https://youtu.be/46HqvYOEcgcA truly great DJ, just for a moment, can make a whole room fall in love, because DJ'ing is not about playing a few tunes. It is about generating shared moods; it's about understanding the feelings of a group of people and directing them to a better place. In the hands of a master, the right music can create rituals of spiritual communion that can be the most powerful events in peoples' lives. – Bill BrewsterIn electronic music, the beat is everything. As an artist, your goal during a set is simple: take the crowd on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. How do you do this? There are countless mechanical elements, of course, things like the pace of songs and the tension and tempo, but the paramount thing is reading the crowd with as much focus as you can. You need to intuit what they’re feeling and thinking, read what hits and what flops, and then fine-tune along the way and in future sets. It’s not an easy thing to judge with accuracy: Your best guess at what the crowd is feeling comes in the form of yells, fist pumps, or that all-important but ever-elusive “vibe.” Subjective? Sure, but it’s all you’ve got. But it’s what separates a mediocre DJ from a great one: their ability to absorb the crowd and work them. In that last 6 years, we’ve performed for well over a million people. In front of 100 people and in front of 100,000 people. We’re not perfect or the best in the world at, but we’ve gotten pretty good. Earlier this year we were hanging out with a friend of ours that told us about a story on Boing Boing where a woman had worn a fitbit during sex. We checked it out and thought it was intriguing. You could see the rising heart rate and the spikes of activity, real data attached to the most natural act any of us know.What happened next started as an idle joke. “I bet our sets produce an even crazier reaction,” someone remarked. Everyone laughed. Then stopped laughing when we all realized that the joke could become a genuine experiment. The execution was simple: we’d ask a few of our fans to wear heart rate monitors to our sold out show at Vulcan Gas Company in Austin. We’d record the set, capture all the data from the heart rate monitors, and we’d overlay the rhythm patterns on the progression of the recorded set. We played in a purposefully smaller venue that night, so we knew it would be prime to really go off. To ensure accuracy, we limited the participants to ones who agreed to be sober during the whole set. No alcohol, tobacco, illegal substances, etc. All agreed (though as you’ll see, one of them clearly did not comply).There was no real goal other than to see--outside of clapping or social media reactions--how people really felt and reacted to our music. To see what songs our fans particularly loved. And not just which songs, but which parts of which songs, and which beats in which parts of which songs.As you can see below, while people’s hearts all went along their own paths, there were a few points in the night when everyone’s heart rate shot up in unison.All Heart RatesAverage Heart Rate6 Biggest Spikes Zeds Dead -- HadoukenZeds Dead -- Lost YouZeds Dead -- AdrenalineDodge and Fuski -- Positive VibeZeds Dead & Melodon -- Wit Me DubDJ SKT -- Take Me Away ft. Rae (Andy C Remix)“Participant 4”And then we have “participant 4”. Ah, participant 4. As much as we’d love to believe our music shot someone’s heart rate up to a level described by the American Heart Association as “extremely high intensity”, a range where people over 40 may die (180 beats per minute), our interactions with this participant that night made it clear their interpretation of “sober” was quite loose.When this particular participant stumbled into the green room after the show, it was like a scene out of the walking dead, and immediately obvious it was not just adrenaline running through his veins. Last we saw he was sliding down the stairs with emphatic thuds each step his butt hit.Participant 4 aside, it was cool to see trends among heart rates and something we may keep in mind for future sets. We plan to explore other data collection points in future shows, to see what type clear data we can put behind a previously subjective point.

Boing Boing is honored to have Last Gasp as a sponsor.In European folklore, the Krampus is St. Nikolaus's dark servant—a hairy, horned, supernatural beast whose pointed ears and long, slithering tongue gave misbehavers the creeps!The Krampus terrorized the bad until they promised to be good. Some he spanked. Others he whipped. And some he shackled, stuffed into his large wooden basket and carted away, then hurled into the flames of Hell!Such scenarios were delineated by skilled and imaginative Old World craftsmen, printed on penny postcards and disseminated throughout Europe.The rare examples featured in Last Gasp's line of Krampus products are, perhaps, the best history has left to offer.

The brother of pop entertainer Nicki Minaj has been charged with raping a child, reports local Long Island/NYC paper Newsday. (more…)

Hunter Moore, the loathsome operator of defunct revenge porn site IsAnybodyUp.com, will be spending more time indoors.He was sent down for 30 months at his sentencing on charges of identity theft and computer misuse, to which he pleaded guilty earlier this year. According to Law360:"Mr. Moore, you have said your victims must face the consequences of posting embarrassing photos. No, you must face the consequences of your actions."Megan Geuss:Moore’s site posted nude and/or embarrassing photos of people without their consent, often along with the subjects’ names and other personal information. The site became known as a “revenge porn” website, as jilted exes submitted photos out of revenge. Earlier this year, Moore also pleaded guilty to paying co-conspirator Charles Evans up to $200 per week to steal nude photos from victims by accessing victims' e-mail accounts through social engineering.

