Boing Boing

The father of Brock Turner, convicted of raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, told the court that imprisonment would be "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action" (more…)

Former Talking Heads frontman and happiest of all the mutants David Byrne has a great post up about voter suppression, voter registration, and the state of American politics. (more…)

A promo for "Sadako vs. Kayako," a forthcoming movie in which the monsters from J-horror classics The Ring and The Grudge fight one another, saw the two of them playing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Nippon-Ham Fighters baseball game, with The Ring's Sadako pitching a 96km/h ball to The Grudge's Kayako, who handed off running duties to Toshio.

Today, Parliament is debating the Snoopers Charter, a wide-ranging mass-scale domestic surveillance law that allows government agencies to peer into the most intimate details of your life, conscripting internet and technology companies as participants in surveillance, with only the thinnest veneer of checks and balances and accountability for the inevitable abuse. (more…)

If you have gunked-up stove burner grates, this might do the trick. I wonder if it works for barbecue grills, too?

Evidently June 5th was the day Ferris took off. SAVE FERRIS

In the past, only the most hardcore of programmers could tackle the complexity of building virtual worlds -- but that's changed with platforms like the AGFPRO 3.0 Game Creator, now available for just $9.99 (90% off).Whether you’re looking to craft RPGs or first-person shooters, AGFPRO makes it easier than ever for you to create a game. This toolset doesn't require any coding knowledge and is bundled with extra content to further elevate your game creation process.Here's what's in your bundle ($109.94 total value):AGRPRO 3.0Voxel Sculpt for AGFPRODrone Kombat FPS Multiplayer for AGFPROZombie FPS Player for AGFPROFantasy Side-Scroller Player for AGFPROBattleMat Multi-Player for AGFPROThe AGFPRO 3.0 Game Creator and DLC bundle usually would cost over $100 -- but you can start building games today for only $9.99, while the deal lasts.

Just like the Mystery Machine I had when I was a kid. I traded it to Takumi Kobayashi for some blue edition star wars cards.Quality on the van is great. Evidently retro Hot Wheels are just like we remember.Hot Wheels Retro Entertainment Diecast The Mystery Machine Vehicle via Amazon

I jumped on the Freewrite/Hemingwrite kickstarter ages ago. It took so long for the single purpose, first-draft-only word processor to show up, I'd occasionally forgotten it was coming. I've had it for a few weeks now, and last weekend I typed a review out, on the unit itself. Thing is, you can't edit on the unit. The review below is the raw output of my clattering away at the old-timey keyboard. If there is elegence to be found in simplicity, the team at Astrohaus have done their damnedest with the Freewrite, their single-purpose, distraction-free word processor. Originally billed as the Hemingwrite, I bought into the kickstarter on this years ago, hoping it'd help me focus on some short stories I never get finished while working on my laptop, or bother to transcribe from my notebooks.I waited a long time for this unit, so I'm a little less forgiving of the problems than I might be with another kickstarted piece of kit. I have absolutely no complaints about the fit and finish. The device is pretty lovely in its gaudiness. It is supposed to resemble a typewriter, I think of the 1920s-1930s generation of my Remington Rand Deluxe Porta 5. It sort of does, the selector switches are mounted in a way to resemble the reels for ribbon, but it more closely feels like a mid to late 1990s portable wordprocessor. It weighs slightly, but not much less. It works about the same, and part of its charm is that it throws back to a mechanical keyboard like they would have used back then. The keyboard is pretty much heaven, if you come from the days of yore, as I do. It feels like I am jamming along on a Commodore Vic20, or a WYSE terminal. While the e-ink isn't vac green, its about as slow as the old led based screens would have been. You get just enough text on the screen to let you read back 1-3 sentences. You can't edit at all, aside from erasing with backspace, so watching as you type and not looking at your fingers on the keyboard is really critical. I find that if I miss a typo by more than 5 words, I try to leave it and not go back.You can edit in Google Docs, Word or whatever editing/wordprocessing program you like, howev er once you start editing off the freewrite, you can't directly append to the edited file with new text. Freewrite only uploads to the cloud, and creates a new file each time it does.You can choose to have your file emailed to you, or saved to a Google drive, Dropbox or some Freewrite sponsored web application. I used Google Drive, as its what I use, and it was pretty easy to connect. Logging into new wifi networks is a mixed bag. Anything that has just an SSID and password will work, but managed free wifi networks like starbucks, which requires some html logging in, will not authenticate, but the network will appear to be working. Don't get too frustrated when your files aren't uploading, I just trusted it'd work out when I got home, and it did.You may not really want to use the thing in public anyhow. I've taken it out a few times and while the fit and finish are lovely, the bright red and white keyboard certainly stand out. The clack clack clack of the keyboard is really soothing to me as I type but I bet it is driving the people around me nuts.I've also had a bunch of power issues with the unit. The guys at Astrohaus tell me there is a firmware update coming that'll allow me to charge the Freewrite off my laptop's usb ports. Right now if I plug it into a laptop the power button becomes inoperable. I have to plug it into a wallwart charger and hard reset it. I keep checking to see if the firmware has updated, and bricking the unit. This error also led to a terrible first weekend with it. All in all, if I force myself to sit down with it, I do actually write. I’d say it works there are a lot of words above. You are reading them. Yee haw! Astrohaus' FreewritePreviously on Boing Boing:The Freewrite, a beautiful, rugged machine for writing -- and nothing elseIs Alphasmart STILL the ultimate writers' tool?

