Nanna Árnadóttir (twitter) explains how to speak English with such a good Icelandic accent that even natives will be fooled. (via MeFi)

Adam West, famed as Batman and latterly for his work in animation, is dead at 88. “Our dad always saw himself as The Bright Knight, and aspired to make a positive impact on his fans’ lives. He was and always will be our hero,” his family said in a statement.With its “Wham! Pow!” onscreen exclamations, flamboyant villains and cheeky tone, “Batman” became a surprise hit with its premiere on ABC in 1966, a virtual symbol of ’60s kitsch. Yet West’s portrayal of the superhero and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, ultimately made it hard for him to get other roles, and while he continued to work throughout his career, options remained limited because of his association with the character.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRNcoJtsZhg

The QFX Elite Series of wireless speakers can be synced up to provide a perfect multi-room sound system, and each speaker (and all three together) are currently available at a discount price.The Elite Series is compatible with any Bluetooth-capable device, and you can connect each speaker over WiFi for a wider reach and greater signal stability. Pair all three together, or appreciate the booming sound of each speaker alone, so everyone you live with can personalize what they want to hear at home.You can play songs from your personal collection, or connect to a variety of streaming services like Pandora, Apple Music or Spotify. Check out the entire QFX Elite Series Bach speaker here for up to 60% off.

Welcome to the Dank of England, where appearances are stern but enforcement is lax.

The music, as selected by uploader pokedude104, is from Spongebob Squarepants. This is a YouTube microgenre.

Want a quick cultural glimpse of the current vibe in SF Bay Area? Take a peek at the contents of this artsy souvenir vending machine my pal Jessica Nguyen spotted at the Oakland Airport. Whoever curated this thing really has their finger on the pulse of the Bay Area. Though, it is a little like playing a game of "Find the precious hipster marketing buzzwords."I spy (from top to bottom, left to right):MOO, dog treats made from Five Dot Ranch's grass-fed beef ($12 plus tax)An eco-friendly embroidered kitchen towel made from hemp depicting the state of California and its state flower: poppies ($24 plus tax)A "super-warm cuffed beanie" by local retail favorite Oaklandish ($18 plus tax)Peanut butter & Jelly granola by San Francisco-based small batch granola brand, Garrett's ($2.75 plus tax)Ready-to-hang wall art made from upcycled 1950s fence wood and a reclaimed California license plate ($15 plus tax)(And, the winner is... )A bag of nut-free, soy-free AND gluten-free "100% organic bone broth-infused kale chips" ($6.50 plus tax)The company behind the this little beauty is called souveNEAR and they've got machines in Kansas City and in San Francisco, as well as in Oakland.

AsapSCIENCE digs into a question you might not want to know the answer to.

I'm looking forward to Quadrant, an upcoming, utterly fantastic-looking movie created by Woodrow White and David Lauer. It looks like a collaboration between Devo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. I met Woodrow on a plane a few years ago. He's a fantastic painter (who happens to be the son of artists Wayne White and Mimi Pond).

Donald Trump went full Donald Trump the day after fired FBI Director James Comey hearing this week gave damning testimony in the most eagerly anticipated U.S. congressional hearing in years. Today began with early-morning aggro tweets from the President. Then, taking reporter's questions at a press conference with the President of Romania, Trump accused Comey of lying under oath to Congress. (more…)

If you live in Los Angeles, here's an art opening that's worth checking out. It's called Looks Like Chicken and takes place at the Castelli Art Space tonight and tomorrow.What you’ll be seeing is the brilliant work of Los Angeles Pop Artists Pat Riot, David Buckingham, and Matt Aston: Three well-established artists with chops, intelligence, and razor- sharp wit. These artists are uniquely distinct from one another, and now together, their Pop Art points a collective finger at the fractured culture of modern America…and it does so in Technicolor.In his series Crystal Lies, Pat Riot reassembles used puzzles of America at its iconic, serene, and fluffy white best, then seamlessly fuses them with hand-crafted resin commentary that is so clear, it’s almost too clear.Pat Riot will also be unfurling his masterful, large scale, multi-media collages, each of which bears thousands of hand-cut and applied details-- each applique integral to the grand, critical theme. David "Kook" Buckingham combs the deserts of California and her junk yards in search of abandoned metal tractors, cars, 55-gallon metal drums, car doors, etc. After he’s carted them back to his studio, sparks fly as he welds and muscles the scrap into beautifully outrageous robots, giants, designs, over-sized objects, and his signature array of metallic linguistics. Each letter is expertly hand cut and used in wall-mounted quotes, slogans or just simple expletives that re-enforce the fact that David Buckingham has no filter...as in none.Matt Aston will be exhibiting his large-scale figurative paintings showcasing a technique that combines the mediums of epoxy, resin, and acrylic which culminate in powerful, direct and unapologetic work. His styles and subject matters run the gamut from Street Art to Abstract Expressionism to Downtown Los Angeles murals that pay tribute to those individuals who have created, and continue to create, dramatic shifts within the myriad facets of American culture.Matt Aston's particular take on his subjects is a matter of unique perspective into the psyche confronted by America as a youthful promise and what she continues to devolve into...

In Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, players must solve a grisly murder through collaborative deduction. One person plays the role of the killer, who carefully chooses what kind of evidence they leave at the scene of the crime. The killer tries to sabotage the investigation, while the forensic scientist attempts to reveal him or her to other players by indirectly analyzing the scene. This game supports 4–12 players, making it a great group activity for board game nights. Deception’s social gameplay keeps it short and exciting—one session lasts about 20 minutes. You’ll use your wits to help lead your friends to the killer, or throw them off your trail with lies and deceit. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong usually goes for $39.99, but you can pick up a copy of this game in the Boing Boing Store for $10 off.

A naked gentleman walking down the highway was stopped by a police officer in Marion County, FL. "What's the deal, man? Why are you naked?" the police officer asks. But rather than converse with the officer, the fellow walks off camera, screams, and beats up the police car. According to the YouTube page:Marion County deputies arrested 18-year-old Andrew Humphries on several criminal mischief charges after he ripped a door handle off a car parked at the Sheriff's Office and caused damage to a MCSO patrol car. Witnesses told troopers Humphries walked up to a car parked at the sheriff's office and pulled the door handle off a car while trying to open the door. Witnesses said Humphries then urinated on the car, which belongs to a MCSO deputy. The deputy estimated Humphries caused approximately $700 in damage to his car.And according to clickorlando.com, Humphries was fleeing a car crash.Andrew Humphries, 18, was involved in a traffic crash near South U.S. Highway 441 around 7:45 p.m. Wednesday and wandered away from the area, deputies said. Details on the crash, including whether or not Humphries was driving naked, were not released.

This brass-and-steel "detector" doorlock, on display at Holland's Rijksmuseum, was made in 1680 or so. It has lots of clever features. To open and close the latch, you have to fiddle with the man's hat. The keyhole is hidden under the man's leg. It has a dial counter that lets you know how many times it has been unlocked, so the owner can tell if someone else opened it. When the lock has been opened 100 times as indicated on the dial, the main bolt can be locked, but not released until a tiny button on the man's chest is pressed, which resets the counter.The inscription on the lock reads: "If I had the gift of tongue I would declare and do no wrong who you are that come by stealth to impair my master's wealth."I hope they share the Arduino code for this.[via]

On Monday, Nick Gemayel was seated at his office desk in his Rochester, New York auto repair shop when he saw a bright flash spark from a light switch and heard a loud crack. Then he realized that his hand hurt like hell was blistered. A co-worker reported that he had seen lightning strike the building. It apparently arced from the light switch into Gemayel. Hospital doctors treated and released him. No word yet on what superpowers he may now have.(Associated Press)

People tend to avoid sick people, even if they don't consciously now that they are sick, according to a new study published in PNAS.Snip:In the perpetual race between evolving organisms and pathogens, the human immune system has evolved to reduce the harm of infections. As part of such a system, avoidance of contagious individuals would increase biological fitness. The present study shows that we can detect both facial and olfactory cues of sickness in others just hours after experimental activation of their immune system. The study further demonstrates that multisensory integration of these olfactory and visual sickness cues is a crucial mechanism for how we detect and socially evaluate sick individuals. Thus, by motivating the avoidance of sick conspecifics, olfactory–visual cues, both in isolation and integrated, may be important parts of circuits handling imminent threats of contagion.David DiSalvo from Forbes has more:Researchers injected one group of people with a harmless bacteria that triggers an immune response for a few hours, causing mild fever and fatigue, but without any really obvious signs of being sick... The researchers exposed the smell samples, photos and videos to another group of people, along with the same set of samples from healthy people... The brain scans showed a signaling effect cutting across the senses when someone looked at a photo or video of a sick person, along with being exposed to the smell samples. The overall effect is a multi-sense brain alarm telling us that someone is sick and should be avoided.

