Boing Boing

There are two Trumps, says Carson, one more cerebral than the other.Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who recently ended his campaign, said he and Trump have “buried the hatchet” after trading nasty words during the primary. He also said there are “two different” Trumps: the one the public sees and a more “cerebral” Trump in private.Speaking at his posh Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump praised Carson and said he would play a “big role” in the campaign, in both political and policy capacities. But he declined to offer specific descriptions.Don't you get the feeling that Republicans (and the #NeverTrump right-wing pundits) will ultimately support Trump? The only conservative principle that seems to matter now is fear. Or they could end up with Ted Cruz, who is even worse, because he means what he says and Trump has always looked vaguely like his stalking horse.To take your mind off all this horror, here is a photograph from the future from Boing Boing's broken ansible, in which lovers Trudeau and Obama ("Trubama" as the holotabloids have it) take the Presidential Hoverbikes for a spin.

New York City's Robin Hood Labs at Blue Ridge Laboratories have opening for paid fellowships to develop apps and technologies to give low-income people legal assistance in civil proceedings, like evictions, debt collection, and immigration procedures. (more…)

On a mountain of skulls, in the castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood! And let me tell you it was really great. And I have a great relationship with the Moldavian people. They love me.

Video games are awesome. In fact, haven’t you always wondered how exactly do they pack that much awesome into a little screen with a few buttons? Playing every day certainly hasn’t lead to any answers but now you can find out how games are made and tackle some yourself. Simply pay what you want for this Hardcore Game Dev Bundle and you can take ten courses that will teach you how to code video games like a true professional. Whether you already know how to program or you’re a total tech newbie, these lessons will have you spinning game like you could only dream before.There are over 108 hours of game-making content here. The course on SpriteKit in Swift will show you how to build actual games for smartphones and tablets and even guide you through the process of creating artwork and designs so your games look amazing. Using XCode and GamePlayKit, you’ll configure game architecture, setup backgrounds and main menus and even make a marketing plan to attract and retain players. From HTML5 to Java to Android Marshmallow, every system is ready to be mastered. With Java you’ll even get overviews on animation, learn conditional statements, loops and events and end up building an actual multi-step mobile game you can call your own.All of this will add quite a punch to your resume, taking your current career to a whole new level or earning you enough gold stars to seek a whole new job. All these courses are yours, you just pay what you want and learn on your own time. The technical skills in these lessons are mandatory for any modern coding work these days, but because it’s gaming you’re learning something super fun and getting a better understanding of your favorite pastime. Check out the link below for more details.Pay What You Want for this Hardcore Game Dev Bundle in the Boing Boing Store.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.On October 2, 1950 a boy named Charlie Brown first appeared in American newspapers. Peanuts popularity grew steadily and on January 6, 1952, the strip’s first Sunday edition debuted. For the next 48 years, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, and all the other players appeared in full color on the comics page.But I wasn’t there for any of that. Rather, I found Peanuts in the early 1980s, when comics pages had already started to shrink and the famous characters of the strip were more readily accessible to kids through specials. Even then, I didn’t read the comics page as much as I did the dusty paperback collections with titles like Happiness is a Warm Puppy and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Growing up as a fan, the single greatest headache was trying to find all the strips. I wanted to know when Snoopy changed from being a dog to being another kid in a funny costume. I wanted to know when Charlie Brown first fell in love with the Little Red Haired Girl. But it couldn’t be done. Although most had been reprinted in one collection or another, there was no single resource that had all the strips.Enter Fantagraphics Books. Beginning in 2004, Fantagraphics collected and published The Complete Peanuts. While this series collected all the daily strips, the Sunday strips were spun off into a second series, Peanuts Every Sunday, the third volume (of ten) of which has just been released. These are the strips I never had access to as a kid. These strips were not collected in those old black and white trades.Peanuts Every Sunday reprints the strips in chronological order, in full, glorious color. While some commentary is provided in both the foreword and afterword, mainly the strips are left to speak for themselves. Each strip is given its own page, in its original size, complete with the date the strip originally appeared in newspapers.These are beautiful books. Full color dust jackets and numbered bindings make for books that look great next to each other on the shelf. But you’ll need a big shelf. At close to $50 per volume, this is not a collection to get into lightly. But for the fan, they are a collection absolutely worth having. – Joel NeffPeanuts Every Sunday: The 1950s Gift Box Setby Charles M. SchulzFantagraphics2015, 576 pages, 10 x 13.5 x 3.1 inches $53 Buy a copy on Amazon

