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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.

Rare footage of Elizabeth II meeting Marilyn Monroe emerged from the archives. (more…)

Claire Hentschker's virtual reality trip through The Shining is even more unsettling than it sounds: thirty minutes of scenes from the movie extruded into 3D, so you can look around in all directions as the camera slowly takes you along. Yet the models are all incomplete, taken as they are from Kubrick's footage, leaving the impression of looking into the Overlook and its surrounds from a timeless, warped, supernatural viewpoint. Which is to say: it's perfect.Shining360 is a 30-minute audio-visual experiment for VR derived from the physical space within Stanley Kubrick’s film ‘The Shining.' Using photogrammetry, 3D elements are extracted and extruded from the original film stills, and the subsequent fragments are stitched together and viewed along the original camera path.Many thanks to the Studio for Creative Inquiry. All content derived from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining

If you believe something is bad because it is…bad, or that something is good because, well, it’s good, you probably wouldn’t use that kind of reasoning in an argument – yet, sometimes, without realizing it, that’s exactly what you do.If you think eating shrimp is immoral, you might defend that viewpoint by saying, “People shouldn’t eat shrimp because eating shrimp is unethical.” Ok, yes, got it, but you just looped back around without defending your original assertion. We are going to need to hear some justification for your views on morality.Likewise, when explaining why something is true, we often unwittingly provide false clarity. For instance, you might read something like, “Human beings enjoy looking at each other’s butts because we evolved to appreciate healthy backsides.” Broken down, this is just a rephrasing of, “People like butts because people like butts.” There’s no answer here, no cause to the effect, no argument for or against, no explanation for why the observable is observable.So why do we do this, and why don’t we notice it when other people do it?In this episode, three experts in logic and rationality will explain how circular reasoning leads us to “beg the question” when producing arguments and defending our ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. You will also learn how to identify, defend against, and avoid begging the question, or restating your beliefs without arguing for or against them.This episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is the sixth in a full season of episodes exploring logical fallacies. The first episode is here.Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is brought to you by the MIT Press, publishing Marc Wittmann’s Felt Time The Psychology of How We Perceive Time. Read more about Felt Time and a few other new science, philosophy, language, and technology titles at mitpress.com/smart.This episode of You Are Not So Smart is also brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create you own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial and 10 percent off go to Squarespace.com and use the offer code SOSMART.This episode is also sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. Get unlimited access to a huge library of The Great Courses lecture series on many fascinating subjects. Start FOR FREE with The Fundamentals of Photography filmed in partnership with The National Geographic and taught by professional photographer Joel Sartore. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.Bob Blaskiewicz is an assistant professor who teaches, among other subjects, critical thinking at Stockton University. He also writes about logic and reasoning at skepticalhumanities.com, and is a regular guest on the YouTube show The Virtual Skeptics.Julie Galef is the president and co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, a non-profit devoted to training people to be better at reasoning and decision-making. She is also the host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast and writes for publications like Slate, Science, Scientific American, and Popular Science. This is her website.Vanessa Hill is an Australian science writer and stop-motion animator who hosts BrainCraft, a PBS series exploring psychology, neuroscience and human behavior. She previously worked for Australia’s national science agency, as a science reporter for ScienceAlert, and has appeared in TIME, The Huffington Post, Scientific American, and Brain Pickings. Her Twitter page is here.In every episode, after I read a bit of self delusion news, I taste a cookie baked from a recipe sent in by a listener/reader. That listener/reader wins a signed copy of my new book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” and I post the recipe on the YANSS Pinterest page. This episode’s winner is Nimi who sent in a recipe for coconut slice and bake cookies. Send your own recipes to david {at} youarenotsosmart.com.Links and SourcesDownload – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudPrevious EpisodesBoing Boing PodcastsCookie RecipesThe History of Begging the Question at Language LogBrainCraftCenter for Applied RationalitySkeptical Humanities Your Logical Fallacy IsPBS Idea ChannelA Guide to Logical FallaciesImage Source – iStockPhoto

When John Oliver revealed that Donald Trump's family name had been changed from "Drumpf" and called on America to #makedonalddrumpfagain, it provided a handy hook for a way of talking about the orange one's micron-thick layer of slickness and the everyday rot within it. (more…)

