Boing Boing

Jeff VanderMeer sends us the latest Storybundle, which has "the DEBUT of Ann VanderMeer's BESTIARY, which features original fiction from China Mieville, Catherynne M. Valente, and many others--not available elsewhere." (more…)

I think we’re all pretty spoiled these days when it comes to bluetooth streaming technology. I can remember waiting in line for one of the first portable, wireless speakers and being disappointed when I finally got it. The syncing was painful, the music cut in and out and the sound quality was iffy.Since then, I’ve been on the lookout for a newer, more portable solution but I had to change my expectations. When the tech first came out, our hopes were far too great. We were all looking for a speaker that could fit in the palm of our hand and sound like a home theater system. The iHome Kineta K1 is tiny and it sounds pretty good to boot. But, don’t hold your breath thinking you’re going to match the $2500.00 Kefs in your living room.I’ve been watching the K1 and I’ve seen them priced anywhere from $89.99 - 149.99. At the lower price points it's a perfect speaker for me because of the way I handle my free time around the house.I have a very short attention span and constantly change locations like Billy from the Family Circus Sunday comics.What I love most about the K1 is that when it's set up and my phone is within 10 meters of it, they auto-sync. My other wireless speakers have to be manually reconnected every day.Another great thing about the K1 is that after using it for a few weeks, I haven't had to charge it much - which is saying a lot because each aspect of my life is tied to charging my phone. The folks at iHome say it has up to 12 hours of playtime when you combine the internal battery with the K-cell.What‘s a K-cell you ask? Good question!Cleverly integrated into the speaker, is a rechargeable, removable power bank called the K-cell. This device within a device can be used to power your phone when it’s running out of juice.Better yet, it can even extend the life of the speakers when they’re running low. Let me repeat that last part – the speakers charge the K-cell and then the K-cell can charge the speakers later on!Because the K-cell pops out at your command, it’s like a technological nesting doll. Imagine if they designed an even tinier portable speaker inside the K-cell and then a tinier battery inside that tiny speaker. Sure external battery packs like the K-cell have been around for a while but they haven't been as convenient. I constantly misplace my loose battery packs after I use them because they don’t have a special housing like the K1 provides.The interface is simple but the truth is you don't need to touch it once it's on. The features are controlled by the device that streams the music and that's exactly what you want in a speaker system. Could you imagine having to interact with your home theater speakers every 15 minutes? It would drive you insane.iHome seems to be the front runner of wireless bluetooth technology and right now my favorite one from the bunch is the Kineta K1.

Lyonya Shilovsky, a 3-year-old drummer from Russia, leads an orchestra of grown-ups in this cute 2014 video re-making the viral rounds. (more…)

The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Army is recommending retired general David H. Petraeus not face further punishment for screwing his biographer and leaking top-secret materials to her. (more…)

CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, encourages companies to spy on their customers and hand the data to the government, in secret, with full immunity (including immunity for launching cyberattacks at users). (more…)

Matt "Metafilter" Haughey's got a new election-season pass-time: he's taking photos that GOP politicians post of themselves holding guns and replacing the BFGs with massive sex-toys, exposing a deep and comic truth. (more…)

On Saturday, I stopped in at the incredible Comc Arts LA indie comics fest and came away with a staggering double-load of amazing funnybooks, and the standout from that wonderful haul is Hope Larson's "Solo." (more…)

While large wallets can cause awkward pocket bulges, slim versions that only fit 2-3 cards can be pretty useless. Meet Hover: a thin wallet that both looks good and works like a dream. Easily store at least 10 cards and quickly access them with a “floating" ribbon you pull to drag your cards out of the wallet sleeve. Made of genuine leather and lined with RFID-blocking fiber that blocks on-the-go identity theft, Hover isn’t just your typical wallet—it’s a work of pure craftsmanship.Store at least 10 cards in your walletQuickly extract any card using “floating” card designKeep bills in 3 places: 2 outside sleeves & a middle storageProtect from credit card theft w/ RFID-blocking fiberDiscreetly keep in your pocket: stays invisible when insertedEnjoy the craftsmanship of a genuine leather exteriorSave 30% On The Hover Leather RFID-Protected Wallet[embed]https://youtu.be/5yiia7hvn6E[/embed]

