On November 4, 1975, David Bowie performed "Golden Years" on Soul Train. Sure, he was lip-syncing, but who cares. The Thin White Duke's got soul. The Bowie Golden Years site has more background on the appearance.

https://youtu.be/SclN-2CteXMI could literally watch this all day. (more…)

There's no one else on Earth who's more familiar with the surveillance capabilities of governments, spy agencies and criminals who is also willing to discuss those capabilities. Edward Snowden's wide-ranging conversation with the Freedom of the Press Foundation's Micah Lee on operational security for normal people is a must-read for anyone who wants to be safe from identity thieves, stalkers, corrupt governments, police forces, and spy agencies. (more…)

Courtney Brown's sculpture "Self Organization" adds gorgeous brass tentacles to an Underwood Noiseless typewriter, for an effect that's fantastic, seeming to surface some latent, Naked Lunch-ish truth about the hard-carapaced writing machines of the past. (via Colossal)

While visiting a friend recently, I stayed at a local hotel and got a chance to try out the Quickcakes Popcake PC-11 Pancake Extruder. About a yard wide, it has a single button on it, a small monochrome display, and is emblazoned with a decal stating "PANCAKES IN A MINUTE FLAT." (more…)

Giant multinational offshoring firms have figured out how to game the H1-B system, flooding the application queue with thousands of requests the instant the process opens each year. It's transformed the H1-B Visa category from a lifeline for companies who need to bring in critical foreign talent into a way to shut down whole departments in the USA and replace them with lower-cost overseas workers who are exploited far from home. (more…)

Wow. @CarnegieMellon is America's Shanghai Jiaotong. https://t.co/UAtaAgJvJh— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 11, 2015Documents published by Vice News: Motherboard and further reporting by Wired News suggest that a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University who canceled their scheduled 2015 BlackHat talk identified Tor hidden servers and visitors, and turned that data over to the FBI. No matter who the researchers and which institution, it sounds like a serious ethical breach.First, from VICE, a report which didn't name CMU but revealed that a U.S. University helped the FBI bust Silk Road 2, and suspects in child pornography cases:An academic institution has been providing information to the FBI that led to the identification of criminal suspects on the dark web, according to court documents reviewed by Motherboard. Those suspects include a staff member of the now-defunct Silk Road 2.0 drug marketplace, and a man charged with possession of child pornography.It raises questions about the role that academics are playing in the continued crackdown on dark web crime, as well as the fairness of the trials of each suspect, as crucial discovery evidence has allegedly been withheld from both defendants.Here's a screenshot of the relevant portion of one of the court Documents that Motherboard/Vice News published:Later today, a followup from Wired about discussion that points the finger directly at CMU:The Tor Project on Wednesday afternoon sent WIRED a statement from its director Roger Dingledine directly accusing Carnegie Mellon of providing its Tor-breaking research in secret to the FBI in exchange for a payment of “at least $1 million.” And while Carnegie Mellon’s attack had been rumored to have been used in takedowns of dark web drug markets that used Tor’s “hidden service” features to obscure their servers and administrators, Dingledine writes that the researchers’ dragnet was larger, affecting innocent users, too.No official word yet from the FBI on any of this.[caption id="attachment_433904" align="alignnone" width="800"] shutterstock[/caption]Here's the Tor Project's statement in full this afternoon:The Tor Project has learned more about last year's attack by Carnegie Mellon researchers on the hidden service subsystem. Apparently these researchers were paid by the FBI to attack hidden services users in a broad sweep, and then sift through their data to find people whom they could accuse of crimes. We publicized the attack last year, along with the steps we took to slow down or stop such an attack in the future.Here is the link to their (since withdrawn) submission to the Black Hat conference, along with Ed Felten's analysis at the time.We have been told that the payment to CMU was at least $1 million.There is no indication yet that they had a warrant or any institutional oversight by Carnegie Mellon's Institutional Review Board. We think it's unlikely they could have gotten a valid warrant for CMU's attack as conducted, since it was not narrowly tailored to target criminals or criminal activity, but instead appears to have indiscriminately targeted many users at once.Such action is a violation of our trust and basic guidelines for ethical research. We strongly support independent research on our software and network, but this attack crosses the crucial line between research and endangering innocent users.This attack also sets a troubling precedent: Civil liberties are under attack if law enforcement believes it can circumvent the rules of evidence by outsourcing police work to universities. If academia uses "research" as a stalking horse for privacy invasion, the entire enterprise of security research will fall into disrepute. Legitimate privacy researchers study many online systems, including social networks — If this kind of FBI attack by university proxy is accepted, no one will have meaningful 4th Amendment protections online and everyone is at risk.When we learned of this vulnerability last year, we patched it and published the information we had on our blog.We teach law enforcement agents that they can use Tor to do their investigations ethically, and we support such use of Tor — but the mere veneer of a law enforcement investigation cannot justify wholesale invasion of people's privacy, and certainly cannot give it the color of "legitimate research".Whatever academic security research should be in the 21st century, it certainly does not include "experiments" for pay that indiscriminately endanger strangers without their knowledge or consent.Remember when researchers abruptly cancelled a talk at Def Con on de-anonymizing Tor users? This might explain it. https://t.co/ofTSi5LDPq— Lorenzo Franceschi-B (@lorenzoFB) November 11, 2015The likely absence of IRB approval of CMU Tor research is even more problematic now that it looks like they turned user data over to the FBI— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) November 11, 2015Journalists following up on CMU/FBI story: Call the CMU General Counsel. Ask if Tor team got IRB approval for research. If not, why not.— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) November 11, 2015

