One thousands teenagers were asked to rank brands by coolness [PDF]. YouTube and Netflix are the coolest. The Wall Street Journal and Vice are the least cool. Many are surprised by the latter, but it must be said, they aren't teenagers.(If you're wondering why Chrome and other polo-shirted, khaki-shortsed Googlebrands are cool, well, take a guess who commissioned and published the research.)

A leaked report from the Inspector General reveals that the US Copyright Office blew $11.6m trying to buy a computer system that should have cost $1.1m (they ended up canceling the project after spending the money and no computers were purchased in the end), then lied to Congress and the Library of Congress to cover up its errors. (more…)

Hainan Island will be designated a special economic zone for "medical tourism," where foreigners will be able to fly to get cheap health care (similar to how offshore entities can go to Guandong Province to have cheap electronics manufactured)> (more…)

Older women are racking up impressive numbers in the fight against Trumpims: 86% of the people using Daily Action to call Congress are women, the majority of whom are over 45. (more…)

Today on the Tor-Forge blog, I write about the nearly inescapable temptation of trying to solve our problems with other peoples' actions by redesigning the technology they use to boss them around, rather than serving them. (more…)

I've been happily trying out TigerVPN, offered in our Boing Boing Store. (more…)

I like these stainless steel tongs because you can lock them closed by pulling on a small metal tab. That makes them easy to store and put in a dishwasher. I bought the set of two (9-inches and 12-inches) for $9 on Amazon. It includes a silicon mat that can be used as a drip mat or hot-pot insulator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ancMN5HDboIn 1999, the Beastie Boys privately recorded a gag country and western album called "Country Mike's Greatest Hits": as C&W albums go, it's pretty good!Country Mike's Greatest Hits is the legendary full-length country album recorded by the Beastie Boys. Never officially released, it was originally only given out to family and friends of the Beasties as a Christmas gift back in 1999, and bootlegs started showing up a few years later. It has proven to be a very hot collectible, supposedly fetching as much as $400 on eBay.The only official reference to the album appears on the Beastie Boys compilation The Sounds of Science, which also includes two songs, "Railroad Blues" and "Country Mike's Theme". In the liner notes, Adam Yauch explains:"At some point after Ill Communication came out, Mike got hit in the head by a large foreign object and lost all of his memory. As it started coming back he believed that he was a country singer named Country Mike. The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he could be in grave danger. Finally he came back to his senses. This song ("Railroad Blues") is one of the many that we made during that tragic period of time."(via Neatorama)

There's 22 days until the publication of Walkaway, my first novel for adults since 2009's Makers (there's still time to pre-order signed copies: USA, UK); to whet appetites, my US publisher Tor Books is releasing excerpts from the book; last month, it was chapter 1, "Communisty Party"; today, they've released chapter 2, "You All Meet in a Tavern." (more…)

Comply foam tips really improve my IEMs!I've been traveling a lot, again. The B&O H5's I've been enjoying came with some Comply foam tips to try, and I'm hooked. These memory foam tips really make a difference!I tried the included Comply foam tips when I couldn't get a good fit in my right ear with the rubbery ones B&O offered. I was instantly pretty impressed. Rolled and compressed between my fingers, before I inserted the buds, the memory foam expanded to fill my ear while adding no uncomfortable pressure. I got a fantastic seat, and seal, allowing the ear buds to stay in place, pain free, for a coast-to-coast trip across the US.I've also been using the ear buds, with foam tips installed, just for noise isolation. Several times I've slept on the plane with the IEMs in, but no music on. They do a wonderful job of taking the edge off ambient noise.I also suggest the "X" models with the wax filter. I can hear no difference to the buds I have without, but they keep ear wax out of the tiny tube the headphones use to send sound your way. That has to be a good thing. I hate cleaning out headphones.I usually end up making cheap Sugru custom fit tips for my IEMs, but for now Comply tips actually seem to do the job better and save me the trouble. Comply has a great compatibility finder, to tell you which model fits your headphones. There are also some universal fit tips.Comply premium earphone tips via Amazon

Southern three-banded armadilloFound in South America, the southern three-banded armadillo "are the only species of armadillos capable of rolling into a complete ball to defend themselves."From Wikipedia:The three characteristic bands that cover the back of the animal allow it enough flexibility to fit its tail and head together, allowing it to protect its underbelly, limbs, eyes, nose and ears from predators. The shell covering its body is armored and the outer layer is made out of keratin, the same protein that builds human fingernails.

