Boing Boing

There are few intellectual exercises better than a good game of chess against a capable opponent, which is why a lot of old hands at the gameplay it online. But there's still nothing like the tactile thrill of moving a knight into checkmate. (Or sweeping the pieces off dramatically when you lose.)That's why we're really in love with Square Off, a chessboard that lets you have that immediacy of a physical board and moving pieces - whether your opponent is in the room or not.This classic-looking rosewood board is especially great at building interest among chess newcomers, with 20 levels of AI difficulty that you can ramp up progressively as you learn from each game. Ready to take on a human? You don't even have to take it down to the park. The board is connected to an app that lets you find players on your level from a community of 30 million.But the real hook here is the robotic inner workings that move the opponent's pieces, whether they're a faceless program or a remotely-playing human. And hey, if you do prefer the park, you can still take it down there and let people watch you play against a "ghost": It runs on batteries that are good for up to 15 games per charge.Square Off: World's Smartest Chessboard is currently 15% off the retail cost, but you can take an additional 15% off that price by using the coupon code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Blue Bottle Coffee customers will need to bring their own containers, or put a deposit down on one, to get a beverage at the high-end chain in the new year. In an ambitious zero waste effort, they are removing plastic and paper cups (and bags) from all of their cafes in the United States. From a statement Monday by its CEO Bryan Meehan (bolding mine): "...we’re not afraid to admit that we’re part of the problem. We recently woke up to the fact that our beautiful bioplastic cups and straws were not being composted even though they were 100 percent compostable. Too many ended up in landfills, where they couldn’t break down at all. So we switched to paper straws and sugarcane-paper cups. But that’s still not enough. We still go through on average 15,000 disposable single-use cups per cafe per month in the US alone, which adds up to 12 million cups per year. We want to show our guests and the world that we can eliminate disposable cups as we serve our delicious coffee.We are proud to announce an experiment that may not work, that may cost us money, and that may make your life a little more complicated. By the end of 2020, all of our US cafes will be zero waste, which according to Zero Waste International Alliance, means at least 90 percent of our waste is diverted from landfill. To help us go even further, we will test our first zero-single-use-cup program in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read the rest

Both Phrma (the lobby for the global pharmaceutical industry) and Biotechnology Innovation Organization (biotech lobbyists) provided letters to a US-UK government meeting to discuss post-Brexit trade terms, in which both organisations called for substantially higher British prices for essential medicines after Brexit.They joined a chorous of lobbyists from other US industries (pork, grains, etc) to sell products to the UK that are currently considered unfit for purpose, such as pork raised with high levels of antibiotics or grains treated with dangerous pesticides.In three days, Britons will go to the polls to elect a new government. Boris Johnson's Tories have called for a "hard Brexit" with no ongoing special relationship with the EU, which will leave the UK in desperate need of trade with the USA, and thus vulnerable to industry demands to make trade deals that tie the British government's hands on safety and health.I am a member of the Labour Party and a donor to Jeremy Corbyn's campaign. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobby group that represents the largest drugmakers in the world, insisted that any U.S.-U.K. deal “must recognize that prices of medicines should be based on a variety of value criteria.” PhRMA called for changes in the way the U.K.’s National Health Service sets price controls through comparative effectiveness research, an effort to control the costs of drugs using clinical research.The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobby group for the biopharmaceutical industry, made similar demands in a letter to trade officials for the U.K., calling to do more in “shouldering a fair share of the costs of innovation.” BIO suggests that in order to ensure fair treatment for drugmakers, companies should have the right to petition an “independent body” to overrule decisions made by the NHS. Read the rest

Even in his simian guise, Dr. Zira would hesitate to kiss the president.The Planet of the Fakes YouTube channel is great, btw![via] Read the rest

T Greg Doucette is the lawyer who put the pieces together on the University of North Carolina's $2.5m handout to the white nationalist group the Sons of Confederate Veterans, then found and published a smoking gun in the form of a "victory letter" written by the SOCV's "commander" Kevin Stone, which Stone and the SOCV used a fraudulent DMCA notice to censor.Now Doucette, acting through his lawyer Marc Randazza (previously) has sent a demand-letter to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, demanding that they turn the $2.5m into a scholarship fund for African-American students or he will sue them for abusing the DMCA.Randazza -- a First Amendment litigator -- has represented various Nazi and white nationalist groups before and Doucette told Indyweek that he expects the fact that Randazza is representing him will is "going to trigger infighting" among the white nationalists of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Doucette’s complaint centers on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act notice the SCV filed with Dropbox on December 2 after Doucette posted a letter from SCV leader Kevin Stone to his members boasting after how he suckered UNC into giving him $2.5 million. (Doucette says he received the letter from an SCV member.) The letter, Doucette argues, falls under fair use, as the law allows copyrighted documents to be published—especially in non-commercial ways—to serve the public interest, which is what Doucette did by posting the Dropbox link on his Twitter account. “Although the DMCA notice confirmed the authenticity of the letter,” Doucette’s legal team wrote to SCV attorney C. Read the rest