I often think about the fact we don't really have 'online lives' any more. When I was small, to have a 'handle', to get on the Information Superhighway, was like attending a masquerade ball on a brand-new planet. All of you were suddenly someplace else, strange and new. (more…)

Our Magic from R. Paul Wilson on Vimeo.The documentary Our Magic by filmmaker R. Paul Wilson lifts the curtain behind which magicians have worked for a century and a half. Our Magic, however, does not explain how tricks work — that’s not the real point of magic. How magicians work, how their childhood experiences feed into what makes them seek such a specialized field of endeavor, is the real secret. Watch Wilson’s award-winning short film The Magic Box to get a taste of not only his talent as a filmmaker, but what makes magicians tick.https://youtu.be/DyfM7oLIlp0Few people who love magic do not feel the well of emotion which The Magic Box (above video) evokes. But why? What makes a grown man (or woman) teary-eyed by watching a short film about something so seemingly inconsequential as a magic trick? The documentary Our Magic answers that question, and does so in an entertaining and artistic manner. Most of the world’s best magicians participated in the project, and with the help of Kickstarter, R. Paul Wilson has created a unique piece of cinema. Happily, Our Magic is now available via Vimeo on Demand either to rent or download and own. The price is startlingly low, and readers of Boing Boing can get a 66% discount by entering the code “BoingBoing” in the appropriate spot.

