You may have heard that "screen time" -- time with TV, phones, tablets, computers, or video games -- is bad for babies and toddlers. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics reversed course on their previous advice about screen time for kids under two." (more…)

Amazon has a promo code so you can get this garlic press for $9. It's regularly $18. (Use code 25NLO83R at checkout) It includes a free silicone tube garlic clove peeler, like the kind reviewed here.

Reuters, the news agency, has banned photographers from filing photos captured in RAW format, mandating in-camera JPGs instead. This, it believes, will cut down on processing time—and prevent photographers from editorializing their images.“As eyewitness accounts of events covered by dedicated and responsible journalists, Reuters Pictures must reflect reality. While we aim for photography of the highest aesthetic quality, our goal is not to artistically interpret the news."Filing RAW is the equivalent of handing unprocessed film, instead of a print, to your page layout guys. It shouldn't be their headache. So that complaint makes sense.But the thing about photomanipulation? This strikes me as a human resources problem being misunderstood as a technical problem.Whatever else you might say about the increased latitude for photomanipulation that RAW images provide, one can easily convert a worked RAW photo to JPG before filing it. Asking everyone to capture photos as JPGs won't make "arty" shooters more honest.

Engineer Alex Weinberg reviews suspension bridge scenes in movies and finds their representation of structural mechanics to be wobbly at best. Embedded above is the most accurate he found, from Final Destination V. The origin of the structural failure in this situation is pretty absurd because the asphalt driving surface on a traffic bridge is non-structural. The road itself rests on a steel structure, which would probably not be seriously compromised by some sawing and jackhammering on the asphalt. Further, it’s hard to invent a scenario in which any of this could cause a failure at the top of a vertical suspender. But who knows, maybe there had been some plot-friendly corrosion in the steel. Regardless of the initial cause of failure, the collapse progresses in a halfway believable manner: The road deck falls, but the main catenary cables and the bridge towers remain. With no road to support, the vertical cables swing dumbly over the void.Most scenes, however, are very bad indeed, like this one from The Dark Knight Rises. "I consider this the worst suspension bridge destruction scene in motion picture history," he writes.https://youtu.be/g8evyE9TuYk?t=45sHis roundup serves as a nice overview of the symbolism of suspension bridges, too. Alas, our directors score only 2 unnerving metallic whipping noises out of 10. Must try harder! [via]

Pete Reynolds in McSweeney's, proving that humor is a better source of news than the news is: "I refuse to support special interest groups whose sole mission is to profit from putting weapons into the hands of people, if those people are Syrians." (more…)

This post is a heartfelt thank you from Loog Guitars CEO Rafael Atijas. Loog is a company that we at Boing Boing are proud to have helped grow. We are thrilled to see them join us as a sponsor. To enter to win one of their guitars, simply send an email to gadgets@boingboing.net!Four years ago I had an idea: what if a children’s guitar wasn't just small but also had other features that made it fun and easy to learn how to play? That’s how I came up with Loog Guitars: a line of 3-string kits that kids can build with their parents and, in that way, connect with their instrument at a deeper level. The 3 strings still let kids and beginners play chords and, therefore, any song. But, with fewer things to learn, it's easier to play and to make sense of what they are playing. I took this idea to Kickstarter and that's how Loog Guitars, which is now a 4 year old business, was born. Later, I pushed my luck and ran a second Kickstarter campaign to make an electric version of the Loog Guitar. Running a Kickstarter campaign, especially one for physical products, is really no cakewalk and can be pretty nerve-wracking. You have to keep on pushing without coming off as spammy or annoying, while keeping an eye on the still-ticking clock urging you closer toward the goal. You feel like you're fighting an impossible fight, until you reach your goal and everything's okay with the world again. For both of our Kickstarter campaigns, that moment came right after Boing Boing posted about us. We always say that Loog Guitars would not exist if not for our Kickstarter backers. And it's also fair to assume that we would have never reached our goal if it wasn't for those two BoingBoing posts. This is why we're writing this post. We want to thank the Boing Boing community by throwing a giveaway consisting of three separate prizes: A complete set of Loog Guitars (an Electric Loog and an Acoustic Loog) plus Loog accessories for both: stands, backpacks, straps and tuners. An Electric Loog Guitar with accessoriesAn Acoustic Loog Guitar with accessoriesTo enter, all you have to do is send an email to gadgets@boingboing.net There will only be three winners, so here's a little something for everyone else: a 20% off discount code, exclusive for BoingBoing readers (shhh!): THXBOINGBOINGERS. We are still a tiny (not small: tiny) company, but strong in our quest for something much bigger than us: helping kids learn how to play music in a fun, engaging way. Bonding through music used to be a huge family activity. Today, it is increasingly rare. We want to change that and make the world a more musical place. But that's just the driving energy behind Loog Guitars; the purpose of this post is just to say thank you. So, thank you Boing Boingers! You are awesome :)

