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The current web development landscape is rife with buzzwords and technology that gets abandoned almost as soon as it’s made. If you’ve never written a line of code before, it can be hard to figure out what’s coming, what’s here to stay, or how to get ahead.This Beginner Web Development Bundle is a great place to start getting your bearings in the web dev world. In this collection of learning materials, you’ll get acquainted with the core technologies of the web: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. You’ll explore a variety of relevant front-end topics like semantic markup, responsive page layouts, and CSS animations, as well as basic client-server relationships.Learn to code on the web with the Beginner Web Development Bundle for $29 today.

Lawyers for President Donald Trump are working on a conflict of interest case against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, reports the Washington Post, and Trump has asked advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members, and himself, for any possible crimes linked to Mueller's probe. (more…)

Toronto officials are hopping mad that a rogue DIYer built a flight of stairs in community park for $550 instead of allowing the city to contract it out to a builder at a cost of $65,000-$150,000. Adi Astl, a retired mechanic, said he decided to build the stairs because several neighbors had taken a tumble down the steep path leading to the park. Park visitors were able to enjoy the stairs for a short while until the city taped it off. The city says the stairs will have to be replaced with stairs that meet regulations.Obviously, the city needs to do something about this for insurance reasons alone. But I'll bet they could work with Mr. Astl to make a great, code-complying flight of stairs for a lot less than $65,000.Astl says he hired a homeless person to help him and built the eight steps in a matter of hours.Astl’s wife, Gail Rutherford, says the stairs have already been a big help to people who routinely take that route through the park. “I’ve seen so many people fall over that rocky path that was there to begin with,” she said. “It’s a huge improvement over what was there.”Astl says members of his gardening group have been thanking him for taking care of the project, especially after one of them broke her wrist falling down the slope last year.“To me, the safety of people is more important than money,” Astl said. “So if the city is not willing to do it, I have to do it myself.”City bylaw officers have taped off the stairs while officials make a decision on what to do with it. However, Astl has not been charged with any sort of violation.Mayor John Tory acknowledged that the city estimate sounds “completely out of whack with reality” on Wednesday. However, he says that still doesn’t justify allowing private citizens to bypass city bylaws to build public structures themselves.“I think everyone will understand that it will be more than $550,” he said on Wednesday. “We just can’t have people decide to go out to Home Depot and build a staircase in a park because that’s what they would like to have.”

A screw with a stripped head can be difficult to remove. There are a number of ways to remove screws with stripped heads. Lifehacker has a nice article on this subject.My favorite method of removing a stuck/stripped screw is with a pair of screw removal pliers. They bite into the exposed sides of the screw head and you can twist the screw loose, then finish the job with a screwdriver. It's also a nice brute-force workaround for tamper-proof screw heads. This is the kind of tool you want to have in your toolbox now, instead of having to run out and buy one when it's needed.If the screw is really stuck, you risk breaking the head off the screw. If that happens, all is not lost. You can try to drill a small hole into the center of the screw shaft and pull out the screw with a screw extractor.

