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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…)

My grandmother Sophie Pescovitz died when I was 2-years-old so I was blown away to see her in these outtakes from a crazy 1930 newsreel in which she demonstrates a bizarre "weight loss" machine! Bubbie Sophie says with a wink, "Won't my husband love me now when I get home? You know, they like them thin!""Stout ladies try weight reduction" (Moving Image Research Collections at University of South Carolina, thanks cousin Irene Lilien!)

Shelter is a human necessity second only to food on Maslow's hierarchy of needs; but it's also an asset-class that is increasingly relied upon by the world's super-rich for money-laundering, rent-extraction and simple investment -- this creates a dilemma for governments, who are under pressure to ratchet up the cost of a fundamental human necessity in order to enrich a minority of wealthy land- and property-owners. (more…)

Special snowflake Donald Trump has been thwarted in his plan to land a helicopter on Masada, an ancient fortress in Israel that Unesco has declared to be a World Heritage Site; he'll have to ride the cablecar up it just like every other world leader who's visited it since 1998. (more…)

For decades, new US presidents were welcomed to Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents with a robot carved in their honor, and which would deliver a short, recorded speech voiced by the incoming POTUS himself -- but the idea of a talking Trumpbot is so repugnant that the entire show is reportedly being rolled back to an earlier version (nominally to shorten it), eliminating the speaking roles of everyone except Lincolnbot and Washingtonbot. (more…)

If only you could hear what I have heard with your ears.Vangelis's fantastic score was reissued on a beautiful picture disc for Record Store Day 2017. Check your local independent record stores for any that may be left or, of course, Discogs.

UK Prime Minister and noted authoritarian Theresa May has promised that if she wins the upcoming general election, her party will abolish internet access in the UK, replacing it with a government-monitored internet where privacy tools are banned and online services will be required to vet all user-supplied content for compliance with rules about pornography, political speech, copyright compliance and so on -- and search engines will have to emply special British rules to exclude banned material from their search results. (more…)

This fantastic t-shirt was born from a discussion at b3s, "an online community of designers and coders and other rad folks." All proceeds go toward the b3s hosting costs. Brilliant.Buy "The New Dark Times" t-shirt

Subtle Dildo is a collection of photographs wherein dildos may be found by observant viewers. [via]

I believe the track is called "Limerent Death," by The Dillinger Escape Plan. [Thanks, Mr. Raccoon!]Previously at Chuck E. Cheese's.Mob-style beating at Chuck E. Cheese'sChuck E. Cheese targets moms with lattes, salad, and more wine and beerChuck E. Cheese owner agrees to $950 million buyoutChuck E. Cheese Rock-afire robots in MGMT music videoCheese fight at Chuck E Cheese'sThe Original Fight

Sweden's top prosecutor announced Friday that it is dropping its rape investigation of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, because it was "impossible to serve him notice."Assange has been hiding in Ecuador's embassy in London for five years to avoid extradition to Sweden, but he's still wanted by British cops for skipping court and they already warned him they'll arrest him if he leaves the building.The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said Mr Assange still faced the lesser charge of failing to surrender to a court, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison or a fine. But the UK has not commented on whether it has received an extradition request from the US, where Mr Assange could face trial over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents.Assange said he'd submit to extradition to the U.S. if Chelsea Manning, a key Wikileaks source, was released—an offer he later made contingent upon cutting his own deal with U.S. authorities. Manning was released this week.

Artist Carson Davis Brown creates rogue art installations, and his latest work in progress does not disappoint: unsanctioned bananas the building lobbies. (more…)

This behind-the-scenes look at the giant practical set built for HBO's 1983 station identification sequence is impressive. It inspired Christopher Johnson at Colossal to dig into the archives for more great examples, including a vintage logo created 63 years ago for Eurovision: (more…)

*boop* *boop* (more…)

New video hit the internet today showing the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, looking on as armed security guards from his entourage violently attacked protesters demonstrating outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington. (more…)

"What has changed... is that the House of Saud is now dealing directly with a member of the Trump family." (more…)

"Hey, let's go to Target." "Why?" (more…)

Art beinArt Gallery in Brunswick, Australia is exhibiting Gerard Geer’s “Chimaephera,” which "features mythically inspired creatures constructed from assorted animal bones and a series of diaphonised wet specimens."

