The BBC created an interactive widget that compares your alcohol consumption to other people from your country. It's not volume so much as the ratio of beer, wine and spirits that defines a national drinking culture. The map above is a little simple, though, in that it shows only the most popular tipple for each nation.

It's been a month since Juniper admitted that its firewalls had back-doors in them, possibly inserted by (or to aid) US intelligence agencies. In the month since, Juniper has failed to comprehensively seal those doors, and more suspicious information has come to light. (more…)

In this case, the cake was certainly a lie. [via]

Ever scroll through Instagram and wonder how someone snapped that ridiculously cool aerial shot? Here’s your chance to learn. Master the art of capturing stunning drone-powered photography and video by practicing flight patterns that make for amazing cinematography, learning editing tips and tricks to create polished footage, and more. You’ll take your first step towards Insta-celebritydom, or at the very least get your followers working that “Like” button in your favor.Take stunning aerial shots w/ over 76 lectures & 7 hours of contentUnderstand which drones & software are best to usePlan your flights to maximize your chance of capturing gorgeous shotsEnrich your aerial footage w/ creative video filmed on the groundMaster flight patterns that allow you to film engaging footageLearn design principles to edit your clips into a stunning videoAdd finishing touches in post-production: music, text & moreGet this Drone Photography & Video Coruse for 74% Off.

He admits he's from Mars. An unpleasant gentleman whose flatbed truck dumped a bunch of wood all over a residential street tells Detroit 7 Action News he don't take no orders from no women. Good to know. (more…)

On Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published an investigation into T-Mobile's "Binge On" video service, which allegedly optimizes videos for mobile download and does not count them against T-Mobile's bandwidth caps. (more…)

Gmoke writes, "Code for America organizes a network of people dedicated to making government services simple, effective, and easy to use by building open source computer and communications technologies. They have 133 chapters and more than 40,000 members." (more…)

In 2015 the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum restored the original USS Enterprise model from the original series. It was built in 1964 by Richard C. Datin, Jr., Mel Keys, Vernon Sion (above), and Volmer Jensen (not pictured). It's 11 feet long and has been restored 4 times.Trekmovie.com covered the most current restoration, which attempted to correct a problem with the third restoration:That [1992] restoration was actually quite accurate, but the restorer applied the “weathering” overlay too heavily,” Mike told TrekMovie. “That’s actually a very easy mistake to make. It’s really very hard to judge the “proper” amount of weathering, especially for an object that is normally seen in second, third, fourth and worse generation photo images, which is what was done for the original optical effects. Nevertheless, I agree that the weathering was too heavily applied.”Mike says that the Museum may decide to take a more conservative approach this time around, saying “I don’t think the museum has yet decided on the exact approach they’re going to take. They’re still studying it, trying to figure out a balance between restoration and conservation. They will want guests to see the starship in all its glory, but at the same time, they want to minimize invasive procedures in the interest of preserving the artifact (including its paint) for future study.”[via]

Cary Gabriel Costello is a trans-man in Milwaukee. Two-thirds of the time when he flies, the TSA has a complete freakout over the "anomalies" his body displays on the full-body scanner. (more…)

Three strange metal spheres fell from the sky in Vietnam's Tuyen Quang province. They range in size and weight, with the smallest at 250 grams and the largest at 45 kilograms. According to the Ministry of Defense, they are likely compressed air tanks from an aircraft or rocket. That said, Nguyen Khoa Son of the National Research Program on Space Science and Technology suggests that they could be debris from a failed satellite launch. Apparently the balls were made in Russia. (BBC News)

Jerry Seinfeld does 5 minutes of hilarious stand-up last night on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This guy needs a TV show!

Terminix has just released its annual list of the top 15 U.S. cities most infested with bedbugs, determined by the most S.O.S. phone calls the company receives about the stealthy blood-suckers. And the winning city for most bedbugs in 2015 goes to… (drumroll) … Detroit! Ohio wins for the state on the list with the most bedbug infested cities (five!).The rest of the list:Philadelphia, MI Cleveland-Akron, OH Los Angeles, CA Dayton, OH Chicago, IL Columbus, OH Cincinnati, OH Dallas-Forth Worth, TX San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA Denver, CO Toledo, OH Oklahoma City, OK Baltimore, MD New York, NYNo need for hysterics, but if traveling to one of these cities (or any city for that matter!) check out today’s Surefire Way to Spot Bedbugs in the Huffington Post. Their tips include:1. Setting your luggage down in the bathroom (unless your room has tile flooring) 2. Pulling the bed sheets off the mattress 3. Using your flashlight app on your smartphone to inspect the mattress – including the seams – for bugs as well as small dark blood stains (from the bug’s excrement, if you must know) 4. Inspect the furniture and wall artA little know-how in spotting these luggage-hopping pests might save you a call to your local bug buster and possibly months of your life trying to eradicate them.

