In 1999, my old pal Gil Kaufman interviewed Prince for the pioneering Web magazine Addicted to Noise. Today at Billboard, Gil writes about his five minutes with Prince:No one else was in the room, so I was clearly next. But I had to wait for this dude to … stop dancing around the coffee table with Prince. Man, they were both pretty into it. "It’s really not a great dance song," I thought more than once as the boogeying just went on, and on. Once you started it, it seemed like it would have been hard to just stop.It was all pretty goofy. The publicist whispered the guy’s name and affiliation into my ear as I stared down at my long list of questions and notes, reminding myself to be cool. Not sure why she did that. But... man, the dancing. I just couldn’t see myself doing that. It’s a calculated choice you make. Dance and maybe you get that extra, extra couple of minutes. Don’t dance and you potentially score one to two stock answers before getting yanked or your clock freezes at exactly five minutes and there's no chance to go into bonus time. I didn’t dance. I sort of nodded my head a bit, respectfully, but not too much.Like that scene in every '80s movie where the needle scratches and the room goes dead silent, the volume dropped hard and Prince looked over at me. "You don’t like this one?" he said, implying that my non-dancing was an offense of the highest order. "The Time Prince Got Mad At Me Because I Wouldn't Dance" (Billboard)

Apparently some Ashkenazi Jews of central or eastern European heritage consider cannabis to be in the category of food that's prohibited during Passover, the festival that begins tonight. However Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a recognized leader in Orthodox Judaism, ruled that it's actually fine to use weed for medical purposes during Passover. Reminds of the time many years ago when we used a bud to represent the "bitter herb" on the Seder Plate. From The Independent:Among Ashkenazi Jews, who are of usually of Central and Eastern European descent, the drug would be considered to be a member of the kitniyot – a group of legumes and grains which are forbidden during the festival of Passover, including rice, peas and lentils....The 88-year-old rabbi, who lives in Bnei Brak, an Israeli city east of Tel Aviv, can be seen with another prominent rabbi in a video uploaded to YouTube by pro-legalisation group Cannabis Israel in which they are presented with cannabis leaves and partake in the leaves being blessed.

It only took a few hours for the latest Trump inconsistency to emerge: saying in one interview that trans people should be able to use whichever bathrooms they like, he said in another that state governments should decide, backing discriminatory laws passed recently in North Carolina and Mississippi.https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/723346182232268800It's funny how the wording of his statement in each case is similar, as if it were recently memorized and he doesn't quite understand which part of it is politically meaningful.

Elliott was among the first outsiders to be given access to Pyongyang's metro. Previously, only two stations could be visited. He posted a nice big gallery of photos and his reflections on a strange (and beautiful) place.This may sound mundane, but the previously restricted Pyongyang Metro is surely one of the most mysterious, yet beautiful transit systems on earth, each station uniquely themed in ultra-nationalism, parading North Korea’s revolutionary goals and achievements to impressionable commuters. In many ways, it’s a small museum, most of which formerly hidden from outside eyes and subsequently shrouded in conspiracy theories. Sensationalism aside, here’s my journey in over sixty photos of the beating heart of Pyongyang, the Pyongyang Metro.There are chandeliers everywhere. Even the trains are museum-pieces - and perfectly looked-after.>Previously: Sycophantic Reactionary Foreign Trains Condemned

The British Library has posted over a million copyright free images taken from books prior to 1900 on Flickr. That means if you need decorations of virtually any type for a website or book, you’ll find more than you can imagine among these visual riches. Just click through! [Via Digital Arts Online]

Merriam-Webster is to add "genderqueer" to its unabridged English dictionary; also "cisgender".Cisgender: of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth.Genderqueer: of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity cannot be categorized as solely male or female.Which pronoun? TIP: Whichever they want.