Now and then I stumble upon a book that completely blows my mind. The latest of such lucky encounters has been with Seven Brief Lessons in Physics by Carlo Rovelli.Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist with a solid, international academic career, presently teaching at the University of Aix-Marseille in France. In 2013 he was among the sophisticated minds who were asked the famous Edge.com annual question. The question that year was "What *should* we be worried about?" His reply: "I worry that free imagination is overvalued, and I think this carries risks."Published in 2014, Seven Brief Lessons in Physics has been an immediate smash hit. In less than 80 pages, Rovelli takes the reader on a friendly trip from the far edges of the cosmos to the edges of the quantum world, addressing some of the hottest ideas revolutionizing our present understanding of the world. And he does so with unassuming innocence, and his enchanting prose makes complex subjects a piece of cake.In one of his most rhapsodic fragments Rovelli writes:"There are absolute masterpieces which move us intensely, Mozart’s Requiem; the Odyssey; the Sistine Chapel; King Lear. To fully appreciate their brilliance may require a long apprenticeship, but the reward is sheer beauty."To this list of timeless masterpieces of human ingenuity, Rovelli appends Einstein's celebrated theory of general relativity, which he calls "the most beautiful of all theories".Now, here's the deal: modern physics is an unbelievably complex, impenetrable and obscure "thing," well beyond the comprehension of any layperson, however well-read. It obviously requires a very long apprenticeship to just get a sense of the terrain (sorry, but watching movies like What The Bleep Do We Know?! or The Secret does not entitle anyone to use the expression quantum physics in any meaningful way).That's where Rovelli's act of legerdemain lies: he admirably avoids the trap of pedantically trying to explain his shit, while doing an outstanding job evoking the beauty embedded in such mind-warping intellectual endeavors. The whole book is a moving and unabashed hymn to beauty. Rovelli provides enough contents and context to allow the readers to get excited and marvel at the splendors of modern physics, while acknowledging the open-endedness of the quest, and the ocean of mystery upon which we are ultimately suspended.Counterpoint to the limits of our understanding of reality is a deep sense of aesthetic appreciation, poignantly articulated (although with a more all-encompassing epistemic stance) by psychedelic raconteur Terence McKenna:[Reality] can’t be understood. It is a receding mystery. It cannot be brought under the aegis of rational apprehension. It says in Moby Dick, “reality outran apprehension.” It always outruns apprehension, because apprehension is the primitive functioning of the primate neural network. You do not measure the depth of the universal mystery with the neural network of a primate. Our role is not to understand but to appreciate. We have an immense capacity for resonance with beauty, for aesthetic awareness, appreciation of form, and appreciation of how things go together.It all boils down to this: our immense capacity for resonance with beauty - and our microcosmic craving for it. Carlo Rovelli alchemically distills pure beauty from dark matter. Seven Brief Lessons in Physics is a tuning fork to make the soul resonate with the harmony of the spheres.Image of Blue dragon-glaucus atlanticus for photo collage by Sylke Rohrlach.

Apparently scientists tend to think of themselves as more rational, objective, and intelligent than non-scientists. Makes sense. And laypeople tend to think that of scientists too. But the scientists surveyed in a new study from Tilburg University in the Netherlands apparently see themselves as much more rational, objective, and intelligent than non-scientists. Are they overconfident or, well, right? From Scientific American:The team surveyed both scientists and highly educated nonscientists and asked them to rate the two categories of people in terms of objectivity, rationality, integrity, open-mindedness, intelligence and cooperativeness.Both groups rated scientists higher on every one of these measures, yet scientists perceived bigger differences between the two groups than laypeople did. “That surprised us,” says psychologist Coosje Veldkamp, the study's lead author. “We expected scientists to have a more realistic picture, but they see a larger difference,” she says. (Some of these perceptions may be accurate, of course, but other research would be needed to determine that.)The scientists' positive self-ratings may be partly explained by the human tendency to judge members of groups we belong to more favorably than others. Further investigation showed that established scientists judged their established peers more positively than those at earlier career stages, and female scientists rated researchers of their own gender more highly. “People who identify more strongly with their group display more in-group bias,” Veldkamp explains. “Women are still a minority in science, and minority-group members have been found to identify more strongly with their group.”

