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A powerful Senate Democrat is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Zoom for deceptive practices, adding to the growing chorus of concerns over the popular video chat software's privacy and security flaws . Several state attorneys general are also probing Zoom, after users, including government officials, reported harassment, known as "Zoombombing," on the platform. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, the ranking member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, sent a letter Friday to the FTC. In the letter , obtained by NPR, Brown said Zoom had made "deceptive" claims to users that their communications would remain private. Brown said Zoom incorrectly suggested its service offered end-to-end data encryption, which means that communications couldn't be accessed by anyone other than the sender and the recipient at any point. Zoom walked back on Wednesday its claim of end-to-end encryption. In a statement, it said, "While we never intended to deceive any of our customers, we

lofi relyricization of harnick/bock song from fiddler on the roof for the sars-cov-2 era. another quarantune! hmm. apparently this idea has also been done, a few days ago, quite well and somewhat more thoroughly. guess i should review the literature for the state of the art before undertaking such things. but i didn't, and this one is mine. lyrics: maskmaker maskmaker make me a mask two plys of cotton that's all i ask maskmaker maskmaker sit at your singer and make me a perfect mask maskmaker maskmaker i'll bring my bandanas if you've nothing to do if you're going bananas cover my face up so i can buy food and a break from this solitude for earloops you can use hairbands to hold it as i sniffle and cough a noseclip might keep it from snagging my stubble and sliding right off maskmaker maskmaker executive orders have kept me all cooped up alone in my quarters the pantry is empty the larders are bare so please make a mask i can wear for papa the family tartan for mama something flowery and bright for me well i'd just be heartened if i could buy groceries tonight maskmaker maskmaker make me a mask stitch me a stitch of cotton not bask maskmaker maskmaker if you're up to the task oh make me a perfect mask

I have successfully eliminated feeding time drama. I will tell you how.

But first - if you're willing to make a small screw hole in the pantry door, you can get an inexpensive metal latch hook that will improve that part of your system. If that won't work, you can find another way to keep that door securely closed. If you get stuck, just use your second AskMe question. You should be able to solve this problem :)

If you can't, well, it doesn't sound like you're getting a ton of help from the robot. Would it be just as easy to store the food in an air-tight container and serve whenever you feel like it?

Now - here's how I got my round little foster cat to stop harassing us for food:

I convinced her that I was not responsible for deciding when to feed her. I had an old phone with a distinctive, not-unpleasant alarm sound (harp glissando), set the alarm for her feeding times, and made a huge show about hearing the alarm sound, running over to it (to shut it off), and feeding her exactly then. It was clear that I was controlled by the harp sound. She made the connection very quickly, and would go sit and watch the sound/alarm system when it was close to meal times. My life improved. Safety improved (no cat weaving around my ankles). My estimation of my own cleverness improved also :)

People tend to overthink this, and I am speaking from real experience. Just keep the requisite number of gallons of water you'd use in the timespan for which you're planning and change them every couple of years, just for the sake of doing it. They'll last for eons in reality.

In an emergency, water's great, but in a longer-term bad situation, it falls pretty far down the list. Unless you're in an unusually arid place, a means to obtain the water necessary to live (maybe not to shower, run the dishwasher or laundry though) will make itself known. And you'd never store enough to matter for *that* long, while a few gallons of cooking oil or a bag of salt would make you a local hero for a long, long time.

What people tend to really wish they'd planned for, but don't:

1) cooking oil
2) toilet paper, paper towels
3) spices, herbs, pepper and salt
4) sugar, chocolate (especially for its fat), candy, honey
5) soap, shampoo, cleaning products
6) seeds for easy-to-grow stuff
7) vitamins
8) if you can keep a couple of hens, you won't regret it.

Nothing's as tradeable (relative to effort) as eggs!

Aside from the last three, these things can be stored for a long, long time. And in reality, #6 and #7 would be good for a few years.

I am a Sarajevan who lived during the siege with no heat, electricity, water, phone (etc) for the most of a three-year period. What's on the list above is what I was almost always missing. We got "dry" food packages from various sources. These tended to be Truman eggs (good for a little protein, but thats about it), macaroni, rice, powder potatoes, Vietnam-era "biscuits" - supposedly with vitamins, but these were from the late 1960s and of dubious nutritional value.

What was missing was: fat, protein, flavor and variety. Boiling was the only way to cook things, due to lack of any cooking oils. To fry something was a rare miracle - even if you were frying reconstituted potatoes from powder. And to have a little pepper or salt was nirvana.

If your location is correct, the Humane Society will do the communual cremation for $35 and there's a campus in your city. If that's too much but you can get her there, I'll cover it. If group cremation isn't the correct choice for you for this pet, however, no pressure.

