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This creepy crocodile-buffalo hybrid turned up in High Rock, Thailand this month. The beast bears a striking resemblance to the half-aquatic, half-terrestrial Hindu god Makara, and is now on display in the village! According to Mysterious Universe, the creature may actually be a calf with a skin disorder. Sure it is....Related, off the west coast of Greece, tourist Harvey Robertson snapped the following photo of this bizarre crocodile-hippo-dolphin that could be the earthly incarnation of the Egyptian demon Ammit, seen in illustration below!

Political scientists and economists who've undertaken peer-reviewed research into policy outcomes have concluded that all over the world, and at every level of government, wealth inequality is correlated with corrupt policy-making in which politicians create laws and regulations that favor the rich at the expense of the wider public. (more…)

Ben Fields, the South Carolina sheriff’s deputy who was video-recorded beating up a black schoolgirl who was sitting peacefully at her desk, has been fired. (more…)

Amir Meshal, an America, claims the FBI falsely imprisoned and tortured him for months, but on Friday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said he can't sue the FBI because it happened in Ethiopia, not the United States. (more…)

I want them all, and so you do. (more…)

The Wah Wah Machine translates your text into the unintelligible trombone vocalizations of all adults in the Peanuts movies. It's a very clever promotion for The Peanuts Movie out next month. (Bonus special message when it catches what may be profanity!)

I've got no idea what the Kawasaki Festival is all about, but a float with a gigantic fiberglass penis shows up, so obviously it's a good one.

See sample pages at Wink.According to artist David Shrigley’s message on the back cover of his book, Weak Messages Create Bad Situations, “We are in a bad situation and weak messages are to blame. Lots of individuals in society today are feeble-minded. They don’t know what the hell is going on ... It’s alright. I am here to help you.”Weak Messages is an over-sized satirical “manifesto” or collection of Shrigley’s deep dark thoughts on all the little and big things that drive our world. Divided into eight chapters (Politics and Opinions, The Arts, Bugs and Insects, The World Explained...), each page contains a child-like drawing along with a hand-written simple opinion or declaration – one-page cartoons that can seem primitively funny at first glance. But read them as a collection and you suddenly find yourself in the depths of Shrigley’s mockingly blunt subconscious where truth, horror, and nervous chuckles abound. But fear not. Shrigley assures us that “If you listen to what I say things will quickly improve.”Weak Messages Create Bad Situations: A Manifestoby David ShrigleyCanongate 2015, 384 pages, 8.2 x 11.2 x 1.1 inches$35 Buy a copy on Amazon

The Kentucky county court clark who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples sent email on the matter using her work address, and the AP gained access to it under that state's freedom of information act.It's "exactly what you would imagine them to be", in a battle-for-eternity kind of way, writes Mark Joseph Stern.The battle has just begun…It has truly been a firestorm here and the days are pretty much a blur, but I am confident that God is in control of all of this!! I desire your prayers, I will need strength that only God can supply and I need a backbone like a saw log!!…They are going to try and make a whipping post out of me!! I know it, but God is still alive and on the throne!!! He IS in control and knows exactly where I am!!…September 1 will be the day to prepare for, if the Lord doesn’t return before then. I have weighted the cost, and will stay the course.Obviously just doing her job there.

The shell of the Earth is about 800 miles thick before it opens up to a massive hollow containing its own sun. Entry points are at the North and South Poles. The residents include the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, led inside by God, where they live for hundreds of years and enjoy such advances as "flying saucer technology." This according to Rodney Cluff, author of World Top Secret: Our Earth IS Hollow!: The Scientific, Scriptural and Historical Evidence that Our Earth Is Hollow! Over at Atlas Obscura, Eric Grundhauser interviewed Cluff for a wonderful feature about the fictional and non-fictional (?) history of the hollow Earth:One of the most popular pieces of evidence for Hollow Earth is a supposed secret journal entry by Admiral Richard Byrd, who claimed to be the first person to fly over the North and South pole. According to believers, Byrd’s secret journal from 1947 included a report of flying into one of the Symmes Holes, and making contact with the race that lives inside the Earth.Of course this too, has supposedly been covered up.Through the mid-2000s and into the early 2010s, Cluff was actually a part of a long-gestating expedition known most recently as the North Pole Inner Earth Expedition. Unfortunately after a number of setbacks including backers and members of the team falling victim to calamities ranging from cancer to fatal plane crashes, the expedition was put on hiatus. Had the expedition been successful, the team would have chartered one of the world’s largest ice breaking ships straight to the North Pole, where they would have attempted to contact the denizens of the Hollow Earth through the hole they believed they would find. Cluff believes that the various setbacks to the project are the work of the international banking conspiracy, but is hopeful that they will someday be able to get funding, and a new expedition leader to help continue the project."The Hollow Earth is filled with giants, Germans, and a little sun"