Giving a Corgi – or any pup for that matter – a bath can be quite the challenge. Just hearing the word "bath" will have them bolting out the doggie door. But here's a sneaky trick that landed Sneakers into hot water before she even realized what was happening. It's simple and definitely worth a try!

As a kid, I grew up near minutes from the beach and many times saw grownups meticulously sifting through the sand with a metal detector. I imagined they were pulling up diamond rings and pirate's gold. My dad assured me they weren't, though I suspect he just didn't want to buy me a metal detector. In any case, these magnet fishing hobbyists have them beat. By dropping a very strong magnet underwater, history buffs "WW2 Wendal" fish their local lochs and rivers for valuable metal objects. They primarily explore WW2 sites for discarded war artifacts but often reel in non-military items such as stolen safes and, well, junk. Sometimes they find nothing at all but, judging from their videos, that doesn't break their spirit. (Digg)

Jake Gardiner was walking in the woods in the foothills of La Crescenta, a suburb of Los Angeles, when he heard rustling in the trees. He recorded video on his mobile phone and later noticed what many are saying looks like an ape-like creature swinging around the branches. “It could be some kind of ape, it also could be a bear, it could be a large bird,” says Andrew Hughan, a spokesman with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He added that it could be someone's pet but it's difficult to say based on the blurry video and lack of physical evidence.“It’s an interesting mystery right at the moment, and we'll see what happens," he says.(Los Angeles Times)

An irritating and frankly dangerous hazard at the popular caves in Tongren City, China, was finally dealt with recently by an enterprising tourist. And they want to track him down and fine him! For getting rid of a useless piece of rock growing for millions of years one mineral-laden drop at a time! No good deed goes unpunished.

This fine pair of Apple Computer sneakers, a holy grail of Apple memorabilia, will go up for auction on Sunday. The starting bid is $15,000 but they are estimated to fetch as much as $36,000. Available only to company employees in the early 1990s, they feature Apple's far superior rainbow logo. The shoe size is 9 1/2. Unclear if they were ever worn, and if so, by whom.APPLE COMPUTER SNEAKERS, CIRCA EARLY 1990S SIZE 9 1/2

How is automation in the age of smart machines going to be different than automation in the age of dumb machines? You'll find out when you watch the latest Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell explainer video.

Grey Gersten, whose work lies at the intersection of avant-garde art, multimedia, and music, has released this interplanetary video for his track "Press Your Heart Against The Screen," from his new album Naked Light out today. The song, about the bridge between humans and machines, is complemented by stunning images captured by NASA's Cassini space probe in 2009. Gersten has explored space in his prior work as well, having composed the soundtrack to Tom Sachs' incredible film A Space Program about the installation artist's Space Program 2.0: MARS project. A force in New York City's experimental art scene, Gersten has collaborated with John Zorn and TV on The Radio, and counts Laurie Anderson as a fan.Starting at sunset tonight at NYC's 537 Broadway gallery, Gersten is hosting an overnight performance experience with special guests, meditation, experimental films, and a dramatic reading of former FBI Director James Comey's Congress Hearing.Far fucking out.

I became interested in magic when I was a young teenager, then dropped out for one reason or another. About five years ago I started getting interested again, this time in card magic (as opposed to stage magic). I had fun making doctored cards to use in my tricks, so in 2015 I wrote and illustrated a self-published ebook called Trick Decks: How to Hack Playing Cards for Astounding Magic. The sales exceeded my expectations, and it was at the top of the "magic" chart in Amazon for a quite a while.Occasionally I reduce to price of the book. For the next few days, I've dropped the price of the ebook from $2.99 to 99 cents. It will go to $1.99, then back to $2.99.Trick Decks will show you how to easily make different kinds of trick card decks to perform stunning magic tricks. You can make the decks from ordinary playing cards and easy-to-find tools and materials. No special skills are required and these cards are fun to make. In this ebook you will learnThe best way to mark cardsHow to make a stripper deck that lets you pull selected cards from the middle of the deckTwo ways to make one of the greatest trick decks of all time: The Invisible DeckHow to make the Brainwave Deck: A spectator’s thought-of card is the only one face up in the deck and with a different colored back than the other cardsNightmare Card: A card chosen by the spectator vanishes and reappears in your pocketFind out more about the ebook at Trick Decks website.