Do you actually like this guy? You've written an essay here and the only positives you list about this person are qualities you assumed about him during the period you had no personal contact. Of course he makes himself look interesting in his own blog.

Stop worrying if he likes you or not, or likes you enough or more than your friend maybe. For the next few weeks, your sole focus should be "do I actually like this guy, really?"

If it's your anxiety telling you you're not good enough that's one thing, but I don't get the impression from what you've written that you've spent a lot of time looking at this dude with a critical eye. HE needs to be right for YOU before you start concerning yourself with whether you're good enough for him.

I have a health condition with a high mortality rate, where about one quarter of us die within the first year, and two-thirds of us don't last five years. I'm on Year 4 now and I'm doing okay, and I'm thankful to be receiving excellent care, and I'm generally optimistic that I'll get to stick around for a while.

Ramping up to my diagnosis, I thought my life was over. And that was both utterly untrue and completely true at the same time. You can't really know what it's like until you have the actual diagnosis, and even then it's been a world of surprises. You may or may not be able to do some of the things you would like to do.

For me to deal with it in a healthy way, I kind of had to create a hard line in the sand. I had to take time to grieve the person I'd been before falling ill, take stock of my accomplishments, and most importantly, I had to REALIZE MY ACCOMPLISHMENTS WERE ENOUGH for my lifetime. If I'd been hit by a bus, my life would have been over in a snap, and whatever I'd accomplished by that point would have had to be enough. Taking that pressure off myself was the kindest thing I could do for myself.

I found I had to let a lot of things go and not compare Previous Me to Sick Me. Previous Me was active, enjoyed travel, able to hold down complex and interesting work. Sick Me can't do much of that, but Sick Me does pretty okay for a sick person, and Sick Me does so much more than Dead Me could possibly do! Seriously, compared to Dead Me, Sick Me is a total winner. Sick Me can do a little modest gardening, enough to keep the weeds away. Sick Me can care for my dog and handle the occasional load of laundry. Sick Me finds a lot of joy in my friends and family and internet communities, and has transferred my social life to text, email, and the occasional dining out when the stars align and energy allows. (Metafilter is a lifesaver because I can pick it up whenever my energy level allows and people are so welcoming and understanding.)

As you're waiting for news, it's easy to fall to worry. Please be kind to yourself and don't suffer those fears and losses before you need to. Right now, you are there for your children. Don't put yourself through the punishment of losing them multiple times unnecessarily. And don't say you won't ever get to do a painting class -- I took my first painting class last fall and it was a boon to my soul and it renewed my capacity for beauty.

In the meantime, take as much control of the situation as you need to. Write down a list of questions to review with your doctors. (I've actually typed them out and distributed copies for them to follow along.) You can google, and it's hard not to, but please never tell a doctor that your questions or concerns are coming from google. Also, do not call yourself a hypochondriac -- what you are feeling is what you are feeling, and your concerns are valid and deserving of respect.

Waiting is hard. Please be extra kind to yourself.

I live most of the year in a small, fairly self-contained village of about 8 people. We do use grid power where we can't get micro-hydro. There's not enough sun to make solar workable (we're in a valley). We all have wood stoves to heat and cook, big gardens, forage for food and medicine, and hunt and fish for meat as well as raise chickens and sheep. Our main needs from the outside world are salt, grains, cooking fats, sweeteners, tobacco, and tea/coffee. There is a large vegetable farm our friend owns up the road, and most of us work there during the summer and we get lots of free produce. We have neighbors we visit to harvest from their orchards and wild berries.

Being totally self-sufficient all on your own is honestly almost impossible unless you are willing to really, really rough it. The things you need depend on your climate, but outside of a few outlier 'lives in the woods by himself in a cave' folks, this is not easy to achieve.

So you need a house. Insulated from heat and cold. This means building a good shelter with air flow and heating. Wood burning stoves are a good solution. If you're in a 4 season climate, you will need between 2 and 4 cords of wood, (60 hours or so of chopping if you know what you're doing) which have to cure for a year before you can use them, even from dead standing. So chainsaw, axes, wedges, and probably a truck. Which means gas. This means money on an ongoing basis.

You need water. A well or a spring, or a creek close enough to the source to not need filtering. This all means pipes or tubing and maybe a pump unless your sources is higher than your house. Also costs money, and needs to be replaced eventually.

