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by Cory Doctorow on (#1ZPQK)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=190&v=3GSwl21-ZwIDave from Imperial College sez, "We've taken observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the Planck mission and turned them into a 3D printed map of the temperature of the universe when it was just a few hundred thousand years old. Download the files and print your own baby universe!" (more…)
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Boing Boing
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| Updated | 2026-09-23 07:32 |
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZN6B)
FBI Director James Comey writes in a letter sent Friday to congress that the bureau is investigating more emails related to Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server.In previous congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton's personal email server. Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimonyIn connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony. The letter's vague. Everyone is losing their shit over it, either thinking it's saying more than it is (there's no suggestion that it's her email), or finding its lack of detail suggestive of a partisan effort to spread fear and doubt days before an election.https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/792062966879444992The earlier investigation led to Comey announcing that Clinton's use of personal email was inappropriate but not worthy of charges.UPDATE: Get this: it's apparently got something to do with Anthony Weiner's teen sext stuff.Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.The implication is that Huma Abedin's device has email to or from Hillary on it, and therefore vanishingly unlikely to make a difference to anything.https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/792075393515724800Here's Newsweek on why Comey might have been forced to turn this into an October surprise. UPDATE: Looks like a dead dud.https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/792080910464065536
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZN42)
I just bought this ten-pack of 16-ounce pub beer glasses on Amazon for $12. They have great reviews on Amazon. I don't know how long they will be at this price. They been as high as $25 recently. UPDATE: Price is now $26!
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by Michael Borys on (#1ZN3N)
I'd like for you to meet one of my favorite people in the whole world. He's a private guy and though he's okay with my writing this post, he'd rather I kept his identity a secret for now. He calls himself The Toadman. But I should warn you, what you are about to read isn't what you'd expect. He doesn't lick toads for fun, eat amphibians or live under a bridge. He simply loves toads more than anything in the world and what he does in his free time proves it.If you ever meet The Toadman, he'll seem just like anyone else in the Motor City. He'll probably talk about Michigan State University, the Detroit Tigers and how great it is to live in his hometown of Clawson. But what you won't get right out of the gate is what I call his "green side". That's the side of him that's comfortable discussing his life-long passion.Since we were kids, The Toadman has been obsessed with frogs and toads. The day I got my drivers license he talked me into traveling 20 miles north to a swampy area because "that's where they have the best ones". I know it sounds strange, but just as a bird watcher is able to detect the presence of certain birds by how they chirp, The Toadman is able to do the same with toads. It's uncanny really.Did I mention that for the past 2 decades he's lived with toads and sometimes sets up professional photo shoots with them? Just look at the size of his favorite googly eyed friend, Toad Ramsey. That portrait is ridiculously huge!Sadly, Toad Ramsey is no longer with us (God rest his frog soul). He was named after a baseball player from the 1880's who became famous for inventing the knuckle curve ball. It seemed that Thomas H. "Toad" Ramsey had severed the tendon in the index finger of his pitching hand and there was no way for it to apply pressure to the ball from that finger when thrown. When other pitchers saw his throws curve the way they did, they deconstructed his grip and the technique lives on to this very day. The Youngstown Vindicator described his pitches on January 6, 1923:“The ball would leave the hand and go on a straight line to the plate, then suddenly shoot down. Ramsey’s curve was pronounced by experts to be the perfect demonstration of rotating a sphere."In 1888 the Toad Ramsey baseball card became available and my friend has built a little house for the one that he owns. He explained that the card isn't especially valuable and though he did it to protect it from direct sunlight, it was also because toads are mostly nocturnal.As you can see, Toad Ramsey will live safe and sound forever under a gigantic portrait of himself. We should all be so lucky.Earlier this year, The Toadman attempted to contact the spirit of Toad Ramsey through a Ouija board. What he found was that Mr. Ramsey doesn't like being called "Toad" at all. He'd rather be called by his given name, Tom. I'm sure you're glad that's straightened out.In 2003, The Toadman's Fantasy baseball team (named The Clawson Toads) won the World Championship title besting more than 200,000 teams in the ESPN's Baseball Challenge. That year everyone in town got a Clawson Toads baseball shirt to celebrate.The Toadman followed CNN trucks around town while wearing his shirt in hopes of getting some well deserved airtime. And at 3:28 PM, on December, 12th 2003, my friend hit 4.5 seconds of pay dirt. This footage became especially important when he found himself in a battle with editors of Wikipedia. It seemed they didn't think the Clawson Toads were important enough to have their own article. After 2 years of tireless battling, The Toadman's wikipedia page was taken down and the sleepy city of Clawson, Michigan has never been the same. But life goes on for The Toadman and he is currently working on his will that states, "Upon my death, I leave everything I own to the Clawson City school district as long as Clawson High School changes their mascot from whatever it is to a toad".And that seems fair to me.Go Toads!