An Arkansas judge has struck a law from the books that allowed the state to keep secret where it gets execution drugs from. The change means pharmaceutical companies who sold life-ending drugs to executioners without the public's knowledge may soon be exposed, writes Claudia Lauer.The judge also ordered the state to disclose drug details, including the makers and suppliers, by noon Friday."It is common knowledge that capital punishment is not universally popular," Griffen wrote. "That reality is not a legitimate reason to shield the entities that manufacture, supply, distribute, and sell lethal injection drugs from public knowledge."Judd Deere, a spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, said late Thursday that the office had filed notice of appeal with the state Supreme Court. Rutledge also asked for an immediate stay of Griffen's order.Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is angry about the ruling because the execution drug suppliers were "assured confidentiality."

Gus writes, "Remember carbon paper? You’re probably of a certain age if you can recall typing on a sandwich of two sheets of paper with a thin, grimy, black sheet between them to make copies." (more…)

The secretly negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership is 2,000 pages' worth of regulatory favors for various industries, but one that stands out as particularly egregious is the ban on rules requiring source-code disclosure. (more…)

JK Brickworks's Sisyphus automata was inspired by Disney Research's work on the "Computational Design of Mechanical Characters". (more…)

At Tynemouth Software's Etsy store, you can buy a ready-to-use Raspberry Pi housed within any of number of classic computer cases. The keyboards are properly hooked up, modern outputs are discretely added, and the prices are reasonable. (more…)

Mexican artist Renato Garza Cervera sculpts freakish rugs in the form of skinned gang members."Years ago I was watching TV at the house of an ex-girlfriend," he told The Creators Project. "We were watching an animation shortcut where a funny monster had in the floor of its house a green and red dotted hippopotamus rug. So I thought, 'That rug is quite anomalous: it’s not made out of a typical beast. It’s not a lion nor a tiger nor a bear. Those rugs apparently no longer represent fierce creatures, now they are endangered species: So what would nowadays be a beast or represent an animal-like, barbaric kind of bestiality?'"The "skins" of the Latino male are tattooed with phrases connected to the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs of Los Angeles."They represent a group of Latin American and US-established societies who live in a difficult set of circumstances due to an odd system of political, economical, social issues, which are out of my reach and comprehension," Cervera says.

Pssssh... Animal all day. Below, Grohl and Electric Mayhem perform the Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2WL_9bVyw

Continuing my learning journey through the history of avant-garde and spiritual jazz, I now have jazz DJ/musicologist Gilles Peterson's sublime mix "Black Jazz Radio" on repeat. Listen below! (And don't miss my previous post about Peterson's mix of tracks from the Strata East label in a similar vein.)Black Jazz Records was an independent label founded in Oakland in 1969 by pianist Gene Russell and percussionist Dick Schory. The only black-owned jazz label at the time, Black Jazz exclusively featured African-American artists whose non-traditional approach melded jazz with soul, funk, and black spirituality and consciousness. The result were a couple dozen stellar LPs by the likes of Doug Carn, Calvin Keys, Walter Bishop Jr, Kellee Patterson, The Awakening, and Gene Russell. If only I had those recordings on original vinyl!

Wonderful. I made a GIF, below, of Infinite Nick Offerman Never Sipping Whisky.

The Associated Press is reporting today that U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will soon announce a historic change: The military will open all combat jobs to women. (more…)

To beat a Dec. 1 change in rules that limit their shenanigans, patent trolls filed more than 200 cases in a single day. (more…)

Paying a little more for a premium microSD card is "one of the highest-impact upgrades you can perform to increase Raspberry Pi performance," writes Jeff Geerling. It's a few dollars' difference—and similar results will surely hold for many wee handmade computery goings-on.