When Marc Edwards was a young Virginia tech engineer, he landed a job with Cadmus Group, an EPA subcontractor who'd been hired to investigate problems with the DC water-supply, but when he discovered a lead contamination crisis and refused to stop talking about it, he was fired. (more…)

Trick out your Mac with an 8-pack of handy Mac apps in this World Class Mac Bundle, now going for over 90% off in the Boing Boing Store.From creative tools to organizational aids, these apps will not only power your projects, but get your Mac running as efficiently as you do.Here's what's in your bundle:Data Rescue 4: Recover data after a hard drive crash or OS reinstallation.Hype 3.5: Animation made easy for videos or websites.Freeway Pro 7: Drag-and-drop website creation, no coding needed.Painter Essentials 5: Sketch or paint with this effect palette.uBar 3: Customize your Mac dock.iStat Menus 5: Real-time Mac system stats right on your Menu bar.Dropzone 3: Supercharge your desktop's drag-and-drop capabilities.Xee 3: A powerful image manager and organizer app.Normally, this app bundle would retail for over $400, so grab this deal now at an over 90% savings.

The folks at Dremel have been featuring different makers, and this month they asked me to be their Dremel Maker. I was happy to do it because I've been using a Dremel Moto-Tool since I was 12.I participated in a Facebook Q&A, offered some tips on Twitter, and made a ukulele from scratch. To make it, referred to the free plans for the acoustic travel uke, available from Circuits and Strings. Here are my build notes. This could be a fun family project.As much as possible, I like to use materials I already have at home. For the neck, I used a piece of wood that was destined for the recycling bin. I'm glad I didn't toss it out. I think it is pine, but I'm not sure. It's 1.5 inches wide, .075 inches high, and two feet long. I cut the end as shown, and glued another cut piece to same end, using wood glue. I clamped it and let it set while I went to work on the rest of the uke.I bought a 6-pack of 6 x 12 x 0.125 inch plywood on Amazon for $11. I used it for the body of the guitar and the fretboard. How did I know how to space the frets? I just held another uke against the new fretboard and marked the spacing with a pencil. If you don't have a uke on hand, here's a fret spacing calculator. Using a square - like the one shown - against a piece of wood's factory edge is a good way to ensure parallel and perpendicular lines.You can see that I used square toothpicks for frets. They work great, and are easier than fret wire. I removed the protruding ends with nail clippers and rounded them with my Moto-Tool.Here's a photo of the freshly glued frets and how I clamped them for drying.The body is made from the same craft plywood. At first I tried to make a square body but then I realized it would be too short for the bridge. This was one of many mistakes I made along the way. I ended up making a rectangular body. The cut-out on the left is for the neck.When gluing the body together, I used a bunch of scrap pieces of wood with right angles for bracing.Instead of regular tuners, I used zither tuning pegs. C.B Gitty sells a 4-pack for $4.19. (Don't forget to buy a tuning key!)Here's a block of wood glued to the inside of the body for the zither pegs to fit into.Back to the neck: I used a rasp to quickly round the edges of the neck, followed by sandpaper. I made a bridge with a few scrap pieces of plywood glued together and shaped it with the Moto-Tool.After gluing the neck and body together, I painted a geometric fireball on the front. I then sprayed many coats of acrylic sealer on the uke, then strung it. Here's the finished instrument (see if you can spot the glaring mistake):If I make another one like this. I'm going to use regular tuning pegs. It's a bit of a hassle using the zither key to tune the ukuele.Here's a sample of the sound. (It sounds better than I can play.):[audio mp3="http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/fireball-uke.mp3"][/audio]Many thanks to Dremel for sponsoring me on this build!

