Belatedly, I've finally read Hao Jingfang's novelette "Folding Beijing," which won the Hugo Award last summer in Kansas City: it's a story about a future in which the great cities continue to be engines of economic power, but where automation eventually makes most of the people in the cities obsolete -- a problem solved by dividing the city's day and geography up by strata, using marvellous origami buildings that appear and disappear, and suspended animation technologies that whisk away great portions of the city's unneeded proletariat for most of the day. (more…)

Of course you do. (more…)

Hiné Mizushima creates whimsical felt sculptures that combine insects and plants into adorable new life forms, like this Venus Anttrap Beetle, or this Amanita Beetle: (more…)

Broadway stars Laura Osnes and Christopher Rice pay homage to classic MGM films in this holiday performance.

Zip through 105 years of popular baby names in this interactive map by Mike Barry. Toggle for boys or girls. We've come a long way from John and James and Helen and Mary. (more…)

Finnish photographer Oscar Keserci braved brutal temperatures in and around Kirkkonummi, Finland for his breathtaking Blue Night series of photos. (more…)

From Verge social reporter and cartoonist Dami Lee. (more…)

James Corden’s 'Carpool Karaoke' segment is almost always a delight. This latest Bruno Mars edition is no exception.

As part of his Project One Life series, Matt Bray has uploaded videos of himself performing the same dance routine for 100 days in his bedroom as well as performing the routine in 100 different places. (more…)

As the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo continues to grow, many people are looking for ways to help. (more…)

Artist Geoffroy Amelot created this Lego-centric replica of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous self-portrait. (more…)

Monocle interviewed Ed Cooke, the founder of the language learning site, Memrise.During a three-month hospital stay when he was 18 years old, Ed Cooke studied memory techniques to overcome boredom. By the age of 23 he was a Grand Master of Memory, someone who can memorise 1,000 random digits in an hour and the order of a deck of cards in two minutes. Cooke is now the founder of a fast-growing start-up called Memrise, which allows people to learn a language quickly while also having fun. He outlines the value of a good memory and tells us how Memrise gained tens of millions of users.

1. Fight the fights (against more government and commercial surveillance; backdoors, government hacking); 2. Prepare for those fights (push companies to delete those logs; remind everyone that security and privacy can peacefully co-exist); 3. Lay the groundword for a better future (figure out non-surveillance internet business models, privacy-respecting law enforcement, and limits on corporate surveillance); 4. Continue to solve the actual problems (cybercrime, cyber-espionage, cyberwar, the Internet of Things, algorithmic decision making, foreign interference in our elections). (more…)

The Australian National Dictionary Centre has declared the two-word compound phrase "democracy sausage" to be its 2016 Word of the Year, defining it as "A barbecued sausage served on a slice of bread, bought at a polling booth sausage sizzle on election day." (more…)

David A Banks argues that the boom in NPR explainer podcasts -- Radiolab, Note to Self, Hidden Brain, Freakonomics Radio and others -- are ideologically bankrupt, presenting individual, often neurological explanations for social phenomena -- rather than turning to the traditional social science accounts of these issues, so that the weird, broken, messed up things in our world are the result of our human "hardwiring" rather than the outgrowth of policies and ideology. (more…)

The financialization of everything is just as real in the boardrooms of technology as it is everywhere else; though the deferential press likes to paint the tech-sector leaders as geniuses, superheroes (Elon Musk as Iron Man), and super-villains (Peter Thiel as Lex Luthor), the reality is that they're basically run-of-the-mill financial engineers, whose major creation is stock bubbles, not "revolutions." (more…)

Germany's DEAL project, which includes over 60 major research institutions, has announced that all of its members are canceling their subscriptions to all of Elsevier's academic and scientific journals, effective January 1, 2017. (more…)

I thought it was a trail for a movie, but this is a real product. It’s advertised as a virtual wife for men who live alone.Gatebox is a holographic home "robot" in the vein of Siri or Alexa. It's basically a 3D cosplay character that says nice things to you and can be programmed to automate your home. It comes pre-installed with a character named Azuma Kikari. She's 20 years old, likes donuts, and dislikes insects. She says her role is "healing character supporting living alone. I always try my best to serve my husband."It costs 321,840 yen (about US$2725) and is available for pre-order now. https://youtu.be/KQ3iZiegnR4

