Boing Boing

The RNC in Cleveland isn't the only unhinged, drunken, drug-fueled marathon party going on this week. Starting today, thousands of Juggalos and Juggalettes gather in Thornville, Ohio, to participate in the 17th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos, which runs through Saturday. Each year at the Gathering, fans of Insane Clown Posse gather to celebrate the weirdness that unites them. The "Juggalo" moniker is from the rap act's 1992 track, “The Juggla.” (more…)

Wow. The Bat mobile and Bat copter alone make me want to pick up this fantastic LEGO set. The Adam West Batcave is interpreted with fantastic detail!LEGO Super Heroes Batman Classic TV Series - Batcave 76052 via Amazon

The Concorde is a supersonic commercial airliner that took people from New York City to Paris in around 3.5 hours. It's heyday was in the 1970s and it finally stopped operation in 2003. Learn why in the Vox video above and in Lawrence Azerrad's magnificent Boing Boing classic feature "Flight of the Concordes!"

This chart shows how much coffee is being consumed around the world, and how much people spend on it. It's hard to believe that a flat white is the most popular form of coffee. I don't think that's true in the US.

In spring, 2015, American farmers started to spread the word that John Deere claimed that a notorious copyright law gave the company exclusive dominion over repairs to Deere farm-equipment, making it a felony (punishable by 5 years in prison and a $500K fine for a first offense) to fix your own tractor. (more…)

The Bookworm Rug (100% woven polyester) come in 2' x 3' ($28), 3' x 5' ($58) and 4' x 6' ($79), and feature a selection of spines from some rather good books, including Iain Banks's debut "The Wasp Factory" some Virginia Woolf, Charles Bukowksi and Haruki Murakami. (via Bookshelf)

Zach Smothers, who hand-colorized 1,300 frames from the credits of The Munsters has posted 64 seconds of similarly hand-colored footage from The Addams Family.

Kokichi Sugihara makes 3D optical illusions. He is the creator of the ambiguous cylinders optical illusion that won the 2nd Prize of the 12th Best illusion of the Year Contest 2016. Here's his entry for 2015, which also won second prize.

In recognition of students who are “sensitive to noise,” a Sydney primary school has banned clapping and cheering at school events. Instead of clapping and cheering, students will be prompted by teachers when it is appropriate for “silent cheering,” “pulling excited faces,” and “punching the air.”From News.com.auIn its July 18 newsletter, the Elanora school has published an item under the headline “Did you know” that “our school has adopted silent cheers at assembly’s” (sic).“If you’ve been to a school assembly recently, you may have noticed our students doing silent cheers,” the item reads.“Instead of clapping, the students are free to punch the air, pull excited faces and wriggle about on the spot.“The practice has been adopted to respect members of our school community who are sensitive to noise.“When you attend an assembly, teachers will prompt the audience to conduct a silent cheer if it is needed.“Teachers have also found the silent cheers to be a great way to expend children’s energy and reduce fidgeting.”

Do Crows hold funerals? Nah, not really, but they're up to something when one among the murder is murdered, and scientists are fascinated by their behavior around fallen comrades.Calling to each other, gathering around, and paying special attention to a fallen comrade is common among the highly intelligent corvids, a group of birds that includes crows, jays, magpies, and ravens, says Kaeli Swift, a Ph.D student in environmental science at the University of Washington. (See "Are Crows Smarter Than Children?")But it doesn't necessarily mean the birds are mourning for their lost buddy. Rather, they're likely trying to find out if there's a threat where the death occurred, so they can avoid it in the future.One study involved using masks to see if crows would avoid humans who handled dead crows (and thereby implicated themselves in the investigation.) They did. On the other hand, if crows are smart enough to investigate murders, maybe they're smart enough to take one look at that mask and think: "OK, that is definitely a murderer."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrfPWjA2PdABoris Johnson, one of the leaders of the Brexit movement and a lifelong racist, xenophobic clown, is now the UK Foreign Secretary, which means that he gets to do press conferences with John Kerry in front of the US State Department press corps. (more…)

Before Theresa May became Prime Minister of the UK, she was the Pry Minister of the UK, the principle proponent of the Snoopers Charter, a sweeping domestic surveillance bill that the European Court of Justice's Advocate General has just found to be excessive under EU law. (more…)

People are "food insecure" if they lack access to "enough food for an active, healthy life." There are 48 million Americans who live in food insecurity, thanks to a combination of nearly all the economic benefits of the post-2008 recovery going to the wealthy; and the sustained attacks on America's social safety net, led by state-level Tea Party governments. (more…)