This handy USB gadget has three USB 3.0 ports and a RJ45 Gigabit ethernet port. It's regularly $25, but if you use code VK5JTT8L you can get it for $20.

The Obama administration declared itself to be the "most transparent administration in history," but a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Obama's Justice Department worked tirelessly behind the scenes to kill any chance of increased Freedom of Information Act access to governments at all levels, from lobbying Congress to kill FOIA reform to urging other administrative agencies to obstruct FOIA requests. (more…)

Nerdwriter Evan Puschak put together a video about The Ren & Stimpy Show, a "seminal cartoon of the animation renaissance." When the psychotic chihuahua and imbecilic cat debuted in 1991, I couldn't believe how fantastically funny and weird it was. There was nothing else like it on TV at the time. Before Ren & Stimpy, television cartoons were awful. Show creator John Kricfalusi paved the way for all the great cartoon series we've seen since.[via]

Video reveals that a black protestor was sucker-punched by a man at a recent Donald Trump rally in Kentucky—and that the police then tackled the protestor, not the attacker.Posted by the Washington Post, the footage shows several people leaving the rally after being identified as protestors. A ponytailed man approaches and punches one of them in the face. The victim stumbles onwards and is brought to the ground by uniformed guards identified by the Post as law enforcement.“Chill, chill!” an onlooker says. “You don’t gotta grab him like that!”Rakeem Jones, the man who was hit, said the punch came out of nowhere.“Boom, he caught me,” Jones told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. “After I get it, before I could even gain my thoughts, I’m on the ground getting escorted out. Now I’m waking up this morning looking at the news and seeing me getting hit again.”… Jones blamed the Cumberland County officers escorting him from the rally for failing to protect him — then detaining him instead of the man who attacked him.“It’s happening at all these rallies now and they’re letting it ride,” Jones said. “The police jumped on me like I was the one swinging.”This isn't the first incident like this. If you choose to go to a Trump rally, be realistic about the risks.1. Shouting anti-Trump slogans, working as media, or being with a protest group is enough to be identified as the enemy.2. You might get assaulted, and Trump might encourage it.3. The cops won't help you if you are. And some of them are itching to participate.

This "olden style" rendition of the New Order classic Blue Monday uses only instruments available in the 1930s. Performed by Orkestra Obsolete, it features a theremin, a musical saw, a hammered dulcimer, a zither, and singing glasses.[BBC via Open Culture]

The Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit that certifies open source licenses, has made an important policy statement about open standards. (more…)

The Wachowski Sisters. Deal with it. (more…)

Redditor Cakeflourz photoshopped beards onto the 2016 presidential candidates.Bernie look great with that Mitch Miller beard![via]

Marvel at this computer graphics demo reel created c.1980 by the company Mathematical Applications Group (MAGI). More specifically, you're seeing the work of the firm's MAGI/SynthaVision group, one of the main outfits that created the CGI for Tron, including the light cycles (clip below)! From Wikipedia:In 1981, MAGI was hired by Disney to create half of the majority of the 20 minutes of CGI needed for the film Tron. Twenty minutes of CGI animation, in the early 1980s, was extremely gutsy, and so MAGI was a portion of the CGI animation, while other companies were hired to do the other animation shots. Since Synthavision was easy to animate and could create fluid motion and movement, MAGI was assigned with most of Tron's action sequences. These classic scenes include the light cycle sequence and Clu's tank and recognizer pursuit scene. Despite the high quality images that Synthavision was able to create, the CSG solids modeling could not create anything with complex shapes and multiple curves, so simpler objects like the light cycles and tanks were assigned to MAGI. MAGI was given $1.2 million to finance the animation needed for Tron. MAGI needed more R&D and many other engineers who were working in government contacts at MAGI were assigned back into MAGI's "Synthavision" division.MAGI sped up the process of supplying its work to Disney Studios in Burbank by a transcontinental computer hook-up. Before each scene was finalized in MAGI's lab in Elmsford, New York, it was previewed on a computer monitor at Disney. Corrections could then be made in the scene immediately. Previously, the only way of previewing the scene was to film it, ship it to Burbank, get corrections made, ship it back to Elmsford, and continue this "ping-ponging" until the scene was correct.(via r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNfs6v7i7eY

