White noise is static, a blend of all audible frequencies. It's hissy and harsh. I prefer brown noise, which attenuates higher frequencies and increases lower frequencies, giving it a richer sound. According to The New York Times, brown noise "gained a fervent following over the summer, picking up speed in online A.D.H.D. communities… Many said it allowed their brains to feel calm, freed from an internal monologue."

Those with A.D.H.D. may not have enough dopamine in their brains, a chemical that impacts attention and motivation, [Yamalis Diaz, an assistant professor in the department of child & adolescent psychiatry at N.Y.U. Langone Health, who specializes in A.D.H.D.] said. Without enough dopamine, the brain stays "hungry" while you're trying to concentrate, Dr. Diaz explained. "While one part of the brain is trying to focus, the other part of your brain is looking for food." When you listen to a sound like brown, pink or white noise, "you're almost assigning the circuits a task," she said. "'You listen to this, while I focus on this task.'"

Here is a fun colored noise generator you can use to mix a noise cocktail of your choice.

Teenage Engineering, maker of the OP-1 portable synthesizer and the Pocket Operator synthesizers collaborated with Pentagram's Yuri Suzuki and Japanese company Gakken to seemingly rebrand Gakken's record cutter for making 5" vinyl records with audio up to 4 minutes long. It's called the PO-80 record factory and it's $149, which is significantly more than the original that came out a couple of years ago and is still available on Amazon, for example, for $120.

From the site:

PO-80 record factory is a compact and portable record cutter that allows you to create your own 5" vinyl records and playback in lo-fi sound. designed to build yourself, the kit includes everything you need, just add your tracks. small parts included, not recommended or intended for children 0-12 years of age.

A 10-pack of blank records costs $20.

Millions of people in Florida are without power as a result of Hurricane Ian's devastation. This time-lapse of a surge in Fort Myers reveals the catastrophic power of the hurricane.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a blunt message to Russian soldiers, most of whom don't want to fight fight in Ukraine: "If you wanna stay alive — RUN. If you wanna stay alive — SURRENDER. If you wanna stay alive – FIGHT. FIGHT at your streets and for your FREEDOM. They took everything from you. Or maybe any of you have got your own oil rigs? Palaces? Vineyards? Or maybe yachts? Your own bank? What are you fighting for?"

No wonder Russian men are trying to sneak over to Georgia — these videos of a Russian military barracks reveal the squalor that draftees must endure before being sent off to slaughter.

Check out Sanho Tree's thread of Russian videos to see how grim things are for the citizens of Putin's fascist empire.

Cassie, a robot that looks disturbingly like a person without an upper body, ran 100 meters in 24.73 seconds at the Whyte Track and Field Center in Corvallis, Oregon yesterday, breaking the Guinness World Record for the fastest 100 meters by a bipedal robot. The robot was designed at Oregon State University College of Engineering and built by Agility Robotics.

From Oregon State University:

The 100-meter record builds on earlier achievements by the robot, including traversing 5 kilometers in 2021 in just over 53 minutes. Cassie, the first bipedal robot to use machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain, completed the 5K on Oregon State's campus untethered and on a single battery charge.

Cassie was developed under the direction of Oregon State robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The robot has knees that bend like an ostrich's and operates with no cameras or external sensors, essentially as if blind.

It took me a while to figure out which person was wearing the high heels in this photo. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was confused.

The announcers in this NFC championship football game didn't know whether to focus on the players on the field or the bizarre incident in the stands, where a man in a burning snowman suit was wildly running through the crowd.

You can watch the video here.

According to Busted Coverage, the man in the snowman costume, Daniel Yoder, bumped into a hot chocolate vendor and doused himself in liquid sterno, igniting the fleece of his costume. The panicked Yoder ran through the crowd, causing panic and confusion until another spectator came to his rescue by snuffing out the flames with their jackets.

From the January 3, 1978 edition of The New York Times:

The victim, 24‐year‐old Daniel Yoder of Dallas, suffered second‐degree burns on his neck and legs and was saved by a Vietnam veteran, Clarence Walters of Dallas, who threw his fur coat over the costume. Yoder, who is listed in fair condition in Parkland. Hospital, rented the suit for a costume party and wore it to the game as a joke. The Sterno was being carried by stadium vendor who was selling hot chocolate.