Online hotel reviews are oftentimes fake. How do you tell? Review Skeptic claims to detect bullshit hotel reviews based upon research from Cornell University into the language of fakery. It's been around for years, as this 2011 article in the New York Times attests. Determining the number of fake reviews on the Web is difficult. But it is enough of a problem to attract a team of Cornell researchers, who recently published a paper about creating a computer algorithm for detecting fake reviewers. They were instantly approached by a dozen companies, including Amazon, Hilton, TripAdvisor and several specialist travel sites, all of which have a strong interest in limiting the spread of bogus reviews.“The whole system falls apart if made-up reviews are given the same weight as honest ones,” said one of the researchers, Myle Ott. Among those seeking out Mr. Ott, a 22-year-old Ph.D. candidate in computer science, after the study was published was Google, which asked for his résumé, he said.I wonder if it's still good, with 5 years of bullshit evolution to account for. One thing in its favor: it seems to "know" that top reviewers tend to affect a style imitative of travel writing in an effort to sound credible, and doesn't trigger on their innocuous but very ad-like use of language.

Earbuds are fine for casual listening while you work out or run errands. But when you really want to experience music as it was intended, nothing beats a serious set of noise-canceling, soundscape-enhancing headphones.The REMXD On-Ear Bluetooth Headphones offer high-quality sound with complete wireless connectivity -- and at just $35.99, this rechargeable set won’t even cut into your iTunes budget.Comfortable, adjustable earcups cradle your noggin while delivering wireless audio up to 33 feet away via your smartphone or MP3 device. You’ll enjoy the rich aural experience you crave for up to 15 hours of listening bliss from a single charge.And if your phone rings? No problem - simple controls on the headphones allow you to answer calls, change tracks, or adjust the volume with the push of a button.

For days, Fox insiders have been leaking that boss Roger Ailes is out, then Fox promptly denies it. The Daily Beast says that it briefly got Fox to "confirm Drudge's report"—that's he's getting $40m to piss off—but Fox called back to walk it back. Soon! Sooooon!

Dan Taylor sez, "Prepare for the TRUMPOCALYPSE! When there is no more room in HELL, the dead will TRUMP the Earth. An all-new comic book from the creative team that brought you HERO HAPPY HOUR. If you think the idea of Donald Trump as President of the United States is scary, wait until you get a look at him as a zombie overlord amassing an army of undead to rule the world." (more…)

Marc Laidlaw, the cyberpunk pioneer who went on to serve as writer on some of Valve's greatest video-game titles -- the Half-Life series, Portal -- has just posted his entire backlist to Amazon as $3, DRM-free ebooks, including his debut novel Dad's Nuke (think Fallout, but with religious extremist militants who subsist on "Host on a shingle," this being the cultured recovered foreskin tissue of Jesus Christ on fortified crackers) and Kalifornia, a brilliant and prescient novel about media, cultural disintegration, and celebrity. (more…)

Mexican artist Mateo Pizarro draws these beautiful and insanely tiny illustrations using just a pencil. (via Juxtapoz)

The Navy have been blasting the sea with louder than rock concert sounds, hunting for Red October. Apparently the U.S. Navy hasn't done enough to ensure its sonar technology isn't hurting whales tho. Regardless this decision being overturned, the Navy had already planned to phase out much of the harmful sound. Via Vocativ: “The Court of Appeals understood that the Navy can do more to reduce the risk of its powerful long-range sonar, especially in the vast reaches of the ocean where too little is known,” Michael Jasny of the National Resource Defense Council, one of several organizations behind suit, said in a statement. “Ignorance is no excuse for inaction where commonsense safeguards recommended by the government’s own scientists can prevent avoidable harm.”The court’s ruling will send both parties back to a district court for further consideration. But time may well run out on the NMFS’s decision anyway; it expires in 2017. The Navy has already agreed to limit its use of sonar in certain locations starting in 2018. Soon, the only waves in the ocean will be the natural ones made of water, not man-made ones that come from sound.