Art collective The Principals put together Sound Journeys, an immersive multimedia project focusing on how sounds shape human response to environment. (more…)

Dayna Corbitt of WhimsyCalling makes impossibly cute clay figurines of whimsical and mythical animals. (more…)

Proofpoint has identified a new version of DNSChanger EK, a strain of malware that changes your DNS settings so that the ads on the websites you browse are replaced with other ads that benefit the attackers -- and which can also be used for more nefarious ends, because controlling your DNS means controlling things like where your computer gets software updates. (more…)

Rotten Tomatoes compiled a highly subjective list of striking movie posters. Since the Moonlight and Sausage Party posters are well-known, here are a few lesser-known posters they list. Note: poster quality and film quality do not necessarily correlate. (more…)

He's been dead for 225 years, but Mozart can still top the charts in terms of CD sales. The Mozart 225 box set was named Billboard's Biggest-selling CD release of 2016. Take that, Kanye and Taylor Swift! (more…)

Accepting the #SeeHer award at the Critics’ Choice Awards earlier this week, Viola Davis emphasized the importance of seeing diverse types of women onscreen. (more…)

Trichinosis will seem like a walk in the park after what Captain Link Hogthrob has to endure in this Muppets Alien sendup starring First Mate Piggy. (more…)

"What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust." The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, with one of the best essay openings of the year, examines the posthumous memoir of Xu Hongci, a Chinese revolutionary and true believer of Mao Zedong, later imprisoned. (more…)

In 1944, a bizarre criminal assaulted the small town of Mattoon, Illinois. Victims reported smelling a strange odor in their bedrooms before being overcome with nausea and paralysis. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll pursue the mad gasser of Mattoon, who vanished after ten days, leaving residents to wonder whether he had ever existed at all.We'll also ponder the concept of identical cousins and puzzle over a midnight stabbing.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Unlike typical portable monoculars with a magnification range from 4x – 10x, this universal lens attachment enables a remarkable 40x – 60x zoom in a backpack-friendly package.Using a simple clip, it attaches to any smartphone, quickly enabling powerful optical zoom. With this large monocular and your tiny smartphone camera lens, you'd think it would be tricky to get a steady hand-held shot. But an opposable tripod attachment keeps it steady as can be.For me, smartphone camera lens attachments are often hard to justify. Device-specific connectors are rendered useless with a phone update, and restricted size attempts to maintain pocketability are often at the cost of quality. This lens dodges both of those common issues and even functions as a standalone compact telescope. Get one for 70% off in the Boing Boing Store for just $37.95.Also check out the Boing Boing Store's 2016 Holiday Gift Guide to treat yourself or someone close to you.

Just a few months after Yahoo disclosed a 2014 breach of 500 million user accounts, the company today revealed this was preceded by a 1 billion account breach in 2013, in which the hackers took everything: hashed passwords, names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and possibly the tools necessary to forge login cookies that would bypass password checks altogether. (more…)

I had completely forgotten about this, probably one of the most thoughtful and emotional Christmas messages from a major media corporation ever televised. It aired starting in 1966, the year after A Charlie Brown Christmas was first broadcast, both on CBS. Created by illustrator R.O. Blechman and animated by Willis Pyle, it's a startlingly simple 60-second piece that truly and fully encompasses the good will and warmth of the holiday. I recently wrote a piece here here about being sucked down the rabbit hole of the internet but there are indeed many long-lost gems to find and so far this is my favorite. As G. Jack Urso writes on his blog, Aeolus 13 Umbra.One of the wondrous things about the Internet is its ability to conjure up the ghosts of the past, and in this case the animated ghosts of Christmas Past. We can connect with long-forgotten memories that upon retrospect we see contributed to our psyches.We live in a world that is a swirling mass of widespread mayhem, murder, and insanity. Take just 60 seconds and watch this—it's my Christmas gift to you.

