These vintage cards and old placards display optical illusions, visual witticisms, hidden images, rebuses, and artistic paradoxes from yesteryear. They were the equivalent of Gifs back then — eye candy worth sharing. Here they are gathered in a oversized paperback for your entertainment and amazement. The Playful Eye: An Album of Visual Delight by Julian Rothenstein, Mel GoodingChronicle Books2000, 112 pages, 9.9 x 0.5 x 12.7 inches, Paperback$9 Buy on AmazonSee sample pages from this book at Wink.

Fox (Broadcasting Company, not Mulder) announced that ten new episodes of the X-Files will air in 2017 and 2018. Last year's excellent six-episode mini-series was a fantastic teaser of what's to come. Trust no one.You ready for more of this @davidduchovny? 🔦 #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/im43BzlDks— Gillian Anderson (@GillianA) April 21, 2017Oh yes, Been ready since '93 https://t.co/jDQRCGtd4V— David Duchovny (@davidduchovny) April 21, 2017In case you missed the news... 😉❌ #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/K2qXobhH95— Gillian Anderson (@GillianA) April 21, 2017

Weaning yourself off coffee? You might want to try this! When designer Lucas Zanotto was asked by Finnish coffee company Paulig to create an ad for them, this is what he came up with. To brew the smallest cup of joe in the world, he uses one bean of Kenya AA-plus Karindum coffee, "grinds" it with a nail file, drops the fine grounds into the tiniest coffee filter you'll ever see, boils the water over a candle, and pours the dark brew into what looks like a vial. To see more of Zanotto's brilliant work, click here.

Luckily, I'm not an insect, because the packaging for this poison free bug trap appeals to me. I've been using this product for years and it works as advertised. From my 2010 review: "Even if we didn't have a cricket infestation problem I would have bought this box of insect traps, because the packaging is so terrific. My 7-year-old daughter couldn't take her eyes of it. My wife was repulsed by it and made me remove the box from the kitchen, but admitted that its design was striking."A 12-pack is just $6 on Amazon.

That point of light between Saturn's rings is Earth, captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on April 12. More about the image here at NASA JPL. It reminds me of the last photo taken by the Voyager I spacecraft before engineers shut off its camera in 1990. Carl Sagan had persuaded NASA to turn Voyager I’s cameras back toward the sun and take the first ever "portrait of our solar system" from outside of it. Earth is just a speck in that photo too, a "pale blue dot" as Sagan called it. His beautiful words remind me how a single image can alter one's perspective in an instant: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there...

Walkaway, my first novel for adults since 2009, drops in four days, and today, my US publisher Tor Boooks unveiled a gorgeous, stylish book-trailer for the novel, created by Jaye Rochon from Circle of Seven. (more…)

Motherboard's Joseph Cox continues his excellent reporting on Flexispy, a company that make "stalkerware" marketed to jealous spouses through a network of shady affiliates who feature dudes beating up their "cheating girlfriends" after catching them by sneaking spyware onto their devices. (more…)

From YouTube description:In honor of the High Holy Day, 4/20, we asked Ella to get high using 100 different pipes, bongs, other instruments, pieces of produce, and edibles. Filmed over eight hours, we watch her achieve higher and higher consciousness by drinking cannabis soda, smoking out of a gas mask, a shoe, a block of cheddar cheese, a baby bottle bong, and way more. It’s with gratitude, good vibes, and joy that we puff, puff, and pass this video onto you.

A recently signed executive order by our glorious Orange Julius has directed the Secretary of the Interior to reconsider rules limiting energy production in our National Parks.Mother Jones:In late March, President Trump signed his 19th executive order, titled "Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth," which in addition to rolling back a number of Obama-era climate polices may also make it easier for energy companies to drill in America's national parks.Buried in the 2,300-word executive order is a sentence directing the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, to review the rules which regulate oil and gas drilling in national parks and to repeal, suspend, or rescind them if they are found inconsistent with the president's energy goals.The move has environmentalists in an uproar. "These are not burdensome regulations by any means," said Nicholas Lund, Senior Manager for the National Park Conservation Association. "They require really just a reasonable amount of work on the part of the operator to protect the park.""We're really surprised and disappointed to see the administration come after national parks this way," Lund said. "With all that's going on in the world, drilling in our national parks should just not be a priority."

