Hear about travel to Northern Romania as the Amateur Traveler talks to Ralph Velasco of photoenrichment.com about the region that he visited leading a recent photo tour.

We talk about the regions of Maramureş and Bukovina, north of Transylvania.

In preparation for the 2017 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Chris (the Amateur Traveler) took a road trip through "Luther Land" and the heart of Germany.

Hear about travel to North Dakota as the Amateur Traveler talks to resident Derrick Schiff about this often ignored state. 

Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Learn what to see and do, where to hike and when to come.

Hear about travel to Northern Vietnam as the Amateur Traveler talks to Cindy Carlsson about her trip to some popular sites and some way off the beaten track places.

Hear about travel to Mantua, Verona, Padua Italy as the Amateur Traveler talks to Gina Mussio from ginamussio.com about these wonderful cities in her adopted country.

Hear about travel to the Northeastern region of the Netherlands as the Amateur Traveler talks to Rachel Heller from rachelheller.org about her adopted country.

Hear about travel to the German state of Baden-Württemberg as the Amateur Traveler, Chris Christensen, talks about his recent press trip there to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the bicycle. 

Hear about travel to Baja Sur in Mexico as the Amateur Traveler talks to   author and travel writer Stuart Gustafson about his love affair with the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula. 

Hear about travel to Northern Arizona as the Amateur Traveler talks to journalist Mark Smith about his recent road trip to beautiful Northern Arizona including half a dozen different parks in the National Park system.

Hear about hiking the Camino Ronda in Northern Spain as the Amateur Traveler talks to Sherry Ott about her trek along the coastline of the Costa Brava region.

Hear about travel to Northern Chile as the Amateur Traveler talks to Steph Dyson from worldlyadventurer.com about her adopted country.

Hear about travel to Mechelen, Hasselt and Leuven in Northern Flanders (Belgium) as the Amateur Traveler talks to Sofie Couwenbergh from WonderfulWanderings.com about her country.

Hear about travel to the Crystal Coast of North Carolina as the Amateur Traveler talks to Kit Parks from the Active Travel Adventures Podcast about the area.

Hear about visiting Universal Orlando Resort as the Amateur Traveler talks to Eric Stoen from travelbabbo.com about he and his kids favorite theme parks.

Hear about travel to the Northern Mississippi River Valley in Minnesota and Wisconsin as the Amateur Traveler talks to Dean Klinkenberg from MississippiValleyTraveler.com about this stretch of America's mightiest river.

Hear about travel to Mantua, Verona, Padua Italy as the Amateur Traveler talks to Gina Mussio from ginamussio.com about these wonderful cities in her adopted country.

Hear about travel to the Algarve region of Southern Portugal as the Amateur Traveler talks to Eileen Cotter Wright from purewander.com.

Hear about travel to Porto, Portugal as the Amateur Traveler talks to João Reis and Sara Silva from nofootprintnomads.com about their home city.

Hear about travel to Northern Pakistan and the  Karakoram Highway as the Amateur Traveler talks to David Harden from travelwornsatchel.com about his road trip in this remote and beautiful country.

Hear about things to do in Asheville, NC as the Amateur Traveler talks to music journalist and cocktail aficionado Bill Kopp about his adopted hometown.

A newly released Reuters/Ipsos poll evaluating President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup shows troubling news for Biden. According to the poll, a lead once enjoyed by Biden has completely “evaporated,” while Trump’s numbers continue to ascend. Reuters/Ipsos said that “Joe Biden’s advantage over President Donald Trump in…

The post Biden’s Lead in Poll Tumbles as Trump Gains Support for Pandemic Response appeared first on The Western Journal.

In 1971, a man named Gregory Harris was murdered. Richard Phillips, an autoworker, was convicted of the crime and spent the next 45 years in prison. The problem? Phillips was innocent. Instead, it was the star witness during the trial who framed Phillips, and it took his alleged partner-in-crime, Richard Polombo, decades to admit that…

The post He Spent 45 Years in Prison for Crime He Didn’t Commit, Turned to Art as His Escape appeared first on The Western Journal.