As the air leaves the chamber, the marshmallow gummy bear bloats. Its candy skin forms fissures. After it reaches its maximum size, the operator opens a valve. The bear implodes under atmospheric pressure, becoming a puddly lump at the bottom of the chamber.

https://youtu.be/-2jjgHsxEu4If you have two cubes of equal size, it's possible to cut a hole in one cube that's large enough for the other cube to pass through it.From Wikipedia:In geometry, Prince Rupert's cube (named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine) is the largest cube that can pass through a hole cut through a unit cube, i.e. through a cube whose sides have length 1, without splitting the cube into two pieces. Its side length is approximately 6% larger than that of the unit cube through which it passes. The problem of finding the largest square that lies entirely within a unit cube is closely related, and has the same solution.The original proposition posed by Prince Rupert of the Rhine was that a cube could be passed through a hole made in another cube of the same size without splitting the cube into two pieces.Image: Wikipedia/Acf6

Noodle Muffin's anthem for President W was also a lot of fun.(h/t David Wolfberg)

The New Scientist has published a good piece on Encrypted Media Extensions (previously), the World Wide Web Consortium's proposed standard for adding DRM to video streams; they're creating their first-ever standard that is encompassed by laws protecting DRM (such as the DMCA), and in so doing, they're creating new liability for security researchers, who'll face unprecedented criminal and civil liability just for reporting defects in browsers. (more…)

Brie-oncé is a tribute to Queen Bey that's sculpted from 45 pounds of cheese. Despite the sculpture's catchy title, it's actually made of cheddar. (more…)

In this new video, the YouTube channel Minute Physics offers a scientific examination of whether it’s better to run or walk when you want to get out of the cold without making yourself even colder in the process.

According to this infographic citing Axalta Coating Systems, Asians like white cars at about twice the numbers of North Americans and Europeans. North Americans are more fond of red cars than the rest of the world. (more…)

American Ninja Warrior vet and Supergirl stuntwoman Jessie Graff is basically a real-life Wonder Woman. And if you need more proof, just watch her casually hold a little girl on her lap while she does some pull-ups. Graff has a ton of other impressive videos on her Instagram, not to mention fantastic photos like this one:https://www.instagram.com/p/BKhM3gtg1_i/

Etsy shop owner Sergey Alexson sells these incredibly helpful reminder magnets that make communicating with family, friends, roommates, coworkers, or even yourself that much easier. The reversible ReminderMagnets can be used for all sorts of different purposes and Alexson will even modify orders at no extra cost. You can check out some of his designs below and see the full collection on Etsy.

Princess BB is a Japanese white-eye and there’s nothing she loves more than getting massaged by Q-tips. So much so, in fact, that sometimes she forgets to focus on anything else.https://www.instagram.com/p/BSBZFILBgrf/As you can see below, she also enjoys listening to Phantom of the Opera, taking baths, and hanging out with her owner.https://www.instagram.com/p/BRnPiChhKX-/https://www.instagram.com/p/BLj5Y13jLQK/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRSSR1eBz32/You can find more photos on Princess BB’s Instagram, Birdbee0705.