Melia is a lecturer in transport and planning at the University of the West of England who's worked on such high-profile projects as the transport links to London's Olympic Park. Urban Transport is a book about one of the most important, worst-understood and evidence-free areas of public policy: how we move ourselves and our goods around the places where we live.From aviation to surface vehicles, passenger transportation is one of the most significant contributors to greenhouse gases. The design of cities has enormous implications for how we get about them, as do public transportation subsidies, parking prices, zoning and traffic rules. Melia's goal is to set out the evidence-based best practices for increasing public transportation, cycling and walking as alternatives to private cars, which he characterises as both environmentally unsustainable and unable to scale to the high density cities that are emerging all around the world. Although the last part of the book focuses on policy recommendations for the UK, most of the book is applicable to cities around the world (a forthcoming volume deals with the USA specifically).Melia's research doesn't just take aim at the blithely asserted, evidence-free idea that building car-friendly roads and parking is "good for the economy" (an idea he demolishes with satisfying thoroughness), but also at some environmental orthodoxies, like the idea that mixing cars, pedestrians and bikes produces more livable cities (this idea came from an influential Dutch planner who was not trying to reduce car usage), and the idea that public transport, especially buses, will, on its own, reduce car usage.The problem with faster, cheaper public transport on its own is that it primarily substitutes for walking and cycling, not driving. Only disincentives for driving, such as "permeable" one-way systems that let buses/trams, pedestrians and cyclists get around faster than private vehicles; high-cost, limited parking; and similar measures can be shown to consistently reduce the number of trips taken by drivers.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7o7A6m2sG0 (more…)

After we realized that Merlin Mann had tricked us into adopting Getting Things Done as Boing Boing's operating manual, we started using the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) and are getting more things done than ever before!Organizations and ConferencesInsist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.ManagersIn making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.EmployeesWork slowly.Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

A 44-year-old Utah woman has been charged with the class A misdemeanor of causing a catastrophe. Police said the woman, 44, drove her daughter and other kids around Ogden, South Ogden, Riverdale, and Washington Terrace to throw eggs at cars and houses.From The Standard Examiner:The group allegedly threw around 10 to 15 dozen eggs at 10 to 20 homes. Police were able to identify several victims, but know a few have gone unreported. Damage to one home’s stucco cost $2,343 and damage to a car’s ignition cost $3,000, according to the affidavit. Other damage included broken screens, windows and ruined furniture. Some victims report they’ve been unsuccessful in completely cleaning up the egg.Edith Massey would have been saddened to learn that so many eggs had gone to waste.https://youtu.be/og_85XJTOac[via]Image: Shutterstock

Researchers at Newcastle University handed out two different leaflets to pedestrians on a university campus. One leaflet had a photo of watching eyes. The other did not. They observed that "4.7% of people dropped the leaflet with eyes compared to 15.6% of the control leaflets."A second experiment found that the effect was only present when there were no other people in the immediate vicinity as when other people are present you are less likely to behave in an anti-social manner.Professor Bateson added: “In the fight against anti-social littering, this study could be a real help. Fast food retailers might want to think about using it on packaging to discourage people discarding the wrappers. The flip side is, for those handing out leaflets, it could help people take in the messages are they are less likely to throw away a flyer with eyes on.”

https://vimeo.com/147111732/Johannes writes, "Artist and life-long nerd Johannes Grenzfurthner is taking us on a personal road trip from the West Coast to the East Coast of the USA, to introduce us to places and people that shaped and inspired his art and politics. Traceroute wants to chase and question the ghosts of nerddom's past, present and future. An exhilarating tour de farce into the guts of trauma, obsession and cognitive capitalism."

A Turkish doctor is on trial for sharing a meme with side-by-side photos of the president of Turkey and Gollum. He is accused on insulting the president. The court has assembled a team of experts to determine whether or not the president resembles Gollum, a character from Lord of the Rings that J.R.R. Tolkien described as "a small, slimy creature."From IBI Times:The experts, including two academics, two behavioural scientists and an expert on cinema, will reportedly decided whether Erdogan was insulted in the tweet.[The doctor], who claims that Gollum is not a bad character and that he did not insult anyone, faces up to two years in prison if convicted.this one is getting Turkish twitterati into trouble: govt suing over Gollum/Erdogan comparison pic.twitter.com/O640fmY5hy— BenAris (@bneeditor) December 2, 2015