This week, I've been doing our family's annual charitable giving (here's a guide to some of the charities we support), a long process that involves using Charity Navigator to verify that the groups we support are still spending money effectively, figuring out how much to give, and then submitting the receipts to my wife's employer for donation-matching.I was a little late to my giving this year, and so I was delighted to be reminded that EFF (always my biggest check!) had extended its "Power Up" donation matching, through which major donors double the individual donations the org brings in.This has been a hell of a year for EFF -- and for the issues it works on. Having my donation go twice as far was a hell of pleasant surprise and really made my week!Power Up! Donations Automatically Matched This Week [Aaron Jue/EFF] Read the rest

In this Vice video, board certified plastic surgeon Dr. Norman Rowe (aka "Dr. Penis") talks about the different ways people unsatisfied with the size of their penis can make them bigger.Photo by Charles on Unsplash Read the rest

Tron: Evolution is a Disney video-game that comes with the notorious Securerom DRM (previously). Thanks to unspecified DRM issues, anyone who bought the game but didn't activate it can no longer do so, a situation that has been known since at least October. Disney says they're working on a patch but won't commit to a release date. Of course, people who didn't pay for the game and downloaded a cracked version instead aren't having any problems. (Image: Disney) (via /.) Read the rest

The business end of KOKUYO Beetle Tips highlighter looks a bit like a rhinoceros beetle's horns, hence the name. Three-way refers to the fun you'll have with the highlighter when you make three different kinds of marks with it.Amazon sells a colorful 5-pack for .[via] Read the rest

Johan Scheffer has posted designs for Lego microscale versions of the Mandalorian's Razor Crest and a few other Star Wars vehicles.For more Mandalorian, Redditor Crybug created a Christmas card:And enjoy a few gifs:Baby Yoda and his soup is the new sipping tea meme. I’ve said it. pic.twitter.com/pxPTd8kxEw— Mando the Bounty Hunter (@AdoptedBabyYoda) November 29, 2019Was killing me that everyone is sharing a rough-looped Baby Yoda Tea so I made a nice one. cc @laura_june pic.twitter.com/KNW8w1uhKQ— Joel, ᵃ ᶠʳⁱᵉⁿᵈ (@joeljohnson) November 30, 2019Them: The Internet probably has enough Baby Yoda GIFs.Me: pic.twitter.com/dd9DqYuTMd— Neil+ (@rejects) December 1, 2019 Read the rest

Cyber Monday is just around the corner, but you don’t need to wait until hoards of shoppers break the internet in order to save big on these top-rated gadgets and accessories—each of which is available for an additional 20% off when you enter the coupon code CMSAVE20 at checkout.1. AquaSonic Black Series Toothbrush and Travel Case With 8 Dupont Brush HeadsMSRP: $140 | Sale Price: $40 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $32This electric toothbrush removes up to 10x more plaque than a traditional toothbrush and comes with its own travel case.2. Nomad 1.5M Battery Lightning CableMSRP: $50 | Sale Price: $20 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $16Keep your devices charged in durable style with this 1.5M lightning cable that comes with its own battery.3. Wilfa Precision Automatic Coffee MakerMSRP: $350 | Sale Price: $75 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $56This precision coffee maker makes it easy to wake up to the perfect cup of coffee every morning, thanks to finely-tuned heat controls.4. Millennium Falcon Ice MoldsMSRP: $15 | Sale Price: $10 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $8These millennium Falcon ice molds are a must-have for any Star Wars fan who hates diluting their drinks with regular ice cubes.5. Dr. Save Vacuum Travel KitMSRP: $70 | Sale Price: $33 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $26Travel lighter with this vacuum kit that can shrink your clothing by up to 70%.6. RECOVER 600mg CBD Muscle Recovery RubMSRP: $60 | Sale Price: $48 | Price w/ code CMSAVE20: $38Treat your post workout soreness the right way with this rejuvenating CBD muscle rub. Read the rest

You can buy a giant LED from a guy who makes them at home. The cost about $70.From his site:My first Maker Faire as a maker was New York 2012, I brought a Giant Arduino Starter Kit (YouTube video Giant Arduino Starter Kit - A 10x Scale Model). Everything was ten times scaled up; the Arduino Uno, breadboard, resistors, potentiometer, LDR, jumper wires, and LEDs.As the LEDs were portable, I would bring an LED with me to other Faire's, it has always been received well and many times people would ask was it for sale.In September 2018 I decided to explore turning the rough model in to something that I would be happy to sell. The following YouTube playlist records some of the progress in Making a Refined Giant LED.[via Evil Mad Scientist] Read the rest

