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Why humming is good for your mental health
Allan Rose Hill / 11:23 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock
Humming has mental health benefits, and there are clear scientific reasons why. Beyond just satisfying yourself with song (and potentially annoying others), humming generates vibrations that resonate through the body, stimulating the vagus nerve which is a key part of the parasympathetic nervous system that's responsible for the body's rest-and-digest response.
Activating the vagus nerve can lower cortisol levels, slow the heart rate, and even enhance heart rate variability, a marker of cardiovascular health.
According to Psychology Today, "a recent study by Trivedi et al. (2023) found that humming can lower stress and heart rate while increasing heart rate variability (HRV)—a vital indicator of a healthy and responsive autonomic nervous system. The study compares the physiological effects of humming against physical activity, emotional stress, and sleep. The results show that humming uniquely balances the body's stress response and promotes a state of calm and equilibrium."
Of course, this is nothing new to practitioners of Pranayama, ancient yogic breathing techniques that originated in India. (The word "pranayama" comes from the Sanskrit words prana (life energy) and ayama (to extend, draw out.) One technique is called Bhramari Pranayama, often referred to as the "bee breath." This particular practice takes its name from the Sanskrit word Bhramari, meaning "black bee," symbolizing the deep humming sound made during exhalation.
In yogic philosophy, sound is considered a powerful vehicle for healing and transformation. By producing this sound while breathing, practitioners aim to cultivate inner peace and focus. Beyond its calming effects, Bhramari Pranayama is a meditation in sound, believed to connect the individual to the vibrations of the universe, aligning mind, body, and spirit with natural harmony.
Now that's some wonderful ancient wisdom for the modern world.
Previously:
• Whistling language of La Gomera
• Woman shows off her unusual talent: nose-whistling a tune at 44.1 decibels (video)
Timelapses of Hurricane Milton from orbit
Jason Weisberger / 10:02 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Here are two amazing views of Hurricane Milton. The storm is very severe.
Astronaut Matthew Dominick shared one video via X and the other from an external camera on the ISS. The storm is anticipated to reach Florida on the night of Wednesday, October 9th. It is currently a category five hurricane, and while it will likely lose strength as it approaches, the results will be devastating.
Here is the video by Dominick:
Previously:
• Hurricane Milton grows to category 4 as it heads for Florida
Fox host Maria Bartiromo humiliated when GOP Congressman shuts down her lies (video)
Carla Sinclair / 9:57 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Image: Maria Bartiromo / Fox News
Fox fabulist Maria Bartiromo tried her darnedest to convince viewers that FEMA was out of money, but her Republican guest immediately shut her down — not once but twice.
"You are an elected official, you know where and how the money is spent," the Fox panic-pusher said to Arkansas Congressman French Hill. "How is it possible that FEMA is out of money?" Bartiromo then went on to paint a grim picture of how the Biden Administration spends federal funds before asking again, "How is FEMA out of money?!"
To which the GOP lawmaker explained, "FEMA is not out of money… [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas has access to nearly $8 billion of funding from the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund accumulated since 2012. Plus, as I've said and as [Speaker] Mike Johnson has said, Congress is ready to replenish that funding as soon as we get back from Washington. They have the money."
You could almost hear Bartimolo slam her eyelids shut as the Congressman schooled her with the facts, but she then rallied, again playing the alternative truth card. "But is that money frozen for some reason?" Nice try. But nope, wrong again.
"This is where the inspector general says no," Hill explained. "Congress' staff says no. They have access to the funding." (See video below, posted by Aaron Rupar.)
Of course, it was Republicans who voted against extending the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund in the first place — including Rep. Matt Gaetz from Hurricane Helene's hard-hit Florida. Fortunately, the funding passed anyway, despite the bad actors who, like Gaetz, are against the funds until their own state desperately needs help.
But, despite looking like a fool, Bartiromo will continue to lie, banking on the sad fact that MAGA voters only watch Fox.
Two students suspected of contracting Marburg virus test negative
Jennifer Sandlin / 9:45 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Thankfully, the two passengers traveling from Rwanda to Hamburg, Germany, who were taken to the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, with suspected cases of Marburg virus, have tested negative. They had recently returned from Rwanda, which is currently experiencing an outbreak of the virus, for which there are no known treatments or vaccines and which has a fatality rate as high as 88%.
