Cyril Takayama is American-Japanese magician who started his career as a teenager busking on the streets of Shinjuku in Tokyo. Today he is regarded as one of the best magicians in the world. The entire one-hour video above is worth watching, but I've queued it to his signature card-through-the-window trick.[via]

A manhunt is on in Oxfordshire after an old wheelbarrow being used as a planter was upset by forces unknown, reports The Henley Standard. Read the rest

From the entrancing Micro Universe Tumblr: a bacterium on a diatom on an amphipod.

Today in Betteridge headlines: "Should Facebook Block Offensive Videos Before They Post?" Read the rest

Avid Life Media is full of genuinely nasty people. Good luck with your next thing, gentlemen. Read the rest

A new "tycoon"-style game offers a provocative look at the world of making people healthy for profit. Read the rest

Two novels I enjoyed very much are on sale right now on Amazon for $1.99 each: The Martian by Andy Weir, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Both novels are thrilling survival stories about people who do their best to overcome desperate conditions.

Abby Moss of Broadly talked to her mother about what it was like to be a well-paid phone sex worker, and found out why many woman over 40 are so good at it. Read the rest

Security blogger Brian Krebs is among those hot on the trail, and he "may have a new lead," according to the New York Times. Read the rest

EverBlock's concept is simple: interlocking plastic bricks at a macro scale.It's quick and easy to build nearly anything, by stacking and organizing the universal blocks in nearly any shape, pattern, or size. Read the rest

Pictured above are the lowest-category storms. Since 2005, the United States has been relatively lucky.

After failed smartphones and other gadgets, Amazon's laying off people who work on consumer electronics.Amazon.com Inc. flamed out with critics and consumers last year in its first attempt at a smartphone. Read the rest

Motherboard reports on hilariously insistent efforts made by mystery correspondents to trick people into thinking they are news reporters.The campaign uses sophisticated techniques to get around the extra protection provided by Gmail’s two-factor authentication, which requires a password and a token to log in, as detailed in a new report published on Thursday by Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. Read the rest

The sold-out installation at Weston-super-Mare is a carnival of dark delights and clearly fun for the whole family. (via JWZ)

Well, The Shephed's Crowd (a Tiffany Aching book) is out in the UK, anyway -- (idiotically) the US release will be Sept 1. Read the rest

We’re happy for the Hugos, sad for the last Terry Pratchett novel, and J.R.R. Tolkien has a new book. Plus, we wrap up Uprooted by Naomi Novik and make our peace with a trope. Read the rest

The Found Footage Festival has unearthed a 1980s-era modeling instructional video so tubular "you'll probably watch it several times over before you understand it all completely." Read the rest

Induced dissociative states are the best dissociative states, and one cheap and easy way to get there is to stare into someone's eyes for about ten minutes. More researchers are looking into the phenomenon. Read the rest

Björk has become known for rocking some stunning embroidered masks. Hint published a nice overview of her longtime collaboration with maskmaker James Merry. Read the rest

Judgey is a fun site that lets you rate a book's cover, then see if your rating matches up with its Goodreads rating. Great way to remind yourself of all the bad design in the world! Read the rest

Bulletproof Coffee was invented by self-described bio-hacker Dave Asprey. He uses mold-free coffee blended with unsalted butter and MCT oil. I've had it and it is very tasty. Read the rest

Annalee Newitz reports that very few of the female profiles at the hacked site appear to represent real people.The world of Ashley Madison was a far more dystopian place than anyone had realized. Read the rest

Tobias Strebel, 35, who famously spent $100,000 on cosmetic surgery to look like Justin Bieber, was found dead in a Motel 6 in Los Angeles County. Read the rest

I thought I was getting a good deal when I bought an unlocked Amazon Fire phone in July for $159, which includes a year of Prime (worth $99), a nice pair of headphones and a USB charger. Read the rest

This guy did not want a tow truck to take his car away, so he tried to drive away while his car was attached to the truck.

I just learned that Randy Stickrod died in late July, and I'm in shock. He was 71. Randy was one of the kindest and most generous people I've ever met, and he was a great friend to many people in the early 1990s San Francisco publishing world. Read the rest

Worth staying until the end of the video. (more…)

Rick Kleffel talks to William MacAskill, the core of Effective Altruism, discussing EA and his book about it. It's much more pragmatic and entirely reasonable, not about extreme statistics and speculations." Read the rest

Sex, intrigue, and catnip, in this cat-themed soap opera YouTubed by Mark Douglas. (more…)

A respected journalist in China who reported an important story about that nation's stock market fluctuations was held by police, who say he was “spreading false information.” Read the rest

“I duct-taped a Superman figure to my Phantom 3 and flew it over Victoria Park. Glorious!” (more…)

This little gadget, called the Zap-It ($13 on Amazon), delivers a small electrical shock to a mosquito bite, making the itch stop. Read the rest

According to the uploader's description, these jolly Russian gentlemen here are opening what is identified as a 70-year-old package of Soviet fighter pilot war chow.Read the rest

If you can manage to avoid smiling while you watch this video, you must be made of far stronger stuff than I am. (more…)

Austin Grossman's first-person secret memoir of Richard Nixon sounds like a Lovecraftian gag, but Crooked is a brooding, bitter Cold War novel that gets deep into the psyche of "the funniest president that ever lived." Read the rest

"Sir, please lower the volume of your punk rock music when in the (elementary school) car line." -- Pesco(more…)

Artist Thomas Kuntz constructs fantastic animatronic mechanisms that recreate scenes from the best nightmares you've ever had. Read the rest

Imagine that one day a giant squid materialized in the sky over a city, singing the song that will end the world. Imagine that you are that squid. Read the rest

I tried a $9 instrument to USB adaptor, and a $50 Behringer unit. $41 extra dollars didn't help my experience.Read the rest

Soon after American soldiers returned home from World War II, a new type of magazine was created for them – the man’s adventure magazine. Read the rest

"Being a starving artist only works if you actually make art." This is just one of many excellent life tips offered by people ranging from 6-years-old to 93-years olds in a video made by CBC Radio WireTap, called "How to Age Gracefully."