#1. A-Audio Legacy Noise Cancelling Headphones with 3-Stage Technology The A-Audio Legacy Headphones are the Boing Boing Store's best seller this month, and it’s easy to see why. With 40mm drivers, powerful circuitry, and memory foam padded circumaural ear cups, these are clearly super high-quality headphones. Plus, the patented 3-Stage Technology lets you toggle between passive audio, bass-enhanced, and active noise cancelling modes, so you can always get the best listening experience. These headphones retail for $299, but you can get them for 73% off ($79.99) in our store.#2. BASICS WalletThis Kickstarter hit won over Boing Boing readers because of its super slim, durable design. It holds everything you need while still being easy to carry—and it’s made from premium knitted elastic, so it’ll withstand all the wear and tear you can put it through. Keep up to 15 cards inside comfortably, and even keep cash, coins, or keys in the specialized built-in pocket. Right now, the BASICS wallet is just $18.99.#3. FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth EarbudsWith the arrival of the iPhone 7, it's no surprise that the FRESHeBuds Bluetooth earbuds are selling out fast. These are some of the best Bluetooth earbuds we've found: they deliver up to a 10 hour battery life and charge fully in just 90 minutes. The best feature is that you can automatically connect them to your phone via Bluetooth by pulling them apart. When you’re done listening, place the earbuds back together, and the connection will turn off. They’re totally waterproof, and are designed to stay in your ears no matter what. Get them for just $39.95 in the store.

If you thought soccer's world cup being awarded to baking-hot Qatar marked the zenith of sporting corruption, give FIDE a chance: the international chess federation's forthcoming world championship is headed to Iran, and women players must wear the hijab to compete. UK tabloids quote leading women chess players as threatening to quit the tournament rather than obey.US women's champion Nazi Paikidze said: ‘It is absolutely unacceptable to host one of the most important women's tournaments in a venue where, to this day, women are forced to cover up with a hijab.‘I understand and respect cultural differences. But, failing to comply can lead to imprisonment and women's rights are being severely restricted in general. It does not feel safe for women from around the world to play here.’She added: ‘If the situation remains unchanged, I will most certainly not participate in this event.’It's insane, but entirely in keeping with FIDE's brainier-than-thou shiftiness, to think that Tehran is a good place to host the key event on their highly-politicized mind game's calendar. For starters, there's a current U.S. government travel warning telling citizens not to go there at all.(I would go, but wear a Burka)

The Atomic Chemistry Set is a "modern chemistry set - 47 chemicals, glassware, lab apparatus, and insane chemical reactions." It looks great!

70% cotton/30% nylon, sized S-XXL, $40 from Thinkgeek.

“They just kept coming, and coming, and coming, across multiple states. Clowns in vans. Clowns in the woods. Clowns lurking in the shadows. Clowns chasing people or doing crimes.” (more…)

Lately my family has been going to the Neon Retro video game arcade in Pasadena, CA. They have a bunch of very nicely restored arcade games. It costs $10 a hour and all the games are set to free play. I just found out about this Pac-Man Connect-and-Play. You can buy it for as little as $8 (including shipping) on Amazon. It's got 12 built-in games including:Pac-ManPac-Man PlusBosconianGalaxianMappySuper Pac-ManGalagaDig DugNew Rally XPac & PalXeviousI wonder if anyone has modded this with a real arcade joystick. That would be a great project for John Park.

Fragments of Horror by Junji ItoViz Media2015, 224 pages, 5.8 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches (hardcover)$12 Buy a copy on AmazonFragments of Horror is a collection of eight wonderfully grotesque and creepy short stories. A seemingly bright and pretty architecture student terrorizes a family while having a bizarre relationship with their house. A boy tries to hold his body together after cheating on his girlfriend. The number one fan of a novelist finds herself in a sick situation trapped in the writer’s basement. A young woman who just eloped can’t understand why her new husband won’t come out from under his futon covers.Written by horror manga artist Junji Ito, whose influences include H.P. Lovecraft, the stories are as weird as they are original, while the art is crisp and expressive. What I love is the way these stories, set in modern Japan, are about seemingly normal lives that take a twisted turn into the bowels of darkness. They remind me of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, the ones that start off in a stylish, mid-century modern house or office where sharp-looking people go about their ordinary lives… until a crack in normality suddenly appears, the creep factor sets in, and they enter the twilight zone. My only regret is that there aren’t more stories here, but fortunately Ito isn’t new to the genre and has many other titles that I’ll be picking up soon.– Carla Sinclair