When the infamous 11-foot-8 bridge of Durham, North Carolina was raised 8 inches last month, fans of the videos showing trucks getting their tops sheared off were bummed out. But it looks like their despair was premature. From the 11-foot-8 YouTube channel:On November 26, the new 12foot4 canopener tried to snag its first truck, but it only managed to get a nibble! Still, we're counting it as "crash #151" since the truck was clearly damaged. I actually collected the piece that fell off :) Read the rest

Brace for maximum cuteness. This cute little weasel sure enjoys playing with their human's hand on that computer mouse.Such a cute little fuzzy dude.His name is Ozzy.I love that his name is Ozzy.Cute little pocket weasel. Not a pet, a rescue.From the uploader, Frisco68:Yup, he loves to play. So do I. But before I get to go online and start killing, I'm being camped by this fearless fighter. But then again; his ping is so much lower than mine...Disclaimer: A weasel is not a pet. They hate being locked up, they're not friendly when hungry. Don't get one. Seriously. Ozzy is a special case rescue baby. Cute, but deadly. ;)The video was originally published in 2013, and is newly making the viral rounds. Ozzy, the adorable desk weasel.Love that Ozzy. Read the rest

A 3-year-old girl got a pair of doll shoes stuck in her nostrils, reports NPR. Her mother used tweezers to remove one shoe, but the second shoe was beyond reach of the tweezers, so the girl's parents took her to an urgent care center. The staff there were unable to extract the shoe because they lacked forceps of sufficient length. They told the parents to take the girl to the emergency room. A doctor at the hospital had long-reach forceps and removed the shoe. The hospital charged the parents $2,658.98.From NPR:Total bill: $2,658.98, consisting of a $1,732 hospital bill and a $926.98 physician bill.Service provider: St. Rose Dominican, Siena Campus, in Henderson, Nev., part of the not-for-profit Dignity Health hospital system.Medical procedure: Removal of a foreign body in the nose, using forceps.What gives: The Bransons negotiated a reduction of the physician's bill by half by agreeing to pay within 20 days. But Dignity Health declined multiple requests for an interview or to explain how it arrived at the $1,732 total for the ER visit."Not every urgent situation is an emergency," the hospital said in an emailed statement. "It is important for patients to understand the terms of their health insurance before seeking treatment. For example, those with high-deductible plans may want to consider urgent care centers in nonemergency situations."The hospital billed the Bransons $1,143 for the emergency room visit and an additional $589 for removing the shoe. The entire $1,732 hospital bill was applied against their deductible. Read the rest

I already purchased Civilization VI's The Gathering Storm expansion for my Mac, becasue of course I did. There's not a lot of games that my 2015 13" MacBook Pro Retina can play that I enjoy—Civ is one of them. I've been farting around with Sid Meir's games since the mid-1990s and my enthusiasm for his titles has only been crushed once. Sid, if for some reason you're reading this, Beyond Earth should have been an add-on for Civilization V. All on its lonesome, it was kind of a lame duck.Anyway, The Gathering Storm.In this, the second add-on to Civilization VI, players are introduced to the misery of natural disasters. Build on a flood plain, sooner or later, you're going to have a bad day. Set up shop in the tundra and you may be visited by a winter storm. Drought is a distinct possibility and don't get me started on volcanoes. The upside of all of this potential carnage is that, in the wake of some of the disasters, new opportunities to improve the lot of your cities becomes possible. Flooding leads to rich farmland, for example (but, unless you research and invest in technology to stop future flooding your peasants are going to be pissed when everything gets washed out again.) These problems add a welcome layer of strategy to a game that I've shamefully invested close to 100 hours in when I should have been writing my damn book. Now, it's not enough now that you have to worry about being influenced by other civilizations. Read the rest

Michael Gardi says, "There were probably millions of CARDIACs (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) distributed to high schools and colleges in the late 60s and early 70s. Heck even my little high school in Northern Ontario got a bunch of them. But they are all but impossible to find now, so here is the next best thing."The CARDIAC Instructable presented here is not a computer, it's a device to help you understand how a computer works. You the user will:decode instructions by sliding panels up and down,move the program counter "lady bug" from one memory location to the next,perform the duties of an arithmetic logic unit (ALU),read inputs from one sliding strip,and write output results to another (with a pencil).Along the way you will you will learn the internal workings of a typical Von Neumann architecture computer. Some fairly sophisticated programs can be executed (by you manually remember) on the CARDIAC. Stacks, subroutines, recursion, and bootstrapping for example can all be demonstrated.Image: InstructablesPreviously on Boing Boing:CARDIAC: Bell Labs's old cardboard computerCARDIAC paper computer emulatorCARDIAC paper computer unboxingNew-old stock of Bell Labs's cardboard teaching computer, the CARDIAC Read the rest