In Botswana, conservation scientists from the University of New South Wales are painting eyes on the rear ends of cattle in an effort to deter lions from eating them. As the lions' protected habitats shrink, they move closer to human settlements. In Botswana, the lions attack the livestock that the subsistence farmers count on. That leads the farmers to kill the African lions, further endangering the species. (UNSW conservation biologist Neil Jordan’s idea of painting eyes onto cattle rumps came about after two lionesses were killed near the village in Botswana where he was based. While watching a lion hunt an impala, he noticed something interesting: “Lions are ambush hunters, so they creep up on their prey, get close and jump on them unseen. But in this case, the impala noticed the lion. And when the lion realised it had been spotted, it gave up on the hunt,” he says.In nature, being ‘seen’ can deter predation. For example, patterns resembling eyes on butterfly wings are known to deter birds. In India, woodcutters in the forest have long worn masks on the back of their heads to ward-off man-eating tigers. Jordan’s idea was to “hijack this mechanism” of psychological trickery. Last year, he collaborated with the BPCT and a local farmer to trial the innovative strategy, which he’s dubbed “iCow”."Eye-opening conservation strategy could save African lions" (UNSW)

Alex Schmidt of Cracked makes a passionate (and hilarious) argument for DC putting Superman and Batman into the public domain, pointing out that comics companiesmake a hell of a lot of money on public domain characters from Sherlock Holmes and Thor. (more…)

A new International Labour Organization report called ASEAN in transformation: How technology is changing jobs and enterprises predicts that "sewbots" -- sewing robots that can piece together garments with little or no human intervention -- will replace up to 90% of garment and footwear workers in Cambodia and Vietnam in the years to come. (more…)

Snake Plissken is back in these epic Escape from New York comics! I loved the comic book continuation of Big Trouble in Little China and these Escape from New York books are more of the same. Excellent art and story telling pick up right where the film ended, the ass-kicking continues. Our hero Snake decides he needs a little vacation and heads south to Florida. Naturally, nothing works out as easily as he plans, and Plissken finds himself stuck putting down a new southern rebellion.Escape From New York Vol. 1 via Amazon

On a Saturday, a 3.7 magnitude "earthquake" was detected about 168 miles off Florida's Daytona Beach Shores. It now appears that the quake was actually a "shock trial," an explosive test conducted by the US Navy to test the fortitude of the USS Jackson, a new combat ship. From the Daytona Beach News-Journal:Asked about the reported earthquake on Monday, Dale Eng, a public information officer for the Navy’s Sea Systems Command in Washington, said the Navy is working on a statement it expects to release this week.Seismographs as far away as Minnesota, Texas and Oklahoma, as well as along the coast of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, registered the event on Saturday, said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist and shift supervisor at the Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in California.(After being shown the above photo of a shock trial conducted last month) Presgrave said, "That's a smoking gun, isn't it?"Presgrave planned to contact the Navy to learn more about the charges used in the shock trials as part of the agency's ongoing investigation.

Jonathan Jarry's short video on the problems with anaecdotal evidence for "alternative medicine" is a powerful, easy-to-digest primer on the ways that confounding variables, survivor bias and regression to the mean can make stuff like reiki seem like it works, and how double-blind tests can uncover these problems and help us figure out what works and what doesn't -- especially important is the idea that "dead men tell no tales"; that is, no one who died because alternative medicine failed to help them will ever tell you how great it worked. (via Motherboard)

From self-driving cars to financial software to the recommendations you get on Amazon and Netflix, machine learning is at the core of modern technology—and its implications for future technology are staggering.And now, you can dive into the field of machine learning yourself with The Complete Machine Learning Bundle. This package of 10 courses includes 406 lessons that will teach you everything from the basics to practical applications of machine learning (like how to apply machine learning to stock trading).So put on that thinking cap and snap up this bundle while it’s available—it’s currently a steal for just $39.99 (94% off the regular price of $780).

Posavina bez mina, a humanitarian organization that works to defuse landmines in the former Yugoslavia, has posted a warning to its Facebook page saying that they've been told that Pokemon Go players are venturing into active minefields to catch virtual critters, and warning people not to go into minefields to catch Pokemon, which is very good advice. (more…)

Pooper is an app for dog owners willing to pay to have other people pick up their dog's poop. Just snap a photo of your dog's poop, and a scooper (paid per scoop) will drive, walk, bus, or bike over and collect it for you. It's $15 a month for 2 scoops/day in a 15-mile radius. An unlimited plan is $35 a month.

