Boing Boing

The greatest break in snooker history is Ronnie O'Sullivan's legendary 147 at the 1997 World Championship. He not only sank every ball with unmatched grace and force, but did so in a record-breaking 5:20s, some two minutes faster than the previous record. But Deadspin's Ben Tippett proves it was executed even faster than the books show.The famous 147 break had everything: The white ball obeyed O’Sullivan’s every command, every shot looked easy because he made it so through his honeyed cueing and Juno-level precision positional play, the break was fast—the fastest maximum break ever, by a long way—and yet he looked like he had oodles of time. O’Sullivan said at the time that he knew a maximum was on after the second red, and the result never looked in doubt. O’Sullivan moved around the table with grace and ridiculous ease, like a concert pianist preparing breakfast in his kitchen.The 5:20 time was human error, based on the BBC's primitive chess-clock technology from the time. The Guinness Book of Records' bizarre retcon to make it work -- the next player's break starts when the previous player's white ball last touches a cushion -- is so weak it requires an event that doesn't even happen on many shots. So Tippett offers two options as to when a player's shot (and therefore any resulting break) starts, yielding two possible times of O'Sullivan's still-unbeaten break:1. 5m 06s : When the player takes his shot.2. 5m 15s : When the previous player's shot comes to rest.

These smiling assassins enlisted as snipers when Germany invaded Russia in 1941. "We mowed down Hitlerites like ripe grain," said Lyudmila Pavlichenko aka Lady Death, one of many elite snipers whose photos were colorized by Olga Shirnina aka Klimbim. (more…)

Convenience always carries costs. In the case of e-commerce, the surge in residential deliveries is causing in urban gridlock. Citylab goes out on delivery routes for their interesting report: (more…)

Justin Rhodes profiles an urban market gardener who leases other people's residential yards for planting produce, which he harvests and sells up and down the east coast of the United States. He makes over $5,000 a month. (more…)

26 years ago.

The Book of Miracles (also known as the Augsburg Book of Miraculous Signs) is a compendium of beautiful 16th-century illustrations of cosmic anxiety and apocalyptic surrealism. The new edition from Taschen, edited by Till-Holger Borchert and Joshua P Waterman, is a perfect introduction to the Renaissance obsession with signs, portents and the damned weird. (more…)

The Neural Parametric Singing Synthesizer is a voice synth with a difference: it soars! It's perfectly uncanny; any better and you'd not even suspect it might be a robot, any worse and it would just sound bad. Previously: I feel fantastic.

I love Alex Schaefer impasto works depicting branches of Chase bank going up in flames in daytime. They were from a series by him called "Disaster Capitalism," and apparently the banks (and cops) would pretend he was planning acts of arson to try and make him stop painting. [via mutantspace, via Janie]On July 30, 2011, Alex Schaefer set up an easel across the road from a Chase bank and began painting the building in flames. However, before he had finished the police arrived, asked him for his information and if he was planning on actually carrying out an arson attack on the building. Ridiculous. Later they turned up on his doorstep asking about his artwork and looking for any signs that he was going to carry through an anarcho – terrorist plot based on his paintings. If this wasn’t bad enough a year later he was arrested for drawing the word ‘crime’ with a Chase logo in front of an LA bank.

Rancher Adrienne Ivey noticed her 150 heifers were all bunched together, and headed over to find them being herded by a "furry little beaver."“It wasn’t until we got to the very front of the herd, that we could see what all the commotion was about.”Ivey said it was “really quite cute,” and “the most Canadian moment of all moments.” Ivey shot video of the curious cattle drive and posted it online, where viewers have been watching the cows trailing closely behind the buck-toothed creature, with their heads lowered. When the beaver stops, the cattle stop, too, only to proceed when the furry animal continues on.The beaver was probably just trying to get from one bit of swamp to another, apparently, when the cows put it in charge.

I don't play a lot of games, but my friend Craig loaned me his BioShock discs for Mac couple of years ago and I enjoyed it. The super creepy dystopian universe is a critique of Ayn Rand's simplistic political and economic ideas based on the concept of "rational self-interest." Amazon has a sale on all three BioShock games in the series for the Xbox One and PS4 for $30. If you don't already have this game, this is a good time to get it.

