Boing Boing

“There’s classified, and then there’s classified,” President Barack Obama recently told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace in response to a question about the now-classified material on Hillary Clinton’s private email server from when she was Secretary of State. (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]You think it’s hard being a celebrity? Try being friends with a celebrity - it’s a life fraught with fear.That’s evident from this week's tabloids, which repeatedly tell how “friends fear” for the well-being of stars.“Portia de Rossi’s terrifying appearance has friends fearing she is on the verge of a life-threatening anorexia relapse” claims the National Enquirer.“Pals fear” that Kelly Osbourne “can’t stop eating,” and “may be eating herself to death” according to the Enquirer, which evokes images of Monty Python’s spheroid Mr Creosote indulging one more wafer-thin mint, though Kelly seems slender by that comparison.Michael Douglas is allegedly looking thin, and “friends fear his cancer has returned,” says the Globe. Because who needs oncologists to carry out scans and tests when we have friends to live in fear for our health?When friends aren’t available, there are plenty of others around who can worry about the stars for them.“Medical experts” are “fearful” that former Friends star Matthew Perry has suffered a stroke, reports the Enquirer, based on a recent TV appearance in which he appeared to be slurring words. As any trained barman can tell you, slurred words are almost always a predictor of a cerebrovascular incident. Right.You don’t need friends when you have family to worry about you. Beach Boy star Brian Wilson is “eating himself to death” - evidently an increasingly popular form of suicide, judging by this week’s tabloids - fears his daughter Carnie Wilson, who is “petrified” and “worried sick,” according to the Globe. The magazine hasn’t actually spoken to Carnie, of course, but they have supposedly spoken to a “pal” who explains Carnie’s fears for her father at great length. Because that’s what good friends do: tell all your private concerns to a tabloid.Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris has a slew of “relatives worry” that she is “charging down the path to ruin” - an unusually poetic metaphor for the Globe - with her new rocker boyfriend. Her “family fears she could revert to her old ways,” the tabloid is told, not by a relative, nor a friend, not even a source or an insider. We’re not told what “her old ways” might entail, but the quote is credited to “a spy” - an extraordinary attribution. We’re accustomed to unnamed (and possibly fictional) “insiders” and “sources" - perhaps a celebrity’s hairdresser, chauffeur, dental technician or gardener - but a spy? Could it really be a CIA agent monitoring Paris Jackson? Or perhaps a foreign spy - Israel’s Mossad? Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence? Or is there someone just stalking Paris, following her every move, eavesdropping on conversations . . ? Oh, wait: there’s a name for that - a tabloid reporter.Friends, family, insiders and sources also reveal such gems this week as Jennifer Aniston heading for a “$170 million divorce” because husband Justin Theroux allegedly still talks with a former girlfriend, according to the Enquirer, and “William and Kate Win The Throne” according to the Globe, which views Britain’s Royal succession as some kind of reality TV game show. “It’s official!” declares the Globe, which clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of the words, since there is absolutely nothing officially announced (or likely) about the Queen abdicating in June and by-passing her son Charles to give the crown to her grandson as “a fitting tribute” to the late Princess Diana.Back in the real world, Us magazine brings us the “stars’ diet secret tips” on its cover - what, is it summer already? Jennifer Lawrence eats chicken and asparagus salad, Ellie Goulding runs half-marathons, Khloe Kardashian avoids cheese, Britney Spears lifts weights, Jessica Alba easts organic produce, Kate Hudson favors pilates, Sheryl Crow eats fiber, Jennifer Lopez meditates, and Anna Faris hikes. I’m exhausting just reading this.People magazine offers “The Untold Story” of Natalie Wood, recounted by her daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, who remembers childhood parties with Audrey Hepburn and Bette Davis, “toys and parties and dinners . . . and animals everywhere.” But she can’t shed any light on the enduring mystery of Natalie Wood’s death, because she was only 11 at the time, and simply wasn’t there when the actress fell - or was thrown - overboard from a boat off Catalina.Fortunately we have Us magazine’s intrepid investigative team to tell us that Nicole Kidman wore it best, Elisabeth Moss carries “five lip glosses, vitamin powder and deodorant” in her handbag, Lionel Richie loves oatmeal cookies and drinks a glass of hot water with lemon every morning, and the stars are just like us: they eat with chopsticks, carry boxes, train their pets, and put product in their hair. But it’s the Examiner which brings us the week’s best story: “Curse of the Ice Man!” Seven scientists and researchers who discovered or worked on preserving the 5,300-year-old remains of a Stone Age hunter dubbed Oetzi have reportedly died prematurely, often with shocking deaths. One succumbed in an avalanche, another of a blood disease, one in a car crash, another fell 300 feet off a cliff, and the man who recovered the latter’s corpse died of a heart attack. ”Stone Age mummy has claimed seven lives since his discovery!” says the magazine. No doubt friends of the Stone Age hunter fear that he’s cursed. Because that’s what friends are for.Onwards and downwards . . .

Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson's 2011 book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger was an instant classic for the way it described the impact of wealth inequality on the lives of both poor and rich people, driving them both to completely unsustainable working lives that destroyed their families and made them deeply unhappy. (more…)

Ian Burkhart lost all sensation in his hands and legs after a freak swimming accident five years ago. Today, doctors report that a chip in his brain has let him regain some control of his hand. The 24-year-old man has “regained control over his right hand and fingers, using technology that transmits his thoughts directly to his hand muscles and bypasses his spinal injury.” (more…)

What do you do if you're a spy and you want to make untraceable transfers of dirty money without having your funding of your country's nominal enemies exposed to the voters whose money you're spending? You hire Mossack Fonseca to open a numbered account in an offshore tax-haven, naturally. (more…)

For more than a decade, corporate America's lobbying budget has exceeded the entire budget for the operation of both houses of Congress, and this year's lobbying spend ($2.6B) is the largest in history, with no end in sight. (more…)

https://youtu.be/Aor6-DkzBJ0?t=3sA song that became the "unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement" was wrongly placed under copyright, and should be released into the public domain. That's the argument in a lawsuit filed today in federal court over the song "We Shall Overcome." Who's behind it? The same group of lawyers who fought for years to free "Happy Birthday" from copyright prison. The 'Happy Birthday' case succeeded at last just a few months ago, and made it safe for little kids all over the world to sing the song over candlelit cakes at birthday parties, without fear of attorneys knocking on the door demanding royalty payments. The new copyright battle is a proposed class action lawsuit that asks for copyright licensing fees to be returned. The case argues that royalties were wrongfully collected by Ludlow Music Inc. and The Richmond Organization, which claimed copyright over "We Shall Overcome" in 1960. But the song is probably based on an old African-American spiritual, according to popular belief--and the lawsuit.The song is based on “an African-American spiritual with exactly the same melody and nearly identical lyrics from the late 19th or early 20th century,” reads the complaint."This was never copyrightable to begin with," Mark Rifkin, an attorney for the plaintiff, told Reuters Tuesday. "The song had been in the public domain for many, many years before anyone tried to copyright it."From Reuters:The We Shall Overcome Foundation, the plaintiff, is seeking to produce a documentary film about song and its relationship to the civil rights movement. The group asked for permission to use the music in the film but was turned down by TRO, according to the lawsuit.Ars Technica has a copy of the complaint here [PDF]. From Ars Technica:At most, they say, the defendant companies own specific arrangements of the song, or additional verses that were added in 1960 when the song was copyrighted and again in 1963.Once more, the lawyers' chief client is a documentary filmmaker making a movie about the song in question. The named plaintiff is the We Shall Overcome Foundation, an organization created by the filmmakers. The foundation intends to make a movie about the song, and include a performance of it in "at least one scene in the movie."From Ben Sisario's New York Times piece:The suit asserts that the song’s copyright was never as broad as its publishers claimed, and has long since expired. Pete Seeger, who was associated with the song for decades, published a version of “We Will Overcome” in 1948, in a periodical called People’s Songs, and commented over the years that it was unknown exactly how “Will” became “Shall” in the song’s title. (“It could have been me with my Harvard education,” Mr. Seeger wrote in 1993; he died in 2014.)Ludlow, the publisher, filed a copyright registration for “We Shall Overcome” in 1960, but the suit claims that this registration covers only an arrangement of the song and some additional verses. The suit cites a study by a musicologist, conducted at the request of the foundation, stating that this version of the song is essentially the same as the one published in 1948, whose copyright — if it was ever valid — would have expired in 1976.https://youtu.be/TmR1YvfIGng

