Make an Impact: 85-year-old and 11-year-old team up to create greeting cards
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Canvas data breachThe online education platform Canvas went offline after a data breach on Thursday, temporarily leaving students and faculty at thousands of U.S. colleges — and K-12 schools — without access to course materials and communications during finals period.
"I'm sure somewhere in the country when the outage happened, there probably were people actually taking final exams on the platform when it crashed," says Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thirty million users — including at half of the higher education institutions in North America — rely on Canvas to manage courses, submit assignments, view grades and facilitate communication, according to its parent company, Instructure.
But when Linker and many other users tried to do so on Thursday afternoon, they met a black screen and a warning message.
"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again)," it read. "Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some 'security patches.'
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/08/nx-s1-5815956/canvas-data-breach-school-finals
Paging @piano-dad @nina @shirokuro
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Bugscrolling - what's buzzing/chewing/biting in your neighborhood?Looks like we're going to have a bad tick season here. We suburbanites never really saw a lot of tick activity in our yards, but they've invaded over the last few years.
We had a bumper crop of cottony maple scale last year and it's back again this year. We're getting the sticky sap spots all over the place now; I left my phone on my potting bench for less than an hour and it the screen got all speckled. The top of the fence is covered in sap; your hand sticks to it if you rest it on the top rail. This joy will be followed by black sooty mold on all the plants under the silver maples that the scale lives on. Oh joy.
Mosquitos are already here, too. I had one drill me in the neck and I got a huge red blotch. Little bastards.
On the positive side, I'm seeing lots of bees!
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Towns rebel against data center projectsTexas Republicans have a data center problem
Data center construction is unpopular among locals, and a majority of the facilities are being proposed in red, rural counties. That puts Texas Republicans in a tough spot, as the White House has encouraged states to let the centers flourish.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/07/texas-republicans-data-centers-rural/
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Tomato fraudI 've purchased and used their products and like them.
It's my go-to brand for most canned tomato products; I also like Red Gold stewed tomatoes.
We've also grown the San Marzano identified tomato variety in our own garden with great success in many years.
Rats! I was at the garden center today buying tomato plants and saw the San Marzanos. Haven't grown them before. Maybe I'll go back and pick up a plant to try this year
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What are they teaching in schools?I hope the mention of therapy suggests that Mr. wtg is progressing in rehabilitation from his stroke.
He is recovering some use of his right side, though it is slow going. He can walk short distances with a gait belt, foot brace, quad cane and a helper person. His balance, strength, and endurance are all improving. He has a few things that hold him back, namely torn rotator cuffs in both shoulders and a pretty arthritic back.
The arm wasn't doing much of anything until last week. He is now able to move the arm just a little bit in certain directions when doing some of the OT exercises. That was pretty exciting as it indicates that his brain is figuring out how to get that right arm to move. Progress!
Thanks for asking!
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Alzheimer's gene mutations -
When AI messes up your job prospectsAI does lots of good stuff. It also seems to mess up pretty regularly, and in ways that impact people negatively, in a big way.
He Couldn’t Land a Job Interview. Was AI to Blame?
Armed with some Python and a white-hot sense of injustice, one medical student spent six months trying to figure out whether an algorithm trashed his job application.
From Wired:
https://archive.is/pTMwz -
What are they teaching in schools?Mr wtg's speech therapist is, I'm guessing, probably in her early to mid- thirties. She's presenting lots of word games to help with word retrieval, conversation, logic, and reasoning. He's come up with words that she has never heard of and ends up looking up as they are going through the exercises.
Some examples:
Talking about The Repair Shop (British TV programme -
), Mr wtg mentioned the luthier, master hatter, and horologist. "Do you mean Mad Hatter?" Therapist had never heard any of the terms but verified them all by looking up the show.Mr wtg: "It's my modus operandi."
Therapist: "What?"
Mr wtg: "Modus operandi."
Therapist: "What's that?"
Mr wtg: "My mode of operation."
(Therapist looks up "modus operandi". Reads the definition and confirms it's an actual phrase.)
Therapist: Oh. Modus operandi. That's Latin; I didn't take Latin.(Therapist reviewing homework that involved naming things that are in a certain category. Mr wtg's entry for some color category was "sienna".
Therapist: "Sienna? That's not a color. That's not even a word."
Mr wtg: "Look it up."
(Clearly she's never owned the 64 count box of Crayola crayons. I'll bet y'all remember "Burnt Sienna". She looks up "sienna" and reads the definition. Says nothing else. )Either we're old, or our children isn't learning.
Maybe both.
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Consumer sentiment for MaySurging gas prices due to the Iran war sent consumer sentiment to a new low in the early part of May, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday.
The school’s closely watched Survey of Consumers posted a 48.2 preliminary reading, down 3.2% from April’s prior record swoon and off 7.7% from a year ago. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 49.7.
Inflation fears were the primary driver of the continued trend lower in consumer attitudes.
The trend, which also saw the current conditions index tumble 9%, is “owing to a surge in concerns about high prices both for personal finances as well as buying conditions for major purchases,” the survey’s director, Joanne Hsu, said.
One-third of respondents mentioned gas prices as the biggest cause of concern. However, another one-third also cited tariffs — both connected to President Donald Trump, who launched an attack on Iran in late February and announced an aggressive slate of tariffs in April 2025.
“Taken together, consumers continue to feel buffeted by cost pressures, led by soaring prices at the pump,” Hsu said. “Middle East developments are unlikely to meaningfully boost sentiment until supply disruptions have been fully resolved and energy prices fall.”