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In 2007, Trump was suing a reporter who exposed unflattering facts about his true level of wealth. The Washington Post reports on a 2007 deposition, related to Donald Trump's failed lawsuit over the expose, in which he was nailed to a series of "falsehoods and exaggerations" remarkable in just how pointless and stupid they were.The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable — cornered, out-prepared and under oath.Thirty times, they caught him.Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, in his mind, because he saw the situation more positively than others did.A "routine and habitual fabulist," is how L. O’Brien, the author Trump had sued, describes him now. The viral video of Trump contradicting himself on every major issue is amusing, but it doesn't get at the man revealed in the deposition. He lies constantly—and is terrible at it.

Lewis from Birmingham, UK is a young man who makes videos about tech support scammers. In this video, he interviews a scammer from Delhi, India who tells Lewis that he works in a call center with 50 or 60 other scammers. He says he is forced to do this crooked work because he signed a 5-year contract. He says he swindles about 10 people a day, and makes a better living than average. His dream is to move to the United States and get a legitimate job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcH9EDlTW8UAh da dah dahr rah, escrong, ryahh, hrheh, sigit, i-wahn i-dinninumm. If Kanye is smart, he'll package these up a la George Clinton's three volume Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some of DAT. (via Kottke) (FUTURE PRESIDENT, YE!, AlinBoss12, CC-BY-SA)

The LA Times investigates the many, fragmentary, much-revised storyline of the Haunted Mansion, the greatest ride that Disney ever built (though Walt himself had to die before the constraints he imposed on the ride could be set aside and the ride finished). (more…)

As the highly controversial deaths of black people at the hands of American law enforcement officers has crept into our public discourse this decade, so too has the revelation that no federal agency maintains statistics on killings by police officers, prompting The Guardian -- a UK-based newspaper -- to launch The Counted, a project to piece together a national picture of death-by-cop from the fragmentary evidence of press reports and open records requests. (more…)

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FOLLOW @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook for inane, hastily composed observations.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and other stuff, which is sort of okay. BUY Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures, which is actually pretty good and kids love it. Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Swingify attempts to turn any song into a swing version of itself. Upload an audio file, select the hardness of swing you prefer, and listen. (more…)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "I just got back from the big debate on is free law like free beer that has been brewing for months at the American Bar Association over the question of who gets to read public safety codes and on what terms." (more…)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hit a new low today by suggesting at a campaign rally that “The Second Amendment” could prevent Hillary Clinton from choosing Supreme Court Justices as President of the United States. (more…)

My wife Kelly Sparks is design director at Epic Sky, a new fashion brand that's all about empowering young teen and tween girls. Rather than just trying to guess what young people want in clothes, Epic Sky is working with hypertalented teenage designers to develop the collections, and a wide network of teens and tweens to vet the products and contribute content to their site. This past Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a big spread about the company. Congrats to co-founders Monika Rose and Marian Kown, Kelly, and all the badass women at Epic Sky! From the SF Chronicle:“We’re all about empowerment and positivity,” says Kwon. “There are a lot of media messages about girls being perfect — that they’re not smart or pretty enough, while our mission is to inspire the epic in every girl. You don’t have to have a perfect body or be the most athletic, which is the pressure a lot of middle school girls face. Snapchat and Instagram put a lot of pressure on girls, too.”“We offer clothes that fit girls and go beyond stereotypes,” says Rose. “As a mom, I want a brand I can say yes to — clothes that are appropriate for girls’ changing bodies and don’t promote early sexualization. On the market now, you go from a one-piece Speedo to a Brazilian thong, and there’s no option in-between for these girls.” Whereas Epic Sky bikinis, designed by Sausalito 17-year-old Antje Worring, actually look like they’d be comfortable and fun to swim in, not just lie around and look glamorous...The way this crowd-sourced model works is that girls ages 10 to 18 from anywhere submit designs to Epic Sky, and every two weeks the team reviews the submissions. Once a design is chosen, “We bring them in, work with them, and they work with our designer to come up with a prototype, and the girls learn how to bring a product to market,” Kwon explains. “They bring the creativity, and it becomes a co-creation.”"Epic Sky’s girl-powered fashion" (SF Chronicle)Epic Sky (EpicSky.co)

UC Berkeley, birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, installed an emergency exit door between Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’ office and his conference room so he can escape if protestors violently storm his suite. From the Daily Californian:Construction of the door was requested about a year ago in response to a protest in April 2015 when protesters stormed the chancellor’s suite (photo above).During the protest, students staged a sit-in outside Dirks’ office where they banged on desks and chanted loudly. They were eventually escorted out of the building, some in handcuffs, by UCPD officers.Later that day, protesters marched from Sproul Hall to the area in front of University House, the chancellor’s residence.ASUC Senator-elect Chris Yamas said there have been many protests on campus throughout the tenure of several different chancellors, but no instances when a chancellor was physically harmed.“There has to be other ways to handle student concerns and protests than simply building ways to avoid them,” Yamas said. “The chancellor seems elitist and out of touch and inaccessible to the students.”