Julio writes, "That's the question that we, the people of Catalonia, will answer on 1 October, day of the referendum for independence. Some of us didn't want independence from Spain 15-20 years ago, but the central government (specially with the right-wing Partido Popular at the helm) has orchestrated a political and judicial prosecution of free speech in Catalonia. The corrupt Partido Popular has destroyed jobs, tried to dismantle public services, going to bed with the local oligarchs." (more…)

Elodie Ponçon designed and printed these cute lighted figurines for WHITE, a wistful story about conformity and imperfection. (more…)

Nikkie of NikkieTutorials offer a step-by-step guide to creating a comic book homage to Diana Prince. Consider pairing this look with your custom-made Wonder Woman bathing suit.

If you’re looking for the perfect combination of snark and insight to get you through the Trump administration, look no further than Pod Save America. Hosted by former Obama White House staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Lovett, the twice-weekly podcast starts with a conversation about current political events and then moves on to interviews with politicians, analysts, and social justice advocates. One particularly strong recent episode featured an interview with Elizabeth Warren, who was funny and frank in her assessment of the Democratic Party.Pod Save America is the flagship series for a larger network of political podcasts, which also includes Tommy Vietor’s foreign policy-focused Pod Save The World and DeRay McKesson’s activist-focused Pod Save The People. You can learn more on the Crooked Media website.

Ten MTA cars have been outfitted as Subway Libraries by the New York Public Library: the in-car wifi connects riders to an e-reading repository containing "books, short stories, chapters and excerpts donated by publishers to the New York Public Library." (more…)

It's been more than two years since Harlem Cryptoparty made the connection between the struggle for racial justice in America and access to networks and encryption; the Trump election has strengthened that proposition, with a national network of Digital Security in the Era of Trump workshops where activists train each other on operational security. (more…)

The SF in SF reading series is back this Sunday at the American Bookbinders Museum, with Steven "Ariel" Boyett and Ken Mitchroney, authors of the outstanding new WWII/alternate history novel Fata Morgana. (more…)

Graphic designer José Bernabé explores a lot of wonderful concepts as part of his work, including this standalone project titled Organic Geometry. Note: if you click this link to see more, there's a supremely annoying autoplaying song embedded. (more…)

YouTuber Latheman demonstrates a nicely-designed V2 Stirling engine powered by two spirit lamps. Impressively smooth action on this beauty! (more…)

In her new series The FREQ Show, Anita Sarkeesian digs into insidious, pervasive Hollywood stereotypes about Muslims and Arabs, and how those stereotypes fuel real-world Islamophobia. As Sarkeesian puts it:To so many Americans, people in the Middle East have never been established as human beings with real lives, hopes, dreams, and struggles. When almost every story you’ve ever seen about a particular part of the world paints the people who live there as monolithic, evil, and scary, you’re a lot more likely to believe that it’s actually true.And it’s not just fictional representation that’s a problem. According to a study by University of Illinois professor Travis Dixon that analyzed 146 episodes of TV news programing between 2008 and 2012, 81 percent of the terrorist suspects discussed on TV news were Muslim. In real life, however, Muslims accounted for just 6 percent of actual FBI terrorist suspects during that time period.

An intense prison dramedy might not seem like the most natural fit for a kids’ show, but that didn’t stop Sesame Street from doing a pretty solid Orange Is The New Black parody anyway.

