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Wellington, New Zealand artist Kirsty Lillico won the annual $20,000 Parkin Drawing Prize for her piece seen here, titled "State Block." The work consists of a carpet scrap hanging over a string. "First of all, I've sort of re-represented a drawing made by someone else," Lillico said."Drawing, to me, it's not just about a pencil and paper. I'm using a knife and carpet and hanging it in a space to achieve the same ends."According to Lillico, State Block was inspired by someone else's architectural floor plan for a state-owned apartment."It's looking at the architectural (drawings) – positive, being black (drawn lines of an architectural design), and the negative being the spaces we occupy," she said.(Stuff.co.nz via Weird Universe)

Wayne Welsh, assistant police chief in Estherwood, La., posted a cartoon to social media depicting a mother holding a young girl under water with the caption "When your daughters(sic) first crush is a negro boy." KATC reports that he at first defended his posting in the initial outcry, but will lose his job all the same. (more…)

If you worry as much as I do about getting sun-damaged skin, this will be welcome news.Biomedical engineering researchers at New York's Binghamton University have a developed a new sunscreen, a think coating made out of DNA, that actually gets more effective the more time you spend in the sun. ScienceDaily reports:(Guy) German and a team of researchers developed thin and optically transparent crystalline DNA films and irradiated them with UV light. They found that the more they exposed the film to UV light, the better the film got at absorbing it."If you translate that, it means to me that if you use this as a topical cream or sunscreen, the longer that you stay out on the beach, the better it gets at being a sunscreen," said German.As an added bonus, the DNA coatings are also hygroscopic, meaning that skin coated with the DNA films can store and hold water much more than uncoated skin. When applied to human skin, they are capable of slowing water evaporation and keeping the tissue hydrated for extended periods of time.Thanks, Colleen!

Web technology has matured considerably in the last decade, and developers are continually in demand. If you're looking to add some skills to your resume, or are just interested in exploring the possibilities of the web, check out this Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp.In this course, you’ll get a comprehensive overview of full-stack development using modern tools. After learning the basics of HTML5 and CSS3, you'll delve into front-end development to build functional interfaces using Angular and jQuery. You’ll learn how to connect your interactive pages to back-end data, and build application logic for projects that include a blogging engine and an e-commerce platform. This course gives you access to 180 video lessons, comes with a companion ebook, and lets you get specific feedback from instructors.The Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp is on sale now for $29.

On the Tonight Show, actor Idris Elba and host Jimmy Fallon took turns singing songs karaoke-style with lyrics humorously mangled by Google Translate. To start, Elba belted out Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back," or "The Baby Escaped" after being run through translation. "I love large saplings that is the truth. A few of your siblings were here. That woman showed up and has small hips with a sleeve around your head."Jimmy then continued the fun with Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" AKA, "Meet My Kids." For the final song, they sang a duet for "I'll Place Kindness on You," the Boyz II Men song formerly known as "I'll Make Love to You." "Shut your face, pray for dreams."

Digital artist Rens de Boer traveled to the island of Fuerteventura a couple times this year and took photos of rocks to "test equipment, workflows and develop new content."Samantha Cole of Motherboard writes:It took him five days to photograph and capture the landscapes he wanted to render, and another several weeks to rebuild them in video game making tool Unreal Engine with a process called photogrammetry, which works by compiling a host of images taken from various angles and using them to create realistic depth...Graphic card maker Nvidia provided de Boer with the GPUs that rendered these photorealistic rocks, two Geforce 1080 Tis, to be exact...(digg)

Former Justice Department lawyer Christopher Wray was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the FBI, about three months after its previous director James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump. (more…)

