Filmmaker Neill Blompkamp (of District 9 and Chappie fame) is producing a series of experimental short movies to be released on Steam and YouTube.He'd teased the idea in a tweet posted in April, and the response was good enough to get the green light, with the director promising a level of transparency and public collaboration rarely seen in Hollywood.https://twitter.com/NeillBlomkamp/status/866751232689315842Here's a teaser:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIYBQ4P9usEmbedded up top is the "Presidential Motorcade" clip Blomkamp released during the presidential election campaign, with its freaky gold nightmare limousine crawling along to 14 seconds of tense synthetic murmurs. More!

Loot Crate is a subscription service that delivers a box of curated pop culture goods to your doorstep. To sample their geeky wares, you can order a single mystery box exclusively from the Boing Boing Store.Each month Loot Crate sends you 6-7 unique items and apparel, including collectibles, books, and t-shirts. Pulling inspiration from all over the vast landscape of fandom, they pack interesting stuff for geeks of all stripes, from retro gamers to comic book connoisseurs. It’s like having a nerdy pen pal who constantly sends you hand-picked gifts.Try this Loot Crate mystery bundle to get a taste of all the awesome future stuff you can add to your collection. This package usually costs $50, but you can get a box from our store for just $25.

Though this brightly colored smoothie looks like the infamous Starbucks treat, it surprisingly contains no artificial ingredients.

Rod McCullom at Undark has a terrific overview of the perpetual "virtual lineup," where half of all American adults "are enrolled in unregulated facial recognition networks used by state and local law enforcement agencies." (more…)

A 145-meter spokeless Ferris wheel just opened in Weifang, China. Built on a bridge spanning the Bailaing River, it's about ten meters taller than the London Eye, a spoked Ferris wheel. (more…)

TED-Ed offers a brief guide to history’s deadliest colors, from lead white in Ancient Greece to “Paris Green” in the 18th century.

Though animals born with one eye rarely survive into adulthood, so far this young goat is doing better than expected.

Journalist Ammar Alwaely was filming with a colleague when a bullet tore through his shoulder-mounted GoPro, deflecting it from tearing through him. Contains plenty of NSFW swearing, which seems entirely appropriate. (more…)

It’s time for the Clone Club to say goodbye in Orphan Black's fifth and final season, which debuts on BBC America on June 10.

Last night's kick-off event for the UK Walkaway tour was brilliant, thanks to the magic combination of the excellent Tim Harford, the excellent people of Oxford, and the excellent booksellers at Blackwells. (more…)

Evidently, many more people eat gas station nachos than I had previously considered possible. A Sacramento, California area botulism outbreak has been traced back to folks who enjoyed the tasty treat at a local refueling station.Via NBC:Gas station nacho cheese that sickened 10 people and killed one of them was contaminated with botulinum toxin, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) confirmed Monday."The nacho cheese sauce was removed from sale on May 5. (The California Department of Public Health) believes there is no continuing risk to the public," the agency said in a statement."While there are still unanswered questions about this outbreak, these tragic illnesses are important reminders to be vigilant about food safety," said CDPH Director Dr. Karen Smith. "As we head into the summer barbecue season, both indoor and outdoor chefs need to be on guard against all foodborne illnesses."Previously on Boing Boing:Nacho is the greatest of all orange cheeses

When I saw this keyboard on sale for $95 I had to order one.This is a solidly made, lovely to look at, mechanical keyboard. It types very well and looks tremendous -- sadly my desk is 3" deep with scattered paperwork and the style is lost on me. I like it anyways.KrBn Retro Circle Keycap Mechanical Keyboard LED Backlit with Aluminum Body Blue Switch Full Size (104 Key) via Amazon

There are reports of one or more 'huge bangs' followed by multiple casualties and injuries and mass panic at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in the UK. Police are treating it as a possible terrorism incident, with a suicide bomber suspected. Authorities are setting up a 'casualty bureau,' which suggests a large number of people were killed. Many of the concert-goers were children with their parents. (more…)

Fantastic Fiction at KGB is a monthly reading series hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, held on the third Wednesday of every month at the famous KGB Bar in Manhattan. They are looking to fund several more years of their popular reading series via a Kickstarter fundraiser, running from May 17th through June 14th, 2017. (more…)

Photographer Robert Goetzfried photographed some of the most magnificent bowling alleys in Germany. (more…)

Amazon is selling certified refurbished Echo Dots for $38. That's a great price for a gadget that plays podcasts, audiobooks, music, NPR updates, tells you the weather, and settles arguments about whether or not Nixon-era Secretaries of State are still alive. I use my Dot many times a day. It has a decent built-in speaker and the microphones (it has 7) can pick up and recognize what I'm saying with amazing accuracy even when I'm across the room.