Being a DJ is easy. You just play other people’s songs at parties and then some Las Vegas promoter finds your Soundcloud and gives you a residency at Caesar’s Palace. After that, you just hang out in Ibiza and start a line of sunglasses. Okay, maybe it's not that easy. But performing tools have gotten pretty exemplary, at the very least making live mixing easier.Case in point: DJ Mixer Pro offers a sophisticated interface for mixing tracks and video clips live. With accurate pitch and speed shifting and automatic key- and beat-detection, you can make seamless transitions on the fly. Four different decks let you cue up songs and crossfade between them at any time for complex, layered mixes. It even supports simulated vinyl effects, letting you add some turntablism to a live set.Whether you want to be the next Frankie Knuckles or just want to bring some flair to your karaoke party, this application has everything you need to make the floor bounce. Available for Windows and Mac, you can pick up DJ Mixer Pro for $39.95—69% off the usual price.

by Rob BeschizzaIn her final hours, mum's death sleep grew louder. Morphine lost control of her body. Murmurs rose into a harrowing whine, swelling with each unconscious breath.The nurse said she wasn't there, not really, but I wondered otherwise. Between her cries, during the bouts of apnea where she did not breath at all, in the terrible silence before she gasped back to life, I begged her to let go. I joked about her refusal to do so—anything to end the pain. Then her face, for hours a mask of frozen yellow wax, screwed up in what seemed a sudden awakening of incredible agony. She tensed, relaxed and sputtered, but did not wake. It happened again. And then she was quiet.Whether she had fled hours ago, or had been aware and trapped in her body, she was gone now. (more…)

Brother Groove's wonderful cover of Herbie Hancock's classic Cantaloupe Island. The original has forever been rendered too-slow-for-me by US3's version.

Did Donald Trump incite violence when he barked "get them out of here" at protesters who were then roughed up? A judge decided Friday that it's plausible, allowing a lawsuit filed against the president to go to trial. U. S. District Judge David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky also wrote in an opinion and order released Friday that because violence had broken out at a prior Trump rally and that known hate group members were in the Louisville crowd, Trump's ordering the removal of an African-American woman was "particularly reckless."Citing case law from tumultuous 1960s race riots and student protests, Hale rejected motions to dismiss the pending complaint against Trump and three supporters in the crowd that was filed by three protesters after a March 1, 2016, campaign rally in Louisville. Only a portion of the defendants' motion was granted, but the decision means that the bulk of the claims will proceed. Hale referred the case to Magistrate Judge H. Brent Brennenstuhl.Hale obviously doesn't fancy Trump's luck and everyone's getting terribly excited on Twitter, but let's just say that bad things happen when weekend editors end up covering courts, he's just kicking it on to a trial that hasn't happened yet, so calm yer fingers.

Working in an office with a straight-khaki dress code doesn’t mean that you have to eschew all forms of aesthetic expression. Even if the bossman won’t let you mock the liminal formality of work wear with your tuxedo t-shirt, you can still let your personality shine around the ankles. (Or in the secret place that coworkers don't see unless you want to have a long meeting with HR.)Happy Socks has a massive selection of unique socks and underwear for men, women, and unisex styles. From cartoon flamingos to pared-down dress patterns in a variety of colors, they have an enormous collection of fashionable socks and undergarments for anyone feeling like their outfits are missing that "it" factor. And they regularly partner with style icons like designer Iris Apfel and the Billionaire Boy’s Club for limited edition runs.These Swedish darners definitely have something fun for everyone. You can get $40 of site-wide store credit for just $24.99.Explore other Best-Sellers in our store:Coding + DevelopmentLearn to Code 2017 Bundle (Pay What You Want)Accessories Twisty Glass BluntD-I-Y CourseRaspberry Pi 3 Course

Precipitation3 is the latest in the wonderfully shot and edited series by Beauty of Science, "an educational brand that produces inspiring content for K-12 STEM education and science outreach." (more…)