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by Futility Closet on (#1ZN21)
In 1896 two New Jersey clam diggers made a bold bid for fame: They set out to cross the North Atlantic in a rowboat, a feat that had never been accomplished before. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the adventure of George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen, which one newspaper called “the most remarkable event in the way of ocean navigation that ever transpired.â€We'll also meet some military mammals and puzzle over a thwarted burglar.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!
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by Sara Lorimer on (#1ZN23)
It’s a big world we live in, full of fortune-telling fox-woman hybrids, libraries where books are chained to the shelves, rusting shipwrecks, and amusement parks at the bottom of salt mines. The website Atlas Obscura collects the most intriguing of them, and now Atlas Obscura is in book form, perfect for flipping through while waiting for water to boil. It’s plentifully illustrated, with photographs or drawings on every page.This is not The Book of Lists, and it is not for young children. Many of the entries concern war or atrocities, and some photos are gruesome; the world is full of mummified limbs. The authors treat the subjects respectfully, and have done their research. The story of the Bicycle Tree in Washington State, for example, has both the glurgy and the factual versions.Some entries are not location based, such as the two pages of entheogens from around the world, or the list of abandoned nuclear power plants. But most entries have the latitude and longitude for each attraction, and sometimes street addresses; you could use this as a guidebook for a particularly unconventional wanderjahr.Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella MortonWorkman Publishing Company2016, 480 pages, 7 x 10.5 x 2.1 inches (hardcover)$21 Buy a copy on Amazon
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by Peter Sheridan on (#1ZMYE)
We’ve come to a pretty pass when the ‘National Examiner’ report that “Frozen Zombie Killers Coming to Life†is actually one of the more accurate stories in this week’s tabloids.Never letting the facts get in the way of a good story, the ‘Globe’ cover hails its “world exclusive†story: “Whitney Houston Exhumed!†Hardly surprising it’s a world exclusive, since the late singer has not been exhumed, as we learn inside the ‘Globe,’ under its pleading headline: “Dig Up Whitney’s Body!†Evidently “legal experts†are calling for her exhumation to prove that Houston’s 2012 drowning death was murder. Except their “legal expert†is actually a tame “Hollywood private eye."Rachel Ray now reportedly weighs 277 pounds and has been ordered by doctors: “Diet or Die!†according to the serial fat-shaming ‘Globe,’ whose cover screams that she is “Eating Herself to Death!†At least she’s a celebrity TV chef, so she should have fun doing it. Did the ‘Globe’ team of highly-trained medical reporters put her on a scale, or hack her latest cholesterol test? Of course not. They simply eyeballed it, like “I Guess Your Weight†hucksters at a county fair. And they found a doctor "who has not treated her†to warn: “The excess pounds she’s now carrying bring the definite possibility of high cholesterol, diabetes, heart failure or even cancer.†What about hypertension, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, breathing difficulties, infertility and sleep apnea? Why not throw the whole medical dictionary at Rachel Ray, because she’s no longer rail thin? I’m only surprised that the ‘Globe’ didn’t adopt its usual approach to celebrity health and warn that Rachel Ray has only weeks to live. Which reminds me - Nick Nolte is still alive and kicking, more than two months after the ‘Globe’ assured us he would die. Can it be long before the ‘Globe’ editorial board put out a “hit†on Nolte, if he keeps flaunting their reports of his imminent demise?Singer Cher is another star the ‘Globe’ keeps telling us is at death’s door, yet who refuses to believe her own press. She went and ruined the weeks-to-live narrative by announcing a major concert tour, launching in February. Undaunted, the ‘Globe’ this week tells us that Cher is “calling it quits†- after her tour is over. As if.The Donald Trump-loving ‘National Enquirer’ continues its fair and balanced election coverage with this week’s cover proclaiming: “Hillary Blackmailed FBI to Kill Corruption Probe!