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Last week, Astral Pipes released a commercial in India that addresses the lack of our most basic needs: privacy when urinating and defecating. This is especially important for women, who take a risk every time they venture out to relieve themselves in nature. In the ad, a group of men in their pajamas go out to a field to do their business, when suddenly they are surrounded by a bunch of chanting women, who shame the men and even snap photos of them with an cel phone. When the men plead with them to consider their honor, the women respond, "Oh, really? When we are assaulted or raped because we have to go to the field in the cover of darkness to relieve ourselves, what happens to privacy or honor?" According to NPR:More than 500 million people — representing more than half of the world's toilet-less people – live in India. According to UNICEF, India has nearly 200,000 diarrheal deaths yearly among children under age five, the highest number in the world. Open defecation is a contributing factor.And without private toilets, the health of women and girls suffers, too. Many develop genitourinary infections from not urinating frequently enough — and from poor hygiene during menstruation.The U.N. report also says the lack of private toilets exposes women to physical attacks and even natural dangers like animal attacks and snake bites. Stories of girls being assaulted when they go to do their business in the fields abound.The ad has gone viral on YouTube, at almost 600,000 views.

I could not resist a $9 Death Star weed grinder.It looks like the Death Star and it grinds weed! Mission accomplished. I am not sure I will use it very often, but this grinder will sit next to the headpiece for the Staff of Ra in my living room. Its a cool knickknack for $9.The 'heavy feeling' zinc alloy feels heavy. You have the choice of leaving a screen in and having the weed all sit in the grinder teeth, and kief falling in a holding cell -- OR you can remove the screen and have the weed all just fall together! Not a lot to this baby.This item appears to be the same as more expensive variants of the Death Star grinder, down to the packaging. This version does not come with the cleaning tools that I doubt you'll really want.Formax420 Death Star Grinder Star War Round Grinder 3 Pieces Spice Mill 1.9 inch via Amazon

Lovely, lovely video.

The peace and quiet and the camera operator's calm framing of the shot really make it. In a few days this will have gone viral, covered in jaunty music, giant text, and an inane voiceover.

The Nation's outstanding roundtable  What Will Kill Neoliberalism? has many admirable interventions (including a notable one from Paul "Postcapitalism" Mason), but the one that got me right between the eyes was William Darity, Jr's "A Revolution of Managers." (more…)

UK Theresa May called snap UK elections (after promising not to) in order to consolidate power in her own party, shutting up the MPs who didn't fall into line with her policies -- this was the same logic behind her predecessor David Cameron's decision to call a referendum on Brexit, and both banked on the idea that the UK electorate wasn't willing to vote for an "unthinkable" alternative in order to tell the establishment to go fuck itself. (more…)

MinuteEarth refutes a common saying with some geopolitical culinary history.

From Nancy Sinatra to Beyoncé, Nerdist uses songs by some of the greatest female artists to salute the most famous female superhero, Wonder Woman.[via The Verge]

Aerial photographer Andy Yeung just released Walled City, a look at how Hong Kong's infamous dense and vertical city within a city resonates in buildings that still stand today. (more…)

If you don’t want to get stuck footing the bill for a hit and run, this dashboard-mounted camera offers up to 2K resolution to make sure you always have a reliable witness, and it’s available in the Boing Boing Store for 30% off it’s usual price.The PapaGo mounts unobtrusively to your windshield to see everything in its 175º ultra-wide viewing angle. It supports recordings up to 12 hours in length onto a micro SD card, and can be set to activate automatically from nearby motion. To prevent against unexpected data loss, the included G-sensor ensures files are saved in the event of a collision.You can pick up the PapaGo Dash Cam in the Boing Boing Store for $124.99.

Zachary Zmith writes, "A Kickstarter is funding beautifully-designed and illustrated editions of classic stories, with illustrations from Paul Pope, Yuko Shimizu and Bill Sienkiewicz. They have already met their initial goal to fund a version of Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' with art by Paul Pope. If they reach $100k, Bill Sienkiewicz will illustrate H.G. Wells' vivisection classic." (more…)

Half a million fake, identical anti-Net Neutrality comments were posted on the FCC's docket on killing Net Neutrality, using identities that appear to have been stolen from a voter registration breach. (more…)

Dan Hon (previously) took note of a sponsored tweet in The Atlantic's Twitter feed: "SPONSORED: The future city: What changes when everything is connected? #MSFTCloud #ad" and decided to have a go at answering the question. The results were fantastic. (more…)

Tigerswan, a secretive private mercenary company, was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to run campaigns against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in five states, including states in which they were not licensed to operate -- the measures they deployed were developed as counterterrorism tactics, including (more…)

