place. He wore only a hat and headphones as he destroyed computers and TVs and apparently caused major flooding. The total wreckage is estimated at $100,000.

Crandall was identified from surveillance footage. According to the Associated Press, "it’s not known whether he has ties to the school."

(Thanks to our Florida bureau chief, Charles Pescovitz!)

Cop who killed George Floyd arrested

Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed George Floyd, was arrested today and taken into custody.

The arrest follows three days of growing unrest in Minneapolis, where Floyd, suspected of passing a fake $20 bill for a pack of cigarettes, was filmed gasping for his life while Chauvin kneeled on his neck.

Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said state investigators arrested Derek Chauvin, who was one of four officers fired this week, but he did not provide details. The state attorney who would oversee any prosecution on state charges, whose home was also the site of protests, was scheduled to provide an update later Friday.

News of the arrest came moments after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged the “abject failure” of the response to this week’s protests and called for swift justice for officers involved.

Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, was arrested.

This is not enough. We have much further to go — including swift, independent prosecution conducted by the Attorney General's office.

The fight to dismantle a violent, oppressive system has just begun. https://t.co/46o1tx0Cqo

— ACLU (@ACLU) May 29, 2020

Troop of monkeys attack lab assistant, steal COVID-19 samples

The badly written dystopian fiction that is our global pandemic continues.

Sky News:

A gang of monkeys attacked a laboratory assistant and escaped with a batch of coronavirus blood test samples, it has been reported.

The bizarre incident saw the troop of primates launch their assault near Meerut Medical College in Delhi, India.

According to local media, the animals then snatched COVID-19 blood test samples that had been taken from three patients and fled.

How to cook a steak from frozen in 30 minutes

I have long been a fan of pan-searing steaks and finishing their roast in the oven. Previously, I'd either thaw the steaks in the fridge overnight or I would sous vide them instead of using the oven, and sear them at the end.

This technique: thawing the surface of the steak enough to hold seasoning and then starting the pan sear is wonderful. I have found that sous vide from frozen to be ok but not my favorite.

$350 USB stick claiming to block 5G is just a cheap thumbdrive

A $350 USB device claiming to block 5G radio signals is just a cheap unbranded thumbdrive, report security researchers.

The makers of the “5GBioShield” claim their USB stick can block electrical waves through a “proprietary holographic nano-layer catalyst” technology. It purportedly does this by “balancing” all the existing radiations around you to create a protective bubble 8 meters in diameter, even when the USB drive is unplugged.

The website for the product goes on to make dubious references to “quantum oscillation,” “life force frequencies,” and “cardiac coherence” in an attempt to convince consumers the science behind the 5GBioShield is legit. But you’ll be pretty disappointed if you actually buy the product, according to Pen Test Partners.

The device (sold as the 5GBioShield) is aimed at people who believe conspiracy theories about 5G radio waves—a market whose credulity and susceptibility to unproven or pseudoscientific products is already guaranteed.

That it's something you can buy on Amazon for a fraction of the price[Amazon link] just shows how little work went into the wheeze.

The website selling the thumbdrives is based in the UK. Local regulators and fraud police are on the case: "We consider it to be a scam," Stephen Knight, operations director for London Trading Standards, told the BBC.

Husky doesn't want to hear it

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. YEAH YEAH YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH" — Blue the husky.

Joe Scarborough in WaPo Op-Ed: The slimy tsunami of bilge spewing from President Trump is hurting innocent people

It's easy to become inured to Trump's ceaseless depravity, which is why I'm glad I read Joe Scarborough's Op-Ed in The Washington Post about Trump's sociopathic obsession about a false story that is causing great pain to a dead woman's family.

One is a politician so obsessed with a morning cable news show that he has sought retribution by repeatedly defaming a dead woman’s memory.

The other is a soft-spoken Air Force engineer who has worked on projects for 32 years with the singular goal of protecting and defending the United States. The 6-foot-3 Florida resident is still mourning the death of a wife he lost 19 years ago. He holds on to cherished memories of Lori Klausutis as a lifelong Republican, a devoted Catholic who sang in her church choir and an avid runner so perpetually cheerful that people called her “Little Miss Mary Sunshine.” After Lori’s death, T.J. Klausutis returned alone to the home the couple had just bought in Niceville, Fla., and faced an almost immediate barrage of Internet conspiracy theories about the “murder” of his wife.