In 1992, Pearl Jam released director Mark Pellington's fantastically dark video above for the song "Jeremy." (Pellington was also the creator of MTV's incredible avant-garde documentary video series Buzz that I've posted about previously.) Actor Trevor Wilson was only 12 years old when he portrayed the troubled student in the "Jeremy" clip. Most of the world last saw Wilson on screen with Pearl Jam at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards before he totally disappeared from the public eye. Turns out, Wilson drowned last August while on vacation in Puerto Rico. Over at Billboard, my pal Gil Kaufman tells the "Untold Story of Video Star Trevor Wilson's Fascinating Life & Tragic Death:"Cinematographer Tom Richmond remembers sitting next to Pellington in the director's Los Angeles home and watching endless VHS audition tapes from New York of kids vying to play the (anti-)hero of the "Jeremy" video. It became pretty clear early into the nearly 200 auditions that the kids they were watching were "typecasty," as if they'd read Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder's lyrics about an outcast high schooler -- based on the true story of Dallas 16-year-old Jeremy Delle, who killed himself in front of his classmates in 1991 after years of torment -- and decided they were had the perfect look and attitude for the part."In a cliché movie about junior high it would have been the picked-on kid, the outcast who looked funny or strange, and I could tell Mark was dissatisfied with that idea," says Richmond of the parade of odd-looking and over-acting kids they watched, whose performances felt a little too on-the-nose. "[Pellington] couldn't articulate what he was looking for, but he knew he wasn't looking for that."A few hours in, Wilson's audition came up and Pellington and Richmond looked at each other and said, “That's him!" It could only have been Wilson, Richmond recalls -- ironic, considering the novice 7th grade actor was a mess the day he auditioned."He was sick on his tape, and he didn’t play it like, 'Oh, I’m all angsty,'" remembers Pellington, then 30 and best known for his pioneering quick-cut work on the MTV show Buzz and iconic videos like U2's "One." "He was sitting there and I was looking at [his audition tape], and he was kind of dazed and numb and f--ked up. I found out later that he was sick. But he was so expressive, in a non-histrionic way.""Untold Story of Video Star Trevor Wilson's Fascinating Life & Tragic Death" (Billboard)

A dozen prisoners at Jasper, Alabama's Walker County Jail escaped on Sunday and one is still at large. One of them used peanut butter to change the number above his cell door and then called for the guard, a new employee, to open it. The number the prisoner changed it to was actually the door to the outside. "And unknowingly to (the guard), he hit that lock and out the door they went," said Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood. Eleven of the escapees were nabbed within eight hours. A manhunt is underway for the twelfth.From CNN:Meanwhile, as of right now, the Walker County sheriff said officials would look again at placing a young person in an control area to make decisions for 140 inmates. The camera system also needs to be equipped with more monitors, he added.Despite the current sticky situation, the sheriff said he doesn't have plans to put any dietary restrictions in place in the future."They love peanut butter sandwiches," said Underwood.

This photo of Albert Einstein has been an old favorite of geeks-of-all-stripes for years. I remember my much older brother Mark, a scientist and surgeon, had a huge poster of it on his wall in college. An original print of the photo, taken by UPI photog Arthur Sasse on March 14, 1951 at Einstein's 72nd birthday party, just sold at auction for $125,000. The print is signed by Einstein at the bottom. The full frame shows Einstein with Princeton's Frank Aydelotte, head of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University, and his wife Marie Jeanette.(Space.com)

The Honda Civic is roomier than one would expect.

I bought a couple of these Stanley Multi Tools last year. They are cheap, but really solid. I gave one to a friend and keep the other in my desk drawer for quick repairs.

This video is hard to watch. It shows a group of Cheatham County, TN Sheriff's Deputies restraining a teenager in a chair and shocking him repeatedly with a stun gun. (more…)

Alex Clay created "Arabic Pixel," which is to his knowledge the world's first public domain (CC0) Arabic font.

Lexi Alexander is the German-Palestinian world kickboxing champ who moved to the US when Chuck Norris helped her get a Green Card; after helping the US Army develop its unarmed combat training program and working as a stuntwoman, she became a virtuoso action-film director, starting with indie movies and working her way up to directing Punisher: War Zone, making her the first -- and, as of now, only -- woman to direct a Marvel adaptation. (more…)

In May 2014, 259 Islington homes changed hands; in May 2016, 139 houses were sold in the Borough: this May, it was 89. (more…)

Psychologist James Mitchell is the self-described "architect" of the CIA's torture program (a consulting gig that netted him a cool $80m at taxpayer expense), along with his partner John "Bruce" Jessen -- they're the pair who oversaw black-site torture programs that killed and maimed people who'd been convicted of no crime by any court, anywhere in the world. (more…)

Writing in Politico, Jeff Flake -- the junior Republican Senator for Arizona -- writes that the Republican Party is "in denial" about the extent to which trumpism (and its precursor, which he says is was the obstructionist movement to block Obama's agenda) has destroyed the GOP's brand of conservatism. (more…)

Calling Bullshit (previously) has released a wonderful lecture series on the epidemic of misinformation in today's media landscape. This lecture looks at dataviz ducks, the craptacular USA Today-style charts that dumb down and garbage up information graphics. (more…)

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I tried to make a "flamethrower" with a bag of flour and a hairdryer when I was a kid. It wasn't very reliable, but it got the job done.July 31, 2017 at approximately 1:00 pm. Switz City, Indiana. White Farms Inc. Overhead tank collapsed full of corn. It hit a power line on the way down and sparked the grain dust igniting the dust and causing the flash. We are very fortunate that there were no injuries!

