Cool Tools reader Joe Stirt recommended the Durascoop cat litter scoop. I bought one, because the little plastic scoop I’d been using for a couple of years had gotten flimsy from use and would often buckle at the handle. This one is made from cast aluminum and will never bend. It easily shaves hardened clumps of litter from that litter box that would cause a plastic scoop to fold in half. It’s actually a beautiful looking tool, too. If Raymond Loewy designed a scoop, it would look like this (maybe the handle wouldn’t be covered with textured plastic). Cleaning cat litter is an unpleasant daily chore for me, but the DuraScoop makes it much less unpleasant. I’m surprised it is only $13. It’s easily worth three times the price. Read the rest
I've been avidly watching these Primitive Technology videos. The fellow who makes the videos lives in "Far North Queensland, Australia," and so far has made a hut with a kiln-fired tiled roof, underfloor heating and mud pile walls, baskets, a stone hatchet, charcoal, and a sling using only his hands on primitive stone tools. In his latest video, he builds a bow and some arrows.
He stresses that doing these things is a hobby for him, not a way of life. From his FAQ:
Primitive technology is a hobby where you make things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. This is the strict rule. If you want a fire- use fire sticks, an axe- pick up a stone and shape it, a hut- build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without modern technology. If this hobby interests you then this blog might be what you are looking for.
Also It should be noted that I don’t live in the wild but just practice this as a hobby. I live in a modern house and eat modern food. I just like to see how people in ancient times built and made things. It is a good hobby that keeps you fit and doesn’t cost anything apart from time and effort.
Read the rest
(I've started the above video at 7 seconds so you don't have to watch a woman get hit and run over by a van.)
From CCTV News in China, a video about the rescue of a woman who was trapped under a van after it ran her over. Passersby ran to her aid, tilting the van so she could be removed. According to the CCTV, the woman escaped with minor injuries, which is remarkable because the first 7 seconds of this video are brutal. Read the rest
A Southwest Airlines passenger is allowed to check two pieces of luggage weighing up to 50lbs each for free. It's a generous allowance. But if one bag weighs 55 lbs and the other weighs 45 lbs, you'll get charged $75 for the heavier bag.
Other airlines have similar pricing arrangement. I bought this illuminated $9 luggage scale last year to weigh checked and carry-on luggage and it's really easy to use -- much easier than standing on a bathroom scale while holding the luggage and subtracting my weight. You just loop the strap around the luggage handle and lift it. It has a built in digital thermometer (because why?). You can switch between pounds and kilograms, too. Read the rest
Why isn't National Public Radio allowed to promote its terrific podcasts and NPR One ("the lauded, loved app that is basically the future of NPR") on air? Because NPR’s board is made up of local station managers, and local stations pay the most of NPR’s bills.
From the podcast guidelines in NPR's Ethic's Handbook:
Chris Turpin, V.P. for news programming and operations, writes:
As podcasts grow in number and popularity we are talking about them more often in our news programs. We are also fielding more and more questions from news staff and Member stations about our policies for referring to podcasts on air. To that end, we want to establish some common standards, especially for language in back announces. Our hope is to establish basic principles that are easy to understand and allow plenty of flexibility for creativity. These guidelines apply to all podcasts, whether produced by NPR or by other entities.
– No Call to Action: We won’t tell people to actively download a podcast or where to find them. No mentions of npr.org, iTunes, Stitcher, NPR One, etc.
GOOD:
“That’s Linda Holmes of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast and our blogger on the same subject and Bob Mondello, NPR’s film critic. Thanks so much.
BAD:
“OK, everyone. You can download Alt.Latino from iTunes and, of course, via the NPR One app.
– Informational, not Promotional: When referring to podcasts, and the people who host, produce, or contribute to them, we will mention the name of the podcast but not in a way that explicitly endorses it.
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The Ideal Conceal is a double barreled .380 that folds up into a small package that resembles a smartphone. The manufacturer says it will be available this summer for $400.
From the Firearm Blog:
The two dominant conversations surrounding Ideal Conceal are pretty polar opposite: glowingly optimistic or severely pessimistic. Some people view Ideal Conceal for its curb appeal of convenient to deploy, easy to conceal, and its level of comfort or basically not requiring a holster. The other mindset is that Ideal Conceal creates a horrifying new concern for law enforcement. All cellphones could now be possible weapons used against our men and women in blue. As if their jobs aren’t difficult enough in the heat of the moment they must now decipher and identify if a small object is a possible threat or just another Samsung cellphone.
