Ken "Popehat" White, a former US Attorney turned criminal defense attorney, notes that the Republican outrage about "flipped" prosecution witnesses is awfully self-serving (given that Trump's bagman Michael Cohen and hushup capo David Pecker have both seemingly turned state's evidence), they have a point, as countless black and brown and poor defendants have discovered in their journey through the American justice system. (more…)

The video begins with two women arguing in a Tesla dealer parking lot. They sound like they are speaking Chinese. One woman is sitting in the driver's seat with the door open. The other is standing next to the driver. After a few seconds, the standing woman starts to hit the seated driver. The driver gets out of her car and they both hit each other for a bit. Then the driver returns to her car. The video stops and starts at a new point in time to show the driver nearly running over the other woman. The woman who was almost run over then gets in her car and rams the other driver's car, making a loud crunch. I wonder what the fight was about. They should be happy to have such nice cars.

Lyft has teamed up with the Urban League, Voto Latino, the Urban League and the National Federation of the Blind to offer free and half-price rides to the polls for voters on November 6. "Transportation issues" were cited as reasons for not voting by 28% of Americans earning less than $20,000 who did not vote in the 2012 presidential election.

Mavic drones are very cool, and the company recently released its newest model, the Mavic 2 Zoom Quadcopter ($1250). Jerry from the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel got one and when to the abandoned Tintic Standard reduction mill in Utah to show off the drone's amazing photographic features. I want one of these in the same way I want a Teenage Engineering op-1 synthesizer - something I'd toy with for a few hours, then put in the closet and feel guilty about not using every time I saw it.Image: YouTube screengrab

“We went there to protect a monument,” he said. (more…)

"The purpose of my research and development is not to answer the philosophical theme 'Will a robot (or computer) obtain a mind or emotions like mankind,'" says Japanese artist Takayuki Todo, "but to portray the sense of conscious emotion such as a human can produce. I think it is possible to represent human-like communications by constructing an adequate interaction system between facial sensing and expressions."To test out his ideas, Takayuki made a small plastic head with simplified static facial features, realistic eyes that can rotate, and articulated eyebrows. The head can move around on the neck. When Takayuki makes different facial expressions in front of a webcam, the robot copies them. It's interesting to see how well the robot's expressions match Takayuki's, even though it can only tilt and turn its head, roll its eyes, and move its eyebrows. In other words, the mouth doesn't seem to matter much in expressions. The head seems very lifelike, much more so than those scary robots that pull back their rubber mouth skin to expose a row of teeth.Image: YouTube screengrab

The Democratic National Committee called the FBI Tuesday, after discovering what the DNC says was the early phase of a sophisticated phishing attempt to hack its voter database. (more…)

I've never had a problem with plugging a cable into my smartphone to charge, but a lot of folks feel it's an inconvenience. If you're one of those and own an older iPhone, you're in luck! Thanks to some sketchy grey market parts from China, nerves of steel, and a devil-may-care attitude towards any warranty you might have left on your handset, you can totally add wireless charging to your phone.

Facebook wants you to "engage" with its service, so they have an algorithm that plucks your most favorited images out of your past stream and adds dancing whimsical cartoon characters and then rams the resulting animation into your eyeballs, because why not? (more…)

Argentinian police officer Celeste Jaqueline Ayala was on duty at a Buenos Aires hospital when she heard the incessant cries of a baby there. (more…)

Do It Again is one of my favorite songs, not least because of the distinctive delay effect applied to the drums by sound engineer Stephen Desper, giving it its weird blend of electronic fuzz and nostalgia ("like something from another planet"). Here it is with the delay effect removed. Being honest with myself, I have to say it's better this way. But then, I wasn't there in '68.

I don't think I've been around a basketball in two decades, never mind played with one. (Who am I kidding? It's easily been three decades.) Yet, I can't help but dig this bright yellow Smiley basketball by Chinatown Market ($59). Dare I say that it put a smile on my face? (Yeah, I'd better not.)(Cool Hunting)

"Enjoying your classes, Harry?" It's the 2009 work of Thewlis Rox, gone viral a decade later in its incarnation as a 2011 swipe posted by another YouTube user, after being reposted to Reddit hundreds (if not thousands) of times, before lightning struck again.

