Why would the manufacturer make this tablecloth mostly white, when it probably doesn't cost extra to print the whole thing with the tie-dye pattern that's on the edges?

Did the 1980s really happen? This scene from the 1985 movie Perfect, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta, has got to be the most cringeworthy in cinema history. Truly fascinating.

What's left of the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday the number of terrorist attacks worldwide and deaths from such attacks dropped in 2016 for the second straight year. The global downward trend is attributed to decreases in Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen. (more…)

A dad took his three kids to Walmart and let them try a claw machine. On the third attempt they were successful. Their delight in beating the machine is infectious.

TedEd tackles the question of "How does caffeine keep you awake?" The answer is fascinating but I care less about how it works and just thank my lucky stars that it does.

Professional kitesurfer and water sports athlete Kevin Langeree has a wonderful moment of inspiration in this video with one very good dog. (more…)

A small polyurethane company in Louisville, CO was vandalized on Sunday, with its front glass door completely smashed in, and at first the owners thought they'd been robbed. But when police came and realized nothing had been stolen, they checked the surveillance camera, only to find it was delinquent goat – backed up by a goat gang who can be spotted in the background of the video – who was determined to do some damage. The goat butted against the glass 20 minutes until it finally shattered the door. Quoted in The Daily Camera, the company's owner, Greg Cappaert, has a good sense of humor about it:"He must have seen his reflection in the door and thought it was another goat. He was trying to beat up the whole building...Everybody had a good chuckle over it."

The Hot Tub Boat is both at the same time. You can rent one to float around Seattle's Lake Union or custom order your very own from HotTubBoats.com. "Well, the hot tub boat is fifteen feet over all, she's about six feet wide, about close to 400 gallons of water in the hot tub,” says (Seattle-based co-inventor Adam) Karpenske. “It can take six people on the boat at any time.""She does her haul speed at about three-and-a-half knots. It's controlled by a little joy stick. Kind of like a lot of people have equated it to ‘if you ever played Pac-man, you can drive the hot tub boat.'""Hit the water in a Hot Tub Boat" (King5 via Weird Universe)

Throwing away expired medicine is a waste of money, according to the results of a recent test on a cache of pills predating "the 1969 moon landing." Lee Cantrell of the California Poison Control System and Roy Gerona, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher who "specializes in analyzing chemicals" analyzed 14 different decades-old compounds, "including antihistamines, pain relievers and stimulants," and found that they "were still as potent as they were when they were manufactured, some at almost 100 percent of their labeled concentrations," according to ProPublica.Cantrell and Gerona knew their findings had big implications. Perhaps no area of health care has provoked as much anger in recent years as prescription drugs. The news media is rife with stories of medications priced out of reach or of shortages of crucial drugs, sometimes because producing them is no longer profitable.Tossing such drugs when they expire is doubly hard. One pharmacist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital outside Boston says the 240-bed facility is able to return some expired drugs for credit, but had to destroy about $200,000 worth last year. A commentary in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings cited similar losses at the nearby Tufts Medical Center. Play that out at hospitals across the country and the tab is significant: about $800 million per year. And that doesn’t include the costs of expired drugs at long-term care pharmacies, retail pharmacies and in consumer medicine cabinets.After Cantrell and Gerona published their findings in Archives of Internal Medicine in 2012, some readers accused them of being irresponsible and advising patients that it was OK to take expired drugs. Cantrell says they weren’t recommending the use of expired medication, just reviewing the arbitrary way the dates are set. “Refining our prescription drug dating process could save billions,” he says.

NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia turns 100 this year. In celebration, the space agency produced this short documentary and enlisted Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, to narrate. Here are just a few highlights from NASA Langley's incredible history: • In times of peace and war, NASA Langley helped to create a better airplane, including unique wing shapes, sturdier structures, the first engine cowlings, and drag cleanup that enabled the Allies to win World War II.• Langley broke new ground in aeronautical research with a suite of first-of-their-kind wind tunnels that led to numerous advances in commercial, military and vertical flight, such as helicopters and other rotorcraft.• Langley researchers laid the foundation for the U.S. manned space program, played a critical role in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and developed the lunar-orbit rendezvous concept that made the Moon landing possible.• Development by Langley of a variety of satellite-borne instrumentation has enabled real-time monitoring of planet-wide atmospheric chemistry, air quality, upper-atmosphere ozone concentrations, the effects of clouds and air-suspended particles on climate, and other conditions affecting Earth’s biosphere.• Protecting astronauts from harm is the aim of Langley’s work on the Orion Launch Abort System, while its work on materials and structures for lightweight and affordable space transportation and habitation will keep future space travelers safe.• Helping to create environmentally benign aeronautical technologies has been a focus of Langley research, including concepts to reduce drag, weight, fuel consumption, emissions, and lessen noise.NASA Langley: Innovation at 100

Family Guy's wonderful tribute to the late great Mayor of Quahog, Mr. Adam West.

YouTube user Ginger Beard created this illusion of a floating bird by capturing the video at 20 frames per second, the same speed at which the bird flaps its wings. (more…)

Lifehacker has a list of ways to deal with a manspreader taking up a seat. Asking politely is probably effective, but my favorite is Cassie J Sneider's technique: plop down on the manspreader's leg.“Excuse me,” I said, standing in front of a thirtysomething guy with his legs spread so far, it looked like he was doing some sort of post-vasectomy physical therapy exercise. He ignored me.As a woman, I am used to this, so I gestured to the seat and said excuse me again. Nothing. I checked and he wasn’t wearing headphones.This man, like the three or four others taking up multiple seats on this train car, are the center of our universe from sun-up until sundown, never once considering the lady with the stroller, the World War II vet stooped over a cane, or the child riding home from school alone.We all go about our ride politely avoiding calling them out on their selfishness, holding grocery bags and diaper bags and the weight of all our frustration, seething. In that moment, something became crystal clear to me: seething doesn’t help anyone, but sitting on a dude sure is satisfying.I waited a moment. He leisurely stretched his calves, turned away from me, and then I sat on him.“Excuse me,” I said, using my bony ass to crush his thigh. Outside of a horror movie, I have never seen anyone react so quickly to get away from another human being. There was terror, then disgust, then anger. I took out my book and turned to him. “Thank you,” I said, and then smiled like Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom. It would have been rude otherwise.Image: FriedC/Wikipedia

These sleek, diminutive flamethrowers cost between $13 and $30 and are for sale online. Any person who makes an untoward advance at a potential victim is likely to have second thoughts after experiencing the device's 3,300 degree Fahrenheit, 20-inch jet of flame.From The Telegraph:[O]ne vendor boasted to local media how they can "scald or even disfigure an attacker.”Another vendor told The Beijing Youth Daily they “can leave a permanent scar, but are a legal, non-lethal tool. Not a weapon.” Chinese police have warned that the devices are against the law, but they were still being sold on the Chinese Internet on Tuesday."Flames and the super high temperatures are enough to scare the bad guys away,” said one website, which added that the flames can last for 30 minutes. "At that crucial moment, you could also become an anti-terror SWAT,” said another.Fortunately, bad people don't know about these.Thanks, Matthew!

The eighth person present at that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. hoped to get a hold of damaging, hacked info on his dad's Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton? We now know that mystery eighth person at the Don Jr. meeting was Ike Kaveladze. (more…)

Human beings are incredible evaporative cooling systems, but that doesn't mean you can't use a little help when things are really hot. These cooling bandanas work wonders.During a recent heatwave, my daughter and I had to cross the Nevada desert in an AC-less VW Van. This was done to honor my parents 50 years of marriage. Our family shows love with great suffering. The kid and I relied on these Miracool bandanas to help us survive.Sewn into the lining are absorbent gel crystals of some composition. When soaked in h2o they really expand. Slowly the gel releases water, and its evaporation cools you down.We found they'd last a full day, but needed to be resoaked after a full day of driving in such a dry climate. Soak them overnight in the fridge for an extra cold start to the day.You get a pack of 4 for $9.MiraCool Cooling Bandanas. Pack of 4 via Amazon