A time-lapse radar loop from Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch shows today's storms billowing like a fire dancing over gasoline. The image (and the storms) cover the U.S. from West Texas to Pennsylvania. [via]

Sony's cameras seem to be in a league of their own. So why do professionals stick with bulkier models from Canon and Nikon? One answer is glass—often just as pricey as pro-grade bodies, and you need a lot of it to be in business. DPReview's Dan Bracaglia suggests that Sony's latest full-frame model, the $5,000 A9, is so fantastic that many pros are talking about jumping ship, but should be cautioned by the sheer expense of doing so.Using our example, the cheapest one could go full-on Sony, with most of the same kit is $22,870. After applying the $11,820 discount from having sold off all the Canon equipment, a photojournalist would still have to cough up about $11,050 to make the switch. Or they could simply take that $11,820 and buy a couple of a9 bodies and maybe a lens."Switching systems is a headache," he adds, "and sports photography gear is crazy expensive."

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All you need to make these movable Wolverine claws are 15 popsicle sticks, six rubber bands, a piece of paper, and glue. Here’s a second, slightly more terrifying version that uses actual blades:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHYu3oJEKSY

The Los Angeles punk and skate scenes of the mid-1980s produced a brief, shining moment of total badassery in the form of The Hags, a now-legendary all-girl skateboard gang that prowled Hollywood and West LA. Bust magazine takes a loving look back. (more…)

HirokA1007's youtube channel is a menagerie of enormous insects such as this Hercules beetle pupa. Below, a larva, also the size of his fist. [via JWZ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ1fuq8rKZQPreviously:

For more than a decade, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been suing the NSA over its extraordinarily broad interpretation of its powers under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act -- a law that the NSA says gives it the power to spy on Americans any time they mention a foreigner. (more…)

The Supreme Court heard arguments in Maslenjak v. United States, a case about whether minor omissions or falsehoods in an immigration application can cost a naturalized American their citizenship, decades after the fact. (more…)

I had no idea!Evidently HAL 9000 sang Daisy Bell as a tribute, it is the first song ever sung by a computer. In 1961 an IBM 7094 was the first to raise its voice in song.The vocals were programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum and accompaniment was programmed by Max Mathews, but the song was written by Harry Dacre, almost a century earlier, in 1892.

(Note to proofreader: I just received this copy and figure it should just go up verbatim. Next time they do something like this remind me to send William Golding instead. — Rob)Later, as he sat in his tent eating the doggo, Robin Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place at the Fyre Festival during the previous three hours.Now that everything had returned to normal, with most of the rich kids cowering in the airport and the ostensible proprietors begging Twitter for forgiveness and mercy, he was surprised that there had been no obvious beginning, no point beyond which lunch had moved into a clearly more sinister dimension. In the middle of the field, a girl in an Afhan Whigs tee shirt screamed about gluten in the rye. (more…)

Not all careers are created equal. Take journalism, for example. High stress, low growth, very low pay. Why would anyone choose this field? (You're asking the wrong person.) According to CareerCast, who ranked the 200 most common jobs in America, journalism is a pretty crummy field to be in this year (as in, last place on the list). CareerCast used metrics such as "growth outlook, income, environmental conditions and stress" as their basis in creating this list. Here is the methodology they used. And now (...drumroll...), here are the 10 worst jobs of 2017:1. Newspaper reporter (Median Salary: $37,820)2. Broadcaster (Median Salary: $38,870)3. Logger (Median Salary: $37,590)4. Enlisted military personnel (Median Salary: $27,936)5. Pest control worker (Median Salary: $33,040)6. Disc jockey (Median Salary: $30,830)7. Advertising salesperson (Median Salary: $50,380)8. Firefighter (Median Salary: $48,030)9. Retail salesperson (Median Salary: $22,900)10. Taxi driver (Median Salary: $24,300)And in case you're wondering, the very best job these days is that of statistician (Median Salary: $80,110). To see CareerCast's full list of 200 ranked jobs, click here.Image: Israel Government Press Office

My new novel Walkaway (US tour/UK tour) is set in a world that is being torn apart by out-of-control wealth inequality, but not everyone thinks that inequality is what destabilizes the world -- there's a kind of free-market belief that says the problem is really poverty, not inequality, and that the same forces that make the rich richer also lift poor people out of misery, delivering the sanitation, mass food production, communications tools and other innovations that rescues poor people from privation. (more…)