I like to watch videos (especially magic trick instruction videos) on my iPhone but I don't like using iTunes to transfer movie files to my phone. (I don't like using iTunes for any reason because it is a terrible application.) For the last couple of years, I've been using the LEEF 16GB iBridge ($60). I plug it into the USB port on my computer and copy movie files onto it. To watch the videos on my phone, I plug the Leef into the phone's Lightning port and use the free Leef app to select and view the videos. It has never given me any trouble. 16GB is enough for me, but there are 32GB and 64GB versions available.

Is "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" actually about psychedelic drugs, British colonialism, or penis envy? Depends who you ask. At the BBC, Hephzibah Anderson surveys 150 years of weird readings of Lewis Carroll's classic book. From Anderson's essay:Re-examining the text, critics found plenty of gynaecological imagery, from the rabbit hole itself to the curtain that she must push aside. Locks and keys were seen as symbolic of coitus, and the caterpillar – well, wasn’t he just a bit… phallic? Inevitably, some saw penis envy in the text, rendering Alice’s extending neck a kind of copycat erection. And then there’s the fanning that she does before she starts to shrink, and the salt water that laps her chin once she’s mere inches tall – both acquire a decidedly masturbatory glossing.More nuanced readings have viewed Alice’s journey as being less about sex per se and more about a girl’s progress through childhood and puberty into adulthood. Our heroine feels uncomfortable in her body, which undergoes a series of extreme changes; her sense of her self becomes destabilised, leaving her uncertain of her own identity; she butts heads with authority and strives to understand seemingly arbitrary rules, the games that people around her play, and even death.Famed literary scholar William Empson got especially carried away, declaring that Alice is "a father in getting down the hole, a foetus at the bottom, and can only be born by becoming a mother and producing her own amniotic fluid"."Alice in Wonderland's Hidden Messages" (BBC)(Top artwork from the beautiful edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Camille Rose Garcia.)

This stately and elegant Whiskey Case was made-to-order by Louis Vuitton in the 1980s. There is one available at posh 20th century design shop Pullman Gallery. From Pullman Gallery:In effectively unused condition, the square case with top carrying-handle is in gold Epi leather, with gold-plated studs, latches and lock, and original key. The drop-front exposes the interior, lined in deep green alcantara and grained leather and fitted with compartments containing all a whisky connoisseur would require – a single, heavy glass silver-mounted whisky carafe, four whisky beakers, a Thermos-lined ice bucket and a nut or olive dish, all in Sterling silver and marked Christofle for Louis Vuitton. A stamped pair of silver tongs and a corkscrew with cover, completes the set. I've requested the price. The recent update of the Whiskey Case is approximately $35,000.

Additional storage for your MacBook can be a bigger hassle than you’d expect. External storage can mean toting around an external drive everywhere you go.Instead, increase your storage capacity by another 128GB with the Nifty MiniDrive for MacBooks, available now for just $33.99 in the Boing Boing Store.Just slide the MiniDrive into your MacBook’s SD card slot with a micro SD card - and you’re set. You’ve got up to 128GB of extra space, and it’s mostly invisible once you plug it in, so you can feel free to leave it there permanently.MiniDrive also integrates with Time Machine and can be set to store daily automatic backups of your MacBook’s most vital files. And no matter what type MacBook you’re rocking - Pro, Air or Retina 13 or 15-inch varieties - MiniDrive’s got an version made just for your system.Handle your external storage needs with the Nifty MiniDrive for MacBooks, now 15% off while the deal lasts.