†The Democratic presidential candidate allegedly dug up dirt on investigators to kill the Whitewater probe two decades ago. That must be why nobody has ever heard of the Whitewater investigation and it disappeared without trace. Right. An unnamed “White House insider†reportedly “made calls to people†to “silence witnesses and bury evidence.†And Hillary ordered this alleged cover-up? Well, no. Supposedly it was “contacts in the White House who worked for Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold Ickes.â€Close enough. I’m sure that will stand up in court when President Trump brings Hillary to trial.Medical stories dominate the tabloids, such as the ‘Enquirer’ claim that singer Britney Spears “tweaks her twin peaks!†which is their 8th-grade way of saying she has had breast reconstructive surgery. Except she hasn’t. As the story later admits: “. . . she’s dying to undergo major nipple and areola rejuvenation.†Because in the tabloid world the Thought Police have jurisdiction, and Britney is guilty as charged - assuming she’s even thinking about it.‘Us’ magazine’s cover claims that Tom Cruise is “Choosing Scientology Over Suri,†explaining that a five-day visit in July with his daughter was the star’s first contact in months. I’m no apologist for that dangerously misguided cult, but the story begs questions that ‘Us’ fails to address. Clearly Cruise could be spending more time with his ten-year-old child, but ‘Us’ mag seems to have opted for the easy explanation, without asking what other dynamics might be in play. Is he choosing Scientology, or is he choosing work? In the four years since splitting with wife Katie Holmes, Cruise has filmed six movies in locations from Iceland to Louisiana, and has two lined up for next year. Does Cruise not want Suri with him on film sets, where she could spend lonely hours in double-wide trailers waiting for him? If Suri has been branded a “suppressive person†by Scientology authorities, as ‘Us’ implies, surely Cruise wouldn’t be permitted to spend any time with her, let alone five days. Does Katie Holmes want Cruise to see Suri, or is she limiting Cruise’s parental visits? Does Cruise think his daughter will fare better with a stable home life rather than being shunted back and forth between warring exes? These are hard questions; it’s no wonder that ‘Us’ avoids them.Fortunately, we have the crack investigative reporting team at ‘Us’ mag to tell us that ‘The View’ cohost Joy Behar makes a “fabulous lasagna†and has “gorgeous feet,†that Rumer Willis carries knitting needles and yarn, melatonin-tinged water, and lip balm in her Cleobella tote, and that the stars are just like us: they sip boba tea, play golf, and (assuming that His Holiness the Pope is a “starâ€) play foosball.‘People’ magazine devotes its cover and five pages inside to the “Hunt for the Long Island Serial Killer." The shocking story of ten women whose bodies were found buried along New York’s Gilgo Beach was horrifying when they were discovered in 2010 and 2011. But what makes them such big breaking news five years later? Perhaps it’s because, by some wild one-in-a-million coincidence, the murders are also the subject of a two-part TV special airing next month, produced by . . . ‘People’ magazine.Which brings us back to the "frozen zombie killers coming to life,†for as the ‘National Examiner’ explains: “As Earth warms, deadly prehistoric viruses are unleashed on humanity!†And that’s not terribly far from the facts. Global warming thawing the Arctic tundra has caused an epidemic among Siberian nomadic herders, hospitalized by an Anthrax outbreak that scientists believe was unleashed by rising temperatures. Anthrax spores can survive frozen in human and animal remains for centuries - undead, like the bacterial version of zombies - and the ‘Examiner’ rightly reports: “There are other pathogens out there, too.†Admittedly, the tabloid’s photo of an actor in full zombie make-up, blood-spattered with rotting flesh, broken teeth and lividity-dappled skin implies that it’s human zombies rising from the grave, but let’s give credit where it’s due to a rare accurate story in this week’s tabloids.Onwards and downwards . . .
