Boing Boing

The science-fiction dream of videoconferencing is finally grim, merciless reality, but tech companies have wanted to foist it on us for decades and this business-to-business marketing video for AT&T's early-1990s solution makes for amusing viewing. They hired David Fincher to do TV ads for AT&T about the same time. They don't depict the VideoPhone itself,…Read More

This is sadly and absolutely as true today as it was when they wrote it.Read More

When we pick up our phones to shoot a video, most of us aren't looking to craft "The Godfather." We just want something that looks reasonably decent that won't be an embarrassment when it gets posted to YouTube or social media. But while not every video needs to reach Spielbergian levels of production, you might…Read More

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler reprise their 50 First Dates roles in this comedic short that imagines what life would be like now for the 2004 film's characters, Lucy and Henry. Lucy (Drew Barrymore) wakes up to husband Henry's (Adam Sandler) routine message to remind her of what's been going on the past 16 years…Read More

The Pretenders recorded this Live at Home rendition of "Back on the Chain Gang" for BBC Radio 2. Chrissie Hynde's voice is apparently immortal.Read More

Former FBI Director James Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30, which is just about one month before the presidential election. The GOP keeps trying to gin up the lie that Comey and the FBI under his direction conspired against Donald Trump in 2016. From the Associated Press: Comey,…

Remember that Trump photo op in front of St. John's Church in Lafayette Square in DC, on June 1st, where American citizens were tear-gassed? Military police were also considering using what is described as a heat ray to burn the skin of people protesting the killing of George Floyd on that day. Previously, the heat […]

The two Tom the Dancing Bug books, Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse, and The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader, are now available. Information about the books, including how to order, and special offers here. "God bless Tom the Dancing Bug! Funny, succinct, and highly original, Ruben Bolling is able to make sense from the chaos […]

The French political cartoon website Charlie Hebdo says Al Qaeda has issued death threats to the staff, after republication of the infamous Mohammed cartooons. SITE Intel Group and AFP have also reported about the threats on Friday, and say they were published in Al Qaeda's magazine, One UMMAH. An image from the cover of the […]

At The Catapult, writer/artist Shing Yin Khor has an incredibly beautiful illustrated essay about her relationship with peaches and depression — connecting both things back to their own Chinese heritage, and to the fruit's relationship with Confederate white supremacy in America. Khor takes a touching personal narrative and deftly weaves it through and around hundreds […]

Sometimes, in my dreams, I am the lead in Kool Moe Dee's I Go To Work.

In artists Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen's installation "Pareidolia," a computer vision system uses facial recognition software to find faces in grains of sand. Of course, "pareidolia" is a trick our brain plays that causes us to see meaningful patterns that aren't really there, like animals in clouds or hidden messages in songs. From the […]

Today I learned about the Houston Vampire Court and the Vampire Court of Dallas/Fort Worth, both member-driven organizations for "Sanguinarians" — humans who sustain themselves through blood (animal, or human) or by "draining" "psychic energies" from other humans. These are, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely off-shoots or goth and/or fetish subcultures, but there's something heartwarming about the […]

The "magnificent" home in Berkeley, California, formerly lived in by author Ursula K. Le Guin is on the market for $4.1m. Pictured above, the writing room, though the press releasy stories about it are vague on when and how long she lived there (Wikipedia suggests not past her twenties) . Below, a video tour of […]

The Broomway is a path over tidal flats near Southend-on-Sea in England, linking the mainland with Foulness Island for at least 600 years. Often shrouded in mist, surrounded by whirpools and quicksand, or simply underwater during high tide, it has claimed countless lives. It has refused all efforts to improve it, finally being replaced with […]

Theodor Kittelsen was a neo-Romantic and fantasy artist famous in Norway but relatively unknown beyond it. Here's a brief documentary featuring and explaining some of his most distinctive work. Narrator Sindrelf posted an accompanying article explaining his fondness for Kittelsen, whose cosy yet unsettling perch rests somewhere between victorian fairy art and the towering gloom […]

Today I learned: Flamingos feed with their heads upside down and that their beaks are adapted for this purpose. This essay on flamingo feeding from Stanford explains: In most birds a smaller lower beak works against a larger upper one. In flamingos this is reversed; the lower bill is much larger and stronger, and the […]