The pace of those hateful lies ebbed and flowed with the years, until they swelled recently into a slimy tsunami of bilge spewing from President Trump’s 80-million-strong Twitter feed. I have never been able to grasp Trump’s bizarre fixation with “Morning Joe,” but that sad obsession has driven him to weaponize Lori’s memory in an attempt to settle some perceived grievance against me. Or perhaps to deflect from the 100,000 Americans lost to a disease he once dismissed as “one person coming in from China.”

I have been a public figure for more than 25 years, so I pay little attention to public lies. T.J. and Lori’s family, however, are innocents in this. To have the commander in chief torment a patriot like T.J. is disgusting, but sadly, not surprising. Despite the pain he endured from discredited websites and Twitter accounts, T.J. kept his peace for nearly two decades, until the most powerful man on Earth began slandering his wife’s good name.

Image: Jumpstory / CC0

This solar charger works anywhere to power up your devices in just minutes

Hunting around for an outlet or a power battery when you’re trying to charge your phone or tablet is always an annoyance. But when you’re out in the world hiking or camping or traveling, finding an outlet might be more than a minor inconvenience...it might be downright impossible.

Running low on battery power isn’t an option anybody looks forward to these days, especially if you’re out and about and may need that phone in the event of any emergency. 

Thankfully, the RAVPower 24W 3-Port Solar Charger takes advantage of the fact that the world’s most powerful battery is almost always right there overhead: the Sun.

Actually, the RAVPower is really more than a traditional charger. Unlike bulky brick-style chargers, the RAVPower is its own solar panel, half the weight of other chargers. Just unfold it from its tiny, compact carrier and aim it at the Sun as its high-efficiency solar cells start juicing up.

Converting nearly a quarter of available solar power into free energy, the RAVPower is a fast, effective, lightweight charger for use in almost any condition. In fact, you can even throw the RAVPower over the back of your pack, plug in your phone, and watch your device power up while you keep moving.

It charges up to two USB-powered devices simultaneously and can take a smartphone’s battery from zero to fully charged in the space of about 3 to 4 hours. The RAVPower uses iSmart technology to automatically adjust to your connected devices, serving up the optimal charging current evenly to everything you have plugged in in the shortest possible charging time.

As an ever-ready source of power in nearly any situation, it can be a true lifesaver. And at less than a foot long and weighing less than 2 pounds, it’s the perfect accessory for any outdoorsman, survivalist, or power-savvy boy scout who almost wants to be prepared in case of an emergency.

The RAVPower Solar Charger retails for $89.99, but with this current discount, you can take $30 off the price for a final total of just $59.99.

Prices are subject to change.

 

RAVPower 24W 3-Port Solar Charger - $59.99

Power up for $59.99

Venture Kapitalist Karen loses his lease after complaining that black men were in an office building gym

a group of young black entrepreneurs have owned a office building in uptown minneapolis for over a year& got racially profiled at the private gym todaysmh pic.twitter.com/iKmAuW5Tli

— nisa (@anisalrh) May 27, 2020

Tom Austin, AKA "Venture Kapitalist Karen," had his office lease terminated after a video showed him calling the building manager to complain about a group of black men in the office gym.

From The Hill:

The incident comes just days after a video of a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he died of asphyxiation went viral. The death of Floyd, an African American man, led to massive protests in the city and calls for an investigation into the officers' behavior.

Stuart Ackerberg, CEO of Ackerberg Group, which owns the MoZaic East building, said he was still heartbroken from seeing the video of Floyd when he decided to terminate the lease.

“My heart hurts,” he told the Tribune. “This is not how we do business. ... I’m alarmed by what I saw.”

Twitter hides Trump tweet calling for "THUGS" to be shot

Twitter last night hid one of President Trump's tweet behind a warning, saying that it broke the company's policy against glorifying violence. In the tweet, Trump branded protestors in Minneapolis 'THUGS' and suggested they should be shot.

....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

Floyd was an unarmed black man killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Minneapolis has seen two nights of unrest as local authorities refuse to release unredacted footage of the incident or to charge Chauvin with a crime. "Thug" is a storied euphemism for black people.