"There's only one thing I regret and that's losing my coat," said Walters. "If only Tex Schramm [the Cowboys' president] would buy me a new 'coat with a nice, fur collar, that would make it a great Super Bowl New Yew' for me."

[via r/ObscureMedia]

Ohio's new abortion law was designed to please Republicans who want to force children to have their rapist's baby. The law counts fetuses as children and doesn't make an exception for rape victims. So, if a child is raped, she's forced to carry the rapist's baby to term. Unfortunately for Governor Mike DeWine and the GOP, there's not a nationwide ban on abortion yet, so raped children are able to sneak out of Ohio to get abortions in neighboring states. Earlier in the year, it was revealed that a 10-year-old child in Ohio was raped by a 27-year-old man and became pregnant. Due to Ohio's laws, the child had to travel out of state to get an abortion. It has now been revealed that at least two more children were raped and had to travel to other states to get abortions.

From Cincinnati.com:

At least two more minors made pregnant by sexual assault were forced to leave Ohio to avoid having their rapists' babies, according to sworn affidavits filed by abortion providers.

…

If true, the affidavits show that a 10-year-old from Columbus was not the only child or teen rape victim forced to leave the state. They also describe more than two dozen other instances in which the abortion law put women under extreme duress.

Here's EarthCam Live's webcam in Sand Cay, Florida. Hurricane Ian is arriving today with expected winds of 155 MPH.

Update 9-28-2022 9:09am PT: The camera is down! Here's another live cam from Naples, Florida:

A couple in Brazil added a large amount of blue dye into the Queima Pé river to make a waterfall turn blue for their gender reveal party. After posting the video to social media, many people were outraged, and now environmental authorities are investigating the incident as a case of environmental damage.

The river is the water source for the town of Tangará da Serra, which is in a drought-stricken area.

From Insider:

The Secretary of State for the Environment of Mato Grosso (SEMA) released a statement saying that it would be investigating the couple to determine what products were used to dye the waterfall and if there is any environmental damage. The statement, published by Brazilian news site G1, noted that six officials — two from SEMA and four from the municipality of Tangará da Serra — were on-site investigating the incident. 

My recurring college nightmare is when I realize in the middle of the semester that I'd signed up for a class that I'd forgotten about. That day, I have a test to take, and I'm unprepared. I scramble to try to figure out the material and study for the final, but it's all a jumble in my head, and I can't focus. I realize I'm going to fail the class and my whole academic career is going to be ruined. When I wake up, it's a great relief to know that it was just a dream.

According to Kelly Conaboy's article in The Atlantic, school anxiety dreams are common among adults who are long out of school. She spoke to a Harvard dream researcher to find out why:

Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University and the author of Pandemic Dreams and The Committee of Sleep, confirmed my suspicion. She rattled off a few common school-dream variations: The dreamer has to rush to an exam after having overslept, or they can't find their classroom, or they prepared for an exam by studying the wrong subject, or they sit down for an exam and the text is in hieroglyphics, or they show up to school nude. "It's a really common theme," she told me. "And it's common not only for people who are still in school … It's a very common theme for people who are far into adulthood, who have been out of school forever."

Barrett explained that these dreams tend to pop up when the dreamer is anxious in waking life,  particularly about being evaluated by an authority figure. She's found that people who wanted to act or play music at an early age tend to experience anxiety dreams not about school, but about auditions—in their youth, that was where they interacted with the authority figures who could most easily crush them. In each of these dream scenarios, we revisit the space where we first experienced success or failure based on our performance.

The majority of the food concessions at San Francisco International Airport were closed Monday as a thousand workers went on an indefinite strike over staffing numbers and wages, reports The Washington Post. And flight attendants at 21 airports in the United States are expected to demonstrate today to highlight understaffing problems. According to the Post, the air transportation industry has 54,000 fewer workers than it did on February 20.

