Boing Boing

About 16 percent of Americans identify Bernie Sanders as their top choice for the next president; Trump is preferred by about 11 percent of the population -- Sanders is nearly 50% more popular than Trump, but Trump outperforms him in press headlines by as much as 23:1. (more…)

Ole Vlad's figured out how to troll the west: celebrate corrupt, populist strongmen who brazenly lie while fronting for the rich and powerful. (more…)

Scarfolk (previously) is the English country town that is caught in a perpetual ten-year loop from 1970-1980; in 1977, while the rest of the world was getting Kenner Star Wars toys, Scarfolk's children were treated to a line of Star Wars medical equipment from the good people at PalliativeToy. (more…)

When someone complains on Facebook about an unsatisfactory experience at particular business establishment, there's a chance that Ben Palmer and Nick Price will respond as if they were representatives for that business. The duo are currently having fun calling themselves Chipolte (sic) Grill and trolling people who think they are communicating with official spokespersons of the hygiene-troubled restaurant.And just for fun, here's one where they made fun of mega-rich televangelist Joel Osteen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sIThe Extra Credits video series has a great segment on Sesame Credit, the Chinese government's public-private "reputation economy" that uses your social media postings, purchases and known associates to assign you a public score rating your citizenship and reliability. (more…)

https://youtu.be/2GHx8s837O8The AP description says, "Surveillance video shows a man allegedly driving his pickup truck into the lobby of an Oklahoma hotel." And the employees in the lobby allegedly didn't like it when they were almost murdered.

America's 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it easy to censor the Internet: under the statute, you can make virtually anything disappear by claiming, without evidence, that it infringes your copyright, and there are almost no penalties for abuse. (more…)

There's a widespread understanding that the vaccine-autism link and climate denial are bullshit, but there are plenty of widespread science myths that are repeated by people who should know better, from the idea that early screening lowers cancer mortality to the idea that the human population is growing exponentially. (more…)

Or you can just buy one from dandelionpaperweights.com or Amazon for $80. The dandelion bloom, with parachute-like seeds, that are about to disperse, was captured in a crystal clear dandelion paperweight. The glass-like half globe, allows the dandelion seed head to be viewed from all sides. Each dandelion seed puff, also known as a dandelion clock, is hand-picked. Due to the nature of the product, each paperweight is unique, with no two being identical, making it a very special gift.They even have a blog, though there have been no updates since 2014's "Dandelions are delicious."DUPE: Previously

Drug entrepreneur Martin Shkreli, 32, made himself infamous by hiking the price of life-saving generic pill from from $13.50 to $750. If you suspected that such a sterling human being might have fingers in other pies, you're not alone, as he's now been arrested on securities fraud charges.Bloomberg's Christie Smythe and Keri Geiger write that the past is catching up with him.The federal case against him has nothing to do with pharmaceutical costs, however. Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he’d been chief executive officer, and sued by its board.In the case that closely tracks that suit, federal prosecutors accused Shkreli of engaging in a complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements. A New York lawyer, Evan Greebel, was also arrested early Thursday. He's accused of conspiring with Shkreli in part of the scheme.The BBC describes him as The most hated man in America, but that doesn't get to the heart of it. There's a perfect compatibility between a new breed of completely unguarded narcissist and the ever-shallower way news is presented. The sweet spot might not last long, but while it does last, expect more Shreklis.

The Entertainment Software Association has been documenting how women now comprise almost half of the gaming population in U.S., but the Pew survey highlights persistent differences in how they are gaming. Not only do boys play more, they tend to be networked gamers; 55% of boys play with friends online at least once a week, compared to 25% of girls. And to top it off, boys seem to have a lot more fun playing games online. They say they feel connected to other online gamers at higher rates than do girls who game online (84% versus 62%).Plenty of folks are concerned about videogames promoting violence and antisocial behavior, but we need to pay more attention to what kids miss out on by not engaging in the positive social aspects of gaming. For example, while investigating links between videogames and violence, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson discovered that boys who don't game at all showed the highest risk of getting into fights. These days, video games are what boys do together, so if they aren't gaming, it means they might not be part of the boys' club. While it's not exactly basketball or football, being a great League of Legends player or Minecrafter can be a source of peer status. In Silicon Valley, coders bond on weekends through the After Hours Gaming League and the angst over who gets invited to high status Settlers of Catan games is reminiscent of elite old boys' networks' bonding over golf and tennis.In addition to conferring social benefits, gaming can be a gateway into science and technology related interests, skills, and careers. Progressive researchers and game developers have long sought to make games more attractive to girls for this reason. The recent firestorm over Gamergate recapitulates these concerns over gender representation in the gaming industry. The National Academy of Sciences released a report in 2011 that argued that educators should do more work to tap computer games as an avenue to science learning and interests. (more…)