https://youtu.be/3wp0LIbGmcIFarkle is a simple dice rolling strategy game that we sometimes play. If you have Yahtzee or Tenzi at at home, you can use the dice and these rules. If you don't have dice, Amazon is selling the Farkle dice game for $5. For that, you get five dice, a plastic cup, rules, and a scoring pad.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Smart About Sharks by Owen DaveyFlying Eye Books2016, 40 pages, 9.2 x 11.5 x 0.5 inches $17 Buy a copy on AmazonI love children’s books that are as delicious for kids as they are for adults, and Smart About Sharks is exactly that. With a sumptuous textured cloth cover, an appealing gray-tinted palette of earth tones playfully punctuated by pink, and a retro encyclopedic design, Smart is filled with fascinating bite-sized shark facts that were completely new to me. Examples: sharks were here on earth 200-million years before dinosaurs; there’s a shark called a megamouth that has a glow-in-the-dark mouth; some sharks grow only to the size of a pencil. Smart About Sharks, just released today, is similar to illustrator Owen Davey’s other info-packed animal book, Mad About Monkeys, which came out almost exactly a year ago (363 days to be exact), and which I reviewed here on Wink. Everything from what sharks eat to their social life to their various shapes, sizes, and many different types (over 500 unique species in our oceans today!) is covered in this high-quality picture book. Rumor has it that this is the start of a series with Flying Eye Books. I hope the rumors are true!

Josh Spencer is the owner of The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. I haven't been there yet, but after seeing this video I plan to visit asap.This video profile was directed and edited by Chad Howitt and produced by Matt Olson.This short documentary focuses on the life of Josh Spencer, owner and operator of “The Last Bookstore”, located in Downtown Los Angeles. Against the closure of massive bookstore chains and the rise of eReaders, Josh has been able to create a local resurgence of the printed word. We explore his life as a father, husband, small business owner, and paraplegic, as well as the store’s magnetic attraction of the community.[via]

Everybody knows that if you want to earn the big bucks these days, you need to learn how to code. Luckily, you don’t even need to spend thousands on grad school to make coding your career. The Entry-Level Python & JavaScript Programming Bundle is the easiest way to get started in programming in two of the most popular languages out there.One of the biggest mistakes budding coders make is learning outdated languages. Our advice: make yourself relevant with the right skills. This bundle packs four courses that teach you everything from the basics of JavaScript to the finer points of Python, so you’ll be a serious contender for top paying companies like Google and Amazon. And our favorite part? You’ll get a certificate of completion and lifetime access to the courses, so your resume will look legit and you can refresh your memory when it isn’t feeling as sharp as it used to be.Trust us, this will be the best $29 you ever spent on your career.

Elton Simpson is one of the two men who fired assault rifles at people gathered for a "Draw Muhammad" event in Garland, Texas before being shot to death by an off-duty police officer; in the weeks leading up to the attack, Simpson had corresponded with an undercover FBI agent who urged him to "Tear up Texas." (more…)

Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has proposed issuing tracking-chips to all visitors to the country, which would allow the government to monitor the movements of all foreign nationals while in-country, in order to "locate them which will help if there are some tourists who overstay or run away (from police)." (more…)

Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack told an audience of flood victims that some people enjoy floods because it means they get insurance money."Frankly, over the years, and the many years I've been doing this... they frankly enjoy floods," he said. "They'd like to see a flood about every 7 years, because they want new cars, they want their homes redone."

An Australian fast food chain that sells "Chiko Rolls" (an Australian version of an egg roll - I had to look it up) has a special offer: send them two Chiko wrappers and they will send you a plastic hand to hold your chiko roll.

Backchannel's package on medical data and the health-tech industry profiles three people who were able to shake loose their own data and make real improvements in their lives with it: Marie Moe, who discovered that the reason she was having terrifying cardiac episodes was out-of-date firmware on her pacemaker; Steven Keating, who created a website with exquisitely detailed data on his brain tumor, including a gene-sequence that had to be run a second time because the first scan wasn't approved for "commercial" use, which included publishing it on his own site; and Annie Kuehl, whose advocacy eventually revealed the fact that doctors had suspected all along that her sick baby had a rare genetic disorder, which she only learned about after years of agonizing victim-blaming and terrifying seizures. (more…)

The HiRise imager in orbit around Mars shoots a continuous stream of data about its surface our way. Nasa's posted 44,000 images so far, each available in all sorts of formats and projections. You could have one a day as your desktop background and never run out.Gullies in Dunes Dubbed Kolhar.Yardangs South of Olympus Mons Crater-Exposed Rocks of Yalgoo Crater in Isidis Basin