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When an unmarked police car drove very close to mailman Glenn Grays in Brooklyn, Grays shouted at the car. Four plainclothes officers got out of the car and started to handcuff him. Grays initially tried to resist, and one of the officers said “Stop resisting! You’re going to get hurt if you don’t give me your fucking hands.”
From Uproxx:
They arrested him and left the mail truck completely unattended, which is a violation of federal law. Most of the action was recorded on a cell-phone camera, and [Brooklyn Borough President Eric L.] Adams — who is a former officer — reviewed the video during the press conference. He calls this a “questionable arrest” for these reasons: “It is not a crime for someone to voice outrage after almost being struck by a vehicle … It is not a crime to state that you’re angry at someone who almost hit you. That is not a crime … If they would do that to him in his postal uniform, they would do it to any person of color in that community.”
NYPD will not offer an explanation why they arrested Grays, who does not have a criminal record. He was released with a ticket for resisting arrest.
Above: Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams urged the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to take swift disciplinary action against the police officers responsible for a questionable arrest of an on-duty postal worker that occurred last week in Crown Heights, which was captured on a newly uncovered cell phone video that will be shared with the media.
Read the rest
Sreedharan Subramaniam shot a video of impatient waterfowl walking over to the tardy man who feeds them every morning. Read the rest
Would you like to see how a sewing machine works? How braces straighten teeth? How a key and lock works? How an ant walks? This collection of 25 GIFs will show you. Read the rest
James Meyers of Concord, North Carolina was driving his daughter to school when police pulled him over for a broken brake light. The police officer looked up Meyers' information and told Meyers he was under arrest for failing to return a VHS copy of Freddy Got Fingered that he'd rented from a now-closed video store in 2002. Meyers was handcuffed and formally charged with failure to return rental property, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200.
From WSOC TV:
Meyers said the officers were very polite and professional. They let him take his daughter to school and go to work as long as he promised to turn himself into the police department later that day.
Meyers said he thought everything would get straightened out at the department. He was surprised when officers arrested him and then took him to the magistrate’s office.
“For the first time I got put in handcuffs,” said Meyers.
Meyers said he vaguely remembers renting the particular movie from the family-owned video store in Kannapolis.
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We've been making tacos a lot lately, and I was getting tired of my tacos tipping over and dumping the contents on my plate. I bought a set of these stainless steel taco stands. You will burn a couple tacos' worth of calories scraping the sticker off the metal the first time you use them. After that, it's easy taco eating.
American Metalcraft Taco Holders
2 tacos ($3.89)
3 tacos ($6.50)
You really like tacos, don't you ($9.01) Read the rest
On the terrific Song Exploder podcast, Iggy Pop and Joshua Homme tell the story of their song, “American Valhalla”, which appears on Iggy's 23rd album, Post Pop Depression.
Read the rest
Civil Comments - How It Works from Civil Co. on Vimeo.
I'm glad the comments on Boing Boing are civil for the most part. Our readers are intelligent and polite, and it shows. Other websites aren't so lucky. A startup called Civil Comments has designed a commenting platform intended to encourage polite conversation. Before commenters are allowed to post, they must first rate the quality and civility of other posts, and rate their own post, too. Civil Comments uses the ratings to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
I'm not sure how Civil Comments will deal with the issue of users "punishing" someone who has a minority opinion, even if it is polite and well-expressed. How does Civil Comments keep this from become a "you suck because I don't agree with you" button?
Civil Comments — How to Build a Great Community from Civil Co. on Vimeo. Read the rest
Panorama photos of scenery are nice. Panorama photos of things that move from shot-to-shot are better. Huh magazine has a gallery of some great ones.
[via] Read the rest
ESPN SportsCenter tweeted this photo of a poor urban area next to the Havana stadium where Obama attended a baseball game. The photo was accompanied by the caption, “Meanwhile, next to the stadium in Havana...”
People responded by sending a barrage of photos of areas next to stadiums in US cities:
[via] Read the rest
These
12" x 16" microfiber cloths are going to break me of my paper towel addiction. You can get 24 for $9.88 on Amazon. If you use Subscribe and Save, you can get them for $8.40.
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In Dan Baum's excellent article in Harper's about the devastating consequences of the US government's war on drugs, there's a revealing quote from John Ehrlichman, Nixon's Watergate co-conspirator:
I’d tracked Ehrlichman, who had been Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, to an engineering firm in Atlanta, where he was working on minority recruitment. I barely recognized him. He was much heavier than he’d been at the time of the Watergate scandal two decades earlier, and he wore a mountain-man beard that extended to the middle of his chest.
At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
I must have looked shocked.
Read the rest
