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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…)

From the late 1800s to the early 1940s, many Americans celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as "ragamuffins" in masked costumes and then thronged the streets, basically trick-or-treating for money and gifts. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHSFf0Lz1qcHardware hacker/security researcher Samy Kamkar is legendary for his legion of playful, ha-ha-only-serious gadgets that show how terrible information security is, and now he's turned his attention to the American Express company, which turns out to be a goddamned train-wreck. (more…)

The Teddytaur is an actual, $400 product, made from alpaca-wool, sold by high-end toymaker Steiff in its Japanese store. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

When Zoe Stavri woke up with a yeast infection, she had a strange and intriguing idea: what about adding some of her vaginal candida to sourdough starter? (more…)

Uncle Bill, please lead us in A Thanksgiving Prayer.

Matthew Borgatti, purveyor of such Boing Boing favorites as the Guy Fawkes Bandanna, the War Boy Bandanna, and the Lockpick Earrings, offers you your choice of his wares at at 20% discount, with the coupon code "jackhammerjill." (more…)

The Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle writes, "We founded a credit union to build a new path after the banking debacle of 2008 and it's been crushed by federal regulators. The regulators close 200-300 credit unions every year, and have been since their founding of the NCUA in 1970. Only a couple are allowed to start each year. We were one of four in our year." (more…)

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There's still time to run down to the supermarket and buy this cake for the coprophages joining you for Thanksgiving dinner.Check out more unusual Thanksgiving treats in the gallery here.

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark] (more…)

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I use a Wacom Intuos Pro graphics tablet, but don't want to. Because I'm used to the quality of this product, though, I can't even use the toys that pass as art styluses for iOS an Android tablets. I've been thinking of switching to the Microsoft Surface Pro to avoid having to own a graphics tablet in the first place, but it turns out the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil are the bee's knees.Gus Mueller, creator of the popular Acorn image editor, is in the same boat as me. He's smitten:It feels absolutely right. Super low latency, palm rejection, and … it just works.Is it the same as drawing in my sketchbook? No. Of course not. I'm rubbing a plastic tip across a glass screen.It's still God Damn Amazing though. …I find that when using the HB Pencil in Procreate, I get something that is very, very close to what I feel when I'm drawing in my sketchbooks. But of course now I've got layers and many colors and a perfect eraser to work with. And endless pages. I love it. I'm drawn to it. It's wonderful. You should absolutely try one if you haven't already.The problem, of course, is that you're likely looking at a $1000 or so price tag for the cheapest iPad Pro, the Apple Pencil, Apps and tax.

A long time ago, Veronica Belmont was featured in a blooper reel for her old TV show in which she clowned around with a Cthulhu t-shirt, wiggling back and forth and saying "So lifelike." A creepy Internet person turned the moment into a GIF that has followed her around ever since, so that other creepy Internet people post it every time she opens her mouth online, and creepy Internet porn companies use it in their ads. (more…)

About a year ago my family started replacing plastic leftover containers with pyrex containers and we have been really happy with them. (more…)