The queen of the world's first mega-sized “prosperity gospel” empire has died. (more…)

Researchers are starting to think that Alzheimer’s disease could be caused by microbial infections that cause plaque to form in the brain. This opens the possibility for a vaccination against Alzheimer's.Support for the immune defence idea comes from work by Jacobus Jansen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Using MRI brain scans, his team has found that people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease have more permeable blood-brain barriers, suggesting that they may have developed the disease because their brains were more vulnerable to attack. “The microbe hypothesis seems plausible,” says Jansen.If infectious agents are kicking off the formation of plaques, then vaccines could head them off. “You could vaccinate against those pathogens, and potentially prevent this problem arising later in life,” says Moir.If many microbes are involved, immunising against them all will be hard, says Jansen. “But if the frequency of certain pathogens is quite high, there might be a possibility.”In the meantime, don't get a brain infection.

Absolutely beautiful. (Thanks Randy!)

The SkinGun, announced today, was developed by RenovaCare to spray autologous (self-donated) stem cells on patients with chronic wounds and burns.For patients suffering severe burns and other wounds, the prospect of a quick-healing, gentle spray containing their own stem cells will be a promising alternative to conventional skin graft surgery, which can be painful, prone to complications, and slow-to-heal. Based on preliminary case studies, CellMist System patients can be treated within 90 minutes of arriving in an emergency room; a patient’s stem cells are isolated, processed, and sprayed on to wound sites for rapid healing. Preliminary investigational use in Europe and the United States indicate the potential efficacy and safety of RenovaCare’s technologies. Clinical observations point to the potential for regeneration of new skin in as little as four days, rather than the many weeks of painful and risky recovery required by traditional skin graft techniques.

If you are anything like me, at all, you frequently wonder what happened next to Jack Burton and the rest of the Big Trouble in Little China gang? John Carpenter, Eric Powell, and Brian Churilla's Big Trouble in Little China graphic novels tell the tale!I've just started reading these BTiLC graphic novels, they pick up right where the movie left off. I could not be happier! The humor, the characters and the artwork are exactly what I'd have hoped for, if I had any idea these books were being published!You can get the first 3 volumes now, volume 4 is available for pre-order, and releases later this year.Big Trouble in Little China Vol. 1 via AmazonBig Trouble in Little China Vol. 2 via AmazonBig Trouble in Little China Vol. 3 via AmazonBig Trouble In Little China Vol. 4 via Amazon

This satisfying new video from the Crazy Russian Hacker reminds me of Harold E. Edgerton's iconic "Bullet through Apple" photo from 1964, seen below.

Is your David action figure lonely? Get him some much-needed companionship with this poseable Vitruvian Man, which comes "with a movable strut that makes it possible to recreate various scenes." (more…)

Lawyer-turned-data-scientist David Colarusso analyzed 2.2 million sentencing records from Virginia to determine the relationship between race, income and treatment in the criminal justice system. (more…)

The Kiwi Cafe, a vegan restaurant in Tiblisi, the capital of the eastern former Soviet republic of Georgia, was attacked by a mob of jeering, violent men who threw meat at the patrons and shouted, resulting in a brawl. (more…)

Ruth writes, "The link tax is back, but we have a chance to stop it. The Save the Link network are pushing back against proposals in the EU for a new hyperlinking fee (AKA 'ancillary copyright') that will affect us all. If lobbyists succeed copyright rules will be extended to hyperlinks - giving publishers the right to charge business fees for linking to content." (more…)

Pascal Deville loves "beautiful atrocities"—websites that could be described as intentionally brutalist were they not mostly just ugh. Fast Company interviewed him on his love of rough design, strangely compelling as it is in the age of bloated, broken, but very pretty websites."I wouldn't call it a protest but a shout-out for more humanity in today's web design," Deville says. He views his site as a bastion for a segment of Internet culture of people who built scrappy websites themselves as opposed to using services with pre-canned templates like Squarespace. "Terms like UX and user friendly don't have a lot of soul or guts and treat everything like a product. They also killed a lot of the web culture, which seems to find a voice on Brutalistwebsites.com."More from The Washington Post.Intriguingly, Deville has found in his Q&As with coders and designers that few set out to mimic this newly popular aesthetic; instead, they all arrived at the same point out of a drive to create something original.“[Brutalism] is interesting to me … because it doesn’t necessarily have a defined set of aesthetic signifiers,” said Jake Tobin, the designer behind trulybald.com. “What defines those signifiers is decided by the platform it’s built on.”Previously.

