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Kevin Mao, a designer in Shanghai, recently had two of his photos placed on Apple billboards to promote the iPhone 6S camera. He told Mashable how he edited the photos.For this photo, he used TouchRetouch ($1.99, which "lets you remove unwanted content or objects from your photo"), Snapseed (Free, general purpose photo retouching), and VSCO (Free, general purpose photo retouching).For this one, he used SKRWT (keystone- and lens-correction), Snapseed, and VSCO.

I like that this activity is called "excavation." From Wikipedia:(The woodpecker) is noted for its ability to acquire wood-boring grubs using their bills for hammering, but overall the family is characterized by its dietary flexibility, with many species being both highly omnivorous and opportunistic with a diet including ants, bird eggs, cactus fruits, lizards, nestlings, and insects. The insect prey most commonly taken are those found inside tree trunks, whether they are alive or rotten, and in crevices in the bark. These include beetles and their grubs, ants, termites, spiders, and caterpillars. These may be obtained either by gleaning or, more famously, by excavating wood. Having hammered a hole into the wood, the prey is excavated by a long barbed tongue. Woodpeckers consume beetles that burrow into trees, removing as many as 85 percent of emerald ash borer larvae from individual ash trees.The ability to excavate allows woodpeckers to obtain tree sap, an important source of food for some species. (via r/gifs)

Pricenomics analyzed the frequency of the final words spoken by death row inmates before being executed.Used by 63% of all speakers, “love” is the most common word in death row inmates’ last statements. At 689 total instances, that works out to an average of 1.7 times per inmate. Other words that insinuate affection — “heart” (14%), “care” (11%), “loved” (10%) — also rank high on this list.In most cases, the word is used to address family members who are present at the execution, on the other side of the glass window. But it is also used to express feelings toward the victim’s family members, lawyers, the court, and even the warden/prison staff.

Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan is nearly 20 years old, and the science fiction story of a journalist who wages truth-war on scumbag politicians 200 years from now could not be more relevant than it is today. (more…)

John Mininno is an ex-malpractice lawyer who raised money from a Wall Street angel and founded the National Healthcare Analysis Group, which uses public data sources to uncover Medicare fraud, then does further data-mining to predict which current or ex-employees will turn whistleblower, cold calls them, and splits the bounty the government offers for whistleblowing with them. (more…)

My late father-in-law, Joe, was born and raised in Los Angeles, growing up during the heyday of hot rod culture. When I knew him he drove Corvettes and Camaros. In high school, Joe and his brother built Soap Box Derby racers. I recently came across an essay about Soap Box Derby racing that Joe wrote in 1957 when he was a student at Los Angeles High School. His teacher wrote, "This is one of the most *interesting* reports I've ever read!" He received a C+, though, because his spelling was atrocious (It was bad when I knew him, too - I think he had undiagnosed dyslexia) and he neglected to add footnotes or a bibliography. Here's a PDF scan of the essay.

After mixed showings in the primaries and a sense that the Democratic Party's profoundly undemocratic "superdelegates" will hand Hillary the nomination no matter what, the press has all but declared Bernie Sanders out of the race. (more…)

The New York Public Library's spectacular Digital Public Library challenged designers to create new covers for some of the public domain's greatest books, which had been previously doomed to an undeserved dullness thanks to the auto-generated covers that book-scanning projects stuck them with. (more…)

Statistician Patrick Ball runs an NGO called the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, which uses extremely rigorous, well-documented statistical techniques to provide evidence of war crimes and genocides; HRDAG's work has been used in the official investigations of atrocities in Kosovo, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Syria and elsewhere. (more…)

Wonkblog runs the numbers on the counties with the strongest support for Trump and finds that the typical Trump supporter is likely to live in a place with higher-than-normal mortality for whites (middle-aged white mortality has been increasing since the 1990s at a rate unseen in the developed world since the collapse of the Soviet Union), lower-than-usual rates of university eduction, higher-than-normal rates of unemployment, where manufacturing jobs have vanished due to offshoring. (more…)