[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]“Hitler escaped” in a secret tunnel and fled to Argentina, "there really are vampires among us,” and Robert Wagner is “going to jail” for killing Natalie Wood.It’s another fact-free fest in this week's soaring supermarket tabloids and scintillating celebrity magazines.Frank Sinatra is this week’s punching bag. Ol’ Blue Eyes was a “cocaine gang overlord” according to the National Enquirer (which makes me view ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ in a completely new light) and “asked mob to whack Woody” Allen after the director cheated on Mia Farrow, according to the Globe.So good to have a week when the tabloids aren’t giving us breaking news about who Sinatra was sleeping with 60 years ago.Fortunately investigative journalism is still alive and kicking at Us magazine, with the startling revelations that Selena Gomez wore it best, TV’s ‘Minority Report’ actress Meagan Good carries Post-it notes, green tea and a miniature teddy bear in her handbag, and the stars are just like us: they exercise together, indulge in ice cream, and volunteer for charity (the latter proving that Us mag considers former president Jimmy Carter “a star.”)Hitler’s escape and America’s plague of real-life vampires come courtesy of the National Examiner, whose reporters never met a conspiracy they didn’t like. It seems reasonable to assume that Hitler may have been killed by Argentinian vampires - I’m just guessing here, which seems to be the standard of proof the tabloids require before going to print - but is Robert Wagner really headed behind bars?The Globe seems to think that a “secret FBI file” reveals his “motive for murder” after a “shocking 34-year cover-up.” Or as an FBI spokesman might say: a probe into Natalie Wood's financial dealings was closed in 1980 without charges, and has gathered dust in an archive since then. Just because the Globe has noticed the antique file doesn’t make it any more of a “secret file” or smoking gun than it was when first shelved over three decades ago.Elvis Presley’s ex-wife Priscilla “is telling all before she dies,” says the Enquirer. Or cynics might say she’s just giving interviews to coincide with the release of the new Elvis album ‘If I Can Dream.’Angelina Jolie has had her nose surgically slimmed, alleges the Enquirer, displaying “before” and “after” photos that seem virtually identical. “Surgery’s so subtle hardly anyone would notice!” it adds. I couldn’t agree more.Us mag splashes with the claim that Gwen Stefanie’s marriage collapsed after she caught hubby Gavin Rossdale cheating with their children’s nanny. Evidently the childcare cutie sent naked selfies to Rossdale that turned up on the kids’ iPad. Grounds for dismissal, no doubt.People mag devotes its cover to a Duggar baby exclusive, though it seems this TV family of Biblical proportions births a new member every week, so this can hardly be news. “I can’t believe he’s really ours,” says Jessa Seewald (she’s not even a Duggar since marrying) who perhaps thinks that the nurses accidentally switched babies in the neo-natal ward.Actress and Food Network host Valerie Bertinelli’s recent weight gain is poised to divide America, it seems. “Valerie loses food fight!” screams the Globe. “Val Vows To Stay Big!” shouts the Enquirer. You decide.Literary awards of the week go to the Enquirer for its headline above bikini photos of Blake Lively, proclaiming “Blake’s Chest Amazing . . .” and for its headline above a photo of a slightly plumper Ben Affleck, touting: “Affleck’s New Role: Fatman.”I hope the Pulitzer judges are watching.Onwards and downwards . . .

A 1968 memo from Paramount producer Robert Justman to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry reports on the sad state of the show's hairpieces, which had gone missing in great number. (more…)

Journalist/educator Lisa Rein is looking for $20,000 to complete a documentary called "From DeadDrop to SecureDrop," which chronicles the development of the last technology project that Aaron Swartz worked on: a tool to help whistleblowers and journalists communicate and exchange documents in secret. (more…)

Floral/fruity scents have long been characterized as attractive to mosquitoes, so it's natural that New Mexico State’s Molecular Vector Physiology Lab researcher Stacy Rodriguez tested a floral/fruity perfume against DEET in a lab trial. (more…)

"Midgets" dressed in camouflage. Worms emerging from the car floor. Possums jumping out of the microwave. People jumping out of the refrigerator. I don't blame Brandon Terry and Casey Fowler of Spartanburg County for calling 911 five times to report these unusual events taking place in their home. Finally, a deputy arrived to investigate. From WYFF:The deputy said Terry showed him several pictures of a basketball hoop and tree. Terry and Fowler told the deputy that there was a person standing beside the tree in camouflage. The deputy told Fowler he could not see the person and Fowler told the deputy it was because only he could see them.Officials said Terry had six felony warrants for narcotics charges and was put in investigative detention, the report said.Terry agreed to a field sobriety test. During the test, Terry stopped and said the deputy was touching his eyes, according to the report. The deputy told Terry he was not and restarted the test.Terry and Fowler were charged with unlawful use of 911, and Terry received an additional charge for being a fugitive from justice.[via]

House Bill HR1737 will create penalties for auto-lenders who substantially overcharge black and latino customers through gouging on dealer markups. (more…)