Claimdog is a new online service that tracks down money owed to you. I tried it this morning and found out that my wife was owed some kind of settlement check for $103.60 from an insurance company from over 20 years ago. They charged me $10 for the service, which seems reasonable for how easy it was to claim the money. (Missing Money is a free site, which you can use if you are willing to file a claim yourself.)Try it yourself, and if you strike it rich, let us know in the comments!

How far would you go to rescue the remains of a bygone world you've loved since you were a kid? Peter Knego went to Alang, India, and then did it again and again, to save what he could of the great ocean liners being scrapped there. But he didn't just want to save the ships. He wanted to live in one. And to a remarkable degree he's succeeded, filling his home in Oceanside, CA with a breathtaking array of maritime memorabilia. This week on HOME: Stories From L.A., one man's mission to recreate, in landlocked miniature, the great days of the oceangoing ships. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSSCheck out all the great podcasts that Boing Boing has to offer!

Today we travel to a future full of spreadsheet approved lives. A future where everything we do is tracked and quantified: calories, air quality, sleep, heart rate, microbes, brain waves, finances, happiness, sadness, menstrual cycles, poops, hopes and dreams. Everything.Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | PatreonThis episode is longer than our usual 20 minute jaunts to the future, because the future of quantified self is so huge. We cover everything from biased algorithms, to microbiomes (again), to the future of the calorie, and more. ▹▹Full show notesCheck out all the great podcasts that Boing Boing has to offer!

In 2014, Home Depot disclosed that it had hemorrhaged 53 million customer credit-cards and 56 million email addresses. Now it has settled a consolidated class-action suit for the breach, agreeing to may as much as $19.5 million in damages and compensation. (more…)

Tiffin pails are the ubiquitous, ingenious and practical lunchpails of Indian workers, delivered daily by an army of spectacularly well-coordinated "dabba wallahs." (more…)

Arts group Works Progress Studio have opened Water Bar, which bills itself as the first-ever bar devoted to nothing but public sources of water. (more…)

Peter from the National Coalition Against Cenorship sez, "A bill requiring schools to notify parents if any 'sexually explicit content' is being taught would undermine First Amendment principles and the freedom to read." (more…)

Beatles producer George Martin, who famously signed the band after other major labels had rejected them, is dead at 90, says Ringo Starr. (more…)

Swiss-German painter Paul Klee kept beautiful notebooks, 3900 pages of which can now be viewed online. [via]

Vice profiled Boing Boing pal and contributor Maja D'Aoust, co-author of The Secret Source: The Law of Attraction and Its Hermetic Influence Throughout the Ages. (more…)

https://youtu.be/KDc-M4dHr0s?list=PLSKUhDnoJjYmeW6nNasZSaVAGh4u91pEkI'm enjoying James Veitch's weekly video series where he has fun with email scammers. In this episode, James has an exchange with a US soldier named Mary Gary who discovered a buried safe while on a routine patrol and wants to share the $15 million booty with James.

It's a lucky day for KTVU reporter Alex Savidge and camera operator Vaughan Chip. The two were covering a train derailment east of San Francisco when a car was hit and came barreling right toward them. (via KTVU)

Are they Alligator leads or Crocodile clips? This $4 set certainly comes in handy when playing with our Makey Makey, and unsurprisingly have become standard kit when trouble-shooting electrical gremlins on my motorcycle.Also useful for extending the reach of a multi-meter.Set of 10 multi-colored 14" Test Leads via Amazon

They have got ape drapes, yes they do!