The ethics of torturing robots is not a new question, but it's becoming more important as robots and AI becomes more lifelike. Author Ted Chiang explored it in his 2010 novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects. In 1998 I wrote an article for Wired Online called "Virtual Sadism" about people who liked to torture artificial life forms called "norns" (and a movement of norn lovers who tried to stop them). In 1977 Terrel Miedaner wrote a philosophical science fiction novel called The Soul of Anna Klan, which featured a little Roomba like creature that seems to be afraid to "die" when someone tries to crush it with a hammer. (An excerpt from the novel appears in the excellent book, The Mind's I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett.)Dylan Love of Inverse revisits the idea of robot abuse in his article for Inverse, "Is it OK to torture a robot?"Consider the latest robot to be unveiled by Google’s Boston Dynamics. When the collective internet saw a bearded scientist abuse the robot with a hockey stick, weird pangs of empathy went out everywhere. Why do we feel so bad when we watch the robot fall down, we wonder? There’s no soul or force of life to empathize with, and yet: This robot is just trying to lift a box, why does that guy have to bully it?The Boston Dynamics video reminded me of the inflatable Bozo men, meant to be abused:https://youtu.be/F2DRyWJgYO0

https://youtu.be/CwetMm33UnIDo you like spoilers as much as I do? Then watch this video that ruins the surprise endings of 47 and 1/2 movies.

Oona Tempest is an apprentice sushi chef at New York City's Tanoshi Sushi. I do love my sushi, but I definitely wouldn't have the fortitude or filleting-skills to be trained as a chef. (Eater)

These PSAs from Project Consent (a non-profit that “aims to combat and deconstruct rape culture”) star anthropomorphic body parts. (more…)

The folks at Biolite sent me a PowerLight Mini. It's a rechargeable LED lantern with a 1350 mAh battery. It has a burn time of over 50 hours in low light mode, and 5 hours in high mode. It can also be used to charge your phone. My favorite thing about it is the design. It's very cute - it has a retro feel that reminds me of a Japanese transistor radio and a Star Trek communicator. The body is stainless steel and it feels solid. I've been using it to read books at night. In the video above, the Biolite team shows how they designed the PowerLight Mini.

When confronted with dogma-threatening, worldview-menacing ideas, your knee-jerk response is usually to lash out and try to bat them away, but thanks to a nearly unavoidable mistake in reasoning, you often end up doing battle with arguments of your own creation.Your lazy brain is always trying to make sense of the world on ever-simpler terms. Just as you wouldn’t use a topographical map to navigate your way to Wendy’s, you tend to navigate reality using a sort of Google Maps interpretation of events and ideas. It’s less accurate, sure, but much easier to understand when details aren’t a priority. But thanks to this heuristical habit, you sometimes create mental men of straw that stand in for the propositions put forth by people who see the world a bit differently than you. In addition to being easy to grasp, they are easy to knock down and hack apart, which wouldn’t be a problem if only you noticed the switcheroo.This is the essence of the straw man fallacy, probably the most common of all logical fallacies. Setting up and knocking down straw men is so easy to do while arguing that you might not even notice that you are doing it.In this episode, you’ll learn from three experts in logic and arguing why human brains tend not to realize they are constructing artificial versions of the arguments they wish to defeat. Once you’ve wrapped your mind around that idea, you’ll then learn how to spot the straw man fallacy, how to avoid committing it, and how to defend against it.This episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is the second in a full season of episodes exploring logical fallacies. The first episode is here.Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. Like Netflix for clothes, a professional stylist helps you define your new look, and then your new clothes arrive at your doorstep in a special trunk. Keep what you want, return the rest. Get started today and Trunk Club will style you for FREE. Plus FREE SHIPPING both ways! Click here for this special offer.This episode is brought to you by The Great Courses Plus. Get unlimited access to a huge library of The Great Courses lecture series on many fascinating subjects. Start FOR FREE with The Fundamentals of Photography filmed in partnership with The National Geographic and taught by professional photographer Joel Sartore. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.This episode of You Are Not So Smart is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial and ten percent off go to Squarespace.com and use the offer code SOSMART.Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.Barbara Drescher is a cognitive psychologist and skeptical activist who lectured at California State University and currently serves as educational programs consultant for the James Randi Educational Foundation. Her website is ICBSEverywhere.com.Jesse Richardson is the founder of YourLogicalFallacyIs.com, a fantastic website where you can learn about fallacies and critical thinking and easily share what you discover. He is an award-winning creative lead on a number of other projects including School Of Thought.Mike Rugnetta is the writer and host of PBS Idea Channel produced by PBS Digital Studios. On Idea Channel he applies philosophical and critical concepts to pop-culture ideas and other more-familiar topics in an effort to better explain to a general, internet-savvy audience the strange and abstract propositions he explores in wonderful detail.In every episode, after I read a bit of self delusion news, I taste a cookie baked from a recipe sent in by a listener/reader. That listener/reader wins a signed copy of my new book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” and I post the recipe on the YANSS Pinterest page. This episode’s winner is Andrew Leman who sent in a recipe for Chinese New Year Cookies. Send your own recipes to david {at} youarenotsosmart.com.Links and SourcesDownload – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudPrevious EpisodesBoing Boing PodcastsCookie RecipesICBSEverywhereYour Logical Fallacy IsPBS Idea ChannelA Guide to Logical FallaciesOrigins of Straw Man FallacyImage Source – CC BY-SA 3.0