My new Locus Magazine column, Wicked Problems: Resilience Through Sensing, proposes a solution the urgent problem we have today of people doing bad stuff with computers. Where once "bad stuff with computers" meant "hacking your server," now it could potentially mean "blocking air-traffic control transmissions" or "programming your self-driving car to kill you." (more…)

It's the perfectly-optimized Trumpian Twittergaffe, lurking somewhere between a) bloviating ignorance and b) his inability to form coherent thoughts in 140 characters. None of his followers will care, every else will find it amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKVd-xwxgJsThe Socal Attractions 360 folks crossed over to the east coast and rode the Walt Disney World version of the Haunted Mansion with a 4K camera, equipped with a extreme low-light filter. The resulting footage is spectacular, the best I've seen. (more…)

On New Year's Eve, a 63-story hotel in Dubai caught on fire. There were no fatalities. Kirill Neiezhmako's time lapse video of the inferno is like something from a big budget Hollywood movie.

Imhotep, by Jerry Dubs, is free for a limited time as a Kindle e-book. It has 4.3/5 stars with over 500 reviews. It sounds like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but this time the Hank Morgan character winds up in ancient Egypt.

How strong is your bullshit detector? And what exactly IS the scientific definition of bullshit?In this episode we explore both of those concepts as well as what makes a person susceptible to bullshit, how to identify and defend against it, and what kind of people are the most and least likely to be bowled over by bullshit artists and other merchants of feel-good woo.You’ll hear how Gordon Pennycook and his team at the University of Waterloo set out to discover if there was a spectrum of receptivity for a certain kind of humbug they call pseudo-profound bullshit – the kind that sounds deep and meaningful at first glance, but upon closer inspection means nothing at all. They wondered, is there a “type” of person who is more susceptible to that kind of language, and if so, what other things about personalities and thinking styles correlate with that tolerance and lack of skepticism, and why?Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is brought to you by The Great Courses. Get 80 percent off Behavioral Economics: When Psychology and Economics Collide presented by professor Scott Heutell along with many other fantastic lecture series by visiting this link and ordering today!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.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 Nick Dahlstrom who submitted a recipe for lemon ricotta cookies. Send your own recipes to david {at} youarenotsosmart.com.Links and SourcesDownload – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudPrevious EpisodesBoing Boing PodcastsCookie RecipesThe New Age Bullshit GeneratorOn Bullshit by Harry FrankfurtGordon PennycookOn the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshitCognitive Reflection TestBig Think Article on Cognitive ReflectionBarbara Drescher’s ICBSEverywhere.comWisdomOfChopra.comImage Source: Wikimedia Commons – Stier by Beno Adams

Last month at the LA Comics Arts Festival, I met David Wolter, a Dreamworks animator who draws the autiobiographical indie webcomic Mascot Zodiac. (more…)

“There’s no media anywhere about these guys, but they’re so cool!” That's the thought Tomonobu Yanagi had when he decided to make a magazine about "construction culture." Yanagi was a punk musician in the 1970s, and now manages a waterworks construction firm. He teamed up with Japanese “new journalism” writer Gensho Ishimaru (known for writing about his recreational drug trips) to launch Blue's Magazine. With lavish photos, it covers subjects such as the kind of food construction workers favor (salty, greasy food), what it is like to be on a crew rebuilding the Fukushima area, and the influx of construction workers from Africa and America.From Ignition:Before BLUE’S, no “culture magazine” had ever written profiles of the men who work at construction sites. Because of that, though, there are really no fixed rules or formulas for how to make such a magazine. Every issue’s layout, Ishimaru says, presents a fresh challenge, and forces the pair to reinvent the rules from zero. The best example of this may be the magazine’s cover design, which features photos of construction artist Hironari Kubota in a loincloth

Here's one of my bad habits: when I go to someone's house, I head straight to their bookshelf. I'm not trying to judge the person based on the kinds of books (or lack of books) they own. I do end up judging them, but that's a side effect. I'm just curious about books! I loved looking at this high res photo of designer and all-around interesting person Bret Victor's bookshelf. I want them all!