A Baltimore judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after jurors were unable to reach a verdict in the case of Freddie Gray, who died after suffering severe injuries while in police custody.After three days of deliberations, a hung jury was announced for all the charges filed against William Porter, the officer charged with manslaughter, reckless endangerment, second-degree assault and misconduct in connection with Gray's death.Gray, who was arrested after running from police in April, died after his neck was broken inside the back of a police van, which made multiple stops after picking him before heading to the station. He was not seat-belted in the van and Porter allegedly refused to get him medical care.Five officers were charged over Gray's death, but NBC News reports that the case against Porter was deemed by prosecutors to be their strongest and an indicator of their chances of success in the other trials.Over the past two days, the jury of four black women, three black men, three white women and two white men gave signals that they were locked in tense discussions. On Tuesday they told Judge Barry Williams that they were deadlocked and he sent them back to deliberate.Earlier on Wednesday the jurors asked for a transcript of witness testimony — a request the judge denied. Shortly after, jurors let the court know that they were hung.

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…)

The LAPD received 1,356 complaints of "biased policing" (AKA racial profiling) from 2012-2014, but after investigating them, the investigating officials decided that their co-workers had done nothing wrong -- ever. (more…)

It's hard to make sense of the politics of Star Wars (a Senate whose electees include senators that represent government agencies; an elected princess who calls a no-confidence vote, etc), but the more you think about Luke's "hero's journey," the more it starts to resemble the "radicalization" process that we're supposed to be watching out for to keep us all safe from ISIS. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=637&v=MCI4bUk4vuMIf the only answer to "a bad guy with a gun" is "a good guy with a gun," we are totally screwed. (more…)

Thom from the Shadowbinders podcast writes, "Journalist Brady Dale from the New York Observer joins us this episode (MP3) as we talk about the changing business model of webcomics. Are webcomics 'dead' -- or just evolving? How will social media play into the business model of digital comics going forward? And what about the money -- where is the MONEY?!" (more…)

https://vimeo.com/67102223Canadians' data requests overwhelming flow through US cables, even when the communications are within Canada. Since the NSA takes the view that it is legally entitled to collect, inspect and retain foreign communications, this means that almost all Canadian communications are being spied on by a foreign power. (more…)

It took less than 48 hours for public outrage to convince Philips that updating its lamps to reject third-party lightbulbs was a stupid idea. (more…)

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is trying to use a Congressional loophole to push through two attacks on our Internet freedom in the 'omnibus' must-pass budget bill that Congress is expected to file tonight. He wants to include the final version of CISA which has been completely stripped of privacy protections. And he wants to include a rider that would undermine the FCC's ability to enforce the net neutrality protections we fought so hard to win this year. There's still time to stop this sneak attack, go to BattleForTheNet.com or call 1-832-YOUR-NET to call Congress now!

https://youtu.be/EQITm3cS8ZkIn 1968, I eagerly waited for this gasoline commercial to air. It featured people magically scooting around the street on their butts. It was likely the best thing on TV that year.

Taking psychedelic mushrooms just once can change your personality for the rest of your life, according to Katherine MacLean, a postdoctoral researcher at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. From LiveScience:The results, published today (Sept. 29) in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, revealed that while other aspects of personality stayed the same, openness increased after a psilocybin experience. The effect was especially persistent for those who reported a "mystical" experience with their dose. These mystical experiences were marked by a sense of profound connectedness, along with feelings of joy, reverence and peace, MacLean said.

Five hours of simmering Sith. (BenjaminApple, thanks Jordan Kurland!)

See sample pages of http://winkbooks.net/post/134912574252/the-field-guide-to-typography-typefaces-in-the at Wink.Typography is a rich, thought-provoking study with a deep, storied history. And yet, for most of us, it is an unremarkable aspect of modern life. We rarely stop to consider the fonts we use in our family newsletters; we do not question the availability nor the history of Times New Roman or Verdana. Typography surrounds us everywhere, every day, and yet we never see it.Peter Dawson's The Field Guide to Typography: Typefaces in the Urban Landscape seeks to change that by introducing the reader to real-world examples. The book is replete with glossy, full-color photographs paired with histories, category, classification, identifying marks, and everything else you would expect of a working dictionary or encyclopaedia. Additionally, one of the most interesting and aesthetically pleasing aspects of the book are the breakdowns of individual fonts. These illustrations identify and label the various components of a typeface (baseline, descender, etc.) along with suggested meanings and evoked images or feelings.Personally, I found this book while browsing art and design books and found myself captivated by its wealth of information and the stunningly clear way the book’s designers presented this heretofore ignored art that I could see all around me. For me, The Field Guide works not only as an invaluable reference book, but as an inspiration and work of art. I did not intend to write such a somber review. In fact, I had a few (terrible) jokes in mind - Sans serif? Sounds like a beach accident, am I right? - but in looking through the book again, I was struck by just how much I admire the designers and artists who put these typefaces together; their work deserves to be recognised and contemplated and The Field Guide is an excellent way to do exactly that.– Joel NeffThe Field Guide to Typography: Typefaces in the Urban Landscapeby Peter Dawson Prestel2013, 382 pages, 6.2 x 8.2 x 1.5 inches $24 Buy a copy on Amazon