Meg Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. Its companion, The Book of Etta, is now available. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes like she’s running out of time.As an author of apocalyptic fiction, I get letters from all over the globe from people who are more prepared for the end of the world than the average individual. Many of them focus on the more popular aspects of prepping: growing and/or storing food, conserving water and even building their own cisterns, and weapons training and storage to be ready for the worst. When I first started writing in this subgenre, I thought about my own odds of survival in the worst sort of worlds. Nobody really survives nuclear war, so I didn’t build a bomb shelter. I’m not the fastest of my friends, so I hope to provide means of escape for them by being tasty zombie food. But those slow apocalypses allow for me to examine what my own role might be in another kind of world. The question is: would writers still write? Could I, if I had the time?In my second book, it’s been a century since Bic and Parker and Pilot shut down. There are no new pens and ink isn’t as simple as one might think. In most cases, it’s a complicated combination of pigments, fixatives, and preservatives. When imagining a post-industrial future, it helps to examine the pre-industrial past. What did people do before pens and ink were cheap?In my research, I found that most inks start with a natural source of pigment. Many plants like berries and grasses have a little color, as anyone who’s ever stained the knees of their jeans can tell you. Better still are the inky secretions of deep sea creatures: octopodes, squids and cuttlefish. However, these are deep sea creatures and even though I live on the Pacific, I’m not sure how I would catch one. I dug deeper. In a public library’s photo archive, I came across high-quality digital images of letters written in the nineteenth century in the U.S., many of them around the time of the Civil War. Their homely ink was brown, not quite opaque, and seemed handmade. A little more digging led me to fascinating descriptions of how walnut hulls (the fibrous material surrounding the shell of a walnut as it grows on a tree) could be boiled to produce this black-brown colored substance that was passable as ink and was commonly used to hastily dye clothes into mourning-dark hues. In isolated and rural places, where true black was costly or inaccessible, everything was rendered in this dark brown by careful work. From the pages of a 250-year-old diary, I found instructions. Gather walnut hulls from a tree; even better if you can pick up slightly rotted ones from the ground, for these are darker. Boil in clean water for half a day, until liquid is reduced by half. Lit sit overnight. Strain, and add a dash of aged spirits, for preservation. In my case, I used 100-proof vodka. On the website for my city, I found historical markers for walnut and oak trees that were over 200 years old. It wasn’t quite a walk back in time, but I did go out gathering after dark. That felt more like a dystopian adventure. I found the rottenest hulls I could, largely piled up in the gutter near the tree. I put them on the boil and left the stove on overnight. In the morning, I strained it and added the vodka. When the slightly thickened mixture had cooled, I had two small bottles of brown, sour-smelling ink. I used a dip pen with a fine nib to test it out and found that it printed clearly and stayed visible even after drying. It didn’t clog my pen or bleed out into the paper. I could make it with what was lying around; I could even brew my own spirits if I had to. (That, too, is another common way to prepare for the apocalypse; scratch the surface of a home brewer or distiller and you’ll find paranoia running wild and deep.) Writing is a luxury born of a leisure class. In most apocalyptic scenarios, people will need to scramble for food, shelter, and safety as life resumes it nasty, brutish, and short default settings. Any world’s end that offers us the time to brew ink to tell our stories is a good one. But like those preppers who write to me from their carefully cataloged canned-food empires, I am ready. I am prepared to keep telling stories long after the world that gave them to me is gone.

I have a paid of +2.50 reading glasses, but they are not good for computer work. I needed some +1.00 glasses. I fund this 5-pack of 80s Reading Glasses for $6.70 on Amazon. One pair has shading. I got them and they are perfect for computer use, and they look good. They also have spring hinges so they don't fall down my nose. Other lens strengths are available, but they cost $13 for a 5-pack.

Last week, I posted about The Sounds of the Office, a 1964 vinyl record released by Folkways Records of field recordings by Michael Siegel. This week, it's The Sounds of the Junk Yard, another 1964 Folkways collection of Siegel's field recordings, ranging from an Acetylene Torch to Alligator Shears to a Paper Baler. As I wrote, in 1948, Moses Asch founded the incredibly influential Folkways Records label to record and share music and sounds from around the world. Along with bringing the music of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Elizabeth Cotten to wider audiences, Folkways, acquired in 1987 by Smithsonian, also issued incredible sound recordings from the Ituri rainforest, Navajo Nation, Peru, and many other locations and indigenous peoples across the globe. (In fact, the label provided several tracks for the Voyager Golden Record, now 12+ billion miles from Earth! Researching that project with my partner Tim Daly, a DIY musicologist himself, I've become absolutely enchanted by Folkways. If any of you dear readers have Folkways LPs collecting dust, I'd give them a wonderful home.)Along with music, Folkways released LPs with poetry, language instruction, nature sounds (frogs! insects), and other field recordings. The Sounds of the Junk Yard reminds me of an Einstürzende Neubauten album but was issued a decade before the birth of "Industrial Music" was born. "Some junk yard equipment is common to all of them, some is more specialized," wrote Siegel in the album liner notes. "All these sounds were recorded in yards in Warren, Pennsylvania."Hear more samples at the Smithsonian Folkways page here.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wlaMRDTht0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcG-2Cyz_e8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTV15R6d1vc