Here's two hours of Democratic and Republican congresspeople not taking any weaselly bullshit from disgraced Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf.In September 2016, Wells Fargo was issued a combined total of $185 million in fines for creating over 1.5 million checking and savings accounts and 500,000 credit cards that its customers never authorized. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued $100 million in fines, the largest in the agency's five-year history, along with $50 million in fines from the City and County of Los Angeles, and $35 million in fines from the Office of Comptroller of the Currency. The scandal was caused by an incentive-compensation program for employees to create new accounts. It led to the firing of nearly 5,300 employees and $5 million being set aside for customer refunds on fees for accounts the customers never wanted.

On August 1st, 1981 the world changed and MTV launched. With a bunch of unprofessional VJs who could sometimes barely cue up tapes MTV went through a lot of growth and changes, from Yo! MTV Raps to Beavis and Butthead, there was a time MTV spoke to me.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7CagI'll never forget the Remote Control theme either. MTV lost me as soon as the reality tv stuff started...https://youtu.be/_RKamrCuwEE?t=31sThey also knew how to run a Presidential campaign.https://youtu.be/yBG6GVVNtkE

On October 19, students at Sacramento Elementary School in Portland will be able to attend the After School Satan Club, which will focus "on science and rational thinking."From CBS News:In August, [Chapter co-head Finn] Rezz told us that the After School Satan Club will promote "benevolence and empathy for everybody." That mission, he said, is in direct contrast to something called "the Good News Club."The Good News Club is an after-school club put on by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, "a Bible-centered organization composed of born-again believers whose purpose is to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and to establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living."

Wood HoodWood hood.

“Raise your hand, Christian conservatives, everybody. Raise your hand if you're not a Christian conservative. I want to see this, right. Oh, there's a couple people, that's all right. I think we’ll keep them. Should we keep them in the room? Yes? I think so.” – Donald Trump at an Iowa rally today. At the next rally he'll have a box of yellow star buttons to pin on them.

From the Commodore USA Facebook page: "This C64C used by a small auto repair shop for balancing driveshafts has been working non-stop for over 25 years! And despite surviving a flood it is still going..."This reminded me of an article I wrote for Wired in 2000 about people who used old computers."Just how much horsepower do you need to read and reply to messages on the Internet?" asks Maurice Randall, a Commodore loyalist and owner of a one-man car-repair shop in Charlotte, Michigan. Randall, who wrote and now sells the first fax software for the Commodore 64, has just finished coding the machine's inaugural Web browser. He uses his C64 for everything from invoices to faxes to displaying automotive diagnostics. "There hasn't been anything made in the last three or four years that's necessary in computer hardware," he says. "I wouldn't be able to do anything more with a new PC than I'm doing with my 64."

This lever operated cork screw is super simple.I hated ripping corks in half, or finding floating bits of cork detritus in my wine. This Oxo opener pretty much removes me from the equation.Bottles are also opened far faster, getting you to the drinking.OXO SteeL Vertical Lever Corkscrew with Removable Foil Cutter via Amazon

Part of an ongoing series by weird chart-maker Scott Bateman; link to today's edition.