At a pottery fair in Pittsburgh, I ran into Kimberlyn Bloise, who makes handsome musical instruments that are also mugs, vases and pendants. They sound and look wonderful, and have the strange quality of something both charming and haunting, like remnants of a vanished culture. You can order them from her online shop.I put a lot of testing into my instruments, but none of them plays a full scale, and none are traditionally tuned. The clay changes so much from when I begin to working with it to when I have the finished product. It shrinks and expands, and the pitches change along with it. What I have been able to do is figure out where to place the holes in relation to the size of the resonating chamber (the hollow handle) so that the notes all sound good together on each individual piece. The flute mugs all play parts of a blues scale! Could I figure out traditional tuning on all of them? Probably. But it would take so much planning and effort, and my prices would have to reflect that. I'm sure you've noticed that "real" instruments are quite expensive, and I don't want to make mine that pricey! Plus, I don't intend for anyone to play the flute handle in any professional capacity, so I don't sweat it too much. Here's a flute hidden in a mug handle:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuLztv5XlXAThe large horn vase:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6uS-6HFytkHere is the "complaining husky" horn vase:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrKp30pD-KkAnd the bouncy udu:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6hRxAXdOGQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnpAlO3WWTg

People snore because they've lost throat muscle tone, says Dr. Mike Dilkes, an ear, nose and throat surgeon in London. In an interview with CBC, he offers an exercise to rebuild your throat muscles:MD: There's a quick [exercise] you can do: Opening your mouth as wide as you can. Poking your tongue out as far as it'll go, so it hurts. You got to really strain your tongue out. Then you touch tip of your nose with your tongue. Then go south and touch your chin with your tongue. Then go side to side as far as you can. Then, as you're doing this, in a loud voice, sing something familiar like your national anthem.CO: So if someone does this workout, four or five minutes a day, they'll stop snoring?MD: If there's no other mechanical obstruction i.e. it's just an age-related problem, then yes — this is a good treatment.

Three million Americans have Type-1 diabetes. If they don't get insulin every day, they will slip into a coma and die. The price of rapid-acting insulin, needed by diabetics who can't take slower-acting insulin, has increased 1,123 percent since 1996. Many insurance companies won't cover the costs, forcing desperate parents to look for insulin on the black market.From NBCNews:Gabriella is allergic to the kind of insulin her insurer covers at a $25 out-of-pocket cost. She can only take Apidra, but her insurance only covers 25 percent of the price, leaving the family to pay hundreds of dollars a month they can't afford.So her mom has turned to the black market, trading for the medication with other families with diabetes she meets online, a tactic that regulators and health experts warn is a health risk. And she cut a back-end deal with a sympathetic drug rep: If she bought one vial he would give her 10 vials from his sample kit, nearly a one year's supply. Gabriella's grandmother covered the cost.

All airlines have their share of customer service problems, and Southwest is no exception. But they seem to be better than most (two free checked on bags, no charge for changing flights), and they just announced that they will no longer overbook its flights, bucking a widespread airline practice.From CNN Money:Southwest is taking it one step further and plans to end overbooking outright by May 8, spokeswoman Brandy King said. The carrier joins JetBlue, which has long advertised that it doesn't overbook flights.It's standard practice for airlines to sell more tickets than there are seats in anticipation of no-show fliers.When a flight is overbooked, federal rules require that airlines first check to see whether anyone will give up his or her seat voluntarily. Airlines control how much they offer to pay, though they usually shell out a travel voucher toward a future flight or a gift card.Image by aeroprints.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Lego just announced its new NASA Apollo Saturn V model rocket set. It's based on a Lego Ideas submission by a builder named saabfun, it's a 1:110 scale model of the real thing. Of course the Saturn V was the workhorse rocket that took astronauts to the moon beginning in 1969 and delivered Skylab to orbit in 1973. and The 1,969 piece set will sell for $120 starting in June. It looks fantastic but I'll wait (and hope) for a Voyager Mission set complete with the Golden Record!