I hope this is effective. Full photo by flopiyt here.

Which of the paintings above is by a respected abstract painter who is human and which was painted by a non-human ape in the Congo?The answer is in the comments.Take the full quiz here: "An artist or an ape?"(via @pickover)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RWWLbg8tuEA seat on the Mexico City subway has a protruding molded torso and cock. Part art project and part PSA, it's supposedly there to highlight the sexual harassment experienced by female passengers. It has proven controversial, reports the BBC.Underneath a video of the stunt, which has been seen more than 700,000 times in the past 10 days, some viewers praised the idea, while others called it "sexist" and unfair to men.Not quite sure how a penis everyone is forced to look at and may inadvertently sit on helps the cause, but, man, that video.

Len Keifer created a series of visualizations that depict the relentless growth and westward expansion of the U.S. Census Bureau.

With the death of author William Peter Blatty on January 13 at 88, I could not help but be reminded that, exactly 43 years ago on that date, at age 15 I first saw The Exorcist, for which he had written the screenplay based on his earlier book. He also exerted strong control over the production.It was a time when I was able to see many films due to a decent allowance from a generous father. The previous year, my mother had taken me to see The Godfather at the Loew’s Orpheum theater on 86th street just off Third Ave in Manhattan.It was a big deal because at age 14, and at that time in 1972, there was a lot in The Godfather most kids my age had never seen (we still had only seven TV channels; no cable, no internet). To top it off, a friend of mine was an usher at what I hazily remember as a Trans-Lux Cinema on Third Avenue just off 57th street, and he offered to sneak me into a showing of Last Tango in Paris. I was a big Brando fan, and I definitely saw a lot in that film I had not seen before. (On the other hand, you’ve probably never seen an usher in a movie theater.)I’d also watched about 10 zillion horror movies on WPIX’s Chiller Theater during the preceding decade, and was extremely curious about why people were so freaked out about The Exorcist. Instead of going on opening day, my usual habit, I decided to wait until the lines abated. The film had opened on December 26, but the usual one-hour lines were stretching to three hours. I could resist only a few weeks and on Sunday morning January 13, 1974, I took an early train into the city from Queens to see the 10:30 am show and arrived at 9 am, hoping to beat the crowd. To my dismay there were seemingly hundreds of people ahead of me.Growing up in New York, for many years it was commonplace to wait in line an hour or more when a film opened. There were no reserved seats and for most films no way to purchase advance tickets—it was dog eat dog in the scrum outside the theater, regardless of the weather. Not sure what it’s like now. It was a shock when I moved to Washington, DC, in 1991 and could arrive at the movie theater five minutes before the film began.Anyway, on that particular day it was damn bitter cold with a piercing wind. I just looked it up online to reconfirm my memory and the high was 27 degrees, with a low of 12 degrees. Damn freeze-your-ass-and-make-you-wish-you-were-dead cold. Hundreds of people shivering in what felt like sub-zero temperature, standing on a concrete sidewalk in Manhattan (the cold comes up through the bottoms of your shoes), with the wind slicing right though our coats, waiting to see a horror movie. Yeah, I know … crazy.Because it was the first showing that day, we didn’t have the usual pleasure of watching the audience for the showing before ours leave the theater. In Manhattan this was always a huge part of the spectator sport of waiting in line for a film. Five years later, when we were in line for the first Alien film, the people leaving the showing before ours had pale white faces and open mouths. They looked seriously disturbed. Perhaps if I had seen the faces of those leaving The Exorcist on that cold day in 1974 I might not have gone inside and seen this.Now you might be wondering what was I doing at age 15 going to see an R-rated film, particularly one as foul-mouthed, intensely disturbing, violent, and gory as The Exorcist. Well, I never saw a movie theater in Manhattan check an ID. If you waited on line and paid for your ticket, in you went (unless you were obviously 10 or 11). It was freezing outside, and pretty chilly in the theater as well (Manhattan theater owners were always trying to save money by scrimping on the heating and air-conditioning). This made the scenes in the possessed Regan’s bedroom where everyone is cold and you can see their breath seem even more true to life. (The set was built on a refrigerated set just for that purpose—it seems the devil doesn’t like it hot.) Here’s director Bill Friedkin wearing a winter coat and hat on the set.Last year I wrote about John Carpenter’s film The Thing, and the reactions it elicited from a crowd at an unannounced preview: people running from the theater, the smell of cookies tossed wafting through the air, and screaming. The reactions to The Exorcist were entirely different. No one vomited except on the screen. I didn’t hear any screams. Stunned silence is