Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, successfully projected her fabricated reality into others' minds for years. It's easy to get people to believe in something if they think it will make them rich.

As soon as it became clear there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the investors, lawyers, and power players snapped out of their trances and vanished. — Read the rest

TL;DR: Get a lifetime subscription to PDF Expert Premium Plan for Mac for just $139.99. Edit, sign, convert, merge, and annotate PDFs effortlessly.

Does this scenario sound familiar? You open a PDF, realize there's a typo, and suddenly, your entire day is ruined. — Read the rest

Stereogum recently published a fascinating retrospective on Neil Young's doomed hi-def portable music device, the PONO. Released in 2015 after several years of painstaking development, Young aspired to create a portable digital audio player to rival the popularity of the iPod—and without compromising the sound quality by compressing the audio like an mp3. — Read the rest

It's only fair, after all. In case you somehow missed it, Trump has been fixated on the prospect of the United States acquiring Greenland, loudly thinking out loud at best and threatening elected officials at worst. If you're Danish and worried about Trump claiming a chunk of your territory or you're American and embarrassed by the orangutan running your country, there's a way to even the odds: pledging your support to help Denmark buy California. — Read the rest

Have you ever had a nightmare where you tried to convince everyone you were you, but nobody believed you? Well, William Woods lived that nightmare for fourteen months while an identity thief was living his best suburban life as a fancy IT administrator, complete with a wife, kid, and probably a golden retriever named Spot. — Read the rest

Holding Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court, Judge Beryl Howell gave former New York Mayor and disgraced lawyer a dressing down: his "outrageous and shameful" refusal to stop defaming two election workers will lead to further consequences, she said: "This takes real chutzpah, Mr Giuliani." — Read the rest

Conservative weirdos are blaming things they consider to be liberal politics as the cause of the massive firestorm currently destroying swaths of Los Angeles.

Steve Harvey is aghast

[image or embed]

— The Daily Show (@thedailyshow.com

AI bots battling each other has led to the wrongful removal of educational content from one of YouTube's most respected mathematics channels. 3Blue1Brown, known for its excellent mathematical animations and explanations, recently had videos taken down due to false copyright claims generated by ChainPatrol.io. — Read the rest

When Mr. Jarvis, a British solicitor, booked his dream Christmas ski holiday in 1969, Swan Tours' brochure promised him heaven in the Swiss Alps. For just £63.45 (including a Christmas supplement), he was sold a festive fantasy: a charming hotel on a "sunny plateau" run by the English-speaking Herr Weibel and his wife, promising "Gemütlichkeit" (that rolls-off-your-tongue German word for "cozy contentment"). — Read the rest

In the dying months of World War II, American spies waged a unique battle against Nazi Germany — not with bullets and bombs, but with letters and stamps. Operation Cornflakes, a psychological warfare campaign, turned the German postal service into an unwitting delivery system for anti-Nazi propaganda. — Read the rest

After years of growing concern about its poor condition, the Arecibo telescope's famed reflector was suddenly ruined by the collapse of its receiver into the dish in 2020. Engineers have completed their report into the disaster and its causes: Failure Analysis of the Arecibo 305 Meter Telescope Collapse [National Academies]

After analyzing the data and the extensive and detailed forensic investigations commissioned by the University of Central Florida and the National Science Foundation (NSF),' the committee consensus is that the root cause of the Arecibo Telescope's collapse was unprecedented and accelerated long-term zinc creep induced failure of the telescope's cable spelter sockets.

The creator and lead maintaner of Linux says AI is 90% marketing, 10% reality. Linus speaks for a lot of us, I think! That it's marketed as "AI" in the first place is a good example of what he's talking about. — Read the rest

A California man visiting Las Vegas says the trip was ruined after a poisonous scorpion stung him under his shorts — and he is now suing the Venetian Resort for ruining his sex life.

"It felt like a sharp glass or a knife" and "like somebody stabbing me in my private area," 62-year-old Michael Farchi said about the nutty sting last spring, via The Independent. — Read the rest

Over the last few years, Abrams ComicArts has been serializing a graphic novel adaptation of the first DUNE book. I reviewed Part One when it came out in 2020, as well as Part Two, which followed in 2022, and now, Part Three has finally arrived, bringing the series to a solid ending. — Read the rest

Movies are filmed at 24 frames per second with motion blur aplenty—an ancient technical and artistic sweet spot, or compromise, that defines the aesthetic of cinema. The folks at TV- and streaming-box-maker Roku know better, and pushed an update that adds the "missing" frames, a technique known as interpolation but more plainly as motion smoothing. — Read the rest

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft's first crewed launch was scrubbed on May 7th due to an issue with a valve on the Atlas V launch rocket. The rocket was pulled off the pad, and the valve was replaced, but another problem was found, this time with the Starliner itself. — Read the rest

Blake Pfeil's abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast is an award-winning audio series that takes a stunningly immersive approach to the trend of urban exploration. Here's the blurb:

​abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast guides listeners through immersive audio fantasies, recreating host Blake Pfeil's experiences exploring abandoned spaces across the United States.

TL;DR: If you spend time in nature or simply enjoy exploring, you'll want to use these digital camera binoculars. Not only do they allow you to see faraway sights up close, but you can also capture photos and videos. — Read the rest

While it's sadly true that Trump is never (and probably never will be) held accountable, the same is not true for those around him. He leaves chaos, prison terms and financial ruin in his wake. Almost everything and everyone he touches turns to shit. — Read the rest

Rachel Marie Powell, a 43-year-old grandmother of six from Sandy Lake, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 57 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release for her role in the January 6 Capitol breach. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth also imposed over $8,000 in restitution, fines, and fees on Powell. — Read the rest