Anna Rothschild says, "See the tiny creatures living in a pond or puddle using your smartphone, poster tack, and a laser pointer."Build a microscope stand for your laser pointer lens scope.Create a 1000x smartphone microscope with a glass bead.Don’t have a smartphone? Try this water drop microscope from Mr. Wizard.[via]

How to have fun by turning friends into foes. Bonus points for the cameraman's Muttley laugh.

The Arizona bark scorpion is the deadliest scorpion in the continental United States. But the Southern grasshopper mouse happily munches on the scorpions. How? The scorpion's venom actually triggers the mouse to numb itself to pain. From KQED Science:The scorpion venom contains neurotoxins that target sodium and potassium ion channels, proteins embedded within the surface of the nerve and muscle cells that play an important role in regulating the sensation of pain. Activating these channels sends signals down the nerves to the brain. That’s what causes the excruciating pain that human victims have described as the feeling like getting jabbed with a hot needle. Others compare the pain to an electric shock. But the grasshopper mouse has an entirely different reaction when stung.Within the mouse, a special protein in one of the sodium ion channels binds to the scorpion’s neurotoxin. Once bound, the neurotoxin is unable to activate the sodium ion channel and send the pain signal. Instead it has the entirely opposite effect. It shuts down the channel, keeping it from sending any signals, which has a numbing effect for the mouse."Stinging Scorpion vs. Pain-Defying Mouse"

Last month I blogged about Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles, a pair of artists who released a high-resolution scan of a looted Egyptian bust of Nefertiti in the collection of Berlin's Neues Museum, which has a reputation for refusing to make data from its collection (including 3D scans) public. (more…)

Boing Boing is proud to welcome Wikileaf.com as as sponsor. When you want to book a flight or a hotel online, if you're bargain-conscious you probably don't go directly to each airline or hotel's direct website, but rather shop on price comparison websites to see who's offering the best rate for what you want. Wikileaf.com applies this same familiar concept to legal and medical cannabis.Wikileaf is the first price comparison website of its kind, empowering marijuana consumers to name their preferred price for pot--then watch as recreational and/or medical dispensaries compete for their bud business.The website operates as a “reverse auction” model for weed. You, the consumer, set the price you intend to spend. Dispensaries in your area offer their best deal (in grams) to match what you're willing to spend.As cannabis laws and regulations ease throughout the U.S., exuberant ganja-preneurs are opening dispensaries faster than ever. All the competition may be good for the market, but it creates a lot of noise for cannabis connoisseurs who just want really high-quality herb at the best possible price.Cruise along the urban streets of Denver, Seattle, Portland, and other weed-friendly American cities, and you’ll notice dispensaries and cannabis shops popping up faster than Starbucks spots. There is fierce competition between dispensaries, and that incentive to compete for your business grows as more shops enter the market.“The problem for the consumer is that there is no transparency in pricing,” says Dan Nelson, CEO of Wikileaf. “What you can get for $40 at one shop might get you nearly double that amount in another shop, depending on the dispensaries current inventory levels.”That the problem Wikileaf is trying to solve for savvy cannabis shoppers. With Wikileaf, you can rise above the noise, and quickly find dispensaries offering the best deals and prices in your neighborhood.In a highly anticipated update coming this spring, the price comparison model will also be applied to individual strains and products. So for example, if you’re looking for the best deals on Blue Dream, you could quickly hop onto Wikileaf.com and find dispensaries currently stocking Blue Dream in your neighborhood--and then compare their offers, to see who’s willing to sell this strain to you at the lowest price.Check out WikiLeaf.com.