ISIS, or as they hate to be called, Daesh, released a video online Wednesday threatening an imminent attack on New York City. (more…)

This week's XKCD has a hell of an Easter Egg, and it's not even in the tooltip. (more…)

Above, The Mickey Mouse Club, circa 1930. Below, Mickey's first appearance, a May 15, 1928, test screening of the cartoon Plane Crazy. The film wasn't picked up by a distributor and as a result we celebrate Mickey's birthday on November 18 because that day in 1928 was the first public appearance of the mouse, in Steamboat Willie (below).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6c_WgxTsMohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4

A new report from the Manhattan District Attorney calls for law requiring "any designer of an operating system for a smartphone or tablet manufactured, leased, or sold in the U.S. to ensure that data on its devices is accessible pursuant to a search warrant." (more…)

Playboy Enterprises has agreed to a settlement with a woman who claims she was injured when a co-host of The Playboy Morning Show hit her in the buttocks with a golf club. The incident occurred at the Playboy Golf Finals in 2012. (more…)

See more photos at Wink Fun.750 Years in Paris is a historical graphic novel sans words as well as a stunning coffee table art book. Paris-based artist Vincent Mahé (aka Mr. Bidon) illustrates 60 snapshots of the same building in Paris, spanning from the year 1265 with cows grazing in front of its humbler beginnings to 2015 in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. With the smallest of details, from words of storefront signs to the clothing of people to the state of the building itself, Mahé is able to subtly and masterfully inject humor, horror, nostalgia, historical facts and pride into his various images. The back of the book has a timeline to help decipher some of the historical events revolving around the images. For instance, directly quoted from the book (and images shown above):1515 – Francis I is crowned king and enters the city in a lavish procession.1804 – Napoleon’s enthronement and imperial troops procession.1915 – World War 1.2015 – 4 million in the streets defending freedom of speech.As I began to write this review, the horror of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris unfolded before the world, making this newly-released book all the more poignant and significant.750 Years in Parisby Vincent MahéNobrow2015, 120 pages, 8.4 x 13 x 0.7 inches$18 Buy a copy on Amazon

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more. You can get both EMU Club Adventures books, signed, sketched and delivered here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

As the saying goes: when life gives you Marshmallow, jumpstart a thriving career! Android's latest platform has opened up even more demand for Android developers, and now's your shot to learn the ropes. Gain the necessary skills--from Java to Android Studio--to build amazing apps from scratch with this lifetime e-learning offer!

A New York man who spent a month in jail after Pennsylvania state police mistook homemade soap he was traveling with for cocaine has filed a lawsuit. (more…)

This amusing criticism of game rating inflation is doing the rounds. Who can deny that game ratings are inflated? And that if it gets less than 7, it's gonna suck.But the suggestion that this inflation is a phenomenon of the 2010s; now, that is suspect. I cracked open a 1990s copy of ACE magazine—one of the more popular British general-purpose gaming mags of the 16-bit era—and it had the following scores. (They're normalized to "out of 10"; ACE rated games out of 1000)Issue 15:Operation Wolf 9Joan of Arc 9Powerdrome 9Bombuzal 9Rocket Ranger 8R-Type 9Space Harrier compilation 7Typhoon 7Menace 7Hostages 7Albedo 7Action service 6Mad Mix 5The only game that gets less than 6/10 is a promotional merch for a drink mix. Basically, every credible commercial product gets at least 7/10. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