One of the few major psychedelics conferences during the dark age of the “Just Say No” Reagan regime was the Psychedelics and Spirituality Conference (aka Psychedelic Conference II), held on the campus of UC-Santa Barbara on May 13-14, 1983.The speakers were a “who’s who” of drug discoverers and researchers: Albert Hofmann, Humphry Osmond, Ralph Metzner, Alexander Shulgin, Walter Houston Clark, Terence McKenna, Andrew Weil, Carl Ruck and Jonathan Ott.Timothy Leary, Joan Halifax and Kathleen Harrison (McKenna) were in attendance but did not give formal talks.Other notables visible in photos: Peter Stafford, Rick Doblin, Deborah Harlow, Robert Forte, John Palmer, Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis.It was at this conference that Sasha Shulgin announced his discovery of 2C-B and delivered one of his greatest talks, “Drugs of Perception.” It was also here that Terence McKenna(in his brother Dennis’ words) “marked his emergence as a public persona with his talk ‘Hallucinogens: Monkeys Discover Hyperspace, aka Return to the Logos.’”Cynthia Palmer (Horowitz), whose ground-breaking anthologyof women’s drug writings (Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady, reprinted as Sisters of the Extreme ) had been published the preceding year, attended the conference with her husband and co-editor, Michael Horowitz. Her candid photos of the speakers and conference-goers during a break from their presentations are published here for the first time.A complete set of the talks delivered at the conference is available on 6 audiocassettes from Soundphotosynthesis.[caption id="attachment_436274" align="alignnone" width="800"] Albert Hofmann in the Cafe.[/caption][caption id="attachment_436273" align="alignnone" width="800"] Rick Doblin, center, Deborah Harlow to his left.[/caption][caption id="attachment_436272" align="alignnone" width="800"] Ann and Sasha Shulgin surrounded by speakers and attendees.[/caption][caption id="attachment_436271" align="alignnone" width="800"] Andy Weil, Michael Horowitz, Sasha Shulgin[/caption][caption id="attachment_436270" align="alignnone" width="800"] Living room scene From L: Andy Weil, Terence McKenna, Kat Harrison McKenna, Walter Houston Clark, Shari Lewis (Jeremy Tarcher's wife), 2 unidentified, Jonathan Ott, Ann Shulgin, Sasha Shulgin[/caption][caption id="attachment_436268" align="alignnone" width="800"] Sasha Shulgin, living room group[/caption][caption id="attachment_436267" align="alignnone" width="800"] Michael Horowitz (left), Sasha Shulgin (middle), Andy Weil (right).[/caption][caption id="attachment_436266" align="alignnone" width="800"] Andy Weil[/caption][caption id="attachment_436265" align="alignnone" width="800"] Ralph Metzner, Stephanie Bernstein[/caption][caption id="attachment_436264" align="alignnone" width="800"] Carl Ruck, Albert Hofmann, Joan Halifax[/caption][caption id="attachment_436263" align="alignnone" width="764"] Jeremy Tarcher, Cynthia Palmer[/caption][caption id="attachment_436262" align="alignnone" width="800"] From left to right: Andy Weil, Michael Horowitz, Sasha Shulgin[/caption][caption id="attachment_436261" align="alignnone" width="800"] Terence McKenna, Jeremy Tarcher (background), Walter Houston Clark (foreground)[/caption][caption id="attachment_436260" align="alignnone" width="800"] Luminaries on the lawn: Terence McKenna, Kat Harrison (McKenna), Albert Hofmann[/caption][caption id="attachment_436259" align="alignnone" width="800"] Albert Hofmann inscribing books, with John Palmer[/caption][caption id="attachment_436258" align="alignnone" width="800"] Patio scene with Carl Ruck and Joan Halifax in foreground. Albert Hofmann in the background.[/caption][caption id="attachment_436257" align="alignnone" width="800"] Walter Houston Clark (left) Sasha Shulgin (right)[/caption][caption id="attachment_436256" align="alignnone" width="800"] Albert Hofmann with attendees[/caption][caption id="attachment_436255" align="alignnone" width="800"] Living room scene. From Left: Cynthia Palmer, Albert Hofmann, Joan Halifax[/caption][caption id="attachment_436254" align="alignnone" width="800"] Humphry Osmond (left)[/caption][caption id="attachment_436253" align="alignnone" width="800"] Admission Ticket for Santa Barbara Psychedelic Conference II[/caption]

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

If you like the idea of stamping approved and rejected stamps on animals' helpless faces, Animal Inspector is the game for you. In a world where pets are taking up too much space, or have turned bad, or maybe both, the Animal Inspector's job is to flip through dossiers and decide which pets are useful enough to stick around. Of course, pets' utility is often things like "is a good listener" or "hides a lot". That's just how pets are. Animal Inspector, made by Tom Astle, is sort of like a lighthearted take on the famous Papers, Please, where your document-processing decisions can create moral conflicts or story branches. If you don't follow your supervisor's instructions, which are often wacky and place you at odds with your coworkers, you collect a "strike", and you can only have three. Your main objective as an Animal Inspector, though, is to stay on the job long enough to protect your own beloved dog from getting inspected away from you. How far will you go to keep him safe?It's well-conceived, fun and funny—you must type your own comments, or reasons for approving or rejecting a pet, on their dossier, and you can save these and share them on social media (I rejected one puppy with only the comment "has a stupid face"). Though the game isn't massive or anything—I finished in 25 minutes—it has multiple endings, and there is lots to see. It also has a soundtrack by Ben "Torahhorse" Esposito (whom we've previously interviewed on Offworld)—Animal Inspector is free to download here, but those who purchase it at the suggested $3 or more get the soundtrack.

The Jungle Cruise at Disneyland in California was an opening day attraction in 1955. Walt Disney’s desire to bring the mystique of faraway lands to what were once orange groves in Anaheim, combined with the inspiration from his series of “True Life Adventure” films, led to its creation. The original boats, festooned with red and white striped awnings on their roofs, were inspired by the film The African Queen.Walt was rarely satisfied with things in stasis: he was always “plussing” (improving) them. Many changes have been made to The Jungle Cruise since its opening, though the majority of park-goers are unaware of them. The Jungle Cruise has always been popular at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World – there’s always a wait (more so in Tokyo Disneyland, where the wait is usually 45 to 90 minutes). Walt didn’t have to change it, but he added new and more realistic animals over time, and in 1963 (or so, I believe) asked Imagineer Marc Davis to create a series of “gag” scenes that would increase the entertainment value. These scenes, including a rhino chasing a safari party up a tree, can still be seen in the attraction.An interesting black and white video of the ride from mid-1960s, where a vocal narration of the ride by Thurl Ravenscroft (he was the voice of Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger) from an old Disney LP has been added, is available here. Numerous videos of its current incarnation can be found on YouTube, and this one of the new upgraded version at Tokyo Disneyland is a lot of fun. The Jungle Cruise Skippers in Tokyo are an intrepid group whose energy level does not diminish even late into the evening. I don’t know what they’re saying, but it certainly draws a more enthusiastic response from those in the boat than you see in the United States.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNf8y8BC_YQThe Jungle Cruise remains popular and its old-fashioned charm is probably part of the reason. Considering what The Walt Disney Company could actually do if they put a lot of money into it, it remains somewhat of a curiosity caught in time. Over on the official Disney Parks Blog they are giving away a free map of the Jungle Cruise which you can download as a pdf and print out at home. Swipe some colored pencils from your kid and have fun.