Yesterday Elon Musk took delivery of his second-hand boring machine for his Boring Company. It's in a parking lot next to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Musk says he's going to take it apart, figure out how to improve the design of boring machines, and start testing by coring out an underground pedestrian tunnel from his offices across (or rather under) the street to the parking lot. He'll certainly need good boring machines to build his Hyperloop system. From the San Jose Mercury News:Last week, a tunnel-boring machine used by L.A. Metro to carve out 2 miles of earth for the new Crenshaw/LAX line was removed from the future Leimert Park Station in South Los Angeles in three pieces.No one confirmed whether the 950-ton, 400-foot-long steel grinder would go to SpaceX. Metro had dubbed the machine “Harriet,” in honor of Harriet Tubman, an American abolitionist instrumental in the Underground Railroad, after a student contest.The day Harriet finished work for Metro, Musk submitted plans to Hawthorne officials to build an underground pedestrian tunnel from SpaceX headquarters to its parking garage across Crenshaw Boulevard.A vertical tunnel shaft already has been dug in the SpaceX parking lot.Now, The Boring Co. machine will dig – cheese grater-style – a 500-foot-long, horizontal pedestrian tunnel that is 20-by-150 feet and 13.5 feet in diameter, according to interim Hawthorne City Manager Arnie Shadbehr.

https://youtu.be/mz5kY3RsmKoFyre Festival was advertised as a luxury music festival on a private island in the Bahamas. But promises of a private chartered flight to the island, gourmet meals, private glamping tents, yacht cruises, gourmet catering, and an all-star concert performance line-up "quickly turned into a terrifying B-movie, with flocks of Instagram models forced to seek shelter in an airport after arriving to discover a lack of food, violent locals, appalling accommodation and feral dogs roaming the grounds," reports The Telegraph.Snip:As a result, social media has exploded overnight with tales of Instagram-filtered terror and disappointment, with beautiful festival-goers arriving on the island to discover half-built tents, their luggage being thrown out of the back of a truck, muggers and thieves laying in wait to steal wallets from trust fund kids, unhelpful staff, and "gourmet cuisine" that turned out to be nothing but ham and cheese sandwiches.From iBankCoin:The “chartered flight from Miami” turned out to be severely delayed coach seats, and upon arrival shocked concert-goers were met with partially constructed USAID disaster relief tents.Heres a drive by tour of the tents:Early report is that many of the tents aren't assembled. Here's their tropical private island owned by Escobar! #FyreFestival pic.twitter.com/TNzBDbNAUJ— FyreFestivalFraud (@FyreFraud) April 27, 2017Angry attendees have flocked to social media to express their disappointment:The $12K Music Festival Promoted by Supermodels Is Already a Mess: #Fyre_Festival, promoted by Kendall… https://t.co/QcVCK3WeFr #nyc #royer pic.twitter.com/OVXQCpRhQ1— Kevin Royer (@isellbrooklyn) April 26, 2017The luxury festival tents are left over disaster relief shelters from @USAID Fyre Festival scammed us! https://t.co/kW4olVKgzY #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/8QYkQ3jIPR— FyreFestivalFraud (@FyreFraud) April 25, 2017More deliberate lies by #fyrefestival. Fyre Festival makes it appear to be its own island...marketing says private island...it isn't! Scam. pic.twitter.com/E4Gz8o3X0z— FyreFestivalFraud (@FyreFraud) April 20, 2017This is how Fyre Fest handles luggage. Just drop it out of a shipping container. At night. With no lights. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/X5CdZRyJWo— William N. Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017The "gourmet cuisine" this weekend was included in the ticket cost. We are being fed salads and ham and cheese sandwiches out of this tent pic.twitter.com/MRv7U0RiyM— dylan (@DylanACOP) April 28, 2017When I showed Carla these photos, she said "Why did the promoter even bother to put *anything* there?"Sad & Snoozy says he found an event planners notes sitting on the ground:The Notebook: Fyre Festival edition. pic.twitter.com/gjUvDvUKhW— William N. Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017So, Jonestown with worse logistics, basically.Fyre Festival's website has gone offline, save for a cryptic, unhelpful, unapologetic message:Imagine being stranded and reading that.

In a federal complaint against Fox News, former Outnumbered host Andrea Tantaros claims that after she filed a sexual harassment claim against the former CEO Roger Ailes, Fox News contracted with a psyops team to set up a "black room" to run a hate campaign that targeted her by cyberstalking her, implanting malware on her computer, and libeling her on "fake news" sites. (more…)

Tim Wu, the Colombia University law professor and anti-trust/competition expert who coined the term "Net Neutrality," has published an open letter to Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (more…)

Bamboo has lots of uses beyond just being panda food. Things like bikes, roads, scaffolding, and musical instruments are made from the fast-growing grass. But unless you are participating in a tropical-themed LARP, you probably wouldn’t want a shirt made from bamboo stalks. So why do bamboo bed sheets make any sense? Because yarn extracted from bamboo fibers is actually super breathable aside from its sturdiness. It's the yarn, dummy!These sheets combine eco-friendly bamboo rayon with ultra-soft microfiber to give you a luxurious sleeping surface. You definitely won’t encounter any of the rough, plastic-y feeling you get from cheap hotel beds.You can get these 2000 Series Bamboo Fiber 6-Piece Sheets in a variety of colors here for $39.99.