L.A.’s infamous Chateau Marmont was the brainchild of famed attorney Fred Horowitz, who built it after returning from a vacation in Europe, where he’d been photographing the gothic castles and chateaus along the Loire Valley River in France. In 1929, The Chateau Marmont opened its doors to the Hollywood elite, billed as “Los Angeles’s newest, finest and most exclusive apartment house superbly situated…” (Google the rest.) The Chateau was never meant to become a playground for the modern day self-proclaimed Hollywood Antidisestablishmentarianist, otherwise known as Beverly Hills kids with Los Feliz attitudes (which is irony in itself, as Los Feliz has now become the city of lost feelings where the average go to be uniquely average). If I hear one more malnourished, vapid ‘It girl’ say, “Oh my God let’s go to the Chateau! Their Bolognese is like sooooooo good!”, I’m going to poke my fucking eyeballs out with the pointless pen they have tucked behind their ear in hopes that it will provoke someone into asking them if they are a writer. So let me break this down for you. First of all, the Bolognese is shit. Mediocre at best. Second, judging form the slender physiques of their patrons, frequent trips to the bathroom, white creamy shit in the corner of their mouths, and their inability to shut the fuck up…NO ONE IS GOING THERE TO EAT!Third, and finally, the Chateau Marmont is where douchebags go when they need to fill their social inadequacies.As I write this I am actually at the Chateau wondering, “Am I an L.A. douchebag?” while simultaneously being awestruck by its contradictions and beauty. It led me to contemplate what this place really attracts (in addition to my own attraction to it–because clearly something draws me to it, despite the fact that I hate it and hate myself when I’m here). I started listening in on other people’s conversations, and here are a few things I heard. Please keep in mind that it was more than half-empty, and 9:00 am on a Saturday. “It would be so cool if we could shoot in Paris. Let’s do it in Paris. But who’s gonna pay for it? I mean, the actors will just have to work for free, hahahahaha. I’ll just ask my dad to pay for it. Cheers, we’re going to Paris…like, can I get another Bellini?” (This girl was basically having a conversation with herself while the other people at her table never had a chance to respond. I hope her dad has a big bank account.) “What about Sundance? They make amazing films. Will there be subtitles? I don’t do subtitles.” (Sundance doesn’t make films, they screen them. Plus, unless you want to avoid the international markets entirely, you’re going to have subtitles. Her ignorance is not bliss.) “I made a character for myself where you will shoot me all over LA. Just me and my photography.” (Isn’t that you just being you? That is not a character—just incredibly narcissistic.)I started to sweat and feel physically sick. Nothing anyone was saying made one bit of sense. It was all psychobabble bullshit. What the fuck was I even doing here in the first place? Then all of a sudden, a girl in a wheelchair came up to me and asked if she could pet my dog. There was something about her demeanor that instantly made me feel comfortable, so I asked her and her friend to join us. After a few minutes of awkward conversation we really struck up a friendship. She told me her life story (which is pretty fucking amazing): she was born to a drug addict mother and later adopted by a Buddhist lesbian couple. She grew up in a Buddhist colony in San Francisco, but moved to L.A. for work. Currently she’s working two jobs, one in TV and another interning for a social media company. I asked her, “If you could only pick one thing you would love to do for fun that you have not done since moving here what would it be?“ Her response broke my heart. I won’t go into everything, but the one thing that really got me was that what she wanted to do most was something that I 100% take for granted. She wanted to go dancing at a Hollywood club, but had been turned away every time because she’s in a wheelchair. Her story infuriated me and lit a fire up my ass, so I made a couple of calls to my good friend Brian who runs Giorgio’s at The Standard, and within an hour she was on the list and looking forward to her first L.A. club experience. I don’t think that I have ever seen so much excitement on one person’s face in my life. How can people be so cruel? She ended up going that night and had the time of her life.Maybe the Chateau Marmont isn’t so shit after all. It goes without saying that it’s a breeding ground for the insufferable, but you can always find a diamond in the rough, and I found that diamond in Sabrina. Her enthusiastic, beautiful spirit, zest for life, fearlessness and willpower to let nothing stop her from achieving goals not only reminded me that, although they are few and far between, there are good people in this world and I should stop being such a judgmental cunt and just order the fucking Bolognese.This essay first appeared in the killer new limited-edition print 'zine "After Grrrl: Small Stories from Big Lives". Featuring art by Jessicka Addams (Jack Off Jill/Scarling) and edited by Carrie Jo Tucker, "After Grrrl" includes stories of female empowerment and punk culture by more than 30 women including Camille Rose Garcia, Elizabeth McGrath, Bonnie Burton, Tara McPherson, Chantal Claret, and many more. It's available now from House of Addams. (more…)

We all know about the 10,000-hour rule, whereby that amount of practice (or thereabouts) is held to be necessary to fully master a given skill. And not long ago I proposed the 5-hour rule, which is what it takes to pretend to be able to do something on video. Now there is also a 100-hour rule, which is what it takes "to become much more competent than an absolute beginner."Leo Polovets's angle centers on sales—yes, another VC who thinks he's a public intellectual!—but I think he's onto something with the idea of there being a threshold of competence where egregious mistakes stop being made, and that it generally takes more than two weeks but less than a month to train someone past it.

