Our guest on the Cool Tools Show this week is Ron Hale-Evans, the open source software blog, Planeta Diego: Linux Y Software Libre, once described Ron as "writer by profession, game designer by vocation and psychologist by training." He’s the primary author of the 2006 book Mind Performance Hacks and co-author of its 2011 spiritual successor Mindhacker.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes: WhiteCoat Clipboard ($31)"The WhiteCoat Clipboard [are] folding clipboards and they're all medical editions of one sort of another and, one morning a few years ago for some reason, I woke up with the idea that I just had to have a folding clipboard to fit in my bag. I searched for folding clipboard on Amazon and 'The WhiteCoat Clipboard' was pretty much it. It folds up so it will fit into a doctor's or nurse's coat pocket. ... You can put stickers on it or decorate it in some other way, but I keep mine plain, because it's kind of fun to look at. … It's also good for when you just throw it in your bag, if you have notes in it, they don't get all creased and crumpled, because the folder protects it."Alphasmart Neo - Handheld ($27, used)“It's kind of like a calculator screen, but bigger. It's just great, you just type in it all day and then at the end of the day, you plug it into your laptop or whatever via USB and it pretends it's a keyboard, and it essentially simulates typing into whatever document you got open and it dumps it that way. … It's very good for getting away from different things, go sit out in the son and not only are you not connected to the internet, but you've got a screen that's visible in bright sunlight. It's great for just throwing in your bag and going anywhere and the battery life is like forever."Emacs Orgmode"It's a package for Emacs that makes it much more useful in daily life. Emacs is GNU Emacs, it's a text editor that has got all kinds of Swiss army knife bells and whistles on it. It's very great, a lot of people prefer more minimalist editors like VI, but there is still a bunch of people who like Emacs like me. I've been using Emacs for a long time. I think since college but Orgmode is an add on package that lets you do things like freeform notes, calendar, to do lists, embedded spread sheets, literate programming. I use it for journal with embedded quantified self data. You can write a book manuscript in it and then render it as LaTex PDF, EPUB. If your publishers want word, you can convert it to word with no problem. .. It's just very, very, powerful and useful. It's all keyboard driven, there's really no mousing necessary."Oblique Strategies“[Oblique Strategies] comes in many forms from decks of cards to phone apps or web apps and you press a button or pick a card and it gives you advice about something you're stuck on creatively. … The advice is very good, it comes from Bryan Eno and Peter Schmidth, Bryan Eno is a musician, Peter Schmidth, the painter. … It's just wonderful, it doesn't hold your hand too much and it doesn't give you airy-fairy kind of advice that you can't do anything with. There is a good balance between general and specific, they only give you a specific task, like a prompt, you know, that you might get from a writer's book. They give you a general idea that can be applied to a lot of creative problems, but that seems specific."

"A Longitudinal Measurement Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web" [PDF] is the first UN-sponsored study of one of the internet's worst places: /pol/. (more…)

My new obsession is the Rex Factor podcast, which examines every king and queen of England from Alfred the Great to Elizabeth II in order to determine which was the greatest ruler of all time. The podcast actually started way back in 2010 and determined its final verdict in 2014. But hosts Graham Duke and Ali Hood are now working their way through the kings and queens of Scotland, and I’ve been immensely enjoying the show’s back catalogue, which is still easily accessible.Each monarch gets their own podcast (and sometime several if they’re a particularly important ruler). The hosts briefly go over the monarch’s biography and then rank them from 1-10 on “Battleyness,” (their warfare skills), “Scandal” (the more scandal, the higher the score), and “Subjectivity” (how much they improved the lives of their subjects). They also examine each ruler’s longevity and their ability to produce a strong dynastic line. And finally, Duke and Hood determine whether each monarch has a certain extra special star quality they call “Rex Factor.”Though they clearly love history, Duke and Hood don’t take their subject matter too seriously. Their conversations are light-hearted and easy to follow, even for the biggest historical novice. I’m only on their Richard the Lionheart episode, but I’m really looking forward to listening to the rest and seeing who they pick as their ultimate Rex Factor winner. You can listen to Rex Factor wherever you listen to podcasts or learn more via Twitter and Facebook as well as the show's website and blog. You can also help support the podcast with a donation right here.