As a fan of Donald Westlake's (aka Richard Stark's) Parker heist novels, I enjoyed this video about one of the biggest unsolved art heists in history, in which two men broke into a museum and made off with $500 million worth of art. They still haven't been caught and a $10 million reward is still on the table.Around midnight on March 18, 1990 two men in fake police uniforms knocked on the door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Only two guards were in the museum. One guard came to the door and the fake cops told him they were responding to a disturbance in the museum courtyard. The guard buzzed them in. The cops then told the guard that there was a warrant out for his arrest and handcuffed him. When the second guard arrived the robbers "arrested" him, too. They took both guards to the basement and locked them in a room. The thieves went back upstairs and started cutting paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and other masters out of their frames. This triggered alarms, but the alarms went to the unattended guard's desk, not the police. One of the paintings, Vermeer's The Concert, is thought to be the most valuable stolen object in the world, worth over $200 million. The men loaded the loot into their car and drove off, and no one has heard from them since.These crooks did wrong, but I can't help admiring this magnificent heist.

Marcel Vos's creation hit the highest intensity rating possible on RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Vos has named the coaster "Big Scary Motherfucker."

John Oliver made fun of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's terrible performance on the talk shows Sunday. Giuliani's "truth isn't truth" statement should surely end up inscribed on both his and Trump's gravestones: a bungled effort to describe perjury traps and other reasons one should generally not talk to cops and most certainly not the FBI.“What is Giuliani doing, and why does the White House keep letting him go on TV?” Oliver said. “Because at this rate, Trump is going to wind up behind bars with Giuliani visiting him and saying, ‘Don’t worry, Donald: Prison isn’t prison.’” The usual problem along these lines is vain lawyers thinking they're good at PR. But Giuliani's just a weird idiot.

Karateka is not just a classic game, but one of the most well-documented thanks to Jordan Mechner's memoirs and his habit for maintaining archives. 34 years after its release, Charles Mangin studied the game's source code and patched it to allow a second player to control the enemies—effectively adding a vs. battle mode.I’ve taught myself 6502 assembly after getting back into the Apple II, through the thriving community online. The idea of a two player version of Karateka came back to me while at KansasFest a couple of years ago. I noodled a little on it back then, getting distracted by finding the code that created the unique music in the game. Long story short: I finally found the places in the game code that needed patching to allow a second player to control the enemies in the game, and create a functioning two player version of Karateka. The resulting patch is only 42 bytes long42, the meaning of life! You can play the two-player Karateka at the Internet Archive. I'd love to see this done to Great Gurianos (sometimes renamed Gladiator), another 80s' fighter with an interesting combat system whose attract mode suggested vs. battles that were not in the game itself.

Drones are undeniably cool, but not all of us have the Top Gun-level piloting skills required to fly them—unless you're using TRNDlabs' new Spectre Drone. Designed new and expert pilots alike, this drone is loaded with fly assist features to make piloting easy, all the while you explore using its built-in HD camera. It's available in the Boing Boing store for over 50% off its usual price.The Spectre makes flying simple with cutting-edge fly assist features, like auto take-off and landing, as well as the ability to hold its altitude (handy for when you're snapping photos with its camera). The drone is also engineered with 6-axis gyro sensitivity, allowing you to complete 360-degree flips with enhanced precision and power. Plus, it even boasts built-in LED lights for pilots looking to take to get airborne at night.TRNDlabs' Spectre Drone was on sale for $99, but it's available at an even lower price today of $69—more than 50% off the usual price.