A Goldsboro, North Carolina woman bought her neighbor's used freezer for $30, not realizing it contained frozen parts of the seller's dead mother. Curiously, the buyer had the freezer for several weeks before opening it because the seller told her it was part of a "time capsule" project at Sunday School and the church would pick up the contents. The church folks never came, so the buyer finally peeked inside, spotted the body, and called 911.The seller had already moved away but is under police investigation for felony concealing or failing to notify the death of a person.“(She was) Just the sweetest lady," the buyer said of the seller. "I mean quiet, kept to herself, stayed at home. Just unbelievable how she could just stick her mom in a freezer."Also unbelievable is that someone would purchase a used, $30 freezer without opening it first.(WNCN)

TTIP is the farcically secretive, insanely corrupt trade agreement that the US and EU negotiated behind closed doors in parallel with the faltering Trans-Pacific Partnership. (more…)

Dick Van Dyke, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, has written an op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter endorsing Bernie Sanders as the best candidate for senior citizens. (more…)

Gizmodo's Matt Novak filed a clever request to the FCC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): what are all the FOIA requests you've "withheld in full"? So they sent him the list. (more…)

If you're a Californian registered Independent/No Party Preference, you are entitled to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary on June 7, but some Orange County poll workers report that they've been instructed to give independent voters "provisional ballots," which, in practice, are rarely if ever counted. (more…)

An independent investigation by The Guardian found 33 cities in 17 US states (including Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee) are systematically cheating on the tests to monitor lead levels in the municipal water. 21 of those cities used the same cheating techniques that led to criminal charges in the Flint water scandal. (more…)

In my weekly segment on KCRW's “Press Play” news program with host Madeleine Brand, we listen to Elon Musk wax poetic about artificial intelligence and whether life might be a dream--and his plans to send humans to Mars by 2025. (more…)

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, cringing from the decision for days after it became clear who would win the party's nomination, has finally endorsed Donald Trump's bid to become U.S. President.The Wisconsin Republican has voice reservations over Trump's tone throughout the campaign and disagrees with him on many policy areas. Last month, he met with the likely GOP nominee and still withheld his endorsement. As recent as last week, he was still holding out.But on Thursday he finally acquiesced. In a column in the Janesville Gazette, the Speaker wrote that the two "have more common ground than disagreement." And despite never using the word "endorse" in the article, Ryan's spokesman confirmed it was an official endorsement.For Republicans, obedience or oblivion.

This orphaned baby rhino likes to walk with this girl to school in the morning.Rhinos are endangered across Africa, as demand for their horn fuels ruthless criminal poaching networks. Ol Pejeta is the largest black rhino sanctuary in east Africa, and is also home to the last three northern white rhinos on the planet. When Ringo is ~4 years old, it is hoped he can be released into the wild.(Thanks, McRaney!)

"Either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will cease to exist," Musk says. (Recode)More on the Simulation Argument here and here.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.The Science Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained)DK2014, 352 pages, 8 x 9.6 x 1 inches $15 Buy a copy on AmazonThe Science Book is DK publishing’s “greatest hits” of science. Laid out chronologically and full of diagrams and photos, it gives you a coffee table book experience but in a manageable way. No book clocking in at 350-ish pages could be totally comprehensive, yet it includes most of the major scientific milestones from 600 BCE to today without being dry or overwhelming. I found that I was able to gain a better understanding of principles that I only marginally understood, like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which is clearly laid out in layman’s terms and with genuinely helpful visuals. Genetics is a particularly complicated topic that has always fascinated me, so I was especially drawn to the chapters that tackled it and found a diagram using bees to explain recessive traits to be one of my favorite features. The individual chapters are broken up into sections and use sidebars and trivia to keep things interesting, so no matter what topic you land on the information is always accessible. I haven’t read it cover to cover, but rather peruse whatever topic catches my eye and always find something I didn’t known before. Textbooks devoted to science have an unfortunate tendency to be dry and technical, so I am especially excited to share The Science Book with my son as he gets older, with the hope that it may help him develop a real interest in science and an appreciation of its value.– Amber Troska

Satellite data from the European Space Agency have revealed that the Earth’s magnetic poles are weakening, and doing so faster than scientists previously thought.From Mysterious Universe:Chris Finlay, one of the researchers with the ESA, says that this new data is groundbreaking in terms of how much it reveals about Earth’s magnetic field: "Swarm data are now enabling us to map detailed changes in Earth’s magnetic field, not just at Earth’s surface but also down at the edge of its source region in the core. Unexpectedly, we are finding rapid localized field changes that seem to be a result of accelerations of liquid metal flowing within the core."From ESA:Although invisible, the magnetic field and electric currents in and around Earth generate complex forces that have immeasurable effects on our everyday lives.The field can be thought of as a huge bubble, protecting us from cosmic radiation and electrically charged atomic particles that bombard Earth in solar winds. However, it is in a permanent state of flux.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science demonstrates the tiny fingers of a piezoelectric motor. (Here's my interview with Ben from last year.)