Pop Chart Lab was founded in 2010 by a book editor and a designer, with the modest goal of rendering all of human experience in chart form. Since then they’ve charted a wide array of cultural touchstones. A Visual Guide to Drink is Pop Chart Lab’s comprehensive volume of its most important topics in graphical form: beer, wine, and spirits. Containing everything from the many varieties of beer and the vessels from which to drink them, to cocktails of choice in film and literature, A Visual Guide to Drink maps, graphs, and charts the history, geography, and culture of the world’s very favorite pastime. The domestic beer-drinking novice and whisk(e)y aficionado alike will relish this perfectly practical primer awash in essentials like charted cocktail recipes, a breakdown of brewing processes, and extensive maps of the world’s wine region in Pop Chart Lab’s trademark clean and elegant design. The definitive guide to informative imbibing, A Visual Guide to Drink is a fun, functional, and beautiful concoction of data and design that is sure to inspire delight in readers (and drinkers) everywhere.

The hand-wash 55" knit scarf is $25 from Thinkgeek, with faux-fur ears. (via Oh Gizmo)

The UK Prime Minister has seized on the tragic deaths and injuries in Paris as an excuse to terroise Britons into allowing him to pass his Snoopers Charter, a sweeping, badly written surveillance bill that will end security research in the UK, cause Internet bills to soar, and riddle critical software with back-doors, threatening anyone who reveals these vulnerabilities, even in court, with a year in prison. (more…)

Hamilton's the kind of city where half of City Hall says they've been bullied at work, where the "accountability" committee charges you $100 to make a complaint and proposed that it would only investigate if you are never quoted in the press on the matter, and where city policy prohibits linking to its website without written permission. (more…)

Matthew Hankins catalogs 500 phrases used in scientific articles that researchers use to figleaf the fact that their results aren't statistically significant, and to hand-wave-away the fact that they're publishing anyway. (more…)

Gardening games tend to be soothing cycles of repetition: You plant, you water, you harvest, and then you do it again. You play them to relax, which is probably why so few of those games are set during wars. But that's exactly where A Good Gardener begins, by asking you to tend a small garden in the midst of a terrible conflict. You're a captured deserter in this unspecified war, assigned to grow crops for the troops in a small, open air compound that looks like it once had a roof. Perhaps it was blown up? All you can see beyond it is sky, and the top of a deserted building in the distance, its windows broken.The experience of the game is simple: every day you collect a box of seeds, plant them, and water them. (Don't forget to refill your watering can at the spout on the days when it rains.) As the days pass, you'll see different crops take different shapes until they reach their final form, and then your mustachioed supervisor will come to collect them. On the days when he arrives to gather the fruits of your labor, he'll often make offhand, ominous statements about what's happening in the world outside, or even your own mysterious past.Who are you really, and what exactly are you enabling with your green thumb? That's the question that lingers over your peaceful daily routine of weeding and watering, and if you're a good enough gardener, perhaps you'll learn the truth.A Good Gardener was originally made for the Ludum Dare 32 competition by Ian Endsley and Carter Lodwick, the creators of the charming sleepover game Little Party. It's is available for $5 on Mac, Windows and Linux, though the developers note that if this "too high a price for you at the moment, please email us and we'd be happy to send you a download code for free."https://youtu.be/skb2Q3IA3_s

Yasuomi Hirai, 28, allegedly hid in a drain under a Kobe, Japan sidewalk grate to peep up the skirts of women as they stepped over. (more…)

This week, our partnership with Critical Distance brings us writing on witch folklore, the intimate language of games, and a lost design doc made by Carl Sagan. (more…)

Law and the Multiverse uses comics and movies to explain the law; today they turn their hands to the evidence that Batman provides to Commissioner Gordon, and how district attorneys like Harvey Dent would be constrained in using that evidence to prosecute the crooks that Batman helped catch. (more…)