The makers of the Coleco Chameleon retro console wanted $2m to manufacture it—and raised more than $80,000 in an Indiegogo campaign. Their prototypes turned out to be unsettlingly reminiscent of a) a piece of cardboard, b) a video capture card in a not-quite translucent box, and c) SNES parts wrapped in duct tape. The axe is falling: Coleco, which licensed its brand to the team, has demanded to inspect a working prototype. (more…)

Phenomena like the Harlem Cryptoparty demonstrate the connection between racial justice and cryptography -- civil rights organizers remember that the FBI spied on and blackmailed Martin Luther King, sending him vile notes encouraging him to kill himself. (more…)

Going to the movies is awesome. You get to sit back and watch action, adventure and romance unfold on a gigantic screen. Everything is big and exciting. But you know what else is awesome? Sitting on your couch. At last you can combine these two highly pleasurable activities thanks to the RIF6 Cube Projector that’s now 16% off. Watch movies as they were meant to be seen - large and in charge - right from the comfort of your own living room.This tiny box packs a big punch. It’s super lightweight so you can tote it for an outdoor movie marathon or prop it up anywhere in your house, dim the lights and let the movie magic begin. Via Bluetooth it streams anything you want to watch right from your smart device: movies, videos, TV shows and even games, projecting them at a whopping 120” onto any wall or screen. The LED light source lasts an amazing 20,000 hours so you can pretty much watch every sequel in every movie franchise. It’s super easy to set up so you can relax while the show rolls.You can even use it to make big presentations at work or show of your latest photo slideshow from a trip. No more slide projectors from elementary school, this is the big leagues of cinema and show, right in your house for 16% off. If you have a phone or tablet, you can now operate a movie theatre. Check out the link below for even more details.Get 16% Off the RIF6 Cube Projector in the Boing Boing Store.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLHIP4Lyn_U[/embed]

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has decided not to run for president on an independent ticket. (more…)

Some bad guys steal your lunch money. Some rob banks, others use guns and swords or blow things up. But today, out on the wild west of the internet superhighway, bad guys hack your data. And there are only a few things you can do about it to protect yourself and exact justice. One is never use your computer or the web. And because that’s not going to happen, you need to back up everything you’ve got. With a lifetime subscription to SkyHub Cloud 2TB Backup that you can nab now for 90% off, you’re safer than ever, backed by the good guys.SkyHub gives you 2TB of data storage right off the bat, which is enough for all your texts, photos, emails and cat videos galore, but if you want even more they can add it right on. With the advanced encryption security you can sleep easy knowing that every last piece of your personal data is super safe and sound. And any time you want to view it, simply login to the easy to use online dashboard to check out everything you’re storing long term, using SkyHub’s unique hybrid storage system.No catch. It’s this easy to backup all your data and keep it exactly where you want: locked up in a super secure e-vault for eternity. Your lifetime subscription is now 90% off and you can stop worrying about the ever-growing threat of cyber hackers, or even the more simple issues or losing or breaking your computer or any smart device. Check out the link below for more details.Take 90% Off a Lifetime Subscription to SkyHub Cloud 2TB Backup in the Boing Boing Store.

I love reading James Blaylock's novels. His take on humanity, and the super natural, always thrill me. This collection of short stories made my rainy weekend.This collection of 16 stories is wonderful. Blaylock often tells tales where hope is covered in a dark sheen of barely contained evil, hiding in everyday California. I'm addicted! Included in this, his only collection of shorts, is Blaylock's award winning 13 Phantasms, the story of a man who follows an ad back into the golden age of science fiction. Steampunk, classic sci-fi, and a few new Langdon St. Ives adventures (one of Blaylock's best known characters,) are gripping!Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories by James P. Blaylock via Amazon

In 2014, Verizon was caught sneaking "supercookies" onto its customers' computers -- these are tracking cookies that bypassed the normal cookie system to surveil Verizon users and target ads to them. (more…)

The ACLU deposed Judge Jack H Weil, a senior judge responsible for training other immigration judges, in a case over whether 3- and 4-year-olds needed legal representation during deportation hearings. Judge Weil insisted that children as young as three could be taught the basics of immigration law and didn't need taxpayer-funded lawyers in order to get a fair hearing. (more…)

Moving into the house we just bought, I found to my delight a mysterious locked safe at the back of a closet. I've asked a few people how to get into it, and the consensus is either to use powerful microphones to listen in on the tumblers (apparently stethoscopes don't really cut it) or to see if the hinges are weakened by time and can be removed by force without damaging the door or the mechanisms. Before I get cracking, though, what do you think? I asked the previous owners for the code, but they don't know. They just assumed it was empty. It's a Yale safe.I know that it's probably full of air, but you never know.