According to The Independent, several platforms at Hamburg Central Station halted operation earlier this week after one of the passengers—a medical student who had been working in a hospital in Rwanda—called doctors while traveling on a train from Frankfurt to Hamburg to express concern that they had possibly contracted a disease in Rwanda.
The Independent provides more details:
The health authority in Hamburg isolated both people at the main train station and transferred them to an area for highly contagious infectious diseases at the UKE for further examination.
Rwanda is currently experiencing an outbreak of Marburg virus with 36 cases, 25 people in isolation and 11 deaths confirmed as of Wednesday in the landlocked African country.
Hamburg's Social Affairs Authority confirmed that the pair had worked in a hospital in Rwanda as part of their medical studies and tested negative for Marburg virus in a PCR test.
According to the authority, at no time did either passenger have "complaints or symptoms corresponding to the disease" after one of the medical students, 26, had minimal contact with a patient infected with Marburg on 25 September.
Symptoms of the Marburg virus include fever, muscle pains, diarrhoea, vomiting and, in some cases, death through extreme blood loss.
The virus originates in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces.
Previously:
• Virus trading cards, animated and 3D-printable
Microsoft still keeping the Halo video game franchise alive
Jason Weisberger / 9:32 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
The newly renamed Halo Studios will continue 343's tradition of claiming Halo will be good again.
Sharing some pretty new graphics and a new name for 343 Studios, Halo fans are again told there is a future for the franchise. Footage that social media wants to be remastered Halo 3 environments looks excellent, but Halo lost its story. With each iteration by 343, the property gets farther and farther away from the spirit of Halo and is just "based on" it.
Xbox has announced sweeping changes to how Halo games are made. 343 Industries, the developer of Halo games since 2007, has rebranded as Halo Studios, with a new internal organization and a new development philosophy. As previously reported, 343's in-house game engine Slipspace is being abandoned in favor of Epic's Unreal Engine 5. Halo Studios released video footage of an internal test project called Foundry, which shows how various elements of the Halo universe — including Master Chief, and several iconic locales — will look in Unreal.
Finally, Xbox confirmed that "multiple" new games are in development, all being built in Unreal 5. But these projects are in the early stages; the Xbox Wire blog cautioned that "a new Halo game isn't imminent."
Halo Studios revealed its new direction in a video titled "A New Dawn," which was shown before the final match at the 2024 Halo World Championship on Sunday. The video features talking heads from Halo Studios explaining Foundry, the engine change, and the reorganization, and it offers as a glimpse of what the future of Halo games will look like via footage of Foundry.
Previously:
• 'Halo Infinite' seeks to redeem the franchise
Headliners bail on heavy metal festival because Kyle Rittenhouse
Jennifer Sandlin / 9:11 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Image: Henry C Jorgenson / shutterstock.com
Jacksonville, Florida-based Metalcore band Evergreen Terrace was supposed to headline the Shell Shock heavy metal music festival on October 19, 2024 in Orlando, Florida, but dropped out upon hearing that the festival had invited MAGA darling Kyle Rittenhouse to make a guest appearance at the event. Other metal bands—including Southpaw, Let Me Bleed, and American Hollow—have also dropped out of the lineup. To replace headliners Evergreen Terrace, the festival will feature a Slipknot cover band.
Consequence explains:
Rittenhouse is best known as the then 17-year-old who shot three men during an August 2020 protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two of them. He was acquitted after claiming self-defense, but still has two civil lawsuits pending against him.
Shell Shock festival bills itself as a charity event that "supports first responders struggling with injuries to include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)."
Evergreen Terrace announced their departure on their social media, stating:
"Evergreen Terrace has always supported and continues to support philanthropic events for veterans, PTSD awareness, child poverty, and many more, but we will not align with an event promoting murderers such as Kyle Rittenhouse capitalizing off of their pseudo celebrity. Unfortunately we did not do our due diligence with this particular event. Even after they offered to pull Kyle from the event, we discovered several associated entities that we simply do not agree with. As advocates for free speech we are respectfully canceling the Shell Shock festival. We will be personally contributing to a veterans charity and urge you to do the same. The promoters have been nothing less than understanding."
