Boing Boing

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…)

Ministers are lobbying to make it a criminal offense for a tech company to inform a user that the UK government is spying on them. (more…)

Today, the City Pages newspaper of Minneapolis published an article by Jay Boller looking into why Maureen Herman had been fired from Babes in Toyland, the iconic punk band she'd been a member of since 1992. Maureen, a close friend of mine, told me a couple of months ago she'd been kicked out because of an essay she wrote in July for Boing Boing, titled "The Jackie Fox rape disclosure shows we still have a lot to learn." In the essay, Maureen wrote about Runaways bassist Jackie Fox's revelation that she'd been drugged and raped by the band's manager, Kim Fowley in 1975. Maureen wrote that Fox's "rape happened in front a roomful of people, including two of her bandmates, Cherie Currie and Joan Jett. In the course of the article’s investigation and Fox’s disclosure, many bystanders have come forward, affirming what they saw and who was present that night in 1975." (Disclosure: I'm also friendly with Jackie. She's been to my house, we play in the same trivia league, and we communicate via email frequently.)Joan Jett, the Runaway's guitarist, responded to the news by denying that the rape happened. Maureen wrote in her essay, "With one nudge of denial from an iconic Joan Jett, we witness the beginnings of the public collapse of Fox’s credibility." A short while after her essay ran on Boing Boing, Maureen was fired by Babe's in Toyland drummer Lori Barbero and lead singer Kat Bjelland.Maureen did not speak publicly about the reasons why she was fired, until December 21, when she posted a note of Facebook that said, "Despite the severe fallout from my own bandmates about writing the article, and it being the catalyst for me getting kicked out of my band, I regret nothing. I will never be silenced, by ANYONE."From City Pages:In the comment thread of her Facebook post, Herman suggests that Barbero was uncomfortable with the essay in part due to her production work for Fea, a band signed to the label owned by former Runaways singer Joan Jett. Barbero says Herman taking issue with that arrangement "caused a little problem," but ultimately was not the reason Herman was fired. Drummer Barbero was quoted by City Pages as saying, "She’s so toxic, I could give a fuck what she says, to be quite honest. It just pushes my buttons, I guess. Over all these years I’ve realized the only thing I can do when anything is negative and toxic, you have to let it go. And that’s the reason we have to have a new bass player. It has nothing to do with rape. The relationship didn't work out and we moved on, and that's really the bottom line."The original version of the City Pages article did not include a statement by Maureen, because Boller had tried to contact Maureen through Facebook's instant messaging service, and Maureen's preferences were set to direct people not on her friends list to a page she doesn't check frequently. However, Boller and Maureen connected later today and Maureen sent him a statement, which was added to the article:“[At the first show back in L.A. in August] Kat gave me a list of seven grievances that Lori had for why I should be kicked out of the band,” Herman says. “The catalyst, Kat told me, was writing the article about Jackie Fox, because [Lori] felt that me being critical of Joan Jett threatened Lori’s business relationship, which I had no idea even existed.”Among the other grievances, according to Herman: Use of psychiatric medication (“the height of ignorance,” says Herman, who has been sober for 12 years).“With Kat’s help, I wrote a response to her grievances, trying to acknowledge my part in any of these things, and a willingness to try and work it out,” Herman says. “What I did not apologize for was the article, because there’s nothing to apologize for. Kat never wanted me out of the band. Kat tried vehemently to keep me in.”Herman says she eventually reached Barbero by phone, and says she was met with the response, “Kat was supposed to fire you.” About a half an hour later, Herman says, she received a text from Bjelland reading, “Sorry, you’re done.”(Image: Ana Viotti/Flickr)

https://youtu.be/dP7k08Ytdq4This street corner in Chilliwack, British Columbia is a real hotspot for petty crime. In this video you can what was captured by a home security camera system in 2015: cars going backwards, arrests, attempted break-ins, drivers doing stupid things, pedestrians making weird noises, trespassers, car chases, beatdowns, muggings, brawls, burglary, and fire hydrant vandalism.[via]