As confetti floated through the air, a baby boy and his family celebrated his final chemotherapy treatment in time to go home before his first birthday. According to KSAZ, young Aaron has been battling a rare form of cancer called acute megakaryoblastic leukemia since he was four months old. Aaron was a patient at Duke…

The post 10-Month-Old Gets Heartwarming Celebration from Hospital Staff After Finishing Chemotherapy appeared first on The Western Journal.

Between having had more than enough of the not-so-great indoors and realizing that the grocery store might not always have meat, Americans are increasingly looking to feed themselves by hunting. “People are thinking about where they get their food and how they get their food,” Land Tawney, president of the advocacy group Backcountry Hunters and…

The post Facing Concerns of Meat Shortages, More Americans Turn to Hunting appeared first on The Western Journal.

Eleven members of the Secret Service have tested positive for COVID-19, according a new report. Yahoo News reported Friday it has seen Department of Homeland Security documents which show that 11 individuals currently have the virus and that 23 members of the Secret Service have recovered from the disease. Another 60 employees of the agency…

The post Report: Secret Service Discovers Nearly a Dozen Coronavirus Cases in Its Own Ranks appeared first on The Western Journal.

“Outbreaks have sparked riots and propelled public-health innovations, prefigured revolutions and redrawn maps.” – The New Yorker, April 2020 “Nothing will be the same.”  That’s the overwhelming takeaway I’ve heard from dozens of conversations I’ve had with C-suite leaders, physicians, policy experts and media professionals these past few weeks.  When it comes to the business … Continue reading "An Open Letter To American Corporations: It’s Good Business (and Smart Marketing) To Support Quality Journalism"

As the coronavirus crisis built to pandemic levels in early March, a relatively unknown tech company confronted a defining opportunity. Zoom Video Communications, a fast-growing enterprise videoconferencing platform with roots in both Silicon Valley and China, had already seen its market cap grow from under $10 billion to nearly double that. As the coronavirus began … Continue reading "New Research Shows Why and How Zoom Could Become an Advertising Driven Business"

By easing distancing measures, the Greater Montreal area could experience a substantial increase in the number of deaths per day due to the coronavirus, according to a new document published by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) in collaboration with experts from Laval University.

A year after the Obama administration changed its policy on which undocumented immigrants it would target for deportation, it's not clear who is being sent back.

Najibullah Quraishi has covered the war in Afghanistan for more than a decade, but embedding with ISIS fighters who've recently emerged there "was the most risky and dangerous job ever I've done in my life," he says.

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Wellness is a buzzy word lately. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a surge in all things health, wellness, and spirituality. Juice bars are popping up, boutique studios are becoming more accessible, and essential oils are chilling us out. Self-care is becoming more of the norm too, but amidst all this hype, it can be challenging to find the right routine that promotes good exercise, sleep, vitals, and mindset.  Read more...

TL;DR: Skate just about anywhere you please with the lightweight Ubran E-Skateboard for $124.95, a 75% savings as of May 9.

When in doubt, skate it out. But not everyone is cut from the same cloth as Tony Hawk, and it won't make sense to try and skateboard if you know you're just going to fall flat on your butt. 

Luckily, the universe is on the side of frustrated skaters everywhere with the emergence of devices like the Urban E-Skateboard. Not only does it take all the guesswork out of skating, but it's eco-friendly, too. And for a limited time, you can get it on sale for $124.95.

At only 7 pounds and 17 inches, the Urban E-Skateboard makes it easy for you to transport it anywhere you go. When you're not, you know, skating, you can easily stuff it in your bag for fuss-free storage. It connects with a wireless remote that allows you to control your speed and choose between three speed modes, accommodating just about every rider's experience level. Read more...

Work(out) From Home is a weekly column where we review smart fitness machines and apps in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Thanks to technology, there are still plenty of ways to exercise if your gym is closed. Read more...

The internet is a scary enough place as it is, and now with the added misinformation and panic surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, it's even scarier. Thanks to the United Nations and dozens of artists, however, the internet just got a little more beautiful. 

In late March, the UN put a call out to artists to help combat the spread of COVID-19. They sought creatives to create content around six areas of WHO and UN priority actions: personal hygiene, social distancing, knowing the symptoms, spreading kindness, myth-busting, and doing more/donating. Tens of thousands of artists answered the call in two weeks, and now the COVID-19 Response Creative Content Hub is available for browsing.  Read more...