The Persistence of Pong is an art installation by Jesse Stiles, augmenting a standard game of ping-pong with sounds, colors, intense flashing lights and moments of complete darkness.An ordinary ping pong table is augmented with reactive sounds and lights, turning the game into a disorienting synesthetic experience for players and spectators alike. The installation presents players with syncopated patterns of light that play with the illusion known as persistence of vision – the phenomenon that distinguishes between the perception of still images versus continuous motion. These patterns are triggered directly by the bouncing of the ball, which is detected by microphones embedded in the table. Similarly, the installation presents disorienting patterns of sound that teeter between rhythm (individual sounds) and pitch as the speed of the action increases and decreases based on game play. Players may choose to cooperate by trying to keep the ball in play through increasingly hallucinatory levels or may seek to destroy the competition in the most disorienting ping pong environment technology can provide.You can play yourself at the LikeLike gallery in Pittsburgh, but you have to arrange an appointment outside of specified dates. Read the rest

C4D4U's SOFTBODY TETRIS V16 is (as the name implies), the latest in a series of "softbody" simulations of Tetris, in which the tetronimoes are rubbery, jelly-like solids that glisten as they wobble into place. It's an incredibly soothing thing to watch (C4D4U calls them "ASMR for my eyes") and part of a wider genre of softbody sims. JWZ argues that this "becomes intolerable" upon the "realization that completed rows don't liquify" but if that's your thing, you need SOFTBODY TETRIS V9. Read the rest

Over at Medium, BB pal Douglas Rushkoff explores how today's propaganda -- born in the 17th century to propagate the Catholic faith and reborn in the 20th century as "public relations" -- is no longer about convincing people to believe in whatever story the source happens to be selling. Today, Doug writes, "the primary goal of government propaganda is to undermine our faith in everything. Not just our belief in particular stories in the news, but our trust in the people who are telling the stories, the platforms, and fact-based reality itself." Interestingly, he traces this kind of systematic reality disruption to the counterculture. From Medium:Before Watergate anyway, it felt as if the press and the government were on the same side, telling the same story to us all. There was no way for the underfunded counterculture to compete with mainstream reality programming—except by undermining its premises. The flower children couldn’t overwhelm Richard Nixon’s National Guard troops, but they could put daisies in the barrels of their rifles.Taken to the extreme, this sort of activist satire became Operation Mindfuck, first announced in 1975 by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in their Illuminatus Trilogy!. The idea was to undermine people’s faith in government, authority, and the sanctity of consensus reality itself by pranking everything, all the time.The idea of Operation Mindfuck was to break the trance that kept America at war, blindly consuming, and oblivious to its impact on the rest of the world. Destabilize the dominant cultural narrative through pranks and confusion. Read the rest

South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi L. Noem spent $449,000 (more that $0.50 per resident of South Dakota!) on a campaign to educate state residents about the state's program to address its methamphetamine epidemic. That campaign's slogan? "Meth: I'm On It."The slogan has been widely mocked. Noem insists that this is all part of a cunning plan because "any publicity is good publicity."Appearing to respond to the backlash in a Sunday evening tweet, Noem bought into the adage that any publicity is good publicity. She suggested the campaign was successful because so many people were talking about it.In a separate statement emailed to The Washington Post, she called the anti-meth initiative “a bold, innovative effort like the nation has never before seen.”“South Dakota’s anti-meth campaign launch is sparking conversations around the state and the country,” she said. “The mission of the campaign is to raise awareness — to get people talking about how they can be part of the solution and not just the problem. It is working.”‘Meth. We’re on it,’ says South Dakota in ridiculed ad campaign that cost $449,000 [Michael Brice-Saddler/Washington Post](Thanks, No Name!) Read the rest

Cecil Castellucci (previously) is a polymath artist: YA novelist, comics writer, librettist, rock star; her latest book, Girl on Film, is an extraordinary memoir of her life in the arts, attending New York's School for the Performing Arts (AKA "The Fame School") and being raised by her parents, who are accomplished scientists.

The Kon Marie method ("does it spark joy?") offers a self-medication regime for middle class people with undiagnosed anxiety disorders and too much stuff. And now there's an official store, complete with $86 candles, to consume your way to minimalism. In a letter posted on the site, Ms Kondo said her tidying method "isn't about getting rid of things".Instead, she wrote: "It's about heightening your sensitivity to what brings you joy."Once you've completed your tidying, there is room to welcome meaningful objects, people and experiences into your life."BUY. Read the rest

In Arkansas, Henderson State University chemistry professors Terry D. Bateman, 45, and Bradley A. Rowland, 40, were charged on Friday with making methamphetamine. They had been put on administrative leave on October 11. From the New York Times:(Tina V. Hall, a university associate vice president of marketing and communications) said the school’s Reynolds Science Center had been closed on Oct. 8 because of “a report of an undetermined chemical odor.” Testing revealed an elevated presence of benzyl chloride in a lab, she said...Stephen J. Madison, who is on the chemistry faculty at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., said that benzyl chloride could be used to help make methamphetamine...It was not clear whether the chemical smell in the school building had prompted the investigation by law enforcement. Read the rest