In the Mexican state of Zacatecas, authorities announced today they have found the severed heads of four men. The heads were left in Styrofoam coolers, along with gang messages that appear to have been written by members of one drug cartel, directed at a rival cartel. (more…)

We're launching the new paperback edition of "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free, my book of practical advice and theory for artists trying to make sense of the net (it features intros by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, too!) at Santa Monica's Diesel Books. (more…)

Last night at midnight, Halo 5 launched. Will this be the last epic adventure for video gaming's mightiest champion? The Master Chief is back, but all the cockamamie advertising colors our hero as the bad guy. I wish I could tell you if this game is any good! I've certainly been waiting a long time to play it! I purchased my Xbox One at launch, anticipating that Halo 5 would shortly follow. My Xbox has been around for two years now, with nary a Chief sighting. I could have played the Master Chief collection, but I heard poor reviews of its translation to the Xbox One. The only game I've really enjoyed in the interim has been Destiny, which was developed by Halo creators Bungie. There is no small amount of question, in my online Destiny circles, around Halo killing Destiny. Destiny has also felt like Halo, without the amazing backstory and hero. Bungie is creating a backstory, and thus far it is pretty much a dud. The game play, and its mesh of FPS with MMO queues, like farming (sigh) are addictive but it is not Halo. I miss stickies. I long to gloriously dual wield the needler, or have a hell bent for leather Warthog chase! Will Halo 5 kill Destiny?Large online teams of 12 players, mashed with an insane gameplay frame rate, and 4 player campaign mode all sound wonderful! I'm far more interested in the story, however. I have not read any Halo fiction, I have simply played the games, and the Master Chief is my ultimate video game hero. His relationship with his A.I. Cortana is legendary. I like him better than Max Payne, and 343 Studios, the developer Microsoft created to manage the franchise, is setting him up as the bad guy? Come on. It is clear 343/MSFT want to introduce us to some new SPARTANs to carry the franchise forward, Jameson Locke and Nathan Fillion. Jameson Locke is a fictional character, Fillion I am not sure. It also seems Fillion can't decide between Destiny or Halo, he voices characters in both. Anyhow, I can only hope 343 gets the story right, because it looks like they're just going for an obvious 'Chief-gone-rogue then saves us all' story line. We all know what the Chief went through to save humanity 4 times already! I'd say trust him.I'm still waiting for the game to install! I went with the CD/DVD-less version and selected a digital downloaded copy. I didn't get the email with my pre-order code until 10pm last night, and I guess the rush of folks installing tied me up! I'm still downloading and appear to have a few more hours wait.I've heard a few early reports that the game is beautiful, and that the soundtrack brings you right back into the Halo Universe. If you already have installed Halo 5, please let us know in the BBS how you like it. Halo 5 via Amazon

The Orwell estate filed a bogus copyright and publicity right theft against an inactive Cafepress store where no one had ever bought one of the "1984 is already here" shirts or tea-towels on offer from film critic Josh Hadley. (more…)

Just look at it (more…)

The only thing that Disney seems certain about regarding any future Indiana Jones films is they don't plan on subbing in another actor as Indy. “There are a lot of rumours,” the franchise's producer Frank Marshall says. “We haven’t even sat down to talk about Indy yet… at some point we’ll sit down. But there’s a bunch of people who could probably take the baton. … We’re not doing the Bond thing where we’re going to call somebody else Indiana Jones … we have to figure this out.”Sorry, Chris Pratt. Mr. Ford, please put down the blaster and grab the bullwhip.(Comic Book Resources)

https://youtu.be/gEC0pKHJKNMI love Qawwali music, and I am really loving this cute viral Qawwali-themed ad for India dating service TrulyMadly. (more…)