From YouTube: "Master impressionist Jim Meskimen reads "The Night Before Christmas" as 27 different celebrities, including Robert De Niro, Anthony Hopkins, and Robin Williams."[via]

Bungie's massive online FPS/RPG Destiny has brought back it's holiday celebration, featuring one of its most fun add-ons: Sparrow Racing. Destiny's guardians spend 11 months a year mowing down invaders from outer-space, and farming loot. For a few weeks, in December, Destiny turns into a crazy fast racing game, ala Wipeout XL. Bungie also added a few new features, like scored and upgraded strikes, and brought back one of the favorite guns in the game, the exotic sniper rifle Icebreaker. I loved Icebreaker.

Yesterday they drew hands on the mitten thumbs to spread good cheer. Today they poked a hole in the cup to release a tubful of holiday joy. (more…)

The Martian mVoice G10 has the trappings of a typical activewear watch. The retro-military aesthetic, rotating bezel, and IPX4 water resistance are common features to expect in a modern timepiece. But the combination of smart features and analog reliability stand out.Instead of contending with the Apple Watch and Android Wear offerings, the mVoice goes a much simpler route. A discreet 96 x 16 pixel OLED face display communicates notifications and incoming calls, and the built-in microphone enables voice communication with your phone’s digital assistant (i.e. Siri and Google). The mVoice is one of the few smartwatches on the market also compatible with Amazon’s Alexa.The biggest caveat to wearing a smartwatch has always been the unexceptional battery life, often requiring daily charging. Because of its minimal display, the Martian mVoice delivers five days of smart feature use. Beyond that, a standard analog watch battery keeps it ticking for up to 2 years. For a limited time, it is on sale for 49% off, just $149.99.Also check out the Boing Boing Store's 2016 Holiday Gift Guide to treat yourself or someone close to you.

Before Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines, he was the mayor of the southern city of Davao, where he boasted of authorizing death-squads that murdered suspected drug-users and drug-dealers with impunity. (more…)

Edward Snowden's Periscope interview with Jack Dorsey -- hosted by the Pardon Snowden campaign ranged over a lot of territory, including the special problems of metadata surveillance (metadata can be "more intrusive" than content "because it can be understood at scale"); asymmetry in privacy (where "an increasing imbalance of power" arises between citizens, with no privacy, and officials with all the privacy: "We can't even see their tax-returns"); the problems of relying on the rule of law in a "global context" where surveillance crosses borders and jurisdictions; and fake news, which Snowden thinks can't be solved by asking Google to be a "referee" but rather when "We talk and we share and we point out what is true." (more…)

The two famous Chicagoans joined forces to remind everyone that December 15 is the deadline to get covered for healthcare for 2017. (more…)

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Lalah lives at the Boulbaka Bouldering Gym in Naha, Okinawa, Japan. (more…)

Lish Laynette posted her amazing Prince-themed Christmas tree on YouTube and Facebook. (more…)