This year's episode of the grand meteor shower the Leonids will peak on Monday morning before dawn. The meteors are bits of debris dropping off the comet Tempel-Tuttle that intersects Earth's orbit every November. Unfortunately, it may be tough to see many shooting stars because activity this year will be low and the waning gibbous moon will shine brightly. Still, it's always fun and meditative to watch the skies. From EarthSky:In 2019, no matter where you are on Earth – and no matter when you watch, on the morning of the peak itself, or on the morning leading up to the peak – the best hours of the night for meteor-watching will be hindered by the bright moon. Those hours are between midnight and dawn, when Earth’s forward motion through space has carried your part of Earth head-on into the meteor stream.Also in 2019, there’s really no way to avoid the moon. You’ll have to find a way to work around it. Try observing in a shadow of a large structure (like a barn), or in a mountain shadow. Just try to keep the moon out of view. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness for a period, say, 15 minutes to half an hour. Just wait and watch, don’t expect too much, and see what you see.We hear lots of reports from people who see meteors from yards, decks, streets and especially highways in and around cities. But the best place to watch a meteor shower is always in the country. Read the rest

Marin for the win!Lost and Found: We found this methamphetamine in a parking lot that appears to have been lost by the owner. If you lost your drugs and are looking for them, please get in contact with us! #LostAndFound #dontdodrugs #DARE pic.twitter.com/wiVRNyu6Gl— Marin County Sheriff (@MarinSheriff) November 15, 2019 Read the rest

Wired security reporter Andy Greenberg's latest book is Sandworm (previously), a true-life technothriller that tells the stories of the cybersecurity experts who analyzed and attributed as series of ghastly cyberwar attacks that brought down parts of the Ukrainian power grid, and then escaped the attackers' control and spread all over the world.In an interview with Rick Kleffel's Agony Column podcast (MP3) Greenberg tells the tale of how he came to write this extraordinary book, and what it means in the context of Ukraine and the current US political situation.(Thanks, Rick!) Read the rest

Geneva ("Genetic Evasion") is a project from the University of Maryland's Breakerspace ("a lab dedicated to scaling-up undergraduate research in computer and network security"); in a paper presented today at the ACM's Conference on Computer and Communications Security, a trio of Maryland researchers and a UC Berkeley colleague present their work on evolutionary algorithms as a means of defeating state-level network censorship.Geneva develops countermeasures to deep-packet-inspection-based censorship systems that monitor network traffic for forbidden keywords and use packet-injection to break connections to forbidden resources.Geneva's approach is typical of genetic algorithms: drawing on an arsenal of evasion techniques, Geneva attempts to circumvent filters, and the techniques that work are reinforced and then randomly varied to produce new generations of algorithms, and the best of these are then reinforced and allowed to reproduce, etc, etc. The researchers describe this as a kind of inversion of the usual method for censorship evasion, in which researchers first determine how the censorship works, and then develop an evasion countermeasure. With Geneva, the system automatically probes censorship systems and develops countermeasures, and by evaluating which countermeasures work, researchers can infer how the censorship is accomplished.The researchers used Geneva to successfully evade the Great Firewall of China, as well as national censorship systems in India and Kazakhstan. They propose that this kind of evasion tool could run continuously on the server side, providing a continuous stream of new tactics for bypassing censorship systems.They also note that censors could use Geneva to find defects in their own systems and so they can fix them, but say that some of the fundamental errors in the assumptions of the censorship systems might be impossible to fix. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH is presented the Good News about Donald J. Trump, in the Newest, Best, Third Testament

If you have a lot of books at home, a cheap book safe like this is a good way to hide small things. The inside storage area is 2" x 5.625" x 9" and the book looks like a dictionary. (Crooks already know to scan bookshelves for The New English Dictionary, so you should put a jacket from another book on it.)It has a lock and two keys to discourage snooping if someone pulls the book off the shelf. Read the rest

After being bankrupted by Peter Thiel and sold off to Univision, merged with The Onion, then finally handed off to a private equity group, the G/O Media (formerly Gawker) stable of blogs might yet have thrived due to their undiminished traffic and capable reporters. This was not to be, as the new management were soon proved ignorant of the company's culture in particular and of contemporary journalism in general. Things came to a head after Deadspin, famed as much for its trenchant culture writing as its game coverage, was told to "stick to sports", an edict that led to the firing of its editor and the mass resignation of its entire staff. In the empty office, the new management tried its hand at blogging only to find that this is harder than it looks.Anna Merlan describes a cringe-inducing, quickly-abandoned effort to write the Gawker way:The sentence structure was uniformly strained. The ledes were clunky. Many of the paragraphs were simply lists of scores, football plays, or marathon finishing times. (The Kenyan runners who won the New York City marathon were unnamed in a headline and described as "cantering," which is something horses do, not people, a phrasing I argued on Twitter was, uh, problematic.) Attempts at cusses were embarrassing: a few things "sucked" or were "dumbass." The headlines were dizzying verb-thickets that had to be read multiple times to be vaguely comprehensible. After a few days of these horrific word-manglers appearing on the site, whether they were his malformed children or not, Editorial Director [Paul] Maidment resigned, citing an "entrepreneurial opportunity" he simply had to pursue. Read the rest