Today we travel to a future where your microbiome becomes a key part of your identity. From health to your child’s kindergarten, here are all the ways knowing about your microbiome might impact your life. Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | PatreonIn this episode we talk about the possibilities and limitations of the microbiome — the trillions of bacterial cells that live in and on your body. There’s a lot of money going towards microbiome research right now, and a whole lot of claims about what the microbiome can do. We break down what we actually know, and where we’re probably going.▹▹ Full show notes

My new Guardian column, Forget Apple's fight with the FBI – our privacy catastrophe has only just begun, explains how surveillance advocates have changed their arguments: 20 years ago, they argued that the lack of commercial success for privacy tools showed that the public didn't mind surveillance; today, they dismiss Apple's use of cryptographic tools as a "marketing stunt" and treat the proportionality of surveillance as a settled question. (more…)

Don’t pin yourself down and limit your career to one niche. Be a Renaissance person. These days on the tech and startup scene, it’s helpful to have a wide professional range and for 97% off, the eduCBA Tech Training Bundle can help you develop and master all the skills you could ever want. Working in tech is hardly all about tech, it’s about combining the right elements of management, organization, design, and yes, a crazy amount of coding.There are more than five hundred courses currently offered on eduCBA and this gives you a lifetime subscription so that you can revisit, rewatch and relearn this material any time you want from the comfort of your own couch. You can ask the expert teachers questions any time and you’ll even take mock tests and quizzes to ensure you know your stuff. The lessons include software development, networking, 3D design, CAD, and way more, plus you can create web apps using HTML, CSS, Javascript and even more coding languages you’ll come to master. It’s the perfect combination of the technical, visual and managerial skills you need to make things happen in the real world.Your resume is about to start popping with bullet points once you add all these skills and certifications on. And any time you want to revisit the material or learn something new, simply log back on because it’s yours for life for 97% off. Start building that background to become the tech and startup allstar you’re meant to be by checking out the link below for more details.Get 97% Off the eduCBA Tech Training Bundle in the Boing Boing Store.

This morning Mitt Romney spoke at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. He said "Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.”Romney's right, of course. The problem is, Rubio and Cruz (and Clinton, to a large degree) are also phonies and frauds. But Rubio, Cruz, and Clinton are attached to choke chains under control of the power elite, making them much more desirable to Romney and his ilk.ABC News: Mitt Romney Slams Donald Trump's 'Absurd 3rd-Grade Theatrics'Trump reacted by saying, "Mitt Romney was a failed candidate; should have beaten Barack Obama easily."

Does this sound like anyone you know who is running for president in 2016?He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the "Hakenkreuzler." So violent are Hitler's fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew's night.But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: "You can't expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them."Vox: The New York Times' first article about Hitler's rise is absolutely stunning

Vice today published a 5-part, deeply reported and researched science fiction series about what happens after the a massive earthquake hits an American city. (more…)