Where is this place? I want to go there.

I subscribe to the Humans at Sea YouTube channel because it often has interesting videos like this one about a cargo ship's security team firing on Somali pirates trying to board.

With less than a week to go until the debut of Walkaway, my next novel for adults, Portland's Powell's Bookstore has run a long Q&A with me about the book, my writing habits, my favorite reads, and many other subjects. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8&feature=youtu.beTom Wildenhain developed a Turing-complete punchcard-driven universal machine that is embodied entirely in Powerpoint Animations and can execute any arbitrary code (albeit very slowly) and presented it at CMU's SIGBOVIK 2017 conference to great hilarity. (more…)

In Canada's hyper-concentrated and vertically integrated telcoms sector, data caps are a normal part of life; and where there are data-caps, there is cable company fuckery in the form of ""zero rating" -- when your telcom sells you to online service providers, taking bribes not to count their service against your cap. (more…)

"Can I bring my rechargable power bank the shape of the greatest orc warriors Orgrim's Doomhammer on a plane?" asks Itaku on Twitter."We're glad you asked," replies AskTSA, an official account of the Transportation Security Administration. "Replica weapons, even those belonging to Horde Chieftains, must be packed in checked bags."https://twitter.com/AskTSA/status/855229598208020480

Posted in Russian that machine-translates to "My vacuum cleaner is afraid slots," Fluff Zabrat's video is a startling reminder of the terrifying chasms and voids we must all leap on our journey to immanence.

You've seen 64kb demoscene productions. Hell, even 4kb is enough to generate a stunning seemingly-impossible variety of scenes. But Linus Akesson's entry in the Oldskool 4K Intro competition at Revision 2017 is generated by a program only 256 bytes long. There's an in-depth technical explanation to read, and a 2,202,009-btye MP3 version to download. [via Metafilter]The demo is driven by its soundtrack, so in order to understand what the program needs to do, it helps to have a schematic overview of the various parts of the song.The three voices of the SID chip are used as follows: Voice 1 is responsible for the kick drum and bass, Voice 2 plays the melody and Voice 3 plays a drone that ducks on all beats, mimicking the genre-typical side-chain compression effect.The artistry of it struck me:When bar $40 is reached, the program turns off the display and jumps through the system reset vector. In this way, the final few moments of the demo are actually managed by the system boot sequence: First, the SID is silenced. Then, there is a delay while the system is setting up data structures. Finally, the display goes back on, and the C64 home screen is rendered. A mind is born.

Thinking of a business idea is the easy part. Doesn't even have to be a "good" idea, you can still get people to throw money at a non-existent venture, but to do that you need to at least have something even resembling a viable business plan. Why doesn’t anyone do it then? Because building that semi-viable business plan on how to get to market can be a huge time and energy investment.Bizplan aims to streamline the process of crafting a business plan by breaking everything down into more manageable tasks. It lets you set financial goals and track your progress while acting as your central organizational hub. Once you're ready to go, powerful collaboration tools let you present your plan to stakeholders with professional polish and easily share data with team members.Bizplan also makes it easy to join Fundable, the world’s largest business funding network. Usually $2,940, you can get a subscription for the lifetime of the service to Bizplan here for just $69 or grab the 1-year service for just $39.Explore more best-sellers in the Boing Boing Store:Protect Your Internet PrivacyTigerVPN ($29)Burn That Old Disney VHS Collection Onto Your ComputerVHS Digitization Software ($21)Jumpstart A New CareerLearn to Code: 2017 Bundle (Average Price~$20)

The deceptively simple Collatz Conjecture is one of mathematics' most difficult puzzles. Alex Bellos shows off a cool rendering by Edmund Harris that looks like a beautiful life form from the sea. (more…)

Before the internet, even before desktop publishing, gang members who wanted calling cards headed to a printer with their idea. The results are collected in Brandon Johnson's Thee Almighty & Insane: Chicago Gang Business Cards from the 1970s & 1980s. (more…)