all. That, and people leaving. The first large batch fled during the scenes of the medical tests where a needle is inserted into Regan’s neck and blood spurts out. Health care as horror.https://youtu.be/V3MG1178fB8Most people stayed in their seats after that, though some more folks hot-footed it out of the theater while Regan was doing you-know-what with the cross … yeah, and your mother knits socks that smell.In case you think that I’m exaggerating about the crowds and people leaving the theater, watch this.https://youtu.be/LpYhBqJLCcEMost people don’t realize how many actresses were involved in portraying Regan. Linda Blair, nominated for an Academy Award, is the one we readily see. For some scenes, however, the possessed Regan was performed by actress and stunt woman Ellen Dietz. Once you’ve seen the film a few times and get past your emotional reactions, it’s easy to see that Dietz looks quite different than Blair in the demon makeup. Dietz also portrays “Captain Howdy,” the flash frame image demon who pops up every now and then and makes you jump in your seat.Dietz was interviewed on media mike’s website:I did a play in New York and an agent saw me in it. He signed me and a casting notice came out looking for somebody who was 5’2”, strong and could act. They asked to see me. I read the book and did a few improvisations for the casting director. I then met Billy Friedkin (the director of the film) Dick Smith (the makeup genius behind the look of the film), Linda Blair and her mother. Then I went up to Dick Smith’s studio, which was amazing. They had to make me look like the demon. I didn’t have to look like Linda. I wasn’t her stand in, I wasn’t her stunt double. I wasn’t many of the things people think I was. I was an actress signed to play the part of the demon that possessed Regan. And once they found out I could handle the role physically I did a screen test. I was originally supposed to work on the film only during the masturbation scene but I ended up working on it for six months. The good news is that, as a principal actor in the film, I still get residuals. There were a total of six people who played Regan when she was possessed. There was a stunt double, a lighting double. There was Mercedes McCambridge, who did the voice. There was Linda Blair, there was me and there was another girl who did the spider walk. It was something they didn’t want known at the time. They wanted everybody to think that this 12 year old girl had done all the work. That’s why my name isn’t in the credits … they wanted to keep the illusion that it was all one performance. In retrospect I should have asked them to put my name in the credits as a different character … that would confuse everybody.Here's Dietz with makeup artist Dick Smith setting up a method for the green-pea vomiting that ultimately was not used.The rumors in Hollywood of how much or how little Linda Blair did were said to have sabotaged her shot at an Oscar for Best Actress, an honor she might otherwise have deservedly won.Below is a snippet of Linda Blair’s performance recorded on set, followed by the same scenes dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge. From the Associated Press:McCambridge was hired to portray The Demon in William Friedkin's 1973 smash hit The Exorcist. After weeks of what she called the hardest work she had done for a film, she had been promised prominent mention in the credits. But when she attended the preview, her name was missing. As she left the theater in tears, Friedkin tried to explain that there had been no time to insert her credit. The Screen Actors Guild intervened and forced her inclusion in the credits.https://youtu.be/aHpFgjF6vvsOne could write books about The Exorcist (several have), but instead I’ll leave you with a few personal reminiscences.I went to a sleepaway camp, Chipinaw, in the Catskills for over a decade. I was often in the camp show, and one year the drama counselor was Bill Forsythe. Since he had been in a touring version it was decided that we would do Grease. Bill was a great guy and we had a lot of fun putting on a bowdlerized version of the show. On Saturdays we would go into Monticello and do our laundry and hangout. At that time, when he was young, Bill had a round face and a slightly piggy nose. He told me that he would go to showings of The Exorcist and, during the scene where the possessed Regan’s head spins, he would puff his cheeks up and slowly turn his head around, spewing air in a scary way, much to the horror of the people who were sitting directly behind him. They screamed! Years later I was sitting in yet another movie theater watching Raising Arizona and there was Bill, now “William,” portraying a dumb-as-rocks kidnapper along with John Goodman.My second story is about my friend, poor Mario Gonzalez, who worked at Lou Tannen’s Magic Shop on Broadway and later ran his own magic shop on Long Island. Lovely guy, he’d been raised in a very strict, devout Catholic household. After he saw The Exorcist he had nightmares for 20 years. He broke out in a sweat just talking about the film. After a while, he stopped talking about it … but he still carried the fear.I carried no fear, but also had no idea that Max von Sydow, who played Father Lancaster Merrin, was not 75. This is perhaps the ultimate illusion created by makeup artist Dick Smith for the film: von Sydow was merely 40 at the time.