Funny or Die scoured the Web for ten genuinely awful toys that were discovered in the wild -- toys that transcend mere poor quality assurance and enter the realm of non-Euclidean ghastliness that defies all reason. (more…)

NAACP founder WEB Du Bois wasn't just a committed, effective activist for the rights of black people in America: he was also a prolific author of early 20th century science fiction and fantasy stories. (more…)

[Editor's note: science fiction novelist Spider Robinson forever influenced my liquor consumption habits with the rhapsodic praises for Bushmill's 1608 Irish whiskey that feature in so many of his books. I've bought rather a large number of bottles of the stuff. So when I got this email (with the subject "Unsolicited testimonial") from him in my inbox this morning, I did two things: ordered a bottle and asked if I could republish the email here here. Spider graciously permitted this. -Cory]I’ve tried most high-end Irish whiskeys, and always kept coming back to Bushmills 1608. But I just switched loyalties.I freely confess I was initially attracted by the name alone. I’d have bought my first bottle just to own the bottle, even if the contents had been undrinkable. But it’s not why I’m now already up to my sixth bottle—and at approximately CAN$65 per bottle! In my opinion, it tastes like what God drinks when He’s sitting at His typewriter. Whiskey—uisge baugh—means “water of Life.” This tastes to me a bit like the first tide pool that developed chemistry sophisticated enough to make its own alcohol. I just gave bottles to my siblings for Christmas, and I recommend the stuff unreservedly to you, my friends. If your local Liquor Commission doesn’t stock it and is too stupid to order it for you, just Google up the online hootch-delivery service called Master Of Malt, and you’ll be drinking it less than a week later without paying shipping, plus they’ll happily sell you either 1 or 6 handsome tasting glasses for a reasonable extra sum. I’ve used MoM to ship the stuff to both NYC and rural Florida without incident; both received breakage-free delivery within 3 days.It’s called Writer’s Tears.Isn’t that glorious? And it tastes good enough to deserve that grand name. It is made by what is called the pot still method. The pot still is worth googling up: it is the direct lineal descendant of the alchemist’s alembic, first source of ancient magic. The one pictured in Wikipedia (attached) looks startlingly like a stupendous bronze Hershey’s Kiss, the size of a hobbit house, with a little stem sticking out the top representing the smokestack. Or I suppose it could be a half-buried grenade whose pin has just been pulled. Or half of a giant’s brass bra. As I said: ancient magic. Battle, brass boobs, chocolate.Oh, and while you’re at Master Of Malt’s website, look around and you’ll find the surprising and delightful answer to the age-old question, “Why do some people spell it ‘whisky’ and some spell it ‘whiskey’?” I loved the answer.(Images: Spider Robinson, Stephan Schulz/JamesonStillCork)

I'm pretty bad at keeping up with new cartoonists. I'm stuck in the world of artists who emerged in the 80s and 90s: Daniel Clowes, Mary Fleener, Julie Doucet, Carol Tyler, Lynda Barry, Los Bros Hernandez, Jim Woodring, Roberta Gregory, Peter Bagge, Chris Ware, Dori Seda. Lucy Knisley is one of the rare younger cartoonists that I've gotten hooked on. (I interviewed Lucy on my podcast Gweek in 2013.) I'm a fan of the "ligne claire" drawing style, which Lucy exemplifies, and her sense of page composition is clean but with the perfect whimsical touch. She also colors her drawings with watercolors, not Photoshop, so they have a nice texture. Her work is mostly autobiographical. Her 2008 book, French Milk, is an illustrated journal about living (and eating) in Paris with her mother. Her next book, Relish, is about growing up in the food industry. In 2015 she wrote Displacement, a comic book travelogue about taking her frail grandparents on an ocean cruise. Lucy does not have children, and was not familiar with taking care of dependent people, so she was stunned by how exhausting the "vacation" was. Her 91-year-old grandmother had dementia and didn't really know who Lucy was, and her 93-year-old grandfather had an incontinence problem that he didn't care about. Lucy ended up having to wash his trousers every evening when she was able to convince him to take them off.In between the diary entries about things like waiting in line for 3 hours to board the ship, calling her father asking for help (he wasn't helpful), and putting up with the bossy ship's crew, Lucy included excerpts from her grandfather's WWII journal, which shows him to be an excellent, observant writer, much like Lucy herself. I felt sorry for Lucy because the trip was stressful and exhausting. She had to deal with vomit, soiled clothing, and lost grandparents on a daily basis. But she had a great sense of humor about her ordeal and her patient and sympathetic care for her grandparents was touching. Lucy entered a new level of adulthood on this trip, and her story of how is happened is fascinating.