This clipper is a great way to cleanly cut off a hangnail. The angled blades make it easy to see what you are doing. I also have the Tweezerman Power Hangnail Clipper. I bought the mini hangnail squeeze and snip nipper for travel ($12 on Amazon) and it's even better.

On Monday, a small plane with two adults and two young children disappeared from radar over the Bermuda Triangle. The Coast Guard has recovered parts from the plane but are still searching for the passengers, Jennifer Blumin, 40, her 3 and 4-year-old sons, and Nathan Ulrich, 52. Since the 1950s, the Bermuda Triangle, an area between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida, has been infamous for what many believe is a disproportionate number of mysterious aircraft and boat vanishings or accidents. From ABC News:The plane was scheduled to fly from Puerto Rico to central Florida, but never arrived at its destination, according to the Coast Guard.Miami Air Traffic Control reported that it lost radar and radio contact with the airplane just three hours into the flight, the Coast Guard added in a statement."There's no indication of significant adverse weather at the time," Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Kelly, a Coast Guard spokesman, told The Associated Press.#Update #HappeningNow @USCG Cutter Bernard C. Webber to continue search for survivors east of Eleuthera, Bahamas, through the night. pic.twitter.com/T2MMQOqLN3— USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) May 17, 2017#Update @USCG image of debris, confirmed components of an MU-2B aircraft recovered 15 miles E of Eleuthera, Bahamas; search continues. pic.twitter.com/lP0lSX0bld— USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) May 17, 2017

In high school, Mike was drinking 8 cans of Coke a day. He quit cold turkey and suffered from "horrible horrible migraines, dizziness, blind spots and tunnel vision." The video was produced by Dress Code.

Here's a time lapse video of the transition from sickening grub to dapper beetle.

This gentleman really didn't want to get caught. In hot pursuit by police, he keeps crashing his car, then taking other people's cars. Eventually he runs out of cars and starts running. He's stopped trying to scale a fence.Takeaway - don't drive with your door unlocked.[via]UPDATE: this happened in 2014 in Denver. The driver was a kidnapping and carjacking suspect. Here's a full 54 minute video:https://youtu.be/rRKOCKsIZUc

By DJ Cumberbund.

Spencer Chen, VP of marketing and business development at Alibaba Group, added the audio from the Blade Runner 2049 trailer to the ad for the new Google Assistant. "I'm scared," he tweeted. "Literally no extra editing involved."Originals:https://youtu.be/VZ9MBYfu_0Ahttps://youtu.be/gCcx85zbxz4

Chris Cornell, the singer of pioneering grunge/metal band Soundgarden, has died of apparent suicide. When I saw them play small clubs in the early 1990s, it was always an incredibly intense and, yes, loud experience. From the New York Times:Mr. Cornell was born in 1964 in Seattle and helped form Soundgarden 20 years later. Sub Pop, then a fledgling record label, released the group’s first single, “Hunted Down,” in 1987, as well as two subsequent EPs. The group’s debut album, “Ultramega OK,” came a year later.“Badmotorfinger,” released in 1991, benefited from the swell of attention that was beginning to surround the Seattle scene, where Soundgarden, along with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, were playing a high-octane, high-angst brand of rock ’n’ roll. Soundgarden’s musical journeys tended toward the knotty and dark, plunging into off-kilter meters and punctuated by Mr. Cornell’s voice, which could quickly shift from a soulful howl to a gritty growl.Three of Soundgarden’s studio albums have been certified platinum, including “Superunknown,” from 1994, which featured “Black Hole Sun,” “Fell on Black Days,” “Spoonman” and “My Wave.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_zzCLLRvEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNh-iw7gsuIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg

"The key to restoring the rule of law is to blunt Trump's aggression and put him on the defensive," says Bob Ferguson, an internationally rated chess master and the attorney general for Washington State. He says Trump's opening move as president -- a Muslim ban -- was like the King's Gambit, "the most aggressive opening in chess." It's a poor choice in chess and politics, and Trump has been playing defensively ever since.From Time:First, we studied Trump's moves and prepared. During his campaign, Trump said he wanted to create "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." His adviser Rudy Giuliani explained to Fox News, "When he first announced it, he said, 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.'" Like White sacrificing a pawn on the second move, the President telegraphed his intent to act aggressively. Once Trump told the nation he wanted the travel ban, we marshaled our resources and prepared arguments for the move we knew was coming.Second, we did not accept Trump's playing field as he presented it. We blunted his action by moving the field of battle to the courtroom. In that setting, Trump was on the defensive. After all, it isn't the loudest voice that prevails before a federal judge--it's the Constitution.Third, we capitalized on the weaknesses created by Trump's early moves. For example, Trump's team did little, if any, vetting of the travel ban. They failed to ask their own executive agencies to review the Executive Order. In short, it was sloppy.Image used for collage: Michael Vadon

I was approached by The Folio Society last year to see if I would be up for working on some illustrations for their planned collection of stories from H.P. Lovecraft, 'The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories', and after a bit of figuring out whether I'd be able to do it justice, due to having preparations for a solo show on the boil at the same time, I jumped right in and ended up having a large hand in its overall design too. (more…)

USA Today reports a brawl at a high school graduation in Tennessee, with grown-ups throwing punches and their weight around as the trio from Pomp and Circumstance plays on.Tammy Mason, superintendent of the Arlington Community Schools, said in a statement Wednesday: "Last night we celebrated 500 students who graduated from Arlington High School. This year’s class earned over $30,600,000 in college scholarships. It was unfortunate that a couple of adults in the audience exhibited the behavior they did prior to the ceremony beginning and thus has caused a distraction from the celebration of our students’ accomplishments."Here's another angle!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnUyCmgl3g4And another!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olArs1qWPvQ

"Think of an avocado like a banana," says Chris Notap, who has a video tutorial on how to cut an avocado and remove the pit without hurting yourself.

The Twisty Glass Blunt is powerful. If you are anything like me, you'll likely need some replacement glass tubes for when you've gotten too twisty, but want to keep on twisting.I broke my TGB on day one. I was so "overwhelmed,' I dropped it 2-3 hours into Twisty Glass Blunt ownership. I was heartbroken. The TGB and I had just been introduced, but luckily Amazon was there to deliver two replacement tubes lickety split! These tubes fit, come with extra o-ring, cleaning tools, and rubber end caps! Huzzah!The Twisty Glass Blunt is an amazing smoking device. A fully loaded TGB should more than last all day at a rock festival, or company off-site. You pack an awful lot of weed into the glass tube, and use the corkscrew to remove the ash and advance good weed to the fore. Not only does it eliminate the need to constantly pack bowls, or roll joints, the TGB makes sure every hit is fresh, green weed.The Twisty Glass Blunt also fits most bong bowls perfectly.Twisty Glass Blunt via the Boing Boing StoreTwisty Glass Replacement 2 pack via Amazon

A very loose definition of "shed" is allowed, ranging from legitimate sheds to Tiny Houses to structures that are explicitly not even sheds, but these garden buildings are both whimsical and awe-inspiring. Pictured above is the Pricklebum, the Hedgehog Palace of Ludlow, winner in the "unexpected" category. [via Metafilter]

Generation Tech has done a few fun videos estimating the costs of items in the Star Wars universe. In the latest installment, they calculate the cost of a star destroyer. Spoilers below. (more…)

If you're intending to build an analytical engine with a six-sided prism to run Charles Babbage's weird cardboard vaporware program, you will need some help with Babbage's notes, as old Charles was inventing a whole technical vocab from scratch. (more…)

You know what would go great with your Voyager Golden Record? A replica of the "galactic greeting card" plaque that rode along with the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes, designed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan with artwork prepared by Linda Salzman Sagan. (more…)

Sometimes, the simplest idea makes a great video. Case in point: the fine folks at Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living Field Laboratory dropped a GoPro into a bucket of water, to the delight of creatures great and small. (more…)

As Donald Trump's national security adviser, one of the first moves Michael Flynn made was aligned precisely with the wishes of Turkey. But Flynn had a secret. He'd been paid half a million dollars to represent the interests of the Turkish government. And team Trump knew. (more…)

Another hour, another bombshell in the accelerating pace of criminal and espionage inquiries into Donald Trump and his team. (more…)