Earlier this month, landslides in Manizales, Colombia killed 17 people and devastated the city. As emergency workers and citizens responded to the tragedy, some people reportedly noticed the clouds part and a beam of sunlight form into the figure of Jesus. "‘Jesus’ Appears Over Landslide-Stricken Colombian City" (Mysterious Universe)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJweHsPVOcA

Flashlight fish, also called lanterneye fish and scientifically photoblepharon (light-eye), are strange and wondrous creatures best viewed during a night dive in the Pacific. (more…)

Nuno Dias shot this absolutely insane surfing footage that looks more like a snowboarder out in front of an avalanche than a surfer on a wave. (more…)

In this video for Mental Floss, linguist Arika Okrent and illustrator Sean O’Neill share the keys to understanding commonalities between languages.[via Laughing Squid]

In their quest to celebrate all things junk food, HellthyJunkFood hosts JP Lambiase and Julia Goolia construct a truly supersized Egg McMuffin.

In this fun series, visual artist Andhika Muksin edits animated Disney character heads onto celebrity photos and film stills. It sounds like it would be eerie, but the photos are perfectly edited and strangely compelling. Some of my favorites are below and you can see even more on Muksin’s Instagram.https://www.instagram.com/p/BR7Lj8CD-fU/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRuUbrBDFEh/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRACrvQj8hl/https://www.instagram.com/p/BTAs0rpDDFU/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRZr6CUDV8x/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSuqnZ5j1zL/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRmnS9sDI8v/https://www.instagram.com/p/BTDQbyAj6I2/https://www.instagram.com/p/BTF2JSgj7Uf/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSPxtWWjjqn/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSID4YEj3Kq/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRws2NdDdxA/