Lord Buckethead, standing against British Prime Minister Theresa May in the country's Wednesday general election, won a staggering 249 votes. The "intergalactic space lord" who "enjoys planet-conquering" and "dominating inferior species" (and UK TV light entertainment classic Lovejoy) fought for office in the Maidenhead, Kent constituency hitherto and henceforth considered a safe seat for May's Conservative party.Though Buckethead did well, May retained her seat by thousands of votes.https://twitter.com/breko/status/873002966537588737The nation as a whole, however, is unexpectedly up for grabs: May, convinced by opinion polls that a snap election would yield a landslide mandate for her Brexit agenda, instead found herself reeling against a resurgent Labour Party, led by the suddenly and unnervingly competent old-timey socialist Jeremy Corbyn. Though her party seems likely to retain the largest vote and perhaps a very slim majority in Parliament, her cred is toast. And Corbyn's success is energizing the left, and not just in Britain...https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/872972461981057024The far-right UKIP party seems to be utterly vanquished, too, a sweet outcome for anyone left of Mussolini.That said, given the assumption Corbyn's Labour party will hang parliament without quite gathering enough seats to topple the Tories, are you ready for Prime Minister Boris? Just imagine how great he'll look in photo ops with Trump.

We can thank global warming for at least one piece of good news: the retreating ice pack has revealed the remains of an alien space ship hidden for millennia beneath Antarctic snow.And that’s about as factual as this week’s tabloids get in yet another truth-challenged week’s reporting.JonBenet Ramsey’s killer has been found (allegedly a “jailed sex pervert” being protected by police), Priscilla Presley has called off her wedding to “sex perv” singer Tom Jones (as if that was ever going to happen), and Prince Charles’ wife Camilla “runs for her life” terrified that he will “shut her mouth ‘permanently’ like his murdered first wife Princess Diana,” according to the facts-be-damned ‘Globe.’Tiger Woods is in a “tragic death spiral” after his DUI arrest, and “friends fear the fallen idol may be suicidal,” claims an unnamed source.A word of advice to ‘Globe’ reporters: People don’t usually talk in rabid tabloid headlines, so it’s hard to believe that anyone actually said: “His shocking mug shot is the face of a man who’s lost everything and doesn’t know where to turn. There are fears he may kill himself!” His mug shot is far from “shocking” - it’s the face of a bleary-eyed guy who’d rather be back in bed letting his attorneys clean up his mess. And he knows exactly where to turn: to the right, for his profile mug shot photo.It’s enough to drive any editor to drink, which is perhaps why boozing celebrities remain an obsession at the ‘Globe,’ which claims that Hillary Clinton is “chugging two bottles of wine every day,” and that Prince Charles’ wife Camilla “has been guzzling anything she can get her hands on” as “constant fear fuels her nonstop drinking.” Former ‘Friends’ star Matthew Perry is “fat & sloppy” reports the ‘National Enquirer,’ world-renown as the ultimate arbiter of high fashion and healthy weight maintenance, where any celebrity who gains an extra pound must “diet or die,” or if they lose a single pound are condemned for “starving themselves to death.” Angelina Jolie took four of her children to visit the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, bringing along two other kids, prompting the ‘Enquirer’ to speculate that “she plans to grow her family without Brad.” Because there’s no way the additional children could simply be friends of her kids, is there?. And those three adults walking with Angie and the kids - they couldn’t possibly be those other children’s parents or caregivers, could they? Of course not. Angie probably plans to adopt the lot, plus any other kids she comes across at the Tar Pits.“A-Rod cheats on J Lo,” screams the ‘Enquirer’ cover, devoting four pages inside to the baseball star’s alleged affair with a “glamorous fitness model” who claims: “He made me dress as a schoolgirl!” The ‘Enquirer’ does appear to have rather a lot of highly incriminating sexually explicit texts and videos allegedly sent between A-Rod and “mistress” Lauren Hunter, but they only go to prove the banality of the affair and the duo’s depressing dearth of imagination and dreary inarticulacy. The language of love has been reduced to such stultifying prose as: “Are you home alone? . . . I miss you . . . Maybe face time tonight . . . Video video please. Want to see and hear you xxxx :)” Pure Shakespeare.Olivia Newton-John, having announced that her cancer has returned, inevitably joins the tabloids’ death watch. The ‘Enquirer’ says the singer “won’t last another year,” while the team of medically-trained experts at the ‘Globe’ categorically state that she has “7 months left.” ‘People’ magazine, which devotes its cover and six inside pages to Olivia’s “brave journey” says that her particular diagnosis "tends to be less life-threatening, so you can really live for a fairly long time . . . “ Maybe she should get a fourth medical opinion? ‘People’ magazine’s story is notable for its pretty pictures accompanied by a starkly generic brief two-sentence statement from Newton-John. The rest is all supportive praise from family and friends, and I can’t help wondering if this set of pictures was taken weeks or even months before her diagnosis.Thankfully we have the crack investigative team at ‘Us’ magazine to tell us that Jenna Dewan Tatum wore it best, that Olympics skater Apolo Ohno prefers tea over coffee, that actress Adrienne C. Moore carries lipstick, hand sanitizer and a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s 'The Prophet' in her Henri Bendel backpack, and that the stars are just like us: they swim, shop, drink and read books. Riveting.‘Us’ promises to have the week’s biggest scoop with its cover story on Ivanka Trump, under the headline: “Why I Disagree With my Dad.” Yet not only does Ivanka not explain why she disagrees with the president, but she hasn’t even spoken with ‘Us’ magazine, which relies on foraging for quotes from her past interviews and pulling them together to show that she takes a different stand than her father on such issues of LGBT rights, climate change, and aiding Syrian refugees, among others. But ‘Us’ never explains the promise of why she disagrees with The Donald. “I think he’s an unprincipled troglodyte who doesn’t give a damn about the suffering of others” is the quote on her lips that she never utters.Once again, the ’National Examiner’ remains in the vanguard of contemporary journalism, telling us that a "thieving dog” has been “collared at last,” that Lucille Ball’s TV sidekick Vivian Vance really did “love Lucy,” that “smarty-pants don’t wear any” (a survey purports to show that people with higher intellects are more likely to lounge around the house naked) and that an “immense UFO lay hidden in ice for eons!”The images of the alleged spaceship, found in Antarctica by a Russian UFO hunter, definitely looks like a space ship - because we all know what those look like, right? Or it could just be a rock . . but what are the odds of that? Astronomical.Onwards and downwards . . .