Just for kicks, Australian auto system manufacturer AXT Turbo put a fidget spinner in a vice and blasted it with an air compressor: We were playing around with the fidget spinner after work, seeing how fast and what the structural integrity of the unit is. We first started with finger on it until it got a little hot. Then we put in in a vice. After it let go, we calculated it was turning 50000 plus RPM.(via Laughing Squid)

Bidets have never caught on in the United States, perceived as a fixture meant for posh hotels an prissy home bathrooms. Of course they're quite the norm in Europe, Japan, and other regions. But not only are bidets more sanitary than toilet paper, they're actually much more eco-conscious. From Scientific American:Justin Thomas, editor of the website metaefficient.com, considers bidets to be “a key green technology” because they eliminate the use of toilet paper. According to his analysis, Americans use 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper every year, representing the pulping of some 15 million trees. Says Thomas: “This also involves 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to produce the paper and 253,000 tons of chlorine for bleaching.” He adds that manufacturing requires about 17.3 terawatts of electricity annually and that significant amounts of energy and materials are used in packaging and in transportation to retail outlets.To those who say that bidets waste water, advocates counter that the amount is trivial compared to how much water we use to produce toilet paper in the first place.This non-electric Greenco Bidet is $25 on Amazon and has many adoring fans.

Netflix brings us a prequel series to the Jim Henson Company's epic The Dark Crystal.

I didn't know that there was a famous copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. It's called "Prado's version" and has been on display in Madrid's Museo del Prado since 1819. According to Wikipedia, it was "considered for decades a worthless copy. However, after its restoration in 2012, the Prado's Mona Lisa was claimed to be the earliest replica of Leonardo's masterpiece." In fact, "the replica was discovered to be possibly painted simultaneously by a student of Leonardo in the same studio where da Vinci painted his own Mona Lisa." Over at Reddit, where I learned about this, commenters overwhelmingly prefer the Prado version:...much more pleasingHer neck is more elegant and the folds in the clothing are incredibleAt least Prado managed to capture some eye brows!...she has an attitudeThe one on the left is way betterI like the folds better with the Prado.I prefer the Prado version, the face is much cuter.Just toss the DaVinci one away, I say. The one on the left is much nicer.Looks like the student surpassed the teacherWhat do you think?

Worst vacay ever.First Lady Melania Trump swatting away president Donald Trump's hand on the tarmac in IsraelVideo of the couple arriving at an airport in Israel shows President Donald Trump reaching out to hold his wife’s hand. But Melania, who was apparently not interested in touching her husband at that moment, appears to slap the president’s hand.

A 4x4 sinkhole has opened up in front of Mar-a-Lago on Southern Boulevard in Palm Beach, FL. It hasn't swallowed anything up, so as far as sinkholes go, it doesn't seem major. But it's inspired some fun tweets:For more details, here's the scoop from 25WPBF News:https://youtu.be/tp7uy71iaJk?t=15sThanks The Washington Post!

"Would you mind showing me evidence of any negative thing any sea lion has ever done to you?" This girl is one of the lucky few to be able to shut up a sea lion.

This spinning mushroom toy is going to kill somebody one of these days.This is the bomb if you want to clear your backyard for kids... from oddlyweird

I was at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend. One of my favorite things was a collection of simple handmade puzzles sitting on a table under an umbrella, away from the action. A Russian woman named Tatiana Ginzburg told me that the puzzles were part of some kind of mind enlightenment group she started. When I got back home I looked her up and found her website, Global Enlightenment.I picked up the puzzle shown in the photo here. It's two nails, bent in such a way that the nails are linked. I spent about 15 minutes trying to disentangle them. I bought it for $10 and as I was walking away from the table, accidentally separated them. It took 15 minutes of trial and error to get them linked again. I spent the rest of Maker Faire fiddling with them. Every hour or so I was able to get them apart, but I didn't know how I did it. Last night when I got back home, I stayed up late and finally figured it out. I can get them unlinked in a few seconds. I still haven't figured out how to easily get them back together. I'll work on it tonight. I love this thing.I don't know where you can buy this exact kind of nail puzzle. This one looks similar, though.