Eire we go, at last! The BBC reports that the Republic of Ireland will now permit same-sex couples to wed.It is not yet known when and where the first same-sex wedding will be held.But the first people to be affected are same-sex couples who have already wed legally abroad. Their marriages are now automatically recognised by the state.They include Orla Howard and her wife Dr Grainne Courtney, who were married in the United States in May 2013.The new rules follow a referendum in May in which Irish voters overwhelmingly supported the change.Ireland was late to the gay rights party, only decriminalizing homosexual acts in 1993. But now it is the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. https://twitter.com/AodhanORiordain/status/602056053270913026This leaves Northern Ireland as the last holdout in the Atlantic Archipelagos; though about 70% of locals support same-sex marriage, conservative protestants in government have apparently used procedural measures to prevent the law being voted upon.1. Various wee UK tax shelters have yet to permit same-sex weddings, but all have signaled their legislative commitment to marriage equality.

Researchers are warning that ads could play coded sounds outside the range of human hearing to secretly communicate with other gadgets within earshot.The technique, which several companies are reportedly working on, would allow marketers to associate devices with one another and paint a privacy-cracking picture of the owner's interests and behaviors.Dan Goodin reports that cross-device tracking is already in use:Cross-device tracking raises important privacy concerns, the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote in recently filed comments to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has scheduled a workshop on Monday to discuss the technology. Often, people use as many as five connected devices throughout a given day—a phone, computer, tablet, wearable health device, and an RFID-enabled access fob. Until now, there hasn't been an easy way to track activity on one and tie it to another."As a person goes about her business, her activity on each device generates different data streams about her preferences and behavior that are siloed in these devices and services that mediate them," CDT officials wrote. "Cross-device tracking allows marketers to combine these streams by linking them to the same individual, enhancing the granularity of what they know about that person."The trick hasn't been seen in the wild, but all the pieces are in place: we all know our smartphones and laptops might end up under someone else's control, but did you know television sets now default to collecting and sending data on what you watch?[via The New Aesthetic]

Gauntlet, Atari's 1985 dungeon-looting arcade game, came long after the heyday of its successful home console. But CDS Games has managed to pack a playable version of the complex action RPG into the primitive Atari VCS. [via] (more…)

It’s no secret that project management is one of the most valued and profitable skills today. Whether you develop proprietary tools for a tech company, or you regularly plan and execute tasks, this course is sure to improve upon your process. Gain a foundation of skills and concepts to double up on your project management skills.Learn to not only earn the Project Management Professional certification, but knock out projects on time and under budget in this must-take course. You’ll finesse the skills you learned in the previous course, and start building project dream teams that hit every milestone. Gain a leg up on your colleagues as you demonstrate your ability to improve profitability with each and every project.

The Womanizer is a new, $189 sex toy billed as a "clitoral stimulator." While woman reviewers universally hate the name and many dislike the leopard-spotted finish, they are universal in their acclaim of the Womanizer's ability to give them fast, powerful orgasms. (more…)

terror attacks in Paris, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump mocked France's gun control laws and the French ambassador described him as a vulture."Isn't it interesting that the tragedy in Paris took place in one of the toughest gun control countries in the world," Trump said on Twitter."This message is repugnant in its lack of any human decency," responded Gérard Araud. "Vulture."

"My grandfather's plane was reported lost in 1960 during the Algeria Independence War, days before the birth of his first child," writes Armel Gibson, in the introduction for his game, Oases. "This is what I like to think happened to him."Oases opens with a plane flying over a desert, its engines trailing dark plumes of smoke. But before it can crash, a hole opens up in the sky, and swallows the plane with in rings of color. On the other side, you find yourself soaring across gorgeous, surreal landscapes of tall trees, enormous trumpet-shaped fungi and waterfalls dripping from giant sculptures. It is a world where you can soar forever, and never crash.It's not the first game created to grieve the loss of a loved one, or make sense of their death—That Dragon Cancer comes to mind—but Oases addresses a very specific form of loss: How do you deal with losing someone when you don't know what happened to them, and probably never will?Gibson writes his own ending for his grandfather's story, and invites us to wander around in it. It's a lovely one too, where the only goal is simply to fly and find pleasure in the world around you.Created by Gibson and Dziff with music by Calum Bowen, Oases is pay-what-you-will on Itch.io for Mac and PC.https://youtu.be/K5gJVgIZgYQ[via Kotaku]