It should suffice to point out that, like the other terrorists, 25-year-old Mohammed Rehman's plotting was not encrypted. Remarkably, Rehman took to Twitter to ask for advice on which of those two targets he should choose: "Westfield shopping centre or London underground?" Rehman asked. "Any advice would be appreciated greatly." The post carried a link to an al-Qaida press release about the 2005 London bombings. Sky News reports that Rehman's Twitter name was "Silent Bomber," with the handle @InService2Godd. As if that weren't enough, his Twitter bio read: "Learn how to make powerful explosives from the comfort of ones' bedroom." The Twitter account has since been suspended.Sky News says Rehman was also openly searching for information about the London bombings and information on how to make bombs: "The same day [as his tweet asking for target suggestions], he trawled YouTube for London bombings and Shehzad Tanweer—one of the 7/7 bombers who he referred to as his 'beloved predecessor.' As well as buying bomb making equipment Rehman searched online for instructions to make explosives and researched violent and extreme Islamic ideology."It's Four Lions for real.

A majestic giant squid (Architeuthis) made the scene at Toyama Bay in central Japan. At an estimated 3.7 meters (12.1 feet), researchers think this was a juvenile."My curiosity was way bigger than fear, so I jumped into the water and go close to it," Diving Shop Kaiyu proprietor Akinobu Kimura told CNN."This squid was not damaged and looked lively, spurting ink and trying to entangle his tentacles around me. I guided the squid toward to the ocean, several hundred meters from the area it was found in, and it disappeared into the deep sea."For more on the mystery and science of the giant squid, don't miss Mark Dery's classic Boing Boing feature: "The Kraken Wakes: What Architeuthis is Trying to Tell Us"

Inimitable singer and bassist Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead and Hawkwind, died yesterday. He was 70. "If you didn't do anything that wasn't good for you it would be a very dull life," he once said. "What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous."Above, my favorite Motörhead song, "Ace of Spades," and below, my favorite Hawkwind song, "Silver Machine." (New York Times)https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=59&v=yao_T2adl14

71 year old Thomas Podgoretsky has resided in the UK for 48 years on a permanent leave to remain visa. He has four British children and six British grandchildren, as well as three British ex-wives. The Home Office has given him 72 hours to prepare for his deportation to the USA, despite his having no living relatives there. (more…)

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! (more…)

Boleskine House, the infamous Loch Ness estate previously owned by occultist Aleister Crowley and later Led Zeppelin guitarist (and Crowley enthusiast) Jimmy Page, was mostly destroyed in a fire last week. The 18th century residence was a second home for a Dutch family who apparently were out shopping when the fire began, likely in the kitchen. They had purchased the property several years ago from Annette MacGillivray who had bought it from Page and then renovated it.“When we bought it, it was a hovel, just a shell," MacGillivray told The Press and Journal. "We spent a lot of money, stripping it back to the bare walls and re-roofing it. It had four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a huge drawing room, dining room, library and various smaller rooms. It is unlikely it will ever be rebuilt unless there is someone out there with an interest in the occult wanting to spend a lot of money.”

Surfing the Web on a public Wi-Fi connection can be dangerous business. Steer clear of hackers with protection from ZenVPN. You’ll be free to access any of their servers located in 32 locations around the world, and can rest easy knowing your activity and data is fully encrypted. Plus, by virtually traveling across borders, you’ll unblock any sites that face geo-restrictions like Netflix and Hulu. The Internet will be a safer and unrestricted place—so you can officially get your zen on.Enjoy uninterrupted Internet surfing—ZenVPN stays out of your way as it runsEasily download & install the service w/ zero configurationEnjoy top-notch connectivity thanks to meticulous network allocationEncrypt all your traffic, all the timeMake sure your online activity isn’t recorded (no logs!)Join a global network of 32 locations & growingDon’t get blocked from BitTorrent connections (like w/ other VPNs)Save 90% on a 5-year subscription of ZenVPN in the Boing Boing Store.