Some Donald Trump supporters on 4chan--that time-honored bastion of gentility, courtesy, and sensibility-- hatched a plan on the forum to use sockpuppet Twitter accounts to pit Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters against one other. The plan had a slogan: “Let’s troll Bernie and Hillary supporters systematically.” Their scheme didn’t really work, and has been removed from 4chan. But something like this could be effective in the future--and who knows, another instance of this same political game may be working elsewhere, undetected, right now. (more…)

"Liftblr" is the informal, amorphous community of shoplifters who post their hauls to Tumblr using pseudonymous accounts, offering each other support and encouragement. Most seem to be young women, and their community's discourse often circles back to class war, politics, gender and consumerism. (more…)

If you're an Amazon seller and you pay people to review your products on Amazon, the company may sue you. The online commerce giant sued three sellers today for using sockpuppet accounts to post glowing but phony product reviews. (more…)

Here's Brian Brushwood showing how to do a great mentalism trick. The effect: Brian explains to the spectator that a psychologist once taught him about a famous Robert Frost poem that, when recited, will force the person who hears it to imagine a specific playing card. Brian then recites the poem to the spectator and asks the spectator what card he thought of. Then Brian tells the spectator to do a YouTube search on the psychologist who told Brian about it. The spectator plays the video and the psychologist says the same card the spectator thought of.

Forthcoming game No Mans Sky promises players the experience of exploring a nigh-infinite universe of beautiful, dreamlike worlds. But its fans are far from serene. When a journalist reported a development delay, he was sent death threats--a black hole of rage that expanded to the game's creators when they confirmed the news. (more…)

Dave Maass from EFF says, "Right now, NIST researchers are working with the FBI to develop tattoo recognition technology that police can use to learn as much as possible about people through their tattoos. But an EFF investigation has found that these experiments exploit inmates, with little regard for the research's implications for privacy, free expression, religious freedom, and the right to associate. And so far, researchers have avoided ethical oversight while doing it." (more…)

Between cyber-thieves, government agencies and other shadowy forces, the Web is chock-full of malicious entities looking to co-opt your online data.The solution? A virtual private network (VPN), which helps you browse anonymously and secure your data. You can get one of PC Mag's best reviewed VPNs with Hotspot Shield Elite VPN, now only $39.99 for a premium subscription.Connect to one of Hotspot’s 20+ server locations around the world, and Shield Elite throws an immediate cover of security over all your Web activity. While you surf the Web, you’ll be able to hide your IP address, bypass Internet censorship, avoid malicious sites, and more.Whether you’re shopping online, watching video, or protecting your devices on public Wi-Fi, Hotspot Shield Elite offers full coverage at all times.At just $39.99 (or 59% off MSRP), that works out to full VPN coverage for a few cents a month - so grab this deal now.

Though there are important differences, the parallels between Reagan's political life and Trump's are downright chilling, from their media careers to the way that the press and their own party establishment viewed them. (more…)

Toby Morris (previously) uses animated gifs in his regular cartoon strip for a NZ website; this week, he writes, "I interviewed Hussam, a 16 year old Syrian refugee about how he escaped." (more…)