Consequence also reports that one of the organizers of the festival, The Antihero Podcast, stated in response to the withdrawals, "We have been silent. But we are prepping. The liberal mob attempted to destroy Shell Shock. But we will not allow it. This is now about more than a concert. This is a war of ideology."
Evergreen Terrace has announced a new show in Orlando that they are putting together, along with other bands that are choosing not to support the Shell Shock festival. They stated:
Orlando. We will be seeing you soon. We are currently organizing a show with the bands that dropped off of the Shell Shock fest after being blindsided. All of Evergreen's proceeds will go to an associated veterans organization. Updates soon. We play shows, not rallies.
I don't listen to much heavy metal, but Evergreen Terrace, you just got yourself another fan!
Previously:
• QAnon declares Rittenhouse to be part of a 'secretive transgender psy-op aimed at harming the MAGA movement'
LEGO site hacked by cryptocurrency scammers
Gail Sherman / 9:04 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Image by Orpheus FX / shutterstock.com
On Friday evening, Redditors on the LEGO subreddit noticed that the LEGO homepage had been changed and was offering LEGO crypto coins for sale. Clicking on the hacked page links brought users to a trading site where they could purchase the "LEGO" coins.
As logging in switched the home page back to Jabba's Sail Barge set, and the fact that there is no official LEGO cryptocurrency, fans knew something was amiss; several Redditors and X-Twitter users reported it to LEGO, and by roughly 10:15 PM, the page had been restored to its pre-hack state. One commenter put together an excellent summary of what likely occurred.
Etherscan has more details and shows 18 transactions and five holders for the faux LEGO coin.
Engadget posted the following statement from LEGO this morning:
On 5 October 2024 (October 4 evening in the US), an unauthorised banner briefly appeared on LEGO.com. It was quickly removed, and the issue has been resolved. No user accounts have been compromised, and customers can continue shopping as usual. The cause has been identified and we are implementing measures to prevent this from happening again."
Previously: How "crypto bros" appropriated Flappy Bird
"Dark MAGA" Elon Musk pleases himself by uttering an insipid witticism
Ellsworth Toohey / 8:34 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Elon Musk (Frederic Legrand - COMEO//shutterstock.com), Poop emoji (A. Solano/shutterstock.com)
Elon Musk, the world's second smartest, funniest, and most beloved man, shared the stage with Donald Trump, the world's first smartest, funniest, and most beloved man on Sunday at a totally normal and not-at-all cult-like campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
Knowing Trump's love of Hannibal Lecter, Musk cosplayed as the OG killer cannibal Ed Gein. He shook hands with Trump, showing his not-at-all-creepy-meet-the-president-face. Then, describing himself "not just MAGA," but "dark MAGA" (a nod to the undemocratic Dark Enlightenment movement, favored by billionaire White South Africans) he spoke about the vital connection between shooting people and preserving free speech, followed by a totally normal laugh that definitely didn't sound like it came straight from a Bond villain's lair.
Meanwhile, Jon Stewart, clearly not understanding the nuances of Musk's brilliant rhetoric, had the audacity to point out on The Daily Show that "guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun.":
"The guns don't protect our free speech. Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed, laid out through the Constitution. It's not based on the threat of violence."
"Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun. It's a tool of intimidation. It is a tool of intimidation and one that, I think, is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadowbanned by Facebook."
"I mean, for God's sakes, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole reason you're there is because some f*cking asshole with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country's 'free speech.' That's why you're there."
Stewart just doesn't appreciate the finer points of using deadly weapons to ensure everyone feels totally free to express themselves. How else are we supposed to have a calm, rational debate if not at gunpoint?
Previously:
• Elon Musk's latest rant targets chess, claiming it's too simple and needs space lasers
• 'They're such NPCs' — Why Elon Musk thinks you're not real
• Musk boosts 4chan claim that women are incapable of critical thinking
• Elon Musk triggered by Black comic book characters
• Elon Musk to his sycophant pet journalist Matt Taibbi: 'You are dead to me'
Jeff VanderMeer's "Absolution" is a dark mirror to the Southern Reach Trilogy
Thom Dunn / 8:30 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Image: Amazon
A decade ago, author Jeff VanderMeer released Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy, a sort of weird alien first-contact series where the only thing scarier than pristine nature was the cold, unfeeling bureaucracy of military intelligence organizations. The books were critically acclaimed—particularly the first installment, Annihilation, which was later (loosely) adapted into an Alex Garland film starring Natalie Portman. The series as a whole was both immensely haunting, as well as immensely satisfying, despite the chilling ambiguity and unresolved mysteries left lingering by the of Acceptance.