Iowa congressman Steve King Steve King of Iowa loves his "sub-group" of people. Here's what he said on a televised panel on MSNBC:“This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”“Than white people?” Mr. Hayes asked.Mr. King responded: “Than Western civilization itself that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America, and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.”Even if King's proudly ignorant statement was true, which it most assuredly is not, the fact remains that King himself hasn't invented anything, other than fabulist history. To be proud of someone else's invention because you have the same color skin as them is just about the stupidest thing a human being could think. It's unfortunate that this nincompoop has enough admirers to vote him into office.Quartz put together a list of things not invented by white people. I wonder if Rep King sullies his hands by touching any of them?numeralsmathematicsreligionChristianityirrigationnovelspaperinkdancemusicgunpowdergunsbombstime bombsthe seismographthe compassjust-in-time manufacturingCD playersMP3 playersPokemoncalculatorskaraokelithium ion batteriesyogamartial artssilkumbrellasteanoodlesinstant noodlesshampoopunk futurismfutures markets

It's hard to believe it's been nearly six years since Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt introduced the Glif tripod mount for the iPhone 4. I bought one and liked it a lot. Now they have introduced a new Glif. This one works with all kinds of smartphones, has 3 tripod mount points, and comes with a couple of accessories. It looks great.

Charges were dismissed for the Madison, Alabama police officer who body slammed a 58-year-old man from India walking on the sidewalk last year. Sureshbhai Patel, who does not understand English, was seriously injured and needed an operation to fuse two vertebrae.From NBC News:Hank Sherrod, Patel's attorney, told NBC News in an email that the state's decision to drop the assault charge is deeply troubling, though not entirely surprising."This decision illustrates how difficult it is to hold law enforcement officers accountable under the criminal laws for brutal acts that would send an ordinary citizen to jail," he said.[Former Madison, Ala. police officer Eric Sloan] Parker, 27, still faces a civil lawsuit in connection with the incident. Parker encountered Patel last Feb. 6 while responding to a call of a suspicious black man looking at garages and walking near houses. Patel, in from India to visit his son and grandson, testified that he did not understand English or the officers who confronted him while he was out for a walk.Nice people around the world gave $209,000 to Mr. Patel's GoFundMe account.

In 1985, Marie Osmond energetically recited Hugo Ball's 1916 poem "Karawane" on the TV series "Believe it or Not." I believe Mr. Ball would have loved this.(Thanks, Gareth!)

The Moto Z phone uses a system of magnetically aligned components that snap on and off to add functionality, from high-quality speakers to extra batteries to a projector. (more…)

This bird soy sauce container makes me happy. Perfect for my gluten-free soy sauce.

The average price of a US movie ticket hit $8.72 during 2016's second quarter, the highest they've ever been -- in possibly related news, ticket sales were down 9.5% in the same period. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=EHRc-QMoUE4The 8-Bit Guy's 15-minute explainer on floppy discs is a great potted history of 80s- and 90s-era storage media (it follows his segment on tape-drives) and the way that competitors learned from each others' mistakes and dead-ends, and engineered clever solutions to one of computing's most serious challenges. (via Motherboard)

Marta sez, "The Modern Poland Foundation is calling for speakers at the 5th International CopyCamp Conference (Warsaw 27-28th October 2016) to discuss the Future of Copyright in Europe. If you'd like to join the debate on the impact copyright has and will have on education, politics, culture and society, send us your proposal and meet with other speakers from all over the world: lawyers, artists, politicians, academics, representatives of NGOS and the media."It's the fifth time CopyCamp gives floor to all interested parties to talk about copyright in the friendly space of the popular movie theatre in the heart of Warsaw.Thematic tracks of CopyCamp 2016:*Copyright and Art*Remuneration Models*Copyright, Education and Science*Technologies, Innovation and Copyright*Copyright and Human Rights*Copyright Enforcement*Copyright Debate*Copyright LawmakingFind more information here. If you are interested in presenting your viewpoint during a 10-minute talk, please send us an abstract of not more than 1800 characters by 31 July.The International CopyCamp Conference 2016Future of Copyright in Europe

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Friends of Tom the Dancing Bug join its subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and much more. And check out Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

You saw the thumbnail and you came to the post, so here's the cold truth: it's just a rendering. Zont Sound's beautiful little pocket synth will have an AMOLED display, softly-backlit matte-touch controls, wireless and USB-C connections, and 3.5mm out. There's a dock that adds MIDI, writes Sean O'Kane, and at least a year of dreaming ahead of us. [h/t daneel]Unfortunately, it seems that it will be a long time before anyone gets a chance to play with the Zont synth: the official website says it won’t be available until the fall of 2017. And while the designer behind the project, Pavel Golovkin, claims to have industrial design experience at Nooka (a company known for its wild wristwatches), this appears to be his first attempt at making his own hardware. That’s not always a promising proposition, though Teenage Engineering pulled it off with their own (admittedly low-budget) pocket synthesizers. (In fact, Zont's already drawing comparisons to Teenage Engineering's synth.) Golovkin will start up a crowdfunding campaign for the Zont synth later this year. Here’s hoping he befriends some audio engineers in the meantime.