A disability rights group is suing Uber over charges that the ride-hailing service violates New York City human rights laws by failing to ensure that enough of its vehicles are accessible to physically disabled riders. (more…)

Novelist Jane Austen will soon become the latest historical figure to be honored on a British banknote, and the Bank of England has revealed an early run of the printed bills. Tuesday is the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death.The author of classics like Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma will take the place of biologist Charles Darwin on the £10 note. The Jane Austen tenner is expected to come out in September, 2017.From Reuters:The central bank has printed an initial run of a billion of the new notes, which are known in Britain as "tenners", after last year's launch of a five pound note made from a polymer film that the BoE said is more durable and harder to forge.(...) The writer was buried in Winchester Cathedral in 1817 and completed many of her best-known works such as "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" in the nearby village of Chawton."Ten pounds would have meant a lot to Jane Austen, about the same as 1,000 pounds ($1,300) would mean to us today," BoE Governor Mark Carney said at the launch of the new note in Winchester.Austen received a 10 pound publisher's advance for her first novel and the new banknote bears a quotation "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!" from her later work, "Pride and Prejudice".The quotation came from a character who in fact had no interest in books and was merely trying to impress a potential suitor. It drew a mix of amusement and criticism in the media when it appeared on an initial design of the note in 2013.[PHOTO, TOP: Bank of England governor Mark Carney poses with the concept design for the new banknote featuring Jane Austen outside the Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton, southern England. (Chris Ratcliffe/Reuters)]

On August 15, 1942 Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin stepped out to milk their cows in the meadow. They were never seen again, leaving seven children behind. Last week, their bodies were found on Tsanfleuron glacier.From Brisbane Times:"We spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day," their youngest daughter Marceline Udry-Dumoulin told the Lausanne daily Le Matin."I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm," added the 79-year-old.

Maximum Lean AngleI can't even touch my toes.

The Open AI researchers were intrigued by a claim that self-driving cars would be intrinsically hard to fool (tricking them into sudden braking maneuvers, say), because "they capture images from multiple scales, angles, perspectives, and the like." (more…)

The PiCar-V learning kit comes with everything you need to build a Python-powered robot, and it’s currently being offered in the Boing Boing Store. (more…)

I don't know why you'd want to mess with a perfectly good breakfast like cold leftover pizza. But if you do, here's a video that shows you how to turn those cheesy slices into french toast. (more…)

Watch in this video as Quebec artist Éric Nado disassembles antique and vintage typewriters and transforms them into machine gun sculptures. (more…)

Before Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven & Hell, late metal legend Ronnie James Dio was a doo-wop artist. (more…)

New business ideas are a dime a dozen; everyone and their cousin has a concept for a new app or service that may or may not revolutionize a small slice of the world. Whether it’s novel ways of ordering food, or time savers that only apathetic wealthy people would pay for, coming up with your own ‘like Uber, but for X’ is the easy part of growing a successful company. Where many fail is in hammering out the nitty-gritty details to actually realize their goals. (more…)

Everyone's favorite Internet monopoly Amazon looks like it's about to eat Blue Apron's lunch. Amazon just announced plans to boy high-end grocery chain Whole Foods last month in June, and has also recently filed for trademarks around prepped meal kit services-- that's Blue Apron's sole business. (more…)

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration today said it was lifting a ban on carry-on electronics such as laptops for passengers on Saudi Arabian Airlines flights headed to the U.S.. This is the last carrier under the restrictions to have been permitted to now ignore those new restrictions. Somehow this is apparently all making America Great Again and So Safe. (more…)

The US government could save lives if it applied 1% of the money it spends on terrorism ("foreign-born terrorists have killed roughly one American per year") towards preventing death by medical error, which kills 250,000 Americans a year and is the third leading cause of death. It probably won't happen though.