In Global proliferation of cephalopods a paper in Current Biology, an esteemed group of marine biologists reports that the population of octopuses (and other cephalopods) is booming thanks to its ability to adapt quickly to ocean acidification and temperature change, which is killing off other types of marine life at alarming rates. (more…)

A minecrafter, infered5, has decided to recreate all of Bungie's Destiny, inside of Minecraft. It is pretty amazing!Kotaku shares the story:Some Minecraft players like to build houses, or castles, or mazes full of monsters. Others prefer to recreate the entirety of Destiny.Player infered5's pet project is to remake all of Bungie’s space dress-up sim in the blocky world of Minecraft, and he’s done a pretty good job so far. Check out this footage for a quick tour through Minecraft’s version of the Tower and even some of the Cosmodrome:“We have the Cosmodrome built from the Steppes to the Divide, through the breach and through the Devils Lair, nothing Mothyards and beyond is made,” infered5 told me. “The Moon was made with worldpainter as a proof of concept, but has no underground areas. Very bland. The Cosmodrome was built by hand and has much more detail. The Tower and Reef are built in their entireties.”

So many of my devices want micro-USB to charge, and somehow the cables keep disappearing. This pack of 7, at $1.85 per cable, should keep me going for a while.I am not sure if the dogs are chewing them, the housekeepers are stealing them, or my daughter and her friends are weaving a complex web of micro-USB cables in the basement, but earlier this week I found, once again, that I was completely unable to charge my motorcycle helmet's headset, any of my portable batteries, or my kindle. MY KINDLE!!!!!! This pack of 7 cables comes in assorted sizes, from 1 foot to 6 feet reach, and should last me a few months, at the very least.Micro USB Cable, COCOCAT [7-Pack]Premium Micro Charging Cable High Speed USB 2.0 A Male to Micro B 2.0 A Male to Micro B Sync and Charging Cables via Amazon

Michael from Muckrock found a reference to "Untangling the Web," an internal NSA guide to the Internet, on Google Books, so he requisitioned a copy from the NSA under the Freedom of Information Act. (more…)

So this happened: a Texas man, relaxing in a trailer park with his marijuana, was bit by a dog. Shocked, and believing the bite was a gun shot wound, he called the cops. Raucous hilarity ensued.The Houston Chronicle shares the few details available.Small town police departments have it easy most of the time. There's almost never a high-speed chase, a deadly triple shooting, or a huge drug bust. Speeding tickets and the random drunk driving arrest bring the most excitement. But the beauty of small town police departments like the one in Groesbeck -- just east of Waco -- is the level of homegrown weird that they get to encounter on a daily basis. Take for instance this week a stoner whose dog got spooked by thunder and bit him in the buttocks, leading to the man thinking he had been shot by a firearm.The event shook him so much that he called the Groesbeck Police Department.

Colombia wants to produce Novartis's leukemia drug imatinib under a compulsory license, something it is allowed to do under its trade agreement with the USA, to bring the price down from $15,161/year (double the annual average income) to prices like those charged in India ($803/year). (more…)

Demonia's Women's Stomp 314 Boots are goth as fuck, knee-high, made of shiny polyurethane and ringed with ammo for that je ne sais quoi. (via The Everyday Goth)

Justin Shafer was roused from his bed this week by thunderous knocking at his North Richland Hills, Texas home, and when he opened the door, found himself staring down the barrel of a 'big green' assault weapon, wielded by one of the 12-15 armed FBI agents on his lawn. (more…)

When you get goosebumps from listening to music, it's called a frisson (pronounced free-sawn), which means "aesthetic chills." About two-thirds of the population feels frisson. Music is the most common trigger, but so is "beautiful artwork, watching a particularly moving scene in a movie, or having physical contact with another person."From Konstruktor:[T]he results of our study show that it’s the cognitive components of 'Openness to Experience' – such as making mental predictions about how the music is going to unfold or engaging in musical imagery (a way of processing music that combines listening with daydreaming) – that are associated with frisson to a greater degree than the emotional components.These findings, recently published in the journal Psychology of Music, indicate that those who intellectually immerse themselves in music (rather than just letting it flow over them) might experience frisson more often and more intensely than others.And if you’re one of the lucky people who can feel frisson, the frisson Reddit group has identified Lady Gaga's rendition of the 'Star-Spangled Banner' at the 2016 Super Bowl, and a fan-made trailer for the original Star Wars trilogy, as especially chill-inducing.The Conversation