Now, Vandermeer has returned to the world of Area X with a new book called Absolution, which illuminates some of the history of the region before the events of the Southern Reach Trilogy. It's tempting to call it a prequel, but that's not entirely accurate; it's more of a dark mirror, a sublimely uncanny reflection of the world you thought you knew (not unlike the strange doppelgängers that inhabit Area X).
Absolution is broken into three sections, each of which feels like a distorted echo of a corresponding book from the original trilogy. This isn't to say that you necessarily need the knowledge of the original series in order to understand what's going on. (One might even argue that having that knowledge still won't help you understand what's happening.) But the promise of connections to a thing you've already read is one of the major narrative lures that pull you through this story.
A brand new reader, for example, may struggle with the first section, Dead Town, in which an intelligence operative (who has only a brief though brutally memorable cameo in Acceptance) sorts through a bunch of files pertaining to a weird incident that occurred in the region that comes to be known as Area X. As in Annihilation, most of the characters here have stripped of their names and identities, being referred to only by their functional job titles, and all you can do is watch in horror as these unwitting researchers stumble into a surreal situation that slows drives them mad. This section is freaky as hell—and while some readers may struggle with the apparent emotional hollowness at the center of it, that clinical, unfeeling perspective largely adds to the horror.
That intelligence operative takes more of an active role with personal stakes in the next section, The False Daughter—which, like Authority, is a slow-burn espionage noir in which a spy discovers that he's actually at the center of a psyop being run by his family and superiors. This was probably my favorite part of the book, as I genuinely felt for poor Old Jim, a sad lonely spy with a heart of gold whose entire livelihood depends on being a completely heartless bastard. One might even say that Old Jim's heart is sort of the heart of the entire book.
(The False Daughter also shares a sort of Roshomon relationship with parts of Acceptance, the third book in the Southern Reach trilogy. It doesn't illuminate anything new about that part of the story, per se, but it has a sort of sympathetic resonance with those events that amplify the horror and make clear who the real villain had been all along.)
Finally, there's The First and Last, which follows the infamous First Expedition into Area X, from the point of view of its only surviving member—who also happens to be the worst person you've ever met. Some readers may struggle with the fact that Lowry is a wretched sack of toxic masculinity who only wants to fuck and take drugs that make him compulsively say "fuck" a lot. Some readers may find this off-putting, and the first few pages, in particular, are complicated to get through—not necessarily because of the cursing but because of the way the words interrupt the sentences. I was easily able to shut them out and push through it, and the prose soon got easier to sift through. However, I'd also argue that there is some uniquely brilliant artistry to this:
The First and Last echoes Acceptance in its atemporal nature (and, in a way, in the themes of acceptance). But unlike that book, which follows three different perspectives at three different times, this section is more linear. To say any more would veer too far into spoilers than I'd like to go with this review. Suffice to say, Lowry is a Trumpian POS, and though you certainly never like him as a character, his role in the story is an important one (in part because of his inherent awfulness), and that ugliness helps to illuminate the bigger picture of the Southern Reach Saga as whole.
Taken on its own, Absolution tells the story of an intelligence agency that goes into a situation and makes it worse by treating everything as a potentially hostile threat that must be analyzed from every angle. In many ways, it reminded me of the leaked documents from Tiger Swan during the Standing Rock pipeline battle, where every casual human interaction was categorized and tagged as some potential threat assessment, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein the private security military contractors are forced to up their security protocols in order to address the imagined hostility they saw in people singing songs together. That's a bleak story on its own, but at least in this case, the conclusion is tragically poetic.
Considered in the context of the larger Southern Reach / Area X saga, Absolution doesn't so much answer any questions as much as it reiterates what you already knew: some extraterrestrial life crashed on Earth, either trying to hide, communicate or colonize, and the meddling of a bunch of paranoid military intelligence operatives inserted themselves into the situation and made it worse, which in turn justified more paranoid military intelligence operations. That's all right there in the original trilogy; Absolution mostly reminds you which species was really the invasive one.