Silverpush, a startup that's just received $1.25M in venture capital, uses ultrasonic chirps that are emitted by apps, websites, and TV commercials to combine the identities associated with different devices (tablets, phones, computers, etc), so that your activity on all of them can be aggregated and sold to marketers. (more…)

Dutch psych-rockers Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz," from their 1969 LP At Home. Far fucking out. Nirvana famously covered the song as their first single in 1988 and it later appeared on Bleach. Below, Shocking Blue play their hit "Venus" that topped the Billboard charts in February 1970. https://youtu.be/yHX0BjwwP8w

Albuquerque police officer Jeremy Dear was ordered to wear a body-camera after many of the city's residents complained about their encounters with him. Afterward, he routinely failed to plug in the camera. His camera was not running when he shot and killed a 19-year-old girl in 2014. (more…)

Craig Barnes, a grad student at Central St Martins in Kings Cross, London, bought and refurbished one of the last 60 Futuro houses, originally designed in the 1960s as modular ski chalets by famed Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. (more…)

I hope the teacher didn't mark it wrong. [via]

Makes me want to hop on a fucking plane to NYC right now. (mediocrefilms)

https://youtu.be/XwdUXS94yNkThis video was made by Finland-based Fragile Childhood, "an awareness-raising campaign, which aims to reduce parents' use of alcohol by helping them understand the harm it causes to children."Here's another:https://youtu.be/i46h9dAaDfoWhat if children could choose their parents?

Michael from Muckrock writes, "Mr. Russell Jones. Maybe the name doesn't ring any bells for you. On February 3, 1999, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation first ran their records on him, there were over a thousand people that made that match. In New York, there were 196. Another 164 of them turned up as living nearby in New Jersey. Perhaps you'd recognize him by another name. After all, there was only one Ol' Dirty Bastard. Today, on the 12th anniversary of his death, MuckRock takes a look at his voluminous files with the FBI. (more…)

A police officer pulled over a Google self-driving car yesterday because it was going only 24 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone. But the car had no driver, so he could not issue a ticket. The officer asked the human passenger why the car decided to drive so slowly.From CNN:In a Google Plus post, the Google Self-Driving Car Project pled guilty to slow driving."We've capped the speed of our prototype vehicles at 25 mph for safety reasons," the post said. "We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets."In the end, the officer determined the car had broken no law. No harm, no foul.And no ticket was issued -- not because there was no driver to whom to issue it but because the car had committed no violation.pic.twitter.com/3tKhtuxxr8— David E. Weekly (@dweekly) November 12, 2015

https://youtu.be/6GYc0ragGOIA Virginia man who died in police custody was tased 20 times in 30 minutes, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed by his sister.Linwood Lambert, 46, was tased 10 times within 2 minutes at one point during his arrest, racking up a total of 87 seconds of electrical discharge: enough, according to federal guidelines, to inflict serious injury or death.Lambert was detained after officers responded to a noise complaint and found him to be delusional, according to police reports. Transported to hospital, however, he became aggressive, kicking out a car window and "sprinting roughly 20 feet towards the ER entrance and crashing into the building’s glass doors."Video footage acquired by MSNBC shows what happened next: the officers tased him over and over again, then decided to arrest him and leave instead of taking him into the hospital.During the incident, Lambert appears subdued on the ground and tells police he used cocaine earlier in the night. As Lambert lies on the ground outside of the hospital, police arrest him for disorderly conduct and destruction of property. Instead of taking him into the hospital to receive care they put him back into the police car.During the incident Lambert repeatedly asked police to stop. "Why are you trying to kill me man," Lambert said in the video. "Please don't do this to me."During the ride to the police station, Lambert appears to be unconscious and the officers realize he is in distress. An ambulance is called to take him back to the hospital and he is pronounced dead at 6:23 a.m., according to MSNBC. The medical examiner ruled that he died of a cocaine overdose, despite an autopsy finding "less than 0.01 mg/L" of the drug in his system. No-one has been disciplined or charged in connection with his death.Police video shows Lambert shackled and subdued in the car, apparently restrained, as officers warn him again and tell him to sit up.“Act like you got some sense,” says one officer. Another warns, “sit up or I’m going to tase you again.” Reaching into the car with two Tasers, the officers tase Lambert as he slumps down in the seat.… In addition to the video, nurses on the scene say they saw “three officers” tasing Lambert “at one time,” according to hospital records obtained by MSNBC.South Boston Police Chief James Binner wrote that it was an appropriate use of force."The deployments of Tasers when a subject has become violent, causing damage to property and placing the safety of persons at risk, as was the case with Linwood Lambert Jr., is appropriate and necessary use of force," according to [his] response.