Pop surrealist pioneer Camille Rose Garcia returns to Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery tonight, March 3, with a magnificent new show of phantasmagoric paintings! This remarkable exhibition, titled "Animus Chrysalis Mortis," hangs until April 2. Garcia says:For this body of work I was inspired by the surrealist and deeply symbolic films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jungian archetypes, and Greek mythology. I created a personal language of symbols, then made a card set and selected at random a different set for each new painting. This method taps into the elements of subconscious influence and chance, as well as mirrors the cut-up method of writing created by one of my favorite authors William Burroughs.From these subconscious suggestions I created a lush and layered symbolic world that explores the realm of childhood, memory and longing. Ghosts and gardens, snakes and skulls frame fever-dream scenes of wounded goddesses slayed open, fecund gardens growing from their wounds. Vibrant strange gardens populated with insects and dream imagery portray a psychedelic dance between life and death.

https://youtu.be/7xNnRBksvOU"Be nice, know your shit, but don't take any shit." That's web producer Hannah Birch's advice for getting what is rightfully your from a government bureaucracy that thinks of you as an annoyance with an number attached to it. She did't use those exact words (they were written by Reason's Anthony L. Fisher), but they sum up her hard fought lesson in getting a driver license from the NY Department of Motor Vehicles. From Reason: Birch suffers from oculocutaneous albinism, an eye condition which allows her to see well enough to drive safely but which prevents her from making out the small-printed text of an eye exam. She writes, "even though I can’t read those tiny little letters on the sheet of paper they hold up, doctors in three states now have concluded my vision is good enough for me to safely drive."The NY DMV provides a form which allows a person to submit a doctor's evaluation of their ability to drive. Even though Birch had that form, as well as a doctor's thumb's up, she knew she was in for a long hard slog at the most loathed of state bureaucracies because as she notes, "government workers can still make it difficult for you to get what you’re qualified for under the law."Here's Birch's advice:Know As Much As You Can in AdvanceFigure Out As Much As You Can QuicklyUse KeywordsSpeak Directly and Stand Your GroundFollow Up With the People Who Helped You Out ProPublica: My Story as a DMV Edge Case: How to Battle Bureaucracy and Win

Fab Filippo and friends have a new show, "Save Me," up for production on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is flush with cash now that the hateful Tories are out of office. (more…)

These days it seems like every job description includes a hefty requirement of computer know-how. Coding is the new typing and everyone needs to get hip to it already. But where to even begin? For a newbie, brogrammers who can build anything are totally intimidating and you don’t have time to go back to school. Luckily this Complete Web Developer Course is now 92% off and can get your fingertips whizzing across the keyboard like a master.With over 236 lectures making up 28 hours of content, you’ll be a coding guru after this pack of courses that covers Java, HTML, CSS, MySQL, jQuery and way more. You’ll build responsive websites using these tools and WordPress for ecommerce and blogging applications with both backend and user interface elements. To connect these products with Google and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter you’ll learn how to integrate API’s too. All these skills will add up to you being able to make amazing websites that consumers will love to use and you’ll love to show off.These hands-on projects are the best way to learn in the trenches, plus they’ll give you a solid portfolio of sample work to show existing or potential employers to up your career game. Coding is the language of the future and you can start speaking it today for 92% off. Startup jobs will totally be in your wheelhouse now. Check out the link below for more details on everything this bundle offers.Save 92% on The Complete Web Developer Course in the Boing Boing Store.

Mixed emotions. That's what NASA astronaut Scott Kelly says he's feeling upon returning to Earth after 340 days on the International Space Station. (more…)

Yesterday a Tennessee teenager didn't want to wake up and go to school. After threatening them to no avail, the 16 year old male produced a handgun and shot his 67-year-old grandmother twice. His 6-year-old nephew and 12-year-old sister were each struck once. All three are recovering. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Walking through the children’s section of any given book store, this book will immediately catch your eye. The front cover has gears sticking out the side, and if you turn them, you can see one of our main characters moving up and down on a wheel and axel system. Open the book, and you’ll be treated to even more interactive illustration done in the book’s playful art style.The plot of the story follows two friends who live in a zoo, Sloth and Sengi. After many years of living there, they have decided to escape using some simple machines. Along the way, they encounter many problems (as you can imagine would occur when a sloth and a variety of elephant shrew attempt to scale a zoo enclosure). Each page outlines a different type of machinery and invites the reader to learn about how each system functions. When Sloth and Sengi try and use an inclined plane to escape, the narrator demonstrates why it takes less effort to climb up an inclined plane than straight over the vertical fence. Later on, this idea of the inclined plane returns when Sloth and Sengi try and use a screw to escape. Probably my favorite section of the book involves the section on levers. The author outlines how a lever functions with an effort, a fulcrum, and a load. You can construct a lever from cardboard cut-outs in the book, and then use it to try and fling Sloth and Sengi over the fence of their enclosure, usually with more success than our main characters.The art style is delightful, with playful, sketchy designs, and fold-out panels introducing new information. The various hijinks of the main characters are illustrated with humor and affection, giving the book a lively feel, and the interactive aspect of building machinery, moving gears, and sliding-out panels easily keeps the reader’s attention. Overall, an enjoyable read that demonstrates that one is never too old to want to fling a cardboard sloth over a fence using a basic knowledge of physics.– Julia PillardHow Machines Work: Zoo Break!by David MacaulayDK Children2015, 32 pages, 8.7 x 11.1 x 1.3 inches $14 Buy a copy on Amazon