See sample pages from this book at Wink.When Matthias Buchinger was born in 1674, he arrived without arms or legs. As an adult, he was under 2.5 feet tall. He lived to the age of 65, outliving three wives (his fourth wife outlived him, and he was rumored to have as many as 70 mistresses), and he sired 14 children. Most remarkably, Buchinger was an accomplished artist, magician, sharpshooter, and calligrapher. Buchinger's specialty was micrography: the art of writing tiny letters. He was famous throughout Europe. According to Wikipedia, “Buchinger's fame was so widespread that in the 1780s the term ‘Buckinger's boot’ existed in England as a euphemism for the vagina (because the only ‘limb’ he had was his penis).”The author of Matthias Buchinger: "The Greatest German Living" is Ricky Jay, a famous magician, performer, historian of unusual performers, and writer. Jay’s biography of the extraordinary Buchinger includes many reproductions of Buchinger’s exacting pen and ink drawings, which he made holding a pen in his small fin-like appendages. Jay is a longtime collector of Buchinger original art, and this book includes several entertaining chapters about Jay’s personal interest in collecting Buchinger’s work and his interactions with other Buchinger-philes.

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…)

The Omax Abrasive Waterjet cuts the hell out of things at 180 inches per minute and can be financed at 3.95% APR. They've got plenty of videos of their machines in action on various metals and such, but the unoffical YouTube channel Cut In Half is much more fun. (more…)

The animated graphics before the song starts are the best thing about this 1978 video. Donny and Marie's outfits are the second best thing. Their dancing is the third best thing. Their puffy hair-dos are the fourth best thing. The dancers with the giant bunny tales are the fifth best thing. The song is the second worst thing. The comedy routine at the end is the worst thing.[via]The only Osmonds song I really like is "Chilly Winds":https://youtu.be/yDFGBD83uCQ

https://youtu.be/Bu3SDZSGlxoThe folks at This Old House use clear plastic plumbing to explain how bathroom sinks work, and how to unclog them. We live in an old house and the pipes get clogged a lot. My favorite bathroom sink unclogger is the Drain Weasel.See also: What do you do when you've got a plumbing clog?

I am constantly plagued by electrical gremlins. This http://amzn.to/1WpVsAJ">cordless circuit tester has been a boon.I love classic cars and motorcycles, and I live by the sea. Seems I can't go a year without something corroding, shorting, or otherwise forcing me to spend hours trying to sort out odd behavior on an old electrical system. This spring? The headlight thumbswitch. Enter the cordless circuit tester!For ages I've used a handy old test lamp. Clip one side to ground and start poking about with the spike, checking to see if a line has power. The problem for me is that the ground line is never quite long enough. The alligator clip always tends to pop loose when I'm going for that one wire that is just out of reach. Problem is that I rarely notice the clip has come off and frequently had to repeat tests. This cordless model ends that. This cordless circuit tester is easy to use. Just carefully use the tip of the tester to poke the wire you want to test. If you've found power, the tip will light up and a buzzer will sound. Could not be easier. If you are chasing electrical gremlins, this cordless tool is an improvement over the corded versions.Apipema Non-Contact Voltage Tester 12-1000V AC via Amazon

It's a shame that this Minecraft comic never happened. The art looks fantastic. Brandon Sheffield, video game director and webcomic writer, has sample character designs, screens, and a script on his website.

What happens when you blow smoke while a not-entirely wise machine is superimposing someone else's face on your face? Dorrit Shank found out.

Today we travel to a world we share with conscious robots. Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | PatreonIn this episode we talk about everything from what artificial intelligence and consciousness even mean, whether you’ll ever have a moral obligation to pay Siri, and what happens when your intelligent secretary needs a therapist. ▹▹ Full show notes

Everyone knows Monopoly is a bad board game (unless you play with alternate rules). It also takes hours to play, even after the runaway player has been identified. This graph says it all:Monopoly Deal is a $5 card game that takes 15-20 minutes to play and has lots of player interaction, and no mind numbing roll-and-move mechanic. Many of the 110 cards in the deck look familiar (money, properties, utilities). There are also action cards which can be used to collect rent, steal another players' property, cancel an action card, or used as money. Best of all, even the richest player is at risk of losing, so everyone stays interested in playing till the end.I think the standard rules are fine, but I'm curious if anyone has come up with their own house rules?