Biomimicry continues to make amazing strides. Festo just released footage of their OctopusGripper being put through the paces. (more…)

Tim O'Bryant, aka Cotontop3, is a logger in Mississippi who vlogs daily. In this episode, he uses the pincers on his log loader to toss leftovers from log bucking, which takes a surprising amount of dexterity. (more…)

This video for "Explosions in the Sky" by the Ecstatics perfectly captures the trippy electronica vibe by using thousands of papercraft sculptures in stop motion. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vgNh3fLxJcLast spring, Samm Sheperd created this amazing overclocked, water-cooled LED flashlight that pumps out 72,000 lumens, using about $700 worth of parts. (more…)

Drone manufacturer DJI published a white paper proposing a kind of license plate for drones in the form of a wireless identifier that the buzzing UAVs would be required to broadcast. The paper describes a possible way to balance the privacy of drone operators with perceived public concern about whose controlling the bots buzzing overhead. You can read the full paper as a PDF here. From David Schneider's column in IEEE Spectrum:As the company points out in its whitepaper, drone operators might want to maintain anonymity even if there were people around to witness their flights. Suppose, for example, that a company were surveying land in anticipation of purchasing and developing it. That company might not want to clue in competitors. Or perhaps the drone is being flown for the purposes of investigative journalism, in which case the journalists involved might not want others to know about their investigations.DJI proposes that drones be required to broadcast an identifying code by radio . . . That code would not include the name and address of the owner, but authorities would be able to use it to look that information up in a non-public database—a kind of electronic license plates for drones.At the same time, it’s easy to understand why law-enforcement or regulatory authorities would sometimes want to identify the owner or operator of a drone, say, if somebody felt the drone were invading their privacy or if a drone were being flown close to a nuclear power plant. “Many people have concerns [about drone flights] that could be ameliorated if somebody could talk to [the operator],” says Adam Lisberg, DJI’s spokesman for the United States and Canada.DJI’s proposed solution is to require drones to broadcast an identifying code by radio, perhaps with that code embedded in the telemetry or video transmissions. That code would not include the name and address of the owner, but authorities would be able to use it to look up that information in a non-public database.