The title grabbed me in such a way, I had to buy Morgan Parker's Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night without reading a single line. I tore through about half the poems, before realizing I was exhausted and emotionally drained. Parker is an accomplished poet, publisher and creative writing instructor. She builds vivid pictures, and transmits such strong feelings, in so few words, I am thrilled! Parker shares a vivid portrait of life in America, pulling no punches and guided by an unerring moral compass. This collection of poems observes life, from how we use social media to outright discrimination, with an immediacy and power I've rarely found in modern American poetry.Here one of my favorites (via Pank Magazine):If My Housemate Fucks With Me I Would Get So Real (Audition Tape Take 1)I didn’t come here to make friends.Buildings spit their stomachs at meand I spit back, down the sidewalkinto a bitch’s hair. I am a foreheadcareening in clouds, a dirty tree branchbrushing against the shinglesof the production room. I amgroundbreaking: two as one.Brooding tattooed over my art.Otherwise, black.Can do angry, can’t doaccents. I need little coaching,provocation. Opinionated andEverything a man wants.Lips and boobs camera-ready.If I hear you’re talking shit about mein your confessional interview,please knowseven birds have fallen dead at my feetright out of the sky.I learned this right hook herewhen I was only six. Bitch, please.I’m so real my hair is going gray,legs bruised up like tree bark,veins of my neck as swollen asripe fruit, the cheeks of what is growing.Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night by Morgan Parker via Amazon

I could get lost on this page for weeks. The stereoscopic views are great, if you know how to see them with your eyes.On January 6th, 2016, The New York Public Library made over 187K digital items in the public domain available for high resolution download. This is one of many experiments by the NYPL Labs to help patrons understand and explore what was contained in that release.

Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet created the "Ethiopian caterpillar" in 1820 (or thereabouts) for a wealthy Chinese collector. It's covered in gold and encrusted in jewels and peals. It was sold at Sotheby’s in 2010 for $415,215.From the Oddment Emporium:When the automaton movement is engaged, the caterpillar crawls realistically, its body moving up and down simulating the undulations of a caterpillar by means of a set of gilt-metal knurled wheels. The automata work is composed of a barrel, cam and two levers all working together to create the crawling motion.[via]

Reddit has published a hardcover compendium of the editor's favorite AMAs from r/IAmA. The 400 page tome, Ask Me Anything, includes AMAs with Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Martha Stewart, the Waffle House Grill Masters, Spike Lee, Bill Gates, Bette Midler, and many more. The book contains original portraits by u/youngluck and introductions from the r/IAmA Mods. Of course, the AMAs are available for free online but this is a tangible object, limited edition, etc. $35."Ask Me Anything (A collection of Reddit's best from r/IAmA Volume 1)" (Amazon)

Tommy Funderburk used to be a copyright troll whose company, Payartists, sent legal threats to people accused of copyright infringement, though they didn't represent any actual artists (the closest they came was in representing Frank Zappa's widow). (more…)

Guitar by the great Albert Lee. Sorry, I could not find this in better quality.

Some people prefer vinyl LPs over MP3s. And it's likely that some people would rather make films instead of videos. That's one reason why the Eastman Kodak Co. announced it will make a Super 8 film camera again. Kodak launched the first Super 8 camera at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and continued to make them until 1982, when camcorders took over.Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke says the new camera, which will have a digital viewfinder, will be used by pros and film school students who like the unique qualities of analog recording. It will arrive in the fall, and cost between $400 and $750. Processing will cost between $50 to $75 per cartridge.From WSJ:Mr. Clarke said Kodak has received expressions of support for the new camera by many Hollywood directors, including Steven Spielberg and “Star Wars” director J.J. Abrams, who directed a 2011 film called Super 8 and was famously hired by Mr. Spielberg as a 14-year-old to work on the older director’s Super 8 film archive.Great news. Let's just hope Kodak doesn't emulate Vivitar's advertising campaign:

Saizai, who is seeking an injunction against the TSA's new mandatory full-body screening test (but only for people they don't like), flew out of SEA-TAC on Dec 31 and was told that the full-body scanner was mandatory. (more…)

The New York Public Library is aggressively digitizing the public domain works in its collections, adding high-quality machine-readable metadata to each of the hundreds of thousands of assets, providing an API, offering residencies to remixers who do interesting things with the collection, and offering all those assets in high-rez with "No permission required. No restrictions on use." (more…)