"Alec is 42 this morning and therefore has nothing further to contribute to society," begins this bit from the 2001 comedy series The Armando Iannucci Shows.Poor Alec is being transitioned into a home for middle-aged men, a place where past-their-primers are reminded, "Possibility is a private party to which you are no longer invited." Ouch!(Nag on the Lake, Blort)

3D character artist Miguel Vasquez brings fairly innocuous-looking cartoon characters into disturbing 3D "life," like he did with Homer Simpson above.Here's his Spongebob Squarepants...https://www.instagram.com/p/BV8r2LGDlq4/?taken-by=marvelous_mikeeAlong with Squidward and Patrick:https://www.instagram.com/p/BalK8mVj3en/?taken-by=marvelous_mikeeHere's his Nigel Thornberry (who's voiced by Tim Curry) of the old Nickelodeon show The Wild Thornberrys :https://www.instagram.com/p/BjElYGwDjqA/?taken-by=marvelous_mikeeIf those weren't enough to freak you out, he's got more on his Instagram.

The FBI is investigating a cyberattack on the congressional campaign of David Min, a Democratic candidate in California. (more…)

I think he should have just kept the wax on. It looks like a 1980 Devo pomp wig!

This 3-ounce Bluetooth speaker is highly rated on Amazon (and Fakespot gives the reviews an A grade for authenticity). It also comes with a built in mic so you can use it as a speakerphone. We bought one in March and my daughter uses it much more than than the larger one she has. It is loud and clear, even at top volume. It's only $10.79 when you click the coupon checkbox.

Many people under the age of 30 have never used a landline, let alone a payphone. Stephen Colbert took a random young person from his audience outside and taught her how to use a payphone for the first time. After spraying the phone with disinfectant and handing her some quarters ("Have you ever seen these before? They're like Venmo you can touch.") Colbert gives her step-by-step instructions. Unfortunately she doesn't know any phone numbers, so Colbert tells her to call the number of the pizza parlor right next to the phone. Then Colbert has her call an operator and whispers into her ear what to say.

Over 1,000 Google employees have signed a petition urging senior management to reconsider the company's plan to launch a censored Chinese search product (codename: Dragonfly), a revolt that's been in the works since the news broke; the employees demand transparency about the project and point out that it violates the Association of Computing Machinery's code of ethics.

On July 26, Guardian columnist George Monbiot tweeted a photo of people on Brighton Beach in 1976, with the comment:In this photo, from 1976, almost everyone is what we would now call slim. So what has happened? A sudden loss of willpower, as some rightwing journos claim? No. An obesogenic environment created by junk food manufacturers and their advertisers.In this photo, from 1976, almost everyone is what we would now call slim. So what has happened? A sudden loss of willpower, as some rightwing journos claim? No. An obesogenic environment created by junk food manufacturers and their advertisers. pic.twitter.com/DmzxsD5VLz— GeorgeMonbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) July 26, 2018As you can see, lively Twitter discussion ensued. Monbiot did some research into people's dietary and exercise habits, then and now. He found that people actually ate more in the 1970s than they do now. Manual laborers are heavier today than they were in the 1970s. Kids move around as much today as they did 50 years ago. "So what has happened?" asks Monbiot? His answer: lots more sugar.The light begins to dawn when you look at the nutrition figures in more detail. Yes, we ate more in 1976, but differently. Today, we buy half as much fresh milk per person, but five times more yoghurt, three times more ice cream and – wait for it – 39 times as many dairy desserts. We buy half as many eggs as in 1976, but a third more breakfast cereals and twice the cereal snacks; half the total potatoes, but three times the crisps. While our direct purchases of sugar have sharply declined, the sugar we consume in drinks and confectionery is likely to have rocketed (there are purchase numbers only from 1992, at which point they were rising rapidly. Perhaps, as we consumed just 9kcal a day in the form of drinks in 1976, no one thought the numbers were worth collecting.) In other words, the opportunities to load our food with sugar have boomed. As some experts have long proposed, this seems to be the issue.The shift has not happened by accident. As Jacques Peretti argued in his film The Men Who Made Us Fat, food companies have invested heavily in designing products that use sugar to bypass our natural appetite control mechanisms, and in packaging and promoting these products to break down what remains of our defences, including through the use of subliminal scents. They employ an army of food scientists and psychologists to trick us into eating more than we need, while their advertisers use the latest findings in neuroscience to overcome our resistance.Image: Evan-Amos - Own work, CC0, Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdszTmNcEFE&feature=youtu.beJames Coutts writes, "Indiana University Victorian Studies PhD candidate Mary Borgo Ton assembled an international group of artists/makers, a media archaeologist, laser cutters and 3D printers to create magic lantern slides that have not been made in 100 years for a show running in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe called Erewhon: "An antique magic lantern projector, an iPhone and a live musical score shine a new light on Samuel Butler’s classic sci-fi novel. A Victorian explorer discovers a colony of refugees; time travellers from the 21st century escaping their dependence on its technology. This delightful neo-historical head-scratcher playfully welds future, past and present into a glittering bracelet of time." (more…)