Developer of the Heimlich Maneuver, Henry Heimlich, now 96, used his anti-choking technique for the first time to save a person's life. The Cincinnati, Ohio physician was in the dining room of his retirement home when another resident, Patty Ris, age 87, choked on a piece of hamburger. Heimlich successfully dislodged it and Ris was fine. "When I used it, and she recovered quickly, it made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able to save all those lives," Heimlich told the Cincinnati Enquirer.From the Heimlich Institute, here's how to do the Heimlich Maneuver for choking adults:• From behind, wrap your arms around the victim's waist.• Make a fist and place the thumb side of your fist against the victim's upper abdomen, below the ribcage and above the navel.• Grasp your fist with your other hand and press into their upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust. Do not squeeze the ribcage; confine the force of the thrust to your hands.• Repeat until object is expelled.And for choking infants:Lay the child down, face up, on a firm surface and kneel or stand at the victim's feet, or hold infant on your lap facing away from you. Place the middle and index fingers of both your hands below his rib cage and above his navel. Press into the victim's upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust; do not squeeze the rib cage. Be very gentle. Repeat until object is expelled.If the Victim has not recovered, proceed with CPR. The Victim should see a physician immediately after rescue.Don't slap the victim's back. (This could make matters worse.)And for yourself:• Make a fist and place the thumb side of your fist against your upper abdomen, below the ribcage and above the navel.• Grasp your fist with your other hand and press into your upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust.• Repeat until object is expelled.

"When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: 'Have ya paid your dues, Jack?' 'Yessir, the check is in the mail.'"These Funko Pop action figures are great! You can even buy a glow in the dark Lo-Pan. I like the Gracie Law figure, but I'm sure some of you will want the three storms, and of course the lovable Jack Burton.May the wings of liberty never lose a feather!Funko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China-Jack Burton Action Figure via AmazonFunko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China-Gracie Law Action Figure via AmazonFunko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China - Lo Pan Action Figure via AmazonFunko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China - Glow-in-the-Dark Lo Pan Action Figure via Amazon

Wisconsin Governor and balanced-budget hawk Scott Walker's failed bid for the GOP presidential candidacy left him with $1.2 million in debt. (more…)

Every company wants to harness the power of social media, but few understand how to make that happen. Be one of those select few with this Social Media Marketing Course & Certification package, now just $29 in the Boing Boing Store.Over 12 modules of course material, you’ll learn what it takes to increase a brand’s social reach, attract more attention and increase sales. You’ll understand how to craft social campaigns on virtually any platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.With that knowledge, you’ll be more than ready to ace the Silicon Valley Digital Marketing Institute’s certification exam and begin a new, lucrative career posting, tweeting and uploading. This comprehensive package retails for almost $4,000, so pick it up at the low price of $29 right now, before the offer runs out.

https://vimeo.com/157414762Jongha Choi's Master's thesis for Design Academy Eindhoven involved the creation of "De-dimension" furniture, which collapses into a flat, easily stored form when it's not in use -- but when it's in its flat form, it looks like a perspective drawing of its expanded shape. (more…)