Yes, it's illegal, dangerous, and annoying, but Austin Augie's video on how to skitch is a real love letter to the activity. (more…)

After maps showing the likely electoral map if only men (or women) voted, Twitter went crazy with the remixes. What if only bears voted? What if only memes voted? If only people never gonna say goodbye? The whole thing went from funny to saturation point to old in record time, and is already over. (more…)

"A Dog’s Life, a heartwarming short film made by director Kristenn over those summer months. GOBO brought this loyal friend In vivid and realistic 3D as he humorously follows his master's exercise routine." [via tl;dr]I made a looping GIF of the best part for y'all.

http://carrie-onn.tumblr.com/post/141383859787/anyone-who-tries-to-tell-you-theatre-is-easyThese are a few of my favorite things.

Calligraphers continue to explore the possibilities of portable tablets for enhancing their craft, and few are doing more than Ian Barnard. Here's his latest tutorial, turning handwritten script into a neon-like gradient.Bonus video: just look at this hand-lettered banana:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxgoN7HUjkw• How to do gradient & shadowed lettering in Procreate on the iPad Pro (YouTube / Ian Barnard)

Molly Manglewood offers a succinct but thorough verdict on Swedish Fish flavor Oreos. (more…)

Shared by Downtown L.A. Life and Dangerous Mind, these gorgeous photos are dated around 1860 to 1901. I've collected a few of my favorites, but both sites have even more portraits on display. They're the perfect rebuttal for those who argue diversity is a new phenomenon.

James Coker and Marshall Stratton star as Eric and Donald Trump Jr. in Trump Bros. Watch the whole series here. (more…)

In the 1990s, Hubble surprised astronomers by revealing just how packed the universe is with galaxies: they estimated some 200 billion of them based on its observations. But now we know these estimates were wrong. There are at least 2 trillion.Conselice and his team reached this conclusion using deep-space images from Hubble and the already published data from other teams. They painstakingly converted the images into 3-D, in order to make accurate measurements of the number of galaxies at different epochs in the universe's history. In addition, they used new mathematical models, which allowed them to infer the existence of galaxies that the current generation of telescopes cannot observe. This led to the surprising conclusion that in order for the numbers of galaxies we now see and their masses to add up, there must be a further 90 percent of galaxies in the observable universe that are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes. These myriad small faint galaxies from the early universe merged over time into the larger galaxies we can now observe."It boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied. Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we discover these galaxies with future generations of telescopes? In the near future, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study these ultra-faint galaxies, said Conselice.That's good for about 700 billion trillion stars, and heaven knows how many planets. (Previously)

On Thursday, Lou Dobbs appears to have doxxed a woman who said Donald Trump sexually assaulted her. The Fox Business Channel anchor tweeted what is believed to have been Jessica Leeds' home address and phone number, and claimed she was linked to the Clinton Foundation. (more…)

Melania Trump is demanding that People Magazine retract a portion of a story that claims her husband sexually assaulted a reporter. Which part of the story? Not the part about sexual assault. (more…)

Amy Goodman, award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now, has been facing an outrageous arrest warrant in North Dakota for “criminal trespass” since early September. The charges are a result of her merely doing her job as a reporter and covering police violence against oil pipeline protesters in North Dakota. (more…)

A blistering new “Sassy Trump” lipdub from Peter Serafinowicz. (more…)

Joe Sparks animation makes me smile every time.

"With the Chemex, even a moron can make good coffee.” Those were the memorable words of inventor and bon vivant Peter Schlumbohm, praising his creation. A Chemex costs $40 on Amazon, but you can buy what appears to be a functionally identical semiknockoff from Bodum for half the price. Unlike the Chemex, which requires a paper filter, the Bodum has a permanent stainless steel mesh filter. It's made from borosilicate glass, and is "mouth-blown" as opposed to being blown with another orifice capable of producing pressurized gas.

Yesterday, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf announced his "early retirement" from the scandal-haunted company, with the CEO seat being filled by former COO Tim Sloan. (more…)

Those who enjoy digital-rights-management coffee will be attracted to the $437 Flatev. It's a large kitchen appliance that makes tortillas (in a variety of flavors). Simply pop in a proprietary pod (79 cents) containing pre-mixed flour and water, and in a few minutes the Flatev will dispense a piping hot tortilla.Some people on the Internet claim it's possible to make a tortilla without a Flatev.