On Friday, a variety of news outlets around the world published the Malta Files, a cache of 150,000 documents leaked "from a Malta-based provider of legal, financial and corporate services," revealing, among other things, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was secretly given a $25M oil tanker (!) by Azeri billionaire Mübariz Mansimov, a "friend" of Trump's who was present at the inauguration. (more…)

On her Instagram, Andrea Reed of Girl Grey Beauty creates gorgeously complex lip designs that are truly wearable art. Here are some of my favorites:https://www.instagram.com/p/BUCvMiNgKCN/https://www.instagram.com/p/BO5M5uMA0oT/https://www.instagram.com/p/BNuoiu8APj8/https://www.instagram.com/p/BLRW-flg5nm/https://www.instagram.com/p/BFosvMGDBPo/https://www.instagram.com/p/BFPKX62DBD0/https://www.instagram.com/p/BEgpnhRjBOQ/https://www.instagram.com/p/BCgGYg6jBNe/https://www.instagram.com/p/BCidqqMjBEg/You can find more designs on Reed’s Instagram and you can watch her process in action over on her YouTube page:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ABPtXChgKw

Last month, musician and YouTube superstar Ronald Jenkees dropped his latest album Rhodes Deep. In honor of this delight, fan Ben Luce created this terrific animation called Quest for the Jam. (more…)

While some people still maintain that everything in Apple’s walled garden “just works” and is immune to the rampant malware of the Windows world, the reality is different. The Mac’s growing market share has made it a much more viable target for malicious actors, and its built-in tools aren’t always enough to fix things. Drive Genius 5 gives your startup disk a set of robust cleaning tools, and it’s currently available in the Boing Boing Store.Drive Genius keeps your Mac running efficiently by purging unnecessary files. It helps you find large files eating up hard drive space, and monitors your file system for corruption to prevent data loss. It offers a simple tool for creating a bootable backup, so you won’t lose hours in recovery time if your machine stops working unexpectedly. Drive Genius also automatically scans and cleans malware to keep your Mac safe from unseen threats.Usually $99, you can get Drive Genius 5 for $39 here in our store.

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Hey, who knew? The reporter-beating crazed thug (and now Congressjerk!) Greg Gianforte is part of a long and dishonorable tradition of American Congressional reps who lashed out at the press! (more…)

Beatboxer Tom Thum had ENT doctor and laryngeal surgeon Dr Matthew Broadhurst shine an endoscopic camera down his throat while beatboxing: "I wanted to find out how my larynx functioned when beatboxing compared to how it functions normally with speech, and whether or not there were any abnormalities in my laryngeal anatomy. I also had very little idea of what the inside of my throat and all my noise producing mechanisms actually looked like. The results were fascinating yet horrifyingly graphic and will probably make a few people spew in their laps." (via JWZ)

Gastric bypass surgery is remarkably effective at promoting weight-loss (it cuts the long-term risk of early death from morbid obesity by 40%), and it's long been presumed that the major action by which it worked was that, by bypassing the parts of the gut where most food absorbtion takes place, it limited the calories that subjects' bodies could harvest from the food they ate. (more…)

Did you think you got away clean when you ate at Chipotle without dying of listeria? Not so fast! (more…)

...it would look like this. Made from 100% medical grade stainless steel, it "includes a tool with a unique spring and spiral design that can effectively relieve itching and massage the ear canal while cleaning." Look at the different handle design on each pick! It's only $8! I can't think of a better way to perforate my eardrum.

Cody Xiong from North Carolina should have kept his mouth shut, but when police came to his door to ask about something unrelated, the paranoid poppy grower said, "I guess you're here for the opium."This led police to discover over an acre of poppy plants, worth about $500 million, in Xiong's backyard.According to Time:Investigators believe the plants were being harvested in Xiong's isolated rural lot, before being shipped elsewhere. Opium poppies are used to make opium, morphine, codeine and heroin, and police estimated that the haul consisted of over 2,000 pounds of the plant.Xiong was arrested at the site and charged with manufacturing a Schedule II drug and trafficking in opium, both felonies. He was later released from jail after posting $45,000 bail.Image: Magnus Manske

Thanks to surveillance video, Port St. Lucie, Florida police have identified the imbecile who yanked the plug of a bouncy house at a kid's birthday party, deflating it with toddlers inside. From Today:"We believe that he thinks that he was pulling the plug to the DJ booth, but it didn't, it pulled the plug to the bounce house," Master Sgt. Frank Sabol of the Port St. Lucie Police Department said...Police have identified the man but have not released his name. They attempted to question him, but said he was uncooperative. He could potentially be charged with trespassing.