From KQED Science: Surface tension is the property of any liquid that describes how its particles stick together. In the case of water, surface tension is especially strong, enough to form a kind of film where it meets the air, whether at the surface or in a bubble...If you’re a bug the size of a paperclip... surface tension makes a difference. Harnessing it, some aquatic beetles carry the oxygen they need underwater in the form of a temporary bubble, sort of like a natural scuba tank. Others encase themselves in a layer of air and draw oxygen from it their whole lives."Nature’s Scuba Divers: How Beetles Breathe Underwater" (Deep Look)

https://youtu.be/I906a5msynw?list=UUeecKs0KQxT7ejAHkoQ4wUwRhizome takes a look at the world of Black Midi, compositions with so many notes that to print them as musical notation would result simply in a giant blob of ink on the page. We've previously written about Circus Galop, an inhumanly-polyphonic test suite for automatic pianos. This stuff makes it look rather minimalist. [via]https://youtu.be/FfhDzEgYZug

She is reading a copy of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.Jacket copy:Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.From Vic Berger IV's Vine.

We've all encountered what people today call Black Memorabilia — a Mammy cookie jar, a racist postcard — but have you ever wondered where these depictions came from, and why they are so common? In her latest article for Collectors Weekly, Lisa Hix interviewed Dr. David Pilgrim, author of Understanding Jim Crow, to get some answers to these and other questions. Hix learned that Black Memorabilia was popularized by post-Reconstruction whites to dehumanize African Americans, and that while slavery may have ended in 1865, Jim Crow has persisted in various forms and guises to this day, which helps explain why the presence of an African American family in the White House has not been enough to put America's racial history behind us.Stock caricatures such as Mammy, Uncle Tom, Sambo, pickaninny children, coon, Jezebel, Sapphire, and the black brute were employed to spread these messages to millions of people. Companies mass-produced these images in every form — including postcards, cleaning products, toys and games, ceramic figurines, ashtrays, cast-iron banks, children’s books, dinnerware, songbooks, tea towels, cookie jars, matchbooks, magazines, movies, gag gifts, salt-and-pepper shakers, planters, fishing lures, trade cards, ads, records, and tobacco tins. If you lived during the Jim Crow era, you’d encounter such caricatures everywhere, in your newspaper, on restaurant walls, on the shelves at stores, and at the cinema or live theater.“If you believed that black men were Sambos, childlike buffoons, for example, then why would they be allowed to vote?” Pilgrim says. “Why would they be allowed to hold office, serve on a jury, or attend public schools with whites? If black men were brutes who were a threat to white women, why would they be allowed to share beaches, public-school classes, or taxicabs? If black women were Mammies whose best roles in life were serving white families, why would they be allowed in other occupations when the society needed them for that? So the caricatures, and the stereotypes which accompanied them, became rationalizations for keeping blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Perpetuating these caricatures was a way to make sure you didn’t have to compete against black people economically. In short, it was a way of sustaining white supremacy."

Mark of Future Forms takes gorgeous photos of his collection of "space-age" electronics from the 1960s to the 1980s, many of which are for sale or rental. You can search by color, brand, or category. I got lost and then found again in "novelty" and then disappeared altogether into "orange." (more…)

I've never understood the need for an advent calendar, as if children needed help remembering Christmas. As my daughter celebrates the gift giving traditions of several cultures, however, I'm left looking for a happy middle ground. We will both enjoy 24 days of Star Wars surprises.This LEGO Star Wars calendar promises to include some minifigs, space craft and some holiday themed droids. I'd love to see C1-10P in an ugly sweater.2015 LEGO Star Wars 75097 Advent Calendar Building Kit