What's brown and white and tastes nothing like Christmas? Archie McPhee's Shiitake Mushroom Candy Canes, of course. Not sure what to do for the holidays this year? Give a shiitake! Shiitake Mushroom Candy Canes may seem odd at first, but they're sprouting up all over the place. How do they taste? Like shiitake. After all, […]

Finally, all this new technology put to useful purpose: film stars manipulated by an evil AI into singing "All Star". The software that does the magic is Wav2Lip [github]. Highlights Lip-sync videos to any target speech with high accuracy. Try our interactive demo. Works for any identity, voice, and language. Also works for CGI faces […]

Being a mortician means getting asked a lot of interesting questions, especially ones on keeping a skull or other memento mori after a loved one shuffles off this mortal coil. The answer is interesting and takes gentle viewers into the arcana of corpse desecration laws. The short answer is that you will need to find […]

Impeached U.S. President Donald Trump was accused by his Democratic rival Joe Biden of causing mass deaths with incompetent handling of the coronavirus crisis. So, on Monday, Trump did what he does best: DARVO. He called Biden "stupid," then demanded an apology for what Trump nonsensically called anti-vaccine rhetoric (Biden is pro-vaccine-science, this is false). […]

"The wildfire that has burned more than 7,000 acres in Yucaipa and surrounding areas was caused by an explosive used during a gender reveal party, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection." — KTLA One of many fires burning in California on Monday is the El Dorado Fire in San Bernardino County. […]

While Labor Day is a moment to solemnly consider the role that work serves in all of our lives, there are certain workers among us who will not benefit from a day of celebration and reflection. Robot vacuums, you just keep working like normal this weekend. Look, it's not that we don't appreciate you. But […]

Whenever you happen to need a charging cable or a power battery…hey, wait a minute, where did that go? Between the house, your vehicle and all those evildoers that blatantly steal your stuff (otherwise known as family, friends and co-workers), it's tough to keep track of where all your tech accessories are at a moment's […]

Spoken Word with Electronics is an audio series delivering to you a two side recording of unusual stories paired with vintage modular electronic sounds Greetings, all. Welcome back to the show. This week, the discussion is on meditation and making our body into a conductive circuit. A meditation device called the SOMA Quantum Ocean arrived […]

Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader poisoned with a novichok nerve agent and airlifted for treatment to Germany, has emerged from his coma. The doctors treating him, however, warn that he has a long road ahead to recovery. Germany's government said last week that tests on Navalny showed "unequivocal evidence" of the use of a […]

The Cheapskate's Guide is Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website. It's a paean to the personal website presented in the form of a David Attenborough-style nature documentary about an endangered species, touching upon the contemporary difficulties of reproduction and how it suffers in a web ecology dominated by giant social media companies. The personal website is […]

Foone recently examined the guts of a digital pregnancy test to find that it was a fully-functional system on a chip that simply looks at the lines on a standard test strip and reports what it sees. They originally reported that the pregnancy test, with its baked-in ROM and tiny display, couldn't play Doom. Foone […]

Classic first-person shooter Doom is 27 years old, but still receiving official updates. A few months ago, it received 60fps support. Now it's going widescreen. [via The Verge] For the first time in an official port, the original DOOM renderer has been modified to natively render 16:9 without any letterboxing. The FOV has been increased […]

Asked today by the presiding judge whether he consents to be extradicted to the U.S. on espionage charges, Julian Assange said "No." The district judge Vanessa Baraitser commented: "That was the response I was anticipating." There were no opening statements by either parties. The indictment says Assange and WikiLeaks "repeatedly sought, obtained, and disseminated information […]

After a truck was spotted driving around Lincoln, Nebraska, with the words "Fuck the N—–s" painted on it, the owner was soon identified and fired from his job. Cordis told the Omaha World-Herald on Sunday that he drove his 2002 Chevrolet Silverado K1500 to Gateway Mall near 61st and O streets at about 5 p.m. […]