Weirdo remix artist Vic Berger slap-chopped together this creepy and hilarious edit of Melania Trump’s recent campaign speech for her creepy and no longer hilarious husband, presidential candidate and noted total shitbag Donald Trump. (more…)

Liza Daly writes: "I’m fascinated by the fertile period between ’79 and ’83, when computers and consoles went mainstream and hundreds of game companies sprung up overnight. These developers were often obscure — sometimes just a P.O. box and a single teenager — but a few racked up enormous profits. And while there were no real rules yet, there was one agreed-upon convention: graphics were primitive and were never to be shown on the cover. This led to an awful lot of experimentation, for better or worse."Box Art Brut: The no-rules design of early computer games

See sample pages from this book at Wink.A gloomy, nine-story mansion, perched on a plateau in a desolate countryside. A trench-coated, top-hatted visitor stands in an illuminated doorway, a tiny, frog-faced boy dwarfed by this imposing figure, as he stands on a checkerboard-tiled floor, the scene ringed by an ornate, circular frame. Taking up two pages, his aunt and uncle sit at a very long dining room table. The boy's aunt accuses him, a black word balloon contains the word "Liar!" in calligraphic script. The boy uses the reflection of an algae-filled basin to read the mysterious page of a handwritten journal, its letters written in ornate, backwards cursive.Warren, a peculiar-looking child with a toad-like face and a luxurious head of hair, is the 13th descendent of the founder of the now-decrepit hotel where he lives with his lazy uncle and mean aunt. Hidden within the walls of the rundown hotel is the All-Seeing Eye, a mythical treasure. Rumors of its existence brings untold numbers of treasure hunters to his family's hotel, including a mysterious lodger covered in bandages. The nine-story-high mansion begins to be ransacked by these new guests, its furniture toppled, its floorboards pulled up, its carpets unraveled, all in the search for the treasure. A pale spectral girl lurks in the hedge maze, and a strange tentacled creature dwells in the boiler room. Warren's only friends are Chef Bunion, and his tutor, Mr. Friggs, but his circle of new friends begins to grow in unexpected ways. A colorful cast of characters include witches, pirates, ghosts, librarians, perfumiers, and chefs.Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye is a lovely book with a foil-embossed cover, nearly every page containing red and black line engraved illustrations that look as though they were pulled from an antiquated reference book from a dusty library. "The ugly boy with the big heart and beautiful hair" meets several intriguing characters, who often aren't what they appear, and navigates a compelling storyline, strewn with puzzles and clues. Ominous black pages hint at arcane goings-on, and they're topped with backward, spell-like chapter headings. As the plot twists and turns, descriptive passages weave an atmosphere filled with the scents and flavors of zesty beef goulash, the feelings of dread, excitement, loneliness, and ultimately triumph. It's a delightful page-turner.– S. Deathrage

The new, evidently terrible Batman vs Superman movie turns on Lex Luthor's evil plan to lobby the US government to grant a variance in its import controls on kryptonite (making the movie part of the pantheon whose creators bravely decided to make the major plot points revolve around regulation, see, e.g., the Star Wars prequels). (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k1 in 20 credit reports contains grave errors that seriously harm the people whom the reporting bureaus are libeling; the credit reporting industry -- which controls access to rental accommodation, employment, and loans -- says this is proof that the system is working, because they're only ruining the lives of 10,000,000 people. (more…)

Before we understood about microbes and their relationship to tooth enamel, we imagined that the painful holes in people's teeth were caused by burrowing toothworms (previously), something we confirmed by yanking out the especially sore teeth and observing the fiber-like "worms" (that is, raw nerves) that were left behind. (more…)

Would it be a fitting end, for one of the first and greatest of the American web's dreams, to be eaten by the most infamous of British tabloids?The parent company of the Daily Mail, the British newspaper and global tabloid website, is in talks with several private-equity firms to launch a bid for Yahoo, the people said. ... A possible bid by Daily Mail could take one of two forms, the people familiar with the matter said. In one scenario, a private-equity partner would aim to acquire the entirety of Yahoo’s U.S. operation, with the Mail taking over the news and media properties. Those assets include verticals such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports plus Yahoo News and a video operation whose big star is Katie Couric. Yahoo has been retrenching in those businesses—in February the company closed seven digital magazines including sites dedicated to food, parenting and health. In the other scenario, the private-equity firm would acquire Yahoo and merge its media and news properties into a new company that would include the Mail’s Web properties, DailyMail.com and Elite Daily, the people said. The Mail would run that business and would get a larger equity stake than under the first scenario.Yahoo's core business is hard to value because of holdings in successful foreign companies such as Alibaba. At one point, its fortunes were so dire that squinting at it just right made the company seem to have negative value. More recently, an analyst put it at $4.3 billion.