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by David Pescovitz on (#1ZMR5)
I don't know the source of this hip glossary that translates beatnik slang into the King's Jive but it would be such a gas if tuned-in cats spoke like this (even if they never really did). (via Weird Universe)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZMR7)
If you're like me, you get frequent calls from scammers based in India pretending to be from the IRS. They threaten to come to my house or place of work to arrest and jail me unless I pay them alleged back taxes in the form of gift cards(!). They are laughably bad at trying to con money (see my post "An IRS scammer called me and I made him mad"), but they do well with seniors and immigrants. According to an article on Vox, "IRS Inspector General Russell George said his department heard from about 2 million people who said they received these calls — about 10,000 of whom admitted to paying the scammers, to a tune of about $50 million. And that’s just the people who contacted them."In order for these scams to work, the Indian scammers need to employ criminals in the US to deal with the gift cards. On Thursday 20 people in the US were arrested for allegedly participating in a fake IRS ring.This flowchart describes how the IRS scam works.Previously: Indian call center employees posing as the IRS may have bilked Americans out of millionsA tech support scammer explains his trade
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZM6B)
Brian Feldman explains why Twitter's decision to kill the Vine looping video service makes the internet worse.The point of Vine was never to generate the next Fellini. It was to have dumb, stupid free play on an internet increasingly hostile to that kind of freedom, whether because of surveillance or heavy-handed advertiser presence or trolls. The lack of adult supervision or corporate culture may have made it somewhat impenetrable, but it also made it feel free in a way no other social network really does.Vine also had what Silicon Valley types describe as a poor "culture fit."Vine wasn’t just dominated by teenagers — it was dominated by teenagers of color. Especially black teens, who created a disproportionate number of popular Vines and used the social network to demonstrate wit, intelligence, creativity, and comic timing that was rarely given a spotlight elsewhere. Twitter's decision to kill it is being felt as deep pain on the web. Twitter itself is worse than unpleasant: it's the oxygen keeping the internet on fire, feeding trolls, harassers and white supremacists. Vine, on the other hand, was adorable, funny, impervious to the hate and great because "there were no brands or grown ups or neonazis to ruin it." But business is interested in at least two of those three things.People often wonder why Twitter, more than other major social networks, is having so much difficulty figuring out ways to combat abuse. It is already far from a free-speech environment, after all, offering private intellectual property enforcement and (at least in a few cases) region-specific political censorship. I don't know much about business, but I always get the impression that Twitter sees its flatness and the abuse it engenders as an energy efficiency problem. A reaction to be brought under control, not vented. What if we could create an environment where bigotry and abuse are harmless? This is the sort of thinking that "trolls" are eager to exploit. Twitter doesn't realize that one of the constants in its formula—the social acceptability of bigotry and abuse—is a variable.https://twitter.com/AdrianChen/status/792005729481785344My favorite vine:https://vine.co/v/eKqtW7Z6nEX
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by Boing Boing's Store on (#1ZM6D)
With Xamarin, coders can develop native apps for both iOS and Android without learning two different programming languages. Obviously, hiring one programmer rather than two is beneficial for companies and makes Xamarin experts highly in demand.You can easily learn Xamarin online with this Xamarin Cross-Platform Development Bundle. It will teach you to use Xamarin and code in C#, the programming language you'll use.The bundle includes 5.5 hours of video content and 48 lessons designed to take you through the basics of understanding Xamarin and the mechanics of actually building cross-platform apps.Right now you can get the Xamarin Cross Platform Development Bundle for 96% off retail, just $35 in the Boing Boing store.Also explore the Best-Sellers on our network right now:CodingThe Python Power Coder Bonus Bundle ($44)Cord-CuttingSelectTV: 1-Year Subscription (33% off)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZM23)
Seth Everman distills a certain video game musical score down to 80 seconds of sheer brilliance. Somewhere in the space between Link To the Past and Secret of Mana, the perfect Nintendo role-playing game. Previously: It is with great regret...
