WTF-Beta

Make an Impact: 85-year-old and 11-year-old team up to create greeting cards

https://www.wilx.com/2026/04/27/make-an-impact-85-year-old-11-year-old-team-up-create-greeting-cards/

The 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

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!

Texas 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/

@Big_Al said:

I '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

@Big_Al said:

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!

@DougG I have the same wish. @Lisa 's daughter is doing research in this field, I think. Haven't seen @lisa around recently; I wonder if she might have info....

AI 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

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.

Surging 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.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/08/consumer-sentiment-falls-to-fresh-record-low-in-may-as-surging-gas-prices-hit-outlook.html

Nice collection of clips from the Beeb:

Wild. And foxy!

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c741gw1nd0jo

HBD to Sir David from his friends:

A federal appeals court panel appears likely to reject Pentagon plans to punish Sen. Mark Kelly for advising troops to disobey illegal orders, another potential victory for the rising Trump administration foe and likely 2028 presidential candidate.
Kelly, a Navy veteran and former astronaut who has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and his military moves over the past year, faces a potential retirement demotion and a reduction in his benefits for comments that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has labeled “seditious.”
The saga has turned the Arizona Democrat into a high-profile opponent of the administration — and elevated his national standing as he “seriously” considers a White House bid. Kelly has already profited off the fight, raking in a staggering $25 million-plus over the last six months even though he’s not on the ballot this year. And he’s using his latest stint in court to solicit even more.
“My case against Pete Hegseth is going to go before a federal appellate court … is there anything I can say to convince you to make a donation?” reads a fundraising email Kelly’s team blasted out ahead of Thursday’s hearing that was obtained by POLITICO.
It hinted at more solicitations to come. “Trump’s out to crush anyone who opposes him, and it’s incredibly likely the attacks will only continue,” the email went on. “It would mean a lot to know we’ll have everything we need to face whatever comes next.””

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/07/kelly-trump-hegseth-seditious-court-00910006

The abrupt shutdown of Spirit Airlines over the weekend has turned an entire terminal at LaGuardia Airport into a ghost town.

Just last Friday, the airport’s tiny but mighty Marine Air Terminal was abuzz with Spirit Airlines passengers. The low-cost airline held the lease at all six of the gates at the landmarked terminal, which dates back to 1940 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

But on Tuesday, the terminal's entrance were covered in "no entry" signs and hastily printed posters directing Spirit ticketholders to call other airlines.

https://gothamist.com/news/historic-laguardia-airport-terminal-deserted-after-spirit-airlines-shutdown

Two California residents are suing Cento Fine Foods, alleging the company engaged in "tomato fraud" by claiming that the tomatoes in one of its canned products are the authentic "San Marzano Certified" version from Italy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-marzano-tomatoes-cento-products-lawsuit/

@AdagioM Great resource. Thanks for posting it!

Some of the most important studies of potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease rely on a group of participants who know they may never fully reap the benefits.

"It's not for us," says June Ward, 64, who carries a rare gene mutation that virtually guarantees she will get Alzheimer's in the next few years. "It's for my sister's children and their children, so that they won't have the same 'nothing' to choose from."

Ward is a member of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN), which includes more than 200 families at more than 40 sites in 18 countries. All the families who carry gene mutations that cause symptoms of Alzheimer's to appear in middle age, or even earlier.

The families' willingness to serve as research subjects over the past two decades has allowed scientists to make key discoveries about how Alzheimer's begins, and how certain drugs may slow its progress.

Yet DIAN, run by WashU Medicine in St. Louis, faces an uncertain future amid cuts and delays in federal funding. It is currently maintaining only essential functions while awaiting word on critical grants from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/07/nx-s1-5759696/early-alzheimers-families-network-risk

Researchers in China have pioneered a formula for a nontoxic "aqueous battery" that they say could last 10 times longer than today's best devices. What's more, the water battery achieves this epic lifespan without degrading and can be disposed of safely in the environment, the team reported in a new study.

For the new method, researchers used synthesized covalent organic polymers (COPs). These tough, organic molecules, such as nitrogen and carbon, are bound together in a tight structure with clear openings and are used as an anode for magnesium and calcium ions.

Organic polymers like this have little use because they are generally short-lived in aqueous batteries; they break down quickly in water-based electrolytes found inside this variant of battery, which can be either extremely acidic or extremely alkaline. The electrolyte is essential to moving ions between the anode and the cathode, which is why aqueous batteries are a nonflammable and more affordable alternative to traditional batteries.

https://www.livescience.com/technology/engineering/new-water-battery-could-last-until-the-24th-century-and-it-can-be-safely-discarded-in-the-environment

@Mark Good eyes! The sink distracted me and I didn't notice the door.

That is some interesting carpentry.