Wintergatan is Martin Molin's musical alterego, who runs 2,000 steel ball-bearings through its many channels and troughs to strike out a musical composition, turning handles, throwing switches and making other adjustments as needed to play his composition, which is rather catchy.

Laura Poitras, whose 2014 Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour won the Academy Award for best doc, has a show on at NYC's Whitney Museum called "Astro Noise," which attempts to capture the sense of overwhelming surveillance she's lived under since the US government targeted her while she was shooting a documentary in Iraq. (more…)

As John Holbo notes, the Ku Klux Klan's extensive, bizarre, fanciful "titles and vocabulary," set out in a 1916 volume called the "Kloran," has enough weirdness to match the Monster Manual for its "hydras, furies, nighthawks, giants, goblins, ghouls, titans, magi, monks, grand turks, dragons, wizards, cyclops." (more…)

Indie sf movie kingpin Jim Munroe writes, "Ever wonder how the Hilton and the Marriott families feel about Airbnb? What would happen if the heir to a hotel chain empire gets fed up and decides to rebrand the sharing economy... as the scaring economy? A concept trailer for a new tech-horror webseries called THE INTERNET WANTS by Postopian Pictures, the guys behind HAPHEAD and GHOSTS WITH SHIT JOBS."

The US government is attempting to force Apple to backdoor its Iphone security, congress is considering mandatory backdoors for all secure technology, and FBI director James Comey insists that this will work, because there's no way that America's enemies might just switch over to using technology produced in other countries without such mandates. (more…)

NASA reports that astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko have returned to Earth Tuesday night, after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. The space travelers touched down in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST (10:26 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time). (more…)

It took a while, but FBI director Jim Comey got a little bit of the grilling he has earned in the FBI vs. Apple case. Freedom of the Press Foundation's Trevor Timm writes on today's House Judiciary Committee hearings on Capitol Hill, at which both the government and the Cupertino tech giant were represented. (more…)

What's at stake in the fight between the FBI and Apple over those iPhones? Oh, no big deal, just the legal green light for “virtually limitless” surveillance under the Internet of Things. That's what a federal judge has ruled in an order rejecting a government request in a New York drug case. (more…)

On NPR's wonderful podcast “The Hidden Brain,” an exploration of what it is that makes some people non-conforming, risk-taking individuals. (more…)

Amazon prime members can get this catnip-filled banana cat toy for $3.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Featuring hallucinatory, psychedelic art inspired by the classic 1960s comic art of Jack Kirby, Space Riders is boldly drawn and beautifully inked in vibrant ultramarine, fuchsia, chartreuse, and the inky blackness of space. Every panel leaps from the page in a dynamic shock of color. Referencing psychedelic rock posters, motorcycle culture, Dia De Los Muertos, and hindu iconography, and presented within the framework of an outer space road odyssey, Space Riders is a pulpy, gritty adventure in intergalactic chaos. The first four issues of the rare, sold-out, and pricey Space Riders from Black Mask Studios are combined in this hardcover anthology for Local Comic Book Shop Day. Capitan Peligro, pilot of the skull-shaped spacecraft Santa Muerte, has been recently relieved of his duty with the E.I.S.F. and must complete three missions before being reinstated. He's accompanied by Mono, his monk-like baboon first mate, and Yara, a female robotic warrior. They're being pursued by the Vikers, armored viking space bikers, when the crew is inexorably dragged toward a haunted planetoid, ruled by the sultry wizard Dona Barbara. Afterward, they encounter the galactic behemoth An-Anu Gigantus, the Space Whale.Recalling a more naive time in the Silver Age of comic books, long before the current state of multi-title event crossovers in graphic novels, Space Riders is an archetypical story told and presented simply, wherein lies its appeal. Adventurers travel through space, fight villains, and save the day. Biff, bang, pow! – S. DeathrageSpace Riders Volume 1: Vengeful Universeby Fabian Rangel (author) and Alexis Ziritt (illustrator)Black Mask Studios2015, 96 pages, 6.4 x 10.1 x 0.4 inches (softcover) $12 Buy a copy on Amazon