It's already one of the most iconic items in film history. Unless you've been off-world for the past few years, you already know all about the all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet. It's the weapon wielded by the Mad Titan Thanos in his quest to reshape the cosmos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, culminating in a heart-stopping smackdown […]

Boy, they sure love to say the quiet part out loud, huh? A two-page document released late Friday by Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought effectively bans all federal agencies from using taxpayer dollars on racial sensitivity or other diversity and inclusion initiatives for workers. "These types of 'trainings,'" the memo claims, "not […]

Don't worry, it's sped up! The little critters fan out into the sand over the course of a day or so, welcoming us to Ant Farm Time Lapse YouTube. (Previously in Ants)

Earlier this week, an international team of scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration published two reports — one in the Physical Review Letters, and the other in The Astrophysical Journal Letters — about a strange gravitational wave phenomena they observed. Approximately 17 billion light-years away from the Earth, a black hole that was […]

From The Guardian, where the Snowden revelations were originally published in 2013: Seven years after the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the US intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were […]

The new National Geographic special "Bin Laden's Hard Drive" analyzes the porn collection found in the Abottabad compound of slain terrorist Osama Bin Laden. BIN LADEN'S HARD DRIVE premieres on National Geographic on Thursday, September 10, at 9/8C. Peter Bergen, who famously interviewed Bin Laden, is the correspondent and host of the special. More in […]

Learning to code is a skill many people realize they should take the time to understand, yet instinctively cringe at the actual prospect of doing. It isn't hard to see why. For its integral place in technology and growth, the thought of plunging into programming with all of its precision and technical mumbo-jumbo can feel […]

Whenever Donald Trump's wife pops up in the news, it's good to remember she was and remains a racist birther. Back in 2011, Melania repeated the racist conspiracy theory pushed by her husband, and called on Barack Obama to release his birth certificate during a TV interview on 'The View'. In the 2011 interview with […]

• China did not release images of the reusable spacecraft it says completed a two day space flight. China's government announced Sunday that its first reusable spacecraft landed after two days in orbit. The success of the Chinese experiment suggests a new way to achieve space flight at lower cost. "The secretive, military-run space program […]

Having a webcam isn't enough these days. We've assembled over 20 gimbals, lights, tripods, full kits, and more to elevate your video game, whether you're making elaborate YouTube videos or just trying not to get mocked on the company call. And if over the Labor Day holiday, if you use the coupon code GOFORIT15 during […]

Part puzzle, part science, part creativity and all fun, the Geeek Club launched a Kickstarter campaign to help make high-tech more accessible by creating fun robot kits that blur the line between playtime and serious engineering. The Kickstarter was a success — and now, you can be a creator of robots yourself with the Geeek […]

Back in the 60s, surfers weren't just dreaming up what would ultimately be recognized as the birth of the modern surf culture. They were practically making up their own language as they did it. Along with terms like the tube, gnarly, humpback and the now ever-present dude, surfers also started calling young surfers gremmies, a […]

Peter Strzok's new book, COMPROMISED, is published next week. In an interview with Politico, the former FBI agent says it's unlikely the FBI was able to do a thorough and complete counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump's widely reported business links to the Russian government and Russian organized crime, and that those financial mysteries, like Trump's […]

At least 4 boats sank, no injuries reported as of late Saturday

“It's more about the survivors of gender violence. That's really what it's about.” — Anita Hill

Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper Harvey Briggs, 52, went face-to-face with a man filming an arrest, handled his firearm while threatening him, then ripped the man's facemask off. It was all caught on camera; Briggs' actions first lost him his job and now his freedom. Briggs, 52, was booked into the Metro jail about 9 p.m. […]

Hear us out on this…but there's a case to be made that the telescoping ladder may be one of mankind's most ingenious inventions. For all of recorded history, man has used some form of ladders and scaffolding to scale any heights over 10 feet…and that usually meant toting a big, cumbersome, hugely inconvenient ladder around. […]

At The Washington Post, Daniel Drezner notes that a lot of gas was wasted last week on the idea that Biden was suddenly losing ground to Trump. This speculation was dashed on the rocks of the latest polls, which show the race tightening only by a hair and Biden still commanding double-digit national leads. Morevoer, […]

Yikes.