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZKV5)
This fellow cobbled together an AC motor and some weed-eater filament, and attached it to a long pole. He then used it to get rid of a bunch of wasps that had taken residence near the top of his house. Those clunking sounds are from wasps flying into the spinning filament.And here's a guy who set up a shop-vac and sucked out hundreds of yellowjackets living inside the walls of his house:https://youtu.be/ZpgovFhV_ho
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by Cory Doctorow on (#1ZKPX)
Duterte has vowed to stop using "epithets" (for example, he called Pope Francis a "son of a bitch" and told Obama to "go to hell") because God threatened to crash the airplane he was flying home from Japan in if he didn't cut it out. (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZKPF)
A resident student paid $41 (not sure if that's a year or semester). Adjusted for inflation, it's $340.[via]
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by RU Sirius on (#1ZK8Q)
I want to thank Boing Boing for allowing me to introduce my music collection titled The Triumph of the Will Not. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#1ZK3W)
Gollancz have announced a gorgeous set of new editions of William Gibson's seminal Sprawl books, which began with 1984's Hugo, Nebula and Philip K Dick award-winning novel Neuromancer, designed by Daniel Brown (previously), using software that created fractals based on 1970s apartment buildings. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#1ZK1H)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHp-mc4JFVkRecent Trump rallies have prominently featured an African-American guy holding a "Blacks for Trump" sign, standing behind Trump himself. That guy is Michael Symonette, and he used to be a prominent member of the Yahweh ben Yahweh murder cult, support for whom led him to stand trial for 14 murders as well as multiple indictments for arson and extortion. (more…)
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by Xeni Jardin on (#1ZJET)
Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump operated a wild and crazy restaurant/bar/brothel in British Columbia during Canada's gold rush era. (more…)
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by Xeni Jardin on (#1ZJA6)
Brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five followers charged over a 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur federal wildlife sanctuary in Oregon last January were today acquitted of federal conspiracy and weapons charges. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#1ZH91)
Jim from Open Rights Group sez, "MPs have worked out that attempts to verify adult's ages won't stop children from accessing other pornographic websites: so their proposed answer is to start censoring these websites." (more…)
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by Carla Sinclair on (#1ZH8H)
I’ve always been fascinated with the cosmos (who isn’t?), and I even once splurged for a telescope to put in the garden for my family to enjoy. But with only one college astronomy class (101) under my belt, my knowledge of the stars falls into the “Dummies†category. Which is why I loved DK’s new book, The Stars: The Definitive Visual Guide to the Cosmos.Not that it’s only for dummies. The large 10.1 x 12.8 book is for astro newbies as well as the more seasoned who will enjoy the scenery and surely pick up some new stellar facts. It's for teens as well as adults, jam-packed with starry science that falls into three sections. The first, “Understanding the Cosmos,†covers the basics and beyond, from the Big Bang, starbirth, supernovae and neutron stars to black holes, colliding galaxies, galaxy clusters and a lot more. “Constellations,†the second and largest section, is loaded with the significance and charts of constellations – some popular ones (like those from the zodiac) as well as many I’d never heard of before (like Vulpecula the fox and Monoceros the unicorn). The third, smallest section of the book, “The Solar System,†just touches on our sun and planets, and was the one section that the authors could have expanded.In true DK fashion, The Stars compliments its smart yet accessible text with a heavy dose of charts, maps, sidebars, and brilliant photos. The authors managed to make every page highly fresh and engaging.The Stars: The Definitive Guide to the Cosmos by DK 2016, 256 pages, 10.8 x 12.1 x 0.9 inches (hardcover)$26 Buy a copy on Amazon
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZH1B)
Musical Cars (A sequel to 15 point turn)The guy on the scooter just wanted to add a bit of a challenge into the mix.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZGXS)
It took me a while to figure out what the deal is with this photo. I thought at first someone coated their thighs in oil. But then I saw it for what it really was. It reminds me of a Necker cube, only for legs.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZGT5)
I learned that there are two forms of mimicry in nature -- honest mimicry (e.g., bees and wasps look similar and advertise that they can sting) and dishonest mimicry (e.g., some flies look like bees and wasps to trick predators into thinking they can sting).Inés Dawson, a graduate and PhD student at the University of Oxford, is the creator of this video, which is part of a science series on YouTube called Draw Curiosity.