For years I've been using the Panix Unicode Text Converter to create ironic, weird or simply annoying text effects for use on Twitter, Facebook and other plain text-only venues. But now there's a new kid in town, YayText: "Super cool unicode text magic. Use s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶, 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒔, and 🅜🅞🅡🅔 on Facebook, Twitter, and everywhere else." 𝕶𝖊𝖊𝖕𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖊𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖘 𝖎𝖒𝖕𝖔𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖇𝖑𝖊! (more…)

We all want to make money. Discounting ways that end with you behind bars, here’s some friendly advice: become an expert in a field everyone knows is important, but that very few fully understand. If you actually know your stuff, you’ll have employers lining up to hire you - and offering to pay you handsomely for the privilege.Cyber-security and the world of internet white hats and black hats is one of those fields. Hacking, cyber ransoms, online terrorism...companies need to protect themselves from such threats -- and now, this giant 12-course bundle of Cyber Security Hacker & Pen Tester Certification Training (just $39, 95% off in the Boing Boing Store) will give you all the tools needed to be a business’ first line of defense in this shadowy realm.Throughout 117 lectures, you’ll understand the mindset of a hacker as you deep dive into areas like threat modeling, cross-site request forgery, source code fuzzing, penetration testing and more. Usually, this coursework collection comes with a price tag just south of $800, but right now, Boing Boing shoppers can get it for about 95% off its MSRP.

In late March, the Philippine Commission on Elections website was defaced in an Anonymous op, and a few days later, Lulzsec Pilipinas dumped its voter database. At the time, the Commission claimed that no sensitive information was exposed in the breach, but that is clearly not the case. (more…)

Avant-garde composer Tony Conrad, whose experimental music in the 1960s inspired the likes of the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine, died today at 76. "Tony Conrad- one of my first partners in noise.- an indelible mark made, that will forever be paid forward," tweeted Conrad's early collaborator John Cale who went on to form the Velvet Underground.If you're not hip to Conrad, start with his 1973 collaboration with Krautrock band Faust, "Outside the Dream Syndicate," a minimalist masterpiece that has just been reissued. Then lose yourself in Early Minimalism, Vol. 1, a compilation that includes the sublime "Four Violins" (1964). (Listen to excerpts of both below.) From NME:Conrad was a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music, later known as The Dream Syndicate, an avant-garde 1960s drone music group whose lineup included The Velvet Underground's John Cale. Conrad also played with Cale in the short-lived 1960s band The Primitives, which was fronted by Lou Reed. Cale and Reed would go on to form The Velvet Underground, naming the band after a book they found in Conrad's department.Conrad's 1966 film The Flicker is frequently hailed as a landmark in structural filmmaking and his work has been displayed in leading international museums including the Louvre in Paris and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hgvK9k39K0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY9RTSXki8E

Tom writes, "Scientists at Northern Arizona U. use a home-made machine to create 'exotic ices.' They're simulating the surface of Pluto to help explain data and pictures sent to Earth by the New Horizons spacecraft." (more…)