Atari was once a giant of video game innovation, but now it's a troll -- a company that produces nothing except legal threats -- and its latest project is to get the US Patent and Trademark Office to give it the right to decide who can make haunted house games, and charge the lucky few for the privilege. (more…)

Mathematician/economist Eric R Weinstein is managing director of Thiel Capital, but that doesn't mean that he thinks capitalism has a future. (more…)

You know, for your Star Wars/Mary Poppins mashup theme wedding! $550 from Etsy seller The Blonde Swan, who makes them to order, and will also do you a BB-8 bowler (same price) if that's your thing. (via Geeks Are Sexy) (more…)

The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reports that the FBI payed more than $1m to get into the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone after Apple refused to create software to bypass its encryption. The Washington Post reports that a one-off $1.3m price tag was admitted, obliquely, by FBI Director James Comey by comparison with his own salary.Federal authorities have not publicly revealed who helped the FBI unlock the San Bernardino iPhone, which was at the center of an extended fight between the government and Apple. The Justice Department had maintained that only Apple could help it access the phone without erasing all of its data before abruptly saying it had gotten help from an outside party and no longer needed Apple’s assistance.According to people familiar with the issue, the FBI cracked the phone with the help of professional hackers who were paid a one-time flat fee. Law enforcement officials have said recently that the FBI has found no links to foreign terrorists on the phone, though they are still hoping that geolocation data on the device could help reveal what the attackers did during an 18-minute period after the shooting.The FBI's attempts to compel Apple's cooperation backfired after CEO Tim Cook publicly accused the Bureau of exploiting the case to try and gain backdoor access to iPhones in general. The phone ultimately yielded no useful information.“But it was, in my view, worth it,” the FBI director said of what it cost to access the phone’s data.

The Independent writes that the U.K. is warning travelers about new anti-LGBT laws in North Carolina and Mississippi. Dr Felicity Daly, director of the LGBT Kaleidoscope Trust said: “It is heartening the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is becoming more LGBT responsive in their work, it’s a good sign as it is an important issue in the UK, but most people who identify as LGBT in the UK will already be aware of the nature of certain states.”Matt Horwood of Stonewall charity said: “What’s happened in Mississippi and North Carolina proves that equality is never secure."It’s positive to see the UK government recognise this need and update its travel advice pages accordingly."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKOUrZOKyTc&feature=youtu.beThe latest Pseudorandom installment features Limor "Lady Ada" Fried and Collin Cunningham extolling the virtues of mechanical keyboards for 40 fascinating minutes:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGXTKDSo4Vc&feature=youtu.beThe climax of this is the video at the top of this post in which a musical number is backed with an all-mechanical-keyboard rhythm section.

Allan Amato, the photographer behind The Temple of Art, is kick starting a new book with our friends at Baby Tattoo! S L I P: Naked In Your Own Words is a study of folks who pose nude for a living discussing their experience.From the KS page:Slipping past the inflammatory nature of the naked form, we celebrate with words and images, the courage of those who reveal the most.Three years ago, I began an informal nude series, featuring models, artists and performers I'd worked with and befriended in LA. My goal was to create a non-presentational kind of image that can't simply be objectified and dismissed. I wanted to explore something slippery, feral, harder to define. And as a person wholly committed to cowering behind the camera, I desperately wanted to know more about their motivation, their story.For those who brave the risk of being vulnerable on camera, the negative aspect of this experience is omnipresent: the shaming, judgement, stigma that is all too often deemed acceptable to level at those who express themselves via the medium of their bodies.But there must be a positive element as well; otherwise why do it at all? And while confronting the darker side is necessary and important, I'd rather the beauty not get wholly overshadowed. The result is a book dedicated to unravelling the complicated relationship we have to nudity, self-expression and commerce.Help kickstart S L I P

Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service allows subscribers to download as many books as they want, and then pays writers based on the number of their pages that readers have read. (more…)

Two NYPD detectives who beat up a uniformed U.S. Postal Service mail carrier were charged with felony assault in Queens wednesday. Angelo J. Pampena, 31, and Robert A. Carbone, 29, were also charged with perjury after CCTV footage of the incident demonstrated that they had lied in their official reports of the arrest.Mailman Karim Baker's harassment by NYPD began after giving street directions to a stranger who later killed two officers, reports the New York Times. But the October 2015 incident went beyond the usual stop and search, leaving Baker disabled.Mr. Brown and Mr. Subin said the detectives approached Mr. Baker as he left work on Oct. 21, 2015, in Corona, Queens. Mr. Subin said the encounter was captured on surveillance video from a building across the street, and had been paired with audio from a 911 call from Mr. Baker’s cellphone that recorded what occurred.Mr. Subin said the officers had asked to see his client’s identification and when he asked why he was being stopped, the officers told him he was parked too close to a fire hydrant. Mr. Baker then called 911 to ask for help, but he dropped the phone when the officers began pummeling him, Mr. Subin said.The district attorney said Mr. Baker was seated in his car when the detectives punched and kicked him multiple times in the face and body and dragged him from the vehicle. Mr. Baker sustained spinal fractures and a knee injury and has not been able to return to work, Mr. Subin said.The cops are suspended without pay in the meantime. As the taxpayer eats the financial pain of paying off police victims, there's not much incentive, other than the slim chance of individual convictions, for them to stop this behavior. So, lets hope this ends in two individual convictions.