Erich Ashbargar's weird, laser-engraved dice are a tour-de-force: a pair of D6s for figuring out where to go for dinner in NYC; another D6 to figure out which die you should roll; an all-20s critical hit D20; Sicherman D6s that have different faces to a normal D6 pair, but the same probability distribution; punctuation mark dice (I've had students who were definitely using these); dice for indecisive people, and so on. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_QZ2F-qrGMTech anthropologist Genevieve Bell (previously) delivered one of the keynotes at last week's O'Reilly AI conference in New York City, describing how you could do anthropology fieldwork on an AI -- specifically, how you could do an ethnographic interview with one. (more…)

Following from Wells Fargo's 2,000,000-account fraud against its own customers -- part of a decade-old pattern -- the state of California has imposed sanctions on the bank, freezing it out of bond issues, brokerage business, and suspending all investment in Wells Fargo-issued securities. (more…)

2600: The Hacker Quarterly -- a venerable and storied source of hacker mischief and wonder -- has publicly offered a bounty of $10,000 (payable in "dollars, bitcoin... or rubles") for the first look at Donald Trump's tax return. (more…)

In 2009, we covered a "one time only 'Road Warrior Weekend' campout" -- now, seven years later, it's an annual event called Wasteland, and it's better than ever. (more…)

My favorite Francis Bacon painting, Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pepe The Frog, has taken on new meaning what with all the memes lately.When asked why he was compelled to revisit the subject so often, Bacon replied that he had nothing against Pepe, that he merely sought "an excuse to use these colours, and you can't give ordinary skin that green colour without getting into a sort of false fauve manner".

Wang Jianlin made billions speculating on Chinese real-estate; now that he's diversified into buying Hollywood movie studios and chains of movie theaters, the richest man in China is prepared to say what many have known: the Chinese property market is a huge, deadly bubble that's ripe to burst. (more…)

By Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin (aka @ThePieous)The tables have turned, now here’s your chance to “dig in like an Alabama tick” when you serve up this Pie-redator apple-strawberry pie at your next movie marathon night. (more…)

Nerdist found this wonderful fan-edit mashing up scenes from Stranger Things in a style of the opening credits from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (more…)

The always-engaging George Pendle (Strange Angel, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore) has a fascinating piece on Atlas Obscura on the history of space art and NASA's (and the government's at large) current awkward relationship with the art world.Yet when the NASA scientists asked the attendant artists to refrain from posting pictures of the meeting on social media, it seemed to sum up both a generational and a temperamental mismatch. (In an email, a NASA spokesperson said that "participating artists are free to discuss their attendance.")From a NASA perspective, the secrecy was a budgetary imperative. In 2003, the renowned performance artist Laurie Anderson was appointed NASA’s first “artist-in-residence” with the remit of creating art about the agency’s exploration of space. Republican congressmen quickly seized on the move as a sign of wanton profligacy. “Mr. Chairman,” sputtered Representative Chris Chocola of Indiana on the floor of Congress, “nowhere in NASA's mission does it say anything about advancing fine arts or hiring a performance artist.” There has been no artist-in-residence since and the reverberations were no doubt part of the reason why NASA’s workshop at Grace Farms seemed tentative and vague. In the not-so-distant past, though, space and art intermingled happily. Artists were crucial to NASA’s development, at times outpacing the science of space travel itself. What happened?The above illustration is NASA concept art of a moon landing, from 1959.

A paper published this summer looked into over 100 times humpbacks were observed disrupting orcas who are hunting, like these humpbacks trying to save a gray whale and calf. But why do they do it? (more…)

At this week's London Design Festival, design firm Uniform displayed Solo Radio. Stand in front of the device and it scans your face for input into software that assesses your emotions. Then it plays a song via Spotify algorithms with the appropriate mood. (more…)

Amos Yee, a 17-year-old blogger in Singapore, is to spend six weeks in jail for "wounding religious feelings." It is his second such jail term: he spent a month in jail last year for criticizing Christianity.The teenager's latest trial was closely watched by rights groups, who argue that the case threatens freedom of expression.Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said Singapore now needs to review its approach in dealing with cases like Yee's, who is likely to benefit from the publicity."Every time the authorities go after him, it just adds to his online audience," said Mr Robertson in an email.Here's his blog, written in English. It's mostly teenage edgelording about religion and politics, but the boy's evidently got prospects—and adapting to the international audience his government has given him!https://twitter.com/amosyee/status/776031479713280000https://twitter.com/amosyee/status/765855631509041153https://twitter.com/amosyee/status/779098845875572736https://twitter.com/amosyee/status/779008556599169024