It's good to see this week's tabloids getting back to the really important news."Aliens Nuked All Life Off Of Mars!" proclaims the 'National Examiner,' which also brings us the more earth-bound revelation that disgraced President Richard Nixon, while happy to meet with Elvis Presley, "ordered hits on Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison."It's important news like this that distracts us from the 'National Enquirer' cover this week, which with characteristic restraint screams: "World War 3 Is Coming!" But fear not - the 'Enquirer' brings us a "step-by-step" guide to "How Trump will crush our eight enemies!" Eight, indeed. No slouch, our Commander in Chief will "launch a coordinated campaign across five continents that will wipe out America's enemies in one fell swoop!" And those are the best kind of swoops.It's the sort of bombast we've come to expect from North Korea, but it's troubling to find such bellicosity (yet again) in the pages of a publication that boasts better connections to the White House than 'The New York Times.' Our enemies? North Korea and ISIS, naturally. Syria will be nuked - that'll put Trump in the history books, if there are any that survive the ensuing global conflagration.But then the 'Enquirer' battle plans get a little hazy. Iran will be hit by severe sanctions. U.S. troops will maneuver along the border with Russia to prevent their intervention. Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia will be targeted. ISIS and al-Qaeda cells in Spain, France, Germany and Italy will be hit. (By this point, we might be wondering if any nation's sovereignty is to be respected.) And while they're at it, U.S. forces will destroy the drug cartels' narcotics operations "throughout Mexico and South America." I can't wait to hear Donald Trump announce that he'll achieve all that within his second 100 days in office.The 'Enquirer' seems to be having a special homophobia edition this week, with three major gay-shock-horror stories in its first seven pages. 'Gay Travolta New Squeeze' yells the grammatically-challenged headline above a story that amounts to John Travolta being photographed giving a thumbs-up sitting next to another man, in what looks like every fan photo ever taken with a celebrity, and nothing more. Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi and Drew Barrymore's 'Love Triangle Exposed!' declares the 'Enquirer,' which claims that the former 'E.T. - The Extraterrestrial' cutie has come between Ellen and her gal. Oh sure, Ellen and Drew are partners working together on a new TV series - but that can only be a front for lesbian sex, right? The 'Enquirer' team of trained psychics know these things. And then there's "Oprah & Gayle's Gaycation With The Obamas!' Because being on a yacht with the former President and First Lady, along with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks, screams lesbian, because two women couldn't possibly just be friends, could they?'Dying Queen Collapses!" yells the 'Globe' cover, with a series of photographs that appear to show her fall, helpfully captioned "Going . . . Going . . . Gone!" You have to credit the 'Globe' for its extraordinary photojournalism, capturing images of a Royal collapse that was missed by the entirety of the British media. Of course, 'Globe' editors probably don't expect their readers to do the research to find that these photos of the Queen were actually taken in July 2015 at the christening of Her Majesty's great-granddaughter Charlotte, at the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Sandringham, England. Nor do they expect readers to find that the photo of the Queen bent double as she apparently collapses is actually Her Majesty bending down to greet great-grandson Prince George outside the church. Look closely and you can see Royal nanny Teresa Borallo standing right next to the Queen. And the photo of a handful of soldiers standing around looking down at the ground - supposedly at an unconscious monarch, though we'll never know because she's not in the camera frame - could easily be looking at one of the Royal Guardsmen who routinely faint after standing to attention for hours during major public ceremonies. But not that day, when nobody collapsed, least of all the Queen.Fortunately we have the intrepid investigative team at 'Us' magazine to tell us that Kourtney Kardashian wore it best (which I suspect has something to do with the fact that she was naked and bra-less under her Saint Lauren dinner jacket, while Emma Watson opted for an elegant shirt), that NBC anchor Lester Holt "could eat Mexican food every day," that 'American Housewife' actress Katy Mixon carries a teasing comb and hair spray in her Gucci bag, and that the stars are just like us: they spray on sunscreen, walk their dogs, and play golf. Extraordinary. The magazine devotes its cover to "20 Slimdown Diet Tips Stars Are Using,' featuring a slew of stars who barely have a spare ounce of body fat between them, so their diets must clearly be working.'People' magazine devotes its cover to TV's ever-popular 'Bachelorette' series, under the headline: "Life After Bachelorette." But the headline seems to be missing the question mark I would have added at the end of that sentence. The feature story tells how six former Bachelorettes found love, and are raising new babies (no doubt because it's just no fun raising old babies). Admittedly, only two of these six have married men they actually met on the show, so that doesn't speak well for the program's ability to bring loving couples together. And fulfilling their dream of finding a husband seems to have had an unexpected dark side. "We used to stay up late and party," says former Bachelorette Ashley Rosenbaum. "Now we all have bags under our eyes, pushing strollers!" Who could have guessed?Onwards and downwards . . .

Apple is in talks to launch its own Venmo, reports Recode, also asking “Could the money-transfer service be called Apple Cash, perhaps?” (more…)

Someone has already bid $80,000 on a near-mint copy of Suspense Comics #3 from 1944, with a cover by Alex Schomburg. This is the type of comic book that led to the moral panic resulting in a senate hearing on the rampant sexual perversion and violence in comics and the collapse of the comic book publishing industry, as chronicled in David Hadju's excellent book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America.In 2015, a copy of Suspense #3 in similar condition sold for $173,275.Here's a complete scan of the issue, in case you are interested. There's nothing lurid inside, other than some light homoerotic bondage.From Heritage Auctions' website:Suspense Comics #3 Mile High Pedigree (Continental Magazines, 1944) CBCS NM- 9.2 White pages. This white-hot Golden Age issue, driven by the "classic" Nazi bondage/torture cover by Alex Schomburg, has been climbing the list of Overstreet's Top 100 Golden Age Books for years. It's currently at #26, up from #38 in 2012, and #63 in 2007. It's no surprise that the Mile High Copy is the finest known, but that there is a Mile High Copy at all will be a surprise to some. Until recently the common opinion was that a Mile High Copy of the iconic issue didn't exist! Overstreet rates it "scarce", and Gerber goes even further, assigning it a "9" or "very rare"! CGC hasn't certified a higher grade than VF 8.0 for the book, although we have been fortunate enough to have offered the impressive Pennsylvania Copy in 2015, a CBCS VF/NM 9.0, which realized a record-setting $173,275! But the Mile High takes it up even another notch! L. B. Cole provided interior art. Overstreet 2016 NM- 9.2 value = $100,000. CGC census 4/17: 0 in 9.2, none higher.

In honor of the great director Jonathan Demme who died yesterday, please enjoy this bloopers reel from his classic film Silence of the Lambs.More horror film blooper reels at TVOvermind.

