Новости за 24.04.2024

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump just informed her MAGA fans that the United States is actually a lot bigger than anyone could have guessed.

Massive numbers of 17- and 13-year cicadas—likely the largest broods in centuries—are emerging in parts of the United States. Annoyed and confused by their loud high-pitched buzzing, some residents of Newberry, South Carolina (and probably elsewhere) are calling the cops.

In 1985, Mister Rogers was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. An audience member asked an excellent question: "Do you ever just cut loose and lose control? Do you ever yell at your wife? I just can't picture you having a knock-down drag-out with your wife." — Read the rest

Poor old Canadian Senator Ted Cruz wants to forget how his golden-haired master made vicious fun of him, his wife, and his father in the 2016 Presidential election. But the bad memories flooded back as David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer took to the stand in Donald Trump's sex scandal cover-up trial, revealing how he would publish demeaning articles about Cruz at Trump's request. — Read the rest

Check out this awesome time-lapse and stop-motion video by Hagerty Media, where they totally revamp a classic Chevy small block 283 engine from a 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle. The amount of work poured into this project is just insane! After lying dormant for 25 years, this beast of an engine gets the full treatment: a deep clean, some serious machine work, a slick paint job, and a meticulous assembly. — Read the rest

I attended a TED talk a couple of weeks ago, and the thesis of one of the speakers really stuck with me (video unavailable as of yet). Professor Miguel Basáñez, of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, spoke about his theory that while there are around 200 countries in the world, there are three primary cultures. — Read the rest

Neon, the studio behind Ammonite and Anatomy of a Fall, has released a new trailer for their Oscar-nominated animated film Robot Dreams, which is finally getting released in the US. In the trailer, a dog named Dog builds himself a robot. — Read the rest

Eric Adams is one of the most unpopular mayors in New York history. And on Monday, travelers were reminded of his low approval rating when a disruptive passenger verbally attacked him while he was on a flight heading back to New York from Miami. — Read the rest

Bots, scammers, line-sitters, and mercenaries have made it all but impossible to get a reservation directly from a restaurant in New York.

In 2019, the University of Maine set three Guinness World Records for 3D printing. They had the world's largest 3D printer, the largest solid 3D printed object, and the largest 3D printed boat. The 5000-pound boat was printed in 72 hours. — Read the rest

This is inspired. Waldo Jaquith created a Mastodon bot in response to the cliché email opening sentence of "I hope this email finds you well."

Airlines are notorious for their reluctance to issue refunds for canceled or delayed flights, making the refund process a nightmare for countless travelers. You practically have to beg for a refund, and the airlines employ a bureaucratic labyrinth that makes it very difficult to communicate with them. — Read the rest

The long-held promise of Artificial Intelligence was that machines would do all the drudge work and we would be left to create. In this AI-enabled utopia, assembly, construction, and hard labor of all kinds, as well as boring sorting and filing and such, would be handled by smart machines while we painted pictures, wrote poems, and sang songs together. — Read the rest

North America's Building Trades Unions has had a very long history with Donald Trump — which has been "wasted breath," says the union leader. And after more than 40 years of dealing with the self-centered conman, the union endorsed President Biden today with a scathing video ad against Donald Trump. — Read the rest

Rebecca Giggs' book Fathoms, subtitled "The World in the Whale," is a deep exploration of those largest of Earthlings, from the abject despair of a whalefall to the yawning poetry of whalesong. The whale collects our waste, the victim of both our shores and our metaphors, the giants of an invisible world adjacent to ours. — Read the rest

Looks like ammo-packing beachgoers might want to avoid the idyllic isles of the Turks and Caicos unless they're down for an extended, amenity-free island jailstay.

The superficially Earthlike appearance of Titan, as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope, is belied by its cold and inhospitable weirdness.

TL;DR:Are you tired of looking at a cluttered desk or bedside table? Level up the way you charge your devices with the 15W Nightlight Wireless Charging Pad, and it's on sale for $39.99 (reg.$99) or 59% off.

Employers use non-compete agreements to prevent workers leaving: it's hard to quit when you can't get a new job in the same field. Cleaning up a patchwork of state-level regulations and limitations on the practice, the FTC yesterday prohibited them outright. — Read the rest

An attempt to prove the existence of alien astronauts has revealed an ancient, all-too human practice — grave robbing. According to Reuters, journalist Jaime Maussan presented two mummified "alien" bodies to a Mexican congressional hearing on UFOs in 2023. They had elongated heads and three fingers on each hand…and were quickly identified by scientists as human corpses. — Read the rest

In 2022, Sour Patch Kids joked about a collab with Oreos:

Thinking ???? about ???? SOUR PATCH KIDS ???? flavored ???? @Oreo cookies pic.twitter.com/1DWZSNpQ6K

— Sour Patch Kids (@SourPatchKids) January 29, 2022

But what was a joke has become a reality. — Read the rest

The post Sour Patch Kids Oreos are apparently real now appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sen. Thom Tillis is a Republican who says the biggest threat to his party is not the Democrats, but something far, far worse: Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Summer Lee, the first black woman elected in Pennsylvania to the U.S House of Representatives and a strong progressive voice in Congress, handily defeated a centrist challenger in Tuesday's Democratic Party primary race. Her opponent, Edgewood Borough Councilmember Bhavini Patel, campaigned on Lee's criticisms of Israel and Biden and with the benefit of a PAC funded largely by a Republican billionaire. — Read the rest

John Lennon played a 12-string Framus "Hootenanny" acoustic guitar in the movie "Help!"  George Harrison used it on Norweigan Wood. It later disappeared for almost sixty years but was recently rediscovered in an attic in the UK and will soon go up for auction.  — Read the rest

It's been an unnerving time to be an airline passenger, especially on a Boeing in a window seat. We don't have the golden parachutes that the Boeing execs are getting! But there is one airline that might have a slight safety edge. — Read the rest