Nick from Adafruit writes, "The latest installment of Circuit Playground is here: the letter L. Learn about how an LED works with Adabot and the Circuit Playground components."

French president Emmanuel Macron launched a new website today encouraging scientists, researchers, and others concerned with climate change to move to France. And the name of the new website? Make Our Planet Great Again, of course.Macron is hoping to lead the world in climate change, and the new site asks anyone interested to apply for positions on the site, and to apply for immigration as well.According to Politico:“This is a signal sent to the rest of the world,” an adviser to Macron said, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity? “France wants to lead the fight against climate change and we want to attract people who share that aspiration.”The site, which cost €22,000 to build, is part of a public relations drive by Macron — who took office less than a month ago — to capitalize on Trump’s decision to withdraw from the climate change deal, and underscores his presidency’s exceptionally active approach to communications.Make Our Planet Great Again introduces itself with a statement from Macron: "On the 1st of June, President Donald Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, which gathered more than 190 countries united against climate change. This decision is unfortunate but it only reinforced our determination. Don’t let it weaken yours. We are ONE planet and Together, we can make a difference. France has always led fights for human rights. Today, more than ever, we are determined to lead (and win!) this battle on climate change."Vive le monde!

All you knitters or crocheters, this one's for you: temperature blankets. The basic idea is that, every single day for an entire year, you'll stitch up a new row (or square or circle or other shape). The color you choose is determined by the outside temperature. When I first came across one on Instagram, I thought it was something pregnant women did to kill time while waiting for baby to arrive. I thought these soon-to-be-moms were measuring their internal body temperature not the one outside. I can see now that I made it too complicated, and weird. To be fair, the crocheter of the one I saw had described it as her "daughter's temperature blanket."Anyway, it's a super cool and simple idea. And it leaves plenty of room for creativity.Most people start them at the beginning of the year, but you seem like a rebel to me. Start one today.

I don't know you real well but I feel certain you need a pair of these realistic. animal. paw. socks. There's a dog one and a cat one and if you flip either pair over, you'll see the bottoms are printed too. Quite the optical illusion!They're not pussyfooting around.(Pee-wee Herman)

The little plastic cat litter scoop I’d been using for a couple of years had gotten flimsy from use and would often buckle at the handle. The DuraScoop is made from cast aluminum and will never bend. It easily shaves hardened clumps of litter from that litter box that would cause a plastic scoop to fold in half. It’s actually a beautiful looking tool, too. If Raymond Loewy designed a scoop, it would look like this (maybe the handle wouldn’t be covered with textured plastic). Cleaning cat litter is an unpleasant daily chore for me, but the DuraScoop makes it much less unpleasant. I bought it last year for $13. It's $12 on Amazon right now.