It starts off innocently. A Wisconsin woman texts her daughter, Jess: "Hunny please grab milk and lunch meet on your way home." But she accidentally sent the text to a 35-year-old man, who was innocently relaxing at home with his wife on his day off. He replied, "I'm pretty sure you have the wrong number. I'm already at home." But the woman didn't believe him. She told "Jess" to "stop playing." The man tried very hard to convince the woman that he was not her daughter, even offering photographic proof. This only made the woman angrier. When she finally realized the man was telling her the truth, she got furious with him and blamed him for tricking her. When he said he was going to post screenshots of the exchange she said, "Post it after u watch your porn u sick pos... do you treat your mother like this?" He replied, "My mom knows my phone number..."

Photographer Harry Israelson has a long-running series of photo essays called For Pleasure. For a recent set, he headed to beautiful Covina, California for a Renaissance Faire. Pictured: Ye Olde ATM. (more…)

Here's a demonstration of sharpener:https://youtu.be/375D7tPfQvEI also use a sharpening steel to keep the knife edge straight every time I'm about to cut food:https://youtu.be/SBn1i9YqN1k

Nintendo programmer Masahiro Sakura coded the Game Boy classic Kirby's Dream Land on a cartridge-based Famicom console and Disk System that lacked a hardware keyboard. According to a recent presentation given by Sakura, "values had to be input using a trackball and an on-screen keyboard." Sakura, who was 20-years-old at the time, said he just thought that was "the way it was done."From Game Watch's report in Japanese, translated by Source Gaming:At the time, the development tool that HAL Laboratory was using was the Twin Famicom, a console that combined the Famicom and the Famicom Disk System. A trackball made specifically for the Twin Famicom was used with the machine, which read and wrote data to a floppy disk and uploaded data to the floppy disks [during development].Essentially, they were using a Famicom to make Famicom games. Sakurai told the crowd, “It’s like using a lunchbox to make lunch”. However, because of that, they were able to create a functional test product before the project plan was even completed. (via Ars Technica)

The only thing that would make this video of Chinese firefighters jumping rope would be a Yakety Sax soundtrack.

The Trump administration continues to bumble nearly every time they mention Judaism or the Holocaust in public. Orange Julius claims to love Jews, but the anti-Semites in his cabinet are here to stay Salon sheds some light on exactly why Trump can't seem to wash his hands of his white supremacist supporters.Via Salon:Let’s put aside the president’s trademark bluster and take him at his word — he loves his daughter, and he has a handful of individual Jews in his life that he cares about. But the issue isn’t what Trump believes in his heart of hearts. What really counts are his actions and the company he keeps — including once fringe figures like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. In that sense, tragically, he has been a godsend to anti-Semitic movements and ideologies once relegated to the margins of society.All the while, alt-right trolls, white nationalist activists and conspiracy theorists have cheered on President Trump from the virtual sidelines. They’re cheering because this administration has carried the stain of anti-Semitism from the campaign into the White House and federal government. Sadly, the longstanding taboo in the GOP against overt anti-Semitism has begun to fall, and ties to anti-Semitic figures and thought — once considered to be automatically disqualifying by the Republican mainstream — are no longer an impediment to serving in the executive branch.But across the GOP and among too many establishment Jewish organizations, no one wants to name the depth and breadth of this pattern. Top administration officials like Jeff Sessions, Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Michael Anton, Rick Perry and, until recently, Mike Flynn, have deep ties to fringe elements of the extreme Christian Right, the white nationalist alt-right, the European far right and the anti-immigration movement. These ties have played a key role in normalizing anti-Semitic bigotry and advancing political alliances with those who promote or are sympathetic to anti-Semitism. This is dangerous for the Jewish community but it is also perilous for immigrant communities, communities of color, and all religious minorities whose safety is jeopardized by white nationalism.

Bonobo (aka Simon Green) just released this beautiful new music video for the track "Bambro Koyo Ganda" from his album Migration out now on Ninja Tune. The track features Innov Gnawa, a fantastic Moroccan music collective formed in New York City. Stylewar directed the clip.Bonobo is currently on tour around the US and Europe.

Cristina and Benno Kaiser were happily divorced after 12 years of marriage. Even though they are together, they are no longer a couple. They are a trio. They both have the same girlfriend, 21-year-old Sierra Kuntz, who they met working at a reptile pet store at the local mall in Nevada. Sierra plans to marry either Cristina or Benno.