So, that huge hack of 500 million Yahoo user accounts last week that Yahoo blamed on a "state-sponsored actor"? A private internet security firm is calling bullshit on the "state-sponsored" part. (more…)

Alfred Okwera Olango, who was black, was fatally shot by police in El Cajon, California on Tuesday. Police in the San Diego suburb city say the 38 year old Ugandan immigrant pointed a vape pen or e-cigarette device at them, before police shot the man to death.Officers were responding to a call of a man behaving erratically, and walking in traffic. Olango's friends and supporters say court records show that he suffered from mental illness, and may have been experiencing a seizure before his death. An El Cajon police officer is believed to have shot Olango within as little as one or two minutes after arriving at the scene. (more…)

A friend in France sent me an email one day and wrote, "You have to watch this Japanese movie 'Ring.' It's very special." Since he likes horror films as much as I do, his words carried weight. But in 1998 it wasn't easy to find a copy, and I had to nose around a bit before finally locating a DVD on amazon.co.uk. As you can see from the photo above, it's one creepy-ass film. There's a moment at the end which, if watched in blissful ignorance of what's going to happen, and in a dark room, the hair on the back of your neck will stand up. If for some reason you haven't seen the movie, then watch it without reading anything about it in advance. Like all good horror in the past few decades, it was recently turned into a parody where Sadako (the creepy lady with pale skin and long black hair in Ring ) eventually faces off against the Kayako (the creepy lady with pale skin and long black hair from another excellent Japanese horror film, Ju-on [The Grudge]) and her son, who is seen below.The new film is supposedly funny (in a good way), though I haven't see it yet, so who knows. I guess it's the Japanese version of Freddie vs. Jason, which sucked. Or Alien vs. Predator, which sucked even more. (Frankenstin Meets The Wolfman still remains good fun.) But those films weren't supposedly to be intentionally funny. Shall we next see Michael Myers as a stand-up comedian?But if you're into that sort of thing, then this self-referential Japanese TV commercial has Sadako doing battle with a Snickers candy bar! I prefer Milky Way Dark, but if Sadako insists I eat a Snickers bar, who am I to say no?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KgUUBFJgQcVia Rocket News

This segment from The Last Word explains the most painful things Donald Trump said, and why we can not elect him our President. (more…)

Both of my daughters like to sketch, and so do I. One of our favorite things to do is sit around the dining room table and spend the afternoon drawing. The sketchpad I typically use is the 9 in. x 12 in. Strathmore Series 400. A pad of 100 sheets costs $9 on Amazon. I use a variety of pencils and brush pens, but I really like the Black Prismacolor colored pencil (PC935), which is what illustrator Mark Crilley uses to "ink" his pencil drawings. It produces a dark black line that stays put when you erase the pencil marks around it.Here are a few of our sketches:

Two students and a teacher were injured in a shooting today at Townville Elementary School in Anderson County, South Carolina. A teenager identified as the shooting suspect is now in police custody.“A bad man came to our school today,” 4-year-old Townville student Amber Jolly told a television news reporter. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Craft for the Soul: How to Get the Most Out of Your Creative Life by Pip Lincolne (author) Penguin Books Australia2016, 216 pages, 6 x 9 x 0.9 inches (hardcover)$28 Buy a copy on AmazonWhen it comes to dishing out all there is to know about living a creative life, Pip Lincolne is certainly your go-to woman. She’s the author of several creative titles and the talent behind popular blog Meet Me at Mike’s. She is also the founder of multiple inspiring projects, including worldwide craft group Brown Owls and the eMag series The Good Stuff Guide.For some, stumbling upon Pip Lincolne’s book, Craft for the Soul, might seem a bit like discovering a rare gem. Sure, there are plenty of books about creativity, as well as numerous books filled with cute craft projects, but Lincolne has seamlessly blended the two to produce a book that is bursting with all things creative. Nestled among her down-to-earth advice about morning rituals, keeping active for creativity’s sake, and how to constantly generate ideas (among plenty of other topics), you’ll also find her favorite delicious recipes, along with adorable illustrations, inspiring quotes, and crafty DIY projects. The author stresses that each and every one of us are capable of filling our day-to-day lives with more creativity, happiness, and fun. And for those of you thinking you don’t have a creative bone in your bodies – the pang of inspiration you feel every time you turn a page will certainly have you thinking otherwise! – Melanie Doncas