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[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]Prince Charles is now a serial killer. Having murdered Princess Diana, he recently ordered the assassination of his “secret daughter” who claimed to be next in line for the British throne. That’s the claim in this week’s Globe magazine, which having had fun for the past two years reporting on ”Sarah” - allegedly conceived in vitro by Charles and Diana during a pre-marital fertility test, and implanted by a devious doctor into his wife’s womb - has now killed her off.As if that wasn’t enough, the Globe declares that “Charles ordered her death.” Presumably because the Tooth Fairy was busy and the Easter Bunny doesn’t do contract hits on innocent women.There has never been a shred of evidence that the Globe’s mystery Sarah ever existed, let alone died. She appears to have been inspired by a 2011 novel The Disappearance of Olivia, which imagined a fictionalized child of Princess Diana’s growing up in Florida.Now - surprise, surprise - Sarah has disappeared while traveling on the Greek isle of Crete, and “a special tracking device she always kept hidden in her clothing” has stopped signaling.Let’s ignore for one moment that there are currently no reports of missing tourists on Crete, and the fact that the Globe wasn’t imaginative to dream up a tracking device embedded under Sarah’s skin rather than in clothing that is easily shed. Why, when Prince Charles' imaginary “secret daughter” fictionally disappears is she first assumed dead, and secondly presumed murdered on her father’s orders? The Globe has the answer: “She knew the truth about Princess’ death in Paris car wreck.” Right. If she ever existed as claimed, Sarah would have been 15 years old and living a life utterly unrelated to the British monarchy when Princess Diana died in 1997. How could she know the truth about anything happening within the Royal Family, let alone events one night in a tunnel in Paris? Perhaps she reads the tabloids - that’s clearly the best way to keep up with the truth about those dastardly Royals.The fate of Prince Charles’ secret daughter has as much of the ring of truth about it as many of the offerings in this week’s tabloids.Bill Cosby was “caught fleeing country!” screams the grammatically-challenged National Enquirer cover, detailing his “plot to escape justice.” But as the 78-year-old disgraced entertainer prepares to face his first criminal trial for sexual assault, the Enquirer claims he has “stashed millions overseas and has plotted his escape from America.” The evidence for this? Zero. It's just what “top law enforcement experts fear.” That should stand up in court.Charlie Sheen “moved to Mexico to satisfy his sick vices!” claims the Enquirer, which claims the actor has purchased a three-home waterfront estate for $1 million in Rosarito. Let’s get real: For Sheen a $15 million mansion would be moving to Mexico. A $1m estate? Just a vacation retreat.On the political front, Hillary Clinton is “freaked out . . . on booze and food binges as Feds expose her lies!” yells the Globe, which actually ran the same story last week with the throw-away line that Hillary is “hooked on pills” amid a larger rant about her physical and mental health. This week Hillary’s alleged predilection for prescription pills is front and center in yet another unsubstantiated attack by the Trump-loving tabloids that alleges: “People are very, very worried about her!” I’d be worried about her too, under all that assault by the tabloids.Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani “elope in Vegas!” says the Globe - except they haven’t. Demi Moore is “painfully thin” and “heading for a deadly collapse,” while Britain’s Princess Kate is being “eaten alive by stress,” claims the Enquirer, for whom being thin is always a life-threatening medical crisis, except when it’s a life-long aspiration.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team from Us magazine to tell us that Kate Hudson wore it best, Paula Abdul believes in UFOs, Roselyn Sanchez carries keys, Chapstick and mascara in her handbag, and the stars are just like us: they drink iced coffee, have facials and walk their dogs - revelations that will doubtless touch many readers and change their lives forever.The “toxic marriage” and “nasty divorce” of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard dominates the covers of People magazine and Us mag respectively. Both promise the "inside story,” but fail to deliver. People mag claims that Depp is possessive, while Heard is freedom-loving, evidently a synonym for screwing around, though she insists she was always faithful. Us mag merely reports the he-said/she-said clash: Heard’s allegations of physical and emotional abuse by Depp, and his army of friends insisting that’s not the gentle peace-loving Caribbean Pirate they all know and love.None of this will matter soon if the National Examiner is right in reporting: “Darth Vader’s Death Star Ready To Attack Earth!” Evidently Saturn’s moon Iapetus bears an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars’ Death Star, complete with a giant crater that looks like the deep-space battle-station's planet-destroying weapon. Photos of Iapetus were taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2004, so presumably the Examiner’s scientific team has spent the past 12 years analyzing the images before reaching this devastating conclusion. While conceding that Darth Vader and Imperial Stormtroopers “may not” be living within Iapetus, the mag’s crack reporting team found someone on a UFO web site willing to speculate that “Iapetus is a constructed object, it’s artificial.” And that must mean it has weapons pointed at Earth, because aliens (who say they believe in Paul Abdul, too.)Onwards and downwards . . .

In this presentation from Freedom of the Press Foundation director Trevor Timm talks about what we can do to protect the next generation of whistleblowers. (more…)

When you sign a publishing deal, the contract spells out different royalty rates for different kinds of commercial activity; you get so much every time a copy is sold, and significantly more from every licensing deal for the book. (more…)

Noah Diamond is a Groucho Marx impersonator, actor and singer whose obsession with the Marx Brothers led him, along with his wife, the director Amanda Sisk, to research "I'll Say She Is," a Marx Brothers stage musical that ran to rave reviews in 1924/5 and has not been mounted since. (more…)

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more. And/or buy 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…)

If you liked Rick Remender's Fear Agent, you'll love his pulpy, break-neck paced, dimension hopping adventure Black Science. [caption id="attachment_464537" align="alignright" width="300"] via Comic Book Resources[/caption]Anarchist scientist Grant McKay has created a device that allows travel between alternate universes! The hope is that his team, comprised of other scientists and his family, will find great advancements in science, and medicine, the sad reality is that McKay's anarchist ways have sent them careening through time and space. Volume one is packed with non-stop action, creepy aliens, and amazingly retro-themed artwork by Matt Scalera and Illustrator Dean White. Black Science reminds me a lot of Lost in Space meets Time Tunnel. The series has a strong feeling of those old 1960s space dramas, and Saturday morning cartoons, but with an updated, adult story. CBR did a great interview with Rick Remender, and shares additional art work.Black Science, Vol 1 by Remender, Scalera, and White via Amazon

Mapchart makes it possible to create maps of the world, of Europe, of the Americas and elsewhere with custom colors, captions and descriptions. For example, here is a map of America that I have made.