Allen Touissant, a deeply influential New Orleans rhythm and blues musician and producer, has died. He was 77. Touissant suffered a heart attack shortly after a performance in Madrid, Spain. Touissant's work influenced generations of artists, from the Rolling Stones and The Who, who covered his songs, to collaborators like The Meters, Harry Connick, Jr., and Elvis Costello, with whom he recorded a post-Katrina album. From the New York Times:Mr. Toussaint was born in 1938 in Gert Town, a humble, working-class neighborhood of New Orleans, where he taught himself piano. He began his career as a teenager in the 1950s, releasing his first album in 1958 under the name Tousan. In 1960, he became the house producer, arranger and songwriter for the Minit label, working on songs like Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother in Law,” Lee Dorsey’s “Ya Ya” and Jessie Hill’s “Ooh Poo Pah Doo.”Throughout his career, Mr. Toussaint embodied the traditions of the New Orleans R&B scene, working as one of the city’s most prolific and influential songwriters and producers during the 1960s and 70s. Even in that fertile period of New Orleans music, Mr. Toussaint’s work stood out for its humor, jaunty style and arrangements with piano flourishes that showed the influence of Professor Longhair.After a brief stint in the United States Army, Mr. Toussaint returned to music in 1965 and continued to work with a range of New Orleans musicians, including the early funk group the Meters. He co-founded Sea-Saint Studios in 1972, which attracted Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and others.https://youtu.be/VBvolXWOaxs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRlRAyulN4oA video of a protest at the University of Missouri shows a professor of mass media blocking a student reporter from reporting. (more…)

Two Louisiana cops who killed a 6-year-old boy have been charged with murder after bodycam footage showed that his father had his hands up when they opened fire.Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, were also charged with attempted murder after firing upon a vehicle at what Louisana State Police described as "the conclusion of a pursuit."Jeremy Mardis was shot five times, according to the Avoyelles Parish coroner's office, and his father, Chris Few, was also critically injured.Police have not yet released the footage.The head of the Louisiana State Police earlier said that video of the shooting is one of the most disturbing things he's ever seen, CBS News' David Begnaud reported."This was not a threatening situation for the police," Mark Jeansonne, the attorney for Chris Few, told the Associated Press after a closed hearing for the marshals.Few remained hospitalized, and he was unable to attend the family's funeral for his son, 6-year-old Jeremy Mardis.Questions are also swirling about the claim of a pursuit, with CBS's Bergnaud describing the answers he's receiving as the strangest he's received in 15 years of reporting."That is one question I've been trying to ask for three days, and the answers I've been getting are some of the most bizarre I've ever gotten," Bergnaud said. "There was no warrant, there was no 911 call… there was nothing to indicate why these 2 officers moonlighting as deputy marshals at the time would have pulled over his man. Nothing to indicate why they would have turned on their lights in Marksville and pursued him down the dead-end road that led to the shooting."Huffington Post reports that at least 18 rounds were fired into the vehicle.Police initially said the marshals were attempting to serve Few a warrant when he attempted to reverse his SUV into the officers. Edmonson, however, said there's no evidence of a warrant for Few and couldn't confirm that Few attempted to back into the officers. The state police leader also said no gun was found that could be linked to Few.Jeremy, a first-grader in elementary school, died at the scene from head and chest wounds, Avoyelles Parish Coroner Dr. L. J. Mayeux said last week.

Wired recommends the Mrice E300 earbuds, a cheapie ($17-25) option that outperforms many headphones that cost over $1000 (!). (more…)

Metafont makes it easy to create your own typeface: all you have to do is move sliders that alter the geometry until you've got the results you want. Then click "download," and you have your font!metaflop is an easy to use web application for modulating your own fonts. metaflop uses metafont, which allows you to easily customize a font within the given parameters and generate a large range of font families with very little effort. With the modulator it is possible to use metafont without dealing with the programming language and coding by yourself, but simply by changing sliders or numeric values of the font parameter set. this enables you to focus on the visual output – adjusting the parameters of the typeface to your own taste. all the repetitive tasks are automated in the background.The unique results can be downloaded as a webfontpackage for embedding on your homepage or an opentype postscript font (.otf) which can be used on any system in any application supporting otf. Various metafonts can be chosen from our type library. they all come along with a small showcase and a preset of type derivations. Metaflop is open source – you can find us on github, both for the source code of theplatform and for all the fonts.