[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]There’s an epidemic of “pot-eating pooches,” the “world’s toughest duck” has died, a dog named Archer was shot in Oklahoma by an arrow, and your cat can live in a “pur-r-r-r-rfect” replica of the Kremlin.There’s plenty for the animal-lover to chew on in this week’s tabloids, which also include ads for an “adorable” posable realistic monkey doll, a limited edition figurine of 12 Yorkies crowded on a sofa, and two porcelain Siamese cats decorated in a willow pattern. There’s even a lovable photo of the 200 pound chimp who chewed the face and hands off his owner, and a mosquito bringing the Zita virus, because sometimes cute-and-cuddly nature will get Medieval on your ass.So will the fact-challenged tabloids, which this week claim that Julia Roberts and George Clooney have been caught cheating, Angelina Jolie is living in “bone disease hell,” the Obamas plan to “ransack the White House,” and John Travolta is a secret “drag queen.”How were George and Julia "caught cheating”? The National Enquirer found them both on the set of their new movie, Money Monster. Sounds like grounds for divorce for me. The Enquirer offers no evidence of an affair, but an unnamed source claims the two actors “cozy up,” and Clooney’s wife Amal feels “it’s cheating - emotional cheating.” Right. Just like I feel cheated of any facts in this story.Is Jolie suffering some dreaded “bone disease” as the Enquirer claims? Not if you read the story below the sensational headline. Claiming that Jolie now weighs 79 pounds, the Enquirer says she is “at risk of developing arthritis and the debilitating brittle bone disease osteoporosis.” In other words, she’s thin, and everything else is sheer speculation.Are Michelle and Barack Obama about to strip the White House of its treasures when they leave next year? The Enquirer warns that “millions of dollars in precious American art . . . could be looted.” Why would they think that? “It’s certainly conceivable,” says the Enquirer. Its’s also conceivable that aliens intent on global domination will blow up the White House. I’ve seen it happen on the big screen. It’s only a matter of time.Photos of John Travolta in a blonde wig and pink dress could be “the final straw” for his wife Kelly Preston, claims the Globe. But these photos, taken at a party in 1997, six years after marrying Preston, first appeared in sister tabloid the Enquirer in 2012. So these photos couldn’t possibly be “the final straw.” They’re just an ancient costume party dressed up as a new slur, hoping that readers have forgotten it’s an old story. Newsflash: We haven’t.The Trump-loving tabloids continue their attacks on Hillary Clinton, who is “hooked on pills,” is “prone to strokes, is battling depression and alcohol abuse and is in the early stages of multiple sclerosis,” according to the Globe. And she has gained 45 pounds, they add - the ultimate tabloid sin. Hillary used “unsecure phones to woo lesbian lovers,” claims the Enquirer, though I’m pretty sure there is no constitutional requirement to woo lesbian lovers on a secure line. Hillary battling MS? Dubious. The unauthorized Hillary memoir Unlikeable by Ed Klein published last year quoted a purported Clinton friend claiming that Hillary “might” be suffering from MS based on the health issues she has battled. Hardly an official medical diagnosis, but it certainly meets the exacting standards set by the Enquirer’s fact-checkers.Thankfully we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Demi Lovato wore it best, Emayatzy Corinealdi (Who she, Ed?) carries lipstick, vitamins and sunglasses in her leather Patricia Nash backpack, that Simon Cowell loves licorice, and the stars are just like us: they shop for flowers, walk their dogs and take selfies. Revelatory.After People magazine last week brought us its 'bodies of the year,' Us mag follows this week with its ‘best bodies’ issue, featuring singer Carrie Underwood on the cover proclaiming “My best body.” I’m pretty sure it’s the same body she’s always had, just in better shape. I’d far rather see Dr Frankenstein, or Burke & Hare, reveal “my best body,” but that’s unlikely to happen. It’s just another excuse for Us mag to flaunt dozens of women in bikinis and shirtless men brandishing their waxed pecs, because nothing says “sexual equality” better than turning all men and women into sex objects.People mag puts TV personality Steve Harvey on its cover telling his rags-to-riches story, having once lived in his car for three years, and now worth $100 million, doubtless offering real hope to every homeless person currently living in a car. The secret to his transformation? Landing a high-profile gig performing on ‘Showtime at the Apollo.’ Come on, homeless people - you can do it!Us mag gets the headline of the week award for ‘Taylor’s Terrifying Night,’ revealing “Swift gets a scare." What dire misfortune befell songstress Taylor Swift? Her boyfriend, top DJ Calvin Harris, was in a car crash and cut his nose. You might think it was a scarier night for Calvin Harris, but evidently ‘Calvin’s Terrifying Night’ didn’t appeal to the sub-editors at Us mag, presumably because anything that happens to Harris is only of interest as far as it affects Swift. That must be slightly disheartening for Harris, but at least he didn’t have his face chewed off by a chimpanzee.As for the “world’s toughest duck,” Perky survived three shootings and two days left in a fridge nine years ago, before being rescued by a Tallahassee sanctuary, until her death this month, according to the Enquirer. “Pot-eating pooches” have become an epidemic in Colorado since the state legalized marijuana, and pets are increasingly munching their owners’ no-longer-hidden stashes, claims the Globe. The dog shot with an arrow was named ‘Archer’ by the vet who saved him, reveals the National Examiner, which isn’t quite as ironic as it first sounded. The Examiner also features luxury cat playhouses designed to look like the Kremlin, a Chinese pagoda, and the White House - doubtless emptied of everything by the Obamas’ cats.Onwards and downwards . . .