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and much more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Is Outback Steakhouse the devil's restaurant? Several twitter users mapped the location of Outbacks around some major cities to the shape of a pentacle or pentagram. Are the restaurant's flame broiled steaks delivered rom Satan's kitchen? Or is it just the fact that Outbacks are generally located in the suburbs around metropolitan areas? Outback's response below. (WCPO)Outback Steakhouse is slaughtering cows and sacrificing them to SATAN: a conspiracy theory pic.twitter.com/RQP8DWUvDt— ♡ JUJU ♡ (@QueenIdle) July 28, 2017Plot twist. pic.twitter.com/t2VEpCrWY2— Outback Steakhouse (@Outback) July 28, 2017Wtf is Outback Steakhouse planning pic.twitter.com/l1CSafkdOK— balenci-who? aga ☭ (@eatmyaesthetics) July 27, 2017

Magic Wheelchair is an organization that teams up with makers to build costumes for kids in wheelchairs. In this video, Adam Savage met with them to check out some cool Justice League-themed costumes.

"This is not cookery as the egg breaking implies, but massage." Scenes from Madam Frieda Moroz's Natural Beauty and Health Salon, circa 1962. (via Weird Universe)

Teenage girls read far more than teenage boys. Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snicket series and other fantastic tales, has a suggestion on how to increase teen boys' interest in books: more sex in the pages. From Daniel's essay in the New York Times:It is a gross generalization, of course, to say that what young men want to read about is sex — or to imply that the rest of us aren’t as interested — but it’s also offensive to pretend, when we’re ostensibly wondering how to get more young men to read, that they’re not interested in the thing we all know they’re interested in. There’s hardly any real sex in young adult books, and when it happens, it’s largely couched in the utopian dreams or the finger-wagging object lessons of the world we hope for, rather than the messy, risky, delicious and heartbreaking one we live in.My new novel portrays a young boy’s emotional, heteroflexible sex life — and I’d like young people to read it. But it’s being published for adults, partly because the guardians of young people’s literature get so easily riled up about sex, preferring to recommend, say, books about teenagers slaughtering one another in a post-apocalyptic landscape, rather than books about kids masturbating at home.To which many would say, so what? Don’t we have more important things to worry about than giving sexually explicit literature to young people? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about, say, the rampant misogyny of everyday life, in a nation led by a self-admitted sexual predator?Which to me is precisely the point. I believe in the power of literature to connect, to transform, particularly for young minds beginning to explore the world. I want books to be an unlimited resource for young people and their curiosity, not a sphere restricted by how uncomfortable some curiosities make adults feel."Want Teenage Boys to Read? Easy. Give Them Books About Sex."

Kelly says no more dicksucking jokes. The Mooch is out.From the NY Times:The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.It was not clear whether Mr. Scaramucci will remain employed at the White House in another position or will leave altogether.Image: Jdarsie11

Joe Arpaio, the notoriously brutal and racist former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, was found guilty of criminal contempt, report correspondents from the courthouse in Phoenix. He'll be sentenced in October.https://twitter.com/MarcyJonesFox10/status/892086824843198464The charges stem from Arpaio's illegal roundups of dark-skinned people, ostensibly illegal immigrants, which were condemned as racial profiling in an earlier court ruling. Arpaio refused to stop the patrols, and was therafter charged and today convicted.

Trencherman Matt Stonie was able to drink one gallon of milk and eat 203 Chips Ahoy cookies in 27 minutes, 33 seconds. That's 12,800 calories. He was a little worried that he wouldn't be able to do it because his dog headbutted him in the jaw earlier that day and it was sore.

When measured by power output, nuclear energy is the safest major energy source, according to Our World in Data, an online publication produced at the University of Oxford.Discussions with regards to energy safety often incite the question of: how many died from the nuclear incidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima? We addressed this question in a separate blog post. In summary: estimates vary but the death toll from Chernobyl is likely to be of the order of tens of thousands. For Fukushima, the majority of deaths are expected to be related to induced stress from the evacuation process (standing at 1600 deaths) rather than from direct radiation exposure.As stand-alone events these impacts are large. However, even as isolated, large-impact events, the death toll stands at several orders of magnitude lower than deaths attributed to air pollution from other traditional energy sources — the World Health Organization estimates that 3 million die every year from ambient air pollution, and 4.3 million from indoor air pollution. As so often is the case, single events that make headlines overshadow permanent risks that result in silent tragedies.Based on historical and current figures of deaths related to energy production, nuclear appears to have caused by far the least harm of the current major energy sources. This empirical reality is largely at odds with public perceptions, where public support for nuclear energy is often low as a result of safety concerns.