Global Justice Now's "Corporate Monopoly" is an excellent piece of information design; it's a playable boardgame adapted from Monopoly (itself originally designed to teach the evils of capitalism), in which a shoe (the 99%) and a top hat (obvs) take it in turns to go round a familiar board whose squares tell stories about real-world class war, centred around UK policies and business. (more…)

c-90.org is a thing of wonder, not least for the Catalogue of Tapes, each lovingly photographed and organized by brand.This page is dedicated to cassette tapes. Here you won't find any kind of scientific research, technical data or things like that. The authors' only message is just to give a visitor something interesting to look at. The era of this particular medium is slowly passing, and here we are trying to turn back time for 60 minutes, or, maybe, for 90...Pictured above is the Sony C-1C Head Cleaner. Sadly, the image sizes are rather small.

The EDC Card [via] is exactly what its name promises: a multitool designed to fit into a wallet and be carried around every day, just in case you run into an opportunity to show off your EDC Card.This Special Edition model comes with a weapons grade ceramic coating applied, to create a non-reflective surface for a discreet look. The back of the Special Edition EDC Card has laser etchings to designate tool sizes.Inspired by high-end outdoor/military knives, the Everyday Carry Card follows the EDC credo of usefulness, minimalism, quality, and high versatility—all in a handheld package that consumes little space.It is TSA-safe, $80 and, the makers stress, made of blade steel, not titanium, which is soft.

Donald Trump unloaded on fellow presidential candidate Ben Carson last night, describing his rival as "pathological" and comparing his behavior to that of a child molester.The Donald's wrath fell only hours after sales figures showed Ben Carson's A More Perfect Union surpassing his own Crippled America at the top of the New York Times bestseller lists.NBC News:"He wrote a book and in the book, he said terrible things about himself," Trump said of Carson. "He said that he's pathological and he's got basically pathological disease ... I don't want a person that's got pathological disease."Trump first compared the two conditions on CNN and repeated them to a 1,500-person crowd at Iowa Central Community College: "I said that if you're a child molester, a sick puppy, a child molester, there's no cure for that - there's only one cure and we don't want to talk about that cure, that's the ultimate cure. No there's two, there's death and the other thing. But if you're a child molester, there's no cure, they can't stop you. Pathological, there's no cure."At one point in what observers described as a rambling, 90-minute rant, Trump flipped over his belt buckle in an effort to mock the former neurosurgeon, who recently took Trump's top spot in polls of Republican voters, too.CNN:Donald Trump on Thursday told Iowa's voters that those who support Ben Carson are "stupid" to believe the "crap" that is his life story, part of a stunning 95-minute tirade that included his most aggressive attack yet on his closest competitor.The real estate mogul's pugnacious demeanor was a stark departure from the far more restrained Trump on display at Tuesday's debate, when he declined to attack Carson while standing right next to him. He criticized the retired neurosurgeon repeatedly, said Hillary Clinton is playing the "women's card big league," ridiculed Marco Rubio as "weak like a baby" and vowed to "bomb the shit out of (ISIS)."Both men hope to become President in 2016.

"Fordite" is an anthropocenic mineral "formed from the built up of layers of enamel paint slag on tracks and skids on which cars were hand spray-painted (a now automated process), which have been baked numerous times. In recent times the material has been recycled as eco-friendly jewelry."(via JWZ)

Calling all writers! Wink Books is looking for writers to review books. Reviewers also need to take some photos of the books they review. If you’re interested, check out our site, and then email me (carla@boingboing.net) for more information. If you have writing experience please let me know.