Forget 8-bit videogames, the vinyl revival, and the resurgence of cassette tapes. Hundreds of households in Scotland are watching black and white television. The data comes from the organization that handles the mandatory licenses required to operate a television set. The annual fee is £145.50 to watch or record on a color set and £49.00 for black and white."It's astounding that more than 550 households in Scotland still watch on a black and white telly, especially now that over half of homes access TV content over the internet, on smart TVs," TV Licensing Scotland spokesman Jason Hill told the BBC News.According to the Museum of Communications' Jim McLauchlan, "There are an increasing number of collectors throughout the UK collecting black and white sets from as early as the 1940s onwards, with some now fetching good prices. In general, younger visitors to the museum show very little interest in the black and white televisions but the occasional senior visitor will comment in a nostalgic way."

I stumbled across Jody DeLucco's Pinterest board of graveyard and cemetery art. It's filled with surprising, funny, sad, and just plain weird gravestones and cemetery markers.

The world's most famous basketball prankster, George "Meadowlark" Lemon of the Harlem Globetrotters, has died at age 83. I was fortunate to see Meadowlark perform with the Globetrotters several times in the 1970s. He was not only a master of the ball, but also a delightful and hilarious performer whose joy was infectious. (CNN)

Neodymium magnets can be so powerful as to be dangerous: you don't want two of them "spotting" one another when a fleshy fingertip is in the way of true love. So how do you ship a 6" one safely?"So, is it really shielded?" asks YouTube's Braniac, chuckling to himself. "No."The magnets featured in the video appear to be from magnetportal.de—what's a good place to buy irresponsible magnets in the U.S.?

Six years ago, I wrote a column comparing IT managers' prohibitions on using your own devices and applications to abstinence-only sex ed: a high-handed approach that leaves its audience ignorant and resentful, and dedicated to undermining you behind your back. (more…)

Writing in the Globe and Mail, University of Toronto Munk Chair of Innovation Studies Dan Breznitz explains how the TPP -- negotiated in secret without any oversight or accountability -- will enrich a few multinationals at the expense of US and Canadian growth, making the whole trade zone less competitive and more ripe to be overtaken by Chinese firms. (more…)

Remember when Internet Person JWZ began to append sarcastic messages to the "This building monitored by CCTV" sign that appeared without warning in his lobby ("FEAR THE UNKNOWN - MONSTERS ARE REAL" "DON'T SUSPECT YOUR NEIGHBOR: REPORT HIM!" "DRONE STRIKES AUTHORIZED 7PM - 5AM")? Eventually he got bored of it, but he's brought it back this Xmas, in Christmas Bauble form. (more…)

Become a Cloud guru with this AWS Associate Certification Bundle. These three courses, all brimming with mini lectures that are just five to 20 minutes long, take you from newbie to pro as efficiently as possible. These classes are designed to help you pass the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, AWSCertified Developer, and AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate exams—all essential to a career as an AWS professional. Once you become certified for all three, your job prospects will increase dramatically, and you’ll likely give a boost to your salary, too.Prep for all three exams w/ 26 hours of instructionGet a broad overview of the AWS platform & learn about individual elements like Cloud Front, Autoscaling, RDS & moreDive into CloudWatch, the main monitoring solution offered by AWSLearn how to create fault-tolerant architectures in the cloudExplore data managementLearn from video lessons, practice exam questions & discussion forumsGet hands-on practice w/ an 80-minute mock exam at the end of each courseLearn as quickly & efficiently as possible w/ quick lectures (only 5-20 minutes each)Get this AWS Associate Certification Bundle for 87% off in the Boing Boing Store.

Ever since the TSA broke the law and abused him, Sai has been suing them over their illegal conduct, forcing them into court and then demonstrating to the court that the agency refuses to play by any rules, even its own. (more…)