I spent the summer and fall of 1984 in London (living in this council flat in Elephant and Castle), and I loved hanging out at a park near the Battersea Power Station. Built in the 1930s, the coal-fired power station in South London had ceased operations a year earlier, and I was spellbound by the combination of its almost incomprehensible massiveness, utter stillness, and the emptiness around it.I haven't seen new photos of it for many years, and I was surprised to discover that a lot of commercial development has taken place next to it. Encroached upon by other large buildings, it no longer has mysterious grandeur. It looks like it has been caged and subdued. I hate it.From The Standard:[Apple] will move 1,400 staff from eight sites around the capital into what it calls “a new Apple campus” at the Grade II* listed former electricity generator.Its employees will occupy all six floors of office space in the brick “cathedral of power,” which is being painstakingly restored after 33 years standing derelict on the banks of the Thames. [caption id="attachment_485146" align="alignnone" width="800"] Image: Battersea in 2008 Wikipedia[/caption]

In the world of orange cheese there remains an outlier: Stadium Nacho Cheese. A lonely, rarely discussed and often maligned member of the bright and cheery circus colored cheese family! Nacho cheese is so disparaged it is often doubted that Nacho is even a cheese.Do not make this simple mistake! While the USDA has no official designation for cheese type Nacho, they do not officially deny its existence either. Frank Liberto, the Father of Nachos, is credited mass producing nacho cheese and making it widely available to the masses. Via First We Feast:While most popular tales of nacho lore jump straight from Piedras Negras to Howard Cosell’s mouth (the man, after all, put the snack on the map during a 1978 Monday Night Football Game at Cowboy’s Stadium), Smith details the key entrepreneurial exploits of Frank Liberto and his Ricos cheese sauce.Key points:Concession stand nachos were introduced in 1976 at a Texas Rangers game. That year, Arlington Stadium sold $800,000 worth of Ricos’ nachos.Each can of Ricos contain 107 ounces of cheese concoction, with 32 ounces of water and 20 ounces of pepper juice used to form the molten sauce we recognize at the concession stand pump.Since 1976, the Ricos style of nachos have become a sporting staple. And, taking into consideration the second key point, the profitability of the product is impossible to argue with, especially considering that the spiciness of the jalapeno was employed to boost drink sales as well as add flavor. Liberto’s innovation made nachos fast—Frank didn’t want customers to wait for more than a minute—and famous. Cosell may have propelled the word nacho into national consciousness, but it was Liberto’s business acumen that made chips and cheese a phenomenon. In the 1970s, Disney animators created trailers feature the characters of Nacho, Rico, and Pepe, helping propel Liberto’s empire beyond the ball park and into movie concessions.KNEEL BEFORE NACHO!

In this time-lapse video from Harvard Medical School, you can watch “bacteria [Escherichia coli] develop resistance to increasingly higher doses of antibiotics in a matter of days.”[via]

A teen boy has been arrested in Saudi Arabia for “unethical behaviour,” after he did a cute internet video chat with an American YouTube starlet. (more…)

After a customer in Canada complained about the Tapping Creeper, Home Depot removed the Halloween prop from its shelves.From Fortune:Breanne Hunt-Wells, who is a mother of two, told CBC that she feels the decoration downplays voyeurism, which can often lead to sexual assault or rape. She also said that she ”failed to see the humor in it.”“It makes light of a very serious crime,” she said. “Voyeurism is a crime in Canada.”It's still available in Home Depots in the US and online.