Social scientist Kate Crawford (previously) and legal scholar Ryan Calo (previously) helped organize the interdisciplinary White House AI Now summits on how AI could increase inequality, erode accountability, and lead us into temptation and what to do about it. (more…)

Michael Weinberg writes, "After over a year of community development, the Open Source Hardware Association has released its new certification program. Hardware with the certification logo is guaranteed to meet the community definition of open source hardware. As a bonus, any hardware registered before the end of October is eligible to receive the coveted 000001 unique ID registration number." (more…)

Don’t mess with Emani.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, the U.S. National Archives' new curated page of GIFs on Giphy has an animated bit of US history for every occasion, like Woodsy Owl or this analog odometer from the Apollo 8 mission. (more…)

5MadMovieMakers revealed how they make their cool POV videos of Hot Wheels cars flying down tracks: a GoPro Hero affixed to Pharadox Hot Wheels Chassis. (more…)

YouTube personality Tyler Oakley sat down with Tim Kaine to quiz the Vice Presidential candidate on millennial lingo. It turns out Kaine's just as much of a nerdy dad as you’d expect, right down to his love of Dave Matthews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tSwJ8zesOMSadly for him, the car he honked at, screamed at, then angrily overtook had front and rear dashcams rolling. No-one gets hurt, but he's likely to lose his license for hitting the school bus.

The month after the Brexit vote, recorded racist verbal and physical assault rose -- and even arson -- by 41% in the UK. (more…)

The Braven 705 Bluetooth Speaker (50% off) may be lightweight and minimalist, but it delivers an impressive sound quality that's rare for its size. Braven is known for creating speakers that are easy to carry around, but also durable enough to take with you practically anywhere without worrying. The Braven 705 comes packing a shock absorbent thermoplastic exterior and IPX5 water resistance. But the most notable characteristic is the sound quality. It's built with two custom high-fidelity audio drivers: which means they’ll fill any area with rich, full sound.As you'd expect, it comes with a built-in mic and speakerphone that let you accept and end calls right from the speaker’s face, without having to find your phone. It also comes in a sleek gray or an array of bright, fun colors. All in all, it’s a seriously impressive speaker that is super portable, and currently, even affordable.Upgrade your Bluetooth speaker with the Braven 705 for 50% off retail, just $49.99.Explore more trending deals:10' Lightning-to-USB Cable: 3-Pack ($21.99)FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth Earbuds ($39.95)SunVolt Water-Resistant Dual-USB Solar Charger ($19.99)SingHong Bluetooth Color-Changing SmartBulb ($19.99)Xamarin Cross Platform Development Bundle ($35)

Tonight the New York Times published two women who claim to have experienced acts of sexual abuse by the Republican candidate for President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. With great speed the Trump campaign declared these claims "fiction." This "fiction" claim seems to spit in the face of his soul-less, truth-allergic campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. Conway has been clear, pounding the networks over and over, justifying Trump's shockingly ugly display at the second Presidential debate, that all women accusers must be heard. Even when presented with sworn depositions by the women that said events never occurred! Conway has also falsely accused Hillary Clinton of trying silence these women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPIQ3iOp88sWill it be that Kellyanne only thinks long debunked allegations need to be heard? Will Kellyanne call for Trump to explain these allegations, or that of his raping a 13 year old? Will Kellyanne now try to silence these women? How can they blame Hillary?

Two maps published by the stats wizards at Fivethirtyeight depict likely electoral maps if only men or women voted. Women prefer Hillary Clinton; men prefer Donald Trump. In both cases, it's a landslide--and Trump supporters want to see theirs made real. The hashtag #repealthe19th, referring to the Ninteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, was kicked into play to encourage American to turn back the clock women's right to vote.Eric Trump, the son of the GOP nominee, campaigned using the men-only map, according to Buzzfeed. He presented it and called its existence proof of the “momentum” the Trump campaign has.Later on, observers noticed #Repealthe19th gaining momentum on Twitter as Trump supporters suggested rolling back the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote. Apparently, it isn’t a new hashtag, but Silver’s predictive map gave it a nudge.It's not the first time a Trumpkin has headed down this path. Trump delegate Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire noted for his successful effort to bankrupt Gawker Media through a series of secretly-funded proxy lawsuits, once wrote that women voting was bad for democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiPR2RTq7xIThe government of Hawke's Bay, New Zealand imposing an energy-company-backed tax on people who put solar panels on their homes. Greenpeace's petition in support of sustainable, renewable power was delivered with a catchy, angry song by Tiki Taane. (more…)