With all the stress in the world — you know, a deadly, terrifying global pandemic — Spotify dropped a new service: a daily, personalized aimed at wellness. Fittingly, it's called Daily Wellness and I gave it a try. 

OK, first, let me drop my biases: I can be a cynical person and I'm pretty high energy — like hyper hyper — which has made meditation difficult for me. I can get both mentally and physically uncomfortable while trying anything resembling meditation or therapy or sincere reflection.

That being said, amid the pandemic — and battling some, let's say, serious anxiety — I've been taking active steps to try to improve my mental health. Therapy, meditation, exercise, whatever else, it all seemed like a good idea to help me get through the day. Read more...

libfacedetection — they claim 1000fps. Open source. Rich Hickey on Becoming a Better Developer — By constantly switching from one thing to another you are always reaching above your comfort zone, yes, but doing so by resetting your skill and knowledge level to zero. Mastery comes from a combination of at least several of the […]

Soul of a New Machine: Rethinking the Computer (Bryan Cantrill) — talk at Stanford, about our vision for a new, rack-scale, server-side machine—and how we anticipate advances like open firmware, RISC-V, and Rust will play a central role in realizing that vision. Let’s Use Kubernetes: Now You Have 8 Problems — If you’re part of […]

Sno — Distributed version control for geospatial and tabular data. Finally, git for (geo)data done right. Open source. The Woman Worked as a Babysitter: On Biases in Language Generation — plugging prompts like “the woman worked as” and “the white person worked as” into text generation systems, and the horrors you get back. (via Violent […]

MLflow — an open source platform to manage the ML lifecycle, including experimentation, reproducibility, and deployment. It currently offers three components: tracking, projects, and models. Eventing Facets (Tim Bray) — the word “eventing” makes my skin crawl, but this series of posts has A+ info in it. Workbox — JavaScript Libraries for adding offline support […]

Pluralistic — Cory Doctorow’s news site and newsletter, where you can learn about African WhatsApp modders among other things. Mapnik — LGPLed software that combines pixel-perfect image output with lightning-fast cartographic algorithms, and exposes interfaces in C++, Python, and Node. pi node — A π-box is a modular system of radio/streaming broadcast, composed of multiples […]

AWS Bill Analysis — always interesting to see how to approach lowering your costs. In this case, the project owner works for Amazon on AWS, but still there were savings to be had. A Design Guide to Writing Offline-first Apps — In this article, we will be diving into some of the engineering challenges that […]

OpenAM — an open-access management solution that includes authentication, SSO, authorization, federation, entitlements and web services security. Building Relationships as a Remote Engineering Manager — And if you haven’t realized it yet, get used to this—you’re going to spend a lot of time writing. API Security Maturity Model — I’m not sure if I agree […]

The Uncensored Library — Reporters Without Borders built a library in Minecraft, in which you can read banned books. (via Gizmodo) Shmoocon 2020 Talk Recordings — everything from email addresses to Verilog by way of Zero Trust, social media, and choose-your-own-adventure ransomware. Differential Privacy: A Comparison of Libraries — We will have a look at […]

How the Great Firewall Discovers Hidden Circumvention Servers — really interesting CCC talk from a few years ago. The Challenge of Software Liability — Liability for insecure software is already a reality. The question is whether Congress will step in to give it shape and a coherent legal structure. XOXO Talks — video archive of […]

Inklewriter — open source interactive text adventure game creator. (Fun for adults, but also great to give to kids who love to read) (via Andy Baio) The Virus Survival Strategy Guide for Your Startup (Steve Blank) — Unfortunately, it’s no longer a normal market. All your assumptions about customers; sales cycle; and, most importantly, revenue, […]

Dos and Don’ts in Open Source (Olaf Geirsson) — really useful advice to would-be contributors and project owners. It’s tempting to respond to a welcome contribution with a quick, “This looks amazing, I will review tomorrow!” Consider giving a thumbs-up reaction instead and wait with commenting until you complete the review. Promises are estimates and […]

NASCAR Replaces Canceled Races with Esports Featuring Pro Drivers (Engadget) — the world is getting weirder. Firebase Scrutinized By Antitrust Regulators — Firebase tools give Google, the internet’s top ad seller, information on what consumers are doing inside apps that it can exploit to target ads to users, according to makers of Firebase alternatives. Journey […]