Way back in 2011, major American automakers were slow to realize that "companies in Silicon Valley have for some time been looking at cars just like another mobile device or app." When the disruption, hit, it hit hard, writes Nick Bilton: (more…)

It’s kind of remarkable how much energy our culture spends belittling teenage girls and their tastes. But in a new Rolling Stone profile, One Direction’s Harry Styles shares a wonderful, impassioned defense of his young female fanbase. As profile-writer (and famed director) Cameron Crowe writes:Asked if he spends pressure-filled evenings worried about proving credibility to an older crowd, Styles grows animated. “Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music – short for popular, right? – have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say. Music is something that’s always changing. There’s no goal posts. Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious? How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans – they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.”You can read the full profile on Rolling Stone’s website. [Image: Harry Styles on Saturday Night Live (NBC)]

David Lynch's 1982 Dune wasn't well-received at the time, but over the years has become a cult classic—perhaps even a good film. With a few nods to the lavish sets and striking set-pieces, Emily Asher-Perrin takes a weirding module to the latter claim: David Lynch’s Dune is What You Get When You Build a Science Fictional World With No Interest in Science Fiction.Any attempt at cohesion on a more granular level, which is where worldbuilding is most essential in science fiction, is shrugged off in favor of another inexplicable style choice that brings a bit of form and zero function. With the exceptions of military collars and crests, there is nothing that communicates how these things and people connect—some have tried to christen it “noir-baroque” which is a cute thought, but it’s hard to believe that any detailed reasons for the aesthetics were considered beyond “this looks cool.”Dune wants to be phantasmagorical and it wants to be offensive to your senses, and those things can work in cinema, as Lynch’s career communicates incredibly well. But this film does not carry off that off-kilter creepiness as anything more than a parlor trick. It fails to be authentic because these cues are not entrenched in the universe projected on screen. They are there to shock the viewer, to disgust them, but they don’t mean anything. The Guild member floating in its chamber of gas is strange and otherworldly and grotesque, but communicates nothing besides that. It is not integrated into its setting, its surroundings. It exists to be gawked at, to unsettle us, and then it disappears from view and we go back to the part of the narrative that needs to hold our attention.Dune (1982) is a Lawrence of Arabia pastiche with a mad bucket of half-baked science fiction tropes bolted onto it. It includes so much extraneous, confusing detail from the novel's world, but when you think of all the things it omits you really get a good sense of why Lynch (or anyone?) could not form it in 2 or 3-hours. I think there are two things that could be done to fix it. Firstly, remove all the speaking and turn the whole thing into a hallucinatory Lynchean nightmare, perhaps to be accompanied by Brian Eno's mythic 45-minute album of Dune music. (The first scene of the movie thus improved, by me, is embedded at the top of the post.)Secondly, use Lynch's movie as the basis for a full-length animated TV miniseries by rotoscoping it and bringing back the original actors for several hours or so of newly-animated scenes.

"It’s so beautiful," U.S. astronaut Jack Fischer described today's trip to the ISS to his wife. The experience, he said, was "a burrito of awesomeness smothered in awesome sauce." (more…)

The Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs, Australia has fashioned a cloth pouch for their orphan joey named Terri, who is very excited to hop in.

Sumana writes, "The Recompiler is a feminist technology magazine launched in 2015. Their goal is to help people learn about technology in a fun, playful way, and highlight a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. They're running a fundraiser right now, asking for $3,000 in subscriptions, book orders, contributions and ads, to publish the seventh issue on time and sail into its third year, and they've made $2236 so far. And for every $500 raised, podcast host Christie Koehler will record a dramatic reading of a tongue-twister."