The work of the late artist Amedeo Modigliani (1884 - 1920) is in high demand. In 2015 his painting Nu Couché (1917–18) was purchased at auction by a Chinese art collector for $170.4 million. Naturally, there are a lot of fake Modigliani pieces in circulation. Earlier this month authorities in Genoa, Italy confiscated 21 suspected fakes attributed to Modigliani. They were on exhibit at at the Doge's Palace, where 100,000 visitors have viewed the suspected forgeries, and an art critic said they were lousy fakes. From The Telegraph:“They did the right thing. This was absolutely shameful,’ said Carlo Pepi, the 79-year-old Tuscan art critic and collector who alerted authorities about the suspected fraud. “A Michelangelo is a Michelangelo. A Picasso is a Picasso. But when a painting is a fake, it is missing its soul, and these were missing that three dimensional elegance of Modigliani - even a child could see these were crude fakes,” he told the Telegraph on Sunday.Mr Pepi has spent decades battling art fraud. He began publicly expressing doubts about Genoa’s Modigliani exhibit in February, when the palace first began promoting it with a reprint of the 1918 oil painting “Marie, daughter of the people.”“My goodness, when I saw the poster of Marie and then looked through the catalogue and saw the others, I thought, poor Modigliani, to attribute to him these ugly abominations.”Image: "Portrait of Lunia Czechowska." Probably by Modigliani

I'm teaching the Clarion Science Fiction writing workshop at UCSD in La Jolla this week, and tomorrow night at 7PM, I'll be reading from my novel Walkaway at Comickaze Liberty Station, 2750 Historic Decatur Rd #101, San Diego, CA 92106. Hope to see you!

University of California San Diego engineer Timothy O’Connor led a team that developed a smart glove that turns the American Sign Language alphabet into text. The project used inexpensive off-the-shelf products totalling about $100. (more…)

Allan Pachino Wallace uses edibles to create detailed portraits, like athlete Stef Curry made from curry. He also made Salt Bae of salt: (more…)

Soon after I started using my Paderno vegetable slicer in 2015 to cut sweet potatoes into curls, I bought an oven crisper pan. This thing is great. Instead of drenching the slices in hot oil to fry them, I just put them in a bowl, add a bit of salt and olive oil and stir until the slices are lightly coated. (more…)

Boars, Gore, and Swords prepares for the imminent return of HBO's Game of Thrones by going through the list of every current character and their whereabouts as of the end of Season 6 in this refresher episode. Ivan and Red cover who's alive and who's been hardcore merced, what they might end up doing, and even throw in some Baby Driver and Spider-Man talk. And don't forget to check out all the extra episodes and content available on the Patreon.To catch up on previous television seasons, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them.

Earlier this year, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian was a guest on Snoop Dogg's GGN show. Ohanian talked with Snoop about his recent engagement to tennis star Serena Williams, the basics of net neutrality, what he thinks is the best "superpower" anyone can learn, and more. Btw, here's that photo the "Doobie brothers" posted on /r/Trees at the end of the show.(reddit)

As part of the Nicer Tuesdays series, Designer Weirdcore treats viewers to a rare historical overview of his concert visuals for Aphex Twin. (more…)

It's happened to all of us. You are at a party or business meeting and people are greeting one another. One of the people in the group looks vaguely familiar or the contextual clues suggest that you are supposed to know the person. What's the best way to navigate this potentially awkward social situation? Lifehacker has a solution: say, “Hey, do I know you from somewhere...?”On NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast, they share a simple way to find out if the person you’re greeting is a stranger or someone you should know. Aim to say this in a light or neutral tone so it comes off as natural. As you shake their hand or give a quick wave, say, “Hey, do I know you from somewhere...?”If they say no, play it off with, “Oh, you just looked a little familiar. Wonderful to meet you!”If they say yes and mention how you know each other, follow up with, “Yes, that’s right. So good to see you again!” Of course, this only works one or two times with the same person, so if you have a strong feeling you’ve met them before (and maybe used this trick), go for something more general like, “Hey, how are you?”I used the “Hey, how are you?” line about a month ago at a party. A woman with red hair walked up to the bar where I was standing and she looked at me with recognition and smiled warmly. She looked familiar but I couldn't remember where I'd met her. "Hi, how are you!" I said. She said something like, "It's so nice to see you!" As we chatted about nothing, it dawned on me that she was writer Susan Orlean. We'd never met before. She had mistaken me for someone else. I'm sure she soon realized that she'd never met me. After about 30 seconds of pleasant chitchat we parted.