Suzanna Quintan's ex-husband bought a Lifelock account in her name, which let him monitor virtually everything she did in realtime, and then the company stonewalled and refused to help her shut down his access and figure out what he'd learned about her using it. (more…)

The billionaires who bankrolled Mitt Romney and other Republican establishment candidates are becoming disillusioned with the political classes, who give them the mushroom treatment: keep 'em in the dark and shovel shit all over them. (more…)

I love Guillermo del Toro: he’s a Renaissance man who makes deeply artful and emotional horror films and revels in his work. What’s not to like? His soul is bottomless as a well and seems to replenish itself from some miraculous underground source. The humanity in his Spanish-language films Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth plunges right to the heart. His viewpoint as a film maker is unique. His English-language films, on the other hand, have an entirely different sensibility — they’re more pulpy fanboy funhouse. Hellboy and Hellboy II are trippy; Pacific Rim is, well, dreck (sorry about that). Only Crimson Peak, a marvelously lush cinematic 19th century gothic melodrama — a genre extinct for a century — that has strong elements of the supernatural fits comfortably with his Spanish-language films. It was horribly mismarketed by the studio as a horror film, but movies in which the ghosts assist the protagonist are spooky melodramas and not “horror” per se. (more…)

Voight-Kampff Empathy Test, 2015 edition. [NBM Online via Waxy] (more…)

Old Book Illustrations is a search engine and browseable library of—you've guessed it!—the engraved illustrations and litho prints found in old books.Choose the type of illustrations you want to see: animals or people, landscapes, buildings, etc. Choose your favorite illustrators from a list: Gustave Doré, John Leech, Charles H. Bennett...[and] Find illustrations by the title of the book or periodical in which they were published: Æsop's fables, Punch, L'Illustration...The scans are high-resolution (though it appears the scanned items are sometimes worse-for-wear) and most come with lots of details about their original creation and printing.

Last year's New York Public Library podcast featured this wonderful reading (MP3) of A Christmas Carol by Neil Gaiman, reading from the last surviving copy of Dickens own annotated "prompt" text, which Dickens himself used to read from. A perfect, perennial listen for the Christmas season. (via Tor.com)

Widespread human trafficking is a big part of why Thailand is now one the world’s biggest shrimp providers, an Associated Press investigative series details. (more…)

Congressional auditors say The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda,” a violation of federal law, when it launched a massive social media campaign urging Americans to support the Waters of the United States rule. (more…)

A new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a whopping 71% of Americans surveyed believe the many shootings and other acts of mass violence in we've seen in 2015 are now a permanent part of life in our country. (more…)

In 2008, the Red Cross was a dysfunctional mess, so it hired on Gail McGovern, an AT&T exec and Harvard Business School prof, who parachuted in a group of other AT&T alums to oversee a program of rigid, centralized control; mass layoffs;secrecy and funny accounting, an emphasis on "branding"; and a collapse in volunteer morale and public reputation for one of America's most respected charities. (more…)

La Fabrique DIY says, "I wanted to view the Eiffel Tower from my bed so I made a giant periscope with 2 mirrors in order to shift the view from my window."This only works if you live in Paris.

Philips makes a line of "smart" LED lightbulbs and controllers called Hue, that run the Zigbee networking protocol, allowing third-party devices to control their brightness and color. (more…)

In The Guardian, psychologist Tom "Mind Hacks" Stafford outlines five classic scientific studies that underpin much of today's thinking about how we learn things. One of Stafford's favorites is BF Skinner's 1930s claims that "with the right practice conditions – meaning that correct behaviour is appropriately rewarded – any task can be learned using simple associations." In 1995, Keio University researchers took Skinner's efforts further by training pigeons to discriminate between paintings by Monet and Picasso.Like (Skinner), they believed that we underestimate the power of practice and reward in shaping behaviour. After just a few weeks’ training, their pigeons could not only tell a Picasso from a Monet – indicated by pecks on a designated button – but could generalise their learning to discriminate cubist from impressionist works in general.For a behaviourist, the moral is that even complex learning is supported by fundamental principles of association, practice and reward. It also shows that you can train a pigeon to tell a Renoir from a Matisse, but that doesn’t mean it knows a lot about art."The science of learning: five classic studies" (The Guardian)And here's a PDF of the 1995 paper: "Pigeons' Discrimination of Paintings by Monet and Picasso"

Gaffer is a graph database "optimised for retrieving data on nodes of interest" developed by the notorious UK spy agency GCHQ, and now you can download, run and improve it because they've posted it to Github under the permissive, free/open Apache license. (more…)

(more…)

Special bonus: Trailer soundtrack by the Beastie Boys.