Also, like the rest of the Area X books, Absolution sufficiently freaked me out and had plenty of moments that will continue to haunt me for a long, long time to come.
Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel [Jeff VanderMeer / Farrar, Straus, and Giroux]
Woodward's book exposes Trump as a Russian asset
Jason Weisberger / 8:22 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Boing Boing/Flux
The New York Times reports that Bob Wordward's new book War includes a few stories about Donald Trump being Putin's stooge.
When the world, including the United States, was suffering a dire shortage of COVID-19 tests, Trump was sending tests to his pal Putin for "personal use." After leaving office, there are stories of Donald rushing aides out of his way to take a private call with his good buddy, Vladimir. Campaign spokespeople do a terrible job denying the calls have happened or may be ongoing.
Former President Donald J. Trump has secretly spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as many as seven times since leaving office, even as he was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.
The book, titled "War" and scheduled to be published next week, describes a scene in early 2024 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's estate in Florida, when the former president ordered an aide out of his office so he could conduct a phone call with Mr. Putin. The unidentified aide said the two may have spoken a half-dozen other times as well since Mr. Trump left the White House.
The book also reports that Mr. Trump, while still in office early during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, secretly sent Mr. Putin what were then rare tests for the virus for the Russian's personal use. Mr. Putin, who has been described as particularly anxious about being infected at the time, urged Mr. Trump to not publicly reveal the gesture because it could damage the American president politically. "I don't want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me," Mr. Putin reportedly told him.
Putin even reputedly encouraged Trump not to tell anyone about the gifts, as it would have hurt Trump's reputation. Such a caring friend! Trump is likely flattered to be managed by the big guy himself, so valuable to the team!
When asked about whether the former president and his one-time Russian counterpart had been keeping in touch, Trump campaign official Jason Miller pushed back in a hesitating manner.
"Um, ah, not that, ah, not that I'm aware of," Miller told Woodward. "I have not heard that they're talking, so I'd push back on that."
It sounds like Trump was doing more than talking to his buddy and, as a private citizen, is interfering with National security. I remember there being legal problems with his "Team" getting too close to Russia before the Orange Menace took office, and I suspect he is, once again, breaking the law.
Previously:
• New York Times finally realizes Trump is old and confused
Manufactured "Israeli-Palestinian" boy band is in really poor taste
Thom Dunn / 8:19 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
"as1one" is a brand new manufactured boy band comprised of six young men from Israel, which conveniently (and strategically) includes a Palestinian Christian from Haifa and a Bedouin Muslim from Rahat.
The team behind as1one, led by longtime music executives Ken Levitan and James Diener, envisioned a Middle Eastern version of BTS, and in the effort to create it, Israeli and Palestinian casting directors had held auditions in major cities and tiny villages throughout Israel in 2021. The pair weren't seeking to create a group made up of Israelis and Palestinians — only to, as Levitan says, "leave no stone unturned" in their search for the country's very best talent. (Auditions could not be held in the West Bank or Gaza due to logistical challenges.)
For the most part, the Billboard article (and similar concurrent coverage of the group in places like People Magazine or ABC News) reads just like a carefully choreographed press release—which, to be fair, is precisely what it is.
But oof, that parenthetical is doing a lot of work. Especially coming after, "leave no stone unturned," considering that quite a few stones have been unturned in those areas!
There's also this extremely awkward paragraph:
"What if we just stopped the world/Hold the phone/Faced the hurt/Take me home/We're not built for this/We're built for more/Forget the score/Show me what it's like when we stop the world," the sextet sings over a pulsing beat. It's the kind of anthem that's vocally reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys' heyday and thematically evocative of — depending on how you're listening — either a tumultuous romance or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Whatever one's take on the relationship between Israel and Palestine, I don't know that a "tumultuous romance" metaphor really quite covers it. Especially when you've already acknowledged that your "unity band" literally could not recruit from actual Palestinian territories—even as those territories were being illegally settled at the same time, and even though your recruitment campaign took place well before Hamas's brutal attack on October 7.
(According to the band's narrative, they also made the trip from Israel to Los Angeles to begin their formal boy band training exactly one day before that same attack.)