The warning notice comes three days after Twitter placed a fact-check warning on another of Trump's tweets and a day after Trump signed an executive order denouncing the company.

'A riot is the language of the unheard.' —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

Drone filmmaker captures Children's Fairyland from the view of a flying fairy — and it's downright magical

There's still magic in the world, as evidenced by this fairy's-eye view of Children's Fairyland, that charming 70-year-old storybook theme park in Oakland, California.

You might remember that when I'm not blogging, I work with Fairyland. WELL... months before we were mandated to shelter in place, a local photographer, Stephen Loewinsohn, contacted our team at Fairyland. He wanted to know if he could come in and capture the park by drone. He showed us some of his work samples (um, wow) and told us he was a lifelong fan of the park. He also told us the finished product would be a gift to us, no strings attached. OF COURSE we said yes! Naturally, none of us realized at the time that it would be the first comprehensive look our community would get from inside the park for months. But that's part of what makes it extra special. We premiered the video on Thursday evening, with great success, as the "cherry on top" to our reopening fundraising announcement.

At my request, Stephen shared his inspiration and thoughts on creating this video:

I grew up in Oakland and went to Fairyland as a kid. Now I have two young kids of my own, so Fairyland is a really special place for me and my family.

I've been working as a professional photographer and filmmaker in the Bay Area for many years, and lately I've been experimenting with building and flying custom camera drones with amazing acrobatic capabilities for specialized filming applications. I've also been teaching myself new techniques for visual effects, compositing, and animation during quarantine. So this project was a way to bring together those two areas of visual storytelling (drones and animation) into one magical adventure through Fairyland.

The first step was to fly a tiny drone (essentially a racing drone with a 4K video camera attached) through the empty park. These types of precise flights in close proximity to objects must be flown completely manually using VR goggles to see what the drone sees. So I spent an entire day in the deserted park flying dozens of takes in order to capture these shots. The feeling of piloting a drone in this way is extremely immersive, and flying through a place like Fairyland is as fun as it looks. So that was the easy part.

Then I spent many weeks in quarantine editing the footage and animating the little flying pixie. Because of the frenetic pace of the camera movements, tracking an object through 3D space is extremely difficult with this type of footage. Many sections of the video had to be painstakingly masked and animated one frame at a time in order to get the desired result. I don't know if I've ever spent more time working on two-minutes of video ;) But I'm really happy with the way it all came together, and it was definitely worth all the hard work if it makes people smile.

I think a lot of families in the Bay Area (and around the world) are really missing our playgrounds and community spaces like Fairyland where kids can run around and be kids right now. I know we are! I'm hoping this video gives people a way to visit Fairyland virtually, as well as a reminder of what's waiting on the other side of the pandemic. I'm really looking forward to the day when we can all safely visit Fairyland in person again, but until then, Fairyland belongs to the fairies!

Follow Stephen on Instagram, where he nabbed the most apt handle ever: @peoplelooklikeants.

View this post on Instagram

Working on something magical with @fairylandca and @rec_sf. . . . . #oaklandish #fairyland #bayarea #eastbay #drones #fpvgaps #fpvfreestyle #cinewhoop #shendrones #shendronessquirt #realsteadygo #gopro #recsf #bts #videoshoot #oaklandlove #oaklandca #oaklandloveit #childrensfairyland #lakemerritt #fpvpilot #fpvdrone #fpv #fpvmagazine #fpvquad #droneoftheday #dronevideo #dronegram

A post shared by Stephen Loewinsohn (@peoplelooklikeants) on Nov 20, 2019 at 8:54am PST

THANK YOU, STEPHEN!

John Waters gives an in-quarantine, green-screened commencement speech

John Waters was slated to give the New York's School of Visual Arts' commencement speech at Radio City Music Hall. Instead, he gave a different version of that keynote in front of a green screen, quarantined in his Baltimore home. Of course, it was still hilarious ("Tiger King" porno knockoff, anyone?) and still full of hard-earned wisdom.

"Artists are magicians: you can see what others can not, have a secret language, the power to make others follow... and you can change history with one ludicrous idea. While you’re still young, maybe it’s time to become a virus yourself—a good kind of virus, one fueled by the years of hard work you put in at the incubator known as the School of Visual Arts. Artists, you are the cure, too. The only people that can inspire the world to notice and then alter its destructive behavior.”