Last spring, we went to Venice to celebrate my wife's birthday and took a boat to the Biennale, which was pretty disappointing, with one notable exception: 'The Key in the Hand,' Chiharu Shiota's installation at the Japan pavilion, which took our breath away. (more…)

Put round magnets on either end of a AA battery and set it down on a sheet of tinfoil and watch it spin! It's a homopolar motor, a simple electric motor that relies on the Lorentz effect to set it in motion. Kottke explains:How does it work? Well, it's been awhile since my last electromagnetism class, but the homopolar motor works because the combination of the flow of the electric current (from the battery) and the flow of the magnetic current produces a torque via the Lorenz force. This short video explanation should give you a good idea of the principles involved. Cool car built from a battery and two magnets [Jason Kottke]

Polyhai's tutorial for creating a tiki-mug menorah is all the sholem aloha you need for eight nights of candlelit grog-swilling. (more…)

In Toxic Workers , a new Harvard Business School working paper, Michael Housman and Dylan Minor look at the paradox of "superstar" workers who outperform their colleagues by 2:1 or more, but who are "toxic" -- awful to work with and be around. (more…)

Robinson's "Oral Argument" is a fascinating courtroom drama about patents, biotech, and photosynthetic tattooed humans that turns on the Bilski Supreme Court decision about the patentability of business methods. (more…)

A leaked memo from the Ministry sets out new bills it would like to see introduced into the French Parliament as early as next month, setting out an ambitious plan to block privacy tools, something only technically possible by recreating China's Great Firewall in a European democracy, spying on all networked activity to prevent the use of Tor. (more…)

(more…)

5minutemeditation is a minimalist, one-shot guided meditation routine on the web. The clean layout and total silence beat the clutter and chaos of youtube, and you can set breathing rate and color scheme to suit your personal level of vibrating newsjunkie rage.Welcome to 5 Minute Meditation! I decided to create this site after I began to get panic attacks my junior year of college. I found that deep breathing exercises were effective in helping myself calm down during them, and wanted to create a simple and quick guided breathing exercise for myself and others to use. Thankfully, I rarely have attacks anymore, but still use this breathing exercise when feeling stressed.

Oldweb.today lets you view archived snapshots of the web (from the Wayback Machine) in old browsers. It has all of the important ones, from NCSA Mosaic through the Netscapes and Mac IE to the present day. [via JWZ.]You can of course use it to view present-day sites in old browsers, too. Netscape 3 chokes pretty badly on jQuery!

I buy an awful lot of toys under the guise of sharing them with my niece and nephew. The truth is, of course, that I’d get them even if I weren’t an uncle. In particular, I love modular puzzle games that make you think in strange ways—and I’m especially fond of the award winning Gravity Maze. (more…)

CompTIA IT certification exams are available in many specialties, leaving you wondering which to take first. We've curated a bundle of courses that will prepare you to ace exams in the most in-demand, relevant categories. (more…)

Martin Shkreli, the most hated man on the Internet, regrets that he jacked up the price of the off-patent drug Daraprim, taken mainly by people with AIDS and cancer, by a mere 5,000%. (more…)

The latest Humble Ebook Bundle features 15 DRM-free ebooks, with works by Fritz Leiber, Kelly Link, Mary Robinette Kowal, Neil Gaiman, Peter Beagle, Madeline L'Engle and many others -- name your price and how much you'd like to divert to charities, including the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Science Fiction Writers of America's Givers Fund, and Patrick Rothfuss's Worldbuilders.

https://vimeo.com/147159504Screen Novelties' Witch Doctor kickstarter is looking to raise $60,000 to finish a gorgeous-looking, tiki-themed stop-motion black-light movie inspired by classic dark rides. (more…)

"We regret that we briefly showed images of photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review," said MSNBC after doing precisely that earlier today in San Bernardino. (more…)

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…)