David from Atheist shoes (previously) sez, "We've just been successful in raising money for the first Atheist Shoes Missionary Mobile Shoe Shop, which will criss-cross the USA, selling handmade shoes and spreading our European message of godless comfort and joy. The fund-raising is ongoing, as we aim to get a whole fleet of buses on the road. The first US tour begins in September 2016, and will take in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas." (more…)

While recently wallowing in nostalgic thoughts about Cracker Jack I began Googling other types of candy of which I had fond memories as a kid.That was a bad idea because I found exactly what I was looking for and am in line to gain several pounds when my box-o-heaven arrives this week.This itch has needed a scratch since my friend Jim Steinmyer took me to Galco’s in Los Angeles a few months ago. The place looks like it was an old supermarket at one time, but now it houses aisle upon aisle of soft drinks (including a mix-your-own soda bar with lots of syrups — I made a toasted coconut marshmallow creme soda and it was fabulouso, and even better: you’re making it in glass bottles).Most of its business is in a million different types of soda, but off on the left side wall is an enormous amount of retro candy with lots of stuff I hadn’t seen for many decades.Galco’s has a website but it’s primitive and online ordering isn’t quite organized yet — you’ll get a much better idea of the place from the reviews on Yelp, which wax rhapsodic at length about the wonders to be found in the aisles.https://youtu.be/HaVyrQ5YjhY From the Galco web site:Devoted to the art of soda pop and supporting the small businesses behind each bubbly drink, Galco’s Soda Pop Stop features more than 700 flavors of soda at its Los Angeles storefront. Beginning in 1897 as an Italian grocery store, Galco’s changed “flavors” when son John F. Nese took helm of his father’s store in 1995 and lined the shelves with classic, small-batch, exotic and hard-to-find sodas. With a mission to support small soda makers, Galco’s motto is “Freedom of Choice” which mirrors Nese’s determination that customers have the right to choose from more than just a handful of mass-produced, big-business selections.I tried a soda whose name has intrigued me for years: Moxie, the first carbonated bottled beverage in the U.S circa 1887. I had seen the name many times in old newspaper articles and books and assumed that it had gone the way of the dodo. But, there it was on the shelf at Galco’s, and I’m here to tell you that it tastes like bitter crap. If you want to make someone gag, this will do it.Moxie has a very fine website which gives a full history of the drink’s triumphs and travails … who knew? Back in the 1920s, of every feisty kid it was said, “He’s got moxie!” The soda was so popular it entered pop vocab. But it tastes like hell … can’t figure that out. You can read more about the taste of Moxie (the reaction of one drinker was “Blech”!) on this very funny blog where it is deemed to be “a flavor for the few.” Sorry: got sidetracked. What I really want to write about is CANDY.CANDY CANDY CANDY.At the age of 7 I began getting an allowance: 25 cents a week, always given on Friday evening. On Saturday morning I was up with the birdies watching TV, and by about noon (after my weekly dose of Davey and Goliath, Colonel Bleep, Space Ghost, Underdog, Atom Ant, The Flintstones, the Beatles, and Frankenstein, Jr. … and if I got really lucky, Milton the Monster).I put my clothes on and (by myself, mind you) went off to the local candy store on Queens Boulevard to spend that coin burning a hole in my pocket. Unless you’re well on your way to geezerdom like me, you’ll find it hard to believe that for 25 cents you could buy a comic book (12 cents), a candy bar (5 cents), and a small toy of some sort with the remaining 8 cents. As my allowance increased in coming years, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster Times were added to my Saturday haul of goodies.Aside: when I went to elementary school, they let us out for lunch. Yeah, really hard to believe, I know. So off we ran to the pizzeria about a block away. I got a quarter every day for lunch and it broke down exactly this way — 2 slices of pizza at 10 cents each, and a large grape drink for a nickel. I remember the unusual taste of the oregano on this particular joint’s pizza to this day.Okay: Nickle Nips, Zero Bars, Clark Bars, Lemonheads, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy (only chocolate), candy buttons and necklaces, Twizzlers (only grape or chocolate), Chocolate Babies, Gold Rush bubble gum, MALLO CUPS, Regal Crown Sour hard candies, Scooter Pies (made by Burrys), Skybar, Razzles, and right into the zing of a happy Saturday afternoon sugar coma.It seems, in the end, that I have not written much about retro candy. It’s all too overwhelming to think about, and I have ordered about a hundred bucks worth of stuff from oldtimecandy.com, which should be your destination. The prices are good and they have an enormous selection.Pigging out and signing off. Chomp.