Congrats, "coronavirus class of 2020," all of you, everywhere!

screengrab via SVA/YouTube

Minneapolis ablaze after prosecutor suggests no crime was committed by cops who killed George Floyd

Fires rage in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by local cop Derek Chauvin.

Though four officers were immediately fired, local prosecutor Mike Freeman said that there is 'other evidence that does not support a criminal charge' even as police refused to release unredacted footage of the incident. Video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck as he gasped for breath was taken by a bystander; Chauvin's long history of violent conduct soon surfaced.

Minnesota's Attorney General said he nonetheless "anticipated" charges against the officers who killed Floyd. Another potential avenue for justice: the FBI is investigating whether Floyd's rights were violated, though its request for "more video" was excoriated by commentator Don Lemon.

Police abandoned a precinct during clashes Thursday night, and it became the first to be destroyed during unrest in modern U.S. history.

Among those detained was a black CNN reporter and his crew, live on air.

On social media, President Trump branded those protesting "THUGS" and suggested they should be shot; Twitter hid his tweet per its policy against glorifying violence, another first.

Photo: Hungryogrephotos (Public Domain)

CORRECTION: CNN's reporter was detained Friday morning, not Thursday night.

Astronaut shows what happens when you drop a hammer and feather at the same time on the moon

Astronaut David Scott re-created, in 1971 during the Apollo 15 mission, Galileo's "falling bodies" experiment by dropping a hammer and feather on the moon at the same time. Simply, both fell at the same rate because there was no air resistance.

screengrab via Wonders of Physics/YouTube

(Digg)

The cop who killed George Floyd has a long record of police brutality

A 46-year old black man named George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis on Monday, May 25, 2020. A police officer named Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck, after vaguely accusing him of forgery and/or public intoxication. He pressed his knee down so hard — and kept it there — that it cut off the air to Floyd's lungs, suffocating him. Three police officers stood around and watched as Floyd used his last breaths to cry for help; several bystanders filmed the scene, and tried to get the cops to stop, but to no avail.

Those 4 police officers were fired shortly after the video was released (by their official account, Floyd had been "resisting arrest," something which is a physically impossible to do while also dying under restraint). That sounds like good news on the surface — but thanks to Police Union rules, bad cops who get fired for misconduct usually just get re-hired in a nearby precinct. Their past behavior — even repeated, established patterns of violent misconduct — are left off their permanent record, or otherwise ignored.

And that's exactly how the police officer who killed George Floyd was in the position to do so in the first place. As Insider reports, Derek Chauvin had a long and ugly history of police brutality, long before he killed George Floyd:

[Chauvin] was involved in violent incidents before, including three police shootings. And he has been the subject of 10 complaints filed to the city's Civilian Review Authority and the Office of Police Conduct.

[…]

In three separate reviews from the Civilian Review Authority, he was found to have used "demeaning tone," "derogatory language," and "language – other." No other details were available.

He has also been the subject of seven reviews by the local Office of Police Conduct. Each review concludes: "Closed – No discipline." No other details were available.

To be precise, Chauvin did not pull the fatal trigger in all of those instances, and was sometimes adjacent to or otherwise involved with a larger situation. In at least one of those cases, in 2011, Chauvin was one of the officers to insist that the victim was carrying a gun in order to justify the shooting, despite eyewitness evidence to the contrary.

Another case was overseen by current Democratic VP Hopeful Amy Klobuchar, who was then serving as chief prosecutor for the county and declined to bring charges in more than two dozen cases of police killing civilians.

Officer Tou Thao, who stood by and kept guard as Chauvin killed George Floyd, also has a history of violence, include a lawsuit against him for excessive violence that he settled out of court for $25,000.

So while it's good news that Thao and Chauvin have been fired from the Minneapolis Police Department, it doesn't actually mean anything, unless you are charged and tried fairly in a court of law that does not protect them based on their status as police officers. Otherwise, they're just going to get re-hired somewhere else, and continue terrorizing communities with excessively violent policing, just as they've done in the past.

The police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck has been involved in shootings and was the subject of 10 complaints [Isaac Scher / Insider]

What we know about Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao, two of the officers caught on tape in the death of George Floyd [Andy Mannix / Star Tribune]

Image: Fibonacci Blue / Flickr (CC 2.0)