"I hate to think that people are watching this and we walk among them." (more…)

Mars is currently 2.24 astronomical units away.We tend to think of places as being a fixed distance from one another, and this works on scales terrestrial (it's 3,459 miles from London to New York) and cosmic (it's 4.36 light years to Alpha Centauri). But within the solar system, things change quicker. John D. Cook offers the code to let you calculate Mars' distance from Earth at any given time. [via Hacker News]Some interesting take-home facts for the laymen among us: the two worlds orbit anticlockwise; Martian years last 687 days, and the is Earth traveling about 20% faster to boot; and there is no evidence that Mars needs women, though it does show evidence of running water.Here's code for all the planets, sans the useful explanation.Make it easy on yourself with this solar system visualizer.

https://youtu.be/APLz2bTprMAThe Idaho beaver population explosion of 1948 was a big problem. Sarah Palin was still just a twinkle in her father-to-be's eye, so she couldn't be hired to shoot them from a helicopter. So Idaho's Fish and Game department resorted to Plan B: catching the critters, stuffing them into boxes, flying them to remote areas, and dropping them by parachute to their new home. The plan worked! (more…)

Bill Boegeman racked up a student loan debit of $82,961.02 to get a B.S. in social studies education from Minnesota State University, Mankato. It's going to take a very long time to pay it off. (more…)

Expensive fountain pens are lovely, but I want to cry when I lose them. This $15 Metropolitan by Pilot does a nice job of bridging that gap.The weight of its brass barrel gives the Metropolitan a feeling of gravitas. I am using the, impressively for a $15 pen, included converter to fill the pen with Noodler's Heart of Darkness, and the pen flows smoothly. The fine stainless steel nib a pleasure. Overall construction is exactly what I expect from a Pilot pen, it is quite pretty. You may also fill it with a standard Pilot cartridge.As a first fountain pen, or just one you won't terribly mind losing, I highly recommend the Pilot Metropolitan.Pilot Metropolitan Collection Fountain Pen via Amazon

I was raised to play chess in the most boring way imaginable, with both sides developing their pieces into a big symmetrical knot before anything even gets taken. Worse, most chess books basically imagine you to play like a master, preparing your openings and exulting them on the basis of their success and failure at the international level. Instead, everyday players should learn the flawed but brutal attacks of their ancestors, dashing gambits, and all the dirty tricks.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib8XaRKCAfo&ab_channel=thechesswebsiteHere's a video of the Top 7 Aggressive Chess openings. The "unfashionable" King's Gambit comes in at #4 and is a great place to start for people wanting to rediscover chess as a brutal game of wits. It's the chess equivalent of kicking down a door and dashing in, arms windmilling at the enemy.The first thing to know in being a chess troll, though, is to avoid the two tricks usually associated with cheap victories: Fool's Mate and Scholar's Mate. These don't even happen in pubs, are no fun at all, and the attempt is liable to make you the fool.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrUalgPaiPQIf you just want a ploy to get hated for, instead learn the Fried Liver Attack. This is your One Weird Trick for getting into fights at the kind of fancy parties where chess boards come out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPAuO4MqaM0(If you're playing black and looking to deal with white smugly trying to Scholar's mate you, here's how to nail them.)Now, here's a favorite. The Halloween Gambit is a good one to play in those generic "everyone calmly develops their knights" chess games that happen when all either player really knows are the rules.But you know something else, you hustling fucker! All white has to do is "blunder" away a knight a couple of moves in to gain tempo (see pic), then pawn rush the enemy in the face. It's the sort of thing competent players look down on, but what's great about it is you never do anything that makes you look like a competent player, so the inevitable victories are maximally humiliating for one's opponent.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roz1YeJjvUY&ab_channel=thechesswebsitePretend to be a cautious newbie with the Cabbage Attack, nudging all your pawns forward one square at a time until your frustrated enemy makes a stupid mistake. I really love this one and the general principle: be a giant, irritating hedgerow. Good players are not fooled but it's so very annoying for everyone else. The Creepy Crawly Formation is a particularly effective way to make your foe think you're completely dumb:This is the exact opposite of a cheap trap, but it's a super hustle for intermediate players. "Instead of memorizing move after move, sometimes it's good to remember core principles" such as playing slowly and annoyingly and pretending to be a creepy crawly thingy. Works great with the white pieces and the black pieces. (The Hippo runs along similar lines but is less ostentatiously daft and perhaps a bit too legit for blog posts about chess shenanigans.) A great way to be the most annoying chess player anyone you know has ever met is to get good at bringing out the queen early and marauding around with it without doing any significant development. Here's a grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, trolling at the highest level.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK-AjbDv0O8&ab_channel=kingscrusherThe Monkey's Bum is not something that you'll get a chance to play much, but the name is so good it has to get mentioned. A weak-looking but fine opening to lure opponents into bad play is the Hillbilly Attack, though if they ignore it you're liable to end up in the same old boring midgame knot. If you've got 15 minutes and are sufficiently interested in chessing, International Master Veliri Lilov offers a tour of some "DEVASTATING" opening traps:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNMAqvc9ic&ab_channel=iChess.netThe Ponziani Opening is another one that looks like clueless beginner play, and useless against good players, but sharp in pub play, where it's been a classic for centuries. It's not very dashing, though.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaF_o3YOTW0A useful YouTube playlist to continue your studies is GJ_Chess's "Dirty Chess Tricks."