For 50 years, the Pirelli Calendar has featured mostly naked models captured by famed photographers in exotic locales. Not this year. (more…)

Black Friday shoppers were treated to a spectacle of violent struggles over the possession of flat screen TVs, tablet computers, toaster ovens, and other highly prized items.

Samurai White handcrafts custom rock and roll nutcrackers. (more…)

The Micro Drone 2.0+ is truly in a league of its own, offering a new perspective on aerial photography, and a world of technological capabilities that make flying ridiculously fun. Simply throw it in the air at any angle and its self-correcting algorithm will stabilize for smooth sailing in no time. You’ll stay entertained with flips, rolls, 720p HD videography, and much more.Performs 360-degree flips w/ the pre-programmed algorithm Captures HD video from upside down w/ a flick of a switchStabilizes to its horizontal flying position w/ self-righting algorithm & sensorsDesigned to be durable & extremely fun to flyPerfect for flying indoors & outside (doesn’t suffer stability issues in wind)Easily recharges via USBIncludes a range up to 400 ft & an 8 minute flight time per chargeGet the Extreme Micro Drone 2.0+ for 42% off ($99.99) in the Boing Boing Store today.

Molly Crabapple (you may recall her 15 rules for creative success in the Internet age) is publishing her long-awaited memoir, Drawing Blood, a singular and illustrated account of an artist's awakening and hunger for engagement, from the New York nightlife underground through the streets of Occupy to Guantanamo Bay, and an array of emerging global conflict zones. Whether she's recounting her time as a teenager living in the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, or, as now, helping everyday Syrians tell their stories, Crabapple's unflinching gaze uncovers a sketch of life that is luminous, complex and inspired and sets her work apart. Creative friends also figuring out how to make it in 21st Century culture, such as Kim Boekbinder, with whom Crabapple collaborated on I Have Your Heart, loom large in the book. (more…)

This week, the scholarly publishing giant Elsevier filed suit against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis, two sites where academics and researchers practiced civil disobedience by sharing the academic papers that Elsevier claims -- despite having acquired the papers for free from researchers, and despite having had them refereed and overseen by editorial boards staffed by more volunteering academics. (more…)

There are lots of transactions that we're either prohibited from making (selling kidneys), or that are strictly regulated by statute (parental surrogacy). Naturally, these rules are hotly debated, especially among economists, who generally assume that markets of informed buyers and sellers produce outcomes that make everyone better off. (more…)

Q: Why is it so hard to remember the name of someone you've just met? A: Because our memories evolved to be associative, and the name of a person doesn't have much of an association with who they are. Mind Hacks offers a way to help you remember names by inventing false associations. The sillier or weirder the association, the better. I've been using a similar method to help me remember the order of a shuffled deck of cards. My goal is to be able to hand someone a deck of cards, ask them to shuffle it and return it to me. I will then spend a minute or two going through the deck, looking at each card. Then I will hand the deck back to the person and ask them to look at the cards while I call them out one-by-one. I'm using a memorization method from an e-book called How to Learn & Memorize a Randomized Deck of Playing Cards Using a Memory Palace and Image-Association System Specifically Designed for Card Memorization Mastery by Anthony Metivier. I've been practicing for about 4 days (10-15 minutes a day) and I can remember the mnemonically-derived "names" of 26 cards so far. For example, the 2 of Spades is "tin can." The King of Hearts is "ram." The 9 of Spades is "tape." To help me memorize the names of the cards, I'm using a free cross-platform flashcard app called AnkiApp. It keeps track of the cards that you easily remember, and focuses on the ones you have difficulty remembering. Gary Wolf wrote a great article in 2008 for Wired about this memorization technique. Once I can easily recall the names of all 52 cards, I will go to the next step: shuffling the deck and putting the cards into a 52-slot "memory palace." My memory palace is made of four cars I've owned. Slot 1 is the driver side headlight of my first car, a 1947 Willys Jeep. Slot 2 is the passenger side headlight. Slot 3 is the hood. I work my way back to the tailpipe, which is slot 13. Slot 14 is the driver side headlight of my second car, a 1965 Jeep with a Chevy small block V8 engine (it overheated like crazy). The idea is to shuffle the deck, look at the first card, recall the card's name, and stick it in that slot. For example, if the first card in the deck is the 2 of Spades I will visualize the driver side headlight of the Willys as a tin can. If the second card is the King of Hearts, I will put the ram in the passenger side headlight and imagine the ram trying to reach over and eat the tin can. And so on. It's going to take me a while to get good at this.