This Sunday marks the return of Game of Thrones to HBO for its sixth season, and the return of recap podcast Boars, Gore, and Swords to the Boing Boing Podcast Network.For the uninitiated, BGaS is a television and film podcast primarily about Game of Thrones, hosted by comedians Red Scott and Ivan Hernandez. Since 2011, the show has recapped and reviewed every episode of Game of Thrones, and covered much of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire extended universe. With a casual, occasionally filthy tongue in cheek, Ivan and Red cover the show, books, video games, and more, along with other TV shows and films like Doctor Who, Jessica Jones, The Force Awakens, and more.To get listeners up to speed for the premiere, this week Ivan and Red reviewed the current status of the Top 100 GoT characters. From that one guy who got stabbed to that other guy who got stabbed, they go over everyone of note in the world of Westeros.If you're new to the show, you can check out their full podcast archive. Some episodes of note include a discussion on the role of women, the first of the live game shows, and their redo of the GoT pilot.If you want to connect with the guys on social media, you can follow them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them. They also just launched a Patreon, so if you enjoy the show you can kick a few bucks their way.BGaS will be posting episodes immediately following the west coast airing of Game of Thrones, so look out for them late Sunday night every week.

Printer manufacturer Lexmark hates America, and everything good and right in the world, because we keep stubbornly insisting that if we buy a printer cartridge, we can refill it, because it's ours. (more…)

In New York, a federal prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation around the “Panama Papers,” an archive of materials leaked from a Panamanian law firm that reveal a massive, secretive network of places where the world's most rich hide their riches. (more…)

His tool of choice: a DIY wrench lure. It's a wrench, string, and two fishing hooks. With only this tool, Florida man Ryan Hein was able to reel in a 400-pound Goliath grouper while fishing in the St. Petersburg area. (more…)

Jamie McFarlane's Wizard in a Witchy World tells the tale of lost in love, current-era wizard Felix Slade. Slade has a tough name, but thats about it. Generally having spent his life not in love, suddenly Felix is. Naturally, he falls in love with a witch, and they are hard to love. It doesn't help simplify matters that Slade has had a vision of the object of his desire dying, and must save her. This cute, fast paced adventure includes a lot of strong world building. The lead character is not a big action seeking hero, and the story reflects that. It will be interesting to see where McFarlane takes this next.Wizard in a Witchy World by Jamie McFarlane via Amazon