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by Xeni Jardin on (#1ZGRE)
Kendall Seifert loves squirrels and swingers, and operates gathering places for both types of creatures at Squirrel Creek Lodge. Seifert is 53, and operated a wildlife rescue center *and* a swingers club at the same site, until state authorities raided his Littleton, CO business in a fairly transparent attempt to throw a wet blanket on the sex stuff by way of targeting the squirrel stuff. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZFQZ)
As a nonprofit, the Yale Record has never endorsed a political candidate. Even in this most momentous of elections, some things have to remain sacred.In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country—a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZFQK)
The Internet Archive has a wonderful front-end: GifCities, a search engine for the myriad of GIFs that once graced legendary website hosting service Geocities. [via Andy Baio]GifCities: The Geocities Animated Gif Search Engine was a special project of the Internet Archive done as part of our 20th Anniversary to highlight and celebrate fun aspects of the amazing history of the web as represented in the web archive and the Wayback Machine. Geocities was an early web hosting service, started in 1994 and acquired by Yahoo in 1999, with which users could create their own custom websites. The platform hosted over 38 million user-built pages and was at one time the third most visited site on the web. In 2009, Yahoo announced it was closing down the service, at which point the Internet Archive attempted to archive as much of the content as possible. ... Mining this collection, we extracted over 4,500,000 animated GIFs (1,600,000 unique images) and then used the filenames and directory path text to build a best-effort “full text†search engine. Each GIF also links back to the original Geocities page on which it was embedded (and some of these pages are even more awesome than the GIFs).If you're just here for the under construction GIFs, here are all of them.
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by Andrea James on (#1ZFMS)
With nearly $28 million in the pot, the eight minutes of "speech play" between Will Kassouf and Griffin Benger came to a very satisfying end. Everyone is debating which of the two players crossed the line. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#1ZF39)
Samsung's got problems: its Galaxy Note devices are bursting into flames, and have been banned from the skies. (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZCYH)
Japanese culture website Tofugu has a rundown of the best Japanese horror movies of all time. Number 6 on the list is Hausu, a cartoonishly gory flick from 1977.https://youtu.be/NN0HVJ5tkIMThis is what makes Hausu great. It's an absolutely childish horror movie. So much so that the characters are one-dimensional (their names even indicate their behavior). But it all plays into the experience. Watching Hausu as an adult means you're forced to think like a child and find scary the things children find scary. This makes for gory fun when the piano starts dismembering people, blood gushing out its sides.Sometimes Hausu's blend of silliness and gore is perfect. Other times not so much. But despite the film's imperfection, it works because it's authentic. Though people in 2010 praised Hausu for its "wackiness," I think affection for the film comes from its authenticity. Hausu knows exactly what it wants to be and goes for it full force. Combine that with a childlike perspective and you've got a film worth falling in love with.