Because it’s the holiday season, Lady Parts Justice League is giving back by reminding us about the anti-choice forces responsible for creating these terrorists with a reinterpretation of a scene from the Christmas classic, “Love Actually”.When trying to make sense of these horrifying killing sprees, it's easy to lump the attackers into neat little boxes that give us peace of mind. When we look into those boxes, we don't see ourselves. There’s a box for the “religious extremist” (but only if it’s in the name of Islam) and one for the “delusional loner” (because if we keep pushing the “loner” idea then we don’t have to face the American epidemic of gun violence). But there is one mass murderer who doesn’t easily fit into any box: the abortion clinic terrorist.During his arraignment, Robert Dear said, “I am a warrior for the babies!” 17 times. There's no evidence presented that he had a psychotic episode, but we all hear the voices that dominate our airwaves and the national conversation. Certainly, the clinic terrorist may be a “religious extremist” or a “delusional loner.” What’s different about the abortion clinic attacker is that the voices in their head are not self-created delusions. Rather, they are the voices of mainstream politicians, mainstream religious figures, and mainstream media.

Angie Drobnic Holan, of the respected, nonpartisan factchecking org Politifact has an editorial in the New York Times about the record levels of falsehood in the GOP race, an outlier in a general increase in the literal factualness of political campaigns, thanks to fact-checking orgs like hers. (more…)

Matt Haughey (of Metafilter fame), explains his latest project: Why I can’t stop putting dildos into the hands of powerful conservatives.It’s been hilarious to see what I originally thought might be a tiny twitter art project that would hopefully crack up my friends spread like wildfire across social networks, and later to news sites, and eventually into many other languages. Mostly people see it for what it is, a silly way to express frustration at The United States’ current endless cycle of gun tragedy followed by inaction while leaders posture with their weapons in defiance of any changes.It's a perfect little mix of symbolism, with something for everyone: denial, pandering, sexual liberation, impotence, and the devil always having the best tunes.Of course, it being on the Internet, there’s a flipside reaction as well. I’ve been asked to meet people to see their guns, and perhaps to experience getting shot by them, I’ve had people on Twitter tell me all the things they want to do with a dildo to me, and I’ve even had a guy say he’d love to shove his gun up my ass and pull the trigger so I got the full idea of how powerful his weapons are. Usually I block or mute people on Twitter that tell me stuff like that so I don’t have to see it again.

Stephen Wolfram set out to find the truth about Ada Lovelace, the 19th century mathematician hailed as the first computer programmer, and who died young. In "untangling the tale," he found a mystery much harder to unravel than he expected.Historians disagree. The personalities in the story are hard to read. The technology is difficult to understand. The whole story is entwined with the customs of 19th-century British high society. And there’s a surprising amount of misinformation and misinterpretation out there.But after quite a bit of research—including going to see many original documents—I feel like I’ve finally gotten to know Ada Lovelace, and gotten a grasp on her story. In some ways it’s an ennobling and inspiring story; in some ways it’s frustrating and tragic.Little-known until recent decades, her star rose with that of Charles Babbage and the mechanical computers he designed but was unable to construct. Which is to say that our understanding of her is clouded by his successes and shortcomings.Indeed, her death cheated us of the profound likelihood that Babbage's mechanical computers would have been constructed as a result of her efforts … and improved.What If…?What if Ada’s health hadn’t failed—and she had successfully taken over the Analytical Engine project? What might have happened then?I don’t doubt that the Analytical Engine would have been built. Maybe Babbage would have had to revise his plans a bit, but I’m sure he would have made it work. The thing would have been the size of a train locomotive, with maybe 50,000 moving parts. And no doubt it would have been able to compute mathematical tables to 30- or 50-digit precision at the rate of perhaps one result every 4 seconds.Would they have figured that the machine could be electromechanical rather than purely mechanical? I suspect so.Wolfram's is a striking portrait, well worth 20 minutes of your time.We will never know what Ada could have become. Another Mary Somerville, famous Victorian expositor of science? A Steve-Jobs-like figure who would lead the vision of the Analytical Engine? Or an Alan Turing, understanding the abstract idea of universal computation?

Blocking the dividing line with a pencil or your finger will help.

This tiny drone is a mighty flyer. (more…)

You may have noticed that Scott "Dilbert" Adams is a colossal asshole. (more…)

A man in the Washington, DC area caught some housecleaners he'd hired through Handy.com photographing documents and rifling through his papers, presumably to commit identity theft. Or, who knows, maybe they were also document archivists and wanted to be very very certain that along with the rest of the house, these papers were very very clean. (more…)