Can you dig it? I knew that you could. (YouTube)

Centralia, PA, has a tourist problem thanks to its long-burning underground coal fire and ghost town status. The locals that remain are tired of being told their beloved, doomed home is the "real-life Silent Hill," that being a gateway to hell replete with deformed nurses with legs for heads, pyramid-headed demons, manifestations of scarred male psyches, etc.Centralians themselves couldn’t be less happy about Silent Hill, since the brief association the film made between Silent Hill and Centralia is now one of the better-known things about the town. Like, what if everyone knew the name of your home town, but only because Frank Booth in Blue Velvet mentioned that he once went to the toilet there.Inevitably, those who visit Centralia for its relevance to Silent Hill leave disappointed. Every article that posits the town as “the real Silent Hill” — or as “The Actual Town from Hell”, “Hell on Earth”, “A Ghost Town… On Fire”, or as one of the “10 Scariest Places on Earth” — includes a comment section with at least one reality check. “It is NOT a scary place at all.” “I’m afraid if you want scary, find an abandoned insane asylum, because Centralia is not very scary at all.” “It’s very peaceful actually.”The irony is that in the Silent Hill trilogy, it's just a mysterious fog. The creepy coal fire angle was grafted onto the mythos for the movie, which no-one really cares about.P.S. The next "big" town over from Centralia is named "Shamokin," a much better name for a municipality sat atop a disappointingly milquetoast chasm to hell.

Celebrate Cyber Monday with some brain food. Save on any eLearning deal in the Boing Boing Store today using coupon code: CYBERMONDAY25. Below are a couple of our favorite eLearning offers: eduCBA Tech Training Bundle: Lifetime Subscription:Welcome to your personal online classroom, where you can finally study at your own pace, on your own time (and pajamas are encouraged). With more than 500 courses currently offered, and more coming, eduCBA delivers course on all things tech. From coding to design, one purchase will grant you access to endless growth potential in the field of your choice. Never stop adding more skills to your toolbox— get lifetime access to eduCBA’s growing library. Ultimate Data & Analytics Bundle:Give your company a competitive advantage, and yourself a career boost by mastering business intelligence techniques and software. This is no mere introduction--this is 130+ courses on everything you need to know to handle data like a pro.Hollywood Art Institute Photography Course & Certification:Skip the technical jargon and get right to taking amazing, professional-quality photos with this complete training. The Hollywood Art Institute Photography Course includes 22 modules filled with tutorials on how to profit off of your photography, or simply capture your memories in the manner they deserve.Amazon Web Services Certification Bundle:Companies are choosing cloud computing as their tech solution. Why? Flexibility, convenience, and enormous amounts of money saved. Be at the forefront of this rapidly expanding industry by gaining two certifications that say to potential employers "you need me on your team, now."Project Management Certification Bundle:No matter your career path, project management skills will fuel your growth and success. Dive into 6 detailed courses to work towards passing this globally-recognized certification!Interactive Coding Bootcamp:Become a job-ready developer by building a portfolio of real-world apps and interacting 1-on-1 with the best mentors in the field. This training is as robust as it gets, including live instruction and job-hunting assistance, on top of 33+ hours of top-notch video courses (some from Stanford, Harvard, etc.).

Wole Talabi, a Nigerian sf writer who lives in Malaysia, has rounded up his ten favorite African science fiction and fantasy stories of 2015. Like Africa, the stories are wildly varied, each as different from the other as they are from the sf you're likely to read coming out of Europe and North America. (more…)

The stubborn unwillingness of millennials to buy cars and houses and save for pensions may reflect a shifting consciousness about material culture, but can also be attributed to the undeniable fact that young people have no money. (more…)

This minimalist multi-tool will see to it that instead of rocking a tool belt, you’ll carry just one. It’s shaped slightly like a key and weighs less than an ounce, so it plays nice with your keychain. The strong surgical-grade stainless steel blade will last, and is handy for everyday tasks like opening boxes and letters. Equally as important, you’ll never have to search for a bottle opener when you want to unwind – it’s all right there for your everyday needs.“Small and discrete enough that you’ll probably forget you’re even carrying it." GizmodoSurgical-grade & corrosion-resistant 3Cr13 stainless steel stands the test of time Dual-layer bottle openerDrop-point, click-locking blade cuts through almost everythingAutomotive-grade Torx T3 star bolt is stronger than a PhilipsReinforced key ring for durabilityGrooved grip for easy open & close Lightweight, key-like designGet the Everyman Porter Key Knife & Bottle Opener in the Boing Boing Store today.[embed]https://vimeo.com/128224969[/embed]

If you're a woman on the Internet, harassment comes with the territory. There have been jerky dudes since time immemorial, after all. But with the advent of America's militarized cops, sociopathic misogynists have a new, deadly force-multiplier in their war on women. (more…)