For generations, members of the Kashia band of the Pomo people have been landlocked. For the first time in 200 years, the coastal tribe will once again have unmitigated access to the sea. (more…)

Mitch Martinez licensed a stock footage clip to a Sony music label to use in a video; when the company proceeded to file a Youtube copyright complaint against him and refused to take his calls, he filed a copyright claim against them, told them he was cancelling their license to his footage, and threatened to make them re-edit the music video, removing his footage from it. (more…)

"Hello, you're watching Dish Network's Pirate TV Channel." Apparently only viewers with unauthorized access to Dish Network would see the "Pirate TV" channel that consisted of this message, looping forever.Below, a version from around 2009: "Hello, you're watching Dish Network. Did you know you're a satellite pirate?"https://youtu.be/X_cAzTn3c0Y(via r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!)

In 1837, Italian physician Camilo Golgi devised a reaction to stain the wispy dendrites and axons of neurons, making it possible to see brain cells in situ. In 1875, he published his first scientific drawing made possibly by his chemical reaction, seen here. It's an illustration of the never fibers, gray matter, and other components of a dog's olfactory bulb. "The First Neuron Drawings, 1870s" (The Scientist)

A survey of 1541 randomly selected US adults ranked the country's fears as of 2015. Items that ranked above climate change included corruption, mass surveillance, cyber-terrorism, bio-warfare, identity theft, running out of money, economic collapse, credit card fraud, Obamacare, illness, nuclear attack, meltdowns and civil unrest and tornadoes. (more…)

Researchers at Incapsula have discovered a botnet that runs on compromised CCTV cameras. There are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of these in the field, and like many Internet of Things devices, their security is an afterthought and not fit for purpose. (more…)

The DoJ is currently trying to force Apple to decrypt data stored on a defendant's Iphone, and Apple, to its great credit, is fighting back, arguing that on the one hand, it doesn't have the technical capability to do so; and on the other, should not be required to do so. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Scott Snyder's Wytches really worked its creepy magic on me. This trade paperback edition collects the first six issues of the popular comic series, which has received widespread praise and counts Stephen King among its many vocal fans. (more…)

Pulp Flesh has a nice but too-small gallery of swamp erotica paperbacks.

Take good care, baby, let me know...

Is it a wise social strategy to make self-deprecating comments? Hopes and Fears asked this question to a psychologist, two personal-brand consultants, a motivational speaker, and a women's life coach. They all pretty much agreed that it's smart for high-status people to self-deprecate and not smart for low-status people to do so.Lindsay Han, life coach focusing on women:I would think one of two things of the high status person. "Wow, despite you being tough on yourself, you still are looked at as a success. You must be pretty fab to reach that level despite your critical self-talk because that hinders so many people." Or, "He/she is just like me! They have their critical thoughts, but it looks as if they've been able to use them in a way that doesn't hinder their success."For the low-status person I would think, "That's why you're stuck. You haven't moved past your critical self-talk. Consequently, you haven't achieved what you want because of it."