Poor Sloppy Steve. After losing his Rasputian status with Trump and the Mercers, he tried to peddle his off-brand fascism with nationalist Europeans. But it turns out even these unsavory characters think the only thing Bannon is good at is making things worse.The London Free Press reports that Alexander Gauland, co-chairman of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party bluntly rejected Bannon's cock-eyed proposal to form a pan-European coalition of ultraconservative groups:“We’re not in America,” Gauland told Der Westen, a news website in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. “The interests of the anti-establishment parties in Europe are quite divergent.” The German politician also reportedly declared that Bannon “will not succeed in forging an alliance of the like-minded for the European elections.”The French nationalists don't want want anything to do with the Ugly American, either:“Bannon is American and has no place in a European political party,” Jérôme Rivière, the international spokesman for the French far-right party National Rally, told Politico. “We reject any supranational entity and are not participating in the creation of anything with Bannon.”Cornell European government expert Christopher Way explains:“Part of why Bannon’s project won’t succeed is a failure to recognize the diversity of European right-wing populist parties. Getting them on the same page is like herding cats,” he said. “I don’t see any reason he should succeed when they haven’t managed to coalesce themselves.”What can he do now? With limited options, Bannon is trying to ingratiate himself with his former boss by making a pro-Trump documentary. Good luck with that.Image: Michael Vadon/Wikimedia. (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

Give your kids Roman candles to use in a confined space. What could go wrong? Sure, they might drop them in terror. Yeah, the sparkling, white-hot explosion of entertaining color that pours out of the firework could cause them life-altering injuries, but it’s totally cool. Just enjoy the colors.Enjoy. Those. Colors.

Pew's latest very detailed survey of voting patterns in 2016 goes the extra mile, by validating whether recipients actually cast a ballot, thus forming a picture of who voted, who didn't, and what policies nonvoters favored. (more…)

Eight American kids are killed or injured daily by unsecured guns in their homes. The Ad Council, creators of Smokey Bear and other iconic PSAs, launched the End Family Fire campaign to raise awareness. (more…)

Venice banned cruise ships, Mount Everest has traffic jams, and now even tourists are saying places like Amsterdam have too many tourists. It's all part of a problem dubbed overtourism. (more…)

Slinky Josh bills himself as North America's first professional slinky manipulator, and if the passers-by are any indication, he's very good at his chosen profession. (more…)

In the Showtime series, Who Is America?, Sacha Baron Cohen convinces far-right leaders and activists to do silly things. He got Dick Cheney to sign a waterboard, Joe Arpaio to say he'd accept a blow job from Trump, and GOP lawmaker Jason Spencer to pull down his pants and yell the N-word. In the latest episode, he convinced pro-gun activist Dan Roberts that the best strategy to prevent yourself from being beheaded was by biting the would-be executioner's penis. Roberts enthusiastically tried out the tactic on Cohen, who wore a strap on dildo.If your irrational fear of terrorists, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, etc causes you to be this deranged you deserve to be humiliated by #SachaBaronCohen#WhoIsAmerica pic.twitter.com/tbZGPFJFlx— Wardin Rosewater (@cynicsanonymous) August 13, 2018

