Boing Boing

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…)

I bought this wall-mounted magnetic strip to have easy access to tools I need for simple household tasks: opening packages, hanging pictures, assembling furniture, tightening loose nuts, installing door locks, measuring things, simple plumbing repairs, etc. It's much better than keeping the tools in a kitchen drawer, because I can instantly find the tool(s) I need. The magnet is very strong, so I don't have to worry about a tool falling off. The strips come in various lengths. The one I bought is 24 inches long. The shortest I've seen on Amazon is seven inches.

This is from way back in 2012, but Geoff Micks determined which U.S. president would win in a massive knife fight and it is essential reading.The scenario had a few rules—the combatants are in the best health of their presidencies, they're in the Colosseum, each are issued with a standard Gerber Combat Knife, FDR is permitted a motorized wheelchair—but they are otherwise left to their stabby devices.Each president's chances are individually discussed. [via JWZ]

It is time once again for the Edge Annual Question, a mind-bending and boundary-busting online convening of scientists, technologists, and other big thinkers all responding to a single question at the intersection of science and culture. From physicists to artists, cognitive psychologists to journalists, evolutionary biologists to maverick anthropologists, these are people who Edge founder, famed literary agent, and BB pal John Brockman describes as the "third culture (consisting) of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." This year, John asked: What do you consider the most interesting (scientific) news? What makes it important?" Nearly two hundred really smart people responded, including Steven Pinker, Nina Jablonski, Freeman Dyson, Stewart Brand, Marti Hearst, Philip Tetlock, Kevin Kelly, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Douglas Rushkoff, Lisa Randall, Alan Alda, Jared Diamond, Pamela McCorduck, and on and on. "Science is the only news," writes Stewart Brand in the introduction. "When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.' We now live in a world in which the rate of change is the biggest change." Science has thus become a big story, if not the big story: news that will stay news."2016 : WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT?

In 1984, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope made its television debut on CBS. Mark Hamill himself hosted the introduction to the film, sporting a sharp tuxedo. Classy. Most classy. (Thanks, UPSO!)

The late, great Natalie Cole, who passed away last week, bares her beautiful soul on The Midnight Special in 1975.

A group of white separatist domestic terrorists have occupied the Malheur National Widlife Refuge Building in Burns, Oregon, fronted by the racist terrorist leader Cliven Bundy, who organized supporters to point sniper rifles at federal officers without any consequence in Nevada last year. (more…)

4AM is a prolific computer historian whose practice involves cracking the copy protection on neglected Apple ][+ floppy disks, producing not just games, but voluminous logs that reveal the secret history of the cat-and-mouse between crackers and publishers. (more…)

Cate writes, "I came across a collection of snapshots at a thrift store and recognized the historic nature of the photos, which documented the 14th World Science Fiction Convention.I purchased the photos from a thrift store in Santa Barbara, California on December 31, 2015. I am looking for help to identify attendees featured in the photos." (more…)

The Website Obesity Crisis, Maciej Ceglowski's (previously) Web Directions talk, documents the worsening epidemic of web-site bloat, and dissects the causes. (more…)

The nascent science of hangovers -- launched in earnest in 2009 with the Alcohol Hangover Research Group -- has ruled out all the traditional culprits for your misery. A promising new culprit is inflammatory response to elevated levels of cytokines, molecules that transmit messages through the immune system. (more…)