We are given many things in our childhood, most of which are lost along the way. When I was six months old my uncle, Alan Soffin, gave me (well, my parents) a copy of The World of Pooh by A.A. Milne bearing the following inscription:November 1958For RichardOn his .6th birthday: To be read to him until his 6th birthday, whereupon he should undertake the project himself, reading aloud occasionally to his parents’ general enlightenment.That I still possess the book is surprising; that it is my most valued possession is not. I read it to my daughter when she was young, and thereafter she read it on her own many times. One day she will inherit my copy and, if she decides to have kids, she will read “Grandpa’s copy” to them.I’m a neither a literary critic, nor an expert on the intellectual subtexts of the Pooh stories, except that I feel and know there are deep rumblings under the activities which occur in the Hundred Acre Wood. A near equivalent seems to me to be the undercurrent of melancholy that runs through Charles Schultz’s Peanuts. They’re different, of course, because the characters in Peanuts never age; whereas the tales of Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin, et al., move inexorably toward the day when Christopher Robin must go to school and leave his friends behind. If you haven’t read the stories in years, you’ve probably forgotten that’s where it all ends—the sadness is there for an adult, but goes right over the heads of kids. When we are young we can’t wait to grow up, and when we are older we cannot help but long for the simplicity of childhood.Far from being a decrepit senior citizen at age 90, Winnie-the-Pooh is being celebrated around the world, something that most likely would have surprised his creator A.A. Milne. The deceptively simple illustrations by Ernest Shephard are inseparable from the deceptively simple prose. The drawings are charming without being treacly (a good Britishism for something super sweet).There is cause for great celebration in his anniversary year, for our friends can been visited anew with a most special book titled The Best Bear in All the World, which contains four stories, each written by a different author, and revolves around the seasons.My friend, the immensely talented Brian Sibley (author, historian, raconteur, writer of radio plays too numerous to mention—yes, they still engage in that civilized practice in England) has written the story which takes place in winter and introduces a new character to the Hundred Acre Wood: a penguin. As Brian writes in one of the U.K.’s premier newspapers, The Guardian:Reading Winnie-the-Pooh, it may be tempting to think that A.A. Milne’s charming and insouciant tales about the Bear of Little Brain and his companions in the Hundred Acre Wood tripped easily on to the page with scarcely any authorial involvement. That is not quite the case, as I discovered in contributing to the official sequel, The Best Bear in All the World, which was published … for Pooh’s 90th anniversary.Today, Milne’s reputation is as a writer for children, but before Christopher Robin and Pooh he was an acclaimed playwright and an accomplished essayist, novelist and writer of light verse. A 1920s polymath, his lighter-than-air wit caught and reflected the gaiety of the decade.This was the skill set that Milne brought to his books for young readers: a consummate knack for creating pin-sharp characterizations that makes Pooh, Piglet, et al so memorable, and droll, occasionally sardonic, dialogue that appeals to readers of all ages. This is the work of a playwright at play.Attempting to capture some of those qualities was a challenge, as was trying to replicate Milne’s verbal and stylistic tricks, such as Occasional Flurries of Capital Letters. And as if that wasn’t enough, I took the risky liberty, in my story, “Winter”, of inviting a newcomer to Pooh Corner. Penguin was inspired by a long-overlooked photograph of Milne playing with his son, Christopher Robin, with the teddy bear who would become Pooh, and a toy penguin.While my colleagues–Paul Bright, Kate Saunders, Jeanne Willis–and I have been engaged on our Milne “impoohsonations”, illustrator Mark Burgess has been busily capturing the illustrative style of the original decorations by E.H. Shepard.At 90 years young, Winnie-the-Pooh is still—in the words of Christopher Robin—the Best Bear in All the World.You can listen to an entertaining BBC radio interview with Sibley here.Brian SibleyAnd you must buy several copies of the book and gift them this holiday season. Adults included! (It’s a mere $14.)If you enjoy Sibley’s tale, then I highly recommend his 2001 book Three Cheers for Pooh, about which the publisher writes:To commemorate Pooh's 75th anniversary, Brian Sibley has written this richly detailed yet exceedingly readable account that celebrates Just What Pooh Did! Lavishly illustrated with Ernest Shepard's full-color artwork and original sketches, as well as photographs, newspaper reports, and manuscript pages in Milne’s own handwriting, this beautifully designed book is perfect for both seasoned Pooh admirers and those eager to get better acquainted with the Best Bear in All the World—Winnie-the-Pooh.And finally, if you don’t have a copy of the original stories by Milne (is that even possible?), then put hand to mouse and give yourself a gift in time for the holidays.

The Department of Energy has rebuffed Donald Trump's demand for the names of employees and contractors involved in shaping and executing government climate policy -- which was widely viewed as a prelude to a politicized purge, to be carried out by Trump's climate-denying DoE leadership. (more…)

Last night, Dan Jackson shot video of a mysterious, gigantic game of Super Mario Bros being projected onto the side of a building over a store in San Francisco's Lower Haight. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI2N6fsPjjgI bought a Kinekt fidget-ring when I first learned about them in 2010; I've since logged many thousands of miles worth of aimless spinning (ZOMG escalator handrails are fun) on mine; now designers Rachel and Glen Liberman have released their first updated product since the 2014 geared heart necklace: new versions of the ring in gold, rose gold, and gunmetal.