A famous 27-year-old Thai actor was arrested after a 22-year-old Finnish millionaire complained that the actor had bilked him out of 5,564 bitcoin (worth $35 million) in an investment scam. Jiratpisit "Boom" Jaravijit, 27, was filming a movie when police took him to jail. The Finnish millionaire, Aarni Otava Saarimaa, said Boom approached him with an opportunity to invest in a stake in a Macau casino that accepted a cryptocurrency called Dragoncoin. Saarimaa handed over his Bitcoin and waited for that sweet, sweet Dragoncoin to start pouring in. But Boom suddenly went silent, and the promise of casino-derived lucre never materialized. Saarimaa went to the Thai police, who turned the case over to its Crime Suppression Division (CSD), which investigated and found that Boom, his brother (who has an existing warrant on an unrelated embezzlement charge), his sister, and two other people who are members of a Thai gang had simply converted the bitcoin into local currency and deposited it into their personal bank accounts. Boom is out on bail, but police are hunting for his siblings. Boom's elder brother, whom the CSD suspects is the ringleader of the scam, is thought to be hiding out in the United States.Image: phanurak rubpol/Shutterstock

Ben Taylor, a 47-year-old artist, was inspired to paint a trippy, colorful circle filled with abstract worm-like patterns. He never finished the work. Years later, Taylor identified the subconscious inspiration for the painting: a 1" African parasitic worm called a Loa loa that he didn't know had taken up residence in his eye but had caused years of illness. Now his painting is on the cover of the medical journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (PDF). From the Washington Post:“I suppose there was almost a sense of relief . . . just because I realized I wasn’t going mad,” Taylor said of his diagnosis...While recovering, Taylor began painting again, and while rummaging in his home studio, he came across... the unfinished work he had shelved earlier...He grabbed his paints and brush and began to finish it. He drew the lashes and the sclera, or the white part of the eye. He painted over the middle, so that the intricate wormlike patterns look like spiraling galaxies disappearing into the dark pupil. He added the worms — long, white and nearly transparent images slithering from the eyelids. “Untitled” became “The Host.”"His health had been failing for years. Then he saw something crawling in his eye" (Washington Post)

In this video we see a cat stealthily approaching another cat. A golden retriever knows that nothing good can result if the two cats start to fight, so it gently picks up the cat by its harness and carries it away.good boy doesn't let a fight break out 😀👌 pic.twitter.com/Vb0h0OKJ6H— Gaml .y (@m_yosry2012) August 10, 2018

Snake 3D adds depth to the classic two-dimensional game; hold shift and you'll move in and out rather than up, down, left or right. It takes so much getting used to--and is so difficult before you even get to the point where the snake's length becomes a hazard to itself--that I suspect that the entire premise is beyond the threshold of human patience, if not comprehension. See 1989's Welltris, from Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Andrei Sgenov, a game design that only makes sense as the result of failing to make a more obvious implementation of 3D Tetris playable. Emboldened by superior 3D graphics in the late 1990s, Nintendo eventually implemented 3D Tetris itself but it wasn't much more fun than Block Out. Nowadays, some form of 3D Tetris sometimes shows up as a "go fuck yourself" mode on normal Tetris games.

After attempting Lucky Charms and Skittles, Claire Saffitz is back with an attempt to make gourmet Oreos, which she says was the most fun of all these sorts of challenges. (more…)

Just look at them. (Thanks, Sean!)

Courtesy of Ian Bogost (previously): a meme generator that puts words between buns!

Running a Shopify store is a great way to net some extra cash on the side or—if you really know what you're doing—replace your 9-to-5 altogether. However, success doesn't come naturally, and newcomers tend to receive mixed results when starting on their own. This E-Commerce Bootcamp can help start your Shopify venture off on the right foot, and it's available in the Boing Boing Store for $29.Led by a duo of Shopify gurus, this course will show you how to build your store with a no-fluff setup checklist. You'll learn from their experiences developing six-figure and seven-figure online stores as you walk through a sales funnel and explore targeting the right markets to grow your audience. Make your way through the collection, and you'll have the skills required to launch your Shopify store and generate leads right away.The E-Commerce Bootcamp is available in the Boing Boing Store for $29, 75% off its usual retail price.

