Whether it's paying for burying dedicated power-lines for data-centers, winning below-cost sweetheart deals on electricity rates, or securing tax-breaks and incentives to set up shop, Amazon Web Services has proven time and again that it is the nation's best cost-shifter, enjoying billions in tax-funded gifts for operating data centers that employ almost no one and whose profits go straight to distant shareholders. Read the rest

Last Monday, David Sedaris was granted an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Oberlin College in Ohio. Then, he gave the keynote address for the school's 2018 commencement ceremony. It was, of course, perfectly hilarious and full of spot-on, no-holds-barred advice for the new grads.

On May 24, just prior to giving the speech, the humorist and essayist appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (video above) and discussed how he picked the advice he was going to share, "Well, it kind of makes you wonder, 'What do I know? What wisdom do I have?' So I started keeping a list of my wisdom. Part of it is, you have to be really careful about scented candles. There's really only two kinds worth having... Diptyque or Trudon."

That was the first piece of advice he shared with Oberlin's graduating class. There are seven more, all gems, including "Be yourself. Unless 'yourself' is an asshole." Watch.

Also, Sedaris has a new book. It's called Calypso. Read the rest

Rustem Kazazi is a 67-year-old retired Albanian policeman who became a US citizen in 2010; last October, he boarded a flight from his hometown in Cleveland to Newark, planning to continue on to Albania. Read the rest

Columbus, Ohio police where chasing an armed suspect in front of a public library when a bystander named Bill casually stuck his foot out and tripped the fleeing fellow. From Cincinnati.com:

“(The suspect) was coming my way so I got in his way,” Bill said in the video. “I heard him hit (the ground) and the gun went sliding out. He went one way and the gun went another.”

Bill was alerted by police sirens that day while waiting for his granddaughter outside the library.

Police say Bill's intervention may have saved the suspect's life, allowing officers to catch up and arrest him without shots being fired.

It's not known why police were chasing the man, what he is suspected of doing, or why he was carrying the gun in his waistband.

Read the rest

Dennis Kucinich was once the youngest mayor of a major city in the US, leading Cleveland through a hard fight with the banks and mobbed-up city contractors to save its municipally owned power plants and kill a plan to privatize the city's energy; after decades in Congress, he's running for Democratic governor of Ohio (a state whose Republican leadership has shamelessly corrupted the state's electoral process) and promising to kill fracking and oil extraction, fund studies that will produce the evidence to sue Big Oil, and create jobs by funding a conversion of the state to renewable energy. Read the rest

In the early fifties, the Airstream company was growing fast and decided to move its factory from Los Angeles to Jackson Center, Ohio. Nearly 66 years later, they're still building their iconic silver "canned hams" there.

In this promotional timelapse video, you can see how they get assembled. One thing to note is that they put all the rivets in by hand. (You may want to turn off the music though, it doesn't seem to be a good fit for the content. Shouldn't it be something more... vintage?)

By the way, if you're in the Jackson Center area, you can go take a free tour of the Airstream factory. Every weekday at 2 PM they offer them.

Also, in the springtime, Airstream hosts Alumapalooza at the grounds surrounding the factory. It's a fun camping event for travel trailer enthusiasts and owning an Airstream is not required. This year's event is May 29 to June 3, 2018.

(The Kid Should See This) Read the rest

An indictment in the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio's Eastern Division alleges that Phillip R Durachinsky created a strain of MacOS "creepware" called Fruitfly, which was able to covertly operate the cameras and microphones of infected computers as well as capturing and sharing porn searches from the infected machines; the indictment alleges that Durachinsky used the software for 13 years, targeting individuals, schools, and federal agencies including the Department of Energy. Read the rest

YouTuber craftsman Paul Jackman fashioned his own "major award" a la A Christmas Story, a "manly" leg lamp based on his own leg's measurements. It's really quite impressive.

He writes:

This leg is an exact full scale model of my own leg. The leg and base are made from maple butcher block scraps from previous projects. The lamp shade is welded from scrap lengths of rebar and wrapped in pleather attached using paracord that looks like Carolina's boot laces. The boot is attached using a threaded brass lamp rod through the entire leg with a nut on both ends. There are also a couple of screws into the toe of the boot/foot.

By the way, if you're not super crafty like Mr. Jackman and want a leg lamp for your very own, the A Christmas Story House & Museum in Cleveland, Ohio has full-sized replicas of the original for sale. The downside? It won't be shaped like your own leg.

(Likecool) Read the rest

91% of the prisoners in Ohio are in Republican districts: they aren't allowed to vote, but they are counted in the census, creating winnable districts with tiny voting populations that would otherwise be included with large groups of nearby Democratic voters. Read the rest

Columbus, Ohio boasts one of the fastest-growing economies in the midwest, with gains in transit, creditworthiness, and employment -- but it's also one of the most unequal cities in the country, where infant mortality is soaring alongside a horrific drug epidemic, both of which disproportionately affect poor people. Read the rest

This is a problem as I will be flying there shortly to visit my family.

Hoping it's just a software glitch on the Chicago Transit Authority station sign.

(via r/softwaregore) Read the rest

Inmates in Ohio's Marion Correctional Institution smuggled computer parts out of an ewaste recycling workshop and built two working computers out of them, hiding them in the ceiling of a training room closet ceiling and covertly patching them into the prison's network. Read the rest

The swift replacement of CRT screens with flat panels created tons of extremely toxic e-waste, with dangerous tubes and leaded glass posing unique environmental and safety hazards for disposal workers and sites. Read the rest

Ross Compton, a 59-year-old homeowner in Middletown, Ohio called 911 in September 2016 to say that his house was on fire; there were many irregularities to the blaze that investigators found suspicious, such as contradictory statements from Compton and the way that the fire had started. Read the rest

The city of Cleveland has revealed its crowd control plan for next month's Republican National Convention, a heavily policed, fenced off 3.3 square-mile "event zone" -- the size of Baghdad's Green Zone -- with fenced-off protest areas far from the convention itself. Read the rest

When Dale Grimm, owner of four Ohio papers -- the New Carlisle News, the Enon Eagle, the Tippecanoe Gazette, and the Troy Tribune -- was queried on Facebook by high-school students about why some of their student assignment articles were published in his papers, but the ones about the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and a trans student weren't, the proprietor answered, "We do not print articles of that nature." Read the rest

Ohio authorities are investigating how a prisoner obtained a list of the usernames and passwords for prison administrators. Read the rest