Hey there, I've been going to Burning Man since 1995 and a funny thing happened out there starting in 1997. I recently shared a shorter version of this story in my inbox zine. Mark saw it and thought Boing Boing readers might like it as well. So, here you are: I’m 99.7% sure that “EAT FUCK KILL” is the playa’s first meme.Let me explain.It was the summer of 1997. Burning Man was right around the corner and I wanted to find just the right thing to gift out on the playa.I was a regular at the local flea market here in the Bay Area and, on a Sunday just before the event, I went searching. I soon spotted a long open box full of black-and-white buttons. There were a few dozen of them and each one read “EAT FUCK KILL.” I knew right then and there that they were the perfect thing to bring to the desert. These irreverent buttons were exactly what I was looking for.In small print, around the edge of the buttons, there was a clue to their origin: The Doom Generation. The buttons had been a promotional item for the poorly-reviewed 1995 film and now, two years later, they were just waiting for me at the flea market.That's me at the 1997 Burning Man, standing in front of the jankiest sign ever. If you're wondering why there is grass, it's because that year the event was held at Hualapai playa, which is located in a different part of the Black Rock Desert.I got to the playa early in 1997 because I was the editor-in-chief of the now-defunct daily newspaper, The Black Rock Gazette (that is a story for another time). I started handing out buttons, maybe two dozen or so, mostly to Burning Man staff and volunteers. They were instantly popular. Strangers came out of the woodwork looking to score one.On Saturday afternoon I wanted to leave camp to go shooting with friends, so I hid the box under a bench. When I returned, the box was gone. :: sad face ::The original button with Evil Pippi's kindler, gentler variation, "Eat Fuck Chill."After the event, the buttons quickly took on a life of their own. Soon there were new buttons with all kinds of alternative messages (the greeters put “GREET FUCK CHILL” on their buttons, for instance).Bigrig Industries (me and my then-boyfriend), in our EFK work shirts, sitting down for a drink at the Mazda-licious Bar and Grill (Burning Man 1998).The next year I made stickers and photocopied a set of postcards. I also silkscreened about a dozen used $1 work shirts to gift to friends (these shirts became the most highly-coveted EFK item).Twenty years later, people are still talking about the buttons and asking me when I’m making more stuff with the EFK image on it. Well, that time is now. From now until September 23, I’ve brought back EFK with an online 20th anniversary pop-up shop which has a bunch of limited-edition products. I've also dug deep into my photo archives and scanned in all kinds of EFK-related images from "back in the day." You can see those in this gallery.If you want to make an EFK meme of your own, I've put a Photoshop file on the site. It's free to download. I would love to see what you come up with!Live long and Eat Fuck, um, Chill.

In a world of expensive urbanization where the spiraling cost of basic shelter has forced ever-more people into debt and fuelled a speculative global bubble of criminal money-launderers who use luxury housing as empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, London is ground zero. (more…)

The Fader Stealth Quadcopter from TRNDlabs packs incredible flight performance into a package small enough to land on your phone screen, and it's available now in the Boing Boing Store.The Fader’s six-axis gyroscope module gives it perfect balance in the air. This makes the onboard 720p HD camera all the better for shooting amazing flight videos, and it ensures rock-solid control if you’re into amateur drone racing. It can fly for up to 7 minutes at a time, and its battery can completely charge in just 45 minutes.This drone kit includes a joypad remote with a built-in device mount. Get one of these Fader Stealth drones here for only $99.

Walkaway is my first novel for adults since 2009 and I had extremely high hopes (and not a little anxiety) for it as it entered the world, back in April. Since then, I've been gratified by the kind words of many of my literary heroes, from William Gibson to Bruce Sterling to the kind cover quotes from Edward Snowden, Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson. (more…)

As of today both Xbox One and PS4 players can preview Bungie's sequel to Destiny, the MMOFPS successor to Halo.Wonderful weapons, colorful armor, and well-balanced skills make Destiny PvP the best since the early Halo games. The PvE raids, puzzles and bosses are similarly challenging and fun to play with friends. The story? Bungie's miserable story telling coasts along behind remarkable controls, level design, and gameplay. Unlike Halo, Destiny's story is a confused and boring wonder.Destiny 2 looks like a new engine, levels, and a lot of new weapons and skills. Evolutionary not revolutionary, I'm sure it'll remain a battle ground for wizened old Atari 2600 owners vs high-pitched pre-teens with excellent reflexes.I bet the Gjallarhorn will be back. I miss the days of Thorn's supremacy.You can pre-order through your platform to get into the Beta. It'll also open up next week to the general public.

Fabrice Mathieu delivered this fantastic new cut of his Raiders of the Lost Darth mashup. Cast: Harrison Ford, Alfred Molina, Paul Freeman, Carrie Fisher, Fred Sorenson, Warwick Davis, and C-3PO as "The Idol".Films and Characters created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.Films used:- "Raiders of the lost ark"- "Star Wars": episodes IV, V, VI, VII.- "Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure".Music by John Williams.

The fine folks behind the series CrapShots did this very funny short clip called The Shipping, on the inevitable outcome of the race for faster packing shipping speeds. (more…)

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.