In 2012, I wrote about a movie called Compliance, a psychological thriller based on a true event in which a sociopath pretending to be a cop called a fast food joint and convinced the manager to do horrific things to a young employee.A very similar incident happened this month in Devon, England. An unknown man called a store manager and, pretending to be from corporate headquarters, told the manager to close the shop for a special competition. The manager obeyed and asked the only two shoppers in the store at the time to come to the back room and speak to the caller. The shoppers -- a mother (Pamela, 55) and her daughter (Naomi, 24) -- were told they could win £3,000 at a store by performing a series of stunts. From Devon Live:They were then taken by the manager into the store room at the back of the shop, where they spoke to the caller.Naomi told DevonLive: "He was asking us who were and where we worked and stuff like that, but I obviously didn't want to disclose where I worked so I just said I worked in a café."The prank caller, who managed to dupe both the staff and Naomi and her mother, then made them carry out a serious of "humiliating and embarrassing" tasks around the store.The manager and another member of staff were told to tie string around Naomi and Pamela's ears, throw water over them, draw on their faces with pens and make them crawl around the store on their hands and knees.The mother and daughter were also ridden like horses around the store and told to lick the staff's feet.Throughout the hoax Naomi and her mother were referred to by the two female members of staff as "ugly and "beast" and in return had to refer to the manager as "beautiful lady."Eventually the shoppers realized that there was no competition and went to the police. The store, Poundworld, offered them a £200 gift card.The caller struck again at another store in Bitterne, Southampton, with similar results.Image: Mtaylor848/Wikipedia

In case you missed it, last December the FDA gave Del Monte Fresh Produce permission to sell genetically modified pineapples in the United States. But up until recently, most people hadn't had the chance to feast their eyes on the pink pineapple. Now, thanks to Instagram, we get a sneak preview of what these pineapples – which are sweeter than the yellow variety – look like. Can you tell me if they are pineapple 🍍 or flowers? #pineapple #flowers #flowerporn #flowerlove #instamood #instagood #instaflower #fleur #fleurs #flowerstagram #flowermarket #flowerstagram #pink #pinkpineapple A post shared by Celia Chan (@celia723) on May 3, 2017 at 2:29am PDT #doleplantation #pinkpineapple A post shared by Michelle Blahay (@mblahay) on May 15, 2017 at 7:36pm PDT We are so ready for some pink piña coladas 😍 These babies are popping up everywhere - fingers crossed they'll be in a grocery store near us soon! #pinkisthenewblack #pinkpineapple A post shared by The Gourmand and Gourmet (@gourmandgourmet) on Jan 5, 2017 at 9:06pm PSTAccording to Oddity Central:Del Monte Fresh Produce, one of the world’s largest produce suppliers, has been working on pink pineapple for over a decade, and in December of last year, the company got permission from the FDA to sell them in the United States. Del Monte has already partnered with Dole, to have the new pink fruit grown in Costa Rica and Hawaii, and while it hasn’t reached store shelves just yet, photos of the unusual-looking pineapple have been popping up on online social networks lately.And more on the subject of pink pineapples from United New International on YouTube:https://youtu.be/J5PjqnKM4AU

How many plastic bread bag clips does Yakima, Washington's Kwik Lok sell annually? "It’s in the billions," says the company's sales coordinator Leigh Anne Whathen. According to Kwik Lok, company founder Floyd Paxton dreamt up the idea in 1954. I wonder if he imagined their other popular use as a makeshift guitar pick. From Atlas Obscura:As the story goes, while he was on the plane, Paxton was eating a package of complimentary nuts, and he realized he didn’t have a way to close them if he wanted to save some for later. As a solution, he took out a pen knife and hand-carved the first bread clip out of a credit card (in some tellings, it was an expired credit card)...According to Whathen, Kwik Lok secured a patent on their little innovation in the early days of the company, and to this day, Kwik Lok remains one of the only manufacturers of bread clips in the world. Whathen says that the only other firm she’s aware of is a European competitor called Schutte. Kwik Lok also has the distinction of still being owned by Paxton’s descendants. Floyd’s son, Jerre, ran the company until his death in 2015, and today it is owned by two of Jerre’s daughters. “We’re still going strong,” says Whathen."Most of the World’s Bread Clips Are Made by a Single Company" (Atlas Obscura)(image: DANIELGAMAGE/CC BY-SA 3.0)

This has to be one of the most impossible shirts I've ever considered wearing!Scotty looks worried.Star Trek Men's Original Crew Mens Tank White via Amazon

Brian Brandt, age 40, was wearing full body armor as he plowed into the Moonlite Bunny Ranch yesterday with a stolen 18-wheeler, causing extensive damage to the property. Seems like the Reno, NV man was holding a grudge against the brothel, which was featured in the reality TV show CatHouse, since his "bad experience" 20 years ago.Fortunately, nobody, including 30 prostitutes, 10 customers, and 5 other employees of the brothel, were hurt.According to The Washington Post:Brothel owner Dennis Hof told the Association Press that none of the business’s five employees, 30 female prostitutes and 10 customers inside were hurt during the crash, which occurred just after 4 a.m.In tweets after the incident, Hof said that the women were “fine” and “pouring free cocktails.” ...Brandt was a trucker with the company and had been fired in recent months for what Blashfield described as inappropriate behavior.Authorities have not revealed a motive, but News 4 reported that the station received a call from a man who identified himself as Brian Brandt in early May. The man on the call was upset, the TV station reported, and claimed that 20 years ago he had a bad experience at BunnyRanch.Brandt "was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, destruction of property and possession of stolen property."Image: Joseph Conrad

https://youtu.be/27dnddCq5gcHere's how to make web page with cute dog photos, taught by Satan!