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZCP4)
Hillary Clinton's campaign team "scrambled" after coming to believe Joe Biden would oppose her for the Democratic presidential nomination, reports Fox News. Some delicious, if insidery machinations turned up in campaign chief Joe Podesta's hacked email, as published by Wikileaks:just three days later, the Biden threat appeared vanquished. Ron Klain, a former Biden chief of staff who is now an operative for the Clinton campaign, emailed Podesta with a cryptic note of thanks.“It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise – and I am definitely dead to them -- but I’m glad to be on Team HRC, and glad that she had a great debate last night,†Klain wrote.Six days later, on Oct. 21, Biden, with Obama by his side, gave a news conference from the White House declaring he wouldn’t run.Biden would have sailed away from Trump much earlier and faster than Hillary Clinton did. But beyond the easy victory she's likely to win anyway all told, he doesn't have much to recommend him over her, and lacks many of her — yes, I know! — her scruples.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZCF3)
Keeping a cat in a NYC bodega is technically against the rules, but everybody loves bodega cats. Everybody but a certain Yelp review, who is now getting a lot of flak for complaining about a bodega cat at SK Deli in the East Village.You gotta be a miserable gentrifying ass bitch to yelp about the bodega cat pic.twitter.com/rinaytDanY— سنكامي (@SynKami) October 24, 2016From Brokelyn:The reviewer has been getting roasted by fellow Yelpers with comments like: “No one likes you. This deli has pretty much anything you might want out of a deli. Owner is a hard ass but the cat is awesome,†which is about the perfect description for most bodegas in New York. From Gothamist:Deli and bodega owners face fines of up to $3,000 for having a cat or cats in their establishments, but they also face fines of $300 for the discovery of rodent fecal matter. Lost inventory is another cost, as rats and mice like to chew through containers and eat the food that is left overnight on shelves like a rodent buffet.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZCDG)
Ken Crossland has a good explainer piece on the Hillary Clinton email issue that conservatives have used to bludgeon her campaign for months.Hillary Clinton isn’t a technophile. She viewed her set-up as a means to an end. Was it working? Great. Did she care how it worked? No. It’s likely as simple as that....I’m pretty convinced, viewing the evidence, that Hillary Clinton believes she’s in the right with her email server, that it helped her do her job well, and that it kept America safe. What irks the public is that we know that she knows that we know that Clinton doesn’t actually care that she used a private server, and the only thing she laments is that it blew up in her face.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#1ZCAK)
Welp those two...Cats squabble over a saucer of milk, until they are both hit by a crisis of conscience.
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZC5Y)
Andrew Lekashman offers a brief pictorial a history of mechanical keyboards, from adding machines to dumb terminals to Symbolics monstrosities to modern blank-key hacker totems. There was a lot of ingenious tech left by the wayside on the way to finding the perfect click.Pictured above is one not included in the roundup, a particularly beautiful Raytheon(!) model that can be bought on eBay for $300, then sent to me.Lekashman's tastes are grittier:Ultrasonic I PlusThis keyboard is acoustic and operates entirely by vibration. This makes it more like a musical instrument than a workplace device. This is something that hasn’t been replicated in the keyboard market since 1982. The specific principle that allows it to work is called Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA). This is like a form of echo-location to measure which key hits the acoustic transfer bar. Whenever a switch is pressed, a metal “slapper†strikes the bar, and transducers measure the sound wave produced, which differs based on the distance of the slapper from the transducer. Typing on the keyboard is delightfully clicky and pleasantly tactile.