You’ve likely wondered if the internet is having a negative effect on your brain. Perhaps you’ve thought this after realizing the world wide web now serves as a trusty resource when gaps in your knowledge appear, and over time it, you’ve thought, maybe it might be making you less knowledgeable overall because you habitually head to Google if you don’t know the answers to something, search, click, read a few lines, and then promptly forget the factoid until the next time you need it.Download – iTunes – Stitcher –RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is brought to you by The Great Courses. Get 80 percent off Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior presented by Professor Mark Leary 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.Fearing that new technology will lead to lazy thinking is an old concern, one that goes back at least as far as Socrates who was certain that scrolls would make people dumb because they would grow to depend on “external written characters” instead of memorization. Just about every new technology and medium has been vilified at some point by that era’s luddites as finally being the end of deep thinking and the beginning of idiocracy. It never happens, of course, and I doubt it ever will. The latest research suggest that though technology probably doesn’t make us stupid, it can, however, cause us to believe that we are smarter than we really are. Knowing you can search the internet is similar to knowing that you can consult a dictionary or a home encyclopedia or make a visit to the library when truly puzzled – but it’s different in that your brain, and the brains of every other cybercitizen, has become accustomed to the power to almost effortlessly reach into the internet and in a second or two bring back the info previously missing from your head, and you can do that mid-conversation, or while driving, or in the subway or on the couch or in line for a concert. That effortlessness and in-our-pockets availability seems to deeply affect how we categorize what is in our heads and what is not. When we consider all there is to know about a given subject, the convenience of search engines seems to blur the way we think about what we do and do not personally know about the world.According to the early studies of researcher Matthew Fisher, the side effect of a familiarity with search engines is an inflated sense of internal knowledge. Habitual googling leads us to mistakenly believe we know more than we actually do about any given subject – and here is the crazy part – that intuition persists even in moments in which we no longer have access to the internet. The more you use Google, it seems, the smarter you feel without it.In this episode we explore what happens when a human mind becomes aware that it can instantly, on-command, at any time, search for an answer to any question, and then, most of time, find it.After the interview, I discuss a new study that suggests having a Facebook account raises your cortisol levels way higher than normal, but interacting with Facebook in a positive way then lowers those levels to normal. Basically, it’s like smoking. It introduces a stressor that it then reduces. It’s the sickness AND the cure.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 Jon Edwards who submitted a recipe for metacookies, or cookies inside of cookies. Send your own recipes to david {at} youarenotsosmart.com.Links and SourcesDownload – iTunes – Stitcher –RSS – SoundcloudPrevious EpisodesBoing Boing PodcastsCookie RecipesMatthew FisherSearching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates ofInternal KnowledgeLiking on Facebook good for teens’ stress, but being liked… not so much

Jaya Saxena and Matt Lubchansky roast the Red Pill men's rights movement in a scathing, scintillating, rhyming Dr Seuss parody that features such gems as: "They’re in the friendzone!/What a pity/Stuck in the orbit/Of a girl that’s pretty." (more…)

You know that successful person's lament about being out of control of their own time, not being able to balance the demands that others placed on them against their own self-care needs? There is nothing new under the sun: "Had Ibeen able to abstain more from public business, and to live more insolitude, I should have been happier, and should have accomplished muchmore as a poet." (more…)

https://youtu.be/JhuYzIQ1ZosIn China, a cable got snarled in the rotating broom of a street sweeper. A reddit user who understands Mandarin explained what happened in more detail:A telephone pole was being installed. There was a steel cable that was coiled on the road that (they believed) should have been no problem for cars going over it. The street sweeper truck on the right went over it and wound up the cable in the rotating cleaner. The other end of the cable was attached to the pole on the left of the video. The cable was brought taut and caused all that damage to the trucks and car.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Hand lettering stands out because everyone has access to computer layout applications now. The warmth and quirky character of hand lettering has great appeal, and for certain kinds of applications (beer labels, artisanal food packages, personal services, some book covers) it’s the top design choice. Outside the Box, by Gail Anderson, a former senior art director at Rolling Stone, is loaded with sketches and finished work from the portfolios of the best hand letterers working today. It inspired me to pull out my sketchbook and do some hand-lettering like I used to do in the late ‘80s when bOING bOING was a print zine.Outside the Box: Hand-Drawn Packaging from Around the World by Gail AndersonPrinceton Architectural Press2015, 256 pages, 8 x 1 x 10 inches (paperback)$14 Buy one on Amazon

Gus the dog tries to comprehend a Thanksgiving toy, and gives up. (more…)