Got some aches that a lazy rubdown won't put a dent in? Give your muscles an early Christmas with these massage guns. If you've never tried one, they're all designed to bring deep tissue relief, and they're all at Black Friday prices now.JAWKU Muscle Blaster V2 Cordless Percussion Massage GunThis cordless massager exerts up to 56 pounds of pressure, but you can tweak the vibration strength to suit any ache. With 4 hours of battery life, it's the perfect accessory to any after-workout routine. And with noise reduction technology, you won't interrupt anybody else's.Sale Price: $249.99MSRP: $299.99Heroproof® BFGun X300 HyperDrive Percussive Therapy Muscle MassagerWth five different attachments, this versatile massager can target any trouble spot from tiny trigger points to broad muscle groups. WhsperDrive technology keeps it super-silent while it increases blood flow and stretches tissue.Sale Price: $259.95MSRP: $299.95Vortix Muscle Massager 2.0The simple, ergonomic design makes this easy to use for anyone who needs quick relief. You can choose between 6 speeds and 4 adjustable heads to deliver the precise amount of vibration your muscles crave. Goodbye lactic acid, hello blood flow.Sale Price: $174.99MSRP: $199.99TimTam All-New PowerMassager™Loosen up those knots with this extremely light and portable massager. It's anything but light on pressure, though: The TimTam can vibrate at up to 2,500 strokes per minute and do it at a mere 25 dB. The 90 degree articulating head is great for reaching tough spots, too.Sale Price: $199.00MSRP: $249.00Vortix Muscle MassagerThe original Vortix sports a firm grip and six adjustable speed settings that allow you to tackle any areas of stiffness or spasming. Read the rest

Mangoes spilling from an overturned tractor trailer caused a messy morning commute on Maryland beltway.The mango truck overturned early Wednesday morning on I-495 in Bethesda. Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service spokesman Pete Piringer told a reporter that one person suffered minor injuries.No word on what caused the truck to roll over, but the Washington Post reports traffic was backed up for miles when two lanes of the highway were closed around 6am.[PHOTO: Mangoes, by Peter Griffin, public domain] Read the rest

The Alien Cathouse near Las Vegas is the "final frontier of sexual adventure," a popular refuge for anyone seeking a little action in their own Area 51. From their website:On an interstellar mission to bring erotic pleasure to the entire universe, the Cosmic Kittens from the planet Venus 69 set out on a fantastic voyage across deep space — but a freak mishap caused their starship to crash land on planet Earth just outside Nevada’s mysterious Area 51 Air Force facility. Now, stranded on a strange planet populated by so many repressed men and women fraught with a galaxy’s worth of lust, the Cosmic Kittens have vowed to use their extraterrestrial sexual prowess to help horny Earthlings satisfy their insatiable carnal desires.In addition to escorts, fetish services, and plush alien dolls already offered at the Cathouse, they'll soon be offering a cutting-edge teledildonics program. According to the Daily Mail, the Cathouse is investing heavily in KIIROO's remote sex robot technology, so that customers can enjoy their services even in a galaxy far, far away. "Visitors" to the remote alien brothel would need to provide their own Interactive Vibrating Masturbator for Men or OhMiBod toy and presumably a stable wifi connection in order to get the full haptic experience.The Cathouse’s Rod Thompson told Daily Star Online why they have added a robot to their line-up: "For clients that have certain … fetishes that courtesans might not be interested in, the robot could fulfill those."Asked how the Cathouse’s flesh-and-blood denizens felt about working alongside an AI rival, Rod said they were all for it: "The Courtesans are actually excited about the additional revenue stream to Alien Cathouse, and themselves … as well as the additional opportunities that might present themselves for interested parties wanting to party with a real flesh and blood courtesan and with an AI sex robot at the same time."It's only fitting that the most technologically advanced brothel in the country would be sci-fi themed. Read the rest

Ever wonder what the song "Let it go" from Disney's hit movie Frozen would sound like in Klingon? Me neither but then again, something like that would never even occur to me. But it did occur to Jen Usellis, who performs as the Klingon Pop Warrior. Listen as she belts out her Klingonese version, called "yIbuSQo'":Nerdist:After Reddit user staq16 posted the song to Reddit’s Star Trek subreddit earlier this month, the track quickly earned mad parmaq from the forum’s community. However, while most users thought the song was on point, some took issue with the fact that Klingons are known for not enjoying the cold—nor letting things go. They also apparently don’t do a lot of other things.(Geekologie) Read the rest

Adafruit has a tutorial on how to make a pendant that looks like a tiny Game Boy and has a display with endlessly scrolling Mario style clouds. Read the rest