Looking at satellite images of North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear facility, the US monitoring group 38 North thought they might spot signs of a 6th nuclear test. Instead they found volleyball – in fact, three games were going on at the same time."An expert from 38 North said it either suggested the site is going into "standby mode" or that it's a deliberate ploy to confuse the U.S. and others monitoring the regime. The group, along with the South Korean and the U.S. governments, has said the recent activity around the site suggests Pyongyang is primed for a nuclear test and that it could happen at any time," says South Korea's Arirang News (video above).According to CNN:US military and intelligence analysis has remained the same for the last several weeks, and concludes that North Korea is ready and capable of conducting an underground nuclear test at any time. It's unlikely to give any warning.And Reuters:"We see that at three locations in the facility – in the main administrative area, at the support area, at the command center and at the guard barracks near the command center - they have volleyball games going on," said Joe Bermudez, an expert with 38 North, an independent North Korea monitoring project based in Washington.Bermudez offered two possible explanations - that the test site could be going into "a standby mode" or that the games were intended to confuse observers, given North Korea knows that Punggye-ri is under constant observation.North Korea has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches in recent months in defiance of U.N. sanctions and concerns have been growing that it could soon conduct a sixth nuclear test after carrying out two last year.

Dolly Parton is a fantastic songwriter and singer. I got a kick out of Andy Rehfeldt's death metal version.[via]

"The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals." -- Ayn Rand

Barry's is Ireland's finest cheap black tea in a bag. Folks seems awful fond of PG Tips and someone brought me a box. (more…)

The popular and highly-rated Anker SoundCore nano Bluetooth Speaker is on sale today at Amazon for $19, if you use code KINANK66. I used mine over the weekend to listen to an audiobook (The Handmaid's Tale) while painting my daughter's rooms. for the size, the sound quality is excellent.

Last week Carla posted Scotty's amazing video about building an iPhone from scratch. Scotty just sent me a couple of photos that show just how difficult it was to build the phone:The attached photos are from one of the booths that sells screws and brackets and other accessories for repairing and refurbishing iPhones.The first photo of the laminated card is showing "foam, stickers, and dust mesh accessories". These are all the little bits of adhesive and foam and mesh hole coverings you need to make an iPhone totally perfect. Most notable are the two grids of pink dots. Those are water damage sensors, which turn red when you get them wet (the other side is faces up when installed, and is white). This is what Apple looks at to see if your phone has gotten wet.The other photo is a bin of brackets for iPhone. They're mostly coverings for connectors, or to hold the camera or other parts in place. The baggies in the upper right are camera covers - they glue into a hole in the metal shell, and are the round piece of glass that prevents the actual camera itself from getting scratched.

After "hundreds of condoms" were found clogging a sewer pipe in Austin, Texas, police realized that illegal sex may be afoot. A nearby massage parlor was subsequently busted.Austin police then launched their probe that culminated in a raid about six weeks later where a woman who co-managed the business "was found in a massage room with a completely nude and uncovered male," the document said. Juan Wang and her husband Joseph Emery were arrested on suspicion of managing "a prostitution enterprise that used two or more prostitutes," it said.Clogged draines was how they caught UK serial killer Dennis Nilsen. But that was human flesh.Previously: 80-metre fatberg removed from London sewer.

I haven't enjoyed him like this since, well never.(Thanks, Jane!)

Vulgar constructs languages for fantasy fiction or whatever other purpose you can imagine, applying consistent rules to the custom phonemes you feed it. [via]Vulgar's output models the regularities, irregularities and quirks of real world languages; phonology, grammar, and a 2000 unique word vocabulary. Trial the demo version online. Purchase the premium version to get access to the complete 2000 word output (with derivational words) and extra grammatical rules. ... Vulgar generates ... based on a list of some of English's most common words. However, the program is more than just a one-to-one mapping of unique outputs to English words. In an effort to mimic real world languages, Vulgar also creates various homphones and overlapping senses inspired by examples from real world languages. For example: Here's my language:The Language of Puput /ˈpʰupʰutʰ/...and he stood holding his hat and turned his wet face to the wind....u lu bunela une luch yafa u neba luch miku peb tul yePronunciation: /u lu bɯˈnela ˈune løtʃ ˈjafa u ˈneba løtʃ ˈmikʰø pʰeb t̪øl je/Narrow pronunciation: [u lu bɯˈnela ˈune løtʃ ˈjafa u ˈneba løtʃ ˈmikʰø pʰe t̪øl je]Puput structure: and he stood holding his hat and turned his wet face the wind toSeed for this language: 0.36384689368800394The Puput word for "stuff" is "nut." I'll spare you details of the nominative and accusative case forms, but they're there. The full edition of the app is $20.