This dad has mad Dad Skills. (more…)

https://youtu.be/HFZFcyM4QvgLocksmith scammers are in every city. They advertise on Google, promising to unlock your house or car for $29 or so. (more…)

After last week's revelation of a record-smashing breach at Yahoo (which the company covered up for years), security researcher Matt Blaze tweeted: "Sorry, but if you have a Yahoo account, you will need to find a new mother, and have grown up on a different street." Ha, ha, only serious. (more…)

Vancouver-based engineer-turned-"entrepreneur" Valeriy Shershnyov published thousands of titles in the Kindle store, "books" of typo-riddled nonsense that he upranked with a system of bots that gamed Amazon's fraud-detection systems, allowing him to sell more than $3M worth of garbage to unsuspecting Amazon customers. (more…)

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 even more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”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…)

Rest in peace.

Over at National Geographic, Nadia Drake's feature on Elon Musk's plan for millions of people to live on Mars is the best explanation (and contextualization) of this far out vision that I've read. From Nat Geo:The rocket would deliver the crew capsule to orbit around Earth, then the booster would steer itself toward a soft landing back at the launch pad, a feat that SpaceX rocket boosters have been doing for almost a year now. Next, the booster would pick up a fuel tanker and carry that into orbit, where it would fuel the spaceship for its journey to Mars.Once en route, that spaceship would deploy solar panels to harvest energy from the sun and conserve valuable propellant for what promises to be an exciting landing on the Red Planet.As Musk envisions it, fleets of these crew-carrying capsules will remain in Earth orbit until a favorable planetary alignment brings the two planets close together—something that happens every 26 months. “We’d ultimately have upward of a thousand or more spaceships waiting in orbit. And so the Mars colonial fleet would depart en masse,” Musk says.The key to his plan is reusing the various spaceships as much as possible. “I just don’t think there’s any way to have a self-sustaining Mars base without reusability. I think this is really fundamental,” Musk says. “If wooden sailing ships in the old days were not reusable, I don’t think the United States would exist.”"Elon Musk: A Million Humans Could Live on Mars By the 2060s" by Nadia Drake (National Geographic)

In the early 1990s, former professional wrestler and police officer Michael Stivers launched a career as a hypnotist, but with the unusual specialty of "breast enlargement hypnotism."According to his pitch, "The larger-breast style of self-hypnosis relaxes the subject, then allows her to will an increased blood flow into the fatty tissues of the breast, much like that during menstruation or pregnancy. Daily conditioning through self-hypnosis allows what amounts to a permanent enhancement."As George Constanza once said, "It's not a lie if you believe it."It may comes as a surprise then that according to an article from the Des Moines Register posted by Weird Universe, not all of Stivers' customers were satisfied."A 58-year-old Tampa woman who wouldn't give her name said her bust measurement grew 3 inches through hypnosis in April, but then shrank 1 ½ inches," reads the article.

Wiggle wiggle.[via IMGUR]

The question of what to do with Battersea Power Station, a disused yet oddly beautiful pile of bricks in London, long occupied the city's planners. The latest developers have scored a coup that sounds a lot like the final answer: it's going to be Apple's London headquarters.Countless schemes came and went for the massive structure, whose four towers belched coal smoke until 1983 and graced the legendary cover of Pink Floyd's Animals. But it was only in the last few years that plans came together for a modern, mixed-use combination of homes, shops and businesses. Apple will be the single largest tenant, London's Evening Standard reports, taking the top 6 floors inside the old boiler house.Apple’s main European HQ will remain at Cork, Ireland, where it employs 4,000 people, but the Battersea site will be one of its biggest in the world outside America. The Californian giant, the world’s most valuable company, will be the largest single tenant in the 42-acre complex of homes, offices, shops and leisure facilities....Apple is leasing 500,000 sq ft in total, making it one of the biggest single office deals signed in London outside the City and Docklands in the past 20 years.It is expected all the firm’s “central function” staff in London in areas such as finance and human resources will move to the power station. Apple has 2,530 staff in total in the capital, including about 1,100 working in its stores. It has taken enough space for 3,000 employees, giving it room to hire more as its operation grows in London. The designers of the office space have not yet been appointed.