The high level PR damage control work at play here is truly astounding. The band members each have their own tightly-branded public-facing instagram pages that come off like the kind of generic pretty boy model pages you'd find for a contestant on The Bachelorette. Meanwhile, the band's official, centralized social media accounts have barely any followers—less than 500 on Xformerlyknownastwitter, and about 20,000 on Instagram.
This kind of eye-roll-inducing, corporatized, centrist-heavy kumbaya musical outings have always existed because there's always an audience for "We Are The World" with sexy abs. But this band's debut single feels particularly crass (and not in the cool way). It's called "All Eyes On Us." You know, like that massively viral social media campaign from earlier this year that attempted to bring attention to the continued suffering of Palestinian civilians in the Gazan city of Rafah? While that campaign had its own share of controversies, the broader point of, "Please stop ignoring the plight of these human beings" was a valid one.
But to appropriate that slogan in order to bring attention to a manufactured boy band that presents itself as an Israeli-Palestinian Unity Project? That's a new depth of corporate cynicism I was not prepared for, even as a desperate distraction from the government's continued apathy towards its own citizens who are still being held hostage.
Oops! Museum worker tosses two beer cans in the trash — not realizing it was art
Carla Sinclair / 7:40 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Image: Adam Constanza / shutterstock.com
As the old saying goes, "One person's trash is another person's treasure." But a maintenance worker at a museum in the Netherlands missed the memo, throwing out a piece of art — which looked like two dented beer cans — that he mistook for trash.
The artwork, "All The Good Times We Spent Together" by French artist Alexandre Lavet, was displayed on the floor of an elevator at the LAM museum in Lisse. And although the cans were "meticulously hand-painted," according to the museum's website, when a well-meaning elevator technician — who was subbing for the regular guy — stepped in to do his job, he thought he'd go the extra mile and accidentally tossed the museum treasures.
"A closer look reveals that these dented cans were meticulously hand-painted with acrylics, with each detail painstakingly replicated," the museum explained. "Unlike ready-made found objects, such as the famous urinal by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Marcel Duchamp, Lavet's piece required a lot of time and effort to create." (See an image of the piece below, posted on X by ArtReview.)
Fortunately, it wasn't long before someone noticed the missing "trash" and dug through some real trash to retrieve it.
From Daily Beast:
The exhibition's curator, Elisah van den Bergh, was able to save the artwork moments before it was thrown out for good, as she came back from a break and saw that it was missing. "We have now put the work in a more traditional place on a plinth so it can rest after its adventure," the museum spokesperson added.
Previously: Can Lego be considered art?
Florida woman clogs stormwater pipe with concrete, flooding neighborhood
Mark Frauenfelder / 7:39 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Fusionstudio/shutterstock.com
In March, Diane Goglas became frustrated with a broken stormwater pipe running through an easement alongside her backyard. It was causing sinkholes in her lawn. She sent a letter to her neighbors stating that the pipe "was installed on my property, without my permission." The letter informed them that she intended to seal the pipe with concrete. "I advise you of this because once I close that pipe off, you will have a drain problem that will back up on the road and on your property."
Well, she was wrong about the pipe being on her property, but she was right about the flooding. Shortly after Goglas fulfilled her promise to clog the pipe, the flooding began."Throughout the summer, homeowners complained to the county the clogged pipe flooded roads and yards in their middle-class neighborhood of about 100 homes and condos off Wekiva Springs Road near Longwood," reports The Orlando Sentinel. "They said roads became nearly impassable, especially after heavy thunderstorms. Floodwaters crept up driveways and into garages." Homeowners resorted to installing pumps to divert the water away from the roads.
In June 2024, residents filed a lawsuit to compel Goglas to remove the concrete or replace the pipe. The county issued a code violation to Goglas in May 2024 for damaging the stormwater system, and she was ordered to post a $15,000 bond for the estimated cost of replacing the conduit.
"Goglas did not return calls for comment," reports the Sentinel. Meanwhile, Goglas's attorney, Gregory Wilson, stopped representing her.
Here's a video from WKMG News that shows how bad the flooding is.