You'd be forgiven for thinking the videocassette format long-dead, but it turns out that Betamax is still around. Sony is finally going to withdraw tapes from sale, bringing a 40-year story to an end.The last recorders were sold in 2002.ベータビデオカセットおよびマイクロMVカセットテープ出荷終了のお知らせ [Sony; via The Verge]

Photographic proof that dogs are angels. Not shopped, we can tell by the pixels.HT: d0gbl0g.dog

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge came up with a convenient way to reject a proposed amendment to the state constitution to legalize cannabis: incorrect mixed singular and plural nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the amendment. Rutledge also said the the phrase “all products derived from the cannabis plant” was too ambiguous. The current laws against weed in Arkansas are some of the harshest in the country:Arkansas punishes first-time convicts of marijuana possession (fewer than four ounces) with a misdemeanor, which can result in up to a year in jail and a maximum $2,500 fine. A repeat offense of possessing fewer than four ounces amounts to a felony, inviting six years of incarceration and a maximum $10,000 fine. That is also the punishment for possession with the purpose of planting and growing more.

The U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority has banned winemaker Premier Estates' "Taste the Bush" advertisement, created by agency Saatchi Masius. According to the government agency, the phrase is understood "to be a reference to oral sex, particularly given that it was accompanied with the image of the wine glass positioned directly in front of the woman's crotch" and that the "ad presented the woman in a degrading manner." Of course, the value of the ad's earned media, aka free publicity, has far exceeded anything Premier Estates could have paid for. ASA Ruling on Budge Brands Ltd t/a Premier Estates Wine (via Huffington Post)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmcGwBjL7W0

PrankvsPrank turned a remote-controlled car into the infamous pizza-loving rat to terrorize unwitting passers-by. How-To video below:https://youtu.be/HLcSDFtHOGA

The first time we ever see the power of the "light side" of the Force is to psychically dominate a security guard. The first time we see a lightsaber in use, it's to maim someone in a bar brawl. It's the "elegant weapon" of a man so feared that his battle cry sends the local people scattering. Small wonder, given that his apprentice slaughtered those same people indiscriminately and without repercussion.This man, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pines for a time when he and his brothers roamed the galaxy, meting out their unaccountable rulings as emotionless judges and executioners— when not using their powers to cheat at dice. "A more civilized age" indeed. (more…)

For our vacation this year, my wife Gina and I took a driving tour of the southern states. The plan was to eat as much BBQ as possible and my fingertips still smell of smoky sauces. We hung out in Memphis and pigged out in Nashville. We made our way south to Mississippi and that’s when it happened. We saw Yoda! The thing is, he wasn’t hanging out in the swamps like you’d expect. He was ON our rental car!I didn’t see him at first but as I got closer his image jumped out at me. It’s obvious right? You don’t even need to squint and look the other way. Yoda’s head is right there, as plain as day!And the license plate designer made absolutely no effort to make this Georgian peach pit look like a peach pit at all! Instead, it looks just like the silhouetted profile of our favorite Jedi Master! Now, if we do a side by side comparison of a peach pit and Yoda, I think you'll find they look nothing alike. Just look at how pissed off Yoda is for even having to hang out with a peach pit for this article. So I ask you dear reader, how could this have happened? How did that license plate artwork get created in the first place? Though this is a noodle scratcher, I have a couple of theories.THEORY #1I believe the designer had way too many free lance jobs going at one time and got overwhelmed. He swapped the Yoda asset from one job for a peach pit in another, went on a weekend bender and then to the printer. Nobody double-checked his work and the swap went unnoticed until it was too late. Both the state of Georgia and The Walt Disney Company were hoping no one would see it - and for a while they were fine...until now.By the way, this theory would also explain my childhood lunchbox.THEORY #2My second theory is that the green mass they call a peach pit, is actually the state of Georgia with some liberties taken.Here's is a diagram of how to take a perfectly good depiction of a proud US state and turn it into ambiguous story fodder. The truth is, I still prefer theory #1.So obvious it is.

In a characteristically insightful essay, Clay Shirky discusses the largely invisible rise of online education and dissects the causes of that invisibility: namely that the American higher education system is an iron-clad requirement for economic success, and it is remarkably bad at serving people who are already poor. (more…)

So smooth, so attractive…it doesn’t get much better than the Apple USB wall plug. NomadPlus acknowledges the presence of true greatness—it doesn’t replace your charger, it makes it better. Slip it inside the NomadPlug and charge your phone and internal 1800mAh backup battery via wall outlet. When you unplug, NomadPlus goes from average wall charger to clutch portable battery. From the wide open roads to the wall, NomadPlus will keep you powered.Fits perfectly w/ your existing Apple wall plugCharges Androids & other gadget types w/ use of a compatible cableCharges all iPhone models from standard Apple Lightning cableCharges gadgets via a wall plug as normal, while also charging the internal 1800mAh backup batteryPowers your phones & gadgets on-the-goIncludes pass-through smart charging & overload protectionSave $15 on the NomadPlus SmartPhone Wall Charger and Battery Pack in the Boing Boing Store today.