There's only two weeks left until members of the World Wide Web Consortium vote on whether the web's premier open standards organization will add DRM to the toolkit available to web developers, without effecting any protections for people who discover security vulnerabilities that affect billions of web users, let alone people who adapt web tools for those with disabilities and people who create legitimate, innovative new technologies to improve web video. (more…)

Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of multiple counts of raping the children in his care. He's spending the rest of his life in jail. It was covered up for decades by his disgraced boss Joe Paterno, who croaked before he could get nailed in court. The college's president, Graham Spanier, was himself convicted last week for child endangerment. But now all that's dealt with, a Penn State trustee has harsh words for their victims.Penn State trustee Albert L. Lord said he is “running out of sympathy” for the “so-called” victims of former Nittany Lions assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, according to an email sent to The Chronicle of Higher Education."Running out of sympathy for 35 yr old, so-called victims with 7 digit net worth," Lord said in the email sent Saturday. "Do not understand why they were so prominent in trial. As you learned, Graham Spanier never knew Sandusky abused anyone."Last September, the college "honored" Paterno at a game. The fuck-you attitude Penn State brass has towards the victims is breathtaking. They've had to pay out $93m, but I guess that's pocket change to a college with a $4bn endowment.

I've been using one of these $10 mosquito bite zappers for years. It's like a little stun gun - you hold the business end against an itchy mosquito bite and pull the trigger. It sends a little spark of electricity (it feels like a static electricity shock you get from walking across a carpet). I usually give myself about eight zaps and it stops the itching for hours. The manufacturer says the zapper suppresses histamines responsible for itching. When I first got it, my kids were scared of the little shock. But they soon came around to the point were they happily self-administered the treatment.

Pee Wee Pumps dot com is a site where you can supposedly order high-heeled shoes for your baby. They are all quite trashy. The site is controversial, reports the BBC.It comes amid growing concern at what is seen as the sexualisation of children."This is not ok," wrote Melissa Balinski.Another commenter, Jen, said that "promoting products for babies this way is just sick". ... "I will definitely avoid this brand," wrote Barrow, commenting on a picture of a baby in "black pump classics". "This is horrid," added Flory.But some users left positive comments, remarking how the shoes made the infants "look adorable". "Too cute," wrote Latoyia.Reminds me of the classic Hemingway 6-word story: "For sale: baby shoes, wait, what?"

This list of the most-frequently asked questions on Google reveals what people are curious about, and how much advertisers are willing to pay to get people who ask certain questions to click on their ads. It's odd that "how to jump a car" (rank: 197) has a CPC (cost per click) if $14.85. Advertisers are willing to pay $2.88 for people who ask "how to kill yourself" (rank: 202) to click their ad. "How to make spaghetti" (rank: 726) has a CPC of just $0.01. "How to give a blow job" (rank: 192) is worth a paltry $0.07 but "how to give a good blow job" (rank: 680) is worth $0.43. Sadly, "how old is snoop dogg" (rank: 741) isn't worth anything at all to advertisers. (He's 45, by the way).Image: @jampschi via Twenty20

NC Republicans and Democrats have collaborated on a "compromise" version of HB2, the state's notorious job-killing, boycott-raising, shamefully discriminatory bathroom bill. The compromise makes some cosmetic changes at the margins, but it's still a piece of shit that will embarrass the state on the national stage, and does not address any of the concerns raised by those who've announced boycotts of NC, meaning it will still cost the state billions. (more…)

Bass player/instructor Adam Neely explores the fastest "useful" music that humans can play. It's a fascinating topic, really, especially how he, and scientists/musicologists, frame the question around what's musically "useful." And yes, speed metal is considered "useful."

This wild-born, free-living orangutan found a saw and quickly figured out how to cut wood with it.

My friend Jesse Genet, founder of Lumi, created this useful and fun video series on how to effectively ship things.

CEU is an American university in the heart of Budapest, founded by George Soros, who is no friend of the far-right, xenophobic Prime Minister Viktor Orban -- which may be why a new law requiring all foreign universities in Hungary to have a branch in their home country uniquely endangers CEU. (more…)