The Twisty Glass Blunt is an intriguing product that claims to abolish the need to ever buy or use rolling papers. And, well, it does if you so choose. You can cut down on the waste this 4/20, and everyday after when you're smoking with this clever piece.Built with a German-engineered glass tube and inner corkscrew, the Twisty Blunt is designed to give you the smoothest hits you've ever taken--and it looks pretty good, too. It's designed with Infini-Cherry technology, which means you only have to light up once rather than between every pull. Like, you know, a blunt.All you have to do to get started is pack the chamber, twist the screw, and then light. When you're done smoking, twist the screw out and the ash stays behind in the glass for an easy dump out. Once you've tried it, you may just give up Swisher Sweets entirely.And since the Twisty Glass Blunt is so compact and comes with a microfiber bag, you can take it wherever you go this 4/20. Celebrate 4/20 everyday with the Twisty, on sale now for $34.99.Explore more best-sellers in the Boing Boing Store:Protect Your Internet PrivacyTigerVPN ($29)Burn That Old Disney VHS Collection Onto Your ComputerVHS Digitization Software ($21)Jumpstart A New CareerLearn to Code: 2017 Bundle (Average Price~$20)

Maro the cosplay cat celebrates Japanese culture by dressing up as chefs and their meals.https://www.instagram.com/p/BTEVSFqA1qb/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSqgkp5AGxm/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSgBsZ5AeVo/https://www.instagram.com/p/BS5_1wiAhmJ/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSyMYj7gVWk/https://www.instagram.com/p/BR8HVMtgc0I/https://www.instagram.com/p/BR2tBD-gxag/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSI9XLaAiV_/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSOK1Gyg7if/You can see more photos on Maro's Instagram, Rinne172.

The long-awaited documentary Graphic Means just premiered at the ByDesign film festival, describing a half-century of world-changing analog-to-digital shifts in how graphic designers worked. Here's the trailer. (more…)

Just in time for Earth Day.

The artist behind the Tumblr GudGuyMaybe created this whimsical guide to the canine kingdom (and a few other species too):http://gudguymaybe.tumblr.com/post/159613533453/heres-an-easy-guide-to-remember-some-dog-names

The Museum of Mathematics recently hosted James Grime's talk "Star Trek: The Math of Khan." He debunked a common stereotype about the show's security detail: redshirts are not the most likely crew to die. (more…)

In March, brand-new Twitter account @SciSupport_BN mysteriously answered science questions, many of which had gone unanswered for years. The real fun started when Bill Nye himself filmed the replies. (more…)

One of the movies that got me addicted to science fiction, Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars is available on YouTube.So many wonderful performances! Truly a classic scifi theme as well.