You need food. Most gardens are geared to fruits and veg, and you'll need a lot of space to grow enough to live on without supplementing from stores. Depending on where you are, you might be able to harvest some berries and fruit if you have producing bushes/trees on your land. Or you can plant them and wait until they are mature enough to produce. You will need to freeze, dry or can what you pick or it's gonna go bad before you can eat it all. So you need canning stuff (big pot, grabber tongs, hella mason jars, and those lids have to be replaced every couple years). A root cellar (lots of digging! So much!) will keep your root veggies and apples fresh through the winter if it's deep enough. Wash your cabbages and carrots in bleach water every now and then. You'll add a month to their viability. You'll want a dehydrator for sure. you can build a passive solar one, but we use an electric one as fall fruit in an outdoor space is a bear fun time pantry. You need garden tools. They cost money and need to be replaced periodically.

You still need protein. Say you live in a place where you can fish and hunt (in season). You need to pay for licenses for these things. You can trap smaller game, but that's much more challenging. If you are hunting larger game you will need a deep freezer to store (electricity!) or be content with a massive salting / smoking process that will allow you to store meat long term.

You also need carbs. Grains need a lot of land space, and the right climate. Getting them to an edible state means you'll need to thresh, winnow, and grind your wheat/oats/spelt etc. Grinding means you need a stone mill. A hand crank meat grinder isnt going to cut it (literally) but you'll want one anyway for other stuff. Potatoes are a good source, and are easy to grow in the right climate. These need to be stored in a cool dry place away from rodents and insects to last all year.

You need fats. Wild crafted diets are low in fat, which is not always a good thing. Game meat is low in fat, and you can't make cooking oil from it. Deer tallow will make soap and icky candles. You need bees for good candle wax (and honey!) Raising chickens can get you both fat and eggs. But they need a place to roost that keeps them safe from predators.

You'll need fencing to protect your garden from deer and bears. Without an electric fence, your garden and chickens are going to get eaten or trampled. Dogs help with this, as do shotguns.

So you need micro hydro (only if you have an accessible, appropriate water source that has enough flow rate) or solar (if you live in a place that gets enough sun all year round.

You need medicine. Our mainstays are tinctures and teas. A very small sampling: nettle, mint, mullein, poppy, willow bark, chamomile, chaga, lions mane, spruce tips, elecampane, milky oat, pearly everlasting, ghost pipe, pine pollen, raspberry leaf, and red clover.

If you really want to go all out, you need clothing and cleaning cloth, so you'll need to tan leather or weave flax or cotton. We have alpacas we shear for fiber. They are cute and less trouble than llamas, but won't haul anything, so sometimes we have to borrow a donkey if we're pulling things up a steep path. You'll need soap, so save your tallow.

I could go on. But really, this is a massive, MASSIVE effort for a single person. Without access to money or the outside world it is going to be a slog. But wow, if you're into it, go try it! I don't recommend you buy some remote property and cut yourself off from the world to see if you can hack it. One bad winter where you run through your firewood? One bad frost or dry summer that kills your crops? There's a reason people tend to settle together.

So yeah, you need good land, good water, good equipment, many years to get established, some friendly neighbors, and some way to get money when you need it. Or a bunch of people already doing this that like you and want your help.

Go look up a victorian household guide on Project Gutenberg. So many good ideas! They have instructions for making everything from soap to paint.

Good luck!

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Amtrak is the latest transportation provider to require all passengers to wear facial coverings or masks to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, beginning Monday. The intercity passenger rail agency joins most of the nation's passenger airlines and many public transit systems in requiring coverings or face masks on passengers. Customers will have to "wear a facial covering over their nose and mouth while in stations, on trains and [Thruway] buses," Amtrak said in a news release. "Facial coverings can be removed when customers are eating in designated areas, in their private rooms, or seated alone or with a travel companion in their own pair of seats. Small children who are not able to maintain a facial covering are exempt from this requirement." "The safety of Amtrak's customers and employees is our top priority," Amtrak President and CEO Bill Flynn said in a statement, "and requiring a facial covering is one more way we can protect everyone." To maintain physical distancing on

Time is important, especially when it comes to the brain. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about how our brains process and understand Time, and how we can reorient out goals within tasks to stay motivated and get more done.

It turns out the idea that women are better than men at multitasking is not true at all. In fact, men and women are equally bad at multitasking, however, why does this notion persist? In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke take on multitasking and gender.

Most of us have the best of intentions when we graduate from high school or college to make our way in the world and lead meaningful and productive lives. But the minutiae of everyday life can eat into our plans to exist outside our comfort zone. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern...

Years ago, the federal government spent $117 million on an experimental "clean coal" power plant in Alaska designed to generate electricity with a minimum of air pollution -- but the project never got up and running.

WSU's season was cut short -- along with all of college basketball -- due to fears about the spread of coronavirus. But the season was certainly entertaining, considering expectations. Here are the 10 most memorable moments.

The Cougars have been in contact with a handful of potential transfers. Here's a look at four players who’ve reportedly shown interest in WSU and why they’d be a good match.