One of two teen boys who kicked and beat a Sikh man in Manteca, California, turned out to be a local police chief's own son. Tyrone McAllister, 18, the son of Union City, California, police Chief Darryl McAllister, was one of the two arrested, police in the city of Manteca, California, said.The other suspect was identified as a 16-year-old boy whose name was withheld because he's underage. The two were taken into custody Wednesday for investigation of attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon, Manteca police said.

https://youtu.be/7FhifTGKtUQIn his YouTube channel description, Sean Woods explains that he created his channel in 2012 as a "fun way to share my passions for history, primitive archery, flintknapping, survival skills, hunting, heirloom gardening, cooking, and a variety of other subjects." He says that last year, "the direction of my channel completely shifted when I accidentally discovered people enjoy watching videos about mouse traps." Now he posts videos almost exclusively about pest control, and he has 800,000 followers.In this video Woods goes after yellow jackets. Anyone whose been stung by one knows how painful it is. I've been stung by bees many times and I barely care. But a yellow jacket will sting you multiple times in a second and each sting feels like getting punched with an icepick. Woods starts out by digging up an underground wasp nest in his backyard. It looks like a hazardous job. First he sprays wasp killer into the hole in the ground leading to the wasp nest, digs with a shovel, sprays more, and digs some more. Even when he drenches the nest with spray some of the yellow jackets are still active. In fact, Woods was stung by one off-camera, but he does't seem to mind. He must have a very high threshold for pain.In the second part of the video, Woods tests three wasp traps. Two are store bought, and the third one is homemade. He uses chicken for bait in two of the traps, commenting that the wasps are "greedy" for meat. His homemade trap beats the other two by a wide margin.

A German 48-year old citizen and her 39-year old partner have been sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of repeatedly raping her son. If that’s not enough, the filth also sold the boy to pedophiles she found on the Dark Net, who further abused the child and filmed it, over a two-year period. It goes without saying that Germany, and most anyone else that’s heard about it, has been horrified by the case. From The Guardian:In Tuesday’s verdict, the couple was ordered to pay €42,500 (£38,000) in compensation to the boy and another victim, a young girl.Local authorities have been accused of failing to protect the boy, who now lives with a foster family. The mother’s partner was supposed to be banned from having contact with children. Officials removed the boy from the family in March last year, but a local court sent him back weeks later.According to The Telegraph, six others were jailed for their involvement in the sexual abuse of the boy. Because of the way that Germany handles criminal cases that involve rape, none of the parties responsible can be named by the media. I can’t even begin to imagine the life-long harm that’s been done to those kids in the name of self-fulfillment and greed, nor can I understand the how a system designed to protect society’s most vulnerable failed them them so completely. Image via Flickr, courtesy of Blogtrepreneur

Germany's polar expedition of 1869 took a dramatic turn when 14 men were shipwrecked on an ice floe off the eastern coast of Greenland. As the frozen island carried them slowly toward settlements in the south, it began to break apart beneath them. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the crew of the Hansa on their desperate journey toward civilization.We'll also honor a slime mold and puzzle over a reversing sunset.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Lordy, there are MORE tapes!The Daily Beast is reporting that professional reality show villain Omarosa Manigault-Newman secretly taped Donald Trump during her time in the Oval Office as Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison. Her new book "UNHINGED: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House" comes out next week. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell The Daily Beast that Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the infamous former Apprentice star who followed Trump to the White House, secretly recorded conversations with the president—conversations she has since leveraged while shopping her forthcoming “tell-all” book, bluntly titled UNHINGED.For months, it has been rumored that Manigault had clandestinely recorded on her smartphone “tapes” of unspecified private discussions she had in the West Wing. Audio actually does exist, and even stars Manigault’s former boss.Good thing Trump only picks the best, most loyal and trustworthy people. Omarosa Secretly Recorded Trump—And Played the Audio for People, Sources Say [Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng, Maxwell Tani/Daily Beast] [Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images]