A New York search engine optimization consultant gave two psychics more than $718,000. Now he's broke.He sat in a Denny's restaurant, drinking coffee between cigarette breaks after a long and sleepless night, answering question after question.He knew none of it made sense: He was a successful and well-traveled professional, with close to seven figures in the bank, and plans for much more. And then he gave it all away, more than $718,000, in chunks at a time, to two Manhattan psychics....Mr. Rice went broke. He lost his apartment in Manhattan and sold his BMW, expensive watch and laptop. He asked his father for a few thousand dollars. Now, he said, he is barely making his rent payments of $500.Last week, Mr. Rice said he wanted to return to England — “I’m trying to get it together” — but acknowledged that he had been drinking again, including the day of the interview. New York Times: Man Who Gave Psychics $718,000 ‘Just Got Sucked In’[via]Image: Shutterstock

We've all heard that there's a federal judge in California who ordered Apple to make a tool to help the FBI decrypt a phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters -- but despite the FBI's insistence that this is a special circumstance, San Bernardino is just one of a dozen-odd cases where the FBI is making similar demands on Apple. (more…)

Rephone makes modular open source hardware cellphone components -- GSM cores, touchscreens, speakers, GPS, miscellaneous sensors, and antennas -- that you can mix and match to build cellular capability into everyday gadgets; one project builds a complete cellular phone into a watch-strap for a Pebble smartwatch. (more…)

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…)

Besides cozying up to the old boss or making really good cookies to leave in the break room every week, there aren’t too many ways to get ahead in your career other than good old hard work. Unless you can magically add another bullet to your resume like by getting certified as a MCSA Windows Server 2012 & Cisco Network Associate. That would help, and now you can take that course for 94% off. Absorb these lessons at your own leisure, on your own time, and learn from the comfort of your couch.The course to become a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate covers cloud computing, server and desktop infrastructure, SharePoint and messaging. This skillset foundation will help you come up with creative system solutions for any organization. The Cisco Certified Network Associate training will teach you all about switches, routers, security threat migrations, and much more about wireless networking. Here you’ll dig deep into LAN and WAN technologies as well as frame relay and serial line interface protocol.With access to all this material for a whole year, you can learn any time, any way you want on your own schedule since you can check out the material online 24/7. You’ll be totally, fully prepped for the certification exam, all for 94% off, so that you can pass without any stress and add that accolade to your resume and casually drop that humble brag into your next boss conversation. Check out the link below for more details.Save 94% on MCSA Windows Server 2012 & Cisco Network Associate Certification Training in the Boing Boing Store.

Here's a report about a Catholic priest said to have been found snorting cocaine in a room adorned with Nazi symbols. In other words, another Monday on the internet. (more…)