Oh it's exciting when a wrestler strikes gold with a ridiculous gimmick. Fandango's refusal to wrestle, the taunting tranquilo pose, Damien Sandow's turn as the Miz's stunt double "Mizdow":And although ESPN insists on covering wrestling as a sport, this is the correct take:Right now, the best gimmick in wrestling is Orange Cassidy, a guy who mostly wrestles with his hands in his pockets, but still manages to show impressive athleticism. Listen to the crowd's enthusiasm for his antics:This guy Orange Cassidy is the best thing going. pic.twitter.com/xRrv2bdam2— Taco Trey Kerby (@treykerby) October 31, 2019.@OrangeCassidy nearly cripples @NickJacksonYB and @MattJackson13 with these devestating kicks #AEWDynamite pic.twitter.com/EsbFqpCvMc— All Elite Wrestling (@AEWrestling) October 26, 2019At a recent bar match, he and Priscilla Kelly dressed as one other:Orange Cassidy vs Pricilla Kelly @BarWrestling ? #thisiswrestling pic.twitter.com/XOIC3PWaFD— Eric Denton (fka @LAAngelsInsider) (@JabronieRamone) November 1, 2019This is why I’m a @BarWrestling regular!!! @orangecassidy vs @priscillakelly_ pic.twitter.com/a1cNFyWhbE— Shane Liu (@maishane) November 1, 2019Well there's the match of the night before it starts @BarWrestling @orangecassidy @priscillakelly_ pic.twitter.com/uSdZVBKJ8M— Cakeob (@Cak3ob) November 1, 2019I don't know how Priscilla Kelly is still standing after that one @BarWrestling #FreshlySqueezed pic.twitter.com/EgsSxne9vI— Sandy R (@sandradeeflat) November 1, 2019@BarWrestling @orangecassidy @priscillakelly_ @TheJimCornette pic.twitter.com/MJBDlMRwPm— James Ward (@jumygrease) November 1, 2019His look works for Halloween, too:Dress up day in school. @CodyRhodes @dustinrhodes @AEWrestling @MattJackson13 @NickJacksonYB @madmadref @orangecassidy #ClementineCassidy pic.twitter.com/jA81ildxjN— Derek Richardson (@DerekEsquire) October 30, 2019 Read the rest

Before they had their historic first flight in 1903, the Wright Brothers had to endure countless failures, crash landings, and false starts. One wonders what they'd make of today's drones, which any non-pilot can just turn and launch with no training.Or better still, this DIY Drone Builder Kit, which not only lets you fly a drone but design and build it from base to rotors.The unit's biggest feature is the Circuit Scribe conductive ink pen, which lets you literally draw your own circuits onto the base, connecting the rotors to the battery. The kit comes with its own rudimentary cardboard arms that are designed to lock together, but you can use any lightweight material that will hold the ink.Suffer a crash landing? Remake the arms out of your own recycling bin. Want to experiment with your own wild designs? Cut out a base and attach the rotors. It's a great gift for any maker, aspiring or established.The DIY Drone Builder Kit is now 40% off the retail price. Read the rest

Joan and Peter Foldes directed this incredible animation, titled "A Short Vision," in 1956. The couple created the film -- based on a poem by Peter -- in their kitchen. It was funded by a grant from the British Film Institute's Experimental Film Fund. From Wikipedia:Ed Sullivan saw A Short Vision in England, and promised an American showing. He said his motive was a "plea for peace" However, he may have shown it because of his relationship with George K. Arthur, A Short Vision's distributor. Ten days after he saw it, Sullivan showed A Short Vision on his popular Sunday night show The Ed Sullivan Show on 27 May 1956. Sullivan told the audience to tell their children in the room to not be alarmed, because of its animated nature. The film was very popular, and it was shown again on 10 June; Sullivan told parents to take children out of the room.More on the film's history here: "A SHORT VISION: Ed Sullivan’s Atomic Show Stopper" (CONELRAD) Read the rest

States' rights are one of the greatest impediments to reducing gun violence in the United States.This was something I noticed when I chronicled the journey of getting my gun license in Boston. It's also all-but-confirmed by the recent release of the ATF's gun tracking data. From The Trace:According to the most recent ATF statistics, released in August, the bureau traced 332,101 guns in 2018. The average time-to-crime of those weapons was 8.8 years. That’s why a particularly short time-to-crime raises red flags for law enforcement, since it often suggests the weapon was acquired for criminal purposes.[…]In California, for example, 12 percent of the guns recovered in the state had a time-to-crime of less than one year. When you isolate only those guns that originated in Nevada and were recovered in California, the figure jumps to 23 percent — almost one in four. (Nationally, 10 percent of all guns had a time-to-crime of less than one year.)For the pro-gun NRA crowd, this essentially proves that gun regulation doesn't work; that's a reason they love to talk about Chicago so much, even though most of the illegal guns there come from Indiana. But I don't actually buy that at all. The issue is and always been about ease of access. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to navigate the black market, trading Bitcoin over Silk Road just to get a gun. If you live in California, and have a cousin in Nevada (or even just know a guy who knows a guy), it becomes less of a "black market" trade, and more of a favor. Read the rest