Brave is a new experimental browser from Brendan Eich, inventor of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla. It comes with a built-in ad-blocker that only blocks third party ads, and replaces them with non-tracking ads from its own inventory, whose revenue is then shared with publishers and users, on better terms than most ad networks give. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.The first thing that struck me about Make Fun!, a collection of toy and game projects from former Mattel designer Bob Knetzger, was how many of my favorite projects from the pages of Make: magazine were his. Bob has contributed to the magazine for over nine years, and this collection represents a best-of from that run (with some original projects as well). WINK’s own Mark Frauenfelder (founding editor-in-chief of Make:) also contributes the book’s introduction. Make: Fun! features full step-by-step instructions for some 40 projects. They range from the very simple, fun, and ephemeral, such as the actuated “Ouija Be Mine” Valentine’s Day card and “Gnome Holiday Hats” to a classic “Diving Spudmarine” bathtub toy to more elaborate builds, such as constructing your own “Kitchen Floor Vacuum Former” and building a “Desktop Foundry.” Some of my favorite projects include the “Monster Candy Snatch Game” (think: Operation), the “E-Z-Make Oven” (think: Mattel’s Thingmaker), and vacuum forming your own “Tiki Masks.”Make: did a really nice job on the production of this book. The projects are well photographed, in full color, and the instructions are well laid out and easy to follow. And there are fun little “gimmicks” that serve the playful spirit of the book (a flip-book animation on the page edges, QR-code videos for some of the projects, and colorful templates and paper project components in the back). You can see the videos, view the templates, and find out more on the book’s companion website. I cannot imagine an imaginative, industrious kid (of any age) getting this book and not wanting to dive right in to building a number of these projects. – Gareth BranwynNote: As an added bonus to WINK readers who are fans of Laura Knetzger’s Bug Boys, a number of the projects (e.g. custom cookie cutters and E-Z-Maker casting) use the beetle characters from that book as their test subjects. Laura is Bob’s daughter.

50ml is 1.7 ounces. which makes these glass beakers perfect for serving a healthy shot of liquor. You can buy a set of 12 for $14 on Amazon.

Space artist Alizey Khan painted the moon on a faux-leather bag and will make one just like it for you for just $100. Khan used Angelus leather paints; I can vouch for them as the best I've found, too, both creatively (in that they run and mix like standard acrylics) but have a convincing texture that doesn't crack.Here's a tutorial she made, too:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFshvu2nA0&feature=youtu.be

In 1980, New Yorker stalwart Gay Talese received a handwritten note by special-delivery: it was from Gerald Foos, a Colorado motel owner, and he revealed that he had been spying on his customers' sex lives for decades and taking meticulous notes, which he offered to share with Talese for his upcoming book, Thy Neighbor's Wife, a now-classic investigation into the hidden sex lives of Americans. (more…)

Though Sanders says he disagrees with the pope on rights for women and LGBT people, he lauds the pontiff for "injecting a moral consequence into the economy," and so he will speak at the Vatican next week. (more…)

Träd, Gräs och Stenar were a groundbreaking, raw psych jam band from Sweden known for their wild concert/improv happenings where they served organic food they had grown, augmented their droning guitar/bass/drum core with home-brewed instruments, effects, and amps, and encouraged audiences to join their musical fray. Formed in 1968 from the ashes of pioneering groups Persson Sound and International Harvester, Träd, Gräs och Stenar released four proper LPs before disbanding in 1973. “One of the best heavy-psych-improv-folk-blues-rock bands EVER," says Pavement's Stephen Malkmus about Träd, Gräs och Stenar. "Toss the tired Krautrock and supposed buried treasures of ‘acid folk’ and catch the True Communal Wave!”Today, the good people at Anthology Recordings are releasing reissues of Träd, Gräs och Stenar's mind-melting recordings, including a limited-edition six LP silkscreened box set of live material, never-before-seen images, reproductions of original flyers, and a digital download with even more tracks. One entire LP in the set comes from unheard tapes that the Anthology folks dug out of founding member Jakob Sjöhol's attic!To celebrate, we are delighted to premiere Anthology Recordings' short documentary about Träd, Gräs och Stenar, directed by Isak Sjöholm and Jesper Eklöw. Far fucking out.Träd, Gräs och Stenar (Anthology Recordings)Träd, Gräs Och Stenar's cover of "All Along the Watchtower":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmrql7Zhg-c

Angry people in local newspapers is a blog that celebrates pictures of people posing angrily by unpatched potholes, inadequate signs, dog excrement, etc. This is the prevalent form of local news journalism in the United Kingdom. Previously: Local People, Arms Crossed.