A few days ago in North Dakota, storm chaser Mike Olbinski made this absolutely incredible time-lapse video of undulatus asperatus clouds. This class of cloud is the first cloud category added to the International Cloud Atlas since 1951. Olbinski writes:We were chasing northeast of Bismarck, North Dakota and as storms were dying out, we decided to go for a lone cell on the backside of a line of storms. We knew it had a hail core on it and we were hoping that we might get some nice sunset color at least on the storm as it moved past us, and hopefully some lightning bolts. But we had no idea what we were about to encounter. The clouds were taking on a very different, curvy, wave-like appearance and suddenly we knew what we were seeing. Undulatus asperatus clouds are a rare phenomenon and actually the newest named cloud type in over 60 years. I've seen tons of photos of them, but never anything like what we witnessed last night. We had a storm with hail in front of us and flashing lightning which was fantastic. But then we had this layer of undulatus clouds flowing across our view. Watching them was amazing already, but then the sun slowly appeared from behind some clouds to the west and lit up our storm like nothing we've ever seen before. We were like kids in a candy store. Running around, doing our best to capture it from every possible angle.

Here's a good video that describes the laws of thermodynamics in an intuitive way, and why perpetual motion machines won't work.

(via @Pickover)

MIT researchers designed athletic clothing that's laden with bacterial cells that enable vents in the garment to automatically open up when you start to sweat. From Smithsonian:(MIT bioengineer Wen) Wang and her team found the optimal construction was a layer of latex sandwiched by two thin layers of bacterial cells, each 1 to 5 microns thick, around the diameter of a red blood cell and 1/15th the width of a human hair. These were formed into flaps, and attached to the back of a workout garment. When the wearer sweats, the cells on the outside remain the same, but the cells on the side facing the body absorb moisture and expand, forcing the flaps open.initially, they used a bacteria called Bacillus subtilis natto, better known as the main component of the gooey, stringy, pungent Japanese food called nattō. Ozgur Sahin, an associate professor of biological sciences and physics at Columbia University, has been using B. subtilis natto in his (unrelated) research into bacteria-using materials because of its tough, strong spores. Wang adopted it because she saw it worked, and because it’s safe enough to be used in food....One big challenge though is that it doesn't hold up to a wash cycle. Still, Wang says, "This kind of thinking, that cloth can actually be dynamic and responsive, and that response is better for its functions, is generally an exciting aspect of the work, and it can potentially be applied in many other areas.”https://vimeo.com/142212881

Using cardboard, hot-glue, popsicle sticks, a pencil, and rubber bands, this guy makes a working coin-operated gumball machine. Good work![via]

SpongeBob SquarePants has been a family favorite in our home for many years. It was fun to see this supercut of sly jokes intended for grownups to enjoy, while the true meaning skated over young'un's heads.[via]

National Taiwan University of Arts students created this genius piece of activist art, popsicles made from the water of polluted local sources. From the translated project description:We personally take Taiwan’s 100 polluted water sources, made it into popsicles, because the popsicles are not easy to save, we will re-engrave the likeness into a 1:1 poly model to do the show, through the beautiful packaging and content of the sense of contrast to convey that pure water is important, and Then we would like to ask you is: would you want to eat a beautiful frozen polluted puddle?Polluted Water Popsicles (Facebook via Laughing Squid)

Newspeak House (AKA NWSPK) is a co-working space (with a few bedrooms!) in East London that houses an eclectic mix of civic hackers: people working to make British (and global) democracy more responsive, more representative, and more transparent. (more…)

The election, for Trump, will never be over, and today he's running against former FBI Director James Comey. Comey is testifying today that the president is (in brief) a lying weirdo who wanted him to ask for his job, to pledge loyalty, to clear him publicly, and to end the investigation into his Russian-entangled surrogates. The Great America Alliance, a pro-Trump political action committee, is running a campaign-style ad against Comey today depicting him as a showboater who struggles with the facts.