I just got back from Maker Faire in San Mateo workshop, where I showed how to make a 1-string diddley bow in 15 minutes. I got back home and found this new video by musician Justin Johnson playing a cool snake-themed 2-string diddley bow. He gets some great sounds out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfv5grvG5qwFor years, Anita Sarkeesian and her crew at Feminist Frequency (previously) have been striking terror into the hearts of reactionary assholes by saying calm, smart, funny, sensible and insightful things about how video games reveal our social attitudes. (more…)

When a jackass driver going full speed on a Los Angeles freeway doesn't look before illegally crossing into a carpool lane and thus cuts off a motorcycle, the motorcycle driver doesn't usually live to talk about what happened next. But watch how this lucky motorcyclist lands (and how clueless the driver continues to be).

Facebook was caught offering advertisers a direct line to psychologically vulnerable teens. Nitasha Tiku writes that this exposes the deeper danger of its insight into our lives: it's not the data that's the problem, it's how it could be "weaponized in ways those users cannot see, and would never knowingly allow."The company had offered advertisers the opportunity to target 6.4 million younger users, some only 14 years old, during moments of psychological vulnerability, such as when they felt “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” and like a “failure.” ... If the users in question weren’t teenagers—or if the emotion wasn’t insecurity—Facebook’s public statement might have been sufficient; the uproar from privacy advocates may have been duly noted, then promptly forgotten.Instead, as Kathryn Montgomery, a professor at American University and the director of the school’s communications studies division—who is married to Chester—tells WIRED, The Australian’s report served as “a flashpoint that enables you to glimpse Facebook’s inner workings, which in many ways is about monetization of moods.”As Tiku points out: "It’s not a dystopian nightmare. It’s just a few clicks away from the status quo."The fences you put up are meaningless if Facebook owns the land.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5d9BrLN5K4

President Trump slips into bliss with his pals Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sis. Here's the "real" story:Trump attended the opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology on Sunday alongside his host, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, reported the state-run Saudi Press Agency.As the lights dimmed, the three leaders officially "activated" the new center by placing their hands on an illuminated globe as a four-minute introduction video displayed on large screens behind them, according to local media.(CNN)

Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds is a new MIT Press book commemorating the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Shelley's seminal novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus." (more…)

At Hyperallergic, BB pal Mark Dery mourns the loss of "the Internet's kitschiest, most surreal" flea market and laments its new role as "the world's largest mall." (In the 1920s,) the Surrealists preferred “Les Puces,” as the flea markets on the outskirts of Paris were called. Andre Breton, the group’s self-appointed leader, wrote in his novel Nadja that the market at Saint-Ouen was “an almost forbidden world of sudden parallels” and “petrifying coincidences,” where unexpected encounters with dreamlike objects lurked around every corner.EBay, the first e-commerce site, was until recently the web’s kitschier, crummier answer to (cultural critic Walter) Benjamin’s arcades or Breton’s Saint-Ouen. In its early years, its hit-or-miss search engine was conducive to close encounters of the absurd kind. Stumbling around the site, you’d find yourself in some obscure corner, staring in slack-jawed amazement at William Shatner’s kidney stone (auctioned off in 2006 for $25,000) or a Lilliputian suit of armor handcrafted to guinea-pig proportions, guaranteed to keep the dauntless rodent “protected and secure in all situations.” Unlike its sleeker competitor, Amazon, whose algorithms ensure you only see things like those you’ve already seen, eBay seemed, for a while, to facilitate chance meetings with the offbeat and the downright bizarre.Lists of the most curious, absurd, abject, and grotesque eBay auctions have taken their place in the folklore of consumer culture: the grilled cheese sandwich miraculously emblazoned with an apparition of the Virgin Mary, which sold for $28,000; four golf balls (not just any golf balls; they’d been surgically removed from the belly of a python, who’d mistaken them for hen’s eggs); your advertising slogan tattooed, for $10,000, on some cash-strapped woman’s forehead; a corn flake shaped like the state of Illinois; a Dorito shaped like the pope’s miter; the meaning of life, on offer from a seller who claimed to have “discovered the reason for our existence” and was “happy to share this information with the highest bidder” (which he did, for the dispiritingly small sum of $3.26)."Mourning eBay’s Days as the Internet’s Kitschiest, Most Surreal Mall" (Hyperallergic)

The Science Fiction Writers of America have announced the 2017 Nebula Award winners, including two of my favorite books of 2016: Charlie Jane Anders's wonderful debut All the Birds in the Sky and Seanan McGuire's outstanding novella, Every Heart a Doorway. (more…)

Fox News founder Roger Ailes was forced out of the company last year by his bosses in the Murdoch family after being exposed. He died last week at the age of 77. Then his teenage son, Zachary Ailes, honored the old man's memory by threatening his accusers at his eulogy with a quote from Tombstone.Zachary pledged to fight to clear his father’s name after a series of sexual harassment allegations led to his ultimate ouster from Fox News.“I want all the people who betrayed my father to know that I’m coming after them,” Zachary Ailes said during a speech at the ceremony, “and hell is coming with me.”Hey, at least he knows where dad is.