The politics escape me, but I'm fascinated by the US Debt Clock, a website covered in real-time tickers and counters purporting to show all of the unpleasant statistics piling up in America.They also have a World Debt Clock for all your international inchoate anxiety needs.

Christian Kirchesch put together a cracking set of logos as used by musicians, pirates, demo writers and other e'erdowells of the Commodore Amiga's hardcore coding scene.Originally this was supposed to be an article about the Top 20 Logos from Commodore Amiga. It ended up with 159. The more I digged into it, the more precious gems I fount. Graphics I hadn't seen for decades, straying around in .ADF- and .DMS-images somewhere on the Internet, forgotten by most people. Some of these Logos go even back to 1988 (Tristar, Unit A, World of Wonders).

The manual for Atari's classic game (posted to flickr by Brian Bennett exactly ten years ago) is not a masterpiece of design. But it is beautiful, in its way, and I strongly approve of that particular shade of orange. Sadly, your ninety-day warranty is over. Pong (1976) [via]P.S. there are all sorts of manuals for early arcade games, including Pong, at Textfiles.org.

Election Betting Odds tallies not polls but gambling odds, to figure out who people think will win the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Democrat Hillary Clinton is the predictable favorite, but interestingly, bettors don't think much of ostensible Republican front-runner Donald Trump, preferring Mark Rubio. Carson, high-polling among conservatives but fast-becoming an object of humor for everyone else, is way down the list. [via internet is beautiful]

In The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World published this week in Current Biology, academic researchers from the US, Canada, Qatar, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and China report on a study of about 1,200 children from around the world in which a "robust" correlation between religious upbringing in either Christianity or Islam and a lack of altruism was demonstrated. (more…)

https://vimeo.com/144773963You used to call me on my cell phone. Late night when you need my cat food. (more…)

In the past few days there have been a flurry of stories about the Russian plane that crashed in the Sinai peninsula, which investigators reportedly think may have been caused by a bomb. Notably, anonymous US officials have been leaking to journalists that they believe ISIS is involved, and it’s a perfect illustration of the US government’s rank hypocrisy when it comes to the Edward Snowden disclosures. (more…)

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a very long, legalistic proposed treaty full of paid-for corporate graft. The Washington Post has made it easy to search, lest its inaccessibility dissuade scrutiny (which seems unlikely, though anything that makes it accessible to laypeople will annoy the right people)

The Staten Island Advance reports that Brandon Williams, 13, was eating his lunch at Barnes Intermediate School on Oct. 28 when he saw that his classmate Jessica Pellegrino was choking on a piece of apple. (more…)

American Apparel founder Dov Charney still lives in an 11,000 square foot mansion in Los Angeles, but he says he is so broke he can't even afford a lawyer and has to couch surf when he goes to New York. (more…)

Posted by Walt Disney Studios Japan.

Are you planning on taking a trip to the Moon? If so, you'll want to create a commemorative photo album. The moon is a pretty desolate place and the truth is, you just don’t have a whole lot to work with. You’ve got moon dust, some craters and if you’re lucky, you’ve got some shadow and light. (more…)

EFF, the Organization for Transformative Works, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund have filed a brief [PDF] in a Supreme Court case over "publicity rights" -- the right of famous people to veto the use of their names and likenesses in other works, like caricatures, documentaries, and biographies. (more…)

Coaxed by the Copyright Page: An Erotic Short Story is Leonard Delaney's latest erotic short story, part four in the Digital Desires series, which includes Taken by the Tetris Blocks, Conquered by Clippy and Invaded by the Iwatch -- they're $2.32 each. (more…)