"Satanic Panic over Dungeons & Dragons" is one of my favorite genres of journalism, and Eric Grundhauser's article about it is a goodun, with all the right YouTube clips.By 1984, fantasy roleplaying had evolved from thretening the innocent minds of America’s youth to threatening their eternal salvation. Religious mini-comic author Jack Chick published one of his “Chick Tracts”—those extreme religious comic book pamphlets you find on the bus—about the issue, tying fantasy roleplaying directly to the occult. Called Dark Dungeons, the thin pamphlet tells the story of Debbie, a young woman who gets seduced by a witchy dungeon master who teaches her to embrace evil through the game. Through the course of the story, Debbie uses a “mind bondage” spell on her father to get spending money and finds the body of a friend who committed suicide after losing her game character.They're still going on about it, too.

You may have caught Funny or Die's "Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie," starring Johnny Depp as Trump. But even stranger is this clip of Depp peeling off his Trump face. Now I'd like to see Depp peel off the next layer to reveal his true identity, Richard Grieco!

VFX pioneer Phil Tippett, creator of Jabba the Hutt's pet Rancor, dropped acid during the production of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi:“I took LSD when I was working on Return of the Jedi. I could communicate with my cat Brian, and Brian took me on a journey.“I crawled into this cupboard with Brian the cat and we went to the centre of the Earth for like three billion years and I was just in this world of molecules. It was fine, it was very calming.“I decided to go back to work and I was at ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) and I walked into the blue screen stage and it’s huge - everything’s just super illuminated bright blue - and it was just like ‘Aaaah, I took like way too much.’’More in this VICE video: "My Life in Monsters" (via The Independent)

Jeff Heimbuch writes, "Return Home is a serialized audio drama, done in the style of radio shows of ages past. It is fully produced, in stereo sound, to make you feel like you are part of the action. Though you can listen however you'd like, it's recommended you do so with headphones. Alone. In a darkened room." (more…)

Daily Grail posted this nightmarish excerpt from the 2014 book Preparing the Ghost, by Matthew Gavin Frank.Squid corpses, even when cooked, retain their sexual reflexes and have been known to inseminate our mouths. After eating calamari...a South Korean woman reported experiencing "severe pain" and a "pricking foreign-body sensation" in her mouth. From her tongue, inner cheeks, gums, throat, her doctor exscised "twelve small, white, spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms." These were spermatophores, which possess seriously tenacious ejaculatory apparati, and a cementlike body, which allows for their attachment to materials like the tongue, inner cheeks, gums...

Not for the Québécois are such mundane sexual preferences as "lesbians" or "hentai" or "facesitting." No, the French-speaking Canadians search for themselves. [via Vice Canada]

While our family is lucky to get our kids in their shoes every morning, Melbourne, Australia stylist Shelley Gifford creates these insanely intricate braids in her daughter's hair before school. See more at her Instagram feed, @prettylittlebraids. (Whenever I see wild braids, I always think of bOING bOING co-founder Carla Sinclair's wonderful 2003 book, Braid Crazy!) From Gifford's post at Bored Panda:I braid Grace’s hair most days and take the photo of the style in the morning before Grace leaves for school. I only have approx 15-20 minutes on a school morning so if it can’t be done in this time I leave it for weekend. Grace is fantastic, I’ve been styling her hair since she was a toddler so she doesn’t know any different. It’s her quiet time for TV after she is ready for school so she is more than happy to sit there. I love doing something that I’m so passionate about and that Grace gets to be a part of it. She’s sweet, affectionate and beautiful little girl. Grace is everyone’s friend. …I love learning new styles, advancing my skills and challenging myself to create something new and unique.(via Laughing Squid)