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One of the most interesting things about programming is that it forces you to decompose seemingly simple ideas into a set of orderly steps, and when you do that, you often realize that the "simplicity" of things you deal with all day, every day, is purely illusory and that these are actually incredibly complex, nuanced, fuzzy and contradictory: everything from peoples' names to calendars to music, art, email addresses, families, phone numbers, and really, every single idea and concept.It turns out that "plain" text is also fantastically complex. Alexis Beingessner's daunting list of the problems of text rendering makes that clear.And once you've got the text to render, you have to edit it, and that turns out to be even harder, as Robert Lord describes in an essay recounting the lessons he learned spending several years merely implementing a text-selection library.Jonathan Blow, in a talk about how software is getting worse, points to the example of Ken Thompson’s text editor, which Ken built in a single week. Plenty of the code in this blog post is accidental complexity. Does Windows need 128 interfaces and 8 kinds of locks to provide text input? Absolutely not. Are the bugs we’ve found in TextEdit disappointing, and a result of a complicated editing model? Yes. Are the wealth of bugs in modern programs something we should be worried about? I’m worried, at least.But at the same time, Ken Thompson’s editor was much, much simpler than what we expect from our text editors today. Read the rest

Olivia Newton-John is auctioning off hundreds of personal items from her career to benefit the Cancer Wellness & Research Centre she built in Australia. Her iconic "bad Sandy" leather jacket and stretch pants are expected to go for as much as $200,000. From CNN:Ahead of the auction, Newton-John revealed that she had to be sewn into the high-waisted pants. "The pants have a broken zip and I had to be stitched into them because they were made in the '50s," she told Reuters Television...A custom Pink Ladies jacket given to her by the "Grease" cast and crew will also go under the hammer and is expected to fetch between $2,000 and $4,000.More here: "Property from the Collection of Olivia Newton-John" (Julien's Auctions) Read the rest

Ticks that spread encephalitis have been found in Britain, say researchers. Encephalitis can cause confused thinking, seizures, and problems with senses or movement, but is only rarely serious.Public Health England (PHE) says it has confirmed cases of tick-borne encephalitis virus in ticks from two parts of England - Thetford Forest and an area on the Hampshire-Dorset border.PHE says the risk to people is still "very low".It is monitoring the situation to check how common the infected ticks may be. Is this a Brexit story? This explains everything. Read the rest

Corridor produced this excellent parody of Boston Dynamics' robots and the style of its promotional videos. It could be the trailer for a new Neill Blomkamp or Paul Verhoeven movie, but where the satire is immediately transformed into stress because there's very little about it that seems unlikely or even beyond the fairly immediate future.Bosstown Dynamics has a new robot in town. You'll see it in the army soon!The unnerving way they abused the robots in early Boston Dynamics videos, I bet they regret that. Read the rest

Agents of the U.S. government have issued multiple subpoenas and conducted searches of various properties in the course of investigating Rudy Giuliani's “Fraud Guarantee” associates, and in one instance feds literally blew the door off a safe to access its contents, reports CNN. From CNN:The subpoena to Steven Fruman is the latest indication of prosecutors' actions since the rushed arrest two weeks ago of his brother, Igor Fruman, and another defendant, Lev Parnas, at a Washington-area airport. Since then, investigators have doled out multiple subpoenas and conducted several property searches, in one case blowing the door off a safe to access the contents, sources tell CNN.Federal prosecutors told a judge this week that they are sifting through data from more than 50 bank accounts. In addition, they've put a filter team in place as they examine communications obtained via search warrant and subpoena, sensitive to material that could be subject to attorney-client privilege because Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, counted Parnas as a client. A filter team is a separate set of prosecutors who are assigned to examine evidence and set aside material that is privileged.Since the October 9 arrests, federal agents visited the New York home of Steven Fruman and served him with a subpoena from Manhattan federal prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said.Attorneys for Steven and Igor Fruman declined to comment, as did the Manhattan US Attorney's office.Feds blow door off safe, issue subpoenas as probe into Giuliani associates escalates [Erica Orden and Evan Perez, CNN] Read the rest

The bizarre move worries public health experts

Case triggered by fatal car crash involving Trump resort customer

Don't be fooled -- the pandas in a new animal cafe in Chugdu, China are actually Chow Chow dogs with dyed fur. From the BBC News:(The cafe owner) tells Hongxing News that he imports his dye from Japan and has hired special staff for dyeing the dogs."Every time we dye it costs 1,500 yuan [$211; £163]," he says. "The dye is really expensive." He says that this is to ensure the quality of the dye, and says that it in no way affects the animals...But it has also raised a lot of concern. One vet, Li Daibing, told Hongxing News that he urged people not to dye their pets, saying: "This could damage their fur and skin." Read the rest