One of the perks of being insanely wealthy is you can hide your money, so when you rip people off or hide your taxes or divorce your spouse, your victims can't figure out how to get their due. (more…)

The UK Intellectual Property Office has sent an official notice to Britons warning them that they don't have to pay the copyright trolls who send them threatening letters accusing them of copyright infringement. (more…)

An employee of a hair salon described as a "faggot" by his boss claimed unfair dismissal, but a Paris tribunal found that the word wasn't a homophobic slur when used at a hair salon, where people are often gay.The text from the salon boss read: "I am not going to keep [the employee]... I don't have a good feeling about this guy. He's a faggot," according to Liberation.They used the French term "PD" which translates as the term "faggot". In the reasoning, the tribunal said: "If we put it in the context of the field of hairdressing, the council considers that the term 'faggot' used by a manager cannot be considered as a homophobic insult, because hair salons regularly employ gay people, notably in female hairdressers, and that poses no problem at all."The ruling has been noted not just for its trivialization of homophobia (Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri described the ruling as "outrageous" and "shocking"), but also for being not quite lucid.

Many of us wear fitness trackers to motivate ourselves to be more active. But after a 42-year-old man in New Jersey had a seizure at work, some very smart emergency room doctors used data they saw on his Fitbit Charge HR to decide on the best way to treat him. They decided to reset his heart rate with electrical cardioversion. His Fitbit may have saved his life. (more…)

I don’t mean a lock of hair or a toe nail—nothing weird. This Saturday, April 9, one of the largest auctions of Houdini memorabilia ever held will take place in Chicago, held by Potter & Potter Auctions. You can download a pdf of the catalogue. And the whole shebang is up on Live Auctioneers where you can also bid on these fabulous items from anywhere in the world.Why so fabulous? No matter whether you are wealthy or not, you will likely be able to purchase something touched in some way by Harry Houdini, the world’s greatest escape artist and icon of the 20 century, in this auction.Do you want a lockpick he might have twiddled between his fingers or toes to free himself from some diabolical device?Or you can buy one of his sets of props that he used for the trick where he swallowed a bunch of straight needles and then some thread, thereafter removing the thread from his mouth with the needles dangling along its length. There are buckets full of Houdini’s handcuffs and various forms of restraints, including these metal mittens that will set anyone into bondage a quiver; and a display of restraints also owned by Houdini and later used as a lobby display for the 1950s Tony Curtis biography of the escape artist.Lot 120 features two canisters of 35mm film featuring 26 minutes of clips of Houdini, some perhaps not seen by anyone in 90 years. The frame grabs below are enough to make Houdini collector’s wet their pants.The auction catalogue describes the films:The reels contain tantalizing glimpses of Houdini at his best—and at his worst. Scenes from The Master Mystery, including many of the first robot to appear in a motion picture, abound, as well as unedited scenes from Houdini’s funeral procession and the moving of his coffin, coverage of his Australian flight in his own biplane, and a number of public straight-jacket escapes, including various angles showing how Houdini was strapped in to the jacket and hoisted in the air. In one scene, he dangles from a rope in Washington, D.C. with the Washington monument in the background as he wriggles free. The Master Mystery scenes involving a chair escape and the robot are spliced together with shots not included in other releases of the footage, and they are also edited in a different manner. At the funeral, Bess Houdini is seen swathed in black crepe. Houdini’s brother and Houdini’s assistant Jim Collins are seen as pallbearers. A throng of thousands watches as his coffin is carried to a hearse. A number of sequences filmed in Paris are included, and this footage consists of out-takes from Houdini’s aborted projected called The Dupe. Material from that film was salvaged for inclusion in another Houdini serial, Haldane of the Secret Service . Sold together with beta masters of the footage as well as a recent DVD transfer of all footage. The broadcast quality film is some of the finest known, and offers both theatrical and real-life glimpses of the great escape artist taken from original nitrate film in the Houdini estate.And there are so many letters, notes, books, and photographs autographed by Houdini that it will suck a lot of wallets dry. These two photos are among my favorites although neither is signed. The first shows Houdini, who had virtually every photo of himself airbrushed into fetal smoothness, in his natural middle-aged state—looking pretty tired. The second is Harry with Teddy Roosevelt’s grandchildren, no doubt after entertaining them and, perhaps, the president as well.In addition to the various manuscripts and published books (including the H.P. Lovecraft manuscript commissioned by Houdini and as yet unpublished), there are several scrapbooks including a mammoth one of Houdini’s own with his handwritten notes which is estimated to sell for between $25,000 and $35,000 and will likely go for much more.And no Houdini auction would be complete without some original stone litho posters.The catalogue for the auction is immense—this is only the smallest peek into the sale. Houdini remains the most famous escape artist and magician in history. When you see the prices these items sell for, you’ll know why.If you want to actually be in the room when all the fun goes on, and the folks with really big bucks are phoning in their bids, Potter & Potter auctions is located at 3759 N. Ravenswood Ave., Suite 121, Chicago, IL 60613 (773-472-1442). The website is www.potterauctions.com.