The UK's Parliament, forced by public petition (link), must debate banning racist nylon toilet brush Donald Trump from entering the country. It would be "a mistake" to do so, his organization warned Wednesday, promising "consequences" in the event that the ban happens.The United Kingdom's proposed Donald Trump ban arose after Trump's widely criticized call for a Muslim ban in the United States. British Prime Minister David Cameron has deemed Trump's proposal "divisive, unhelpful, and quite simply wrong." A petition circulating in the U.K. has earned more than 560,000 signatures calling for Trump to be turned away from Britain's borders.However, according to the Trump Organization, a ban would "alienate the many millions of United States citizens who wholeheartedly support Mr. Trump and have made him the forerunner by far in the 2016 presidential election." Further, the Trump Organization warned that were the U.K. to take any action against its namesake, it would "force The Trump Organization to immediately end [investments in Turnberry] and all future investments we are currently contemplating in the United Kingdom." Jeva LangeNice little island you have there, Britain. Shame if something hyuuuuuge were to happen to it.

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…)

There are many types of designers, but not many designers that can do it all. Take these four courses and you'll be a diamond in the rough--ready to take the tech world by a storm.Here's a breakdown of what you will be getting in the bundle that's only $49: 1Web Design Course$777 Value2App Design Course$465 Value3Game Design Course$299 Value4Basic WordPress Course$299 Value

Jon Lebkowsky writes, "Bruce Sterling and I are at it again... State of the World 2016 started today and runs for two weeks." (more…)

Erik Söderberg, a multimedia artist based in Sweden, created this series of geometric GIFs: "Fractal Experience Part 2." (more…)

Our refrigerator has a bad butter tray design. If you forget to lower the butter tray door and then close the refrigerator door, the butter tray door will get pinched between the refrigerator door and the refrigerator. If you close the refrigerator door too quickly, the butter tray door will crack. This happened a few months ago, and I couldn't find the piece that broke off. But it still had enough of the hinge left on it to function. Today, I forgot to lower the tray door again and the whole corner snapped off, rendering it non-functional. This time, I was able to find the broken piece. I reattached it with Bondic, a liquid plastic welding material that cures in 4 seconds when exposed to the UV LED. It creates a strong bond, especially if you roughen the surfaces of the broken pieces with coarse sandpaper. The resulting blob of plastic doesn't look good, but it beats paying $31 to buy a new "dairy bin assembly."This video shows you how to use Bondic and gives examples of what you can repair with it:https://youtu.be/xTsfwL61CR8https://youtu.be/GqflCZF0e0E

In a huge victory for press freedom, New Zealand’s High Court has ruled decisively in favor of independent journalist Nicky Hager in his case against the New Zealand government for raiding his house and seizing his family’s possessions in 2014. (more…)

Introduction to DIY: Becoming a MakerAn Online Skillshare Class by Mark FrauenfelderSkillshare is a terrific online learning community for creative people. It teaches you new skills through well-made videos with great production values. I've been using Skillshare to teach myself Adobe After Effects. All the videos feature people who are professionals in their field. I love this site. I taught a couple of classes for Skillshare as part of its Month of Learning for January. One of my classes is about learning how to use the Arduino electronics prototyping platform and the other is about how to develop a maker mindset. You can use this link to sign up for my classes.

Bill Barnwell topped the scales at 334.7 pounds on January 1, 2105. This year, he's a little over 200. In this essay he writes about his depression, body image, compulsive eating, and what he did about it. Barnwell describes his compulsive eating as "the fear of missing out."My compulsive eating had little to do with hunger and was almost never enjoyable. Instead, it was like trying to chase a vague, indefinable comfort, some satisfaction that never arrived — or even could arrive. It was the fear of missing out, but for food and constantly. I would struggle to pick between two fast food places and just stop at each of their drive-thrus, hiding the soda cup and the wrappers from the first one so the second cashier wouldn’t see, because being caught in my embarrassing act was somehow more shamefug than the actual behavior I was committing. The idea of just waiting for another day just wasn’t realistic to me; I absolutely, compulsively had to get that sandwich from Wendy’s. The act of ordering the food, of making the conscious choice to indulge, was far more important than eating the stupid thing.