An Object at Rest from Seth Boyden on Vimeo.An "Object at Rest" is a 6-minute animated cartoon by Seth Boyden. He says, the cartoon "follows the life of a stone as it travels over the course of millennia, facing nature's greatest obstacle: human civilization." It was his final thesis film at CalArts. Well done, Seth!

The Federal Election Commission has deadlocked on a complaint about an employer who coerced his salaried employees into donating to a PAC he had started; the three Democratic commissioners voted to take action, the three GOP commissioners voted against, and that means that nothing will happen. (more…)

The City of West Hollywood is using automated parking to fit more vehicles into a garage. It's neat, but I wish Los Angeles would use its resources for better public transportation.The garage requires a much smaller physical footprint than would a conventional parking structure with a similar capacity. The space savings nets more than 7,000 square feet for a Community Plaza and entry service area that will be used for community events. The Automated Garage will help to answer the City’s need for parking for City Hall and for surrounding businesses. Parking your vehicle is as simple as driving in to the bay, pulling a ticket and walking away. The maximum vehicle retrieval time for an individual car is approximately two minutes. The automated garage has multiple lifts and shuttles that can move many vehicles at once.

Dan Benjamin is a podcaster, writer, software developer, and ex-corporate stooge. He is the founder of 5by5, a podcast network where he hosts a handful of shows. He is the author of baconmethod.com and hivelogic.com, and has written for A List Apart and O’Reilly. Dan lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and their children. Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page Show notes: Staedtler Mars Mechanical Pencil ($6) and Sharpener "This could be called an architect's pencil or a draftsman's pencil or a lead holder is the name that I've always used for it. ... What's nice about it is it's lightweight ... but it's got that nice metal grippiness to it. ... Instead of being like a regular mechanical pencil where you click the end of it and it advances the lead millimeter by millimeter out, this thing you can control. When you press down the button end of it, as much lead as you would like to slide out can slide out. ... A supplemental item is the Mars Rotary Action Lead Pointer and Tub, which allows you to put the lead holder in there. It presets how much of a point you want based on these two little holes that you adjust it to, and then you spin it. ... I encourage people to write and draw with a pencil. It's the most fun thing in the world." Telefunken M82 Dynamic Microphone ($399) "This is my microphone of choice these days. I have used so many different microphones over the years. I started podcasting back in 2006. ... I care a lot about the microphone. ... This was maybe the fifth or sixth microphone that I'd tried. When I try one, I tend to try to use it for several months. This one I've been using now for about a year, and I just love it. It really meets with my voice I think really well. What's nice about it is it was originally designed as a kick drum mic. If you were mic'ing up a drum set, you would put this microphone in front of or even inside of the kick drum. As weird as that may sound, some of the most widely used microphones for voice in broadcasting actually were originally designed or designed in part to also be kick drum kind of a mic or a mic for a drum." Vitamix 5300 Blender ($430) "First of all, I have to tell you how I came to have a blender that is this absurdly expensive in my possession ... I started getting into the idea of making smoothies in the morning for breakfast ... and I said to my wife, 'I think I want to try making them at home.' She says, 'Well, you know we have a blender that could do that.' I said, 'You mean like the one we got when we got married, like a million years ago?' She's like, 'No. We have a really nice blender. It's a professional level Vitamix blender.' I'm like, 'Where is it?' She's like, 'It's in the box in the garage.' I'm like, 'Why is it out there?' She's like, 'It was so expensive that I was going to return it. I just bought it not long ago and I felt like there's no sane reason I should have spent this much money on a blender.' ... I said, 'All right, let me try it.' I tried it and the smoothie that I made — the world stopped and everything went dark and a spotlight went down on the smoothie. It was the best thing in the world. I was full. I was full all day. I had energy. I lifted a car off of a fire hydrant in the garage. It was amazing what I was able to do. I said, 'Don't you dare return. I'm keeping this thing.' She's like, 'All right. We can keep it.' A week later I've been making smoothies all week long. It's been the most amazing thing. ... Anything blends in this." Steelcase Series 7 Height-Adjustable Desk ($1,449) and Mat "I got this desk is because years ago I started dealing with chronic lower back issues ... As a result of that, my doctor said, "One thing you should really consider doing is instead of spending most of the day sitting, you could spend a significant part of the day standing," but you still want to sit. .... I went with Steelcase because at the time that I got it that was the desk that you get. Now there are lots of other alternatives for sit-stand desks, but I still really like the Steelcase one, because it's just made so rock-solid. The motors in it are super, super solid and strong. You can have your big, fancy monitors up on top of it. In my case I even have a rack with a whole bunch of audio gear on top of it and a screen. It lifts us up and down, no problem."