Being a lame duck President nearing the end of your term, your thoughts probably turn to what the hell you’re going to do after eight years in the White House. Someone on Barak Obama’s staff probably told him it’s time to loosen up and show folks who he really is. A little late, but what the heck.Fresh from his stint at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner where he did standup comedy that eclipsed host Larry Wilmore (sorry, Larry), Obama and staff have now released a very funny video with some great self-deprecating humor and one genuinely surprising guest. Don’t ruin the fun for your friends by giving anything away, just tell them to watch this.

In 1919, Ohio businessman Arthur Nash decided to run his clothing factory according to the Golden Rule and treat his workers the way he'd want to be treated himself. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll visit Nash's “Golden Rule Factory” and learn the results of his innovative social experiment.We'll also marvel at metabolism and puzzle over the secrets of Chicago pickpockets.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

The origin story of Children of Earth and Sky, my current novel, begins with my Croatian editor being the first person ever to tell me about the Uskoks of Senj. He did that as we approached where their stronghold had once been on the Dalmatian coast (the Uskoks are long gone now, a small tourist town remains). I told that road trip story here and another version of the origin story here. By the time I came, many years later, to write a book taking off from that anecdote, the tale did not involve Uskoks, or the Dalmatian Coast. Nor was it formally about the aftermath of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, or the Holy Roman Empire, the Republics of Venice or Dubrovnik. And Senj had become Senjan.Close, but…I do this all the time. A modus operandi by now. Nearly our known history, but not quite. A ‘spin’ on the past, or a ‘quarter turn to the fantastic’, as one reviewer called it.Provence becomes Arbonne in my novels; Al-Andalus, Al-Rassan; Byzantium, Sarantium; China’s Tang Dynasty morphs into Kitai’s Ninth…I’ve written over the years about how this approach evolved, what underlies it, but just about every interviewer, for print or pixel, on stage or on air asks again, and it reminds me that just because you’ve said something somewhere, it doesn’t mean everyone (or even most people!) will have seen it. I can feel over-identified with certain topics, and a large majority haven’t a clue I’ve said a word about them! It is a corrective. A comment on the nature of our world.So, on the eve of a new book’s release, as that journey from Senj to Senjan leads to Children of Earth and Sky, it seems proper to address the ‘why’ of such a journey. Why isn’t the book set in a ‘real’ place, in our own Europe? Why do I have Seressa instead of Venice and Batiara for Italy? Why a rebel leader named Skandir, instead of Albania’s great Skanderbeg, who inspired my character?There are a multiplicity of reasons by now. But here’s a caveat: be skeptical when writers present intuitive processes as thought-out planning. This was an evolution for me, not a strategic concept. I discovered what I was doing, and why it worked for me. I didn’t lay it out in advance.It largely started at the beginning of the 1990s with A Song For Arbonne. (Tigana, the book that came before, was far more loosely tied to real places and events.) For Arbonne, I read widely in the poems and the lives (as we know them) of the troubadours, and in the history of the Albigensian Crusade and the ‘Courts of Love’ of medieval Provence.I emerged with a number of thoughts, some of them about how the role and status of women in the west took a turn with the conquest of Provence, and how a great deal of political history might also have also done so. I invented troubadours inspired by a few of the real ones, and then I reversed the result of that ‘crusade’ down the Rhone valley. There is almost nothing of the fantastical in the book, the idea of magic is treated as a false, cynical ‘tool’ of organized faiths to frighten and control people. I sharpened the male-female aspect by offering a northern sun god and a goddess in the religion of the south.And I found that I liked what all this allowed me to do. I could work with history but tighten focus on themes. I could have my characters do and think and be what I wanted them to, because they were not the real people. Readers who knew the history would see the riffing involved, those who didn’t would either not miss it or - a bonus, for me - might be moved to do some non-fiction reading of their own, after. (And I always include starter bibliographies.) The historical reversal in Arbonne embodied a thought-experiment. I tried to do it lightly, to let the reader go as far as he or she wanted down that road. If they preferred to just treat the book as a tale … well, each reader makes the book they read. (That’s another essay.) With Lions of Al-Rassan, which followed, new elements came in. This time my research led me to Rodrigo Diaz (El Cid), probably the most potent figure in Spanish history, mythic or real. The intellectual battle as to which of those he really was, and to what degree, lasted well into the 20th century and was bound up in the politics of and after the Spanish Civil War. I also discovered ibn Ammar, the great courtier-poet of Al-Andalus, and I found in my research, to my great delight (it shaped a novel) that these two extraordinary men appeared to have been exiled in the same year by different kings to the same place. Not such a big city, very prominent men, they’d have to have met, I thought. But I realized that I did not want to treat history