PHILADELPHIA — Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pennsylvania Department of Health now recommend we all wear face masks when going about essential tasks in public, as part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Those types of masks have become a hot topic online during the ongoing outbreak, and are […]

It sounds like a punch line, but experts say the problem is real: The coronavirus pandemic, by unmooring the daily lives of tens of millions of people, has made time itself feel distorted.

President Donald Trump speculated about ultraviolet rays. But artificial UV techniques are ineffective and likely deadly for treating an infected person, scientists say — and some can be extremely dangerous used at home for disinfecting.

The coronavirus has changed how we travel in many ways including the increased use of face masks on flights and in airports.

Courtney Ekmark wants to be a coach, and that’s the reason you see her at Seattle U, listening and learning from coach Jim Hayford, who Ekmark has known for many years.

The Chicago State University men's basketball team will not travel for two regularly scheduled games this week, including a trip to face Seattle University, citing the spread of the coronavirus.

Both Chicago State University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City have decided not to travel west this week for men's basketball games against Seattle University, citing concerns related to the spread of COVID-19.

As we face a unique health-care crisis with the proliferation of the coronavirus, the ramifications for sports are just one piece in a giant, complicated puzzle. But I can’t remember an event in my lifetime with the potential to have a greater impact on the world of athletics.

Three junior-college transfers and a freshman join the team.

In addition to the face mask policy, Greyhound said it also stepped up cleaning procedures, sanitizing buses after every trip and frequently cleaning locations.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska will receive $50 million in federal coronavirus aid for fisheries, the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced, about half what state officials had expected. Alaska is home to large stocks of pollock, an inexpensive fish used in fast-food sandwiches and fish sticks, and landed 58% of the nation’s seafood by […]

Costco will require shoppers to wear masks that cover their mouth and nose while in the store starting Monday, the company says.

Amazon-owned Whole Foods will provide grocery shoppers with free single-use masks at all its stores beginning this week, in keeping with the chain's "request" that all shoppers wear masks.

Since health officials began recommending (but not requiring) that everyone cover their faces in public to reduce the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, a new divide has emerged over who wears a mask and who doesn't.

Since health officials began recommending (but not requiring) that everyone cover their faces in public to reduce the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, a new divide has emerged over who wears a mask and who doesn't.

Along with a 2018 ruling by the court that the city had reached full compliance with a 2012 consent decree, the request would dissolve virtually all remaining oversight of the police department regarding its use of force and other issues.

Along with a 2018 ruling by the court that the city had reached full compliance with a 2012 consent decree, the request would dissolve virtually all remaining oversight of the police department regarding its use of force and other issues.

The CDC recommends wearing a face mask when out in public to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial for sewing your own face mask, with video.

OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — All that 84-year-old Mary Ann Wakfield needed to do to win a new car was sink a putt across the entire length of the court at the University of Mississippi’s basketball stadium. Wakfield did just that during a promotional segment at Saturday’s game between Ole Miss men’s basketball team and Alabama. […]

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Byron Mallott, who served as Alaska’s lieutenant governor as part of a “unity ticket” with former Gov. Bill Walker, died Friday. He was 77. Walker called Mallott’s death a “huge shock.” He said they maintained a relationship after leaving office in 2018 and that his last communication with Mallott was about […]

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Supreme Court rules an effort to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy can move forward.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that an effort aimed at recalling Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy from office can proceed, a movement initially fueled by public outrage over spending cuts he’d proposed. The court had previously allowed the Recall Dunleavy campaign to proceed with a second signature-gathering phase while it heard […]

Five TSA employees nationwide have died of COVID-19, and 516 employees have tested positive, including seven at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska will receive $50 million in federal coronavirus aid for fisheries, the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced, about half what state officials had expected. Alaska is home to large stocks of pollock, an inexpensive fish used in fast-food sandwiches and fish sticks, and landed 58% of the nation’s seafood by […]

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Marijuana shops in Alaska will be among the first nationally where onsite use would be permitted. Alaska’s legal marijuana industry hit the milestone Thursday as regulators approved the first retail stores in the state that will be allowed to have customers smoke or consume marijuana products on site. Some cities in […]

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Lauren Jackson and Swin Cash, two of the best players in Storm history, have been elected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

As we face a unique health-care crisis with the proliferation of the coronavirus, the ramifications for sports are just one piece in a giant, complicated puzzle. But I can’t remember an event in my lifetime with the potential to have a greater impact on the world of athletics.

In what felt like a formality, the WNBA on Friday announced its season will be postponed indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska will receive $50 million in federal coronavirus aid for fisheries, the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced, about half what state officials had expected. Alaska is home to large stocks of pollock, an inexpensive fish used in fast-food sandwiches and fish sticks, and landed 58% of the nation’s seafood by […]