Crystal writes, "'Dark rides' like the Spookarama at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park, those single-cart rides that take you through a haunted house full of ghosts and scares. They're prime for teenage making out, have been around for 100 years -- and they're disappearing. Joel Zika, a 36-year-old art and design university professor in Melbourne, Australia, has been fascinated with the dark rides for years, reveling their connection to early horror effects in movies. So he decided to document them in the only way that would truly do them justice: virtual reality." (more…)

Niall from the online speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons writes, "Our annual fund drive has just 6 days to run, and we still need to raise at least $3,000! Why should you, the fine readers of Boing Boing, consider donating this year?" (more…)

Aliens is one of my all-time favorite movies. A perfect mix of action, sci-fi and horror, which I would argue hasn’t been replicated. Then there’s Alien 3, and everything that came after it. I don’t like to talk about that. But, in 1988 after Aliens came and four years before the next movie would come out, this comic series ran which gave me the followup story I wanted. The series has been published as Aliens: Book One, Aliens: Outbreak, and in novel form as Aliens: Earth Hive (a lot to keep track of), but since these publications were made after Alien 3 came out, names were changed to avoid confusion from the films continuation of the story. So Wilcks = Hicks and Billie = Newt. Thankfully this comic doesn’t do that. This printing features the comic as it was intended to be read with the characters we’re familiar with. The story picks up a few years after the film ended. An adult Newt and aged Hicks are struggling to deal with the horrors they witnessed, and Ripley is ominously missing. The black-and-white comics really capture the gritty world that the movies take place in, expanding on it in the best way. Although the comic ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, the story is continued in Aliens: Nightmare Asylum, but you will have to deal with the name change of the main characters. The book itself is beautiful. And black. Very black. It feels like something that was designed by H.R. Giger himself. Why I’m most excited about this rerun of the series is because it gives me some hope at seeing a movie that truly succeeds Aliens. There’s been a lot of back and forth, but Sigourney Weaver, Ellen Ripley herself, has been in talks with Neill Blomkamp (director ofDistrict 9), and the two are championing a new Alien movie. One which might retcon everything that happened in the later movies. This would mean that the cinematic world might very well line up with these comics. It’s a stretch, and might never happen, but I like to dream. Aliens fans will definitely appreciate this one.Aliens 30th Anniversary: The Original Comic Series by Mark Verheiden (author) and Mark A. Nelson (illustrator)Dark Horse Books2016, 184 pages, 8.3 x 12.4 x 1 inches (hardback)$17 Buy a copy on Amazon

I have these TaoTronics 60 Watt LED equivalent bulbs and like them a lot. At $13 for 6 (when you use code RSHKZDMQ on Amazon), it's a great deal. I prefer the Soft White (3000K) because the Daylight ones are a bit harsh.

I'd never heard of this genre referred to as 'LitRPG', but Awaken Online: Catharsis is a fantastic trip into MMORPG land!Things are always clear in a MMORPG, right? Kill the bats and rats to get a bigger sword, so you can kill bigger rats and bats and get an even better weapon! Up until now moral choices have been simple, good or bad? Welcome to Awaken Online, where moral ambiguity seems to be the thing! Join Jason (great name) as he tries to figure out if the ends really do justify the means, and that maybe, just maybe, he's the bad guy here. I really enjoyed this first novel by Travis Bagwell. It is free via Kindle Unlimited.Awaken Online: Catharsis by Travis Bagwell via Amazon

Forty five years after Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs as a way to persecute black people, little has changed, according to a new ACLU/Human Rights Watch report.The ACLU/Human Rights Watch report shows that arrests for drug possession continue to make up a significant chunk of modern-day police work."Around the country, police make more arrests for drug possession than for any other crime," the report finds, citing FBI data. "More than one of every nine arrests by state law enforcement is for drug possession, amounting to more than 1.25 million arrests each year."In fact, police make more arrests for marijuana possession alone than for all violent crimes combined.The report finds that the laws are enforced unequally, too. Over their lifetimes, black and white Americans use illicit drugs at similar rates, according to federal data. But black adults were more than two-and-a-half times as likely to be arrested for drug possession.

iamlindoro says: "I built a site that builds you custom budgets for 600 cities around the world based on your lifestyle, family, housing, and other needs."