This AC outlet has two built-in USB charging ports. I have found it to be useful not only for phone charging, but for keeping bluetooth speakers charged, too. One reviewer said it will charge two iPads at the same time. Last April they were $18, but they are on sale for $15.

Two related tweets from Joey DeVilla.

I bought this wall clock at a garage sale on Saturday for 25 cents. The aluminum clock hands were bent and damaged beyond repair, but I figured I could 3D print some replacements. The clock was a single piece of molded black plastic. It was dusty but was otherwise in great shape. I decided to remove the battery powered quartz movement so I could wash the body in the sink. To do that I had to remove the hands from the movement. There was a little pin, which looked like a thumbtack, at the end of the shaft. I had to get it off to remove the hands. I inspected the pin with a magnifying glass (this awesome illuminated one that costs $1.85 including shipping). I thought I saw threads on the shaft. I tried to unscrew it but the shaft just rotated. So, foolishly, I removed the back cover on the quartz movement in order to hold the shaft with pliers, and a bunch of the gears fell out. At the same time I also learned that it didn't help to lock down the shaft to unscrew the pin. It wouldn't unscrew. But I stopped worrying about getting the pin off for the time being. I worked in getting the gears back in place. I thought I succeeded, but when I closed the cover, the movement didn't work any longer. Only some of the gears were rotating. After a while I discovered the problem -- one of the gears was missing. I found it on the floor (it was the only clear gear -- the others were white) and put it where it belonged. This time when I closed the cover, I was happy to see all the gears turning. Next, I did what I should have done at the outset, learn from YouTube. There are many videos about quartz movement clock repair. I learned that you can simply pull the pin out with a pair of pliers. I was able to pull it out with my fingers. Oh well, at least I got a tour of the inner workings of a quartz clock movement. It's amazing how simple they are. And inexpensive! You can buy them on eBay for $1:Once the pin was off, it was easy to get the hands off and remove the single nut keeping the movement secured to the clock body. I cleaned the body with soap and water and spray rinsed it.Finally, I got to work on making new hands. I used this $13 pair of digital calipers to get the diameter of the holes in the existing hands. I measured the length and width of the hands. With these measurements, I went to Tinkercad and modeled a new set of hands. It took a few iterations to get everything right - I had to make the hole diameter a bit bigger, and I made the hands less floppy by adding a reinforcement beam along the length. I also decided to use red plastic inside of the metallic silver I started with:If, for some reason, you want the 3D model, here you go.The end result:Later that evening, I became curious about quartz movements. Here's a good article that presents a high level overview. Basically, when a quartz crystal is electrically stimulated, it oscillates 32,768 times a second. And when it oscillates, it produced electrical pulses at the same frequency. A small circuit with a microchip divides the frequency to produce a 1 Hz signal, which drives a stepper motor. The gearing provides the rotation of the minute and hour hands. Quartz movements are very accurate - to within 5 seconds a month!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6DlkMBKVVsChris Msando is the Kenyan electoral commission IT manager who oversaw the country's computerized voting systems; now, just days before a hotly contested election, his body has been found in the Kikuyu area in Nairobi's outskirts, and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission says he was tortured and murdered. (more…)

Alex Jones is the self-described "performance artist" whose four-hour-per-day show mixes odious conspiracy theories (like the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the grieving parents are paid actors) and aggressive pitches for foul-tasting, evidence-free "remedies" that are often just the same shit Gwenyth Paltrow sells through her Goop empire, repackaged for easily confused right-wingers. (more…)

The Comic Book Plus site has an unbelievable trove of over 33,000 Golden Age and Silver Age comics books, scanned and ready to be read in full. Once you get drawn into it, it's like you're a kid sitting on the floor, surrounded by piles of rare and amazing comic books you'd never imagined you'd ever get to read.I love the Dell comics section, particularly the Four Color series. This is a series that was published several times a month, featuring mostly licensed one-shot comics. The quality of the art and writing is surprisingly high, and the comic book versions of obscure sitcoms (Car 54, Where Are You?), cartoons (King Leonardo and His Short Subjects), adventure shows (Sea Hunt), and tons of other material are fascinating and hilarious (intentionally and otherwise). Where else would I have discovered King of Diamonds, a comic book based on a short-lived TV show about detective John King (Broderick Crawford) who ONLY takes cases involving the recovery of stolen diamonds? The guy is weirdly obsessed. And he's a comic book hero who looks like this:(art by Mike Sekowsky, Frank Giacoia)I have no comment on the site's claim that all the comic books on the site are in the Public Domain, except to say that it's so obviously in everyone's interest that these comics are made available for people to see, and no one's economic interests are harmed in the least.