In honor of Record Store Day, I got on the phone with Russ Solomon, who founded Tower Records in the early 1960s — the late-great chain was also the subject last fall of a terrific documentary by Colin Hanks called "All Things Must Pass." In speaking with Russ, and then my son Tom, age 25, about their recollections of Tower, it became clear that how one feels about the place, which meant a great deal to me, is purely generational. To that end, I interviewed both Tom and Russ, as well as Tower's former COO, Stan Goman.From my story in Collectors Weekly:Napster, as Hanks’ film makes clear, was not even the biggest factor [in Tower's demise]. Sure, it allowed people to get music for free, but it would not have been so attractive to consumers if the record companies, with the complicity of chains like Tower, had not insisted on keeping the prices of CDs high and discontinuing the practice of selling singles, which is what music consumers had been buying since Russ and Clayton Solomon sold their customers used 3-cent 78s for a dime.“The 78,” Solomon says, “which morphed into the 45 in the 1950s, was really the lifeblood of the record business. It was all about singles. When the record companies decided not to make singles anymore, I think that was the beginning of the downfall of the industry. They were taking away what the kids really wanted by forcing them to buy an album. That was a big mistake.”“To me,” says my son Tom, “one of the cooler parts of the documentary was seeing how the market changed. For a while, Tower sold singles and LPs, then singles on cassette, and then the record companies got greedy, didn’t sell many singles as CDs, and raised the price of CDs. So, when MP3s came along, you could suddenly get singles again. The greed of the record companies probably had the biggest impact on encouraging music piracy. You’ll notice that today the market is all about singles.” On this, Russ Solomon and no less an authority than former record producer David Geffen, who is also interviewed for Hanks’ film, wholeheartedly agree.Tower’s unchecked expansion and the record industry’s greed were self-inflicted wounds, but there was a third factor other than Napster that helps explain why Tower went broke—competition. One of the characteristics of CDs is that they are smaller than LPs, which means you can put more of them in the same amount of space in a store. And as “Thriller” had shown, hits lured people into stores. To put it simply, consumer-electronics retailers, and even big-box chains like Walmart and Target, decided they wanted a piece of this action.“Walmart and Target didn’t sell enough to bother us,” Solomon corrects me. “But Best Buy did. They sold CDs, videos, and video games to draw people into their stores to look at their electronics and televisions.”And they were selling those CDs dirt cheap. “We were paying, say, $10.40 for a CD,” Solomon continues. “Well, we could sell anything in the Top 40 list for $11.98 and not be hurt particularly because we sold a lot of them. But they were selling everything for $11.98. In contrast, we were up around $15, or something like that, for most of our stock. It was really hard to compete against that. We had a bigger selection, but they had enough, and that sucked away a lot of our business.”Finally, then, there was Napster. “I think I first became aware of Napster when we had the store in Boston—a great store, I might add,” Solomon says. “It became a kind of a worry, but a worry you didn’t bother with. The record companies were more hysterical about it than we were, and they had good reason to be. The whole industry was in confusion when it started, but I don’t think we were really affected by it. We had so many other problems—overexpansion, what have you.”Stan Goman takes the impact of Napster on Tower more personally than his former boss. “Napster? I didn’t get that. To me, it was just stealing. And that’s the reason there’s no real record business anymore, because you can’t compete against stolen items. I hope Mr. Napster, whoever that asshole is, is happy, because he put a lot of people out of work.”

JakeMarshall91 went to a museum and face-swapped with statues. The results are strangely horrifying and wonderful.

Crooked cops and prosecutors in Nebraska are gnashing their teeth today. The state has taken away their license to steal cash and property from innocent people and use the proceeds to fatten their bloated budgets. In some states where civil forfeiture is still allowed, high ranking police officers drive in luxury sports cars taken from owners who were never arrested for a crime. (more…)

I hope to see you at Radiotopia Live at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, Wed, May 4, 2016. Many of my favorite podcasters will be there.Radiotopia Live brings your favorite podcasts out of your headphones and onto the stage for one night only. Join Radiotopia shows: 99% Invisible, Criminal, Song Exploder, The Memory Palace, Strangers, Mortified, Radio Diaries, The Kitchen Sisters, Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything and The Allusionist for an unforgettable evening of performances, conversations and music.

The Minim+Aid is a "minimalist survival kit" from Japanese design firm Nendo that features "a whistle to alert others of one’s presence, a radio [that can also charge your phone], raincoat, lantern, drinking water and a plastic case, all packaged inside of a 5cm wide tube that is waterproof and floats." (more…)

In the runup to the 1988 Olympics, the South Korean government ordered Seoul's "vagrants" to be cleared from the street. Thousands of people, many of them small children, were sent to a "welfare facility" called "Brothers Home," where they were subject to vicious, often fatal beatings and routine rape. The order to round up the vagrants came from then-President Park Chung-hee (father of current President Park Geun-hye) whose successor, President Chun Doo-hwan, suppressed any investigation into the atrocities. (more…)

The internal Volkswagen investigators who are trying to figure out who knew what, when, about the company's illegal, lethal practice of programming its cars to cheat on emissions tests say they've been slowed down because the company assigned dozens of secret code-names to the software, such as "acoustic software." (more…)

George Osborne, the Tory chancellor of David Cameron's UK government, has amended the Bank of England and Financial Services Bill to exempt the families of "Politically Exposed Persons" -- Members of Parliament and other elites -- from money laundering investigations. (more…)

Tupac knew what was up. In a previously unreleased interview with the rap icon shot in 1992, Tupac Shakur concisely and accurately analyzes Donald Trump's greed. (more…)

A homophobic guy in Florida, of all places, has changed his name to "Bruce Jenner." He barely closets his intolerance in a ridiculous theory about returning this precious name to earlier glory. This excerpt, from the Sun Sentinel, reads as a list of scorn worthy people. This Bruce Jenner was formerly Mark Behar, an actor and bodyguard who legally had his name changed in order to preserve the “heterosexual roots” of Jenner’s original name, according to a statement from his publicist, Tom Madden."We're representing Mark who is now legally Bruce so the famous Bruce Jenner name will return to its heterosexual roots where our client believes it belongs instead of hanging around out with the likes of the Kardashians and getting into car accidents as Caitlyn," Madden was quoted saying in a press release from TransMedia Group, the PR firm representing the former Behar.