A masterfully told history of the life of John Yudkin, once the UK's leading nutritional expert, turns into an indictment of the nutritional scientific establishment, which coalesced in a cult of personality around Ancel Keys, who was convinced that fat made you fat and cholesterol raised your cholesterol, and belittled and marginalized anyone who disagreed, including Yudkin, who believed that sugar, not fat, was the cause of obesity and heart disease. (more…)

https://youtu.be/uOrcYnusGGEFor the last few years, ex-con fraudster televangelist Jim Bakker has been selling giant plastic buckets of dehydrated survival food to scared people on TV. His advertising motto is "Imagine — the world is dying and you're having a breakfast for kings." Now, you can have furniture for kings, too, by using his food buckets as chairs and tables![via]

Have you ever had a sample of tea in a Teavana store? I have, and I loved it. I bought some based on how much I liked the taste. But when I got home and followed the directions, the tea tasted weak. I figured I just didn't know how to brew the tea as well as the expert teenagers who work at the Teavana store. But it turns out Teavana's in-store samples use up to "three times as much as the instructions for brewing at home," according to the Consumerist. That's why it was so strong and flavorful. If I wanted to make the same strength of tea at home, I'd have to use a tablespoon, not a teaspoon, effectively tripling the price of the already expensive tea.I stopped buying Teavana, but on Monday I saw a can of Teavana Royal English Breakfast Loose-Leaf Black Tea at Starbucks for $9. It was a pretty big can so I thought it was a good deal. I bought it. When I opened the can at home, I found a small plastic bag stuffed in the bottom of the can, containing the tea. In the photo above, you can see how much tea was in the can. It fills about 1/3 of the can.I like the tea, but there's no way I'll get 20 cups from the can, as the label suggests.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.I have long been a fan of Emily Carroll’s distinctive art style, which I was first introduced to in the video game The Yawhg. Her beautiful illustrations fit perfectly with Marika McCoola’s wonderful pseudo-fairytale about a young woman named Masha, called Baba Yaga's Assistant. Masha feels out of place after her grandmother passes away and her father remarries a woman who has her own daughter. So, when Baba Yaga puts out an advertisement for an assistant, Masha decides to leave and try her hand at working for the terrifying witch of Russian folklore. Masha will have to use her wits and memories from her youth to thrive in her new profession.The story blends present with myth and memory, and these different moments are beautifully conveyed in Carroll’s pictures, with different styles for each storyline. For example, when Baba Yaga’s bear attacks Masha, she recalls fairytales from her childhood in order to figure out how to dissuade him from eating her. The style or art changes, with the panels outlined with geometric designs, and the internal images appearing as abstract watercolors. Later, when Masha remembers moments from her past, the images are frequently rendered in duller colors, creating a hazy appearance that appeals to our sense of what memory “looks” like. At other points, the panels spill over into each other, pushing the story quite literally from one section to the next.My favorite thing about the book is Masha herself, who is plucky enough to stand up to Baba Yaga, and independent enough to pursue her own path. McCoola expertly weaves together folklore with a more modern spin, creating a fairytale for the modern world, and Carroll’s lovingly rendered illustrations only add to the enchantment. If you’ve ever wanted to run away from your life and become a witch (or a witch’s assistant), this is the book for you. Curl up on a rainy day, and enjoy a story that makes you wonder where you’ve been and imagine where you might be going. – Julia Pillard

Your rich, eccentric uncle just passed away, and you and your 99 nasty relatives have been invited to the reading of his will. He wanted to leave all of his money to you, but he knew that if he did, your relatives would pester you forever. Can you solve the riddle he left for you and get the inheritance?Here's the full lesson, taught by Lisa Winer for TED Ed.[via]

The teaser trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is out. Perhaps we'll be presented with a story where patricide is not the solution to all the problems in the galaxy, and the path to great power.