This week, our partnership with Critical Distance brings us interviews with the developers behind Cibele and Uriel's Chasm, as well as a meditation on games that aren't meant to be played. (more…)

What if you could learn how to play chess simply by looking at the pieces? (more…)

Mattel's Hello Barbie has a microphone and a wifi interface, and it transmits the phrases it hears to a central server in order to parse them and formulate a response. Mattel claims that the data isn't being retained or harvested for marketing purposes, and assures parents that they can make Barbie stopping eavesdropping on them at will. But does it work? (more…)

Last February, Lenovo shocked its security-conscious customers by pre-installing its own, self-signed root certificates on the machines it sold. These certificates, provided by a spyware advertising company called Superfish, made it possible for attackers create "secure" connections to undetectable fake versions of banking sites, corporate intranets, webmail providers, etc. (more…)

If I could walk, I wouldn’t have missed my connection. If I could walk, I wouldn’t have been left onboard, twice, after everyone else disembarked. If I could walk, I wouldn’t have my feet crushed, dragged under a narrow chair, as untrained staff pulled me off a plane.“We'll still have someone contact you," came the message, at last, after two trips in travel hell. "We don't want to lose your business and hope you won't give up on us.”But I have given up on American Airlines. They have lost my business. I urge anybody who travels with a disability to consider any other airline.As a space and aviation writer, I never look forward to writing about a bad experience in the air. Those who use wheelchairs to get around know how unfriendly our friendly skies can become. But I never expected an experience as unpleasant as the one given to me by American Airlines. (more…)

You’ll have tons of fun playing this well-balanced board game even if you never win - and I should know.Getting my wife to play games with me is a bit like pulling teeth. To increase my odds of making it happen, I normally promise to light a fire and make a cozy evening out of it.Here, you can see the lengths I went through last weekend to get my game on. On this particular night, we played The Duke!It’s a 2-player strategy game that takes place on a simple board of 36 squares. The game is a bit like chess – only better. The mechanics are constantly in flux and it forces you to think in a way that’s very different from other games. Like chess, players take turns controlling the movement of troops on the playing field. The player's movement options are graphically portrayed on the front and back of each troop but only the side that’s facing up is in play. Each time you move a troop, it's flipped and the movement rules change.Each player begins with 3 "stock" troops a sack of mixed wooden tiles that'll be chosen from later. Stock troop #1 - The Duke. He’s like the King in Chess. It’s important to keep him safe at all times because once he’s captured - you lose. The Duke can move clear across the board like a Rook. Stock troops 2 & 3 – The Footmen. These are like pawns in chess. They’re expendable but powerful. When a Footman moves, it can only be from his current position to positions denoted by the black circles. The Footman on the right, would be able to move 1 space in any diagonal direction, or 2 spaces forward. Where the Footman on the left would be able to move either horizontally or vertically one square.Each player places their troops anywhere on their side of the board as long as the Duke touches the bottom edge and the footmen touch the Duke. There are many different troop types and each has a unique way of getting around the board. Some troops can slide clear across the board and attack anything in its line of sight while others have the ability to jump over troops to attack or flee.When a player takes his turn, he has the choice of either moving one of his troops to a new location or pulling a random troop into play. A player can bring out troops as long as there is an open space on one of the 4 sides of The Duke. These spots are troop spawn points.If a player's troop lands on an opponent's occupied square, the attacked troop is eliminated from play.Sometimes it’s tough to decide wheather to attack or fortify your army.Even through the rules are very, very simple, the combinations of game-play seem endless.Did I mention that my wife beat me?Here’s the thing - Gina claims to not care for games of any kind and yet she effortlessly destroyed me at The Duke all night long. There was nothing I could do and though it was a massacre, I still had a great time.But I just may have a secret weapon for our next battle.You see, The Duke comes with 2 blank troops for you to customize – and while I may never stoop as low as to create a kraken character who can wipe out an entire army with one wave of his tentacle, it’s nice to know it’s there just in case.She’d never know what hit her! But if you're looking for well designed augmented rules and expansion packs for The Duke, there are a few to choose from.With these you can play as the Knights of the Round Table, The Three Musketeers or as Robin Hood and his band of merry men. For now, I leave you with a final photo of my cat Kucha posing with The Duke. Boy is that box ever adorable.

The Slo Mo Guys set fire to a bucket of fuel surrounded by box fans, then filmed the resulting column of fire. It's really something—a beautiful and scary thing that's understandably hard to capture in the wild.