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag says that US investigators have discovered three more hidden cheat apps in a Volkswagen product line: these ones were discovered in 3-liter Audi diesels. (more…)

In the 2012 election, as it became clear Barack Obama was polling better than Mittens Romney, it was claimed the polls were "skewed" in favor of Democratic candidates. Turned out that the polls underestimated Obama's margin of victory. But with Donald Trump trailing Hillary Clinton in similar fashion four years on, the "unskewers" are back. (more…)

It's hard to say why The world's biggest asshole is worth watching without spoilering it, but Coleman Sweeney is at least an entertaining asshole—until he isn't.

Kottke nailed it when he said that the timelapse video of these colorful pills dissolving looks like "decaying clowns."

The parallels between the Bernie Sanders insurgency and the vicious UK Labour Party fight over its left-leaning, incredibly popular leader Jeremy Corbyn keep on coming: now there's a Labour analogue to Debbie Wasserman Shultz, the corrupt, hawkish, disgraced former chair of the DNC, who was forced to resign after the DNC email leak revealed her extensive dirty-tricks campaign against Bernie Sanders. (more…)

Vincent Riemer made a TR-808 drum machine that runs in the browser, complete with all twiddly controls, the classic turn-of-the-eighties color scheme, and all the cowbell you can handle.

VH1 has ordered a new unscripted series that will star Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, under the working title “Martha & Snoop’s Dinner Party.” (more…)

This is cool as hell. “While thousands turned out to watch NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) recently complete a full-scale test of its booster, few were aware of the other major test occurring simultaneously.” NASA’s High Dynamic Range Stereo X (HiDyRS-X) camera project captured the test like we've never seen before, and recorded propulsion video data in unprecedented detail. (more…)

I have a larger model of the Mpow motion sensing solar-charged LED outdoor light and it has performed well since I installed it earlier this year. The light is very bright and the motion sensor is sensitive enough to turn on the light when a person or coyote walks by, but doesn't turn on the light unecessarily. Right now, Amazon is selling a smaller, 8-LED model for $11 (use code PWAVPADF).

Imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning is suffering from severe mental health challenges in prison, directly related to her treatment in prison. She isn't getting the care she needs, and she recently tried to take her own life. Chelsea is a transgender woman who, despite her gender identity being acknowledged by the world, is forced by the U.S. to serve out her sentence in an all-male maximum security prison. To be a woman imprisoned among men is a most gendered form of cruel and unusual punishment, but America's hatred and misunderstanding of trans people allows this to be the norm. (more…)

The world's first psychedelic computer enters the universal library. And it all runs in the browser, meaning you'll never have to hunt for Workbench disk images again.

At a rally in Detroit, Donald Trump said "titties" while attempting to say "cities." (more…)

Paper engineer Petrina Case creates miniature sculptures from business cards that, if so desired, may depict the profession listed on the card. She accepts commissions via her Etsy shop: Petrina Case Studio (via Neatorama)

"Scary Lucy," the freakishly grotesque statue of Lucille Ball by sculptor Dave Poulin that for several years stood in her hometown of Celoron, New York, was joined this weekend by artist Carolyn Palmer's lifelike statue."People gasped when she was unveiled and everyone looked so happy," Palmer said.In a 2015 letter to the Hollywood Reporter, Poulin stated that he meant no harm with his more creative depiction."I take full responsibility for 'Scary Lucy,' though by no means was that my intent or did I wish to disparage in any way the memories of the iconic Lucy image," Poulin wrote.According to Celoron Mayor Scott Schrecengost, Scary Lucy will stay put "because it has been such an attraction. "We've had thousands of people here over the past year from all over," he said. "...Even though the other statue is called 'Scary Lucy' or 'Ugly Lucy,' whatever the people want to call it, it's still artwork and not all artwork is beautiful."

Last month a 31-year-old Chinese man who was traveling through Germany realized he lost his wallet in Stuttgart, Germany. The tourist, whose name hasn't been disclosed, tried to ask authorities for a stolen goods form, but ended up filling out a refugee asylum application. This set "machinery in motion that he couldn't get out of," Christoph Schluetermannan, an official with the German Red Cross, told reporters. According to The Guardian:From there, he was sent to Dortmund in northwestern Germany and on to the refugee home in Duelmen. “He simply did what he was told,” Schluetermann said.Schluetermann said he quickly noticed the man because “he was different from the others – very, very helpless.”With help from a translation app and then from a translator at a Chinese restaurant, it became clear that the man wanted to travel on to France and Italy, not seek asylum.It took 12 days before the tourist was set free.