Esther Longhurst and Jessica Messenger of the improv group Sense and Spontaneity salute Jane Austen’s number one dreamboat, Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Lane Loomis posted a scary story about how manners and expectations lead us into danger, especially when one person has all of one and none of the other.I walked down to the front door of my building and there was a man there who looked nothing like “Jamie”. The thing about being a woman is that pleasing people is in your blood. From a young age you’re taught that not being liked by a guy is the worst possible thing. No one tells you why this is so bad, or even what would happen that’s so terrible about a guy not liking you. You just have this instinct to do it. It’s hard to go against.So I saw this guy down there, and I had studied Jamie’s Tinder photos for the last hour since we started talking. I knew it wasn’t the same guy and I was confused about it. But I also didn’t turn around and go lock myself in my apartment. I did the stupid thing. I did the thing that women do and I went down and opened the door and smiled at him.

Animator Miao Jing created Hills Beyond a River, which follows several animals traveling through a stylized geometric landscape. Great full-screen with headphones! (more…)

The Instagram account GoldenRetrievers shared this adorable footage shot by GoldenLeia.https://www.instagram.com/p/BNj4mgOB39Z/

Bombs away!

Because ladybug hindwings are covered by an opaque outer shell called an elytra, scientists were not sure how the wings' folding mechanism worked until Kazuya Saito created a clear replacement shell that allowed them to film the process in super slow-motion. (more…)

Usually, drones and hawks don't get along so well, but this hovering hawk didn't mind being filmed. (more…)

Yes, yes there is. The ultraportable Twisty Glass Mini boasts all of the simplicity of its forebear, while fitting just a little bit better in your pocket.The Mini is perfect for casual smokers, and anyone who doesn’t have the patience or fine motor skill for rolling papers. This piece keeps the convenient design of its older sibling’s characteristic corkscrew in a package that’s smaller than a standard Bic lighter.Using the Mini is simple—after you fill the glass tube with your choice of herb, just screw in the center section to easily expel ashes with and queue up more with a quick twist. It holds up to a half gram, and offers consistently smooth hits with a smaller cherry, thanks to the tube’s compact shape.This pipe usually retails for over $50, but you can pick up the Twisty Glass Mini here for 21% off at $39.99.

I'm in the UK for the British Walkaway tour, which kicks off tonight at 7PM in Oxford where I'll be in conversation with Tim Harford at Blackwells. (more…)

Thailand's insane lese majeste laws make it radioactively illegal to criticize the royal family, reflecting a profound insecurity about the legitimacy of the ruling elites there that can only be satisfied through blanket censorship orders whenever one of the royals does something ridiculous, cruel or both (this happens a lot). (more…)

Zeynep Tufekci (previously) is one of the most consistently astute, nuanced commenters on networked politics and revolutions, someone who's been literally on the front lines around the world. In a new book called Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, she sets out a thesis that (as the title suggests) explores the trade offs that political movements make when they use fluid, improvisational networks to organize themselves, instead of hierarchical, traditional organizations. (more…)

Every Ozimal digirabbit in the venerable virtual world Second Life will starve to death (well, permanent hibernation) this week because a legal threat has shut down their food-server, and the virtual pets are designed so that they can only eat DRM-locked food, so the official food server's shutdown has doomed them all. (more…)

While many newer smartphones boast decent water resistance, most of us are still stuck with the kind of handsets that need to spend the night in a bowl of rice when they get wet. If you want to enjoy your favorite podcasts in the shower but are holding out for your next phone upgrade, this XXL Shower Speaker is a perfect bathroom accoutrement.This speaker includes a handy suction cup for sticking it anywhere inside the shower. It puts out 3 watts of crystal-clear audio, with a battery that lasts almost a month. Its face has the expected array of playback and phone-answering controls, and is compatible with any bluetooth 4.0-capable device.You can get one of these dead-simple XXL shower speakers right now in our store.

Rudy Carcamo-Carranza was an undocumented restaurant worker in Michigan wanted for a DUI and a hit-and-run; the FBI and ICE used IMSI catchers -- powerful, secretive cellphone tracking tools that the agencies bill as a kind of superweapon in the war on terror -- to catch him and put him up for deportation. (more…)

Welp. (more…)

Whoever created the Wcry ransomware worm -- which uses a leaked NSA cyberweapon to spread like wildfire -- included a killswitch: newly infected systems check to see if a non-existent domain is active, and if it is, they fall dormant, ceasing their relentless propagation. (more…)