Previously:
• Smug neighbor's property line grudge costs him big time in fence feud
• Man conquers noisy neighbors with 'magic'
• Garage sale displeases neighbor
• Bamboo gone wild and neighbors from hell: Redditors share homeowning nightmares
Atlanta police "Officer of the Year" shot and killed trying to break into house
Rob Beschizza / 6:00 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Investigator Aubree Horton (Atlanta Police Department)
An off-duty Atlanta police officer was shot and killed while reportedly breaking into a house in Douglas County, west of the city. Investigator Aubree Horton was recently named "Officer of the Year" at the "Crime is Toast" breakfast.
The incident occurred around 5 a.m. Friday at a home on Orkney Way near E. Carroll Road in the St. Andrews Country Club neighborhood. Douglas County Sheriff Tim Pounds said deputies responded to a burglary call at the scene of the shooting. "On an attempted burglary, we understand that an individual attempted to gain entry into the residence," the sheriff explained. "Once inside, the homeowner produced a firearm in self-defense and shot the individual. At this time, the individual is deceased."
No charges were filed or said to be pending against the homeowner. "Authorities" told Fox 5 Atlanta that Horton "may have been experiencing a mental health episode or under the influence of narcotics."
Supreme Court rejects appeal from Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli
Rob Beschizza / 5:00 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Shkreli in his testimony to Congress. Screenshot: CSPAN
"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, famed for jacking up the price of life-saving drugs and smirking at Congress, has already completed his jail sentence on unrelated fraud charges. But he still owes millions in dirty profits to Uncle Sam, and the U.S. Supreme Court has no interest in letting him off the hook.
Shkreli appealed an order to return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped after monopolizing the market for the medication and drastically increasing its price. His lawyers argued that the money went to his company rather than him personally. The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is typical, and there were no noted dissents. Prosecutors, though, said the company had agreed in a settlement to pay $40 million, and because Shkreli masterminded the scheme he should bear responsibility for repaying profits.
Sadly, there are no more unique Wu-Tang Clan albums to flog off.
Foldable pocket keyboard computer just needs a monitor
Rob Beschizza / 4:00 am PT Tue Oct 8, 2024
Photo via Kickstarter
A few days ago we learned the Raspberry Pi 500 was likely on its way, and here's an alternative with some high-end features including a battery, power and video over USB-C and an AMD Ryzen 8840U CPU. Moreover, the Lunar "all in keyboard" PC, launched on Kickstarter, folds so it can be stashed in a decent-sized pocket.
The machine has an AMD Ryzen 8840U processor paired to either a 16GB RAM/512GB SSD or 32GB/1TB SSD combination. Aside from that, it features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, plus a single USB Type-A (USB 3.0) and two USB Type-C (USB 3.2 and USB4) ports. For a portability boost, the mini keyboard PC has a built-in 59.2Wh (16,000mAh) battery, allowing you to use it for up to 8 to 10 hours for light office work away from an outlet.
Seems like it would pair great with something like this or this (Amazon links) though at what point do we ask ourselves why we are avoiding laptops.
With 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, it's not going to be competing with a Pi on price: options start at $580. See also the growing popularity of netbooks again thanks to better-performing low-power x86 chips: One-Netbook at the high end, Chuwi at the low.
Alcoholism charity executive busted for drunk driving for the third time
Allan Rose Hill / 3:45 pm PT Mon Oct 7, 2024
image: Bratu Laurentiu/Shutterstock
Eliza Loftus, 26, is the marketing director and chief fundraiser at Be Well Stay Well, a charity that provides counseling for alcohol and drunk addiction in Cheshire, England. She recently pled guilty to driving drunk, crashing her car into a tree, and hiding from police in a bush. Loftus had blood-alcohol level was .24, three times the legal limit of .08. This was her third conviction of DWI since April 2022. (One of the prior convictions was for being under the influence of cannabis; the other, alcohol.)
According to The Telegraph, "the court heard that Ms Loftus was driving home from a night out at a pub on April 7 when her white Ford Ka careered into a tree shortly after midnight."
Her attorney says she is now receiving treatment from the charity where she works.
(Thanks, Chanté McCormick!)
Previously:
• Police drunk driving simulation results in real crash injuring five people
• Drunk driving suspect switched seats with dog when pulled over
• King Tut may have died in a drunk driving accident
Your earwax tells a lot about you, including why you may stink
Allan Rose Hill / 3:27 pm PT Mon Oct 7, 2024
image: New Africa/Shutterstock
Earwax protects the ear by trapping dust, debris, and microorganisms while also moisturizing the ear canal to prevent dryness and irritation. It also can give insight into your ancestry, reveal medical conditions, and contribute to stinky body odor.