I'm trying to find the source video for this animated gif of an artist putting the finishing touches on an amazingly lifelike sculpture of a man.[via]Realistic sculpture

https://youtu.be/fwHFwBNjiTcSOG's $60 Sync II "wearable belt buckle" multitool isn't the only multitool/buckle on the market, but it does add a couple very sensible innovations, like a clip-on/clip-off base that lets you use your tool without taking off your belt, and a squared-off form factor (like a pair of folding travel sewing scissors) that adapts the folded tool for the buckle form-factor. (more…)

From Nasa's Juno probe:This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection.

Grant Thompson of “The King Of Random” conducts a simple experiment to answer a viewer’s question: Will food coloring dye liquid nitrogen or just freeze? Science!

In this delightful Instagram, Hugh Jackman shares an unexpected sight in Tokyo. The best part is just how excited he gets.

Frederik Vanhoutte describes himself as a creative coder who works in the field of generative art. His site W:BLUT has lots of cool little experiments. Above, Big Red I, a longer fractal experiment that evokes FRank Lloyd Wright. (more…)

Just in time for the return of Twin Peaks, the YouTube channel Cocktail Chemistry whips up two different versions of the “Black Yukon Sucker Punch,” a colorful drink Judge Sternwood orders in season two.

Swiss art school Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) just created a nifty little device called Bouquet that lets users smell colors while looking at visual art. (more…)

Kathryn from Do It On A Dime demonstrates how to make a disaster preparedness kit on a budget.

HYPNO-VISTA was an experimental opening sequence used in the late 1950s on a few horror movies. The film would be spliced to start with a hypnotist practicing that dark art. (more…)

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Mind Over Munch’s Alyssia Sheikh shares three healthy Lunchable alternatives for parents who want to give their kids the fun of a Lunchable without all the unhealthy ingredients. Of course, this also works for adults who want to mix up their office lunches and/or revisit their childhoods too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cm8Su-bbmwTrump has been demanding that NATO member states who have funded their militaries below agreed upon rates "pay up." The leaders of those nations almost unanimously look like they could care less about what Orange Julius has to say.The world could use less military spending.

Morton Subotnick is an 84-year-old avant-garde composer whose pioneering electronic music, and approach to musicmaking, influenced the likes of Daft Punk, Kraftwerk, Four Tet, and countless techno artists. Subotnick helped Don Buchla design what was likely the first analog music synthesizer and used it to create his seminal psychedelic masterpiece, Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), the first electronic music work commissioned by a major record company, Nonesuch/Elektra. (Fan-made video below.) Just a few years before, Subotnick co-founded the iconic San Francisco Tape Music Center that became a creative home for Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, and so many more incredible composers. And he's still making sounds. Now, Toronto's Waveshaper Media, the production company behind “I Dream Of Wires" and the forthcoming “Electronic Voyager" film about Bob Moog are working on a documentary about Subotnick. Support it on Indiegogo.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8DwthVf-Wg

Orange Julius-themed toilet paper will hit the shelves this year, and 30% of the profits go towards helping migrants.Via CNN affiliate Expansion:Del enfado pasó a la creatividad. Antonio Battaglia, un abogado guanajuatense, pondrá a la venta la marca de papel higiénico 'Trump' a finales de año, y de paso dejará una parte de las ganancias para apoyar a migrantes y a sus compatriotas deportados.El tono ofensivo que utilizó Donald Trump al referirse a los mexicanos durante sus días de campaña rumbo a la presidencia de Estados Unidos motivó a Battaglia, que buscó generar un mensaje para dejar claro que los mexicanos no son “Bad Hombres”, como les llamó el estadounidense."Me generó una molestia y empecé a buscar la manera de hacer algo que tuviera una repercusión, no en tono de burla o un mal desquite, sino de manera positiva”, dijo en entrevista a Expansión.(h/t Pocho)

With the classic 1980s Nintendo Entertainment System continuing to rack up extra lives thanks to the retro videogame resurgence, the thirty year-old game Castlevania has been ported to Netflix with a new animated series. Warren Ellis wrote it, which almost guarantees that it will be the best TV program based on a videogame ever, and that includes Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man.

Is a dirt cheap bidet really the way to go? Our publisher risks his nethers to find out! (more…)

More Sassy.