Sup Doc is a great idea for a podcast series - interviews with interesting people about their favorite documentaries. The latest episode is with Wayne Fedeman, who discusses Terry Zwigoff’s documentary about cartoonist Robert Crumb. If I had to pick a favorite documentary, it would be Crumb.https://youtu.be/3sdwibrYkUUPaco and George were thrilled to have the comedy legend Wayne Federman over to talk about his favorite documentary CRUMB. Crumb is Terry Zwigoff’s (Ghost World) first film about his longtime friend and bandmate, godfather of underground comics Robert Crumb. This doc soon expands its scope to the Crumb Brothers (Maxon and Charles) and ends up going many unexpected directions. Wayne Federman is an American comedian, actor, author, comedy writer, and musician. He is noted for numerous stand-up comedy appearances in clubs, theaters, and on television; a biography of “Pistol” Pete Maravich; and supporting comedic acting roles in The X-Files, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Community, Legally Blonde, 50 First Dates, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Step Brothers. He was the head monologue writer for NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in its first season.Crumb is a 1994 documentary film about the noted underground cartoonist Robert Crumb (R. Crumb) and his family. Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by Lynn O’Donnell, it won widespread acclaim. It was released in the USA on April 28, 1995, having been screened at film festivals the previous year. Jeffery M. Anderson (later critic for the San Francisco Examiner) placed the film on his list of the ten greatest films of all time, labeling it “the greatest documentary ever made.”Crumb is about the experiences and characters of Robert Crumb and his family, particularly his brothers, Maxon and Charles, as well as Robert’s wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and his children. (Crumb’s sisters declined to be interviewed.)The movie chronicles Crumb’s career, highlighting his creations “Keep On Truckin’” and Fritz the Cat, and his pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Interviews with his family members and ex-girlfriends (such as Kathy Goodell), and commentary from critics like Robert Hughes and Trina Robbins, as well as selections from Crumb’s vast artist output, shed light on Crumb’s psychology and darkly cynical perspective on life.Portraits emerge as well of older brother Charles, who committed suicide before the film was released, and youngest brother Maxon, a panhandler who painted to assuage his inner demons. Though filmmaker Zwigoff had the consent of the Crumb brothers, some questioned the ability of the more disturbed brothers to provide that consent. The involvement of Charles and Maxon, which Zwigoff felt was just as important to Robert’s story as anything else, led Zwigoff to title the film Crumb to imply the importance of all three brothers.

Bose's $350 wireless headphones need an app to "get the most" out of them, and this app monitors everything you listen to -- the names of the podcasts, the music, videos, etc -- and sends them to Bose without your permission, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Chicago by Kyle Zak. (more…)

Juicero is a self-parodying high-tech juicing machine that raised millions in venture capital on the promise of delivering a highly calibrated squeeze to a pack of mulch sold in expensive, DRM-locked pouches, for a mere $400. (more…)

To celebrate Bicycle Day on April 19th, the date of Albert Hofmann’s — and the world’s first LSD trip in 1943, we are publishing this excerpt from the forthcoming interview with Michael Horowitz — the third installment of the Acid Bodhisattva series, coming soon to Timothy Leary Archives.Images: from Lysergic World (April, 1993): Albert Hofmann in 1977 (above), and the route of his famous bicycle ride on LSD through Basel, Switzerland on April 19, 1943, from Sandoz Laboratories to his house.Below, Leary's archivist Michael Horowitz reminisces about a car ride with Albert Hofmann and Timothy Leary in February 1972."Tim and I took the train to Basel where Albert picked us up in his car. He drove, Tim sat in the passenger seat and me in back, trying to manage a super 8mm movie camera with one hand and a tape recorder with the other. Albert told us that we were driving the route of his first LSD trip in 1943, when he bicycled home with his Sandoz lab assistant after testing 250 micrograms. Tim cracked up when I asked Albert if he still had the bicycle. I knew it was gauche of me, but I couldn't resist. A short time later Albert pulled over."Here is an excerpt of the conversation between Albert and Tim, after they picked us up at the train station. On the way to Albert's estate we passed by his 1943 home.Albert: That house is where we lived at the time. I never thought I would get home that day. My assistant who had ridden with me at my request asked permission to leave. I told her fine, but in fact I was in a panic. My wife and children were away. It was just me. I barely managed to crawl to my bed. It was the first bad trip, too. There was no precedent. You must have thought you'd poisoned yourself. Albert: But in the end it was good. In the morning it was fantastic.Timothy: For me, the world changed forever. I would have remained a boring professional psychologist the rest of my life, making money and accomplishing nothing.Michael: Instead of being the most dangerous man in the world.Timothy: Right.

There have been dozens and dozens of versions of the spiritual Wade in the Water.This version, recorded in 1965 by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, is my favorite.

British sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor drew the ire of some people when he secured the "exclusive rights to use Vantablack (the blackest substance known) for artistic purposes." But instead of getting mad, British artist Stuart Semple developed Black 2.0, "the world’s mattest, flattest, black art material." It sells for $15 for a 150mL bottle, and is available to anyone on the planet, with the exception of one person - the website states that Black 2.0 is "Not available to Anish Kapoor."[via]