Artist Annelies Hoffmeyr has a fun Instagram page that mischievously plays with Barbies, jewelry, and provocative "fashion shoots," if you will, including the use of tampons as hair curlers, cigarettes, and nail art. This is the coolest period art I've seen yet. I really don't understand why my tampon nails never became a trend 🤷🏼‍♀️ A post shared by Annelies Hofmeyr (@wit_myt) on Jul 1, 2017 at 11:14pm PDT Tampon Nail Art for #theperiodproject A post shared by Annelies Hofmeyr (@wit_myt) on Jun 7, 2015 at 8:31am PDTThanks Mashable!Cover image: Kaldari

It's not easy to tell that the Barack Obama in this video is a digital fake, but it is. It was created by researchers at the University of Washington. They developed an AI model of the former president's mouth movements so that the bot's lips sync up to any audio track. In this video, the digital Mr. Obama says things that the carbon-based Obama never said.From the YouTube description:Given audio of President Barack Obama, we synthesize a high quality video of him speaking with accurate lip sync, composited into a target video clip. Trained on many hours of his weekly address footage, a recurrent neural network learns the mapping from raw audio features to mouth shapes. Given the mouth shape at each time instant, we synthesize high quality mouth texture, and composite it with proper 3D pose matching to change what he appears to be saying in a target video to match the input audio track.The researchers say that even though the video looks real, it's easy to reverse engineer it and find out it's a fake. But will this always be the case?

A man having dinner at a New Jersey restaurant with his family noticed someone poking around his parked car, so he turned on his phone's video camera and walked over to challenge the suspected criminal. The snoop quickly backed away from the car, and the car owner saw a police badge on a lanyard hanging from his neck. When the man asked the cop what the hell he was doing, the cop offered a few mumbled excuses that were as lame as the gargantuan man bun on his head. The cop also tried to get the man to walk over to his police car, but the man wisely kept his distance. The video is being reviewed by the prosecutor's office in New Jersey.From Huffington Post:The Facebook page Mediatakeout shared the video, which has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. When the man filming asks the officer, “What the fuck is you doing, yo ... What is you in my van for,” the officer shuts the van’s rear door and walks away.The officer, still walking away, tells the man filming to follow him, but the man refuses. The man asks the officer again, “What is you in my car for when I’m sitting down eating with my family?”The officer tells the man that “we’re getting a lot of complaints about guns,” to which the man replies, “Listen, I don’t care about none of that. What are you in my van for?”When the man asks the officer how he accessed his trunk, the officer replies, “It’s open. It’s wide open.”“Still. Still,” the man filming says in return. “You’re not supposed to be in my van sir.”

“It’s about family, and that’s what’s so powerful about it,” says the late Carrie Fisher.

Two new studies from the Annals of Internal Medicine have made the rounds on news sites, each claiming that an increased coffee consumption leads to a higher life expectancy. While this may sound like a great excuse to fuel a coffee habit, the summary of the studies explicitly states that:Although drinking coffee cannot be recommended as being good for your health on the basis of these kinds of studies, the studies do suggest that for many people, no long-term harm will result from drinking coffee.Despite the claims from many news sources, excessive coffee drinking has not been proven to prolong your life. For those wondering why the study in inconclusive, an opinion piece in Forbes clearly outlines why association does not prove causation, and why more coffee will not necessarily benefit you.A compelling article from last year in New York Times' Well explains a fairly decisive link between genetics and the health impact of coffee-drinking. Whether or not you are a fast- or slow-metabolizer of caffeine may determine its health benefits or consequences. If you are interested in the subject, it is worth reading.While the two new studies do suggest that coffee drinkers live longer lives, there is no evidence that clearly points to coffee as the culprit. For now, drink assured that coffee will not harm you, but know that it may not be the elixir that it’s currently hyped up to be.Image: Peter Lindberg

