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Alan Bishop, bassist/vocalist of Sun City Girls and global music collector, wrote an excellent post about his favorite film scores by legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Read the rest

A young man with a VR headset does not want to part with an inflatable torso dressed up as an anime character.I interviewed Robert Anton Wilson for bOING bOING (the zine) in 1988 and he told me he was not concerned about virtual reality sex because people who favored it over real sex would be weaned from the gene pool.

I found these matchbox size wood puzzles at a general store in Colorado and bought three of them. There are a bunch of different ones in the series and I plan to get them all because they are almost like magic tricks and it’s fun to challenge your friends by showing them the end result (without letting them see the process of solving them). Read the rest

The Royal Institution posted this demonstration of an explosively unstable substance called nitrogen triiodide. I love the purple smoke it makes. Read the rest

Start a fire with a water bottle. Use glycerine to make a bottle disappear. Create weird dancing blobs with cornstarch and water. Marvel at water droplets sizzling in a hot pan. Poke pencils through a water-filled ziplock bag without the water leaking. This video has a total of ten cool things you can try at home. It's also one of the rare YouTube videos that doesn't require skipping ahead 20% to get to the interesting part.

This van, complete with blacked-out windows and lacking a license plate, was freaking out parents (and kids) in a Sacramento, California suburb this week. Turns out the van was headed to Burning Man. Read the rest

An all-male council in India has ordered that two sisters, ages 15 and 23, be raped and paraded in public with blackened faces because their brother eloped with a married woman. Read the rest

In 1901, Annie Edson Taylor, then 63, was the first person to make it over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She designed her own barrel, containing a harness and mattress, and sent her cat over the falls first as a test. Read the rest

I had a hard time selecting a blockquote from Douglas Coupland's essay on retail shopping because every paragraph is a gem. Read the rest

Kern Saxton recut the Straight Outta Compton trailer to Ben Fold's cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit."

Withers was inspired by the film "Days of Wine and Roses," starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon. Read the rest

The headset that came with my Xbox One was chewed by a dog. This Skullcandy SLYR is a fantastic step up!Read the rest

The New York Daily News reports on a campaign rally where the real estate mogul and TV star spoke in the broken English often used to mock, as Trump puts it, "those people." Read the rest

"Do you ever see a super-old guy…with a super-young girl…and wonder, how the hell did that happen?" Here's what we're calling it now. Read the rest

The ancient neolithic tomb pictured above was destroyed and replaced by the monolothic concrete park bench pictured below. Read the rest

Described as "suitable for affairs or murders" before it was removed from eBay, this grotty little trailer home is loathed by its present owner. Read the rest

Hungarian police have arrested four people on suspicion of human trafficking after the bodies, thought to be Syrian refugees, were found locked in an abandoned, airtight container truck in Austria.

"There are many unspoken postulates in literary criticism," writes the legendary author, "one being that the more one writes, the less remarkable one’s work is apt to be." And yet… Read the rest

Redditor Mystharia terminated a pregnancy for medical reasons last week; her doctor gave her this consent form, mandated by -- and scathingly attacking -- the Texas legislature, which requires the doctor to enumerate an eye-wateringly detailed account of the foetal development before termination. Read the rest

Instagram is ditching its insistence on square photographs. Jenna Garret writes on the troubled history of the cool but unwieldy format and its inevitable, eternally-recurring defeat by rectangles. Tell us your favorite shape in the comments. (more…)

Jonathan Smith, 34, was charged with misdemeanor battery after "pelting his mother with grub," reports The Smoking Gun.“Jonathan grabbed a hand full of potato salad and threw it,” striking his mother in the face, reported cops, who noted that the woman had “food all over her and in her hair” when they arrived at the residence. Read the rest

Autobiographical cartoonist Jonathan Baylis recalls a story involving the legendary R. Crumb. Excerpted from So Buttons: Man of, Like, a Dozen Faces. Read the rest

Space sailor Buzz Aldrin and the Florida Institute of Technology are planning to colonize Mars within 25 years.More specifically, he’s shooting for 2039, the 70th anniversary of his own Apollo 11 moon landing, although he admits the schedule is “adjustable”. Read the rest

Bipolar planetary nebulae occur when a twin star system lies at the center, forming beautiful wing-like symmetrical lobes. The Hubble team estimates this translucent beauty occurred only 1200 years ago. Read the rest

John Poppleton demonstrates how he creates eye-popping body-painted landscapes using fluorescent paint and UV light. Below are a couple of examples: Read the rest

Mars Curiosity Rover has spotted many interesting things on its mission, like this UFO, a tiny Millennium Falcon type star freighter, heavily modded for use on Mars. Read the rest

PUMP, or Problematic Use of Mobile Phone, happens when users turn to their phones instead of in-person contact to alleviate depression, according to a new study in Computers in Human Behavior. Read the rest

You are Jimi Hendrix, a detective. Officer Jimi Hendrix has called you to the scene of the crime. The victim? Jimi Hendrix. Read the rest

I've heard VR users often say that inhabiting other bodies and other spaces is uniquely liberating, but my colleague Laura Kate Dale sheds light on the fact that embodiment may be complicated for some. Read the rest

Home row on the raaaaange! I made that up myself. Here's a fun typing game about Western shootouts! Read the rest

Papers, Please's Lucas Pope has us shuffling pen and paper again in the joyfully-bleak Unsolicited, a game about filling in and mailing form letters. Read the rest

Part of the ongoing Disneyland/Muppet crossover video series: I'm away from home and blogging this so that my daughter sees it!

If they can keep up with Usain Bolt, I guess Segways can go kind of fast after all. Read the rest

Politely show the world that you don't have time for anyone's shit with this colorful and classy sticker. Read the rest

The author and longtime internet forward-thinker joins The Daily Show as their “supervising producer for digital expansion.” Read the rest

Dan Hamilton's astounding range of talent is ours for the taking—if we can get him to stay still for a moment. Read the rest

Just one of the many stunning images hitting social media today from the protests around Guatemala. An unprecedented number of Guatemalans of all economic, ethnic, and social backgrounds have united in the streets, calling for an end to corruption and the impeachment of president Otto Perez Molina. Read the rest

Protesters are seeking to arrest the sitting president for corruption. Read the rest

Read a beautiful essay on city-building, and the appeal of the eminently-watchable Cities: Skylines. Read the rest

Subway Adventure is a game where you might find yourself saying, "wait, I think I need to transfer to the green line in order to get to the moon." Read the rest

Not sure if it's the scary-looking lasso or the ass-kicking red boots, but a school on Mainstreet, USA banned this dangerous Wonder Woman lunchbox from campus. Read the rest

If you're heading to China, watch where you step. Last month it was escalators pulling people underground in China, with three separate accidents, including one that killed a mother after she managed to save her son. Read the rest