From the Post:

Lucinda To is among the 1,000 workers on strike at San Francisco International, where she has worked for 20 years. She prepares buffets, washes dishes and clears tables at restaurants and the United Club lounge for weary travelers. It is draining work that has only gotten harder this year, she said. With inflation at 40-year-highs, To said she has to work 60 hours a week at two food service jobs at the airport for $16.99 an hour to afford a two-bedroom unit in the Bay Area. Her mortgage is $2,800 a month.

"Right now, on my wage, I make so little that I couldn't even buy one meal at this airport, where hamburgers are $22," To said. "I need to work two jobs to support my family, and I'm always working double shifts."

A film crew, making a documentary about Trump pardonee Roger Stone called A Storm Foretold, provided CNN with a pre-election video in which Stone can be heard saying, "Fuck the voting, let's get right to the violence. Shoot to kill. See an antifa? Shoot to kill. Fuck 'em. Done with this bullshit."

For his part, Stone is claiming the video is doctored. "CNN airs fraudulent deep fake videos and expects anyone to believe them based on their long history of lies," he posted on Telegram. "F*ck Don Lemon. Let CNN or anyone else produce any proof that I knew in advance about, participated in or condoned any illegal act on January 6 or any other day."

In his new book, The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th, former US representative from Virginia Denver Riggleman described his impressions of colleagues Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar. He said they embraced such extreme, conspiratorial stances that he thought they might "have had serious cognitive disorders."

From The Guardian:

Riggleman says Gosar and Gohmert "seemed to be joined at the brain stem when it came to their eagerness to believe wild, dramatic fantasies about Democrats, the media and big tech.

"I came to believe Gosar and Gohmert may have had serious cognitive issues."

Riggleman also calls Gosar "a blatant white supremacist", describing him and the Iowa Republican Steve King "making a case for white supremacy over pulled pork and ribs".

"It was unbelievable," Riggleman writes. "I had always bristled when I'd hear Democrats dismiss Republicans as 'racists'. To me, it seemed like an easy insult that dodged policy discussions. Now, here I was behind the curtain, seeing that some of my colleagues really seemed to hold these awful views."

Manchester artist Nathan Shepherd of Good Future Music transformed Guns 'N Roses' classic "Sweet Child O' Mine" into the chunky chord-driven style of The Ramones. I wish he'd played the entire mashup.

[via Laughing Squid]

HBO debuted the first trailer for The Last of Us, heralding the arrival of a brand-new post-apocalyptic universe on the network. The series is scheduled for 2023.

Craig Mazin, author and creator of HBO's Chernobyl, created the series. Neil Druckmann from Naughty Dog, the studio that created both of The Last of Us video games, is in charge of developing and executive producing the show.

Like the game, the series features survivors Joel and Ellie trying to survive as they cross a country populated by zombie-like monsters and deal with undiseased humans, of both the nice and mean variety.

After entering a plea of guilty for vandalizing the "Bewitched" statue in Salem, Massachusetts by painting it blood red, a man will be given 18 months of probation, reports News 4 Jax, which has a photo of the defaced statue.

The Salem News says a judge deferred the gentleman's original year-long jail sentence on the condition that he pay back the cost of fixing the bronze statue's damage. The man was held on bond, according to a prosecutor, because he was "going through a tough time" and "wanted to do anything to get arrested."

Elizabeth Montgomery, who played Samantha Stephens in the 1960s sitcom, is shown in the statue perched on a broomstick in front of a crescent moon. Some of Salem's residents object to the statue because they say it trivializes the misogynist horror of the 1692 trials.

In a superbly edited video, you can see the construction of a player-piano-like device from Lego pieces that causes little mallets to tap switches and play an electronic drum synthesizer. Different rhythms can be programmed by inserting pegs on a Lego conveyor belt.

The Honest Guide YouTube channel asked viewers to send in their videos of scammers trying to rip them off in popular tourist destinations. They include the out-of-gas scam, the fake deaf-mute scam, the money exchange scam, and the cups-and-ball scam. One of the scammers got so mad about being exposed that she started throwing rocks at her intended victim.