Of Oz the Wizard from Matt Bucy on Vimeo.I can't imagine how much time it took Matt Bucy to cut up The Wizard of Oz and reassemble every word of dialog into alphabetical order. The resulting movie is called Of Oz the Wizard

Local Progress is a national coordinating organization for left-wing US city councillors that supports initiatives like higher minimum wages, bans on fracking and deportation detention centers, multilingual information for voters, guaranteed sick leave, predictable working hours for part-timers, restricting foreclosures, and improving access to voting. (more…)

Several years after Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died, his heirs found a cache of floppy disks. It's taken until now, some 20 years later, for the data to be recovered. The reason it took so long is awe-inspiring: he made his own computers, only switching to commercial products near the end of his life.The floppy disks were used with the custom computers, but unfortunately one of those computers had been auctioned off and the other one was no longer operational. Roddenberry’s estate sent the floppies to DriveSavers, which spent three months writing software that could read the disks in the absence of any documentation or manuals for the custom-built OS.But what did they find? They're not saying, yet!This, of course, leaves one more question: What, exactly, is on the disks? Mike Cobb, director of engineering at DriveSavers, confirmed that they found “lots” of documents. The company will undoubtedly have a confidentially clause signed with the Roddenberry estate, which likely explains why it won’t be revealing what it found. But in a major anniversary year that will see a new Star Trek movie come to fruition, with a new Star Trek TV series premiering on CBS All Access in 2017, there could be some surprises in store.The custom computer looks wonderful, and very focused upon its word-processing purpose. I wonder how hard it'd be to make a replica (or perhaps an homage, with a Raspberry Pi, a cap-swappable mechanical keyboard, elbow grease...)

https://player.vimeo.com/video/138516641Marcus Rosentrater composited the first six Star Wars movies into a single videostream, with the audio mixed so that you can -- more or less -- work out all the individual dialog and SFX, and with selective transparency in the video streams to let the action from each frame shine through the overlays (you can also watch a similar work created with just the original trilogy). (more…)

Babypod is a wireless speaker designed to be worn by pregnant women in their vaginas so as to bombard their foetuses with music with minimal distortion. (more…)

Rey, the female lead of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is not among the character tokens one may play in the film's tie-in version of Monopoly. Featured are only male characters, including one not even present in the new movie. It is the latest in a line of official merchandise that has drawn ire for prioritising less prominent male characters over Rey. … A Star Wars figurine pack released by Target also failed to include Rey or other new female Star Wars characters such as Captain Phasma, played by Gwendoline Christie. The six featured characters are Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, Finn, Poe Dameron, a Stormtrooper and a TIE Fighter pilot.Hasbro, the game's maker, claims that including Rey would have been a spoiler.…Julie Duffy, the company's Global Communications vice president told the Daily News. "Rey was not included to avoid revealing a key plot line that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance," she said.Slightly less laughable is the excuse sometimes aired that, as there is an individual figurine for Rey available, people should stop complaining about the sets from which she is excluded. After all, TIE Fighter pilot is a very important character.https://twitter.com/holden/status/679126771472531458/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://vimeo.com/150423718This alphabetized version of the Wizard of Oz, edited so that everything from the titles onward is presented in alphabetical order, dates from 2004. It makes a good companion to other alphabetized classics like The Well Sorted Bible and that alphabetical edition of Joyce's Ulysses. (via Kottke)

Earbuds often don’t fit well, a literally uncomfortable truth that extends to even Apple EarPods. Earhoox offer an easy solution in the form of silicone molds that wrap around your EarPods, helping them apply traction and pressure to key points on your ear. The result? Your EarPods will fit like a dream, staying in place after inserted and wearing so comfortably you’ll forget they’re there.Ensure your Apple EarPods fit comfortably & securelyGroove to your tunes knowing your earbuds will stay in placeStretch to fit around your EarPods, then use immediatelyWear comfortably even after frequent, extended useNever deal w/ loose, uncomfortable earbuds ever againGet a 2-pack of Earhoox for only $15. [embed]https://youtu.be/KdaG15TthZw[/embed]

Brian David Johnson (previously) is the futurist and theorist who used design fiction to help the company think about how its products would work in the future (I wrote him a story about the painful death of passwords). (more…)

Ronald Deibert from the University of Toronto's Citizenlab (previously) sez, "The Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto has a job posting for a security researcher/malware analyst. (more…)

The domestic terrorists who occupied the Malheur National Widlife Refuge Building in Burns, Oregon were mobilized over the plight of ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond who were convicted of arson, sentenced to a year in prison, released after time-served, and then re-sentenced after the fed prosecutors appealed the judge's sentence. (more…)