and real lives as if my own ‘have to have met’ idea was a truth. I didn’t want to set about giving real men invented personalities, relationships, desires and thoughts I imposed on them. And yes of course ‘imposed’ is a loaded word, and yes many brilliant books have been written that do exactly this. I didn’t want to do it that way, though. I saw, for myself, a different approach to the process. Perhaps (probably?) it was because I had begun as a published writer with a traditional fantasy years before, but the creative avenue I was seeing, along with the opportunities it afforded, kept suggesting this quarter-turn to me. I made the setting for that book Al-Rassan, not the actual Al-Andalus. I had characters evoking the two lions I’d researched (and other real figures, too) but clearly not them. I invented a female physician. There were historical parallels, and I let my setting give me license to push her a little further. And - perhaps most of all for this book - I changed the three religions of our history. I wanted to explore interactions not ideologies. To see if the hint of the fantastic allowed me to detach readers somewhat from assumptions, prejudices. If the twist of the fantastic could become a tool serving the emerging heart of the novel: the way in which holy war can destroy the space in which men and women - even powerful ones - might move, and shape their own lives and relationships. It was with Lions that I started to clearly see - and begin to speak about - the strengths of fiction done as near-history as opposed to history. One aspect of this that resonated strongly for me was how it displayed (I dared hope) respect for the real people behind a story. I was inspired by them, not pretending to assume psychological awareness of them. With a figure like El Cid, still so powerful for a culture, it seemed proper to work this way, and it became liberating, too. Then, just as I’d reversed the Albigensian Crusade in the previous book, I telescoped the Reconquista in Lions. The tragedy of a culture’s demise could play out in one or two generations in a novel, not over hundreds of years. Sharpening the focus, again. I was learning the sorts of things I could do with this approach. I suppose I’ve never looked back. The Sarantine Mosaic added elements to the concept, as I began to think more formally now, and write about these issues, especially the idea of not using real people in fiction.The Mosaic pair was where I pushed the idea hardest, perhaps, that my characters and setting are modeled on our world’s, but not identical. Justinian and Theodora’s Constantinople, the building of Hagia Sophia, and Justinian’s Italian Wars … All these were recognizable, but altered, because the books are about Sarantium, not Byzantium, and I had thoughts I wanted to develop and explore that way. About Procopius the historian, about the writers of history, chroniclers and artists, about those artists and the powerful, about Yeats, about random events that can change the world (that’s a recurring motif for me). I had come to realize that this quarter-turn gave me a remarkable degree of freedom in a book. I gained the ability to comment on, interact with, real history. It felt empowering, while retaining the core idea of preserving respect for real lives. Also, on a very basic level - but one that matters if you want to keep readers turning pages - this shift from following the events of history means that even if a reader knows the real story of what happened, he or she cannot be sure they know where the novel they are reading is going. This is, I have often said, a gift to both writer and reader. As a result, by the time I wrote Last Light of the Sun, and then two novels inspired by Tang and Song Dynasty China, I’d had years of thinking about these issues, seeing and shaping ways in which I could add to the concepts, even comment on my earlier work. Ysabel had offered another way to comment on history, but is an exception for me, taking place in our modern world, in the south of France: a book that insisted on being written when we returned to Provence after a decade away. It had not been the project I went there to write. Sometimes that happens. So, briefly told, these are some of the strengths I see in quarter turns. There are also downsides, or risks, to how I work, and I’d be remiss to overlook them. Readers will never learn the year of the Treaty of Utrecht in my novels. They will not assuage any desire to ‘learn the real facts’ about a specific period, the way they might while reading a straightforward historical fiction. Of course those ‘facts’ might have been altered by the author, sometimes significantly. On a mundane level, we readers like categories. Bookstores certainly do, including online ones. If my work slips back and forth between historical fiction and fantasy with themes of today … shelving gets challenging, marketing does. Even labelling does. One agent said to me long ago, ‘Write me a straight historical and watch the advance we get, how many copies we can get sold for you!’ He may have even been right. I’m not certain, but he was a commercial agent and he was referring to exactly this border-blurring aspect of how I write, this challenge to pinning the books down. In the end, I knew then (and still know) that I was a stubborn prairie boy who enjoyed what I did too much, that I saw (and still see) too many strengths emerging from this approach. And I’m reassured, over a great many years now, by so many loyal, thoughtful, ‘I get it’ readers around the world and in many languages. I carried on back then. I still am. This has laid out out some of the reasons, for those coming late, or just trying to sort through for themselves why Senj becomes Senjan.