Behold the Tunda Cyat, one of the many delights from P5YCKONOMIXXX. NSFW.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkiXbUCs1yAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsdHRg0gDcM

Joi Ito (previously) -- director of MIT Media Lab, former Creative Commons chief, investor, entrepreneur, and happy mutant -- interviewed Barack Obama for a special, Obama-edited issue of Wired. (more…)

The Justice League collection from Hero Within works subtle DC hero insignia (Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hal Jordan) into hoodies, blazers, and pea coats. Costs range from $150-$250; coats ship in December. (more…)

The Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps were a group of 40 woman artists from NYC and Philadelphia ("in perfect physical condition") who devised camouflage systems for fighters and materiel during WWI, testing their theories by hiding in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx -- where the local cops grew accustomed to having seeming rocks and trees spring to life as they passed. (more…)

Explosive growth and change in China means many things must be built. They are not built well, writes British ex-pat James Palmer.The apartment is five years old. By Chinese standards, it’s far better than the average. Our toilet works, while in many of my friends’ houses, flushing the loo is a hydraulic operation akin to controlling the Nile floods. The sockets do not flash blue sparks when plugged in, and all but two work. None of the lightbulbs have ever exploded; and the mirror merely broke away, rather than falling spontaneously from the frame. The shower is not placed next to the apartment’s central wiring and protected by nothing more than rotting drywall.It's so brutal—"My time in China has taught me the pleasure and value of craftsmanship, simply because it’s so rare"—I can't help but wonder if it's really that bad! The word Chabuduo is offered as the cultural gravity point at hand. Meaning "close enough," it is depicted here as a powerful and useful concept in earlier times (think: improvisation, effectiveness, ingenuity) that has become dangerous in the context of modern life (think: slapdash, jobsworth, irritable.)Yet chabuduo is also the casual dismissal of problems. Oh, your door doesn’t fit the frame? Chabuduo, you’ll get used to kicking it open. We sent you a shirt two sizes too big? Chabuduo, what are you complaining about?At my old compound, the entrance to the underground parking lot was covered by a 20-metre-long half-cylinder of heavy blue plastic. Nobody had noticed that this made a highly effective wind trap, and it had been only crudely nailed to the brick foundations. Chabuduo, what’s it going to matter? When a storm hit, the nails burst from the pressure and it was sent hurtling across the compound, smashing stone tables and trees; I came down in the morning to find it lying across the grass like a fallen jumbo jet’s wing.If you're wondering where the Chinese precision craftsmanship goes, well, chances are you're looking at it right now.Photo: Three Gorges Dam by Le Grand Portage (CC-BY-2.0)

Modal VR, the new stealth startup co-founded by Atari and Chuck E. Cheese creator, has opened the doors a crack. According to Bushnell, their portable VR system is built for business applications (even though the demo video shows, you guessed it, a game). “We want to help enterprises solve problems by looking at them from another point of view," Bushnell said. “For those of us who grew up on “Star Trek,” the holodeck has always been the gold standard," he said. “Modal VR is the first time that I believe we actually have the holodeck.”"Nolan Bushnell’s Modal VR launches next-generation virtual reality platform for enterprises" (VentureBeat)"Nolan Bushnell Says His New Virtual Reality Startup Has the Keys to the Holodeck—and it’s Portable" (IEEE Spectrum)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5gzOQ2x-4c

The Chemical Weapons Convention has a giant loophole in that it allows for the stockpiling and use of chemical agents in law-enforcement; with the Eighth Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) coming up next month, there's an urgent question about whether "neuroweapons" (chemical agents intended to pacify or disperse people) will become tools of law-enforcement and "defensive warfare." (more…)

In a brand new series for the Webby Awards where I'm editor-at-large, I commissioned the talented comic artist Andy Warner to illustrate the wild history of the Web, from inspiring eureka moments to crackpot ideas that changed the world to fantastic failures.The first comic in the series is: "Twitter's First Chirps"!And for more of Andy's work, I highly recommend his absolutely wonderful book just out this week, Brief Histories of Everyday Objects, the illustrated stories behind life’s most common and underappreciated items.

Mark Rittman is a "BI, DW & Big Data specialist, Oracle ACE Director" who dabbles in home automation and smart appliances: he spent 11 hilarious hours locked in an epic struggle with a wifi-equipped smart kettle, trying to get it to heat water for a cup of tea, livetweeting the battle. (more…)