[Peter Savodnik, a filmmaker and founder of Stateless Media, made a short film about Catherine Abegg, a woman who lives in a van with her husband and newborn child. Catherine is a celebrated LGBT wedding photographer.]How did you meet Michael? Michael & I met and immediately fell in love about seven years ago, at a bar, and he met the criterium on this little list that I had written of what I was looking for in a partner. On that serendipitous list, I had stated that I needed a man with a VW van; which sounds absurd, but I always thought families with vans always looked like they were having so much fun. I also knew that if someone owns a van, they tend to be adventurous, and either be handy, have a semi-disposable income, or maybe even both... and all of that sounded just fine to me.How did you know he was your soul mate?That first night we met, we talked all night and all the way until the sun rose; and we've just never stopped talking. We fell in love within days, but it wasn't until he met Madeline a few weeks later that everything really fell into place.Why did you guys choose to live in a van? We have spent many days & many miles together in a collection of different vans throughout the years; most notably in our prized 1990 Vanagon Syncro, named Priscilla. When Mads started to reach an age that her future outside of our home was becoming an impending reality, Michael & I decided that it made most sense to move into our van once she graduated high school so that we could travel full time. So, over the course of about two years of planning, Priscilla transformed from a Syncro tin-top to a Syncro-Aventurewagen-Westfalia with a Subaru engine conversion... all in the name of becoming an over-landing rig that we could live. Michael is an accomplished mechanic with the curious mind of an artist, and did all of the work himself, save for the engine conversion which we trusted to our friends over at Northwesty.As the end of Madeline's school years were drawing nearer, we were more & more ready to move into our van full time... and then a few weeks before Mads turned 18 years old, we got the surprise of a lifetime & found out that we are expecting a second child! We spent some time considering if we should settle back down & buy a home again, but quickly realized that starting this new & unexpected chapter in our life only made sense in our beloved van. We don't have a purpose or platform that we represent, but we do believe in living a life of togetherness, mindfulness, and adventure... and being in our van only strengthens that belief for us.How is Haakan enjoying the van? As far as we know, he loves it! All children want & need is to be loved, and I'm sure having us so physically close to him makes him pretty happy. He's a very content child who eats & sleeps well, but I'm not sure how much that has to do with living in a van... but who knows?Do you have van-wi-fi? We don't have wifi outside of our iphones, but so far that hasn't been a problem.We're told Madeline is a photographer. You must be proud. What does this say about your relationship? Madeline is an excellent photographer. I didn't teach her much, but she often came to both Michael & I for critique (and praise) of her work, and I know that's had a positive impact on her progress. I like to think that she comes to us because she values our opinions and trusts that we are proud of her & want the best for her, which says everything about our relationship.How do her images differ from yours? Madeline is a better photographer than I am, which is what every parent wants, right? A better version of themselves?! Her images are fearless, imaginative, and tell a story with equal parts subtlety & strength. I'm a well-seasoned photographer having shot for that last 21 years, but my work is more traditional. I don't want to downplay my own photography because I think it's quite good and I'm great at storytelling with my imagery, but the heart of my work shows up much differently than from hers. I'm her biggest fan, obviously.What's your all-time favorite wedding you've photographed?I've shot so many great weddings!!! My favorites have always been where you can really feel the love & respect between the couple as well as with their families. However, I do have a wedding that stands out above the rest, that involved a few days of camping, and a couple who canoed into their ceremony and jumped into the lake together after their vows were exchanged... and the celebration that night included campfire, dancing, and skinny-dipping. It was so much fun, and broke all the rules in the best way possible.Do you have any regrets?Nope.

Inspired by the "evolutionary tree diagram" format, Talking Heads vocalist, artist, and writer David Byrne drew numerous tree diagrams meant to "explain" everyday phenomena, terminology, and the irrationality of life. For example, above is the diagram of "Romantic Destiny" (2003). Ten years ago, Byrne collected his diagrams in a wonderful book titled Arboretum.Möbius Structure of Relationships:Legacy of Good Habits:History of Mark-Making:See more on Byrne's site: "Tree Drawings/Arboretum"

The BLU Vivo Air, a GSM 4G phone, has just 16GB of internal storage (with no microSD expansion), but at $100, this unlocked 0.2-inch thick phone with a 4.8-inch display is a great deal. A newer LTE version is available for $144.

At around 500 rubber bands, the external pressure forces the watermelon to explode. https://t.co/xqP5IXz9Ht pic.twitter.com/IpJ0TnE3Hr— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) February 21, 2016This is from Mental Floss' gallery of 15 cool science GIFs. I love this one:When you notice that the air bubbles “fall down,” you’ll realize these divers are actually walking upside down on the underside of the ice on a frozen lake. This becomes possible when they inflate their gear with air, which increases their buoyancy and makes them go up. A little fine tuning, and they can simulate gravity upside down. They can do that as long as they have air in their bottles, because the water pressure around them is supporting their entire bodies from all sides.[via]