The best part of smoking is the moment when it’s finally time to inhale that first breath, kick back, and relax. But getting to that first inhale isn’t always the easiest task, and you’re often left with a bigger mess than when you started.There’s a better way, and it’s called the Hippie 2.0 Vaporizer. This compact little vape packs a powerful punch: it has a temperature scale of 356 F- 428 F, is constructed with a full ceramic chamber, and charges quickly via USB.Plus, it’s smart enough to remember what your last temperature setting was, so you’ll always have the best smoking experience, every time (no more fiddling with the perfect way to pack the bowl).The Hippie 2.0 Vaporizer also comes with an assortment of goodies including a USB charger cable, a glass pipe attachment, and a sleek leather carrying case—all for just $96 (39% off the original price of $159).

A group of South African astronomers announced on Saturday the discovery of more than a thousand galaxies never before known to have been seen or recorded by human beings. The astronomers “were showing off the first taste of the ultimate cosmic feast of what is to come, at least as seen from this particular dusty crumb called Earth,” writes Dennis Overbye at the New York Times:[caption id="attachment_472309" align="alignnone" width="930"] Left: A patch of sky about as big as the full moon where the MeerKAT telescope discerned the radio glow of about 200 galaxies. Only a few (circled) had been previously observed; Right: A distant galaxy that is being blown up by a black hole at its center. Credit SKA South Africa[/caption]When it’s done, sometime around 2030, the Square Kilometer Array, as it is known, will be the largest telescope ever built on our planet. It will consist of thousands of radio antennas that will collectively cover a square kilometer (hence the name), spread out in mathematically intricate patterns in South Africa and Australia.The telescope is being built by an international collaboration with its headquarters at the University of Manchester in England. The first phase, to be completed in 2023, will cost 650 million euros.Astronomers estimate that it will pull some 35,000-DVDs-worth of data down from the sky every second. So much that it would take 2 million years to play on your smartphone.For now the bounty consists of the radio glow of some 1,300 distant galaxies spotted in a patch of sky about 20 times the size of the full moon, where only 70 galaxies had been counted before. Some of them are erupting in cataclysms as massive black holes in their hearts spew radioactive high-energy particles across the dark sea of space.South African Telescope Spots 1,300 Unknown Galaxies [NYT]These Frank Chu signs are fake and created with the acme.com/chumaker, but the New York Times headline reminded me of Chu's intergalactic imaginings.[caption id="attachment_472313" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption][caption id="attachment_472319" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption][caption id="attachment_472318" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption][caption id="attachment_472320" align="aligncenter" width="930"] The MeerKAT radio telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa.[/caption]

"How To Hide Anything" is Michael Connor's 1984 book about rigging secret hiding places for your contraband and even yourself. Download the book for free here at Archive.org or purchase a hardcopy from Amazon. Connor is also the author of other well-intentioned self-help books like "Sneak It Through: Smuggling Made Easier" and "The Power of Positive Revenge: A Winner's Guide to Exacting Vengeance."

For more than 50 years, Justo Gallego has spent his days building his own beautiful cathedral outside of Madrid, all by himself."When I started to build this cathedral, the word on the street was that I was crazy," Gallego says.

Approximately 350,000 people in the US are diagnosed with gonorrhea each year. According to the CDC, it may soon be untreatable. Currently, the sexually-transmitted disease, not-so-fondly known as The Clap or The Drip, is treated with two antibiotics, azithromycin and ceftriaxone. Data is currently showing a rise in gonorrhea samples that are resistant to those drugs. Companies are developing new antibiotics but could be "years away," says CDC medical epidemiologist Robert D. Kirkcaldy."We think … it’s a matter of when and not if with resistance,” he says. “This bug is so smart and can mutate so rapidly.”(Scientific American)

The copyright troll business-model: a sleazy lawyer gets copyright holders to one or more films (often, but not always, porn) to deputize them to police those rights; then the lawyer's company uses sloppy investigative techniques to accuse internet users of violating those copyrights; they use deceptive notices to get ISPs to give them contact details for those users (or to get the ISPs to pass notices on to the users); then they send "speculative invoices" to their victims, demanding money not to sue -- usually a sum that's calculated to be less than it would cost to ask a lawyer whether it's worth paying. (more…)

Lucky there are leash laws!(via Reddit)