Samuraigutarist recorded his cover of The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" at a very slow tempo that lengthened the song to around 30 minutes. Then he sped up the video and audio 20x. The result sounds like a lovely violin version of the song.

Over at MAKE, Shane Walton explains a neat technique for turning coins into beautiful rings. Instead of hammering the edge with a hammer, he suggests tapping it with a spoon... for hours.

Ewan McGee writes, "Creators of the YouTube channel H3H3 productions are being sued by the creator of the YouTube channel MattHossZone for showing/talking about one of his 'pick up' videos. YouTuber Philip DeFranco talks about the story in his YouTube show, sets up a GoFundMe page for the creators of H3H3 to help them with their legal fees, and donations come pouring in, including support from well-known names like Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach, Markus "Notch" Persson and others. In just 12 hours over 3,000 people have already donated more than $95,000 in total." (more…)

I don't know enough about grammar to be able to tell if this Sentence Tree is accurate or not.

Here's a gentleman taking a nap while his Tesla drives for him.From Electrek:Tesla’s Autopilot requires the driver to always monitor the vehicle and be ready to take control. If the system lacks data to continue to actively steer the vehicle safely, it will show an alert on the dashboard.If the driver ignores the alert for too long, it will emit a sound and decelerate while activating the hazard lights and moving the vehicle to the side of the road. The vehicle basically assumes that the driver is unconscious if he can’t take control after visual and audible alerts.In this case, it seems like the Autopilot is still very much in control and therefore is not bothering the sleeping driver – now a simple passenger.

When Brandon Li, a 34-year-old American, went to Hong Kong, he was so taken by the city that he made this stunningly beautiful short video about it, which shows the people, both rich and poor, eating, playing, working, competing, and celebrating. Li told the South China Morning Post, “Hong Kong is a city which feels like it cannot exist. It is this mix of British and Chinese culture – it is filled with an uncontainable energy of beautiful corners that are sometimes hidden.”

Zurich-based Illustrator and graphic novelist Martin Panchaud created a massive infographic adaptation of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. If printed, the document would be more than 400 feet long. You might think of it as a visual Star Wars Torah scroll. SWANH.NET

Tristan Harris was Google's "Design Ethicist" where he studied how design choices directly affect people's behavior in conscious and unconscious ways. He's also a practicing magician! As he says, "Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it." Over at Medium, Harris wrote a fascinating post about persuasive technology and how design can "exploit our minds’ weaknesses." From Medium:Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how those choices are manipulated upstream by menus we didn’t question in the first place.This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. I can’t emphasize enough how deep this insight is.When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask:• “what’s not on the menu?”• “why am I being given these options and not others?”• “do I know the menu provider’s goals?”• “is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?” (e.g. an overwhelmingly array of toothpastes)"How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist" (Medium)Harris's piece supports the essay that my Institute for the Future colleagues Marina Gorbis and Devin Fidler recently posted about the incredibly high stakes of on-demand platform design: "Design It Like Our Livelihoods Depend on It" (WTF?)