Carol from Cheapass Games writes, "About a year ago, James Ernest started working with Patrick Rothfuss to make the game Tak a reality. Tak features in Patrick's novel, The Wise Man's Fear." (more…)

My photographer friend Clayton Cubitt, whom I met here in the Boing Boing comments a decade ago, did an amazing project to support the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. (more…)

Everyone sounds drunk or stoned when slowed down 50%, but doing so to Trump reveals that his bizarre, digressive speech patterns are uncannily like a drunk sped up 200%.

I've switched over to exclusively using tear-by-hand packing tape ($6 for a 50-foot roll on Amazon). No scissors or skin-abrading dispenser needed - just pull off what you need and tear across the tape. It's more expensive than ordinary packing tape, but I don't mind. A true wonder material of the modern age.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICzBGDnA9OAThis is an incredible example of early informational film making, and still super interesting today. I love the meandering start.

Comedian John Hodgman, who is incredibly well loved here at Boing Boing, today endorsed Hillary Clinton. (more…)

https://youtu.be/CWP4n4BfAYoThe Smartress is a mattress with embedded sensors that will send an alert to your phone "whenever someone is using your bed in a questionable way," according the manufacturer, Durmet. (more…)

Patrick Kun's Unseen Magic videos compile 5-10 second clips of beautifully executed magic tricks that combine manual dexterity with fabulous showmanship. (more…)

Nicholas Shaxon, author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens (previously) appeared on The Foreign Desk podcast (MP3) this week to discuss the nature of tax havens, how they hollow out both their host countries and the countries whence their hidden riches comes. (more…)

From the YouTube description of this TedEd video:Imagine a police lineup where ten witnesses are asked to identify a bank robber they glimpsed fleeing the scene. If six of them pick the same person, there’s a good chance that’s the culprit. And if all ten do, you might think the case is rock solid. But sometimes, the closer you start to get to total agreement, the less reliable the result becomes. Derek Abbott explains the paradox of unanimity.

The New York State Democratic primary is a "closed primary" that excludes anyone who isn't a registered Democrat from casting a ballot. Many people say they are registered Democrat but have been purged from the list, or had their affiliations changed to Republican or Independent. Some have posted images of what they say are forged signatures on voter registration cards. (more…)

Ariel Waldman, creator of Spacehack, has just published a delightful book titled "What's It Like in Space? Stories from Astronauts Who'Ve Been There?" Illustrated by Brian Standeford, it's a fun collection of astronaut anecdotes on everything from sneezing and farting in zero gravity to weird frights and the necessity of Sriracha in space. Here's an excerpt:The early male astronauts often had leaky space suits. They would frequently complain about their urine leaking into other areas of the suit. For a while, no one could figure out what was wrong with the spacesuits. NASA eventually realized the leaking was due to the oversized condom catheters the astronauts were using. Turns out that when the astronauts were asked by doctors what size they needed, they would often ask for “large.” Buy "What's It Like in Space? Stories from Astronauts Who'Ve Been There?" (Amazon)Excerpted from What's It Like in Space by Ariel Waldman, illustrations by Brian Standeford (Chronicle Books, 2016).

"Hee hee hee..."

In China's Hebei Province, bulldozers from competing construction companies battled it reportedly over a business opportunity. According to ABC News, police finally put a stop to the insanity and two drivers were injured. Perhaps the operators have been watching too many Survival Research Labs performance videos.

Samantha Bee hilariously interviewed a panel of folks feeling the Bern.

Since the late 1970s, the American conservative movement has been an uneasy -- and unstoppable -- alliance of big-business-friendly finance boosters and poor, evangelical Christians whose major issues were things like gay marriage, abortion, and forcing women into "traditional" gender roles, not taxation and "small government." (more…)

Slither.io is the classic game Snake, but massively multiplayer and with the ruthless eat-and-grow mechanic of Osmos. The "eat" mechanism is subverted: hitting other creatures results in death, so you must instead outmanoever them and force them to hit you. On my best run, I got eaten at 7,000. Can you do better? [Thanks, Joel!]