"The wax is secreted by modified apocrine glands, which are the same glands that release sweat," NOVA reports. "Bacteria are attracted to apocrine sweat, releasing a pungent smell when they devour it and causing body odor. And people with wet-type earwax tend to be smellier, suggesting the two have to do with each other."
There are two main types of earwax: Sticky yellow-brown earwax is found mostly in folks of Caucasian or African descent, while people of East Asian decent have lighter, flakier earwax.
"These different earwax types are caused by different variants of the same gene," NOVA explains. "The wet-type is likely the original form, and scientists believe the dry-type evolved in the population of early humans who migrated to northern and eastern Asia.
Previously:
• These weird headphones are for cleaning out ear wax
• How to clean the earwax out of AirPods
• Scientist analyzes the chemical composition of his ear wax
Shockingly huge cat stands on 2 legs to eat from kitchen counter: "Sir, that's a bobcat" (video)
Carla Sinclair / 3:09 pm PT Mon Oct 7, 2024
Image: Nils Jacobi/Shutterstock
If it looks like a dog and acts like a dog — such as standing on its hind legs to snarf up food on the kitchen counter — can you still call it a cat?
Apparently, the answer is yes, as proven by Zeus, a humongous Maine coon kitty whose video went viral on TikTok when viewers saw his astounding size (see clip below). And to put his incredible height into perspective, when a "normal" sized cat walked by, it looked as if the smaller guy had just been zapped by a shrink ray. But not all viewers were convinced Zeus was really a house cat.
"Sir that's a Bobcat," corrected one commenter, while another asked, "What's this horse called?" Many others gently broke the news to his human that the kitty was actually a dog — and not a small one at that.
But jokes aside, at over 3' tall when standing on two legs, this cat is a giant even for a Maine coon. See more of his videos at Zeus.Maincoon.Official.
Via Newsweek
Previously: Cat makes doggo squirm with just a simple but unrelenting stare (video)
Trump's buddy Lewandowski once again shown the door
Jason Weisberger / 12:59 pm PT Mon Oct 7, 2024
Image: BoingBoing/MidJourney
As expected, Donald Trump's previously ousted thug, Corey Lewandowski, has once again been shown the door.
Brought back as a safety blanket that apparently staged a coup, Donald Trump's abusive and scandal-ridden advisor Corey Lewandowski is said to have again been distanced from the campaign.
What Trump's tenacious, temperamental pal forgot is that no one in the building was especially keen on him. The Guardian noted that much of the Trump campaign team was hired by Wiles and LaCivita and has been working with them for two years. Without any allies, his ambitions for reclaiming his MAGA throne fell flat.
The newly humbled Lewandowski has now been instructed to stay out of the campaign's way and focus on his surrogate duties, as well as New Hampshire, the New England state with four electoral votes where Lewandowski has a home and has been involved in local politics.
…
Lewandowski was already batting with two strikes: He was fired before Election Day in 2016 after clashes with Trump's family and then was fired from a pro-Trump super PAC in 2021 over allegations he made unsolicited sexual advances toward a female donor.
Previously:
• New York Times finally realizes Trump is old and confused
Impressive 1.5-meter "sea snake" found by beach clean-up crew was something else entirely
Allan Rose Hill / 12:11 pm PT Mon Oct 7, 2024
image: Dan Shachar
A group collecting trash on the Danish island of Bornholm stumbled on a fantastic "sea snake" specimen that washed up on the shore. See below. Recognizing that the 1.5-meter snake was quite unusual looking, they had it further analyzed. Conservation group NaturBornholm determined it wasn't a sea snake at all but rather a whale penis.
According to IFL Science, the dismembered member "previously belonged to a humpback whale that washed up on the beach at Dueodde in southern Bornholm earlier this year."
"Now it goes in the freezer, and we'll figure out what to do with it later," nature guide Kenneth Nielsen told Dagens.
When I visited the wondrous Icelandic Phallological Museum, I was struck at the diversity of penises found in just one country. But in terms of size, the most impressive were the whale dicks. Indeed, the blue whale penis can range in length between 8-10 feet. Above is an image of a sperm whale penis displayed at the museum.