Last week, Andrew Tierney and Ken Munro from Pen Test Partners demoed their proof-of-concept ransomware for smart thermostats, which relies on users being tricked into downloading malware that then roots the device and locks the user out while displaying a demand for one bitcoin. (more…)

University of California San Diego nanoengineers developed a flexible, wearable sensor that measures the blood alcohol level of its wearer and transmits the info to a mobile device. From UCSD News:The device consists of a temporary tattoo—which sticks to the skin, induces sweat and electrochemically detects the alcohol level—and a portable flexible electronic circuit board, which is connected to the tattoo by a magnet and can communicate the information to a mobile device via Bluetooth. The device could be integrated with a car’s alcohol ignition interlocks, or friends could use it to check up on each other before handing over the car keys, he added.“When you’re out at a party or at a bar, this sensor could send alerts to your phone to let you know how much you’ve been drinking,” said Jayoung Kim, a materials science and engineering PhD student."Noninvasive Alcohol Monitoring Using a Wearable Tattoo-Based Iontophoretic-Biosensing System" (ACS Sensors)

Technology cheerleaders love to talk "leapfrogging," the idea that developing regions that haven't adopted traditional technology (like an electrical grid or banking systems) can jump straight to the newest, "better," thing more quickly. Occasionally, that's true, like in parts of Africa where empowering mobile phones took off long before most people had landlines. Now the big idea is that drones will negate the need for roads, and save lives in the process. The Economist presents a more measured view:...Such caveats hardly dampen the mood at business conferences in Africa, where you find hundreds of investors gushing about their plans to help the poor with new technology and make big profits while doing it. “Within the next few years you’ll really see leapfrogging taking off,” says Ashish Thakkar, a British-born, Ugandan businessman whose Mara Group, a business-services firm, is setting up tech businesses across the continent. Perhaps, but tech booms based on leapfrogging have been wrongly anticipated in the past. Americans who turn up in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam with millions of dollars hoping to buy startups that have risen as part of the so-called “Silicon Savannah”, an east African cluster, for example, frequently leave empty-handed because there isn’t all that much to buy.African tech types often think they can quickly copy rich-country products and sell them to the urban middle class. But then they discover that there is no getting around complex tax laws, a dearth of engineers and fragmented markets. The Western investors who back them have even less grasp of just how dysfunctional basic infrastructure can be, notes Ory Okolloh, a Kenyan investor and a political activist. All the evidence suggests that technology firms are no better at leapfrogging such hurdles than, say, a carmaker. The only part of the continent with a mature tech scene is South Africa: a country which also has good roads, reliable power and plenty of well-educated graduates.

Goat Story's 16 oz horn mug is designed to bring a little Viking to your morning cup, with a spillproof lid and a cross-body carry-strap that converts to a stand to allow you to balance your horn of plenty on your desk between swigs. (more…)

I'm still addicted to the Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube (previously, previously), but am careful only to force you to endure the very best crushings. Here, a roll of duct tape.

Most states being large and empty, the most frequent answer to the question "what is the most common job in your state?" is "truck driver." For everywhere else, teachers and software developers prevail. And where even roads are rare, farmers. Hawaii, though...NPR's map is fascinating, though, in that you can jump back to earlier days. In 1978s, what did we all do before software development was the day job of millions?What's with all the truck drivers? Truck drivers dominate the map for a few reasons.Driving a truck has been immune to two of the biggest trends affecting U.S. jobs: globalization and automation. A worker in China can't drive a truck in Ohio, and machines can't drive cars (yet).Let's see about that in a decade.

"Wife of a Bears' lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics," The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday. Sadly, the headline writers were unable to figure out her name before Tweet time, but they eventually did and later credited the wifehood (and the medal) to "Corey Cogdell-Unrein, the wife of Bears lineman Mitch Unrein." (more…)

Enjoy this remarkable montage of the Republican candidate for President of the United States flipping on virtually every position he's drawn breath to hold. His limited vocabulary makes it quite easy to find literal contradictions.

Gordon Tang and Huaidan Chen -- Chinese nationals who live in Singapore -- own a global property speculation and development empire whose US branch is called American Pacific International Capital Inc. They followed a recipe set out in a memo by Charlie Spies, a top Republican lawyer, in order to funnel $1.3M to Jeb Bush's PAC, then Tang offered a reporter for the Intercept $200,000 not to mention that he had been investigated for smuggling, tax evasion and bribery by the Chinese government. (more…)

This is a demonstration of Omote, a real-time face tracking and projection mapping system.

Two Muslim-American women were kicked off an American Airlines flight this week, basically for flying while Muslim. (more…)

Today, the EFF and a coalition of organizations and individuals asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to explore fair labeling rules that would require retailers to warn you when the products you buy come locked down by DRM ("Digital Rights Management" or "Digital Restrictions Management"). (more…)