In Meet the people who have volunteered to die on Mars, Walker Lamond writes about the thousands of people who wanted to compete to be the first humans to travel to Mars and colonize it. The only catch was that they can never come back—ever.Science Fiction legend Kim Stanley Robinson offered a stark wakeup call about the prospects for human survival beyond planet Earth in Our Generation Ships Will Sink. It's an undeniable case for ecological stewardship: put simply, it'll always be easier to make our own world a fit place to live than to terraform other worlds—or to risk spending our children in the deep. It will not surprise you, however, to learn that the traffic charts were mostly dominated by posts such as Mark Frauenfelder's 16-year-old girl who took nude selfie photos faces adult sex charges, a perfect storm of absurdity, injustice and authoritarianism: he knocked the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office for thinking it made sense to charge a 16-year-old girl with two felony sex crimes, with herself as her own victim, for taking nude selfies. Porn actors must wear protective goggles during shoots: California safety standard was another of Mark's top postings, landing at a similar intersection of government, sex and stupidity. (Police awfulness crops up again and again in our most well-read items: Lars Forseti's Unarmed man flags down LAPD seeking help. They shoot him in the head. lurks close to the top 10)Cory Doctorow left London for Los Angeles this year, and made no bones about why he left the U.K. In "my family is moving to Los Angeles in two weeks. Many Londoners understand intuitively why we're going" he charts the growing unpleasantness of Britain's capital city and its diminishing appeal to anyone who isn't very well-off. His blogs post linking to Consumerist's GM says you don't own your car, you just license it and to Annalee Newitz's Gawker item exposing the details of Ashley Madison's sad, bot-powered shakedown of lonely arseholes ("only 1,492 female-profile users ever checked their messages, compared to 20m men.") were also hits.David Pescovitz's top blog posts of the year were "Father and son take same photo for 27 years" and "Dildos dangling from power lines in Portland". If someone could combine long-unfolding nostalgia with sex toys, they'd have the ultimate Boing Boing blog post.Xeni Jardin's post about climate change denier Rupert Murdoch buying National Geographic was a huge hit—the $725 million dollar sale brought an end to more than a century of independence. Other hits from Xeni included how to talk about Caitlyn Jenner: a guide to speaking and writing about transgender people, a useful primer on the happy mutations to language and culture that helped 2015 on its way. Can you guess who Arab-looking man of Syrian descent found in garage building what looks like a bomb is about?This year, I annoyed the right people with Rickrolling is sexist, racist and often transphobic in context. When I wrote that it was highly problematic, especially in its dependence upon the semiotics of cisgendered discourse, I had no idea how many people would become angry without even reading the article.My short story Hakim, the Masked Gamer of Minneapolis remixed Borges, internet madness and narcissism, and won a little praise and many clicks. But not as many as blog posts about porn and a mystery man shitting in golf holes.BB publiser Jason Weisberger's top posts were Bet you recognize this famously sampled song and a charming vintage snapshot of himself as a kid: I was once a student leader: "This is cracking me up, from Santa Monica College's 1989 course catalog." Of his various photographs of Muir Beach, California, the most successful was one where you can't see anything. Turneresque!In the only technique to learn something new, James Altucher warns that learning is both less and more specific than we appreciate: "I had a friend who wanted to get better at painting. But she thought she had to be in Paris, with all the conditions right. She never made it to Paris. Now she sits in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, filling out paperwork all day." Why Bob Ross is the perfect let’s play-er, by Leigh Alexander at Offworld, honored the famous painter’s posthumous return to popular culture, an event that "encapsulates the beauty of watching and learning." Her introspective piece, "All the women I know in video games are tired", charted difficult times for women writers who tackled the genre.Our top review of the year was Laura Hudson's look at a hit video game from director Hidetaka Miyazaki: In Bloodborne's brutal world, I found myself. "I've always wanted to know the difference between perseverance and masochism," she writes. "This is the game that taught me." (more…)

San Bernardino is ground zero for the bunkum industry that sells "behavioral detection" courses to law enforcement, the place where the most cops and government employees are taught to spot "lone wolf" "active shooters" before they snap -- but none of Syed Rizwan Farook's expensively trained co-workers noticed that he and his wife Tashfeen Malik were about to go on a shooting spree. (more…)

Jerry Seinfeld usually brings along a fellow comedian for a ride with him in a vintage car to a coffee shop, but this time he mixed things up a bit by inviting the President to accompany him. Unfortunately, the Secret Service wouldn't let Seinfeld and Obama drive past the White House gate, so they ended up having coffee in the White House basement, which looks like a set for a 1970s sitcom about an aluminum siding telemarketing boilerhose. There, they had a fun conversation while drinking low-quality coffee made in a Mr. Coffee machine. I'm glad they aren't wasting money on Keurig pods, at least. From Crackle: Just Tell Him You’re the President

Adam Driver did a great job but I still prefer the original actor.

Ian Murdock is half of the founding team of Debian, a popular and foundational flavor of GNU/Linux from which Ubuntu and Mint are descended. Earlier this week, he posted a series of bizarre, racialized tweets in which he threatened to commit suicide to call attention to the police brutality he was experiencing. He is now dead, though the cause of his death has not been disclosed. (more…)