Texas A&M Professor of Management Markus Fitza used a technique called variance decomposition to evaluate the extent to which the performance of companies can be attributed to astute leadership versus the random chance, and concluded that in 70% of cases, CEOs can't be shown to add any value to the companies they run. (more…)

This 1928 London Underground ad is a beautiful and witty example of using data to help people get the best use out of public services. By listing the tube's load at different times of the day, LU helped riders figure out how to avoid crushes, and by making the descriptions funny and insightful, the poster's creators created memorable hooks for putting the info in context. (more…)

Joey from Arizona State University writes, "ASU’s Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative is holding its first-ever Climate Fiction Short Story Contest. First prize is $1,000, and three more winners will receive book bundles signed by Paolo Bacigalupi, who was our annual Climate Futures lecturer last month. The best submissions will be published in an online anthology, and will also be considered for publication in the journal Issues in Science and Technology. The contest will be judged by Kim Stanley Robinson, along with a panel of experts from the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative." (more…)

What a gem was released upon the internet today! This video of Bob Ross: A Walk in the Woods, was Season 1 Episode 1 of his long-running “anyone can paint” television HOWTO show. (more…)

Hopes&Fears has a beautiful feature up today on the lives of service dogs for people with psychiatric disabilities and mental illnesses. (more…)

Laurie Penny's science fiction story "Blue Monday" is a mean little kick up the ass. I workshopped this story with her last summer at the Clarion West workshop in Seattle and it doesn't get any less punchy on subsequent re-readings. (more…)

Alex Q. Arbuckle of Retronaut published this gallery of 1968 photos of the Wonderland Arcade in Kansas City, Missouri.

Tim Fitzgerald shot video of naked people. Then he shot video of the same people holding the same pose, but wearing clothes. Then other people smeared and splashed green paint on the people's clothes, and Fitzgerald green screened the two superimposed videos to make this amusing and NSFW short film.

Oakley Latch sunglasses have an ingeniously simple special feature: a clip in the temple so you can attach them securely to your shirt when not wearing them. They were designed by skateboarders Eric Boston, Sean Malto, and Curren Caples and skate photographer Atiba Jefferson. Oakley Latch Sunglasses(via Uncrate)

Justin Trudeau is certainly an improvement on outgoing Pherime Minister Stephen Harper. He's unlikely to go on burning Canada's archives and warring on its scientists, and he'll probably stop ignoring the murder of hundreds of aboriginal women and girls, and he's not a racist asshole who plays to other racist assholes to keep power. (more…)

You don’t need years of drone-piloting experience to have a ridiculously fun time with SKEYE Nano. This smooth black quadcopter automatically calibrates each time it hits the sky, so you’re promised an enjoyable ride whether you choose beginner, intermediate, or advanced mode. Use the remote to hover and move through even the smallest of spaces, thanks to SKEYE Nano’s small and nimble design. And with its new, stealth black look, this limited-edition drone will have your fellow drone enthusiasts sick with envy. Throw your cares to the wind, literally, as you throw this drone in the sky and take flight.Epic throw-to-fly functionalityAdvanced 6-axis flight control system w/ adjustable gyro sensitivityBuilt-in LEDs for night flightsCapable of aerobatic flips & exciting maneuvers4 replacement rotor blades for stress-free crashesMatte-black design for a unique stealth styleMiniature size for nimble flight paths3 flight levels from beginner to expertSave 42% on the limited edition matte-black version of the SKEYE Nano Drone today in the Boing Boing Store. [embed]https://youtu.be/n5Hbb_vEw6g[/embed]

Following a mistrial in the Dewey & LeBoeuf case -- a complex financial fraud involving a tony white-shoe law firm -- Bloomberg tries to analyze what happened to the jury, who were unable to convict despite four months of hearings and 22 days' worth of deliberations. (more…)

On October 9, the Supreme Court of Vanuatu found that fourteen members of the government had accepted bribes from the opposition in exchange for a promise of support in a vote of no confidence. Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, was out of the country at the time, leaving speaker Marcellino Pipite as head of state in his absence. As Pipite was one of those convicted, he promptly pardoned himself and his co-conspirators and suspended the country's ombudsman. (more…)

Wikileaks has posted a collection of documents ganked from CIA director John Brennan's email account, which was reportedly hacked by a "teen stoner" earlier this week. (more…)