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZC5H)
The YouTube channel INDUSTRIAL JP is a wonderland of machinery and music operated by a label in Japan. [h/t Joel] (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZC09)
According to Google Trends, the search term "memes" is now more popular than the search term "Jesus," a fact noticed by Dominik Vincent Salonen, @Kuwaddo on Twitter. https://twitter.com/Kuwaddo/status/790912204237332480
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by Ruben Bolling on (#1ZBWZ)
FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and oh, so much more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (â€A book for the curious and adventurous!†-Cory Doctorow) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#1ZBX1)
The fakers at ADDYOLOGY posted a scam video purporting to create a homemade wireless smartphone charger that is both dangerous and useless. The always-entertaining ElectroBOOM did this epic takedown and electronics tutorial. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#1ZBX5)
Recent revised estimates upping the number of galaxies in the universe seem even more mind-boggling when contemplating this image released from Hubble this week. It shows NGC 362, one of about 150 globular clusters on the outskirts of just one galaxy, our own Milky Way. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#1ZBX3)
YouTuber Barb Ackue (get it?) was kind enough to upload an important moment in US history: Commander John Young complaining about flatulence while Apollo 16 was on the lunar surface. After working through some technical issues, Young says: (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#1ZBX7)
Liza Mandelup directed this lovely short documentary on a camp for children with xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP, a genetic skin condition which makes those with the trait extremely sensitive to sunlight. Activities happen during the night, allowing these young people to enjoy the outdoors together. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#1ZA04)
*deep inside the Apple lair, Tim Cook approaches his captive adversary*"There will be no escape for you, Mr. Bond."Images of New MacBook Pro With Magic Toolbar Leaked in macOS Sierra 10.12.1 [macrumors]
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by David Pescovitz on (#1Z9PZ)
In this Scientific American video, Rubik's Cube master Ian Scheffler, author of the new book Cracking the Cube, explains some of the math behind "speedcubing." Scheduler's book sounds fascinating even though the only way I could get my Rubik's Cube solved is to hand it to my 10-year-old son's friend Luc who was the first to dazzle me with the fine art of speedcubery. From the description of Cracking the Cube:When Hungarian professor Ernő Rubik invented the Rubik’s Cube (or, rather, his Cube) in the 1970s out of wooden blocks, rubber bands, and paper clips, he didn’t even know if it could be solved, let alone that it would become the world’s most popular puzzle. Since its creation, the Cube has become many things to many people: one of the bestselling children’s toys of all time, a symbol of intellectual prowess, a frustrating puzzle with 43.2 quintillion possible permutations, and now a worldwide sporting phenomenon that is introducing the classic brainteaser to a new generation.In Cracking the Cube, Ian Scheffler reveals that cubing isn’t just fun and games. Along with participating in speedcubing competitions—from the World Championship to local tournaments—and interviewing key figures from the Cube’s history, he journeys to Budapest to seek a meeting with the legendary and notoriously reclusive Rubik, who is still tinkering away with puzzles in his seventies.Getting sucked into the competitive circuit himself, Scheffler becomes engrossed in solving Rubik’s Cube in under twenty seconds, the quasi-mystical barrier known as “sub-20,†which is to cubing what four minutes is to the mile: the difference between the best and everyone else."Cracking the Cube: Going Slow to Go Fast and Other Unexpected Turns in the World of Competitive Rubik's Cube Solving" by Ian Scheffler (Amazon)
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by Jason Weisberger on (#1Z9H1)
Just a pilot and his pal, a deadly Titan. I'm looking forward to Titanfall 2 as a welcome break from Destiny. It launches on October 28th.
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by David Pescovitz on (#1Z9ET)
@nathan: "Barack Obama is the Nickelback of presidents."@DJ_lcpl: "Barack Obama...bro, do you even lift!?"(Obama's response: "Well, I lifted the ban on Cuban cigars, that's worth something.")@realDonaldTrump: "President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!"(Obama's response: "Well, @realDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president.")
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by Jason Weisberger on (#1Z9DC)
Let Shub-Niggurath teach your child the alphabet with C Is for Cthulhu: The Lovecraft Alphabet BookI wish we had this book when my daughter was younger. Things would be much different!C Is for Cthulhu: The Lovecraft Alphabet Book via Amazon
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