RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — The State of North Carolina requested $929 million from the federal government to help with costs associated with Hurricane Matthew, but the state will be receiving far less than that, according to an announcement by Gov. Roy Cooper.

North Carolina will receive only $6.1 million from the Trump administration. That’s 99 percent less than the requested amount.

Good move, Trump.

Hopefully, the NC Dems have already started making commercials comparing the amount of money it costs to fly Chump and his dipshit family back and forth from their golf outings to the amount of money he's willing to spend helping NC disaster victims.

Soon after Charla McComic’s son lost his job, his health-insurance premium dropped from $567 per month to just $88, a “blessing from God” that she believes was made possible by President Trump.

“I think it was just because of the tax credit,” said McComic, 52, a former first-grade teacher who traveled to Trump’s Wednesday night rally in Nashville from Lexington, Tenn., with her daughter, mother, aunt and cousin.

The price change was actually thanks to a subsidy made possible by former president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which is still in place, not by the tax credits proposed by Republicans as part of the health-care bill still being considered by Congress.

Hmmm.

The failed effort by Russian attackers to influence the outcome of the French presidential campaign in its final hours was in part a forced error, thanks to an active defense by the digital team of French president-elect Emmanuel Macron's campaign organization, the digital director of the campaign has claimed. Campaign team members told the New York Times that as the phishing attacks mounted, they created a collection of fake e-mail accounts seeded with false information.

"We created false accounts, with false content, as traps," Macron campaign digital director Mounir Mahjoubi told the Times. "We did this massively, to create the obligation for them to verify, to determine whether it was a real account."

...

The bait documents may have caused the attackers to rush their efforts. As Ars reported Monday, the eventual dump of documents by the attackers included metadata showing Russian versions of Microsoft Office were used to edit some documents, and the name of an employee of a company providing information security services to Russian intelligence organizations was in document metadata showing the last person to edit at least nine documents. Multiple documents were proven to be forgeries, including one which appeared to be an invoice for a Bitcoin payment for mephedrone ("bath salts") to be sent to the French National Assembly. The Bitcoin wallet and blockchain transaction data was easily determined to be fake.

What we saw in the 2016 election is nothing compared to what we need to prepare for in 2020.

We're minutes away from not being able to know if a video of a person talking is actually a video of that person talking.

We're utterly doomed.

They were worried for good reason. With so many troops and so much artillery swelling in England, it was impossible to keep the attack a secret. Hitler knew it was coming, and he’d been preparing a defense for months. Only one detail eluded him, and he was confident in a Nazi victory if he could figure it out—he needed to know where, exactly, the attack would happen. To make D-day a success, the Allies needed to keep him in the dark: They’d have to trick the Germans into thinking the real invasion was just a bluff, while making it seem like a major attack was imminent elsewhere. The task seemed impossible, but luckily, the British had a secret weapon: a short, young balding Spaniard. He was the king of con men, an amateur spy gone pro, the world’s sneakiest liar. He was also, of all things, a chicken farmer.

Mental Floss

What if I told you...
I photoshopped the same face onto every man behind Trump. Would you have noticed if I hadn't said anything?#GOPclones pic.twitter.com/C4MERQmvLC

— Amanda Holland (@AwkwardHolland) May 4, 2017

, Mark Walker.

You're a terrible 'representative'.

This is just so ... wow.

So much effort.

OMG.

Wow.

Goddamn.

This is my sourdough recipe.

• 4.5 cups of flour
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup of active sourdough starter
• 2 teaspoons salt

Makes 2 loaves.

For flour, I typically use 3 cups King Arthur white bread flour + 1 cup whole wheat flour + .5 cups dark rye flour.

The loaf in the picture was probably made with an all-white starter. These days, my starter is fed with wheat flour so the loaves come out fairly whole-wheat-dark.

Night before baking (this is always Saturday, 10:00pm), mix water & starter, then add 3 cups of flour (1.5 cups white + wheat + rye, or whatever your mix is). Cover. Put this somewhere coolish to sit overnight (<70 degrees if possible).

I actually mix the stuff in a 6 quart bucket, and then put that inside a 12 quart bucket with a big handful of ice on the bottom. Then cover that.

Next AM (9:00ish), add salt and one and a quarter cups more of flour. Mix it all up, let it sit for 10 minutes. This gives the flour time to absorb the water completely (this is the 'autolyse' method). After that, if the dough is still too sticky, add more flour.*

At this point, you can knead if you want. Or, you can do what I do, and use Ken Forkish's stretch-and-fold method. Big ball of dough in the bucket, grab one side and pull up a bit - less than a foot. Fold that back down onto the ball, rotate 90 deg, pull again. Rotate, pull again. And once more. Repeat the pull and stretch process at 20 minutes and again at 40 minutes.

After mixing, let the dough sit for 4 hours in its bucket, in a cool place, covered.

Scoop the dough out of its bucket onto a clean floured surface. Divide the dough in half. Shape each half into a ball. This is another bit that took me a while to figure out. Shaping is very important. Without shaping, the dough will not become a nice round loaf. It will become a hard, ugly lump.

My shaping method is pretty simple:

1. Grab the ball of dough
2. Hold it in my upturned hands as if I'm offering it to someone
3. Hold the dough on my fingers and rotate both wrists outward. My thumbs pull the sides down, gently. This stretches the top. And my fingers tuck the excess back into the bottom of the ball
4. Rotate the ball horizontally a little after each stretch to get a nice even shape all around.
5. Be gentle. Don't squeeze.
6. This should only take a few seconds.

Now, proofing. This is the final rest before baking. I use a floured wicker proofing basket for this. A lightly-greased steel mixing bowl will also work. The dough ball I just shaped goes top-down into the basket. And it sits there for 45 minutes or so.

I bake in a cast-iron dutch oven (D.O.). Preheat the D.O. and its lid, in the oven @ 425. When it's pre-heated, take the (FLAMING HOT) D.O. out of the oven, put it on the stove and quickly throw a sprinkle of cornmeal into the bottom (keeps the dough from sticking), then gently and carefully place the dough ball into the D.O., top-side up. Grab the sharpest knife available and cut a wide "X" into the top of the ball. This gives the loaf a place to expand. If you don't do this, it will pick its own place to expand, which can be dramatic if it picks a nice place, but it also might just refuse to expand. And then you will have lots of croutons and bread crumbs.

Into the oven, put the (HOT) lid on the D.O.. 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take the lid off but leave it in the oven. Turn the temp down to 375. Another 15 minutes, or until the crust is dark but obviously not burned.

Now repeat with the other dough ball.

* - this is the part that took me the longest to learn. "Too sticky" is very subjective. The dough should hold together, but it shouldn't tough and leathery.

pinkphilosopher:

moonblossom:

deluxetrashqueen:

Honestly, Rick Rolling is the best practical joke ever. Like, there’s nothing offensive or mean  spirited about it. It’s just like “Oops you thought there would be something else here but it’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.” which isn’t even a bad song. It’s fairly enjoyable to listen to. There’s no jumpscares, no screaming, no ill will. Just Rick Astley telling you he’s never going to give you up. I think that’s great. “You fell into my trap! Here, listen to this completely benign song that will have no negative effect on you.” 

I wish this were true. There’s a really good article about the problems inherent with rickrolling here.

Very interesting. I never thought about that and now I feel bad.

(via bookoisseur)