A state appeals-court judge in Florida has broken with the precedent that the courts may not compel suspects to reveal the unlock codes for their devices as this would violate the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against forced self-incrimination. (more…)

Los Angeles-based graphic designer Holly Fox combines her love of baking and design with these amazing iced sugar cookies. You can see more of her designs on Instagram and even order some cookies for yourself on Etsy—although, unfortunately, Fox is already sold out through 2016. Here are some of my favorite designs:https://www.instagram.com/p/BN8HuhvgTk_/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BN25tx_AXb-/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BNdOrz5A5Ld/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BNSw2m2gE6K/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BNIniAcARn3/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BNLSEPHgtDd/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BM-SknqA9K4/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BMu0sHBg02B/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BMScYtagcF3/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BKzKi1CgxAB/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BI8uupwh0rO/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BHyDOhchU0i/?taken-by=hol_foxhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BE9yWgOLsYA/?taken-by=hol_fox[via Bored Panda]

Libby Prison was one of the most infamous prison camps of the Civil War -- thousands of Union prisoners were packed together in a converted warehouse, facing months or years of starvation and abuse. The Confederates thought the prison was escape-proof, and in this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll show how a determined group of prisoners set out to prove them wrong.We'll also duel with a barrel and puzzle over why an admitted forger would be found innocent.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

The sad, misguided former heroes who make Eggo brand frozen waffles took a left turn and ruined it all. I recently tried their Sausage, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich and lived to regret it. (more…)

I'm pleased with this cheap Suaoki K12's ability to jump start smaller cars and motorcycles.I gave my last USB battery kit away, a young lady was needing her car jumpstarted an awful lot and seemed it seemed the nice thing to do, (and I didn't need all the laptop dongles that were included.) I decided to try this low-cost 8000mah replacement, and it works. Suaoki K12 USB jumpstart battery via Amazon

Besides white supremacy, one of the key drivers of the last election was trade, with outsourcing being the main scapegoat (even though any economist able to count to 10 will tell you that it was technology rather than bad trade deals that really created the Rust Belt). But back in the Depression, one group of Ohio factory workers were delighted to have all their jobs outsourced, and some of them even went along for the ride. They were the workers of the bankrupt Dueber-Hampden Watch Company, which was bought in 1930 by the Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets were keen to create from scratch a watchmaking industry to rival Switzerland's. In his latest story for Collectors Weekly, Hunter Oatman-Stanford interviewed a collector of Soviet watches (who happens to be Oatman-Stanford's younger brother) on this suddenly timely topic.Here's a snip:Three Soviets traveled to Canton, Ohio, where these two companies were based, to pack up all the manufacturing equipment, leftover watch movements, and pieces to ship back to Russia. Twenty-one former Dueber-Hampden employees from Ohio sailed with them to help set up this new facility in Russia, which was aptly named the First State Watch Factory. They began making 7- and 15-jewel pocket-watch movements made with parts from Ohio. The Soviets changed all the lettering to Cyrillic to signify their new ownership, and there were slight design modifications, all very minor. Starting around 1935, they began taking ownership a bit more, using different insignias that said “First State Watch Factory,” and as the years progressed, they began customizing their pocket watches to be a bit more Soviet-specific.When World War II began, the demand for watches was unprecedented, and the Soviets went into overdrive. By the end of the 1940s, the Soviets had nearly a dozen factories producing watches, though some had been relocated during the war. They were still using the same movement designs from Ohio, but putting them into new forms.These original so-called “Type-1” movements are still available today, and I have several dozen in my collection in various dial patterns. A wristwatch Type-1 variant was also produced, though a pocket-watch movement on your wrist makes for an enormous wristwatch, and it was very outdated with a noisy ticking sound. The old joke was that during the war, the Germans didn’t have to seek out any Soviets—all they had to do was listen for their ticking watches and shoot in that direction.