Every week, Kevin Kelly, Claudia Dawson, and I send out our Recomendo newsletter. It's a lightweight rundown of six useful things. (Sign up here!) Here's this week's newsletter:Five good crime books:On the excellent Five Books website Author Simon Brett is interviewed about his five favorite crime novels. Three of his picks (A Kiss Before Dying, The Big Sleep, and The Talented Mr. Ripley) are among my favorites, so I added his other two picks to my wish list. — MFSummer enjoyment:I spent almost four hours lounging in this papasan float on the 4th of July and it’s now my favorite purchase of the year. Half my body stays in the water, so I’m able to stay cool while basking in the sun. The only drawback might be how easy it is to relax — time went by so fast, I got sunburned. — CDOutstanding listen:You know about Song Exploder, yes? It’s this amazing podcast that takes one well-known song each week and explodes it into its component parts. The musicians who wrote and perform the song take it apart track by track, sometimes beat by beat, explaining what they were thinking as they created the pieces: what challenges and dead-end they met along the way, how the song changed as they worked on it, and why they like the final version. It’s the x-ray into music I always wanted. — KKFree app finder:Daily App Advice shows you which paid apps are currently being given away for free in the iTunes App Store. I’ve found many useful free utilities and games here that usually cost between $1 and $10. — MFMovie night must-have:Cinesift is a website that combines film ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic and gives you the average. What I find the most helpful is that I can filter my movie search by genre, and limit results to only those available on Amazon Prime and/or Netflix Watch Instantly. That way I don’t waste time flipping between services searching for a movie. — CDBest work surface:I have a large self-healing mat on my workbench, and I have smaller cutting mats I lay on a table if I am working. The non-skid surface keeps parts and pieces stationary, while the cushion prevents dings in the table top beneath. And of course, the self-healing mat is ideal for cutting fabrics, paper, etc. with razors and blades. Also protects from spills better than cardboard. It is easy to clean up: just tilt and wipe. It’s become my default surface for any work. Get the largest size you can. At the minimum, an 18 x 24 inch mat covers well and yet is portable and easy to store. — KK

Do you have a neat signature, or a messy one? Do you let the dishes pile up in the sink, or do you clean them as soon as you are done using them? Do you prefer coffee or tea? The purpose of 2 Kinds of People, by João Rocha is to sit down with another person and go through the dozens of side-by-side drawings to find out how compatible you are. It isn't supposed to be a serious exercise, but you will probably learn some interesting things about yourself and your friends and partners by doing it. For instance, not only did I learn that Carla likes to hang her toilet paper with the hanging side towards the wall, she was also able to convince me that her preferred way is superior.

Hey, remember how Bill Clinton doubled down on the War on Drugs, perfecting Reagan's haphazard and shoddily made race-war into a well-oiled incarceration machine that turned America into the world's greatest incarcerator, a nation that imprisoned black people at a rate that exceeded Apartheid-era South Africa? (more…)

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The Metasploit framework is an open source tool that lets you simulate real attacks against your system. You can get introduced to this essential cyber security software with this Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking course, available now in the Boing Boing Store.Throughout these 23 lessons, you’ll exploit vulnerabilities, evade antivirus software, and gain unauthorized access to protected systems. After getting familiar with the Metasploit environment, you’ll analyze targets for system weaknesses and execute automated tests backed by the world’s largest database of exploits. You will learn how to escalate privileges and take over remote machines by executing your own penetration code, and discover how to effectively cover your digital tracks. It’s a great way to pick up the fundamentals of this critical security role, since you’ll be following along closely with their interactive lessons.This Hands on, Interactive Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking course is usually $65, but you can pick it up here for $28.