If you want an idea how desperately bad the U.S. healthcare system is for those unable to afford it, the reader reviews on Moxifish—aquarium antibiotics—make for grim reading. Worked in two days! My fish no longer has a tooth infection:) lolMy fish started work at a new job and his insurance hadn't kicked in yet. Well, of course, my fish got a bad case of bronchitis or something like that. Nevertheless, we decided to get him some meds and boom! Within 2 days he was all new again and just kept swimming!My fish got bronchitis the first week of a new job and didn't have the time or money to go see a doctor. I received these quickly after ordering them and now my fishy's nasty cough is gone!My fish have been sick for two weeks straight and having trouble sleeping at night. I finally figured out that the fish have a bad sinus infection and swollen glands. After just a few hours the swelling is gone and my fish can breath again. They were even outside all day building a shed and didn't feel sick at all. :).$40 for thirty 500mg amoxycillin capsules isn't a good deal, and it seems likely the reader reviews have become more about the joke than the broke. But doctor visits can cost hundreds of dollars without insurance (and $50 or more with it), alternatives are not easily accessible, so here we are. P.S. survivalists have long suggested stocking up on pet antibiotics for the comic-book apocalypse. It used to be that America was the land of millionaires and the temporarily embarrassed, but the new dream is to fantasize about managing one's own misery in a world where misery has already prevailed. For however long the pills last, that is.

Ben Blatt's Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing takes advantage of the fact that so much literature has been digitized, allowing him to run statistical analyses on writers, old and new, and make both fun and meaningful inferences about the empirical nature of writing. (more…)

A Bronx restaurant has one less chicken today, according to reports from ABC News in New York, with the pollo purloiner also making off with a tray of biscuits.Employees are reportedly "crying foul." After taking the food, the suspect flew the coop.The suspect is described as a man with long braids. He was last seen wearing a black and pink shirt, blue jeans and blue sneakers. He also had a white towel over his head.

The story varies depending on the source—momma being killed by a trap, run over by a car, lawnmowered, etc—but in all cases the result is this video of a pile of baby hedgehogs suckling on a cat.https://twitter.com/RTUKnews/status/891645569319424001

INORI (Prayer) is a proof of concept inspired by a call for artists and technologists to collaborate on works that push boundaries. (more…)

For one reason or another, these three elderly gentleman had never tried cannabis, until now. Watch as "grandpas" Robert, Marvin, and Graham smoke some sweet bud for the very first time. Graham about smoking from the bong, "It's like a porno thing."Robert, when asked what his parents would think about him trying weed, "My dad, if he was still alive, would disown me.""Legal? It never should have been illegal," Marvin's thoughts on whether weed should be legal.As they get higher, the video gets funnier. By the middle, Grandpa Graham is starting to feel "really relaxed."(digg)

Set this Mandelbrot zoom video to full screen and prepare to zone out on deep fractals for the next five+ minutes. It has 750 million iterations and its creator Fractal universe claims that's a new record. They also report that it took "more than 10 gigabytes of ram to render the reference."(reddit)

EyeEm announce the finalists for their 2017 awards, and among the many standouts, the Outdoors category is especially impressive and competitive. (more…)

Romanian artist HyperGlu creates programs and algorithms that generate fascinating images and animations with a geometric and mathematical beauty. (more…)

What would some of the most iconic items of recent pop culture look like if they were real, enormous, and left to rot away? Filip Hodas explores the possibilities in his cool illustrations. (more…)

In 2016, Dan Piech photographed an amazing lightning bolt over New York City. The shot was so popular that he spent hundreds of hours upconverting it to a massive 5.45 gigapixel file that can be printed at 50 feet wide with no loss. (more…)

Listen: Boars, Gore, and Swords for Episode 3, "The Queen's Justice."The new season of Game of Thrones has come ashore, and Boars, Gore, and Swords is ready to count the many fleets burned in their recap of "Queen's Justice". Ivan and Red discuss Cersei's worsening mental state, a surprisingly subtle torture, Tyrion's massive strategic self-own, and so much more. 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. If you want access to extra episodes and content, you can donate to the Patreon.